The Rediscovery of Common Sense Philosophy This page intentionally left blank The Rediscovery of Common Sense Philosophy Stephen Boulter © Stephen Boulter 2007 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2007 978-0-230-00246-3 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2007 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-28063-6 ISBN 978-0-230-22313-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230223134 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10987654321 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 For Eileen, Joan and Elizabeth This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgements viii Introduction: Two Tribes ix 1 The Metaphilosophy of Common Sense 1 2 The “Evolutionary Argument” and the Metaphilosophy of Common Sense 32 3 Towards a Taxonomy of Philosophical Error 53 4 Theology’s Trojan Horse 75 5 Metaphysical Realism as a Pre-condition of Visual Perception 98 6 Semantic Anti-Realism and the Dummettian Reductio 118 7 Eliminating Eliminative Materialism 137 8 Freedom and Responsibility 157 9 On the Existence of Moral Facts 177 Afterword 198 Notes 201 Bibliography 223 Index 233 vii Acknowledgements I have profited enormously from the advice and critical comments of many people in the course of preparing this book. Special thanks are due to Alexander Broadie, William Bechtel, Mark Cain, Jim Edwards, Mary Haight, John Haldane, Michael Lessnoff, Christopher Martin, Fred Miller, Constantine Sandis, Kim Sterelny, Neil Spurway, Steve Stewart-Williams and Kenneth Westphal. I would also like to thank my family. Without their support, this book would not have seen the light of day. viii Introduction: Two Tribes Open any history of Western philosophy and you are likely to find at least a brief mention of Thales of Miletus (640–545/8 BCE). The mention, however brief, is obligatory because Thales is generally honoured as the first recognised philosopher in the Western tradition, the first thinker, that is, who quite consciously set aside myth and religion in order to provide a rational account of the world and man’s place within it. As anyone with a passing acquaintance with Presocratic thought will tell you, Thales is usually remembered for breaking new ground in cosmo- logy with his striking conjecture that the ultimate constituent of the universe is water. He is also credited with several important geometrical discoveries. He was the first to demonstrate that a circle is bisected by its diameter, that in every isosceles triangle the angles at the base are equal, that when two straight lines intersect the angles at the vertex are equal and that a pair of triangles with one equal side and two equal angles are equal. Historians of Presocratic thought aside, it is safe to say that the earliest of the so-called “Seven Sages” of early Greek thought is remembered for little else. But it is not for these reasons that Thales is recalled here. Our interest in Thales lies rather in a curious but revealing anecdote mentioned almost in passing in a Platonic dialogue, an anecdote in which our hero is humiliated by a common barmaid. While expounding upon the nature of the archetypical philosopher in his Theaetetus, Plato says that the true philosopher has no interest in practical politics, and looks disdainfully upon courts of law, social cliques, dinner parties, “merrymaking with flute girls”, and all other activities associated with ordinary everyday life. The philosopher, says Plato, always seeks “the true nature of everything as a whole, never sinking to what lies close at hand” (Theaetetus, 173d–e). When asked what he means by this, Plato offers our anecdote by way of illustration: The same thing as the story about the Thracian maidservant who exercised her wit at the expense of Thales, when he was looking up to study the stars and tumbled down a well. She scoffed at him for being so eager to know what was happening in the sky that he could ix x Introduction: Two Tribes not see what lay at his feet. Anyone who gives his life to philosophy is open to such mockery. (Theaetetus, 174b) This story of the first absent-minded professor is probably apocryphal. And it is likely that Plato recounts it here at Thales’ expense at least in part because he liked to poke fun at Presocratic philosophers generally.1 But there can be no doubt that this anecdote is meant to illustrate Plato’s considered views on the nature of philosophy and philosophers. It also neatly captures the tone and tenor of the uneasy relationship that obtains between philosophers and the common run of mankind, an uneasiness stretching back from the very beginnings of the discipline to the present day. Between those two utterly distinct tribes of humanity, says Plato, there can be only mutual contempt. For if Thales could not see what lay at his feet, it was precisely because he maintained, like all true philosophers in Plato’s view, that the grubby, everyday world of the vulgar, untutored barmaid is not worthy of serious study. The world of the true philosopher, says Plato, is on an entirely different plane, far beyond the reaches of even the most sharp-witted waitress. Moreover, it is only to be expected that barmaids and their ilk will fail to appreciate the nobility of the philosopher’s aspirations. Indeed, it would be perverse to expect swine to appreciate pearls. After all, the common run of man is lost in a world of insubstantial shadows, while the philosopher alone sees the world as it truly is. Our anecdote, then, is Plato’s stark warning to all philosophers that mockery and scorn will inevitably follow those who refuse to “sink” to the level of the everyday, and that this has always been so.2 Plato is certainly not the only philosopher to have explicitly voiced opinions of this kind. For Parmenides, there could be “no true reliance” on “the opinions of [ordinary] mortals” (Kirk, Raven and Schofield, p. 243). Heraclitus and Democritus both claimed that the untutored mass of mankind knows nothing of significance, and as Seneca pointed out, they disagreed only on whether this ignorance ought to provoke laughter or tears.3 And this attitude is by no means confined to the ancient world. Charron, an influential contemporary of Descartes, took matters to new heights when he spoke openly of the “contagion” of the crowd and common people. “Above all”, he says, the philosopher must “avoid the bog”. And philosophers must rid themselves of all popular opinions, he says, for they are “base, weak, undigested, impertinent false, foolish, flighty, and uncertain – the guide of fools and the common people”.4 Descartes himself expressed similarly Introduction: Two Tribes xi unflattering opinions of the mass of mankind. In his Preface to the Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes writes that his plan is to lay the foundations of first philosophy, but I do this without expecting any praise for it from the vulgar, and without hoping that my book will be read by many. On the contrary, I would not recommend it to any except to those who would want to meditate seriously along with me, and who are capable of freeing the mind from attachments to the senses and clearing it entirely of all sorts of prejudices; and I know only too well that there are very few people of this sort. (1986, p. 11) Descartes’ disdain for the common run of mankind is perhaps only matched in the modern period by Kant’s memorable rebuke of the members of the so-called “Scottish School of Common Sense”. These philosophers were foolish enough to betray their tribe and to speak up in defence of the views of the common man because they could not bring themselves to accept the counter-intuitive conclusions of their more illustrious countryman, David Hume. Of this treacherous crew Kant wrote acidly as follows: [T]he opponents of the great thinker [Hume] should have penetrated very deeply into the nature of reason, so far as it is concerned with pure thinking, – a task which did not suit them. They found a more convenient method of being defiant without any insight, viz., the appeal to common sense. To appeal to common sense, when insight and science fail, and no sooner – this is one of the subtle discoveries of modern times, by means of which the most superficial ranter can safely enter the lists with the most thorough thinker, and hold his own.