On Reason II: Reason & Value

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Prologue

Following on from the first part here we are going to look at some of the problems with the Humean account pointed out by Michael Smith. Smith's understanding of reason itself looks like an attempt to vindicate the metaphysical distinction of reason and the affects we considered in the first part. Our aim in this part will be to consider Smith's objections to Hume and in so doing point the way past them both towards the existential grounds of reason itself.

III

Desiring & Valuing

I have shown that a consequence of Hume’s analysis is that motivational and normative reasons for action are found in the desires of the agent whose emotionally pre-evaluated situation calls upon them to make a decision. What is therefore valuable and what is desirable is, in the HTR, equivalent. The HTR is what is known as an internalist view regarding normative reasons for action. Internalist views are characterised by their insistence that normative reasons are related in some significant way to one’s own motivations.[1] The HTR itself, as presented, is an actual state internalist view, which means that it claims the source of our reasons are to be found in some state the agent is presently in. In the case of the HTR this source is the agent’s current desire(s) which relate to the motivational facts by virtue of being the motivational facts.

However, in The Moral Problem, Michael Smith draws an explicit distinction between valuing and desiring in order to challenge the HTR on precisely this point. Smith notes that we can explain action in one of two ways: intentional or deliberative. On the intentional picture we explain an action teleologically in terms of the psychological states which produced it. To give an example, we could explain someone’s writing an essay for university in terms of their wanting to do well in their degree scheme and believing that the only way to do so is to write the essay (and write it well!). As such he equates the intentional picture with our motivational reasons.[2] On the deliberative picture, however, we explain an action in terms of the process of rational deliberation which either did or might have caused it. Importantly he notes that it doesn’t matter if we didn’t actually follow a chain of reasoning so long as we can give an after-the-fact reconstruction of what could have been the chain of reasoning we acted upon. The deliberative picture he equates with normative reasons (what is valuable).[3]

In order to draw a distinction between valuing and desiring Smith offers us some common sense examples of where the two seem to have come apart. The first[4] is from Harry Frankfurt, who invites us to imagine someone who is addicted to heroin and who wishes they could stop taking it but simply cannot resist their addiction. In this case the link between desiring and valuing is said to come apart because they desire to take heroin despite knowing that the best thing to do (what is valuable) is to get clean.

The second and third examples[5] are from Gary Watson who invites us to imagine a frustrated mother who drowns her crying child and a tennis player who, after losing a game, decides to hit his opponent in the face with his racquet. Watson asserts that it is simply false that the mother values the death of her child or that the tennis player values the suffering of his opponent. They desire these things, he says, “in spite of themselves.[6] As Smith points out they do these things without thinking what they’re doing is rationally justifiable. So what all of these examples show, for Smith, is that we can desire something which we don’t value – especially, as he quotes from Michael Stocker, when we’re in situations where we have difficulty concentrating, are anxious, depressed, or tired.[7]

On the basis of these examples we’re led to see that the HTR has perhaps not cast its net wide enough to account for all possible instances of human action. Desiring to do something is, in these cases, not the same as thinking that one’s actions are rationally justifiable. What one presently desires might stand in stark contrast to what they really think is best and this is a problem for an actual state account of reasons like the HTR.

But remember that what was most significant about our interpretation of Hume’s account is this notion that we inherit the basis upon which we make rational decisions from the feelings themselves. One’s passions are apprehended by reason which then leaves us to choose an option based on which we feel best about. However, Smith has argued that what we think is the best thing to do and what we in fact desire can come apart. He sees normative reasons as having a factual, propositional character over and against the psychological quality of motivational reasons – separating them ontologically.[8] Having a normative reason, for Smith, is when a ‘practically rational’ person believes the proposition that they would perform an action X if they were practically rational. But this belief and the intentional desire to do what is rational are not necessarily always found together, and so what we value and what we desire can come apart.[9] What justifies you to do X might not necessarily motivate you to do X.[10]

The first thing to notice is the fact that the addict, in expressing their wish to give up taking heroin, lets us know that desire is a factor in both options. Perhaps we can, in fact, sidestep Smith’s objection to the HTR by pursuing the possibility that in the above cases one does not choose between their current desires and what they believe they would have a reason to do if they were practically rational. It might turn out to be the case that it is rather a clash of passions.

Recall that in the scholastic solution to the problem of the weakness of will, reason pursues the ultimate good, but as it is but one part of the soul it can nevertheless find itself overwhelmed by the appetite or the spirit. Despite this, we recall that the source of reason’s own power is in that very separation which enables it to act contrary to the passions. Smith’s account, in distinguishing reason and the passions ontologically, looks like an attempt to vindicate the role of reason as a sui generis in order to rescue it from its supposed supervenience on the passions. Hume himself speaks of weakness of will at the end of Treatise 2.3.3 where he notes that:

“Beside these calm passions, which often determine the will, there are certain violent emotions of the same kind, which have likewise a great influence on that faculty. When I receive any injury from another, I often feel a violent passion of resentment, which makes me desire his evil and punishment, independent of all considerations of pleasure and advantage to myself.”[11]

So Hume is up to this point in agreement with Smith, that our desires can lead us to act in ways which abandon any concern for our own best interests. However, next Hume puts forward the view that cases like those which Smith points out are not clashes between reason and the passions but are rather clashes of contrary passions:

“Men often counter-act a violent passion in prosecution of their interests and designs: ‘Tis not therefore the present uneasiness alone, which determines them […] What we call strength of mind, implies the prevalence of the calm passions above the violent…”[12]

So there is a distinction which Hume draws between the violent passions and the calm passions, and he uses this to explain weakness of will without having to invoke the metaphysical or ontological separateness of reason and the passions. We can certainly agree that the passions sometimes lead us to perform actions which we would later come to regret, but it’s important to remember that what is valued in the above examples must be valued affectively. The notion that one ought not to hit their opponent in the face following a defeat could not emerge from out of any instance of pure reason. What such rational principles presuppose is the involvement of concernful individuals who can be affected by such violence. Providing we are also moved by preserving the feelings of others, we have normative reasons not to want to harm them based on one’s calm passions, the habitual exercise of which Hume feels we are prone to call reason.[13]

Similarly, with the heroin addict quitting taking the drug means something – getting clean means that one doesn’t have to search for money for a hit or suffer terrible withdrawals. Most importantly, though, it can mean getting on with the things one wants to do in life, things which heroin addiction can prevent a person from doing. If none of these possibilities had the power to move the addict it becomes difficult to imagine why they would value getting off the drug. It simply makes no sense to imagine that something could be valuable to an agent who had no interest which would be satisfied in attaining it, even if their present affective state covers over that yearning. The existence of contrary passions, violent passions like cravings and impulses which eclipse everything else, is not evidence of normative reasons and the passions coming apart but, on this account, simply evidence of powerful passions overcoming weaker ones.

It seems, however, that Smith’s remarks do disrupt the actual-state view outlined above. One’s violent passions can dwarf the calm and so their actual desire leads them to do something for which they don’t have a normative reason. While it might yet turn out to be true that one cannot have a normative reason to do something if they do not have a corresponding desire to do it, we cannot now say that just any desire will fit the bill. Accordingly, it is not necessarily the case that one has a normative reason to act when they presently have a desire which would be served by that action. Violent passions often force our hand against our interests, and so, if we were to follow Hume, we should perhaps say that we only have a normative reason to act when our desire is a calm one - but this seems arbitrary. Can a violent passion never be a normative reason? Perhaps anger can be called justified if it has risen to the fore in one’s best interests? So Hume’s distinction can only get us as far as indicating the affective import of options in all choices – it cannot, however, get us to the source of normative reasons for action alone.

But if the passions are a component in all normative reasons, what distinguishes evaluative passions from disruptive or violent ones, if not the intensity of the feeling itself? Hume himself has already given us the clue when he made mention of interests. What we must now do is give positive, independent grounds for believing that evaluations are affectively pre-appraised in terms of our interests. What the remainder of this paper will attempt to do is demonstrate how any normative fact or proposition presupposes a concernful agent pursuing interests pre-valued in terms of what we’ll call originary affectivity.

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[1] Finlay, S. & Schroeder, M., ‘Reasons for Action: Internal vs. External’ in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reasons-internal-external/, (1.3), (cited henceforth as ‘RFA’)

[2] Smith, M., ‘The Moral Problem’, Blackwell Publishing, 1994, p. 131, (2008 edition) (cited henceforth as ‘TMP’)

[3] Ibid. pp. 131-132

[4] Ibid. p. 134

[5] Ibid. p. 134

[6] Ibid. p. 134

[7] Ibid. p. 135

[8] Finley, S. & Schroeder, M., ‘RFA’, (2.1)

[9] Copp, D. ‘Belief, Reason, and Motivation: Michael Smith’s The Moral Problem’, Ethics, Vol. 108, No. 1 The University of Chicago Press, 1997, pp. 36-37

[10] Ibid. p. 34

[11] Hume, D. ‘Treatise’, p. 268

[12] Ibid. p. 268 (2.3.3) (emphasis added)

[13] Ibid. p. 269 (2.3.4)

On Heidegger's "Being and Time": Truth (Study Notes #3)

Continuing my attempt at providing study notes to important notions in Heidegger's Being and Time. As ever these are my notes and so little or no explanation of fundamental terms/notions is offered. From this point on notes will probably only be of use to anyone familiar with the majority of Division I, owing to the peculiar development of Heidegger's argument. 

At the culmination of the division Heidegger spends the final parts of Chapter Six dealing with the philosophical consequences of his interpretation of the being of Dasein as care (which turned out to be the structural articulation of being-in-the-world). But before Heidegger penetrates to the ultimate ground of Dasein's being as temporality (which will be the theme of Division II) he makes it clear to us just how much of the philosophical landscape has changed already. Traditional epistemological questions about if we can even know the world and ontological questions about the reality of the world are turned on their heads. However the most interesting result of Division I, for me, is Heidegger's existential notion of truth. As many of the themes of Division I are finalised in this notion I think its more deserving of attention than the specifically epistemological or ontological consequences of the existential analytic (which are in a way held within the essence of truth themselves).

Initially Heidegger's understanding of truth seems quite strange. We're accustomed to thinking of truth as the correspondence of a statement with a state of affairs. If the content of the statement matches the state of affairs itself then we call the statement true. For instance if I say "the apple juice is in the fridge" and the apple juice is indeed in the fridge then the statement is true. Otherwise the statement is false (as it does not represent anything in the world). Analogous to Heidegger's treatment of the isolated subject perceiving objects he points out the problematic nature of how two such things with such different natures could possibly correspond to one another. Like the problem of how the res cogitans can reach into the res extensa a similar problem now emerges about how the logos can represent the physis.

Now Heidegger does not wish to do away with the correspondence theory as he did not wish to do away with the substance ontology when he dealt with Descartes. As we've seen time and time again in Division I, Heidegger simply wishes to elucidate the existential grounds of the theory and exhibit how something like correspondence is initially possible. By now we'll be familiar with Heidegger's existential-phenomenological method of beginning with an ontic phenomenon and laying bare its ontological grounds (i.e. the condition of its possibility, its essence). We first saw how the subject and object are both founded in the being [sein] of Dasein, and are as modifications of being-in-the-world. We saw that without being-in-the-world there could be no possibility of passive observation as the original moment of understanding is disclosed in the active being of Dasein. What such passive observation refers to are significations already disclosed by participation in being-in-the-world. This means that when we know the apple juice is in the fridge, the "content" of our knowledge has already been given over in that original moment of understanding. When we press into beings, beings press into us: this propriative moment of mutual disclosure "is" the original happening of truth.

So we saw how being-in-the-world discloses significations. When the handle breaks off my mug of tea and spills everywhere, the initial propriative moment is the apprehension that my mug is broken and the floor is wet. We understand now that we can only grasp something like broken-ness by being the kind of being which is concerned in its being about that being. Broken means no longer able to fit into the nexus of activity from which beings show themselves as the beings that they are. If we weren't always already intending upon things as beings for-the-sake-of some end (i.e. for the sake of drinking) we could not grasp how something could become broken and thus incapable of allowing us to pursue that possibility of our being (drinking tea)

The disclosure of such significations like "it is sunny", "I am tired", "this is boring" goes along with the structure of being-in-the-world. As preliminary steps have been taken to introduce being-in-the-world in its temporal character as care, care becomes the essence of truth. Care was understood as Dasein's thrown-projection which took it that our present activities make sense in terms of their trying to fulfil some possibility of ourselves which lies in the future (making a brew) but which was made initially possible by our thrownness (that we found ourselves bored near a kettle in a culture which drinks tea).

As care is the essence of Dasein it follows that the essence of truth is Dasein. The happening of truth depends on the being of Dasein but this does not mean that the specific being [seindes] of truth depends upon Dasein. Heidegger himself states that only being [sein], i.e. only the propriative moment of understanding in which beings are grasped as the beings that they are depends on Dasein. The ontic qualities of those beings themselves are whether or not Dasein is around to disclose them. The wind would still blow and the flowers would still blossom even if we were not around to behold them. Truth is this being able to behold them.

On Reason I: Reason in History

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Prologue

I've been silent for a while on the blog as I've been deep in the bunker finishing off my final year as an undergraduate philosopher. One of the major headaches/joys of the last few months has been completing my dissertation, which is the development of an idea I posted to this very blog some time ago. I've decided to present my dissertation on the blog in two or three parts (as a 6400 word slog isn't exactly casual reading for anyone). The first part will deal with the understanding of reason in the history of Western philosophy from Plato up to what I consider to be a radical breaking point during the renaissance period, culminating with Hume.

Introduction

This paper aims to explore the basis of normative reasons for action, focusing on the structure and operation of the passions[1] and their relation to practical reason in everyday life. In this I intend to go some way towards a solution to the problem of the source of those reasons by demonstrating how reason itself operates on the basis of an affectively articulated evaluative scheme. I ultimately hope to defend two claims about reason:

1. Reason is inseperably tied to the passions.

2. The passions can nevertheless lead us to do things which are not in our best interests.

With this in mind I suggest that the primary driving phenomenon in activity/deliberation is the evaluative scheme itself. But in order to first find our way in this enquiry we’ll give a brief overview of the historic antecedents of the view we’re proposing, situating our investigation in its appropriate context and establishing what is at issue.

I

Historical Antecedents

In the ancient tradition, explanation of human action initially took it that all actions aimed at the good. With this view the possibility remained open that we could be mistaken about what we aim for, and so might unwillingly try to accomplish something which would be bad. The consequence is that we can’t knowingly aim at accomplishing a bad thing.[2] However, cases involving the weakness of will challenge this ‘holistic’ view. Intuitively, we can all think of times where our feelings got the best of us and we found ourselves acting in ways we later came to regret. Perhaps we had yielded to a growing frustration and lashed out at somebody who was disturbing us, or perhaps we gave in to an urge to spend money on something we could not really afford. In any case, we’re in no short supply of examples of our emotions clouding our judgement and causing us to act foolishly.

Plato’s understanding of reason, as outlined in The Republic, is developed along these sorts of lines. In his discussion Plato declares that the soul must have three parts: reason, appetite, and spirit. The appetite, he has it, is equivalent to the desires[3]; hunger, lust, thirst, etc. The spirit, however, is more akin to our moral sense, manifest in the feeling of guilt when we have done wrong or in indignation when we have been accused of a wrongdoing for which we are not responsible.[4] Both of these faculties are roughly equivalent to what we might call the passions, though both of them deal with different aspects of affective phenomena. What is important is that Plato sees reason as the master of these two faculties.

Most importantly, however, he argues for this separation of the soul under the principle that one cannot incline in two opposing ways with the same part of themselves towards the same object at the same time.[5] To illustrate this we are invited to think of a man who is standing still but waving his arms and head around. We do not imagine that this man defies the rule by being stationary and in motion all at once, for it is his torso and legs which are stationary and his arms which are moving.[6] The intended consequence of Plato’s short discussion is to establish that opposing inclinations must arise from separate parts of the soul e.g. one cannot both want to eat and not want to eat with the same part of themselves. Accordingly, if we witness just such a conflict in ourselves or in others then, for Plato, we must infer that it is not the same part of the soul acting in two opposing manners but rather two parts of the soul acting contrarily to one another.

Following these preliminary discussions Plato goes on to formally distinguish the three parts of the soul, beginning with desire. He puts forward the example of one who wants to drink but who suppresses the urge, insisting that it is reason which has called the desire to heel.[7] To illustrate Plato’s point, imagine one has become lost at sea and feels overwhelmed by the desire to drink. Our craving appetite directs us to the endless panorama of water which surrounds us, beckoning us to fill our canteens and drink. However, reason reminds us that the salt content of this water would dehydrate us far quicker than not drinking at all, and so with some effort we overcome the urge.

More moderately, in Use of the Passions Senault proposes that “there is no passion which is not serviceable to virtue, when they are governed by reason.” The scholastic view of reason begins to fall out of favour around the 17^th century as writers like Senault, Descartes, and Spinoza questioned the separation of the soul which had metaphysically supported the view that reason guided the passions.[8] Though the works of these philosophers differ in significant ways with regards to their understanding of reason and its relation to the passions, they are nevertheless united by at least two pertinent themes: (1) the passions are useful when governed by reason[9] (2) reason cannot govern the passions alone.[10]

Under the scholastic conception, weakness of will is understood as the spirit or appetite overcoming the dictates of reason - a feat they can accomplish by virtue of their being separate parts of the soul. For the 17^th Century rationalists named above, however, it is the simple weakness of reason which accounts for the possibility of its being overcome by the passions – particularly its inability to motivate our actions.[11] This abandonment of the metaphysical structure of the soul signals an historic point where philosophers begin to challenge reason’s place as a guide to action. If reason cannot motivate one to act in accordance with the choices it prescribes then it is incapable of guiding our actions by itself.[12]

Certainly in times of emotional upheaval one may say or do things they would never say or do if they had thought about it calmly. But by what power, if any, can reason call our desires to heel or the heart to order? David Hume answered precisely this question by grounding our reasons in those very passions. In the Treatise (2.3.3) Hume explicitly states that he’s going to show us how (1) reason can never generate motives for the will, and (2) reason can never oppose the passions with respect to the will. However, as I will argue, a further consequence of Hume’s view is that reason cannot generate normative reasons for the will either, and that these too are sourced in the passions.

II

Hume’s Account

Now, it is one thing to judge that something is the reasonable thing to do but quite another to suppose that this thing is worth doing. To prove this Hume first separates demonstrative reasoning (that pertaining to relations of ideas, logical/mathematical, a priori truths) from probabilistic reasoning (that pertaining to matters of fact, empirical, a posteriori truths) in order to show why neither form of reasoning owns the possibility of generating motivation. Beginning his argument with demonstrative reasoning, Hume notes how it always relies on there being some previously established purpose or end to which it can be applied:

“Mathematics, indeed, are useful in all mechanical operations, and arithmetic in almost every art and profession: But ‘tis not of themselves that they have any influence. Mechanics are the art of regulating the motion of bodies to some design’d end or purpose”[13]

So, for Hume, demonstrative reasoning cannot itself provide any motivation to action. The results of such demonstrations, as with logical or mathematical proofs, are in themselves inert. To make this clear, imagine we are architects calculating the arrangement of load-bearing struts whilst designing a skyscraper. Now, it might be tempting to think that the results of the calculations themselves motivate the manner of construction - the results, after all, prescribe how the struts must be organised in order to properly bear the weight of the rest of the building. However, what this overlooks is that the very purpose of calculating these values refers back to the original motivating principle behind the construction of the building itself. In other words, the calculations let us know how we must organise the struts in our building if we want it to stand securely. Motivation is therefore already presupposed before we come to calculate anything.

Of probabilistic reasoning, then, Hume has it that our expectation or experience of pleasure/pain from which we “feel a consequent emotion of aversion or propensity” leads us to respond to a particular thing in a particular way, through some mode of either approach or rejection. A happy dog who comes bounding over to you with his or her tail wagging, for example, tends to make manifest a pleasant feeling, motivating you want to pet or play with the dog. As we accrue more and more experiences of friendly pups wagging their tails we come, by habit, to anticipate friendliness when we see a dog wagging its tail. Hume points out that our feeling is concerned not with the wagging tail itself but with the expected effect. Our reasoning discovers this pre-existent causal relation and our actions are affected in terms of how we decide to deal with it.[14] But it is not reason itself which produces the feeling (even if reason chooses how to act upon it). In each case it is the emotional import of the expectation or experience of pleasure/pain which permits the discovery of such causal relations:

“But ‘tis evident in this case, that the impulse arises not from reason, but is only directed by it. ‘Tis from the prospect of pain or pleasure that the aversion of propensity arises towards any object […] Where the objects themselves do not affect us, their connexion can never give them any influence; and ‘tis plain, that as reason is nothing but the discovery of this connexion, it cannot be by its means that the objects are able to affect us.”[15]

Hume concludes that as reason cannot in itself produce any action, either by demonstrative or probabilistic means, that it therefore cannot oppose a desire. In both cases feelings are presupposed as the basis upon which reason proceeds but it’s as yet unclear how exactly reason factors in. Later on Hume states that:

“…A man naturally loves his children better than his nephews, his nephews better than his cousins, his cousins better than strangers […] Hence arise our common measures of duty…”[16]

It is the passions and not reason itself which is supposed here as the basis of our measures of duty. In reading this short passage we are led to imagine reason choosing between options which are pre-valued in terms of customary emotional responses, though the formulation in terms of custom is itself a little inaccurate. If one does love their children better than their nephews then they have a reason to, let’s say, take their children on holiday instead of them. But if one loves their nephews more than their own children (we’ll imagine these children are morally blameworthy in some way) then the opposite is the case, and this is true despite what is customary for others. As everybody’s situation is different, customary affective responses are no safe guide to what the best thing to do is.

With this said, it’s important to recognise that not only motivational reasons are tied to the affects but normative reasons are too. If reason cannot itself produce or oppose the passions, and if the passions are the basis upon which we make our decisions (as with the example above) then both motivational and normative reasons are pre-disclosed by the affects. It follows from Hume’s discussion of probabilistic reasoning, that reason discovers emotional associations and comes to choose on that basis. If reason cannot produce the associations itself but only discover them then the basis on which reason chooses is not produced by reason – it is the passions, rather, in which its reasons to approach or avoid something are sourced. Any process of reasoning about what we should do must be founded in the feelings we have towards what it is we’re choosing between. On this interpretation, then, both motivational and normative reasons for action are the same thing.

Consequently I suggest that practical reason, for Hume, consists in making decisions based on a kind of pre-evaluation tied explicitly to the passions. The Humean Theory of Reasons (henceforth ‘HTR’), on this interpretation at least,[17] declares that “if there is a reason for someone to do something, then they must actually have some desire that would be served by their doing it, which is the source of their reason.”[18]  It will be helpful to formalise the argument leading to this conclusion:

1.  An agent has no reason to do some action A if there is no possibility of their being motivated to do so.

2. There is no possibility of an agent's being motivated to do A if they have no desire which could motivate them.

3. Therefore, an agent has no reason to do A if they have no desire which could motivate them to do A.[19]

The HTR raises pertinent questions about the role of emotions in practical deliberation. In the next part we are going to take a good look at some difficulties which Hume's  position faces, moving towards a closer approximation of the evaluative scheme alluded to in the introduction.

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[1] I will be using the terms “passions”, “emotions”, “feelings”, and “affects” interchangeably throughout.

[2] Setiya, K. ‘Reasons without Rationalism’, Princeton University Press, 2007, p. 21 (cited henceforth as ‘RWR’)

[3] Plato. “The Republic”,  Penguin Books, 1987, p. 214 

[4] Ibid. pp. 215-217

[5] Ibid. p. 210

[6] Ibid. p. 211

[7] Ibid. p. 217

[8] McIntyre, Jane L. ‘Hume’s ‘New and Extraordinary’ Account of the Passions’ in Traiger, S (ed.), “The Blackwell Guide to Hume’s Treatise”, Blackwell Publishing, 2005, p. 207 (cited henceforth as ‘HA’)

[9] Ibid. p. 203

[10] Ibid. p. 204

[11] Ibid. pp. 204-205

[12] Ibid. p. 208

[13] Hume, D. ‘A Treatise of Human Nature’, Norton, D (ed.) & Norton, M (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1739, p. 265 (2.3.3) (2009 edition, cited henceforth as ‘Treatise’)

[14] Ibid. p. 266 (2.3.3)

[15] Ibid. p. 266 (2.3.3)

[16] Ibid. p. 311 (3.2.2)

[17] I should mention that I am fully aware of controversy surrounding the interpretation of Hume on this point. However for the purposes of the present paper this matter is irrelevant.

[18] Finlay, S. & Schroeder, M., ‘Reasons for Action: Internal vs. External’ in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reasons-internal-external/, (1.3), (cited henceforth as ‘RFA’)

[19] Ibid.

On First Principles: Rhetoric, Induction, Concern

In this essay I hope to vindicate Hume’s claim from the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding that neither experience nor reason can support the principle of induction. In so doing I suggest we take a close look at how experience is constituted, following Karl Popper in arguing for a reversal in the relations Hume supposes between observation and hypotheses. The result of this will point the way to criteria which removes the requirement of rational or empirical justification for first principles on condition that they are empirically falsifiable.

I

First Principles: Induction

Hume sees our human understanding as wrought in two: (1) relations of ideas and (2) matters of fact. Relations of ideas are a priori truths, e.g. that three plus five makes eight, which we can know without having to look at how things are in the world. Matters of fact, contrarily, are known a posteriori which means that we have to look at how the world is in order to come to have such knowledge, e.g. that motion from one billiard ball communicates motion to another. In section IV of the Enquiry, Hume is keen to investigate the nature of our evidence of matters of fact “beyond the present testimony of our senses, or the records of our memory”.[1]

To begin he supposes that our knowledge of matters of fact is founded on knowledge of cause and effect, citing the example of finding a watch on a barren desert island. Finding this watch would lead one to conclude that there had once been people there through simple inference from the effect (watch) to the cause (people).[2] As we know watches exclusively as an effect of human activity we come to associate the phenomena and so are able to infer, upon finding the one, the former presence of the other. So now the problem becomes one of discovering how we arrive at knowledge of cause and effect.[3]

Hume argues that we can’t manage this a priori because we cannot infer the causal powers of anything from sensible qualities alone and so we must become empirically acquainted with causes and effects in order to make such an inference. One could not, for instance, deduce upon first seeing two pieces of smooth marble that they would become extremely difficult to separate except by lateral pressure[4] - only by having first experienced such a phenomenon could we come to expect it when next presented with two pieces of marble. If a priori reasoning cannot ground our knowledge of cause and effect that leaves us with one remaining candidate: experience. Following on from this in Part II of section IV Hume endeavours to find out what the foundation of our conclusions from experience is.

Remarkably, Hume claims that such conclusions are “not founded on reasoning, or any process of the understanding”.[5] He establishes this by considering two propositions of the sort we find in all reasoning concerning matters of fact:

(1) "I have found that such an object is always attended by such an effect".

(2) "I foresee, that other objects, which are, in appearance, similar, will be attended with similar effects".[6]

This second statement is known as the principle of uniformity. In Humean terms, it is the notion that the hidden causal powers governing the behaviour of the natural world are uniform across time. But the question is: how do we infer (2) from (1)? We begin with such experience as we have in witnessing the constant conjunction of two events, one billiard ball communicating motion to another. We might witness this simple phenomenon hundreds, maybe thousands of times – but how could we possibly derive (2) from such temporally limited cases?

Hume admits that he cannot discover the device which leads us from the one to the other, but is not willing to say that as he cannot presently think of the solution to our conundrum that no such solution is therefore possible.[7] However, in order to bolster his negative conclusion he will take apart the two forms of human understanding and try to show why we can’t in principle discover the reason for our inference from (1) to (2) in either of them. We’ve seen why we cannot make this inference a priori given that we can certainly conceive of the causal laws governing the universe changing in the future. We must therefore focus instead on probabilistic reasoning regarding matters of fact. Recall Hume’s argument up to now:

i. Our reasoning concerning matters of fact is based on cause and effect (p. 26)

ii. All reasonings and conclusions based on cause and effect are derived from experience (p. 29)

iii. All our experiential conclusions derive from the supposition that the past will resemble the future (principle of uniformity).

We see that the foundation of our conclusions based on experience is the principle of uniformity and so we cannot then secure this principle on experience without falling into circularity! We find ourselves with a problem: all of our empirical knowledge happens to be based on causal inference and yet when we look for the ground upon which this knowledge rests we cannot find it in the understanding at all. No a priori reasoning and certainly no amount of experience can justify our supposition of uniformity, for Hume.

How then are we led to anticipate future events based on our finite past experience? Hume proposes that it is habit or custom which leads us to this expectation.[8] He defines habit/custom as the propensity of a repeated operation or act to cause the reproduction of the very same operation or act, reiterating that no process of the understanding is factored in.[9] But, significantly, as this kind of faculty is not cognitive/propositional in nature (owing to its not being an operation of what Hume calls the understanding) it means that the principle of induction is not a principle at all but rather a mode of behaviour. What we must now consider is the possibility that behaviour can function as a mode of the understanding.

II

Knowing-How & Rhetoric

Italian rhetorician Ernesto Grassi sees the problem of first principles as arising from a failure to appreciate the metaphysical relation between two types of discourse: the rhetorical and the rational.[10] Rational discourse consists in proving things, and to be proven means to be demonstrated on the basis of something.[11] In order to prove the notion that a moving billiard ball will communicate motion to a stationary one, for instance, we point to our past experiences of such phenomena on the basis of the principle of induction. Raw experience alone only gets us as far as constantly conjoined perceptions - we must make an inference based on the principle of induction in order to arrive at the general claim adverted to.

But rational principles cannot themselves be demonstrated by rational means, as to be proven demands the supposition of just such first principles. This is another way of expressing Hume’s problem above, that induction cannot ground induction without presupposing itself and thereby running into circularity. So when we posit these first principles, Grassi asks, what is the form of discourse through which we do it, if not rationality? As Hume has eliminated the possibility of experience filling this role, perhaps we ought to consider Grassi’s claim that it is from out of rhetorical, creative discourse that these suppositions come into being.[12] Grassi understands rhetoric metaphysically as the origin of rational discourse and not, as is typically understood, a set of clever argumentative tricks.[13] Rhetoric is understood as emerging from praxis, the day-to-day concerns of human existence, which are historically contingent.[14]

As we’ve seen, Hume concludes that neither demonstrative nor probabilistic reasoning can ground the principle upon which induction rests – it is only habit which leads us to suppose this. But what if the phenomenon proposed here as “habit” was in fact a form of the understanding? Certain philosophers in fact do see this non-propositional habitual comportment as a form of the understanding, one upon which propositional knowledge rests. Gilbert Ryle was one such philosopher:

“…both philosophers and laymen tend to treat intellectual operations as the core of mental conduct […] they tend to define all mental-conduct concepts in terms of cognition. They suppose that the primary exercise of minds consists in finding the answers to questions and that their other occupations are merely applications of considered truths…”[15]

While this might not be totally true of Hume (see footnote 12), nevertheless he is partly implicated for imagining that the understanding performs only cognitive operations, either through a priori deduction in formal systems or a posteriori inference based on past experience. But our readiness to deal with situations in our daily lives exhibits understanding too, for instance we know-how to use all sorts of things without needing to make explicit inductive or deductive inferences based on considered truths. Ryle saw the application and consideration of discovered truths as an operation of intelligence, and not vice-versa. Praxis, then, is perhaps a form of the understanding too.

With respect to this the first thing which strikes us about Hume’s account is his restriction of the understanding to propositional forms, both demonstrative and probabilistic. While his insistence that sceptical abstract reasoning will never affect the day to day comportment of human life[16] is very astute, nevertheless I feel his cognitive-propositional picture of the understanding prevents him from fully grasping any possible non-propositional origins of logical principles - leaving them shrouded in mystery. In the next section we will consider more evidence regarding the notion of practical concern and the role in plays in human understanding.

III

The Necessity of Perspective

What Hume says about the specific nature of experience aside from its relation to ideas is scant, suggesting he thinks the concept is unproblematic and in need of no elucidation. However, if we take a closer look at how experience is resolved to us we might gain significant insight into Hume’s problem. Karl Popper helpfully deflates the myth of directly intelligible experience, insisting first that experience is experience-for something and that as such any perceived repetitions are repetitions-for-something.[17] The perspective[18] of the subject is paramount as any perceived repetitions have to be interpreted as repetitions from within a perspective. This is as against the “naïve view” that events are similar and their being recognised as such is down to our unmediated perception of that fact.[19]

In order to make this clear consider two separate cases involving one person passing an item to another person. Both instances are formally identical with respect to experienced sense-data (which is to say in both instances we witness one person passing an item to another). Now suppose that these instances have different meanings - in one a gift is being given and in another a debt is being repaid. Sense-data alone cannot convey these different meanings as the sense impressions themselves are identical and therefore contain no indication of how to discriminate the different meanings. The meanings of the two instances are found in the purposive activities involved. In the gift-giving example, for instance, let’s say it’s your birthday and so when the gift is presented to you, you can interpret the item as a gift according to your expectations of the situation. Contrast this with the debt repayment instance – one is not expecting a gift, but they are expecting repayment from their friend and so they interpret the item as repayment, not as a gift.

Popper furthers this challenge, inviting us to appreciate the absurdity of the instruction: “take a pencil and paper; carefully observe, and write down what you have observed!”[20] This instruction immediately solicits the question “observe what?” – alluding to the requirement of a purposeful direction to guide any observation:

“Observation is always selective. It needs a chosen object, a definite task, an interest, a point of view, a problem. And its description presupposes a descriptive language, with property words; it presupposes similarity and classification, which in its turn presupposes interests, points of view, and problems.”[21]

It’s helpful to think of this in terms of a library. If it was disorganised it would be very difficult to find any book we were after, so we organise it as best fits its particular purpose. In a university library, for instance, the books are typically divided along disciplinary lines; Philosophy, German, Psychology, etc. Popper’s point is that we perform a similar feat in our experience, interpreting/organising it according to how what we’re perceiving matters to us, relative to our interests, points of view, and problems.

The import of this result is two-fold. The first outcome is that Hume is right that experience alone cannot support the principle of induction (as we have discovered the necessity of a perspective from which to interpret experience). The second outcome is that Hume’s psychological solution runs into the exact same difficulties as we found when trying to explain the supposition of the principle of induction from experience. This is owing to the fact that repetitions need to be interpreted as repetitions from within a perspective so that even habit presupposes experience within an organising perspective.[22] Two avenues within the problem now point us to the perspectival character of experience.

If the first outcome stands we see that the proper starting points for securing knowledge are problems emerging from our particular interests/concerns – not raw perception itself.[23] We have seen how we cannot subtract our active sensitivity to the meaning of a situation and try to rebuild it from the sensory remainder as one needs their concernful perspective to interpret sensory experience. An experiment involving young dogs which Popper mentions offers a great example of this. After being exposed to a lit cigarette for the first time the dogs turn and move away from it, unable to be coaxed into returning. Days later they were shown the cigarette again and responded in like manner, even turning away from a rolled up piece of white paper, interpreting it as similar in kind to the cigarette which had previously disturbed them.[24]

The dogs’ past experience informs their current perspective and enables them to anticipate discomfort when presented with another object which looks like the offending cigarette. But if (1) a perspective allows our experience to be intelligible while, (2) experience simultaneously informs and shapes that very perspective - are we not again stuck at circular reasoning? Not this time, as our expanded notion of experience shows us that the dog’s initial apprehension of the cigarette as unpleasant was not a passive/direct experience but a concernful experience mediated by the dogs’ simple aversion to unpleasant smells. The experiment shows that no foregoing experience is required for an object to be initially interpreted as something.

IV

Conclusion

Now, as we’ve seen that knowledge does not proceed from unmediated experience but from experience within an organising perspective, we may suppose that the origin of the principle of uniformity is found in those very activities in which the anticipation of regularity is discovered. What Hume called habit is not any passive reception of repetitive impressions, in fact we’ve seen that it need not even be repetitive but can be formed after one instance. Habit, rather, is the active appropriation of things relevant to our interests. This leaves us with the possibility that no justification is required for our expectation of regularity save its genesis in dealing with things in a world organised by our interests.

But Popper’s solution does not cast our principle of uniformity to the hounds of irrationality. While it may originate in the behavioural anticipation of uniformity this does not mean that it isn’t subject to another empirical process: falsification. If no amount of verifying experience can justify the leap from constantly conjoined perceptions of a certain kind to a universal rule governing all possible perceptions of that kind, induction is troubled from the ground up. However, a falsified theory is falsified deductively – meaning that you can logically demonstrate that something isn’t the case[25] rather than inferring that it probably is. Finding a black swan, for example, renders it deductively certain that the hypothesis “all swans are white” is false. The aim therefore is not to verify the principle of uniformity by experience but to ensure that it is able to be falsified by experience. The condition is that falsification takes place within a perspective wherein a falsifying observation is interpreted as a falsifying observation.

Bibliography

Hume, D. (1909). Enquiries Concerning the Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals. Clarendon Press.

Popper, K. (1972). Conjectures and Refutations. Routledge and Kegan Paul.

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[1] (Hume, 1909), p. 26

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid. p. 27

[4] Ibid. p. 28

[5] Ibid. p. 32

[6] Ibid. p. 34

[7] Ibid. pp. 34-35

[8] Ibid. p. 43

[9] Ibid. p. 43

[10] (Grassi, 2001), pp. 18-24 (note:)

[11] Ibid. p. 19

[12] Ibid. p. 19

[13] Ibid. pp. 18-19

[14] Ibid. pp. 6-7 (if we were not concernful beings for whom the natural world has meaning with respect to those concerns, nothing like induction would be necessary as we would have no need to make any inductions).

[15] (Ryle, 2000), p. 27 (my italics)

[16] (Hume, 1909), p. 41

[17] (Popper, 1972), p. 44

[18] Popper doesn’t explicitly use the word ‘perspective’ however I feel it is a convenient catch-all expression for the various phenomena he lists as helping organise and make sense of experience (see footnote 15).

[19] Ibid. p. 45

[20] Ibid. p. 46

[21] Ibid. pp. 46-47

[22] Ibid. p. 45

[23] Ibid. p. 155

[24] Ibid. p. 44

[25] Providing all background assumptions stand, etc.