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The Doctor of Philosophy Will See You Now

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 December 2009

Christopher Coope
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Extract

Papers about philosophy, as distinct from papers within it, are like homeopathic medicines – thin in content. We can only hope to provide some substance if we confine ourselves to some particular aspect. The aspect I have chosen to discuss is this. What hope should we have of finding from within this rather curious and academic subject of ours a help in the affairs of life? Could we expect a doctor of philosophy to give practical advice, rather like a medical doctor?

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Papers
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Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 65 , October 2009 , pp. 177 - 214
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Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2009

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References

1 A glossy leaflet put out by my own university, offering ethics to the public, promises ‘an exceptional client experience’, but sadly gives no further details.

2 From Pyke, Steven, Philosophers (Manchester: Corner House Publications, 1993Google Scholar) In this book, the photographer Steven Pyke presented a collection of striking portraits, each philosopher being asked to make a brief remark to epitomise their conception of the subject. This was Philippa Foot's contribution.

3 ‘Introduction to the Study of Philosophy’, Philosophical Studies, (London: Edward Arnold, 1934) 184.

4 “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism”, Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, Vol. 8, (London: Allen and Unwin, 1986) 243.

5 God, Knowledge and Mystery (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995) 189–190. See also 186, fn. 17, as to the peculiar difficulty in philosophy of passing on what one has learned.

6 The Philosophy of Michael Dummett, R. E. Auxier and L. E. Hahn, (eds.) (Chicago: Open Court, 2007) 29. The controversy itself is in New Blackfriars, 1987–8.

7 ‘The Bioethics Consultant’, HEC Forum, 2003, 378, 367. (The initials ‘HEC’ stand for ‘Healthcare Ethics Committee’.) Professor Engelhardt is surely here reporting without endorsing. Anyone who knows his work will know just how pessimistic he is that much by way of truth or wisdom will emerge from courses in practical ethics.

8 I notice that Mossner, after quoting a passage from ‘On Suicide’ remarks: ‘This is eloquence, no doubt – but is it philosophy?’. Mossner, E. C., The Life of David Hume, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954) 333Google Scholar.

9 It is of course a very ‘Kantian’ essay. Thus there is a passing characterisation of conscription as ‘mere using,’ and of the state as a ‘a moral person’ which is not to be reduced to the status of a thing.

10 The Philosophy of Michael Dummett, 844.

11 Compare Anscombe's, Elizabeth remark in “Contraception and Chastity”, that temperance in regard to eating and drinking, or honesty about property, “has a purely utilitarian justification” (Faith in a Hard Ground, Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2008, p. 188)Google Scholar. No one could suppose that Anscombe was any kind of utilitarian or was invoking anything which deserved to be called a philosophical discovery.

12 Ludwig Wittgenstein, a Memoir (London: Oxford University Press, 1958) 32–3 and 39.

13 Letter reproduced in von Wright, G. H., ‘The origin of the Tractatus’, Wittgenstein, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982) 83Google Scholar, italics in text.

14 Waismann, Friedrich, Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979) 68–9Google Scholar.

15 Lee, Desmond (ed.) Wittgenstein's Lectures, Cambridge 1930–1932, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980) 35Google Scholar.

16 MS 219, 6. Quoted by Kenny, Anthony, The Legacy of Wittgenstein, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984) 57Google Scholar.

17 Zettel, Oxford: Blackwell, 1967, Sec. 608, a step beyond Investigations Sec. 158.

18 Zettel, Sec. 455.

19 On Certainty, Oxford: Blackwell, 1969, Sec. 612. Italics in text

20 Culture and Value, Oxford: Blackwell, 1980, 10.

21 Rhees, Rush (ed.), Ludwig Wittgenstein, Personal Recollections, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981) 175Google Scholar. Wittgenstein was here reacting to the reassuring view, very prevalent as it happens among sophisticated Christians of the present day, that ‘at the end of time’ everything would turn out well for everyone, even the fallen angels being restored to glory, etc. This had been a teaching in Origen, perhaps influenced by Hellenistic thought, and was looked on with favour by Drury.

22 Frede admitted that Pyrro himself might have been a total sceptic. For, by report, the helpless Pyrro would have faced all risks, ‘carts, precipices, dogs,’ were it not for his friends who always accompanied him. But on the whole ancient sceptics tended to lead normal lives without the need for a bodyguard. See ‘The Sceptic's Beliefs,’ in Myles Burneat and Michael Frede (eds.), The Original Scepticism, A Controversy, (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997). These sceptics believed in the existence of dangerous dogs, but not say, in atoms – in this last respect being like Ernst Mach in more recent times. Modest in comparison to Pyrro, they seem to have argued for an extreme version of the modest reserve defended in the present talk.

23 “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism”, 171.

24 From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1983) 242. The section in question is entitled: ‘Could it turn out that there are no such things as beliefs?’ and ends by suggesting that we might, in raising these doubts about belief, personhood, agency, etc. be on the very threshold of a new Copernican revolution. Not an unusual claim in philosophy of course. And far from representing a solitary voice from beyond the philosophical fringe, this sort of thing is by now a recognised ‘position’ in our subject, going by the name of eliminativism.

25 French, P. et al. , (eds.) Midwest Studies in Philosophy IV, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979)Google Scholar. Peter Unger had earlier defended an even more extreme scepticism, see below.

26 ‘What is the Relation Between and Experience, the Subject of the Experience, and the Content of the Experience’, Philosophical Issues, 2004, 289, 291. It can of course be hard to pin a philosopher down. According to Galen Strawson, Dennett not only persists in denying the existence of consciousness, but then persists in denying that he denies it. (‘Evolution Explains It All to You’, Review of Daniel Dennett's Freedom Evolves, New York Times, March 2, 2003.)

27 ‘The Philosophy of Logical Atomism’, 238.

28 Thoughts of ‘applying’ a fancy philosophical suggestion can be important not because it can be expected to be of practical help, but rather to determine what the suggestion might actually mean.

29 Ernest Sosa says, in praise of this book, that ‘Unger follows the argument … wherever it may lead’. I think he must mean simply that consequences are drawn, not that they have had their natural effect on his conduct. After all, Peter Unger is still alive. (Both Professor Sosa's remark and the description of the book's message are taken from Oxford University Press's website.)

30 ‘… and [we] should arrive at solipsism but for the most desperate contortions’ Mysticism and Logic (London: Longmans, Green, 1918, 210. It is ironical that Russell should in later years have looked down his nose at Aquinas for not setting out ‘to follow the argument wherever it may lead,’ History of Western Philosophy (London: Allen and Unwin, 1946) 484.

31 Living High and Letting Die: Our Illusion of Innocence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) 32.

32 ‘On the Ignorance of the Learned’, Table Talk: Essays on Men and Manners, in Works, P. P. Howe (ed.), Vol. 8, (London: Dent, 1931) 75.

33 ‘The Philosophy of Logical Atomism’, 172.

34 Of course some apparent oddity is easily accommodated. The ‘paradoxes of material implication’ for example which can look startling are simply a liveable-with consequence of a minimal, truth functional, convention about ‘if-then’.

35 What Are We? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007) The possibility that we are not anything at all is the topic of Chapter 8. Another suggestion considered in this book and not just dismissed out of hand is that ‘there is no such thing as thinking’ (14).

36 Discussed in relation to the question, often rather curiously supposed to be of interest in connection with abortion, whether a foetus at n weeks is ‘conscious’. Worth and Welfare in the Controversy over Abortion, (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2006) ch. 4.2.

37 ‘The Self and the SESMET’, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 1999, No. 4, 100.

38 Consciousness and Its Place in Nature (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2006) 5–6.

39 Braun, David and Sider, Theodore, ‘Vague, so Untrue’, Nous, 2007, 139Google Scholar, qualified later (everything else) 154.

40 Cicero, De Divinatione, 2, Sec 119. See also Montaigne, , ‘An Apology for Raymond Sebond’, Essays, Screech, M. A. (ed.) (Penguin, 1991) 613Google Scholar; Descartes, . ‘Discourse on Method’, Philosophical Works, Haldane and Ross, Vol. I, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911) 90Google Scholar; and Hobbes, Leviathan, ‘Reason and Science’, M. Oakeshott (ed.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1960) 27. Cicero's particular example is that well-worn illustration of philosophical oddity, the Pythagorean objection to beans – an objection which, ironically, could have been perfectly rational, favism being an inherited condition prevalent in Mediterranean countries.

41 Berkeley, , Philosophical Works, Ayers, M. R. (ed.) (Everyman, London: Dent, 1975) 321Google Scholar.

42 There are not only sceptics in philosophy. There are also (what we might call) credulics. A credulic is someone who supposes that every truth can be known. An extreme credulic is someone who supposes that every truth is known. Fitch's thesis, that if there is an unknown truth then there is an unknowable truth, when combined with the ‘knowability thesis’, that no truth is unknowable, yields the conclusion that there is no unknown truth. (Someone who supposes that there must be truths unknown to human beings might find reason here to believe in at least one non-human intelligence.)

43 Perhaps by Galen Strawson, see ‘Why I Have No Future’, The Philosophers' Magazine, 2007. ‘You can't harm [people] simply by bringing about their painless and unforeseen death’ (23–4). It is worth remarking on this curious qualification. The interesting truth is that we cannot harm people simply by hurting them. As we all know, a doctor can often truly say: ‘This will hurt you, but don't worry, it won't harm you’. This tells us something significant about the concept of harm.

44 This oddity is not however evenly spread. It is very prevalent in the philosophy of mind, and pretty evident in metaphysics and ethical theory, but in my experience modern epistemology is comparatively sane. This no doubt stems from the nature of the task epistemologists have so often set themselves: of defeating the waywardness of scepticism. Political philosophy too often avoids reliance on the uncertainties of theory, setting itself up as ‘political not metaphysical’. The metaphysical doctrines in Hobbes – the psychological egoism, the determinism and the materialism – have little bearing on what is of interest in his moral and political philosophy and indeed prove something of a distraction.

45 W. E. Johnson to Drury, 1929, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Personal Recollections, 118.

46 ‘The Philosophy of Logical Atomism’, 166.

47 Wittgenstein told Drury, I do not expect very seriously: If you think philosophy is hard, you should try architecture. Rhees, Rush, ed., Ludwig Wittgenstein, Personal Recollections (Blackwell, 1981) 121Google Scholar.

48 It is possible to render an argument trivially valid by adding hypothetical premises, but this of course merely shifts the difficulty. We have now to consider the truth of these new premises.

49 Principles of Human Knowledge, Sec. 51–3.

50 Lewis, David in ch. 2.6 of On the Plurality of Worlds (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986)Google Scholar says in effect that his doctrine has no practical implications. It has however an ethical upshot, good news for those who devoutly hope that ‘the good’ be maximised. For the sum total of this quantity in existence ‘is non-contingently fixed’ (128). It is thus forever maximised, and is indeed maximised whatever we do.

51 ‘The Self and the SESMET’, 99.

52 Human Immortality and Pre-existence, Edward Arnold, 1916. McTaggart's reasons were quite ungodly of course, he being a devout atheist.

53 Well, that is a little hasty and cynical. The employees might be asked to read the careful and well-deployed answer to this important question at the end of Peter Singer's Practical Ethics. This answer, if accepted, should increase pilfering considerably.

54 ‘If there is any proposition which expresses precisely what I think, offered the familiar Euthyphro contrast, Wittgenstein is reported as saying: it is the proposition “What God commands, that is good”.’ F. Waismann, Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, 115.

55 Russell's original remark is in ‘Mathematics and the Metaphysicians’, Mysticism and Logic, 75.

56 Ethics in Practice (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997) 1.

57 ‘Utilitarianism and the Virtues’, Moral Dilemmas, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002) 60.

58 For Kant's view that that a human offspring is ‘a person’ and is not an item of parental property, see the discussion of procreation in The Metaphysics of Morals (Mary Gregor, trans., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, 98–100). And concerning suicide, Kant maintains that it is not a crime only against oneself but is sometimes a crime against others too, and mentions the case of suicide in pregnancy. Parents who commit suicide, he says, can violate their duty to their children (218).

59 United States v. Amy, 1859, 24 Federal Cases, No. 14445.

60 Reprinted in Hare's Essays on Bioethics, (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1993).

61 ‘Anselm or Russelm’, Philosophical Quarterly, 1993, 500, commenting on her earlier article ‘Why Anselm's Proof in the Proslogion is not an Ontological Argument’, Thoreau Quarterly, 1985.

62 The Times, March 11, 2004.

63 ‘As far as my own concepts of the ethical duties of the doctor are concerned, they are contained in my book regarding medical ethics, and I believe always to have acted according to the principles of that book and lived according to them. My life, my actions, and my aims were clean. That is why now that at the end of this trial I can declare myself free of personal guilt.’

64 An organisation might usefully be devoted to second-order vigilance – ‘Human Rights Watch Watch’ it might be called.

65 How Are We To Live?, London: Mandarin, 1994, ix.

66 Republic, 389b, 414c.

67 Principles of Human Knowledge, Sec. 52.

68 ‘Why I do not regret lying to my father about life after death’, The Times, 19 July, 1996, p. 16. ‘We did not talk about death at home. I think my father hoped that there was a future life. In fact, when he thought he was dying, he asked me if I thought there was going to be a life after death. I said that yes, I did. That was a lie. A lie, a lie which I uttered because he obviously wanted it to be so and hoped we would be able to meet again, and I did not want to tell him what I saw as the bleak truth. So I did not tell the truth, and I do not in the least regret it. Since I believed that nothing would follow one's death, why should I cause a dying father pain?’

69 Beauchamp, T. and Childress, J., Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 4th edn., New York: Oxford University Press, 1994, 126Google Scholar: ‘on balance the lie may be justified in this context…’. In Case 2, 512–3 it is referred to as ‘a bald lie’, so we know pretty well what we are talking about. Google-searching suggests that no one finds this passage in Beauchamp and Childress to be worthy of note. (This thought runs through various editions up to the present day.)

70 Ethics, Inventing Right and Wrong, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977) 183. The chapter is called ‘Elements of a Practical Morality’.