31 March 2008

re: top ten philosophers of all time

found through old wizard is this list of the top ten philosophers of all time. *drumroll please*

10. Rousseau
9. Hume
8. Hegel
7. Heidegger
6. Kierkegaard
5. Kant
4. Descartes
3. Nietzsche
2. Husserl
1. Plato/Socrates

is it just me, or is this list heavily biased towards the continent? it's not that the continental tradition hasn't added somethin to philosophy, but there are some names in there that, although somewhat important, have had their thoughts culminated in the philosophies of others on the list. Say kierkegaard, his thoughts could be expressed mostly by heidegger. same for husserl. Roussaeu was barely a philosopher, more of a political-and-economical theorist in the style of marx. i imagine hegel to be important, so i'd keep him in. nietzsche, on the other hand, was also culminated in heiddeger. and nietzsche was more of a self-help writer anyway. so i'd strike out Rousseau, Kierkegaard, Hursserl, and Nietzsche.

in their places, which would i put in? i'd definitely include wittgenstein, for one. also aristotle. those two for sure. but who else? i'd be inclined to include peirce, probably as a result of my heavy bias in favor of him. but i figure russell might deserve to be in there, also kripke, or even quine, or locke. possibly hobbes or marx. rawls. even sartre. maybe frege, or even foucault. anyway, here's my list.

15. Chomsky

a little out of left field, i know, but his philosophical underpinnings for his linguistics work, combined with his political commentary based in philosophical justifications for a communist anarchism, make him the most cited person alive. he will be read for a long time.

14. Quine

scientistic through and through. his radical empiricism reminds one of hume, but his logical tools and his subject choice of language distinguish him and establish his importance. tried to dissolve the analytic/synthetic distinction.

13. Kripke

an essentialist in the spirit of aristotle, he provided much of the logical structure of modal talk, and his kripke semantics for modal semantics, combined with his influential view of proper names, make him among the best.

12. Peirce

charles peirce, modicum of clear thought, founder of the american school of pragmatism. along with frege invented mathematical logic as we know it today, along with the logic of relations.

11. Russell

wanted to establish the logical basis of mathematics but filed. nevertheless, his political philosophy, his philoophy of language, and his philosophy of mathematics make him virtually unavoidable in philosophy.

10. Sartre

one of the major thinkers in the existentialist schoo l yet wrote a bit more clearly than the rest of them. his interestes were wide and influential, including "meaning", "existence", and various issues in the mind.

9. Frege

revolutionized basic deductive logic and ultimately began the analytic tradition, the "linguistic turn".

8. Hegel

idealist extraordinaire, pretty much started the continental tradition. notorious for being very difficult to read. ontology reserved for ideas.

7. Wittgenstein

i'm pretty sure i should have included wittgenstein twice here, once for the tractatus and once for the investigations. either way, both times he set out to prove that he didn't solve philosophy, he dissolved philosophy. the first, by saying that all philosophical pseudo-problems could be gotten ride of by rigorous logical analysis. the other time by realizing that there are no essences behind words, just uses. very, very influential.

6. Heidegger

extremely rigorous analysis of ontology. i couldn't read him when i tried. but he took ideas from nietzsche, schopenhaur, etc.

5. Kant

one of the first to synthesize the rationalist and empiricist schools. made epistemology respectable. ethics were also highly influential.

4. Hume

very precise philosopher, for the most part. also one of the last great and true skeptics. empiricist to the extreme, made us question our own rationality.

3. Aristotle

hugely influential on all respects. his theory of predicates took the idea from his famous teacher, but made it less creepy. anyway, there are threads of this guy in every other philosopher (except #1 maybe)

2. Descartes

cogito ergo sum

1. Plato/Socrates

the guys who really started it all. forms, justice, love, examined lives, and all that. no need to justify this one, really.

whaatchathiink?

26 March 2008

nietzsche's superman morality

Nietzsche is a particularly interesting philosopher because, as Russell pointed out, most of the objections that are brought up against his ideas are not rational in nature: that is, they stem from deep seeded “feelings” or other kinds of arguments not based in logical argumentation. However, if there is a way to find counterexamples to his theory without the appeal to feeling, then there might be a way to logically argue against it. I’m going to try to do just that in this brief post.

“A morality of the ruling class applies the principle that one has duties only to one’s equals…”. Here, Nietzsche is summing up a discussion that deals with the distinction of different ethical systems used by individuals in a society. The first system is the one that is constructed by religion and the masses and is what Nietzsche calls the “slave morality”. This system or morality makes individualism and self-interest the “evil”. Further, it makes the interest of the common people the “good”. This system, Nietzsche suggests, was contructed only as a contrast to the “master morality”, the morality used by the success-driven individuals in a society who worry less about popular conceptions of “good” and “evil” and instead look out for whatever they want to. This kind of morality is what drives civilizations forward, Nietzsche believes, and is thus the type of morality everyone should adopt.

Special attention should be payed to the concept of the Master Morality. According to this way morality is construed, what is good to the “overman” is just whatever makes him more powerful, and weakness is what is the “bad”. More and more power will lead the overman to be more happy, and this is how morality should be conceived. There are many ways to attack this kind of reasoning, but some of the ways are limited by our method. Let me show how this is so.

The first way to try to object to these claims is that it just doesn’t seem right. More and more power is not the same as more and more good. These two words designate different things; they’re independent concepts. A Nietzsche-an would quickly retaliate that this is precisely the point he wants to bring forth. That these two concepts are not independent and attempting to make a distinction between them is just a product of our indoctrination to the slave morality. Although this move is kind of shady on the part of the Nietzche-an, Let’s let it slide and explore other routes.

Another way to try to argue against Nietzsche’s Master morality is to try to accept the distinction between the slave and master morality, yet be agnostic about which morality to prefer. After all, the more people follow the slave morality, the more people will live longer and be saved, or so it seems. If more people are looking out for the interest of the group as a whole, then more people will place the interest of their brethren as high as their own and thus people will be more likely to help each other in times of need, when other are attacking, etc. The contrasting morality will also be necessary until a certain extent, but there would be no need for a preference either way. This I feel might be a powerful argument against Nietzsche prioritization of the master morality, as Nietzsche seems to be straddling the line between relativism and objectivity about morality. On the one hand, he says all morality is relative and there is no objective basis of morality. Yet on the other hand, he says master morality is the best morality, the right morality. There May be an implicit contradiction there.

Finally, and on to what I believe to be the most powerful argument against the assimilation of “good” and “power” in Nietzsche’s master morality, is a rather simple argument by consequence. If one person in the “master” morality decides to attain as much power as he could, and then someone else has the same objectives, then it is possible that in gaining more and more “good” one of the individuals annihilates the other. Thus for that person there is no more “good.” The acquirement of power was not in the best interest of the destroyed person, as it led to his death. Of course here the Nietzsche-an could counter-argue and say something like this: “well, that the person died was just evidence of his weakness, not necessarily that power is not good. After all, the person who ended up killing the other guy now has even more power and thus he is even more good.” But would follow with this. If ethics is a relative concept, and the preferred conception of ethics is power=good and weakness=bad, then, to the person who was attempting to attain power and failed, he was in the good yet it led to the worst kind of weakness, death. So maybe, just maybe, looking for more and more power isn’t the same as goodness after all.

Obviously my arguments aren’t very refined yet nor are they knock-down, but at least I think they show that there’s either some inconsistency in the concept of the master morality or that it’s just something that needs to be worked on by Nietzsche followers. (For all I know someone has made these terms clearer but I’m not familiar with more recent literature on the subject.)

14 March 2008

note:

I am neither addressing absolute skeptics, nor men in any state of fictitious doubt.
CSP, CP 5.319

06 March 2008

did 'naming and necessity' really defeat descriptivism?

When Kripke is starting the third lecture of Naming and Necessity, he takes a second to look back at the accomplishments of the previous lectures. By Kripke’s own account (N&N p. 106), he has thus far shown how descriptivism falls short, how names are reference-fixers, not synonymous to descriptions, and how identity is a property that should be considered de re instead of de dicto., all worthy topics where Kripke undeniably made some progress. However, the prospect of this paper is to show that, even though Kripke challenged the way philosophers were thinking about these issues at the time, the revolutionary interpretation of his work is a bit unfounded, as some of the important projects of the paper don’t manage to connect.

One of the most important accomplishments of the book is the questioning of the descriptivist theory of proper names. Under the influence of Russell and Strawson, descriptivists conceived of proper names as synonymous either to a definite description or a cluster of descriptions that may have either conjunctly or disjunctly added up to the name at hand. This analysis of names conflated statements of a priori and necessary truths. If, in fact, ‘W. Bush’ meant ‘The only former governor of Texas who became president as of 2002,’ then this apparently contingent fact about the person W. Bush becomes a necessary one. However, intuition makes us strongly want to disagree with these consequences, as we feel that, but of course, W. Bush could have lost to Gore in the 2000 election.

That being said, Kripke made us think twice about whether names could really be descriptions because then any cognitive or even linguistic association we have with a give name is not only contingent, but also incomplete. Most people would not be able to give a uniquely satisfying criterion to any proper name, even those of our most intimate acquaintances. At the very least it is not a necessary precondition for proper use of a given name. If I wish to refer to Bach, and all I know of him is that he is a German composer, I can still l properly use his name even though I probably wouldn’t be able to name a single particular work he has created. Nevertheless, I am still talking about him and there is no reason to believe I am in any way misguided in what a descriptivist would have to admit being a meaningless utterance.

However, what comes into question is Kripke’s methodology. Kripke lays out a formal, comprehensive, and rigorous theory regarding proper names under the guise of a proper Descriptivist agenda. To this set of 6 theses and 1 non-circularity satisfaction condition (p. 71), he goes on to prove how each thesis is either misguided or doesn’t satisfy the non-circularity condition. This is fair enough, given his presentation of the theses. However, even though he shows that descriptivism is not the right kind of theory or proper names, he goes on to attempt to prove that a descriptivist picture won’t do either. I’m not so sure he actually makes this point.

Descriptivism, as a picture of names--as opposed to a full on theory, would fail if one could prove that descriptions of any kind are not always necessary for the use of proper names in a language. Further, Kripke would have to show how descriptions are irrelevant to proper names. If there is a way to introduce a name without any descriptive element, the anti-descriptivist wins. Kripke shows us how a name could be used without there being descriptions immediately attached: through the causal or historical chain attached to the name and object. However, how is it thatnames come to be to begin with?

Kripke gives us with two possible alternatives, the first being completely descriptive. One can introduce a name into a language by fixing a reference from a rigid designator. If, for example, I want to talk about the northernmost point in the continental United States, I could designate the name “Tom” to that spot.[1] With this kind of name origination, the description is ever present and thus we should consider the other option.

The second (and last) way Kripke discusses introducing proper names in to a language is through the initial baptism. What does this ceremony entail? Well there is something in front of you, and there is some suggestive gesture that the person who originates the naming will, from that point forward, call that thing by some name. Now, suppose it is a puppy. The owner of the puppy presumably looks at it and says, or even thinks, “I shall name it ‘Max’.” But what is the it? Is it possible, as a Quinian might say, that one is actually naming the un-detached puppy head? Or is it possible that you’re actually talking about the stage of puppy-life when they are that young? Or perhaps even giving a part of the puppy-collective? Well, presumably, no. What one is naming is the puppy itself. So whether explicit or not, one is thinking “I shall name that puppy ‘Max.”

In introducing the name along with the ‘sortal’, one is at least providing some kind of descriptive element when introducing the name, even in the event of baptism. Otherwise it would be left arguably ambiguous what exactly one was naming in the act of the initial baptism. If in fact it is true that all of these cases of baptism involve a sortal, and if sortals are descriptive, then both options explored by Kripke would include descriptions and descriptivism, in some modified way, is still a force to be dealt with. Further, descriptivism would not have been completely defeated.

But are these two methods of introducing proper names exhaustive? A possible counter-example to this line of argumentation, and it would come from the likes of people who might assert that there are times when one privately baptizes things around them. Say one is found in a novel environment, alone, perhaps a foreign wilderness, where one is unfamiliar with the fauna around oneself. Then perhaps it would make sense that this person would look at something and name it in their own mind without externally expressing anything at all. Surely, here there is no descriptive element? Well I think I would argue against that. Perhaps one doesn’t vocalize any sortal description, perhaps one doesn’t even speak to oneself using any sortal terms. Nevertheless, one looks at the certain thing and decides about that thing, whether it is the head of that thing (a head is a thing, after all) or that fauna in its entirety, or whatever one decides of that thing to call it by a certain name. Otherwise the intention of naming something fails to stick on to anything, throwing names into the dark.

Now that we have shown that there is a good argument that even baptisms include descriptions, and that the two options presented are tentatively exhaustive. Also, the previously mentioned method of introducing names via definite descriptions includes descriptions too, thus making both name-introducing mechanisms Kripke proposes dependent on descriptions. Why shouldn’t this theory of proper names be just a peculiar type of descriptivism, perhaps a des-Kripke-vism? Well the answer to this is once again return to the text carefully analyze Kripke’s arguments. The main point of contention seems to be that even if we allow for descriptive elements present at the inception of a name, carrying descriptions through to every possible use of the name, that is, making original descriptions necessarily known at every instance of its use, would lead to unacceptable conclusions including but not limited to: a conflation of the a priori and the necessary, determinism, and circularity.

So how has Kripke fared so far? Well he has definitely pointed out some difficulties in the descriptivist theory of proper names as presented his own manner. As a complete theory, Kripke has irrefutably proven that it fails, especially given the non-circularity conditions. However, in the beginning of his third lecture Kripke is arguing that the descriptivist camp not only failed to provide a theory, but that it also failed to give an adequate picture. Well I guess here it a matter of definition what one means to say that the descriptivist picture has failed. If by descriptivist picture one just means to say that hey, descriptions do play a major part in any theory of names, then Kripke here is just flat out wrong, since even his anti-descriptivist manifesto cannot dispense with descriptions altogether.

On the other hand, if one considers showing that descriptivism was the wrong type of picture we were looking for when it came to proper names was just denying the descriptivism as presented by Russell and potentially his close followers, then I guess Kripke did a very good job. And considering the fact that a whole lot of people still had Russell's “On Denoting” in a special drawer reserved for canonical, unquestionable texts, this achievement alone is very impressive.

The causal theory of names presented by Kripke isn’t held to the same rigorous standards descriptivists are held to. After presenting a theory of descriptivism and refuting it, Kripke doesn’t really show that the picture of descriptivism, as a rough sketch, might be at least in part right. When he provides his alternative, he first doesn’t even provide the audience with a rigorous theory. This is acceptable: he doesn’t intend to provide a rigorous theory. However, the picture he gives us of the causal theory of names is quasi-descriptivist, or at least retains some of the descriptive elements he was setting out to refute. Sure, Kripke’s theory differs from Russell's and in significant ways. Reference and use of a particular name can be continued without uniquely identifying knowledge, and names are passed by mostly if not entirely through the historical connections of use of words in presence of others. The initial users of the name, whether through introduction by rigid designation or through baptism, did have some descriptive association that was necessary for the introduction of the name. When the names are passed down, this necessary descriptive connection could potentially be lost (and, often, it actually is lost). That these names gain new descriptive associations is also a part of the causal-historical chain. However, the original descriptions don’t have to be thereby the time you move to the nth person down the line.

It becomes difficult to me to decide whether or not Kripke’s theory of proper names completely takes descriptivism off the map or not. Ultimately it’s not for me to decide, as a lowly undergraduate student. The social element of passing down names and the potential loss of meaning or descriptive associations with the name was a significant step forward. Conversely, because even when providing a supposed antithesis of the Descriptivist program Kripke ends up relying on descriptions himself, I can’t really say descriptivism was fully eliminates the still-powerful intuition that names have to have been linked to some identifying description

Works Cited

Saul Kripke (1980). Naming and Necessity. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts.



[1] There may be some ambiguity of scope here. I could be talking about the actual northernmost spot and naming it “Tom”, or I could be talking about the northern-most spot, whatever that may be, and naming that spot “Tom”. To clarify, I’m discussing the de dicto implications.



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05 March 2008

incomplete answers to some queries

C (hey C!) asked some interesting and important questions which i will repost briefly. i will attempt to answer them as an exercise in critical engagement with the text.

he asks:

(1) what are the implications of when we are mistaken about concepts in this manner?

(2) Since employment of the two different concepts in the same linguistic instance results in the same answer, what is the fundamental difference between employing the two? Is the answer yielded actually the "same"?

(3) How does this differ from other forms of skeptical possibility, if at all? Does this generate a sort of skeptical problem similar to the Cartesian one?

ok. i think i'll try to answer (3) first, as it will make the answers to the other questions clearer. the skepticism kripkenstein presents is much more devastating than descartes's. this is because descartes's skepticism was epistemological in character, whereras this skepticism is both epistemological and metaphysical. descartes's skepticism was with the goal of establishing a certain, true set of beliefs from which to base the rest of his epistemological enterprise. foundationalist through and through, he designated an epistemically privileged set of propositions that he used to justify shakier propositions, so to speak. and much has been written (cs peirce, susan haack) about how this kind of cartesian epistemic skepticism was pretty much just bafoonery to get to propositions he wouldn't alter anyway because they were 'clear' and 'distinct' to him anyway, thanks to god.

however, kripkenstein's skeptical paradox is a more serious threat. not only does the quaddition example show that we, at this moment, don't know whether we are using addition or quaddition, an epistemic skepticism, there is no fact of the matter as to what mathematical function we are performing at the moment, a metaphysical skepticism. this of course extends to previous uses of the function and future uses of the function. and then the same principle carries over to not only addition, but ultimately every function, name, natural kind term, description, etc.

so, if we take a step back for a sec, what kripkenstein is actually doing is presenting to us a very real, encompassing, epistemological as well as ontological skepticism of meaning that pretty much runs the full sweep of both speech acts and mental acts. there is no fact of the matter concerning what we ever mean by any linguistic utterance. part of the problem here, of course, is that there is an underlying assumption that we have to explain meaning in terms of something else, but that problem isn't very relevant for the present discussion, so we'll just give it to him for now.

now to address (1). well the implication here is that we don't ever know what we're talking or thinking about because there is never any fact of the matter as to what we are talking or thinking about! the implications themselves are rather tough to formulate apart from this previous statement. my initial reaction was to say that "even if we think we know what we're talking about, we don't actually know because there is no fact to speak of." but the problems of saying this are pretty evident: i mean, communication in general would be a farse, but further even the possibility of cogent thought comes into question. if we take kripkenstein's skepticism seriously, then it is almost undeniably, irrefutably serious!

finally, for (2) i'm going to use another mathematical example. the functions (n+m), (n x m), and (n^m) are of course different functions. but if we happen to say for each of these functions n=2=m, then they all yield the same answer. the fundamental difference in them is the nature of the method of manipulating the numbers, but given specific circumstances they might coincide in output. the problem with kripkenstein's kind of skepticism is that all math, all communication through symbols, actually, is lacking meaning. if nothing has meaning, because there is no ontological fact concerning meaning, then every communicative act is a coincidence, just as those functions happened to coincide at 2.

well i hope i helped a bit, as it helped me understand kripkenstein a bit more myself.