Thank you!

I don't think Russell believed he was using "real" in a special or technical sense; he probably thought his use was obvious. Turns out, it requires a bit of interpretation. And of course he wasn't trying to provide a comprehensive metaphysics in the passage in question. (I always aim for the most charitable and sensible reading of any important philosopher's thought.)

I guess the idea that a word like "chair" could be ambiguous doesn't sit too well with you, but is it really so arcane or "speculative"? "Chair" can refer to any given perception of a chair -- which, as Russell points out, may or may not give us a good sense of the chair's true shape -- or "chair" can refer to the composite, hopefully correct, idea of the chair which we put together based on those individual perceptions. We could certainly debate whether this ambiguity is a good thing, and perhaps recommend that one or the other sense of "chair" be changed to a different term, but the distinction being made really isn't all that speculative, is it?

Thanks for the secret knowledge behind the ellipsis!

I linked above to the text that is Austin's target. — Banno

Many thanks. I don't see Russell as arguing for the impossibility of direct perception, but maybe Ayer does; I'll read him and find out. Russell's "real" table is only the composite, and hopefully accurate, view we create after many sense impressions of the object. That table is not directly perceived, but that's not the table Austin or anyone else should be worried about. The key here is that "real" is a technical term Russell uses without defining it very clearly. Or so it seems to me.

A lame question, but I'm fairly new to the forum: How do I make those arrow+name graphics that mean "view original post"?

Thanks, and that'll teach me to review the material before posting! I'd forgotten that Ayer is his primary antagonist -- a worthy opponent back then, I guess.

As for the Russell quote . . . I don't think he's being quite as villainous as Austin or some others might paint him. Most of what he says is unexceptionable, merely pointing out the difference between how an object may look to us, and what shape it may actually have. And it is certainly true that we construct the correct shape from a multiplicity of individual "takes." By the time Russell starts to make his point, "real" appears in quotes, meant to contrast with appearance, as in:

experience has taught us to construct the ‘real’ shape from the apparent shape, and the ‘real’ shape is what interests us as practical men — Russell, The Problems of Philosophy

But the ‘real’ shape is not what we see; it is something inferred from what we see. And what we see is constantly changing in shape as we move about the room — Russell, The Problems of Philosophy

Again, I think this is uncontroversial. We may or may not see the "real" shape at any given moment, but Russell doesn't mean the object itself is somehow unreal, or that the object's true shape must permanently elude us. In Russell's sense of "real" -- a perception that corresponds fortuitously to an actual shape -- and in that sense alone, the object can be said to be "not immediately known to us at all, but must be an inference...."

Notice, lastly, that this Russellian sense of "real" suggests the basis for distinguishing between veridical perceptions and familiar illusions.

Glad to see this thread starting up. Austin is always worth rereading.

This talk of “not directly perceiving objects” makes me wonder, not for the first time, who Austin believed he was arguing against. Did he think that Idealism in general, or versions of Kantianism in particular, entailed such a view? I don’t think that’s a very charitable interpretation of what I take Kant and others to be saying.

Kant wasn't a Christian apologist but he was a Christian, and not just in name. His ethical philosophy is impossible to understand without including his view of Heaven as a "Kingdom of Grace" in which our "highest good may be attained." (from the CPR, A812/B840). This was, in his opinion, the only successful theodicy.

By this I mean not that there must be some premises that are forever unrevisable but, rather, that in any process of reasoning or argument there must be some thoughts that one simply thinks from the inside--rather than thinking of them as biologically programmed dispositions. — Thomas Nagel

I don’t want to overlook this important quotation. Nagel is telling us that, as @Wayfarer says, the epistemological buck stops with what Nagel calls “thinking from the inside” -- that is, from within rationality rather than from an alleged viewpoint that claims to somehow evaluate rationality from outside. In order to claim, for instance, that reasoning is a biologically or evolutionarily programmed activity, you would still need reasons for the claim, which can only be discovered by, once again, thinking from within rationality, because that’s the only place you can find reasons.

However, I think there’s an equally important insight here that can get overlooked: Nagel’s claim is an epistemological one, not a metaphysical one. He’s not saying that “there must be some premises that are forever unrevisable,” that is, metaphysical discoveries that are incorrigible and which can be used as foundational premises. That would be a misunderstanding. I’ve read a lot of Nagel and I think he’s agnostic on the question of basic ontology. But he firmly argues that the only way to approach the question is from within rationality.

Put another way, a metaphysic is a statement of what must be the case, in order for the world to be as it is. — Wayfarer

That’s a great description of the kind of metaphysics based on transcendental deduction, of which Kant was the master. I think it’s possible to invert it, though, and describe metaphysics as the investigation of whether basic structure can be discerned in Reality (substitute for this term whatever you think comprises the widest possible field of investigation). This is an inversion because it puts into question the term “the world as it is,” and asks whether a correct metaphysics might change our understanding of that world.

contemporary Aristotelian philosophers who make the case for a revisionist form of metaphysics in full awareness of the scientific worldview and of Kant's criticism of metaphysics. — Wayfarer

An excellent contemporary philosopher (not an Aristotelian, I don’t think) who does this is Theodore Sider. His Writing the Book of the World is a bravura performance and really shows what metaphysics can look like today.

Walking, eating and thinking are activities we engage in — Ciceronianus

You’re right, and I may have placed the emphasis misleadingly on the idea of an “activity” in general. Walking and eating are unproblematic examples of activities, because understanding them seems to begin and end with some description of how our bodies work, and why we perform the activities. But thinking or, more controversially, “having a thought” has a lot of room for questioning. Like you, I’d welcome some definitive input from a neuroscientist, but that’s probably decades away. Even without it, we can recognize that the activity of thinking has aspects – namely, the thoughts themselves – that don’t easily reduce to process-level description, and in fact invite the analogy with creating something or bringing something into being – namely, the intentional object of the thought. I agree that this is often misleading, but I think we have to acknowledge the difficulty of accounting for the “contentful” aspect of subjective experience.

We might be in agreement here, I'm not sure. Some folk would read the above as diminishing the import of verbal disputes. — Banno

Right, I don’t at all mean to diminish the significance of identifying and, if possible, resolving verbal disputes in philosophy. Ordinary language philosophy, practiced in the modest way that I believe its originators intended, can be enormously helpful. So can metaphysical investigation, though I know you’re less enamored of that.

But take the question up a level. How do we decide the meta-question of “Is this merely a verbal dispute, or is there some genuine issue that could be settled by further thought and/or empirical investigation?”? What I’m saying is that this question can’t be settled using a result obtained at the original level. That would be arguing in a circle, or elaborately begging the question. Rather, it’s a genuine fresh question requiring a new argument.

"Thinking about a cup" seems to me a fairly good description of thinking about a cup. — Ciceronianus

Well, but only fairly good. Put it this way: Before time T, I'm not thinking about a cup. At time T, and for a certain time after, I am thinking about a cup. Let's stipulate that no new "thing" has come into the world at time T. The question is, What has changed? To reply, "I've thought about a cup" doesn't help enough. We know that; what we want to know is, How are we to understand this thought event if it isn't a thing and it isn't an image? (though I think it is, sometimes). Again, it won't do to keep saying, "Thinking about a cup" or "It's a process" in reply. Surely a neuroscientist wouldn't be satisfied with such an answer, and I'm suggesting that a good old metaphysical phenomenologist wouldn't be either.

That said, your description of how we use thinking about a cup to find a cup is accurate and well reported -- which for me only adds to the sense that we know very little about what's going on here.

We may think of a cup, certainly, but no "thought of a cup" results — Ciceronianus

This means, I take it, that “thought of a cup,” understood as some sort of object or newly created ontological entity, doesn’t exist. Very well. What language would work better to talk about thinking of a cup? Might we call it an event? A process? A heebeejeebee? (that is, coin a new term?) Using “existence” in a particular way that privileges thing-hood doesn’t change the fact that we still need some designation for what happens when we think of a cup. Thinking of a cup is no less real because it doesn’t qualify as “existing-like-things-exist.” Or, if you want to put it in terms of quantifier variance, “Ex” requires an interpretation at the quantifier level, not just the domain of possible Xs.

It's a question of preference, of what "parlance" one chooses, but I'll go with there being one table, described in two ways, participating in two language games, and hence that the table one sits at is the space mostly strung together with forces. — Banno

This response nicely sets up what for me is a key meta-philosophical problem. Traditional metaphysics, in my understanding, isn’t willing to concede that basic ontological questions are verbal disputes. And by “traditional,” I don’t simply mean historic; I think this is still the case with people like Kit Fine, Karen Bennett, Ted Sider, and many others. Of course the other position is attractive: Maybe there isn’t really a fact of the matter, and we are simply faced with a choice of parlance, a preference among various ways of assigning words to concepts and/or objects. Which position is true, I’m not sure. At a guess, I’d say it varies depending on the ontological topic. But the point I want to make is that this very question remains philosophically meaningful. It requires argument, in other words, to demonstrate – if one can – that problem X is a matter of terminology and hence not worthy of metaphysical argument. Or the reverse, of course.

the intelligence of philosophers was bewitched by means of language, as Wittgenstein said — Ciceronianus

Interesting answer, thanks. Though I can't help thinking that something so clearly absurd (in this telling of the story) would have been noticed long before Wittgenstein . . . Pretty strong enchantment! Also, now that LW has unbewitched us, wouldn't that kind of put an end to serious metaphysics? Yet all the phil. journals I read still haven't got the memo, apparently. Or does the anti-spell only work for some philosophers? What do you suppose makes the difference?

this adventure in the preposterous — Ciceronianus

the remarkably silly task — Ciceronianus

which although it is in all respects a chair as I understand a chair to be and I use it as such, cannot be known — Ciceronianus

This is a little off topic, but I’m always curious about positions like this. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that your position is true, i.e., Kant and Descartes were engaged in a preposterous, silly task involving, among other things, denying that a chair could really be known as such. In your opinion, then, what accounts for the fact that thousands of first-rate philosophers have taken D & K seriously, devoted enormous scholarship and brainpower to investigating the pluses and minuses of the Cartesian/Kantian tradition, built upon this tradition to explore many modern philosophical questions, etc.?

You see what I’m getting at. If D & K are not merely wrong – as they may be – but preposterous and silly, how can you explain so many other philosophers’ inability to grasp this, which ought to be very obvious, as most preposterous things are?

I’m not being snarky. I’d really like to know what the truth of this position would entail about the history of philosophy, and the intelligence of philosophers. You’re not the first philosopher I’ve put this question to, and have garnered some remarkable answers over the years! (My favorite is, "The only good philosophers are the ones that agree with me!") What’s yours?

I like simple. I don't understand "bedrock Existence-with-a-Capital-E". — Banno

I like simple too. "Simplistic," the word I used, means something different. What I meant, more or less, was that Kant's impressive philosophical system can hardly be reduced to "denying that things exist outside my mind." That would be simplistic -- because it misses all the nuances that Kant tried to explore about concepts like "thing" and "existence."

As for capital-E Existence, this was my whimsical way of referring to Kant's noumena. You can substitute "noumena" for my Capitalized Phrase if that helps.

Not to butt into someone else's argument but . . . aren't we getting a little over-simplistic here?
@Banno, surely Kant didn't "deny that things exist outside the mind" -- he merely sought to discover the limits of our knowledge of them. And I think he was quite sure his chair existed. What he questioned -- rightly, in my opinion -- was whether "My chair exists" is a statement about some bedrock Existence-with-a-Capital-E (the Ultimate German Noun! :smile: ) which would have the same qualities if it did not appear as a phenomenon to us. Indeed, what we now learn from physics seems to support this.

Been paying attention, haven’t you. — Mww

Attention is one of the few things I enjoy paying!

Under the assumption X is some empirical condition, and negative knowledge regarding X is obtained according to judgements such as, “I know X’s are not this or that”, such judgements are “….inane and senseless; that is, they are in reality purposeless and, for this reason, often very ridiculous…”(A709/B737). — Mww

I have a different interpretation of this passage. Kant is talking about the distinction between negative judgments “which are such not merely as regards their form but also as regards their content.” Negative formal judgment is not a problem; “we can make negative any proposition we like.” The task is different for a negative judgment of content, however. Such a judgment is meant to be “rejecting error” (Kant’s italics). So a negative formal judgment can’t do this, since “no error is possible – [such judgments] are indeed true but empty. . . “ And now comes the rest of the lines you quoted: “that is, they are not suited to their purpose, and just for this reason are often quite absurd” (sorry, I have a different translation). But Kant is not talking about negative content judgments here; he’s saying that a negative formal judgment that pretends to add to our knowledge is inane, absurd, etc.

The example he gives makes this clear, I think: “Alexander could not have conquered any countries without an army.” In other words, this is a negative formal judgment that seems to be offering a piece of knowledge, but in fact it merely restates a logical truism (if you stipulate, as Kant probably would have, that an army is necessary for conquering). So it's "true but empty."

It’s never easy to grasp Kant, of course, and I welcome your thoughts if I'm off track.

So you might reconsider your first argument. Folk have experiences that do not imply that something exists - hallucinations, dreams, illusions and so on. Your conclusion is not justified. — Banno

I don’t think Bob Ross meant that the experiences we have are necessarily veridical. Nor does this question have anything to do with our more sophisticated scientific knowledge, compared to Kant. The Enlightenment thinkers were well aware of hallucinations, etc.

Rather, when Bob Ross gives his first two premises:

1. There is experience, therefore something exists.
2. That something, or a part of it, must be producing experience. — Bob Ross

I take him to mean that the “something” which must exist and be producing experience could just as well be whatever process produces illusions. The point is that, veridical or not, something is going on.

I am asserting that all final causes are reducible in the above sense. — sime

This is very clear and helpful. I’ll let Leontiskos pursue the evolutionary biology question, but I want to raise a problem concerning the more common use of “final cause” -- that is, as a reason for doing something. Are you saying that a proper analysis of the first three causes, taken together, would also eliminate or correct a statement like “I raised the flag to show my support for our troops” as an answer to the question, “Why did you raise the flag?”?

I think we could recast the statement, "X is true, therefore you ought to believe it," with, "X is true, therefore you ought to see that it is true (and then you will believe it)." — Leontiskos

This nicely captures the problem. I agree that the recasting doesn’t ask us to create any “rational space” between understanding and believing. So my misgivings about whether such a space really exists are avoided. In the recast version, “and then you will believe it” is meant to describe a (necessary?) consequence or perhaps even a definitional identity between “see the truth” and “believe it”. We’re not left wondering whether we can still not believe!

But what is the force of the “ought,” in the recast statement? Is “You ought to see that X is true” the same thing as “You ought to believe X”? I don’t think so. I read the two statements as saying quite different things. “You ought to believe X” wants to claim that the truth of X gives us a reason to believe X, a reason that should be heeded. Whereas “You ought to see that X is true” could be saying a couple of different things. It could mean, “If you understand X, then you ought to accept its truth.” Or it could mean, “You have an obligation, under the circumstances, to understand X so as to affirm its truth.” What sort of obligation? Perhaps an important decision is at stake; perhaps time is running out on an ethical dilemma.

The point is, neither interpretation of “You ought to see that X is true” is offering a reason to believe it, in the way that “You ought to believe X” does (claim to) offer a reason for belief. The original, unrecast version is claiming that a space is available between truth and belief, and from within that space a person can be adjured to choose belief on the grounds of an allegedly compelling reason, namely that X is true. The recast version doesn’t make this claim.

I remain uneasy about whether such a space makes sense, but I don’t think we can eliminate it in the manner you were suggesting.

"This is true, therefore you ought to believe it." This is a uniform claim which is intended to apply to both sorts of cases (e.g. self-evident truths and obscure truths; necessary truths and contingent truths; etc.). — Leontiskos

Just to pick up this thread for a moment: The unease I was describing above has to do with whether it makes sense to use "ought" in this way. You've persuaded me that the claim is indeed a uniform one, not separated into "Nagel truths" (self-evident, apodictic) and more complex inferences. OK, so the idea is that, if X is a true statement, I ought to believe it. But what I now wonder is: Exactly what would the alternative be? Does the phrase "disbelieve a truth" make sense? In psychological terms, sure -- we all know how hard it can be to really take on board a difficult truth. But I don't think that's what either of us is talking about here. We want a situation in which I understand and acknowledge the truth of statement X, but also claim that I don't believe it. And if you begin to sympathize with me about how hard this can be sometimes (perhaps X is one of those "difficult" truths), I deny that this is the problem. I'm not experiencing any inner resistance of that sort, I reply; I simply do not believe X.

Is this thinkable? If you then asked, "Why not?" what could I reply? This hypothetical situation is meant to evoke a rational response. And if I've excluded any personal, subjective reasons for disbelief, then we seem to have hit bedrock. What more can I say except "I just don't"?

So, this suggests that belief follows from truth, and Nagel is right not just about self-evident logical principles like the law of non-contradiction, but about any truth that is understood as such. If so, then in such a case "you ought to believe," even though it seems to be a good English sentence, is meaningless, since I already do. Or, more accurately, its only meaning would arise in urging me to investigate and overcome whatever non-rational, psychological reasons are preventing me from believing what I acknowledge to be true. Does this make sense to you? Is this what you have in mind when you imagine saying to someone, "You ought to believe X"? If so, I can certainly go along with that.

A final, interesting point about a statement like "I acknowledge X to be true but I don't believe it": Is this self-validating in some way? Do I have direct, introspective knowledge of what I believe and don't believe? Must it be the case that, if a person says, "I don't believe X", they really don't? Or may they be mistaken? We can be mistaken about "I know," "I remember," "I see," and even "I feel," sometimes. More subtly, we can use "I wish," I desire," "I promise," in circumstances where it's reasonable for a listener to doubt our self-knowledge. Where does "I believe" fit, in this collection? J. L. Austin probably has this somewhere; perhaps I can find it.

But I am using it ["indifference"] in that same statistical sense. "They would consider [them] false as often as they considered them true." — Leontiskos

Possibly I just misunderstood; I thought you had confused two kinds of indifferent people. The first kind, Ms. Nihil, can tell the difference but doesn't care, so chooses randomly. The second kind, Mr. Ignorant, can't tell the difference and so also chooses randomly. This guy, to me, is the roulette wheel: The wheel not only makes "choices" at random, it also has no idea what the difference is between red and black. A model for Ms. Nihil might be a person who's asked to select an assortment of candies she likes, and there are only two choices. Turns out she likes both equally, so while she knows perfectly well the difference between caramel and chocolate, she decides to make random choices because she doesn't care.

The outcomes would be the same: randomness, "indifference" in either sense. But there'd be a huge moral difference if the choice was between, say, right and wrong. A person who can't (ever) tell that difference would, I suppose, be pitied, or hospitalized. But someone who knows the difference, can recognize it when they see it, and still doesn't care about choosing right over wrong -- we'd judge Ms. Nihil pretty harshly here, I think.

There's a lot of good stuff here and I probably need to reply piece by piece, as this week is starting to get the better of me. So, to begin:

I think at a very basic level we are simply considering instances of disagreement and/or persuasion, which are common." — Leontiskos

Yes, and I have no trouble making sense of the kind you go on to list. Where I'm starting have doubts concerns statements like "You ought to believe that water is H2O because it's true." Surely all the persuasion would take place at the prior claim of "Water is H2O." Once you're persuaded that this is the case, what more am I asking you to do if I say to you, "Now, believe it, because it's true"? I initially thought there was some conceptual (not psychological) space between "acknowledging truth" and "believing," but now I'm wondering if this is an illusion. If you know X is true, then you need no further reasons to believe it. (You might require some psychological assistance, of course, if it's a weird or humiliating truth.) And if you don't know, my asking you to believe it seems to be asking you to take my word for its truth. This is all very unsatisfactory somehow, and I'd welcome anyone to straighten it out.

BTW, this has obvious parallels to the question of whether the statements "X" and "It is true that X" have the same propositional content.

It seems to me that the OP is predicated on the idea that there ought to be a consensus, and that we are thus left to reckon with a conspicuous absence. When it comes down to brass tacks, this has a lot to recommend it. — Leontiskos

Yes, but. I tried to walk a fine line in the OP. I was trying to put the idea “There ought to be consensus based on rational argumentation” in brackets, so to speak, acknowledging its attractiveness but also holding it up for consideration and critique. What is the status of our concern for rational consensus, for “something to which we can appeal which will or ought to command universal assent” (Bernstein)? How should we view it? Is it the same thing as a desire for some unattainable, foundational objective truth? Or should we carefully examine other understandings of rationality? I guess I would summarize this as: Objective rational consensus may be the great unrealized dream of philosophy, or its nightmare, from which we struggle to awaken. I take the “Habermas gap” question to be a way of asking, “What would it take in order to be able to realize the consensus dream?"

So would you say that the self-reflective character of philosophical thought intrinsically resists consensus? Or intrinsically resists rational agreement? — Leontiskos

I’m not sure quite what I’m saying here. I’m trying to find a way to make the consensus question ahistorical, I think – not simply something that waxes and wanes depending on time and place – but this may not be the way to do it.

There’s no doubt that what you describe is accurate, and different eras do develop consensus relative to prior history, and then, perhaps, lose it. Could there be any progress to this dialectic? As to this possibility, Rorty puts the question well: “Even when we have justified true belief about everything we want to know, we may have no more than conformity to the norms of the day.”

I find myself wanting to say that it’s philosophy itself, understood as a particular way of thinking critically or self-reflectively, that ought to reveal why this kind of consensus is chimerical (if it is), not some historical analysis. The only reason I tried to call out self-reflection, previously, was because we’re all familiar with the queasy infinite-regress character of reflection, which seems analogous to the consensus-about-consensus question, or the how-to-reason-about-rationality question. Or, as another forum member pointed out, this may be the nature of dialectic, if dialectic indeed characterizes philosophy – no synthesis can resist becoming the next thesis, to be countered by its antithesis. But I don’t have a theory of this, or even a good insight.

@Leontiskos Thanks, that helps. You’ve raised some complex and difficult issues here. Maybe the best point of entry is the beginning of your paragraph about the “indifferent speaker” :

If someone were indifferent to truth they would say false things as often as they say true things, and they would intend to say false things as often as they intend to say true things, and they would do this even when “talking to themselves” or reasoning privately. — Leontiskos

Here, “indifferent” is being used in the sense of having no preference, overall, between truth and falsity. Aside from a certain former president, I agree that it’s difficult to imagine such a person doing this continually. But I don’t read you as describing a person who doesn’t know the difference between truth and falsity. Indeed, you speak of them as intending truth when speaking truthfully, and falsity when not. So that’s one sort of indifference: I can tell X from Y but have no preference or allegiance or “ordering to” one over the other.

But then you offer this:

They would consider foundational principles like the principle of non-contradiction false as often as they considered them true. — Leontiskos

Here, I think, “indifference” is being applied in a new sense. Now the speaker doesn’t know the difference. They’re not merely indifferent as to their choice; they can’t tell them apart. Here I’m with you and Aristotle and Nagel: I can’t believe in a person who can explain the law of non-contradiction but not acknowledge its validity.

But, going back to the first sense of “indifference,” surely it’s still possible for the “indifferent speaker” to take this position: “Yes, I recognize truth and falsity quite well, but I am indifferent to them in this case.” Or, of course, they might say, “I actively prefer what is false, again in this case.”

By bringing up individual cases in this way, I think we move into another difficult aspect of the question: When we talk about things like Aristotelian ordering, are we speaking about what is the case for all humans all the time, or allowing that exceptions can be made? (Perhaps it’s a telos for the species which we haven’t yet achieved?) We might say, as an analogy, that the human species has evolved so that mothers, and by extension families, care for their young. As a general rule, this is unexceptionable. But we know it’s possible for a particular parent, in a particular situation, to fail to follow this rule. (It’s not necessitated, in your terminology.) Is “being ordered to truth” like that? Or are we saying that there is a human nature so hardwired that it’s literally impossible for anyone, anytime, not to show a preference for truth over falsity? I doubt we could maintain this. Indeed, if we could, the issue of “ought” would be moot. Every example would be covered by the “Nagel rule”: You can’t help but think/believe/say it.

Similar questions would apply to the doctor situation. It’s true that doctors assume, as a rule, that their patients desire health, but it’s not outlandish for some hedonist to say, “Sorry, I’d rather live at 100mph and die young, thanks all the same. Hold the water!” So you need a real, if unspoken, premise that says, “Follow your doctor’s advice if you want to be healthy” -- and many do not. It’s not that one might “just as well” desire to be unhealthy because one is indifferent to health, or can’t tell the difference between good health and illness. Rather, one has made a choice to value something else more.

We agree that “it’s hard to say what the exact force is” of a claim like “You ought to believe X because it’s true.” Given what I’ve written above, there are some cases where we’d say “You ought to believe X because . . . no, wait a minute, it’s a ‛Nagel truth’ so you already believe it!” Those aren’t the problematic ones (though very problematic indeed for those who don’t think Nagel truths – self-evident or analytic truths – exist). The case of concern is one where we want to say, “You ought to believe X because it’s true (though not self-evident) and because human beings are creatures with a certain ordering to truth. You should believe this particular true thing because of the sort of creature you are.” Sadly, this just puts us back into the general/individual distinction, it seems to me. The nonbeliever can always reply, “I quite agree that humans have evolved this way, and I certainly practice this most of the time. However, I am not hardwired to do so in non-apodictic truth-claim situations, and in this case, I will choose not to.” So our “ought” remains hypothetical, and our interlocutor is rejecting our hypothesis for themselves, in this case. They’re saying, “I don’t accept the translation of ‛if’ into ‛because.’ I interpret your statement as ‛You should believe this particular true thing if you want to be the sort of creature you are. Well, ‛the sort of creature I am’ is one who may be ordered to truth but can also choose not to believe some instances of it. So that’s what I’ll do.’ ”

(I want to fess up to something that has really started to puzzle me, though. I’m starting to think that the whole “you ought to believe X” thing is kind of unreal, a philosopher’s thought-experiment. What exactly would it mean to “not believe” something, if you also thought it was true? What are the actual examples of this? Are we talking about belief as a psychological experience, or as a theoretical assent to a proposition? We all know that if I’m asked, “Do you believe water is H2O?” the questioner doesn’t mean “Are you having a mental event right this moment that consists of believing X?” Beliefs can be unthought, background conditions. So which kind of “belief” have I been claiming, rather glibly, that it’s possible to refuse to true statements? I need to think a lot more about this, so it’s in parentheses.)

As you say, the “ought” question is huge and deserves its own thread/book/library. So does Kant’s view about imperatives. I appreciate the light you shed on the possible nuances between categorical and hypothetical oughts, and for what it’s worth, I find some nuances in Kant as well. I’ll watch for the next Kantian ethics discussion.

thanks for the interesting and ambitious thread. — Leontiskos

Glad you like the thread. “Ambitious” is being kind!

Your perspective here is a timely corrective. We don’t talk past each other and disagree about absolutely everything, that’s true. (And yes, I meant to raise this as a problem among philosophers, not the general public.) Perhaps there’s more consensus than I realize. Perhaps, as you point out, the sense of “grotesque wild pluralism” (as Richard J. Bernstein put it) is local to our era.

But here is why I’m skeptical. First, irreconcilable or incommensurable positions seem to have been around since 5th century BCE Athens, if Plato is to be trusted. I’m one of those who reads (most of) the Platonic dialogues as illustrations of the conflict between a certain kind of rationality, philosophia, and those who distrust it, as played out in an actual polis where political consequences are very real. And even after bad actors like Thrasymachus leave the Republic, we still never really reach a definition of justice that could persuade those who are hostile to philosophia. And your point about the Theaetetus is also telling. So . . . disagreement over argumentation and its value are nothing new, I would say.

Second, what I’m calling the “Habermas gap” really is like playing Whack-A-Mole. Consider Anscombe on consequentialism. You rightly use terms like “from this perspective” and “considered in this way.” But doesn’t this merely reinforce the point that there are many equally talented philosophers out there who don’t share her perspective and don’t consider the matter in this way? Are we narrowly aligned around a consensus re consequentialism? Maybe. Darn it, there’s not even a consensus around whether there’s a consensus! . . . or so it seems to me.

I wonder if the consensus about the idea that there ought to be a consensus is perhaps our own historical peculiarity, and is driven by the West’s secularism and its belief in “The End of History.” — Leontiskos

One last point, very speculative. I think the question about rational justification as a consensus-building technique may be internal to philosophy and not a historical phenomenon at all. I suggest that it’s part of the essential self-reflective character of philosophical thought – which may also account for its apparent intractability. I find this speculation of yours about the West enticing, but I don’t think that historicizing the problem can really answer it. For (and I know this is repetitive by now) the position that “There’s a consensus around the idea that there ought to be consensus,” aka “We now know that consensus is a good thing,” can be and has been disputed, by thoughtful philosophers.

@Gnomon I agree with most all of this, especially the humility part. I would only clarify that "being in possession of all truth," as Franklin put it, isn’t really the goal here. Philosophers like Habermas and Rehg (and me) who worry about this question are worried about why even the most basic issues in philosophy don’t seem to have agreed-upon stopping places or plateaus of consensus.

'Does the idea of a philosophical system detract from the argumentative weight of a premise?' — kudos

I think I understand this, but hope you'll say more. Tell me if this is close: One possible premise for a philosophical argument is "Philosophical arguments need to have premises that can be rationally argued for." So, in trying to evaluate that premise, we're immediately thrust into a self-reflexive loop that is also highly abstract. (I would have said "form without content," though you characterize it the opposite way.) I'm not sure whether, or why, this detracts from the argumentative weight of any one particular premise, or whether the "system" aspect is important here. I do see that it highlights a foundational problem about argumentation, and if that's mainly what you mean, it's a good point. But I may be missing something . . . please go on!

Is this really characteristic of it being reasonable, or only of it being a claim? — kudos

Again, I may be at fault here for not explaining precisely what the problem situation is. No one – not me, not Habermas, not Rehg – believes that any and all claims are automatically reasonable, that just because it’s possible to counter a claim in some fashion, this creates a plausible or reasonable position. Rather, the issue raised is meant to address a very familiar problem situation in philosophy, where excellent philosophers find themselves differing about very basic questions in metaphysics, morals, etc. H and R, if I’m reading them correctly, are asking into how this comes about – how it could come about, if all concerned are intelligent and rational and have been exposed to the same pro-and-con arguments on the question.

The idea is that, if the form of the argument is agreed to be valid (and of course there may be disagreement about that as well), then the problem must lie in disagreement about the premises which have not been argued for. Clearly, some premises have no initial plausibility (“We know there’s a hell because God needs to punish us deservedly”) and most philosophers wouldn’t waste time on them. So perhaps we should say that a reasonable claim might be one with a long, intricate history of back-and-forth among great philosophers, always being countered by other, equally reasonable claims. As I said, I think that is a very common thing to find in the history of Western phil.

But this emphasis on arguing for the premises seems merely to push the question back, or up, one level. For any argument in favor of the premises must itself start from premises, and so on. . . there’s the problem. H and R want to know if there is a way out of the potentially infinite regress, and if so, whether it is rational in the sense that it can argued and justified to others who dispute the original claim. And as we’ve seen in this discussion, it may well be that an approach emphasizing rhetoric, persuasion on ethical grounds, or some form of hermeneutic analysis is required – in other words, a new understanding of “rationality” would have to be brought into play.

The role of psychology is yet a different matter.

Different from what? — kudos

I meant “different from the question of whether there’s a rational move that can be made in this situation.” We can give as much weight to psychology as we care to – we can imagine all our interlocutors are burdened by heavy baggage of personal biases -- but the question doesn’t go away: Could they do something about it, in terms of argumentation, other than assert their idiosyncratic (Kant would say “heteronomous”) points of view? And would whatever they did be rationally convincing?

none of those concerned are interested in looking for a truth that they are not already in possession of — kudos

I’ve met many such people, interested only in confirming what they’re already sure of. Socrates met a lot of them too! I hope it doesn’t characterize more than a fraction of good philosophers, though.

'Competing reason' is an oxymoron. — kudos

I probably didn’t do justice to the distinction Habermas and Rehg want to make between “rational argument” and “reasonable claim.” Rational argument based on logical form (validity, if you like), with the premises put on hold as to their veracity, is indeed as objective as “objective” gets – that is, it’s transparent and publicly checkable. But H & R’s idea is that, when you also claim veracity for the premises, you’ve moved from rational argument to reasonable claim, to making a plausible case that could be countered by an equally plausible alternative. And the “gap” question concerns whether there’s a rational procedure for deciding between such competing reasonable claims.

The role of psychology is yet a different matter. In an earlier post, we have:

The participants each come to the argument with their own education, experiences, prejudices, interests, temperament, and so on. — Fooloso4

This seems to be a similar idea to yours. But the “gap” question remains: You can grant that most of what we think is idiosyncratic to our psychology, and still ask whether there is a rational procedure that can mitigate this -- and also, as many have responded here, whether you would want to.

Your final quote about religion as a lodestar is @Wayfarer, not me, so I'll leave it to them to respond.

You said you did not want to pursue the use of rhetoric and emotion — Fooloso4

By all means, please share your thoughts on how rhetoric might enter the story here. In the OP I tried to sharpen the question about rationality in order to make it manageable and specific, but Rehg and Habermas both write about the importance of rhetoric and a hermeneutical investigation of rationality. In the same paper I quoted from ("Reason and Rhetoric in Habermas's Theory of Argumentation," in Rhetoric and Hermeneutics in Our Time, Jost & Hyde, eds., 1997), Rehg devotes a number of pages to laying out his ideas of how "rhetorical devices might constitute an essential aspect of rational motivation."

@Janus I think this is what Rehg is getting at when he talks about the difference between “cogent argumentation” and “logical deduction,” in the quoted passage. He wants to know whether the premises for a logically valid deduction can also be rationally justified in a way that would compel agreement. So your answer is no, fair enough. From your position, I wonder whether you think there might be something sufficiently intersubjective – not to say objective – in “creative imaginative thinking” that could take the place of rational argument and inspire consensus? Or might we need to supplement imagination with rhetoric in order to persuade?

we are left with an acknowledgement of the irreconcilability of viewpoints. The question then is, how best to live together given that there are differences that cannot be reconciled. — Fooloso4

One of the responses to this problem that I like best is the line that stretches from Dewey through Rawls and describes a broadly liberal-democratic, pluralistic vision of justice and the state. For let's not kid ourselves, when viewpoints become irreconcilable, philosophy must become praxis. The way we disagree has ethical and political dimensions.

But then, in the spirit of "two reasonable views of (most) everything," Rawls, T. Nagel et al. have been the subject of some withering, well-observed dissents from Critical/neo-Frankfurt School philosophers and also from more friendly voices such as Martha Nussbaum.

I don't want to derail the topic but the Socratic tradition does not promise Truth. — Fooloso4

I agree. — Arne

And so do I. I was doing my impersonation of a disappointed post-modernist, trying to give voice to a common critique of Western phil. My own view is that Plato was the subtlest of philosophers, constantly engaging with the meta-philosophical questions I find so compelling. However . . . there is a way of understanding "the Socratic tradition" to mean "everyone in the West who came after Plato," and if you adopt this somewhat crude and Hellenistic conception, then yes, there's a strong streak of "Let's find the ultimate truth about everything" in that tradition.

Even posing the issue raises issues. — Arne

I thought about pointing out that the very problem I was raising was, of course, subject to the problem! But I decided it would be better to let that come out in the discussion. I agree completely. There are reasonable arguments to be made on both sides of the "Is rational agreement possible" question.

I question the framing of the problem in terms of rational motivation. The participants each come to the argument with their own education, experiences, prejudices, interests, temperament, and so on. — Fooloso4

Yes, and the question Habermas and Rehg want to press is: Is that all we can say? Is that the end of the story? Is rational consensus impossible? Are we left with the dreaded "incommensurability" of viewpoints?

What do those today within the Socratic tradition have to wake-up from, if anything? — Fooloso4

I'm not a post-modernist, and perhaps should leave that question to someone with more sympathy for the "wake-up call" position. Presumably, the Socratic tradition would be seen as a chimera, something that promises Truth and doesn't deliver, because capital-T Truth just isn't on offer.

So, why do you see disagreement as a problem? Why should philosophers agree about something? — Angelo Cannata

These are good questions, and need to be taken separately. Philosophical disagreement can be a "problem" in two senses. First, it can puzzle and distress individual philosophers, especially those who have held out high hopes for something like a scientific philosophical method, one that obviously converges on truths within given paradigms. Should it distress them? It’s hard to know quite what to say here. It seems more a psychological than a philosophical question.

But philosophical disagreement can also be a problem in a more abstract sense – a thought problem, a phenomenon that needs explaining. Taken in this sense, disagreement may or may not cause personal distress, but it ought to raise a question about what we’re doing as philosophers. What can we discover in the history and practice of philosophy that might account for such widespread inability to converge on a consensus? One may or may not think that’s unfortunate, but the intellectual problem remains. It’s more in that spirit that I wanted to raise the question. (Personally, I find that when I’m operating in a rational mode, I do think it’s unfortunate, and when I’m in a more aesthetic/mystical place, I don’t!)

Which leads to your second question about why philosophers should agree about something. As a skeptical observation, I think it’s unanswerable. There is no good reason, provided you’re willing to operate outside rational argumentation and/or "argue" for such a move. And indeed, we see this strategy (I don’t mean that derogatorily) often employed by Derrida, Feyerabend, Rorty, and others. They are, or appear to be, indifferent to whether other philosophers agree with them, unless it’s in the name of “solidarity,” like Rorty.

It looks like you identify philosophy with rationality, but they are not the same thing. — Angelo Cannata

Well, I don't really identify philosophy with rationality, since many of the post-modern critics I have in mind are extremely dubious about such an equation, and I don't hesitate to call them philosophers. For me, the rationality question is a problem within philosophy, but not necessarily solvable by rational means alone. A philosopher is free to recommend other approaches.