Philosophy is one particular human enterprise among many, identified by its characterizing mission of answering to the âbig questionsâ that we have regarding the worldâs scheme of things and our place within it. Often as not, those âbig questionsâ in philosophy are explanatory questions, questions whose answers enable us to understand why things are as they indeed are. Philosophizing thus endeavors to create an edifice of thought able to provide us with a habitable thought-shelter in a complicated and challenging world. As a venture in providing rationally cogent answers to our questions about large-scale issues regarding belief, evaluation, and action, philosophy is a key sector of the cognitive enterprise at large. And subsidiarilyâsince a rational creature acts on the basis of its beliefsâphilosophy also has a bearing on action, implementing the idea of PHILOSOPHIA BIOU KUBERNĂTĂSâthe motto of the American Phi Beta Kappa honorary society which has it that philosophy is a guide to life.
However, before philosophyâs questions can be addressed, they need first of all to be explained and clarified. How exactly the issues invoked are to be interpreted and understood, and what considerations are at issue here need to be explained atâor nearâthe outset. And what presuppositions need to be made if those questions are ever to arise. In sum, philosophical investigations always have significant preliminaries. In this domain, issue clarification must accordingly precede issue resolution: Substantive investigation requires prior analysis.
As a venture in clarification, the discipline seeks to elucidate the problems and puzzles that cover a broad range of our cognitive canvas, ranging from questions about philosophy itself to matters of knowledge, the conduct of life, and even the role of religion. The chapters comprising the present volume move across this range in endeavor to show how philosophical reflection can contribute to illuminating some aspects of the issues that confront us in the pursuit of understanding about these important matters.
To clarify a philosophical issue is not necessary to resolve it. But no cogent resolution will be available without appropriate clarification: It may not be sufficient but it does constitute an indispensably necessary predication for sufficiency.
Not only is clarification an essential first step in dealing with philosophical issues, but sometimes it proves to be the only generally acceptable last step as well. For sometimes, the resolution of a philosophical issue is dependent on so many person-variable considerations and evaluations that no general consensus response can be established. In such matters, people can come to a common understanding of what the questions are and what issues they involve but yet cannot achieve a consensual commonality in the appropriate responses. They agree on the explanation of what the relevant problems are but not in their resolution. Explanation and elaboration are within reach but consensual resolution is not. The issues are clarifiedâand personal resolutions possibilized, but agreed solutions remain an unachievable goal. Given the circumstances, this may be the most and best that can be realized, and people will only agree to disagree. But of course even this is progress in that it provides for a better understanding of just the issues and a firmer grasp on the basis of contention.
Sometimes clarification alone of itself goes a long way to resolve an issue. Thus, theorists have puzzled about whether numbers exist. But once it is acknowledged that distinctions must be brought into it and that there are different modes of existenceâfor example, physical existence as parts or aspects of the worldâs constitution in contrast to ideal existence as potential objects or thoughtâthe problem comes to have a very different aspect.
The discussions of the present book will proceed either by way of general consideration of method or by way of illustration and case study exemplification. Taken as a whole, they conjoin to indicate how issue clarification can serve to facilitate a productive approach to issue resolution. A good deal of philosophical disagreement relates not so much to the answers as to the questions and roots in the fact that the necessary preliminary work of getting clear about just what the issues are is a prerequisite.
The bookâs chapters fall into three sectors. The first deals with the nature of philosophizing itself and seeks to illustrate the project from the angle of the pragmatic tradition. The second sector deals with issues of knowledge and how the cognitive project goes about producing results that are cogent and objective. Finally, the third sector considers how the ideas and perspectives of these considerations can be applied and implemented in matters of personal judgment and practice.
Philosophyâs Mission
Philosophy is a purposive enterprise. It seeks to avert puzzlement and perplexity in our efforts to get a secure cognitive grip on the nature of the world and our place within it. Its aim is to answer the key questions that arise in this regard: questions regarding the nature of truth, knowledge, justice, beauty, human satisfaction, and much else besides. And these big issues relate to the fundamentals of human concern, being universal in dealing with humans at large rather than particular groups thereof (farmers or doctors or Europeans or contemporaries of Shakespeare ). By definition, philosophical deliberations have a bearingâdirect or obliqueâon the key essentials of the human condition. Its prime task is to undertake reasoned reflections about what is to be thought on these matters.
Philosophy seeks to connect and coordinate understanding (cognition) and appreciation (valuation) by giving us a securer grasp of the what, how, and why of the things that have worth and value for us humans as investments for the limited time and energy at our disposal. The plain man âknows what he likes,â and the philosopher ought (by rights) to be able to explain how and why it is that some things deserve being liked and âare worth it.â One salient task of philosophy is accordingly to enlarge our sensibilities, to enhance our cultural sophistication (German: Bildung), to develop our appreciation of matters of value, significance, and interestâto enrich our lives through a more developed appreciation of the products of nature and of artifice.
When the matter is viewed in this light, one cannot really speak of â
the mission of philosophyâ because the field in fact has several missions:
to explain the human condition in relation to the world and our place in its vast scheme of things.
to provide guidance in making assessments of importance, worth, justice, and other major dimensions of evaluation.
to elucidate the considerations that can channel our actions in positive and constructive directions.
Philosophyâs aim is thus to enable us to achieve clarity of thought regarding these issues. There is, to be sure, disagreement among philosophers about priorities, some favoring one as against other purposive possibilities. But it seems to be generally acknowledged that philosophy is a pervasively erotetic enterprise whose definite mission is to address a wide range of large and pressing questions about belief, evaluation, and action in an endeavor to do the best we can to provide rationally cogent responses to them.
Philosophy is thus subject to the usual standards of rationality. In pursuing its ends, we are committed by the very nature of the project at hand to maintaining a commitment to the usual ground rules of cognitive and practical rationality. 1 The discipline seeks to bring rational order, system, and intelligibility to the confusing diversity of our cognitive affairs. It strives for orderly arrangements in the cognitive sphere that will enable us to find our way about in the world in an effective and satisfying way. Philosophy is indeed a venture in theorizing, but one whose rationale is eminently practical. A rational animal that has to make its evolutionary way in the world by its wits has a deep-rooted urge to extend practical into speculative reason.
Philosophy is thus akin to science in that its contentions are theoretic in nature rather than simply observational, invoking a substantial measure of theorizing conjecture rather than observational reportage. However, philosophy is distinct from science in that science is oriented to accounting for the worldâs concretely observed occurrences as such, whereas philosophy is oriented to the ways in which we humans can, do, and should think about things. The field is accordingly identified as one particular human enterprise among others by its characterizing mission of providing satisfactory answers to the âbig questionsâ that we have regarding the worldâs scheme of things and our place within it. As a venture in rational inquiry, philosophyâs mission is to provide credible answers to the âbig questionsâ we have regarding the world, ourselves, and our place in its scheme of things. Its task accordingly is to provide instruction about what we are to think and do with respect to these matters. Answering questions, resolving uncertainty, and providing guidance in regard to thought and action are the key tasks of philosophy.
Philosophical Data
One major area of the philosophical defect is the failure to harmonize with the extra-philosophical facts by ignoring, let alone mishandling, them. Coming to this with the âfact of lifeâ as everyday experience and scientific inquiry provide for us is another cardinal philosophical defect.
Like any cognitive enterprise whose aim is to answer questions and provide explanations, philosophy must rely on data for the starting point of its deliberations. And two points are critical here:
- (1)
The data of philosophy envision the whole range of pre- and extra-philosophical knowledge.
- (2)
The data of philosophy are not personal and idiosyncratic vis-Ă -vis particular investigation, but they are part of the joint possession of the community of inquirers.
Specifically, the data of philosophy include:
matters of common knowledge,
the manifold of commonsense belief,
scientific knowledge,
the âlessonsâ of historical experience (short and long term), and
traditional lore and inevitable wisdom.
Granted, all of these are subject to eventual assessment, but whatever critique there is must come from other sectors of the overall domain. In this sense, all such criticism is group internal.
Failing to provide adequate guidance for living is a third cardinal defect in philosophizing. The philosophy that does not impel its exponents to live a better, fuller, more rewarding life than they are otherwise likely to have is not worth the ink spilled on its exposition. Philosophy ought by rights to be a useful instrument if not in the âpursuit of happinessâ then at least in the pursuit of virtue. Any philosophy worth having ought to have the tendency to make us better people than we would otherwise be.
The âBig Questionsâ
Philosophers generally pursue their mission of grappling with those traditional âbig questionsâ regarding ourselves, the world, and our place within its scheme of things by means of what is perhaps best characterized as rational conjecture. Conjecture comes into it because those questions arise most pressingly where the available information does not sufficeâwhere they are not straightforwardly answerable in terms of what has already been established. What is needed here is an ampliative methodology of inquiryâone that is so in C. S. Peirceâs sense of underwriting contentions whose assertoric content goes beyond the evidence in hand. 2 We need to do the very best we can to resolve questions that transcend accreted experience and outrun the reach of the information already at our disposal. It thus becomes necessary to have a way of obtaining the best available, the ârationally optimalâ answers to our information-in-hand-transcending questions about how matters stand in the world. And experience-based conjectureâtheorizing if you willâis the most promising available instrument for question resolution in the face of imperfect information. It is a tool for use by finite intelligences, providing them not with the best possible answer (in some rarified sense of this term), but with the best available answer, the putative best that one can manage to secure in the existing conditions in which we do and must conduct our epistemic labors.
In the information-deficient, enthymematic circumstances that prevail when questions must be resolved in the face of evidential under-determination, we can have no logically airtight guarantee that the âbest availableâ answer is actually true. Given that such truth estimation involves transcending the information at hand, we know that rational inference cannot guarantee the truth of its products. (Indeed, if the history of human inquiry has taught us any one thing, it is the disastrous meta-induction that the best estimate of the truth that we can make at any stage of the cognitive game all too frequently comes to be seen as well off the mark with the wisdom of eventual hindsight.) Rational inquiry is a matter of doing no moreâbut also no lessâthan the best we can manage to realize in its prevailing epistemic circumstances. Nevertheless, the fact...
