Self-Reflection for the Opaque Mind

An Essay in Neo-Sellarsian Philosophy

T. Parent

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317210955
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

This volume attempts to solve a grave problem about critical self-reflection. The worry is that we critical thinkers are all in "epistemic bad faith" in light of what psychology tells us. After all, the research shows not merely that we are bad at detecting "ego-threatening" thoughts à la Freud. It also indicates that we are ignorant of even our ordinary thoughts—e.g., reasons for our moral judgments of others (Haidt 2001), and even mundane reasons for buying one pair of stockings over another! (Nisbett & Wilson 1977) However, reflection on one's thoughts requires knowing what those thoughts are in the first place. So if ignorance is the norm, why attempt self-reflection? The activity would just display naivety about psychology. Yet while respecting all the data, this book argues that, remarkably, we are sometimes infallible in our self-discerning judgments. Even so, infallibility does not imply indubitability, and there is no Cartesian ambition to provide a "foundation" for empirical knowledge. The point is rather to explain how self-reflection as a rational activity is possible.

Part I

Preliminaries

Preamble

Is Philosophy Anti-Scientific?

Initially, this book may seem to be philosophical excess of the worst kind. It can look like wishful thinking, a panicky response to legitimate scientific results about the limits of self-knowledge. For, despite ample evidence of these limits, the book argues that many beliefs about one’s own mind are not just reliable; they can be infallible in the way Descartes suggested. Such a view, if not anti-scientific, will at least seem quixotic.

I shudder that this might be the impression left on the casual reader. Like many contemporaries, I think of myself as a naturalist: I not only reject ghosts and gods, but more generally accept that science is the highest authority on what mind-independent reality is like. (Yet this is not to say that science is perfect.) Thus, if science reveals that the mind is largely opaque to itself, one would expect a naturalist philosopher to let the matter lie.

However, nowhere is any of the scientific data contested. Quite the contrary, the data puts an inviolable constraint on the project. Still, even if the data shows the mind is often self-ignorant, it does not follow that this is most often the case. It at least remains possible that in many important cases, we are attuned to our own minds. Naturally, to suggest the possibility is not to demonstrate its actuality. Yet this illustrates that some first-person authority may be possible, even given the science. (Though whether it is at all probable is another matter.)

0.1 A Neo-Sellarsian Approach

Be that as it may, why exactly should this position be developed? (There is still the smell of wishful thinking.) The answer shall be developed in the next chapter. But my concern here is with a prior matter: Why is a philosopher suited to investigate the issue? Whether homo sapiens know their own minds may seem better left to empirical psychology, especially by the lights of a self-proclaimed naturalist.

0.1.1 Reconciling the Images

I certainly welcome confederates from psychology. Nevertheless, some issues in the area are distinctly philosophical, in that they exist as conflicts between what Sellars (1962) called the manifest image and the scientific image of the world. The leading question of the book is an example: How is rational self-reflection possible? From the manifest perspective, self-reflection stands as an important part of our intellectual and moral lives. Yet the activity presumes a reliable ability to identify one’s own beliefs, desires, etc. in order to evaluate them. And reliable access of this type appears non-existent in light of contemporary psychology.¹

So is self-knowledge and self-reflection mere foolishness? Either way, the point is that we have now entered distinctly philosophical terrain. The question is: What should we do about this conflict between the manifest and scientific images? Should we try to resolve it? Or should we reject self-knowledge, and with it the practice of self-reflection? (Alternatively, should we just learn to live with the conflict?) Importantly, since the issue is a normative one, it seems appropriate to address it via (empirically informed) philosophy.

A Sellarsian adopts a particular answer to the normative question—namely, that resolving the conflict is best.² But this is contentious in two ways. First, it is doubtful whether the philosopher is qualified to discuss what exactly the data allows. Second, it may appear more scientifically serious just to reject what the manifest image says rather than prop it up somehow by massaging away the empirical difficulties.

Regarding the first issue, a philosopher may well be unqualified to analyze the data for prototypical scientific purposes. Still, a Sellarsian is not necessarily out of line if she offers hypotheses to show how reconciliation is possible. Such hypothesis-building is certainly not the special province of philosophers. Yet if the Sellarsian recommends resolving conflicts between the images, she thereby incurs a burden to answer the “how possible?” question. She becomes dialectically obligated to do some amount of hypothesis-building, given that some of her peers answer the normative question differently. Whether her hypotheses are scientifically viable should be judged on a case-by-case basis. (And if they are not, that is reason to judge them philosophically lacking as well.) But even if they are de facto ignored by scientists, they can still serve a dialectical function vis-à-vis the normative question, a question which is indeed appropriate for philosophers.

The book thus develops an increasingly nuanced hypothesis about self-knowledge, meant to vindicate the manifest value of reflection. But the second issue, again, is that it may be more scientifically respectable just to dismiss reflection as misguided. In fact, this is an instance of a very general problem for Sellarsian metaphilosophy—namely, that the Sellarsian looks anti-science insofar as she advocates conserving the manifest image, despite its conflicts with the scientific image (hereafter, “MI” and “SI”). What follows is an attempt to respond to that worry.

Even so, I do not endorse in an unqualified way Sellars’ metaphilosophy. Yet to fend off the anti-science objection, the main thesis shall be that engagement with the MI is simply non-optional. Further, if we are stuck with MI, we cannot be blamed for continuing to engage it, even if this is less than scientifically ideal. In which case, it is only understandable that we would try to reconcile the conflicts with SI. We could not be blamed for trying.³

0.1.2 Against Unconditional Unity

Before elaborating, however, I want to register a few disagreements with Sellars—thus explicating the ‘neo-Sellarsian’ label. These concern three metaphilosophical ideas from Sellars (1962), which are often quoted approvingly by contemporary philosophers. The first is:

1. (a) The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term (p. 1).

Dennett (2013), for instance, says, “That is the best definition of philosophy I have encountered” (p. 70). In the same paragraph, Sellars offers a related thought:

1. (b) To achieve success in philosophy would be … to “know one’s way around” … in that reflective way which means that no intellectual holds are barred (1962, p. 1).

But in addition to (a) and (b), there is also the main thesis of Sellars’ paper. Sellars regards problems of philosophy as problems, roughly, of:

1. (c) how to reconcile the ultimate homogeneity of the manifest image with … the system of scientific objects (p. 36).

Our interest is mainly in (c)—yet this section addresses (a) and (b), so to leave them behind later.

On a natural reading, (a) is concerned to say that philosophy aims to unify, to give a systematic and cohesive theory of reality.⁴ Yet it seems one could equally say this of physics—and so pace Dennett, it is unclear how “definitional” of philosophy it is. But secondly, and much more importantly, it would neglect that philosophy is also in the business of de-unifying. Indeed, if we think of philosophy in the vein of Socrates, Cartesian skepticism, Humean skepticism, Schopenhauer, Quine, the later Wittgenstein, and feminist social criticism, philosophy seems more destructive than constructive. Here, “success” consists in identifying our pretensions, our illusions of thinking we “know our way around.”

Even so, perhaps the aim of de-unifying is to ensure that things are ultimately unified in the right way. So perhaps philosophy is a unifying endeavor in the end. That is likely true in some cases. But other times, I think not. Often, pluralism seems like the most honest answer to, for example, the species problem in philosophy of biology. When we consider the many ways that actual biologists individuate species, attempts to “unify” this multitude can oversimplify matters considerably (cf. Kitcher 1989). Whether this pluralism about species is correct, however, is not really the point. Rather, it is just that pluralism per se is not contra-philosophical, simply because it surrenders the unifying goal. (There is a sense in which pluralism imposes a kind of unity [“E pluribus unum”], but that is the trivial sense in which any view “unifies.”)

Such points bear on (b) as well. “Knowing your way around” is akin to knowing a map that unifies the disparate bits of reality, to facilitate easy travel across the philosophical terrain. But again, one central task of philosophy is also to show how “lost” we really are—in some cases, even irredeemably lost. Contemporary philosophers often have a distaste for such destructive or “skeptical” philosophy. Regardless, it is a strong current in the history of the discipline, and it oversimplifies the history if it is unified under the “unifying” goal.⁵

0.2 The Manifest Image and Quinean Scruples

Perhaps Sellars can grant the points above, for his 1962 is not necessarily an attempt to give an exhaustive metaphilosophy. He may just be highlighting some particularly important features of some particularly salient philosophy. Regardless, a categorical metaphilosophy of “unity” is to be resisted. However, Sellars is quite right that “unifying” is one kind of philosophical endeavor, and (c) insightfully explicates this in terms of reconciling of the manifest and scientific images.

But what exactly are MI and SI, and in what ways do they need reconciling? Sellars spends a good deal of time explaining what MI is, though as he admits, it remains sketchy. At least, MI is not the “original image”—it is not a pre-scientific vision of the world based in myth and religion. But nor is it thoroughly scientific; it instead seems to be a kind of “halfway house.” MI admits no gods or monsters, and is thus an empirical “refinement” of the original image (p. 7). Yet MI is importantly different from SI. For only MI posits things like intentions and agency along with standards of correctness for morality and for logical inference (pp. 16–17). Thus, Sellars is prompted to aim for reconciliation:

[T]he task [is] of showing that categories pertaining to man [sic] as a person who finds himself confronted by standards (ethical, logical, etc.) which often conflict with his desires and impulses, and to which he may or may not conform, can be reconciled with the idea that man [sic] is what science says he is.

(1962, p. 38)

But the key question is: Why exactly should reconciliation be the goal? After all, there are at least two other options. One is pluralism about the images (not to be confused with more localized pluralisms about, e.g., species.) The image-pluralist accepts both images for their different advantages, without requiring consistency between them. Though in practice, she may want to side-step incompatibilities as much as possible. (My own view, in fact, is that MI and SI are occasionally irreconcilable, whence a kind of “theory dualism” becomes the best option.⁶)

Sometimes, however, MI and SI seem reconcilable—and it may be apt, dialectically at least, for a philosopher to build hypotheses to reveal that. (But this is not to say that this is the only suitable task for philosophy, nor even its most characteristic task.⁷) Even so, my focus will be on defending Sellarsian reconciliation against an alternative response to MI–SI conflicts—one where the conflicts prompt us to dispense with MI entirely, letting SI claim hegemony.

This alternative can be associated with Quine (1948; 1960).⁸ For the Quinean, our ontological commitments should be fixed by our best, regimented scientific theory—specifically, by the range of its quantifier. The ontology of SI is thus the only one worth taking seriously. And this perspective is not to be taken lightly. After all, if one retains an attachment to MI, in spite of its conflicts with science, one risks being unscientific. Concurrently, any attempt to reconcile MI with SI can seem illegitimate. It would be like trying to reconcile the original image with SI, as some theologians are wont to do. Such things would differ only in degree and not in kind.

Less dramatically, Sellarsian reconciliations can look unseemly akin to “domesticating metaphysics,” as criticized by Ladyman et al. (2007). Domesticating metaphysics uncritically assumes an atomist, mechanistic “folk physics”—and in so doing, it is patently unscientific. Now Sellars does not portray MI as adopting folk physics. But MI may be perturbing in an analogous way. For it ass...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Part I Preliminaries
• Part II Knowledge of Thought
• Part III Knowledge of Judging
• Part IV Denouement
• Index