Guide to Philosophy

C. E. M. Joad

• Publisher: Barakaldo Books
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781839746673
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Historia y teoría filosóficas

Joad's 'Guide to Philosophy' examines systematically but non-technically the central questions of philosophical thought since classical times—Is there a plan to the universe? Is mind unique and independent or a mere secretion of the brain? Is there such a thing as free will? These and similar questions in the theory of knowledge and in metaphysics are introduced, the reasons why they are so much discussed are shown, and the methods by which the discussions have been pursued through the centuries are illustrated. The examination is, for the most part, in terms of opposed solutions- subjective idealism vs. realism, teleology vs. chance, causation vs. temporalism, logical positivism vs. vitalism and modern idealism. Under each problem area, the contributions of each of the major philosophers—Plato, Aristotle, the Scholastics, Kant, Hegel, Leibnitz, William James, and many others—are considered, with such milestones as Plato's theory of ideas, Aristotle's criticism, Kant's and Hegel's philosophical systems, Bergson's philosophy, and Whitehead's philosophy each receiving a chapter or more.

PART I—THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

CHAPTER I: WHAT DO WE KNOW OF THE OUTSIDE WORLD?

1. The Problem Stated

Introductory. It is not easy to decide how to begin a book on philosophy. Philosophical problems are closely bound up with one another; so closely, that some philosophers think that a completely satisfactory solution of any one of them would entail the solution of them all. Whether this is so we cannot tell, since it is extremely unlikely that a completely satisfactory solution of any one of them will be reached by the human mind in the present state of its development. It is, however, true that most philosophical questions are found sooner or later to raise the same problems. In philosophy all roads lead if not to the same Rome, at least into the same maze, so that it is a matter of not very great moment which you choose at the outset of your journey.

But the fact that there is no very good reason for choosing one rather than another makes it very difficult to choose any, as the logical ass of the philosopher Buridan{2} (1300-1350), placed between two equally large and equally succulent bundles of hay, is said to have starved because of an inability to discover any reason why he should proceed in the direction of one rather than of the other.

On reflection I have decided to begin with the problem of sense perception; not because it is any easier or any nearer to solution than any other philosophical problem, but because it entails a consideration of issues which people can explore for themselves: can, and to some extent do, since, of all philosophical conclusions, the conclusion that the outside world is not really “there” or is not really “real” is most familiar to, and most frequently derided by, the non-philosophical. But whether people deride it, dismiss it, or embrace it for the controversial discomfiture of their friends, they are at least familiar with it.

Common-sense View of External World. The problem may be stated fairly simply in the form of a number of questions. What kind of information do our sense organs give us about the external world? Is it reliable information? If it is, what is the nature of the objects about which we receive it? Of what sort of things, in other words, is the external world composed? Common sense answers these questions without much hesitation on the following lines, (1) The external world, it declares, consists of substances which possess qualities; for example, of wood which is hard or soft, of metal which is yellow or silver. (2) These substances we perceive in the form of physical objects such as chairs and tables, gold rings and silver shillings—unless we happen to be scientists, when we perceive what are, presumably, more fundamental substances such as chemical compounds and molecules of which the ordinary substances are composed, and should perceive, if our instruments were delicate enough, which they are not, substances more fundamental still such as atoms and electrons. (3) Physical objects are “out there” in the world and are revealed to us by our senses exactly as they are. In particular, they are not dependent for their existence upon our perception of them. When our sense organs, eyes, ears or noses, are brought into suitable spatial relations with them, then we are said to know them. But common sense would hold that that which actually knows is not itself a sense organ, but is the mind or consciousness. The sense organs, it would be said, are the channels by which knowledge of physical objects is conveyed to the mind.

Now each one of the above propositions is denied by many philosophers, and, although it is by no means clear what propositions ought to be substituted for them, it is reasonably certain that, in the form in which I have just stated them, none of them is true. The first proposition, that the world consists of substances possessing qualities, will be considered in Chapter VI. The consideration of the second and the third which are largely interdependent brings us to the problem of sense perception. In the present chapter we, shall be mainly concerned with the third proposition, which asserts that the physical objects which we perceive are “out there” in the world, and are in no sense dependent upon our perception of them for their existence. Most philosophers have held that they are not “out there” in the world in any ordinary sense, and many have come to the conclusion that they are in some sense dependent for their existence upon the mind or minds which perceive them. Other philosophers, while maintaining that something exists in the world outside ourselves which is not dependent upon our minds for its existence, have, nevertheless, adduced good reasons for denying that this “something” is in the least like the physical objects with which, if the common sense account of the matter is to be believed, we are in contact. They have, that is to say, denied the second of the three propositions asserted above. With the reasons for this latter denial we shall be concerned in the second chapter.

What do our Senses Reveal? Let us call the objects of which, common sense would say, our senses make us aware sensible objects. What do our senses tell us about them? At first sight it seems that they tell us a great deal; but on reflection we find that much of the information which our senses seem to give us relates not to what is going on outside ourselves, but to what is going on inside ourselves, not to sensible objects, but to our own experiences.

Let us suppose that I press my tongue against my teeth and ask the question: “What is it that I experience or am aware of?” At first sight the answer would appear to be: “I am aware of my teeth.” But is this answer really correct? Is not what I really experience a feeling in my tongue—a feeling caused perhaps by the contact between tongue and teeth, but a feeling nevertheless, and since it is a feeling, something that is mental? Suppose now, that I press my fingers against the table, is what I experience the table? Again, the obvious answer proves on examination to be doubtful. The immediate object of my experience, that of which I am directly aware, is, many would say, a sensation in my fingers, a sensation of smoothness, hardness, and coolness.

Let us take a further example. If I stand two feet away from the fire, I experience heat, and common sense tells me that this heat is a property of the fire. If, however, I move nearer to the fire, the heat increases in intensity, until it becomes pain. Now, the pain is clearly in me and not in the fire; since, then, the pain is only a more intense degree of the heat, the inference is that the heat also was a sensation of mine, and not a property of the fire. The leg of a cheese mite is so small that, except with the aid of a microscope, we cannot see it. Are we, then, to suppose that the cheese mite cannot see its own leg? This seems unlikely. We must infer, then, that the apparent size of the cheese mite’s leg varies according to the nature of the mind perceiving it—that the leg, in fact, has one apparent size for the cheese mite and another for ourselves. But the leg cannot have two different sizes at the same time. Has it, then, any real size at all? May it not rather be the case that size is not an intrinsic{3} quality of the object seen, a quality possessed by it in its own rights but is relative to and dependent upon the nature of the perceiver’s mind.

The Case of the Steeple. Let us consider the case of size in a little more detail. I am, we will suppose, looking at a church steeple. Its height appears to vary according to the distance from which I view it. It appears, for example, to have one height from a distance of half a mile, another from a distance of a hundred yards, and another from a distance of five yards, while, if I stand right underneath it, I am unable to estimate its height at all. There are thus a number of different heights which the steeple appears to have. How am I to tell which one of them is or represents its real height? The common sense answer would probably be, by applying a measuring rod or tape-measure or whatever apparatus is normally used for measuring steeples, and noting the reading on the apparatus in question. Let us suppose that the reading on the piece of apparatus—we will call it a tape-measure—is 150 feet. Then we shall say that 150 feet is the real height of the steeple. But will this answer bear investigation? For practical purposes no doubt it will; but for philosophical ones it will not.

In the first place, we have admitted that the steeple appears to have different heights to different observers situated at different distances. What we want to know is, which one of these different appearances really is its height. Now, 150 feet is one of these heights, the height, namely, which it appears to have to a tape-measure extended to the whole of its very considerable length along the outside of the steeple. But why should the tape-measure be accorded the title of a privileged observer, and why should the position immediately contiguous to the outside wall be regarded as a privileged position, so that we are entitled to say that to an observer occupying that position alone is the real height revealed?

Secondly, what sort of information does a reading of 150 feet really give us? We want to know what is the real height of the steeple and we are informed that it is 150 feet. But what is 150 feet? It is a mathematical expression, a name that we give to certain sorts of height, for example to the height possessed by the steeple. Thus, when we want to know what is the real height of the steeple we are told that it is 150 feet, and when we want to know what 150 feet is, we find that it is the sort of height which the steeple, and whatever other things happen to be exactly as tall as the steeple are said to possess. Our information, in fact, is purely circular.

Thirdly, what account are we to give of the tape-measure itself? We have cited a number of illustrations above to suggest that the qualities apparently possessed by sensible objects do not belong to them in actual fact, but are either qualities of our own experience or, since our experience of them varies, are at any rate dependent upon and determined by our experience. But if this is so, we have no right to assume that a tape-measure is exempt from the conclusions suggested by the previous analysis, that it really owns in its own right the qualities that it appears to own, and that in particular it has a length which really is its length. If we may assume without question these facts about the tape-measure, there would be no need to raise questions about the height of the steeple. But whatever reasons there are for doubting whether the steeple really has a height are equally good reasons for doubting whether the tape-measure really has a length. We cannot in short establish the real height of the steeple by reference to the real length of the tape-measure, for it is precisely the meaning of the words “real height” and “real length” that is in doubt.

The Shape of the Penny. As with height so with shape. Let us consider as an example the shape of a penny. Common sense supposes the shape to be circular, but from almost any point of view from which the penny is looked at, the penny appears, as we quickly find out when we try to draw it, to be elliptical, the ellipses which we perceive varying in degrees of fatness and thinness according to the angle of vision from which we view the penny. From two positions only does the penny appear to be circular, and these, namely, the position vertically above and the position vertically below the penny, are rather peculiar positions which are comparatively rarely occupied by the human eye.

If the shape of the penny normally appears to be elliptical, why do we call it circular? It is not easy to say. In the first instance, perhaps, because of the prevalence of a general belief to the effect that it is circular, a belief so widespread and deep-seated that anyone who questioned it outside a philosophical discussion would be regarded as imperfectly sane, But how did this general belief arise? On what is it based? Probably it rests at bottom upon the fact that the penny conforms in respect of many of its attributes to the definition of a circle. There is, for example, a point on its surface such that all lines drawn from that point to the circumference are of equal length: its circumference again is equal to 2πr, its area to πr2. But, if we take our stand on this definition, similar difficulties arise to those which we considered in the case of the steeple. What we want to know is the nature of the shape to which these mathematical properties belong? If we answer that it is a circular shape the question arises, does a penny have it? Unfortunately the penny as usually seen does not. Nor does the penny as touched; to feel a penny is not to feel a circular shape but either a flat surface or, if a finger is crooked round its edge, a curving line of metal. Hence, to touch and to sight the penny does not normally appear to be circular. But to what, then, does it appear to be circular? Presumably to a pair of compasses. But why should its appearance to a pair of compasses, or if the expression be preferred, the reaction of a pair of compasses to it, be presumed to acquaint us with its real shape, in some sense in which its appearance to eyes and fingers does not acquaint us with its real shape? Why in fact are the compasses privileged “observers”? Moreover, what are we to say of the properties of the pair of compasses? Can we, when the existence of physical objects possessing properties in their own right is in question, steal the answer to the question in the case of the compasses in order not to beg it in the case of the penny?

As it is with texture and temperature, as with size and shape, so is it with most, if not all, of the qualities which apparently belong to objects in the external world. In regard to most, if not to all, of these apparent qualities we can truly say that in the last resort they turn out to be relative to ourselves. We have only, for example, to raise the temperatures of our bodies a few degrees, and the world will look different. Still more obviously will it feel different. Yet there is no reason why that world alone should be privileged to be considered real which is perceived by a normal, Nordic adult possessing a body which is heated to a temperature of 98·4 degrees.

Implications of Modern Science. The force of these considerations, in so far as they purport to show the relativity to the perceiver of the qualities apparently existing in the external world, is considerably strengthened by the information which science in general and the sciences of physics and physiology in particular have obtained in regard to the machinery of perception. Before, however, we indicate the bearing of the conclusions of modern science upon the problems under consideration, it is necessary to guard ourselves against misinterpretation by the introduction of a word of warning.

In the first place, the whole question of the relation between sci...

Table of contents

• Title page
• INTRODUCTION
• PART I-THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
• Part II-CRITICAL METAPHYSICS
• PART III-CONSTRUCTIVE METAPHYSICS
• GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY