On Philosophical Denials of the Obvious

In philosophy, appeals to the obvious don't cut much ice because, as Hilary Putnam says somewhere, "It ain't obvious what's obvious."  And as Spencer Case, MavPhil Cairo correspondent,  points out, ". . . in contemporary academic philosophy there is a perverse incentive to deny the obvious."  One who denies what counts as obvious to the vulgar comes off as a learned sophisticate while the one who invokes the obvious is cast in the role of rube or bigot or intransigent fool.

This raises the question whether there are obvious truths the denial of which would be perverse and sophistical.  The answer is obviously in the affirmative.  For example, it is obvious that normal post-natal  human beings have two legs, that if they live long enough they learn to walk upright upon them, etc. Examples are easily multiplied ad libitum in the Moorean manner. More interesting is the question whether there are obvious truths that competent, academically accredited philosophers have denied either directly or by implication.  I asked Spencer for examples.  Here is part of that he said:

As far as more serious philosophers go, certain pro-choice hardliners at the University of Colorado deny that it is wrong to kill small children in fairly mundane circumstances. In addition, I believe every emotivist and expressivist theory of semantic content of moral statements denies the obvious. It's obvious that when I say "eating meat is morally wrong" I do not mean "eating meat (Boo!)" or anything of the sort. I am the one formulating the statement, and I know damn well what I intend to say. Extreme materialism in philosophy of mind, and David Lewis' ideas about modality also seem like good examples to me. Then there's Graham Priest who denies the law of non-contradiction. (But you might have already noticed the hedging in "I believe" or "seem like.") 

Let's consider three examples.  I expect Case to agree with me about the first two and disagree about the third.

1. Infanticide.  I argue this way: "Infanticide is morally wrong; there is no morally relevant difference  between late-term abortion and infanticide; ergo, late-term abortion is morally wrong."  But of course the argument can be run in reverse with no breach of logical propriety: "Late-term abortion is not morally wrong; there is no morally relevant difference between late-term abortion and infanticide; ergo, Infanticide is not morally wrong."  For details, see here.

Both arguments are valid, but only one can be sound.  Which one?  The first, say I.  I am tempted to say that is just obvious that killing infant humans is morally wrong in the vast majority of circumstances, and that if you say the opposite, then you are denyng the obvious.  I think Spencer will agree with me on this.  So here is a case where it is obvious what's obvious.  Even if it is not blindingly self-evident that killing infant humans, for convenience say, is morally wrong, it is more obvious than the opposite.

Of course, much more can be said in elaboration of the basic point, and to soften up my opponent.  But if he remains intransigent, then I am well within my epistemic rights in writing him off as morally blind and showing him the door.  What is both subjectively and objectively self-evident to me is not subjectively self-evident to him -- but that is due to a defect in his cognitive apparatus: he is just morally obtuse.

2. Extreme Materialism.  One form of extreme materialism about the mind, the most extreme, is eliminative materialism.  I trust Spencer will agree with me if I simply dismiss it as a lunatic philosophy of mind despite its having been espoused by some brilliant people.  For argument, see my Eliminative Materialism category.  Brilliance is no guarantee of truth.  (David Lewis goes wrong brilliantly and most creatively.)  My dismissal of eliminative material is a dismissal of its claim to be credible.  It is incredible.  (By its own lights there are no beliefs, which also supplies a reason for its being unbelievable). But I am not saying that one shouldn't  study it.  After all, pathology can be very instructive, whether one studies diseased tissue or diseased thinking.

Less extreme is identity materialism which I argue collapses into eliminativism.  I am within my epistemic rights in simply stating that it is obvious that my present thinking about the Boston Common is not identical to a complex state of my brain.  Of course, I am not saying that one should not be prepared to give detailed arguments and to answer objections.  But all that is merely in the service of what really ought to be obvious.  The arguments merely articulate the position one finds obvious, situating it within the space of reasons.

3. Berkeleyan Idealism.  Can it be dismissed in the same way, as involving a denial of the obvious?  As I said in an earlier post (December 2009) responding to Case:

I think it is clear that someone who identifies God with an anthropomorphic projection simply denies the existence of God.  This putative identification collapses into an elimination.  You are not telling me what God is when you tell me he is an anthropomorphic projection, you are telling me that there is no such being.  Same with felt pains. A putative identification of a felt pain with a brain state collapses into an elimination of felt pains.    For a felt pain simply cannot be identical to a brain state: it has properties no brain state could possibly  have.  But an  identification of a physical object with a cluster of items such as Berkeleyan ideas or Husserlian noemata, items that exist only mind-dependently, does not  collapse into an elimination, the reason being that there is nothing in the nature of physical objects as we experience them that requires that such objects exist in splendid independence of any mind.  I just located my coffee mug on my desk, and now I am drinking from it.  There is nothing in my experiential encounter with this physical thing that requires me to think of it as something that exists whether or not any mind exists.  And so I am not barred from the idealist interpretation of the ontological status of stones and coffee cups and their parts (and their parts . . .).  Nor does the meaning of 'coffee cup' or 'physical object' constrain me to think of such things as existing in complete independence of any mind.  Neither phenomenology nor semantics forces realism upon me.  There is nothing commonsensical about either realism or idealism; both are theories.

Neither a realist nor an idealist interpretation of the ontological status of  physical objects  can be 'read off' from the phenomenology of our experiential encounter with such things or from the semantics of the words we use in referring to them and describing them.  Only if realism were built into the phenomenology or the semantics would an identification of a physical thing with a cluster of mind-dependent items collapse into an elimination of the physical thing. For in that case it would be the very nature of a physical thing to exist mind-independently so that any claim to the contrary would be tantamount to a denial of the existence of the physical thing.  The situation would then be exactly parallel to the one in which someone claims that God is an anthropomorphic projection.  Since nothing could possibly count as God that is an anthropomorphic projection, any claim that God is such a projection amounts to a denial of the existence of God.  But the cases are not parallel since there is nothing in the nature of a physical thing as this nature is revealed by the phenomenology of our encouter with them to require that physical things exist in sublime independence of any and all minds.

Of course, one could just stipulate that physical objects are all of them mind-independent.  But what could justify such a stipulation?  That would be no better than Ayn Rand's axiomatic declaration, Existence exists!  What Rand means by that is that whatever exists exists in such a way as to require no mind for its existence.  But although that may be true, it is far from self-evident and so has no claim to being an axiom.

In sum, token-token-identity theory in the philosophy of mind collapses into eliminativism about mental items.  As so collapsing, it is refutable by Moorean means.  The identitarian claims of idealists, however, do not collapse into eliminativist claims, and so are not refutable by Moorean means.

My claim, then, is that Berkeleyan idealism does not deny the obvious in the way that the eliminative materialist does.  Indeed, it shows a lack of philosophical intelligence if one thinks that Berkeleyan idealism or its opposite is  obvious.  St. Paul displays the same lack of philosophical intelligence when he claims, at Romans 1:18-20 that the existence and nature of God are obvious from nature. See Is Atheism Intellectually Respectable? On Roman 1:18-20.

Nature can be reasonably interpreted both as divine handiwork and as the opposite in the same way that the tree in the quad can be interpreted Berkeley-wise or the opposite.  But my current headache or my present thoughts about Bostion cannot be reasonably interpreted as identical to material states.  It is obvious that they are not material states given the understanding of 'material 'supplied by current physics.

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Comments

[Peter Lupu]

Bill,

I am somewhat puzzled by your claim that there is an asymmetry between materialism regarding the mind, which you claim collapses into eliminativism, but Berkeleyan idealism does not collapse into eliminativism about physical objects. You argue for the former on the grounds that identifying felt pains with brain states ends up eliminating the former because felt pains have properties that brains states do not. But I should think the same holds for an identification of physical objects with ideas. For instance, physical objects have mass whereas ideas do not; physical objects have spatial location, whereas ideas do not (provided they are not identical to brain states).

but an identification of physical objects with a cluster of ideas does not collapse into eliminativism about physical objects.

because mental state, such as felt pain, have properties brain states do not and therefore such identifications "...a felt pain simply cannot be identical to a brain state: it has properties no brain state could possibly have.

[Bill Vallicella]

Peter,

The idea is not that a physical object is a mental act or even a collection of mental acts, but that a physical object is a system of ontological guises (Castaneda) or noemata (Husserl). These thin intentional objects are not mental acts but accusatives of acts. I see no reason why a maximal system of such objects could not have mass and spatial location.

[Peter Lupu]

Bill,
Sorry about the two dangling phrases; forgot to delete them.

You argue that the reason why an identification of physical objects with any mind-dependent items (such as Berkeleyan ideas) does not collapse into eliminativism is because “there is nothing in the nature of physical objects as we experience them that requires that such objects exist in splendid independence of any mind.” (my emphasis)

But surely prior to any such theory of identification we distinguish between physical object and the experience of a physical object. I am not arguing that an identification of an experience of a physical object with mind-dependent items reduces to eliminativism, for an experience must be conscious and hence mental. I am arguing against conflating physical objects with our experience of physical objects and then claiming that since the later can be identified with some mind-dependent items, so can the former.

[Bill Vallicella]

Peter,

I am not conflating the experience of a physical object with the physical object experienced. Every theory must respect that distinction. As I said above, "These thin intentional objects are not mental acts but accusatives of acts."

[Peter Lupu]

Bill,

I am not sure what difference does it make whether they are accusatives of acts or some other mental aspect. The central issue, as I understand it, is that you maintain that a theory which identifies physical objects with something mental or a cluster of such, does not collapse into an eliminativist theory of physical objects. The question is whether the argument you give for this claim is sound.

The argument, so far as I understand it, is that our experience of physical object does not require us to think of physical objects as mind independent. It is this claim that I fail to understand. After all, I could say the same about the mind: i.e., that our experience of mental events does not as such preclude them from being physical processes. The reason such identity theories fail is because we recognize that the mental has properties that physical objects cannot have and this last claim is not based on the fact that we do not experience physical objects as having consciousness, for instance.

Similarly, I should think, we begin with a certain conception that physical objects are mind independent and have properties that no mental items can have. That is why Berkelyan idealism is so counter-intuitive; it defies our pre-philosophical concept of what a physical object is.

[Bill Vallicella]

Maybe this post will help: http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2009/12/of-berkeleys-stones-and-the-eliminativists-beliefs.html