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The Mortimer J. Adler Archive |
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Index:
Using the word "epistemology" for the theory of knowledge -- especially for inquiries concerning the "origin, certainty, and extent" of our knowledge -- I have two things to say about this part of the philosophical enterprise. First, it should be reflexive; that is, it should examine the knowledge that we do have; it should be a knowing about our knowing. Second, being reflexive, epistemology should be posterior to metaphysics, the philosophy of nature, ethics, and political theory -- these and all other branches of first-order philosophical knowledge; in other words, our knowing what can be known should take precedence over our knowing about our knowing. Both of these procedural points were violated in the critical movement that began with Locke and ran to Kant. Epistemology became "first philosophy," taking precedence over all other branches of philosophical inquiry; and, with Kant, it be came the basis for "prolegomena to any future metaphysic." Epistemology more and more tended to swallow up the whole philosophical enterprise. It is this retreat from the known world and our knowledge of it to the world of the knower and his efforts to know which prepared the way for the later total retreat of philosophy (in our own century) to the plane of second-order questions, relinquishing entirely any claim to have a respectable method for carrying on first order inquiries. I think it is apt, and not too harsh, to call this first unfortunate result of the critical reaction to dogmatic systems "suicidal epistemologizing." Epistemology, fashioned by philosophers as a scalpel to cut away the cancer of dogmatism, was turned into a dagger and plunged into philosophy's vitals. The second unfortunate result can, with equally good reason, be called "suicidal psychologizing." Like the first, it is also a retreat from reality. Where the first is a retreat from the reality of the knowledge that we actually do have, the second is a retreat from the reality of the world to be known. Modern idealism begins with Kant. It is the worst of the modern errors in philosophy. What I mean by "suicidal psychologizing" is sometimes less picturesquely described as "the way of ideas," fathered by Descartes, but given its most unfortunate effects by the so-called British empiricists -- Locke, Berkeley, and Hume -- who made the psychologizing of common experience the whole of philosophy and substituted that for the use of common experience as a test of the soundness of philosophical theories or conclusions about the experienced world. The psychologizing of common experience deserves to be called suicidal; for, in effect, it cuts away the very ground on which the philosopher stands. It makes experience subjective, rather than objective.
In the tradition of Western thought the word "emotion" is generally misused for feelings and sentiments -- in general, for affects. These are, in neurological and physiological terms, not emotions at all. Aristotle's Rhetoric has a long list of irascible and concupiscence emotions in pairs, each with its opposite, such as love and hate or joy and sorrow. A similar listing and grouping is adopted by Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica. Other lists are presented by Benedict Spinoza in his Ethics, Book IV, where they are called the passions and are treated in relation to human bondage and freedom. We can also find listings of the emotions or passions in Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke, and in subsequent writing by British empirical psychologists, David Hume, George Berkeley, and J. S. Mill. A very short list of emotions is presented in the psychology of William James, where he pays tribute to Professor C. Lange, a Danish physiologist, for his contribution to a theory of emotions that came to be known as the James-Lange theory. According to this theory, emotions are widespread bodily and visceral changes that are controlled by the sympathetic nervous system. This widespread neurological and physiological commotion includes such things as pupillary dilation, changes in the respiratory system and in the psycho galvanic system (electricity in the epidermis), presence of adrenaline in the blood stream, and changes in the pulse. This complex state of changes, occurring simultaneously and accompanied by bodily movements of attack and withdrawal, constitutes an emotion, strictly speaking. With two exceptions, all emotions are alike in their visceral components, differing only in the bodily actions of attack and withdrawal. Anger or rage is one of them, and fright or fear is another. They are alike viscerally but they are differentiated in the acts of attack and withdrawal that accom-pany the same visceral commotion. Two exceptions are grief, on the one hand, and sexual orgasm on the other hand, these two have no opposites. There is no emotion of joy or one of love. Most of the so-called emotions (listed and grouped by the philosophers from Aristotle, Aquinas, Spinoza, and the British empirical psychologists, until we get to the psychology of William James and to the James' Lange theory of the emotions) are mild feeling, sentiments, or affects that involve no physiological, neurological, or visceral components. I have little hope that people generally will give up making long lists of the emotions that fill the pages of literature. These lists belong to poetry, not to scientific physiology and neurology. The best word to use for the psychological states they refer to is the word sentiment. Sentiments represent the nonrational aspect of human nature, the aspect of human nature that human beings share with other animals. The human conflict between reason and the passions that is discussed there afflicts human beings be-cause they are like other animals, on the one hand, and unlike them, on the other. The James' Lange theory of emotions applies to the lower animals as well as to human beings, as anyone knows who has observed a hissing and ferocious cat or a frightened rabbit.
Philosophy, seeking to establish itself as knowledge rather than mere speculation and unfounded opinion, is afflicted with a series of errors that have occurred in modern times. These must be corrected in order for philosophy to succeed in its effort to provide us with ethical and political knowledge. In my opinion, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, properly construed, is the only sound, pragmatic, and undogmatic work in moral philosophy that has come down to us in the last twenty-five centuries (it is the ethics of common sense and is both teleological and deontological). Its basic truths are as true today as they were in the fourth century B.C. when that book was delivered as a series of lectures in Aristotle's Lyceum. Of course, it contains some errors. All books do. Of course, not everything it says or every distinction it makes is of equal importance. But when it is carefully read with an eye to its main theses, we are as enlightened by it today as were those who listened to Aristotle's lectures when they were first delivered. The reason this can be so is that the ethical problems that human beings confront in their lives have not changed one bit over the centuries. Moral virtue and the blessings of good fortune are today, as they have always been in the past, the keys to living well, unaffected by all the technological changes in the environment, as well as those in our social, political, and economic institutions. The moral problems to be solved by the individual are the same in every century, though they appear to us in different guises.
The distinction between real and apparent goods must be understood, as well as the fact that only real goods are the objects of right desire. In the realm of appetite or desire, some desires are natural and some are acquired. Those that are natural are the same for all human beings as individual members of the human species. They are as much a part of our natural endowment as our sensitive faculties and our skeletal structure. Other desires we acquire in the course of experience, under the influence of our upbringing or nurturing, or of environmental factors that differ from individual to individual. Individuals differ in their acquired desires, as they do not in their natural desires. We have two English words for these two kinds of desire, words that help us to understand the significance of their difference: "needs" and "wants." What is really good for us is not really good because we desire it, but the very opposite. We desire it because it is really good. By contrast, that which only appears good to us (and may or may not be really good for us) appears good to us simply because we want it at the moment. Its appearing good is the result of our wanting it, and as our wants change, as they do from day to day, so do the things that appear good to us.
I will try, as briefly as possible, to summarize the argument that I think supports the view that the intellect is the immaterial factory needed, in addition to the brain, for the occurrence in the human mind of conceptual thought. The argument, as stated, is not to be found in the philosophical writings of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, but its main tenets can be found there. The argument hinges on two propositions. The first asserts that the concepts whereby we understand what different kinds or classes of things are like consist of meanings that are universal. The second proposition asserts that nothing that exists physically is ever actually universal. Anything that is embodied in matter exists as an individual, a singular thing that may also be a particular instance of this class or that. From these two propositions, the conclusion follows that our concepts, having universality, cannot be embodied in matter. If they were acts of a bodily organ such as the brain, they would exist in matter, and so could not have the requisite universality to function as concepts that enable us to think of universal objects, such as kinds or classes, quite different from the individual things that are objects of sense perception, imagination, and memory. The power of conceptual thought, by which we form and use concepts, must, therefore, be an immaterial power, one the acts of which are not acts of a bodily organ. The reasoning that supports the first of the two foregoing propositions is as follows. Our common or general names derive the meanings they carry from the concepts we have. The meaning of a common or general name is universal. It always signifies a class of objects, never any particular instance or member of the class. Particular instances are designated by proper names or definite descriptions. When we use the word "dog," we are referring to any dog, regardless of breed, size, shape, or color. To refer to a particular instance, we would use a canine name, such as "Fido," or a definite description, such as "that white poodle over there lying in front of the fire." Our concepts of dog and poodle not only enable us to think about two classes of animals, they also enable us to understand what it is like to be a dog or a poodle. The second proposition about the individuality of all material or corporeal things is supported by the facts of common experience. The objects we perceive through our senses are all individual things--that is, this individual dog, that individual spoon. As I pointed out in the preceding chapter, we have never seen a triangle in general, nor can we imagine one. Any triangle that we can draw on a piece of paper, any triangle we have seen or imagined, is a particular triangle of a certain shape and size. But we can understand what is involved in triangularity as such, without reference to the character of the angles or the area enclosed. Whatever exists physically exists as an individual, and whatever has individuality exists materially. No one has ever experienced or produced anything that has physical or corporeal existence and also is universal in character rather than individual. The argument then reaches its conclusion as follows. Our concepts are universal in their signification of objects that are kinds or classes of things rather than individuals that are particular instances of these classes or kinds. Since they have universality, they cannot exist physically or be embodied in matter. But concepts do exist in our minds. They are there as acts of our intellectual power. Hence that power must be an immaterial power, not one embodied in a material organ such as the brain.
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The Adler Archive Index |
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