duke agnitio spring 2011 issue

The Duke Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy

agnitioThe Duke Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy

Spring 2011

gnitioThe Duke Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy

Spring 2011

A G N I T I O:: staff

Editor-in-Chief

Kenneth Hoehn, Biology 2013

Faculty Advisor

Andrew Janiak

Editorial Board

Daniel FishmanDrake Glesmann Gabriele GrosslMichelle KelseySusan MoNick SchwartzAlvin ShiPraveen TummalapalliEddie WuSam Zimmerman

From the Editor::

In 2006, Agnitio arrived on the Duke undergraduate online publication scene. After several issues and a brief hiatus it was picked up again by our current group of editors; this issue represents this team’s second installment. We have made every effort to stay with our core aim of providing accessible and engaging material for readers interested in philosophy. We hope you’ll find it as thought provoking as the first!

After a long selection process we have drawn together three outstanding essays on topics ranging from the philosophy of art to the philosophy of science. This year, we also had the privilege of interviewing Frederick Dretske, one of Duke’s most prominent philosophers of mind.

Because Agnitio is an undergraduate publication, it is fueled by submissions from thoughtful students. If you truly enjoy this material (or at least believe you can improve upon it), we hope you will consider contributing your own work in the future. Additionally, if you have any questions or comments about the journal, please feel free to contact us at [email protected].

As always, read on, and may your occupation with the ideas presented here extend beyond your browsing window!

Kenneth HoehnEditor-in-Chief

May 2011

Table of Contents::

Clever Animals, Human Serpents: Progress, Truth, and Metaphor in Science

Michael UhallUniversity of Georgia

5

Tracing Discipline into a Global World:A Reconciliation of Appadurai’s Fear of Small Numbers,and Foucault’s Discipline and Punish

Laura MartinHaverford College

20

Art as an Ode to ExperienceBonnie SheeheyUniversity of Hawaii at Manoa

29

An Interview with Fred Dretske 43

Agnitio 5

Clever Animals,Human Serpents:Progress, Truth, and Metaphor in Science

Michael Uhall University of Georgia

ABSTRACT

In order to answer the question “Is there progress in science?” it seems necessary to rely on a number of theses about the accrual of veridical or verisimilar content over time, the telic narrative structure of science as a discourse, and, most generally, about the definition and nature of truth as such. This paper contends at varying lengths with each of these theses in turn. In it, historical disagreements between Thomas Kuhn and some of his earliest interlocutors, John Dewey’s critique of the correspondence theory of truth, and generalizedinsights about the relevance of evolutionary theory to the topic at hand are discussed at length. In conclusion, the attempt is made to rescue and reorient the notion of progress in science without recourse to a confused reliance on the problematic concept of truth as such, instead turning to the notion of metaphoric extension as suggested in early works on metaphor in science by both Kuhn and Richard Boyd.

In the following essay, I will attempt to answer the following question: “Is there progress in science?” To answer this question, I will begin with an extended analysis of the principal terms at work in the question. As such, I will examine critically and at some length what I call the two theses of the traditional conception of scientific progress. From here, I intend to narrow my focus in order to argue that truth is a concept without which we can improve our philosophical and scientific theories. This may seem to imply that my answer to the aforementioned question of progress in science must be a negative one. For, if by progress we mean either the greater approximation of truth in our theories by an increase in the number of true sentences contained in those theories, or (less formally put) a deepening limning of nature’s ultimate structure, then there can be no such thing as progress without truth. In fact, the very notion of progress seems to presuppose some strong conception of

Uhall Clever Animals, Human Serpents

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truth, i.e., that truth somehow appears or inheres in accurate relationships of correspondence, that the increasing accuracy of these relationships is perhaps indicated to us by 1. a variety of experimental means; 2, an extension of coherence (however conceived, e.g., the coherence relation being thought of either as consistency with some set of propositions or, more strongly put, as entailment by those propositions); and 3. an increase of comprehensiveness within a theory. However, my answer to the aforementioned question of progress in science is not a negative one, and I will explain why by adumbrating an alternative way in which we might characterize progress as such.

§1: Progress

So what, exactly, is meant by “progress in science”? To answer this question, allow me to explore the difference between progress and mere change. “Change” is a neutral term that only indicates some difference between the states of affairs S1 and S2. The nature or quality of this difference is irrelevant. In contrast, improvement – i.e., the actualization of preferable or preferred states of affairs – seems to inhere in the very notion of “progress.” Progress is a term with strong axiological overtones, whereas change lacks those overtones. For there to be progress between S1 and S2, S2 has to be better than S1. As such, cognitive values must feature in any discussion of scientific progress. According to Larry Laudan, “To be progressive, on the usual view, is to adhere to a series of increasingly rational beliefs” (Laudan, “Progress” 5).1 Another way to describe scientific progress, as traditionally conceived, is to say that science progresses insofar as the explanations put forth by scientists increasingly approximate truth. I will call the notion that, as Kitcher puts it, “[s]uccessive generations of scientists have filled in more and more parts of the COMPLETE TRUE STORY OF THE WORLD” the traditional conception of scientific progress (Kitcher, “Advancement” 3).2 There are a number of submerged claims at work in the traditional conception of scientific progress. The most important two I will classify as follows.

(T1) The cumulative/preservation of meaning thesis states that the veridical or verisimilar content of science should – and, in fact, does – accrue over time. In other words, the first part of thesis could be described as follows: “if a scientific field is making progress, there should be a general upward trend, comparable to the generally rising graphs of profits that [a] firm’s president displays at board meetings” (90). The second part of thesis T1 holds that this process of accrual is truth-preserving; i.e., previous theories that were true are preserved as limiting cases in more mature theories. So, if and when theory changes occur, science should be in a markedly better place after the change than before it. A common, though somewhat contentious example, of this cumulative trend is that of the transition from classical mechanics to relativistic dynamics. In this example, it is argued, classical mechanics are preserved as a special case of relativistic dynamics. As such, here is a supposedly clear instance of cumulative change. So the story goes, Newton developed and refined the classical mechanical model; and classical mechanics suffice for a period of time despite peripheral anomalies, e.g., the difficulty of explaining phenomena involving very fast moving objects and/or objects with unusually strong gravitational fields. As Einstein developed and refined a system of relativistic dynamics, physics increases its explanatory domain, and is therefore able to explain some of the anomalies that could not be resolved in classical mechanics. But classical mechanics appear to be retained.

Allow me to explore this example in more detail – specifically, I want to unpack my assertion that this example is particularly contentious by discussing a conflict between


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Thomas Kuhn and Dudley Shapere over this very issue. Is classical mechanics preserved in Einstein’s universe? Kuhn, arguing in his Feyerabendian mode, concludes that it is not. Why? Kuhn argues that because the “physical referents of... Einsteinian concepts are by no means identical with those of the Newtonian concepts that bear the same name,” it would be necessary “to alter the fundamental structural elements of which the universe to which [Newtonian laws, Einsteinian laws] apply is composed” in order to force a derivation of Newton’s laws from relativistic dynamics (Kuhn, “Structure” 102). Furthermore, even if this is forced, Kuhn continues, it cannot really be a genuine derivation at all because the definitions of the central concepts have been changed. The meaning of the central terms has not been preserved. As such, “Einstein’s theory can be accepted only with the recognition that Newton’s was wrong” (98).

Shapere, responding critically to Kuhn’s denial of the possibility of a satisfactory derivation here, argues that Kuhn merely carves out an arbitrary space in which Newtonian and Einsteinian concepts can be asserted bluntly to have different meanings. Shapere writes that

“[Kuhn’s] only attempt to support his contention comes in the parenthetical example of mass; but this point is far from decisive. For one might equally well be tempted to say that the ‘concept’ of mass (the ‘meaning’ of ‘mass’) has remained the same (thus accounting for the deducibility) even though the application has changed. Similarly, rather than agree with Kuhn that ‘the Copernicans who denied its traditional title 'planet' to the sun . . . were changing the meaning of 'planet'” (p. 127), one might prefer to say that they changed only the application of the term” (Shapere, “Structure” 390).

But this argument is very strange. One consequence that appears to follow from it is that however it is that a term is used (e.g., to refer) has no significant connection to the meaning of that term (i.e., as very traditionally conceived, the reference of that term).

In an attempt to shed light on this issue, allow me to briefly turn to Keith Donellan’s 1966 paper, “Reference and Definite Descriptions.” Here Donnellan distinguishes between the attributive use and the referential use of definite descriptions. The former use “states something about whoever [sic] or whatever is the so-and-so” (Donnellan 267). In contrast, the latter is “used to refer to what a speaker wishes to talk about,” that is, “to enable his audience to pick out whom or what he is talking about” (265, 267). In other words, the attributive use asserts something about whatever object fits the definite description in question, while the referential use serves to point out an object so that the speaker can assert something about that object specifically.

Donnellan uses the following intuitive example to make his argument: “Smith's murderer is insane.” If we use the definite description “Smith's murderer” attributively, we are asserting that whoever murdered Smith is insane, regardless of whom that might be. But if we use “Smith's murderer” referentially (for example, while sitting in the courtroom, observing the accused person’s unusual behavior), we employ the definite description as a kind of verbal pointer. Both uses of “Smith's murderer” presuppose that a murderer exists, so Donnellan supports his distinction by “considering the consequences of the assumption that Smith has no murderer” (267). He argues that, if no murderer exists, then the attributive use of the definite description fails as a speech act, explaining that “in the [attributive] case, if there is no murderer, there is no person of whom it could be correctly said that we


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attributed insanity to him” (267). In contrast, “in the [referential] case... it is quite possible for the correct identification to be made even though no one fits the description we used” (267).

So how can this distinction help us? If we can rely upon it, then it provides us with a guide by which to distinguish between a change in meaning and a stability of reference. In other words, it allows us to say that the meanings of theoretical terms do change – i.e., that the attributions of definite descriptions do change over time – while in many (but probably not all) cases, the referential use of definite descriptions provides a stability of reference over time. As an example, take the pulse. Herophilus, a Greek physician, studied the pulse, and although he did not conceive of it “as a simple mechanical response to the pumping action of the heart,” he still “employed variations in pulse rhythms as a diagnostic and prognostic tool” (Lindberg, “Beginnings” 120-121). In contrast, physicians after William Harvey and the advent of mechanism in science generally would have conceived of the pulse precisely as a “mechanical response to the pumping action of the heart.” As such, did Herophilus and Harvey employ different meanings when talking about the pulse? Using Donnellan’s distinction, we can answer that question as follows: Although Herophilus and Harvey doubtlessly attributed different definite descriptions to the “pulse,” both of them used those definite descriptions referentially. In other words, although the two physicians conceived of the pulse very differently, there appears on Donnellan’s account to be a stability of reference that extends between the two insofar as the two both discussed the pulse as a process “out there” in the world. To borrow a turn of phrase from Donald Davidson, perhaps we might say the two were not (à la Kuhn) worlds apart but instead only words apart.

Taking a slightly different tack, it is perhaps worth mentioning in conclusion that Feyerabend, writing in response to Putnam, argued that “mere difference of meanings does not yet lead to incommensurability in my sense” (“Putnam” 272). Here he also attempts to clarify the notion of incommensurability. In “Explanation, Empiricism, and Reduction,” Feyerabend had characterized incommensurability as occurring when a main concept of a theory H2 “can neither be defined on the basis of the primitive descriptive terms of the latter [i.e., another, ‘incommensurable’ theory H1], nor related to them via a correct empirical statement” (76). He alternatively characterizes two theories H1 and H2 as being incommensurable when they are “incapable of mutual reduction and explanation” (77). In his reformulation, which strikes me as a clarified restatement, he argues that incommensurability only occurs “when the conditions of meaningfulness for the descriptive terms of another [theory] do not permit the use of the descriptive terms of another [theory]” (Feyerabend, “Putnam” 272). This boils down to saying that equivocation is not permissible when trying to derive a theory H2 from another theory H1. But that seems uncontroversial. If Kuhn’s sense of incommensurability resembles Feyerabend’s – and I think it does – then it may not be as rigid a relationship as previously thought.

(T2) The teleological/historical thesis states that the history of science and the future of science both evidence a certain telic narrative structure. I call this structure teleological because the image of science that emerges is that of science as a broadly purposive enterprise. I do not mean that science is portrayed as a purposive enterprise in the limited, trivial sense that, at any given time, science is practiced in order to achieve specific ends, e.g., the solution to a specific puzzle, the cure to a specific disease or the fix for a specific engineering problem. Rather, the purpose of science, on this way of thinking, is to get us closer to the truth, to strip away layer after layer of confusing, inchoate appearances in order


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better to reveal and understand the reality underneath them. This is a grand narrative about science, and it is an explicitly historical one where, especially in the more naïve accounts, the protagonists are, for example, Galileo, Newton, and Einstein – all of whom are portrayed in this narrative mode not just as brilliant men and excellent scientists, but as existential luminaries, as men who prod the World Spirit along its passage toward self-perfection.

I use explicitly Hegelian terms because some features of the traditional conception bear a striking resemblance to Hegel’s own grand narrative about progress in history.3 I refer particularly to the desired, projected climax of science – i.e., Peirce’s “ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief ” or the “real... that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you” (Peirce 5.565, 5.311). For the traditional conception, this is the notion that somewhere far in the future – perhaps impossibly far away, like More’s Utopia – there lay an ideal state of affairs in which all informed inquirers achieve consensus, not because they are forced by social pressures or other vagaries, but instead because they are compelled by reality itself unlimned and therefore known without distortion. This is structurally comparable both to the belief of the committed Hegelian in the slowly but inevitably approaching culmination of history and to a religious faith in some future state of mystical union with God. In conclusion, to put it rather contentiously, we might rechristen T2 as the millenarian thesis.

§2: Truth

Allow me to respond to T2 at length, specifically attacking this notion of an asymptotic approach toward truth and, indeed, the very idea of truth as such. I will start with a perhaps seemingly unrelated question. Should evolutionary theory have an influence upon the practice of philosophy? I think that the answer to this question must be an unqualified yes. In his essay “The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy,” John Dewey argued that “the ‘Origin of Species’ introduced a mode of thinking that in the end was bound to transform the logic of knowledge” (Dewey, “Influence” 2). He argues to this conclusion by sketching the differences between the description of human beings as evolutionary products and older, teleological descriptions. In this sketch, he introduces a distinction between earlier epistemological models that focused on constructing or discovering “the changeless, the final, and the transcendent” and epistemological models influenced by evolutionary theory (7). These former models are

“compelled to aim at realities lying behind and beyond the processes of nature, and to carry on its search for these realities by means of rational forms transcending ordinary modes of perception and inference” (6).

As for the latter models, they forswear “inquiry after absolute origins and absolute finalities in order to explore specific values and the specific conditions that generate them” (13).

Why does Dewey introduce this distinction, and why does it matter? If evolutionary theory is accepted, then it follows that human beings are the results of evolutionary processes. If human beings are the results of evolutionary processes, then it follows that human beings are however they are, not because of their immutable and purposive nature, but because of the Darwinian history that led to their development. Nietzsche provides us with a particularly apt characterization of human beings as the products of Darwinian


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evolution when he describes us as “clever animals” rather than as rational animals – as per Aristotle, Plato, and the traditional Greek conception of the self – or as animals imbued with a pure (or once pure, prior to the Fall of Man) spiritual essence – as per the Christian conception of the soul (Nietzsche, “Truth” 42). This has dramatic consequences for the status of human beings as inquirers and as knowers. For Dewey, one of these consequences is that, rather than trying to find Descartes’s “firm and abiding superstructure in the sciences,” we should seek after solutions to immediate problems that occur in specific environments (Descartes, “Meditations” 1). This is analogous to how design problems are solved by evolutionary processes. Evolution is not progressing purposively toward some final, ideal state; rather, its processes adapt organisms to constantly changing environments.

Dewey elaborates his naturalized account of knowledge by identifying it with a set of (at least potentially) changing functional or procedural responses to stimuli. He introduces a distinction between two kinds of environments in which organisms can exist and operate. The first is the stable environment, “a continuous system of connected events which reinforce its [the organism’s] activities and which form a world in which it is at home, consistently at one with its own preferences, satisfying its requirements” (Dewey, “Existence” 245). This would be an environment in which stasis is common, in which new threats to the organism do not arise and its desires do not shift. The second kind of environment, which Dewey calls precarious, is an environment in which the organism “finds a gap between its distinctive bias and the operations of the things through which alone its need can be satisfied” (245). It is in this second environment that Dewey thinks that the human animal finds itself. Living in an indifferent and frequently hostile universe, it “either surrenders, conforms, and for the sake of peace becomes a parasitical subordinate... or its activities set out to remake conditions in accord with desire” (245).

So the question of increasing knowledge becomes a matter of optimizing outcomes in a given environment. According to Dewey, this manipulation of our external conditions in accord with our desires is aided or perhaps even permitted only with knowledge – but what, for Dewey, is knowledge? He argues that “Knowledge, as an abstract term, is a name for the product of competent inquiries” (Dewey, “Logic” 8). As such, Dewey thinks that knowledge is a product; to understand this product requires not the consideration of abstractions but the application and examination of inquiry, a process. The details of this process are more important for Dewey than the product itself, given that the product – i.e., knowledge – will be relative to an environment and however it is that we desire to remake the conditions found in that environment. Following from this, Dewey firmly identifies humans-as-knowers with humans-as-inquirers. The process of inquiry is the process by which human beings adapt to their changing environments; or, rather, it is the process by which they learn how to adapt the environment to their own needs.

So what is the upshot here? I think that several implications may follow. The first is that a sea change in the practice of epistemology may be required. Why? Well, if the practice of epistemology traditionally proceeded on the assumption of some foundationalism – the assumption that “the changeless, the final, and the transcendent” existed and were therefore discoverable or that a “firm and abiding superstructure” could be constructed by stringent enough practitioners – then this assumption is thrown into question. Furthermore, the status of humans-as-knowers in the traditional sense – i.e., human beings as Platonic metaphysicians whose highest calling is to seek after a comprehension of the universe’s ultimate structure – is destabilized by this focus on inquiry relativized to an environment. In other words, to put it bluntly, foundationalism as such is challenged by Dewey, and,


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concurrently, it is challenged by evolutionary theory. The second implication seems to me to throw the notion of truth as such into question. This notion is already so ill-defined and poorly understood that I think we might be better off without it.4 At the very least, eliminating it would free us from any obligation toward something so vague.

Although he provides us with several definitions during his career, Dewey seems to find the notion of truth suspect as well. Prima facie, this is unsurprising. After all, if knowledge is the product of competent inquiry, and inquiry is a process relativized to an environment, then there can be no changeless, final knowledge. “The attainment of settled beliefs is a progressive matter; there is no belief so settled as not to be exposed to further inquiry” (ibid.). I would argue that Dewey – and, by extension, the rest of us – can eliminate this notion of truth altogether, rather than simply trying to pour in content that is radically different from the intuitive content of correspondence, the accuracy of which we take to be indicated by increasing coherence, experimental results, and so forth. The robustness of Dewey’s theory of inquiry can be retained without ever appealing to the metaphysically suspect.

But what about this notion of truth as correspondence? First, there seem to be a number of problems with the notion of correspondence. As examples, allow me to examine the following two problems. The first and most threatening problem is that of independent access to the world – to that to which our language is supposedly isomorphic. If truth somehow appears or inheres in accurate relationships of correspondence, then how it is possible to check this relationship? The answer to this question seems to be that it is not possible to do this, that it is not possible to achieve any independent access to reality, to step outside of ourselves into a view from nowhere or to a God’s-eye view. As such, either knowledge is impossible or the notion of truth as correspondence is untenable.

The second problem is the naturalistic worry, which furthers itself into a worry about circularity. Without any clear way to account for the correspondence relation, it seems as though it is a very strange sort of relation. We could respond by claiming that when we utter a true sentence, it corresponds to a fact. But the ontological status of facts is unhelpful to our cause as correspondence theorists. What is a fact? It cannot be a true sentence, at least not for our purposes; or else we would simply be relating a true sentence to another true sentence and the truth of it all would continue to elude us. In short, facts – at least on any of the usual characterizations – cannot account for truth because they presuppose truth, i.e., their facthood depends on their truthfulness. And, furthermore, even if were this not a problem, what about conditional facts, counterfactual facts, negative facts, and subjunctive facts, to name only a few species of unusual facts? Here the uselessness of the correspondence relation seems to make itself especially forceful.

Given these problems, only a number of possibilities for rehabilitating the notion of correspondence remain. First, we might argue that some other property serves as a truth-indicator. So we might argue that, for example, the more coherent we find, say, a scientific theory to be, the more likely it is to correspond to the world. But what is the warrant for this claim? Intuitively, we can respond with the standard rebuttal to any coherence theory of truth. It seems possible to think of instances in which we would want to say that although a theory is perfectly coherent (whatever that means exactly), it is not true. The same response applies to the attempt to make justification a truth-indicator. Being justified, we intuitively want to say, is not the same thing as being true. Both of these objections hold because both attempts to suggest possible truth-indicators commit what I will call the rationalist’s fallacy.

The rationalist’s fallacy occurs when a philosopher conflates the processes which


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constitute human understanding with the structure of the universe. One of Plato’s mistakes was to assume that an appealing or even a seemingly successful argument necessarily tells us something about the world.5 This assumption reads human rationality – itself an evolutionary product – into the order of things and thereby transforms Reality into Reason. This – much like the creationist’s attempt to explain intelligence by appealing to yet a higher intelligence – puts the explanatory cart before the horse. If human rationality evolved in order to allow humans to cope with certain kinds of environments, then there is no reason to think that the universe truly behaves in ways concordant with that rationality. If rationality allows us to remake our conditions in accordance with our desires, then lucky us; but thinking that rationality works because the universe itself is rational seems unwarranted at best and superstitious at worst. If the arguments above hold, then we have no access – either directly or indirectly – to the correspondence relation that is taken so often to be central to the notion of truth. As such, there is no reason to retain the correspondence theory of truth other than a vague but philosophically unhelpful intuition.

Dewey writes that “knowing is not the condescension of reduplicating a nature that already is, but is the turning of that nature to account in behalf of consequences” (Dewey, “The Problem” 128). We could easily replace “knowing” with “truth,” but, I would conclude, this latter notion of truth strays so far from our unhelpful intuitions about truth that we would do better to stop talking about truth altogether. In other words, rather than calling “truth” something other than correspondence, like “the turning of that nature to account in behalf of consequences,” why not simply let the turning of nature to account in behalf of consequences be? Truth, here, seems an honorific at best (and a pointless confusion at worst). I would, following Dewey in his middle career, suggest that a more compact way of putting this would be to say, rather than talking about truth as such, why not talk about warranted assertibility? Unlike Dewey, I am reluctant to identify truth as warranted assertibility due to the concerns stated above. It seems at least plausible that warranted assertibility could play the same role for us that truth has always played without the problems that, as I have been arguing, doom the truth project in our cultural and philosophical milieu.

Being eliminativists about truth might seem to lead to some problems, but those problems are chimeras that result from subtle question-begging. As such, they can be easily dissolved. Let me restate at the outset that eliminating the notion of truth does not mean eliminating the notion of truth-as-correspondence and replacing it with some other notion of truth (e.g., as justification, as warranted assertibility). Rather, being an eliminativist about truth is to say, let’s simply stop using the term as if it had any depth or philosophical interest. So what are the apparent problems with eliminating the notion of truth from our philosophical toolbox? Well, the first apparent problem might be stated as follows: If we get rid of truth, then toward what do philosophers and scientists aspire? The second apparent problem might be stated as follows: If we get rid of truth, then what prevents a collapse into relativism?

The first problem can be described in the two following ways: either as a problem of inspiration or as a problem of justification. The problem of inspiration asks why we should do philosophy or science if we are not trying to increasingly approximate truth in our theories. The problem of justification asks where the justificatory process is supposed to end. Without truth as a sort of epistemic dam, what goal does inquiry aim toward and by what standards should we judge the products of inquiry as failures or successes? My response to both of these problems is the same and also somewhat deflationary. If truth as such is a concept that is not clearly defined or well understood, then it is unclear how exactly


Agnitio 13

it provides inspiration or a final goal of inquiry, or the necessary standards to judge the products of inquiry. In other words, to put it contentiously, if we do not know what we are talking about when we talk about truth, then using it either as a reliable point of reference or as a stopgap is arbitrary – as arbitrary as any mere appeal to divinity.

The second problem can be dissolved even more quickly. By eliminating truth from our vocabulary, we have also eliminated relativism as a meaningful threat. The charge of relativism seems to entail that because truth is relative to some conceptual scheme, whether it is a communal or an individual conceptual scheme, there is no possibility of determining any external standards by which to make qualified value judgments. Without a useful conception of truth, this threat dissolves – truth is no longer a tool for either the foundationalist or the relativist. This may seem like a linguistic solution to a real problem; I do not wish to contend that eliminating truth will necessarily clarify disagreements. However, it will show some of these conflicts to be purely semantic and the investments by the respective disputants to be ephemeral. To continue appealing to truth as central would require that a clearly understood notion of truth as such be provided. The history of the attempts to do so is a history of failure. To make such an unclear notion as truth so central to our theory-building seems, to borrow a phrase from Dewey, like intellectual atavism. It is a throwback to a simplistic Aristotelianism (i.e., trying to scry the final cause) and to Platonism (i.e., trying to build perfect definitions for all of our principle terms). As such, I think we are indeed justified in eliminating the word from our vocabulary – at least insofar as we take the word to be philosophically fertile.

§3: Metaphor

Given the arguments above, it might seem impossible to salvage a positive account of progress. If the concept of truth is effectively abandoned, if we reject the strong conception of truth (i.e., the notion that truth somehow appears or inheres in accuraterelationships of correspondence), then in what could scientific progress consist? My answer will be comparatively brief given the length of the arguments above, yet hopefully still fruitful or suggestive.

In his 1979 paper “Metaphor in Science,” Kuhn observes that “Metaphor plays an essential role in establishing links between scientific language and the world” (539). For example, theory change “is accompanied by a change in some of the relevant metaphors and in the corresponding parts of the network of similarities through which terms attach to nature” (ibid.). Kuhn makes these claims parasitically upon Richard Boyd’s thesis that

“There exists an important class of metaphors which play a role in the development and articulation of theories in relatively mature sciences. Their function is a sort of catechresis – that is, they are used to introduce theoretical terminology where none previously existed” (Boyd, “Metaphor” 482).

However, unlike Boyd, who tried to argue that these metaphors were restricted to serving a merely heuristic role, Kuhn adopts a much stronger stance. As such, he attempts to complicate Boyd’s description of theory change as a progressive accommodation of language to the world. Kuhn asks

“What is the world... if it does not include most of the sorts of things to which the


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actual language spoken at a given time refers? ... Does it obviously make better sense to speak of accommodating language to the world than of accommodating the world to language? Or is the way of talking which creates that distinction itself illusory?” (Kuhn, “Metaphor” 541-542, emphasis my own).

I intend to extend and hopefully sharpen these questions before returning briefly to Boyd to draw my conclusion.

In his second question, Kuhn appears to be making a rather strange suggestion. Initially, we might read his formulation of this question as tentatively suggesting that we should return to some sort of linguistified idealism. However, given our discussion of Dewey’s instrumentalism above, perhaps we might reinterpret a phrase like “accommodating the world to language” not as a sort of idealism but instead as the suggestion that we should approach the world instrumentally in the attempt to make it conform to how we wish to speak about it. However, such a project might be unfeasible for two reasons. First, it is not immediately clear how we might accomodate the world to how we wish to speak about it without first speaking about it. In other words, beyond brute force, how could we intend to manipulate some X-phenomenon if we have no idea what sort of a thing that X-phenomenon is or no way of speaking accurately (in the referential sense) about that X-phenomenon? Second, there do seem to be instances in which how we might wish to speak of some X-phenomenon simply do not conform to how that X-phenomenon presents itself to us.

Nonetheless, I think that Kuhn’s most philosophically interesting suggestion presents itself in his third question – is the way of talking which creates the distinction between accommodating language to the world and accommodating the world to language illusory? Similarly, in his “The Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy,” Dewey writes that “Two radically different reasons... may be given as to why a problem is insoluble. One reason is that the problem is too [difficult]; the other is that the question in its very asking makes assumptions that render the question meaningless” (14). As such, how might we know if the way of talking which creates the distinction is illusory; and, if it is indeed illusory, then what follows from this realization? To address the former question first, one clue might present itself to us in the perennial similarities found in the conflicts that arise between certain philosophical ways of speaking (for example, in the antagonism found in earlier days between idealists and positivists and today between realists and antirealists). Another clue might present itself in the constant problematization and reformulation of nearly all positions in either camp. As for the latter question, if such a way of speaking that creates this distinction is illusory, then why not abandon it altogether?

In writing about Wittgenstein’s intellectual development, his biographer Ray Monk discusses the physicist Heinrich Hertz, who addresses in his Principles of Mechanics

“the problem of how to understand the mysterious concept of force as it is used in Newtonian physics. Hertz proposes that, instead of giving a direct answer to the question: ‘What is force?’, the problem should be dealt with by restating Newtonian physics without using ‘force’ as a basic concept” (Monk, “Duty of Genius” 26).

We find in Hertz a passage which illuminates further the consequences of his proposal. “When these painful contradictions are removed, the question as to the nature of force will not have been answered; but our minds, no longer vexed, will cease to ask illegitimate


Agnitio 15

questions” (Hertz, “Principles” 8). This brief detour, I argue, serves as an apt analogy for the proposal at hand – the roots of which are found in Kuhn’s passage above – that is to say, the proposal that we should abandon ways of speaking that lead to the troublesome distinction discussed above.

While keeping Kuhn’s complication of Boyd’s thesis in mind, we can extract a conception of scientific progress wholly apart from the traditional conception of scientific progress by appealing to the notion of metaphoric extension. If, as Boyd argues, metaphors in science are “used to introduce theoretical terminology where none previously existed,” then we can begin to identify scientific progress widely with the introduction of more and more theoretical terminology (Boyd, “Metaphor” 482). However, a mere glut of theoretical terminology by itself is clearly not progressive – in fact, such a glut could easily be seen as unhealthy and unparsimonious. Therefore, some sort of qualification is necessary to salvage this account. A suggestion for such a qualification is provided by McMullin when he writes that scientific models function “somewhat as [metaphors do] in language” and that these metaphors help “to illuminate something that is not well understood in advance” (McMullin, “A Case” 31). As such, he continues,

“[i]f an anomaly is encountered or if the theory is unable to predict one way or the other in a domain where it seems it should be able to do so, the model itself may serve to suggest possible modifications or extensions” (ibid.).

What McMullin calls “tentative suggestion,” I call metaphoric extension. And from this process of metaphoric extension (an example of which McMullin explicates in his historical discussion of the development of plate-tectonics from Wegener’s continental drift theory) we can extract at least a thin conception of scientific progress, one in which progress is identified with both a proliferation in the number and diversity of scientific theories and also in which these theories contain the metaphoric resources for their own development and evolution.

In conclusion, allow me to recount briefly an example from the history of science sketched in these Deweyan terms, that is to say, in terms that cast the example not as a mere stage in humanity’s progress toward a final, ineffable truth but rather as a sequence of adaptive, contextual changes.6 We can broadly interpret the Copernican Revolution as such. A specific example from the later stages of the revolution is the slow development of Newtonian gravity, which was met at first with hostility. Why? As Kuhn tells us in The Copernican Revolution, “To most 17th century corpuscularians, gravity, as an innate attractive principle, seemed far too much like the Aristotelian ‘tendencies to motion’ which they were unanimous in rejecting” (Kuhn, 258). Before Newton, a Cartesian theory of corpuscles had been favored, in no small part because of “its complete elimination of all such ‘occult tendencies’” as those perceived in Newton’s theory by his contemporaries (258). This provides a social context for the initial resistance to Newton’s theory, one that illustrates the wider hostility toward Aristotelian science that had been gradually mounting. So why did Newton’s theory come to be almost unilaterally accepted? Again according to Kuhn, he writes simply that “the power of the Principia made it indispensable to scientists” (259). This power inhered in the conception of the universe as “an infinite neutral space inhabited by an infinite number of corpuscles whose motions were governed by a few passive laws like inertia and by a few active principles like gravity” (260). In short, the Copernican Revolution marks an incremental, socially dependent, and evolutionary process. This process, on my


Agnitio 16

account, is progressive because of the greater capacity for metaphoric extension evinced by what followed from the Copernican Revolution (and the Scientific Revolution more generally). This capacity is illustrated by the markedly increased proliferation of diverse scientific theories that follow these revolutions and which continues to the present day.


Agnitio 17

Notes

1. It should go without saying that Laudan finds the “usual view” deeply problematic. Cf. Progress and Its Problems: Towards a Theory of Scientific Growth (1978).

2. Kitcher calls this notion “Legend,” and he writes, “Since the late 1950s the mists have begun to fall. Legend’s lustre is dimmed” (Kitcher 5). Clearly, by Legend, he refers primarily to the logical positivists and their disciples. In contrast, I intend by “the traditional conception of scientific progress” something a little less individuated, something more akin to the fuzzy yet common intuition that science today is simply better than was science in 1950 (or 1850 or 1750).

3. The obvious difference being, of course, that history, for Hegel, is “none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom,” whereas science, according to the traditional conception under discussion, would be better characterized as the the progress of the consciousness of truth (Hegel, “History” 19).

4. This is not a general prescription. I do not deny that ideal definitions are not always (if indeed they are ever) possible. However, such an intense and a specific value is placed on truth – one which seems to run hither and thither between science, jurisprudence, religion, and morals – that I would argue that in this case having no clear idea of what we mean when we talk about truth is unseemly at best and, at worst, dooms our other projects that rely so heavily upon “being true” to confusion and obscurantism.

5. To this, one might respond that if an argument is successful, then it is true. But this begs the question.

6. An excellent example provided in great detail – too much detail to be discussed here – can be found in chapters six and seven of Helen Longino’s Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry (1990).


Agnitio 18

Works Cited

Boyd, Richard. “Metaphor and Theory Change: What Is a ‘Metaphor’ a Metaphor For?” 1979. Metaphor and

Thought. Ed. Andrew Ortony. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 481-532. Print.

Descartes, Rene. Meditations on First Philosophy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.

Dewey, John. “The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy.” The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other

Essays. 1910. New York: Prometheus Books, 1997. 1-19. Print.

Dewey, John. “The Problem of Truth.” 1911. The Essential Dewey, Volume 2: Ethics, Logic, Psychology.

Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998. 101-130. Print.

Dewey, John. “Existence as Precarious and as Stable.” Experience and Nature. 1925. New York: Dover

Publications, 2000. 40-77. Print.

Dewey, John. Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. 1938. New York: Saerchinger Press, 2008. Print.

Donnellan, Keith. “Reference and Definite Descriptions.” 1966. The Philosophy of Language. New York:

Oxford University Press, 2008. 265-276. Print.

Feyerabend, Paul. “Explanation, Reduction, and Empiricism.” Realism, Rationalism, and Scientific Method:

Philosophical Papers Volume I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. 44-96. Print.

Feyerabend, Paul. “Putnam on Incommensurability.” Farewell to Reason. 1987. New York: Verso, 1988. 265-

272. Print.

Hegel, G. W. F. The Philosophy of History. 1837. New York: Prometheus Books, 1990. Print.

Hertz, Heinrich. The Principles of Mechanics Presented in a New Form. 1899. New York: Cosimo, Inc. 2007.

Kitcher, Philip. The Advancement of Science: Science without Legend, Objectivity without Illusions. New

York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Print.

Kuhn, Thomas. The Copernican Revolution. 1957. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1985. Print.

Kuhn, Thomas. “Metaphor in Science.” 1979. Metaphor and Thought. Ed. Andrew Ortony. New York:

Cambridge University Press, 1993. 533-542. Print.

Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 1962. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Print.

Laudan, Larry. Progress and Its Problems: Toward a Theory of Scientific Growth. Los Angeles: University of

California Press, Ltd., 1977. Print.


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Lindberg, David C. The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical,

Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450. Chicago: The University of Chicago

Press, 1992. Print.

Longino, Helen. Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry. Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1990. Print.

McMullin, Ernan. “A Case for Scientific Realism.” Scientific Realism. Ed. Jarrett Leplin. Los Angeles, CA:

University of California Press, 1984. 8-40. Print.

Monk, Ray. Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius. New York: Penguin Books, 1990. Print.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. “On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense.” The Portable Nietzsche. 1873. Viking

Penguin, Inc., 1976. 42-46. Print.

Peirce, Charles. “Consequences of Four Incapacities.” 1868. <http://www.peirce.org/writings/p27.html>

Peirce, Charles. “Truth and Falsity and Error.” 1901. <http://www.peirce.org/writings/p29.html>

Shapere, Dudley. “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” The Philosophical Review 73.3 (1964): 383-394. Print.

Agnitio 20

Tracing Discipline into a Global World:A Reconciliation of Appadurai’s Fear of Small Numbers, and Foucault’s Discipline and Punish

Laura MartinHaverford College

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I compare two dystopic visions of society: one presented by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish and one by Arjun Appadurai in Fear of Small Numbers. In Foucault’s work, minute disciplinary forces operate to produce docile subjects, whereas in Appadurai’s work, individuals commit large, conspicuously undisciplined acts of violence and aggression. These two views initially appear to be irreconcilable in their conception of the individual’s relation to society. I will argue, however, that the two are linked in the sense that Appadurai’s society can be read as an unintended consequence of Foucault’s society. Furthermore, Appadurai’s work is not simply a continuance of Foucault, but rather reveals the effects globalization has had on a Foucauldian analysis.

Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish and Arjun Appadurai’s Fear of Small Numbersboth present analyses of the interplay which occurs between social forces and individuals. Foucault’s work engages with philosophical issues of power and knowledge, whereas Appadurai writes in a more anthropological vein on the social phenomena of modernization and globalization: for both thinkers, individuals are fabricated and reproduced through a combination of social arrangements and pressures. Despite their formal similarities, however, the two works differ quite dramatically, and the portraits of society the authors paint are divergent enough to constitute a difference of philosophical concern. In this essay I examine the apparent disjunction between the two visions of society in Foucault and Appadurai, and seek points where links can be forged, or alternatively, where globalization has rendered certain connections untenable.

On one hand, Foucault’s strictly disciplined arrangements of docile bodies seems to inevitably move us towards a paralyzed, complacent society of meek individuals. On the other hand, Appadurai’s fluid and violent movements of ethnic groups move us towards a world in which complacency is shattered, and where meaning is created only through intense, brutal violence. Although Appadurai is writing thirty-one years after Foucault, it is

Martin Tracing Discipline into a Global World

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too simplistic to claim that their differences can be wholly explained by the changes engendered by globalization. This certainly comprises part of the relation between Foucault and Appadurai, but I believe that Appadurai’s violent world should instead be read primarily as an unintended consequence of Foucault’s disciplinary society. First, I will discuss three areas in which this idea, that Appadurai represents the unanticipated continuation of Foucault’s trajectory, is made manifest. These are the role of statistics, the mentality of subjects in a disciplined society, and the notion of a disciplinary violence. I will then discuss the ways in which Appadurai’s account of the effects of globalization contest several foundations of Foucault’s work such as the normal/abnormal binary, and his conceptions of spatiality.

The depiction of society Foucault presents in Discipline and Punish arouses claustrophobia and anxiety. The tightening mechanisms of control he points out enforce power over individuals, sculpting various kinds of subjects. These mechanisms are so deeply written into societal institutions like the school and hospital, that there is a sense in which we are rendered helpless and unable to escape their normalizing power. Foucault describes the increased surveillance and pressure which imposes itself on everyday individuals: “…the mechanisms of power that frame the lives of everyday individuals; an adaptation and a refinement of the machinery that assumes responsibility for and places under surveillance their everyday behavior, their identity, their activity, their apparently unimportant gestures; another policy of that multiplicity of bodies and forces that constitute a population.”1

Individuals are observed, counted, and categorized, through disciplinary mechanisms that imbue their daily lives. Power is no longer exerted through the singular bloody spectacle, such as the dramatic exhibition of the criminal on the scaffold, but is inscribed within the very structures of institutions. Under this surveillance, individuals face the ever-present possibility of being categorized as ‘abnormal’ through being closely observed for behavior which deviates from the norm. With the birth of the disciplines arises the belief that the ‘abnormal’ can be fixed. As a result, those who are categorized as such fall under stringent normalizing measures. Gradually, through this exclusionary dichotomy of normal/abnormal, individuals become normalized beings in docile bodies.

Appadurai’s vision of society, although equally dystopic, is radically different to Foucault’s. In Appadurai the obedient, disciplined subjects, meek under the forces of normalization, have vanished. In their place is a world filled with outbreaks of ethnic violence, radical ideologies, and genocide. Appadurai describes: “The growing and organized violence against women...The mobilization of youth armies...Child labor is sufficiently troubling as a globalized form of violence against children, but the labor of fighting in civilian militias and military gangs is a particularly deadly form of induction into violence at an early age. And then there are the more insidious forms of violence experienced by large numbers of the world’s poor...”2 Appadurai sees these new forms of violence becoming increasingly explosive and troubling due to the uncertainties and pressures created by the maelstrom of globalization. His society is one in which violence is catalyzed by a jumble of competing ideologies, whereas for Foucault, subjects face increasing normalization under an umbrella of ideology. For Foucault, power has been transformed into something lighter, quieter, and more operational by virtue of its invisibility. For Appadurai, power bursts forth from terrorist attacks, genocides, and radical acts of violence and torture.

In contrast to Appadurai’s world of brutal force, Foucault’s account displays a remarkable lack of physical enforcement. In the Panopticon, a prison model he describes, prisoners inhabit cells arranged around a central tower. By virtue of the fact that they cannot


Agnitio 22

ascertain whether someone is monitoring them from this tower, they begin to monitor themselves. The panoptic arrangement magically lifts the bars of imprisonment and secures control through what are practically invisible techniques. Foucault writes, “A real subjection is born mechanically from a fictitious relation. So it is not necessary to use force to constrain the convict to good behaviour…Bentham was surprised that panoptic institutions could be so light: there were no more bars, no more chains, no more heavy locks...”3 Foucault shows us that physical, external enforcement becomes unnecessary when a “fictitious relation” can compel subjects to internalize a normative ideal and become self-regulating. This “fictitious relation” in the model of the Panopticon is the possibility of an omniscient monitor. In contrast, Appadurai writes, “…large-scale violence is not simply the product of antagonist identities but that violence itself is one of the ways in which the illusion of fixed and charged identities is produced…Violence, especially extreme and spectacular violence, is a mode of producing such certainty…”4 Whereas Foucault describes an insidious form of subjection relying on immaterial modes of inducing self-regulation, Appadurai describes a society in which the production of identities depends upon the corporeal enactment of violence.

One initial response to the question of difference between the two is that they are not, in fact, engaged in the same project and that to draw a parallel between the two would be mistaken. For example, as the passages in the previous paragraph imply, Foucault’s silent mechanisms of control serve to construct and control individuals, whereas Appadurai’s mechanisms of violence as a means of ascertaining identity is a response to an uncertain society. Yet this tentative distinction between creation and reaction fails to recognize both the ways in which these concepts are intertwined, and the deeper similarities between Foucault and Appadurai which indicate that cleanly separating the two accounts is overly simplistic. Although the thinkers frame the issue in different ways, both are discussing epistemological mechanisms. The silent discipline in Foucault aims at full knowledge of individuals in a population, and this knowledge is then deployed in the move towards a normalized, controlled population. Appadurai’s violence wears a different guise, but is at heart, an epistemological violence which seeks to gain full knowledge of the enemy. Appadurai writes, “Bodily violence in the name of ethnicity becomes the vivisectionist tool to establish the reality behind the mask…”5 The acquisition of knowledge through violence aims to reach behind the mask of the enemy in order to establish the identity both of the group and the antagonist.

If we are unable to separate the two accounts into descriptions of different parts of the social order, then what is the nature of the link between the two? This question of linkage raises theoretical problems, for if Foucault’s account is accurate, then Appadurai’s account is unthinkable. If it is the case that in Foucault’s society, subjects have been successfully disciplined and normalized, then the future should not be one characterized by outbreaks of distinctly disobedient violence, but one in which the noose of discipline will only become tighter. It ought to be the case that through the entrapment within the panoptic machine, individuals will become so docile that they never take risks and merely seek comfort and safety. When the very spaces inhabited and languages spoken are infused with operations of power, it seems that society has reached an inescapable dead-end. Foucault points to this strong sense of entrapment within the panoptic society when he writes,

“Our society is not one of spectacle, but of surveillance; under the surface of images, one invests bodies in depth; behind the great abstraction of exchange, there


Agnitio 23

continues the meticulous, concrete training of useful forces...We are much less Greeks than we believe. We are neither in the amphitheatre, nor on the stage, but in the panoptic machine, invested by its effects of power, which we bring to ourselves since we are part of its mechanism.”6

Power is not only enacted upon subjects, but subjects themselves become nodes of power: they are instruments within the panoptic machine carrying out the work of power upon themselves. The greater sense of entrapment issues from the fact that there is no longer any external figure who might be destroyed in order to gain freedom; instead, the jailer and the incarcerated are one and the same.

Yet thinking about Foucault within the dichotomy of freedom and imprisonment misses an important element of Foucauldian thought. Re-thinking his work gives us reason to believe that his philosophy does not entail an increasing imprisonment within the panoptic machine. It is not impossible that Foucault’s disciplined subjects have become violent subjects. Foucault writes,

“The individual is no doubt the fictitious atom of an ideological representation of society; but he is also a reality fabricated by this specific technology of power that I have called ‘discipline’. We must cease once and for all to describe the effects of power in negative terms: it ‘excludes’, it ‘represses’, it ‘censors’, it ‘abstracts’, it ‘masks’, it ‘conceals’. In fact, power produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth. The individual and the knowledge that may be gained of him belong to this production.”7

Foucault indicates that the produced subject cannot be thought about merely in negative terms as a subject who is repressed by society. Instead, there is nothing to be repressed; the subject that exists is the subject produced by effects of power. Thinking about the individual as something that is produced rather than something that is repressed allows us to see that the nature of the individual is not something which is eternally fixed. Instead, the nature of the individual changes as social forms of power evolve and alters. In Appadurai’s society, therefore, technologies of power have changed, and the produced subjects have also changed.

Understanding the fluidity inherent in Foucault’s production of subjects allows us to recognize that Appadurai’s version of society may not necessarily be in conflict with Foucault’s notion of society as panoptic machine, but may actually represent the unintended consequences of Foucault’s disciplined society. Indeed, Appadurai writes, “Whatever may characterize this new kind of uncertainty, it does not easily fit the dominant, Weberian prophecy about modernity in which earlier, intimate social forms would dissolve, to be replaced by highly regimented bureaucratic-legal order governed by the growth of procedure and predictability.”8 Foucault’s disciplinary society, which was intended to produce utmost certainty, has not resulted in a self-assured society. Instead, we are given a society which continues to desire certainty, but is filled with anxiety in its palpable absence.

How is this disjunction possible? A causal relationship can be discerned in the roles played by control and knowledge in each account. In the framework of Foucault’s genealogy, shifts in disciplinary mechanisms have occurred partially as a result of a drive towards the birth of the disciplines. Statistics, censuses, and population maps are manifestations of this drive towards certain knowledge of individuals. For Appadurai, these


Agnitio 24

processes of tracking, recording, and counting individuals play a foundational role in the upsurge of global violence, for they have led to the creation and cementation of the concepts of majority and minority. Appadurai writes, “So what is it about minorities that seems to attract new forms and scales of violence in many different parts of the world? The first step to an answer is that both minorities and majorities are the products of a distinctly modern world of statistics, censuses, population maps, and other tools of state created mostly since the seventeenth century.”9 Sociological changes in the modern world have necessitated greater control and better management of a large population. Statistics, counting, and recording have therefore risen as methods of organization, contributing towards Foucauldian surveillance and discipline. These methods have also introduced minority and majority into the conceptual vocabulary of modern societies, fueling ethnic violence.

A second way to think about Appadurai’s world as unintended consequence of Foucauldian society is through the kinds of individuals Foucault’s disciplinary societies create, and the way in which these kinds of individuals interact with a globalized world. For Appadurai, social uncertainty plays a major role in the upsurge of violence. He writes, “Where...forms of social uncertainty come into play, violence can create a macabre form of certainty and can become a brutal technique (or folk discovery-procedure) about “them” and, therefore, about “us.””10 This notion presupposes a population which not only holds an expectation of social certainty, but is willing to utilize violence in order to gain this certainty. The Foucauldian society of discipline not only produces docile subjects, but also produces subjects ingrained with a desire for certainty. Indeed, Foucault impresses upon us the way in which discipline not only acts upon the body, but also upon the mind, speaking of “…the ‘mind’ as a surface of inscription for power…” The panoptic society he describes does not simply act upon the body, but also impresses itself into the very minds of the subjects. The kind of subjects produced by Foucault’s society are not only disciplined in their behavior or actions, but are also mentally disciplined: their expectations and values are in accordance with the highly regimented and reliable social order in which they live. I believe that the kind of reaction Appadurai discusses, violence committed in the name of certainty, cannot be explained simply as a result of social uncertainty. Instead, it is only possible in a global society which is conditioned to the smooth operation of the panoptic machine, and which has produced individuals acclimated to a mechanical sense of certainty.

The third way in which we can think about Appadurai’s violence as unintended consequence of Foucault’s disciplinary mechanisms is through a conception of Appadurai’s violence as disciplinary violence. Far from Appadurai’s violence being radically different from Foucauldian discipline, Appadurai’s ‘new’ forms of violence are discipline transposed onto violence. Foucauldian discipline works through visibility and invisibility. He writes, “…power should be visible and unverifiable…The Panopticon is a machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen.”11 The “fictitious relation” which obtains between the prisoners and the watcher in the tower is not based on a true relationship. Instead, it is based on the ever-present possibility of being seen, and the power which derives from a position in which one may be watching others.

The new forms of violence described by Appadurai depend upon, and are enacted through visibility/invisibility. The terrorist does not mark herself, but functions through her ability to be invisible in the society she wishes to enact violence upon. Appadurai writes, “As a figure that has to get close to the place of attack by appearing to be a normal citizen, the


Agnitio 25

suicide bomber takes to the extreme the problem of uncertainty…In one suicide bombing in Israel, a suicide bomber disguised himself as a rabbi, thus subverting the very heart of the visible moral order of Israeli Jewish society.”12 The figure in the panoptic tower is able to wield power through being both visible (prisoners are aware of her existence), yet unverifiable and in this sense invisible (the prisoners cannot observe the watcher – if there is one). In the same way, a terrorist wields power through being an unverifiable, invisible, yet constant threat in society. She blends in with the crowd, and there is no way to distinguish her from the masses. This very invisibility facilitates her power to cause destruction. The invisibility of the terrorist also serves to heighten anxiety and fear on the part of the public over who is a concealed weapon, and who is an innocuous citizen.

There is a sense in which both Foucauldian discipline and Appadurai’s violence work as endogenous to society, and therefore infuse the everyday. As I have described, Foucauldian disciplinary mechanisms are written into everyday institutions, rendering the daily, “normal” experiences of citizens ones infiltrated by disciplinary mechanisms. In the same way, the new violence is written into everyday life. Appadurai writes, “The actions of various terrorist networks and agents seek to infuse all of everyday civilian life with fear…it is a quotidian war, war as an everyday possibility, waged precisely to destabilize the idea that there is an “everyday”…”13 Not only do Foucault and Appadurai both concentrate on the ways visibility and invisibility are manipulated and subverted, but also describe mechanisms which filter down to the smallest grain of everyday life, ultimately rendering the concept of a space which is “normal” or “everyday” nonsensical.

There are, then, concrete ways in which connections can be made between Foucault and Appadurai. The leap is not an inexplicable one, and Appadurai’s society clearly bears the traces of Foucauldian elements. Yet there are also strong ways in which changes effected by globalization and described by Appadurai challenge some of the foundations of Foucault’s work. I wish to finish with a brief discussion of these challenges, for they hold explanatory power in thinking about why certain links cannot be made between the two texts.

Foucault’s disciplinary society relies on the concepts of the ‘normal’ and the ‘abnormal’. He writes, “…the criminal designated as the enemy of all, whom it is in the interest of all to track down, falls outside the pact, disqualifies himself as a citizen and emerges, bearing within him as it were, a wild fragment of nature; he appears as a villain, a monster, a madman, perhaps, a sick and , before long, ‘abnormal’ individual.”14 As I have previously discussed, abnormality must be categorized and treated; the criminal or mad person must be ‘fixed’ into a normal individual. Foucault recognizes the dyad of the ‘normal’ and the ‘abnormal’ as a “dualistic mechanism of exclusion”15, yet there is a sense in which the society he describes relies heavily upon this bimodality and takes it to be valid. In other words, the institutions and disciplinary mechanisms Foucault describes could not function, were it not the case that they could rest upon an accepted notion of what constitutes the normal and the abnormal.

Appadurai’s work shows us that globalization has created a sense of confusion within society over what is normal and abnormal. Appadurai writes,

“In a variety of ways, globalization intensifies the possibility of…volatile morphing, so that the naturalness that all group identities seek and assume is perennially threatened by the abstract affinity of the very categories of majority and minority. Global migrations across and within national boundaries constantly unsettle the glue that attaches persons to ideologies of soil and territory. The global flow of mass-


Agnitio 26

mediated, sometimes commoditized, images of self and other create a growing archive of hybridities that unsettle the hard lines at the edges of large-scale identities.”16

One of the effects of globalization is the disruption of in-group and out-group conceptualizations which in turn, obfuscates the concepts of ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’. As dualistic mechanism of exclusion, the concept of normality is reified by what is deemed abnormal; yet there is still a strong sense of what must be constructed. In the society described by Appadurai, however, the very foundations of normality and abnormality are shaken.

A second basis in Foucault is that space is always something tangible (a seemingly contradictory statement!). His narrative rests on an analysis of buildings, architectural structures, and spatial arrangements. Disciplinary mechanisms and power are mediated and enacted through central towers, backlit rooms, solitary cells, and partitioned hospital wards. Foucault states, “In the first instance, discipline proceeds from the distribution of individuals in space.”17 He goes on to describe the importance of enclosure, partitioning, and functional sites. He writes, “Discipline sometimes requires enclosure, the specification of a place heterogeneous to all others and closed in upon itself. It is the protected place of disciplinary monotony.”18 Examples of enclosed spaces include schools, the barracks, the hospital, and the factory. Without the necessary walls surrounding the subjects within the space, disciplinary power would be unable to function. In a globalized society, however, the concept of space must be radically re-thought. Virtual space does not resemble a building or a wall, but still has real consequences. Foucault’s assumption that it is possible to create enclosure is quaint in the age of the internet, an epoch in which an individual may be physically confined, but nevertheless exposed to ‘space” through virtual media. Disciplinary power must break down, when the basis from which it derives its power - bounded space – falls into obsolescence.

The disjunction between Appadurai and Foucault― Foucault shows us a society which is growing increasingly passive, whereas Appadurai gives us one which is marked by increasing violence― is both superficial and real. It is superficial when one considers the links which can be made between discipline and violence in terms of the role of numbers, the kinds of people Foucault’s society produces, and the way in which violence bears traces of disciplinary procedures. It is real, however, by virtue of the radical sociological changes brought about by globalization. Indeed, Foucault’s Discipline and Punish no longer suffices in a globalized world which possesses deranged notions of normality and abnormality, and which complicates the concept of space. Appadurai is neither a neat consequence of Foucauldian discipline, nor an anomalous deviation. Instead, we can read him as portraying the next step in Foucault’s genealogy of discipline, documenting changes to the production of subjects Foucault himself was unable to envision or foresee.


Agnitio 27

Notes

1. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, New York: Vintage, 1995: 78.

2. Arjun Appadurai, Fear of Small Numbers: an Essay on the Geography of Anger, Durham: Duke UP, 2006: 39.

3. Foucault, 1995: 202.

4. Foucault, 1995 : 7.

5. Appadurai, 2006: 89.

6. Foucault, 1995: 217.

7. Foucault, 1995: 194.

8. Appadurai, 2006: 5.

9. Appadurai, 2006: 39.

10. Appadurai, 2006: 6

11. Foucault, 1995: 202.

12. Appadurai, 2006: 78.

13. Appadurai, 2006: 31-32.

14. Foucault, 1995: 101.

15. Foucault, 1995: 199.

16. Appadurai, 2006: 83.

17. Foucault, 1995: 141.

18. Foucault, 1995: 141.


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Works Cited

Appadurai, Arjun. Fear of Small Numbers: an Essay on the Geography of Anger. Durham: Duke UP, 2006.

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage, 1995.

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Art as an Odeto Experience

Bonnie SheeheyUniversity of Hawaii at Manoa

ABSTRACT

The philosophy of John Dewey resonates deeply with Japanese Zen Buddhism. This paper explores the affinity of Zen with Dewey’s aesthetic theory and his understanding of the self. These two scopes provide novel outlooks to expand and enrich our insight both in Dewey and Zen. The haiku poetry of Bashō and Busson especially illuminate Dewey’s conception of an aesthetic experience. The ningen model of selfhood of Watsuji Tetsurō complements Dewey’s notion of the “social individual.” In understanding the self holistically, this paper attempts to show how the aesthetic and social qualities of the self are not separate, but intimately connected.

Introduction

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “To be great is to be misunderstood.” Perhaps there is no better way to introduce one of the most misunderstood philosophers of the twentieth century. After ninety-two years of life, John Dewey had over twenty-five publications ranging from topics including nature, art, logic, democracy, education, psychology, and ethics. While certainly known as an American innovator in the fields of education and psychology, Dewey has been, until rather recently, nearly disregarded as also being a reformer of Western philosophy. Until the time of Dewey, Western philosophy was absorbed in dualism, reductionism, and a fixed Eidos. John Dewey transformed the Western philosophical tradition with his emphasis on notions of non-dualism, holistic experience, and a relational or transactional ontology based on interdependence. For anyone familiar with the Eastern philosophical tradition of Zen Buddhism, words such as ‘non-dualism’, ‘holism’, and ‘interdependence’ echo in the ear. Zen could thus serve as a new and important instrument in approaching this Western philosopher who has been greatly misunderstood. A conversation between the two traditions can provide new insights in each. Both Zen philosophers and John Dewey understand the nature of the person holistically and relationally. As the ultimate expression of the person, the self includes the aesthetic and the social. The consummate feature of aesthetic experience necessarily embraces the social

Sheehey Art as an Ode to Experience

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quality of the self. Before delving into the aesthetic and social features of experience, this paper will first outline the basic cosmological assumptions of Zen and John Dewey.

Zen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism that came to Japan from China via Korea and Vietnam in the twelfth century. Zen began as Chán Buddhism in China, where it was influenced by other popular Chinese schools of thought such as Confucianism and Daoism. When Zen arrived in Japan, it was also altered by the predominant religion known later as Shintoism, a polytheistic animism. Hence Zen represents a mixture of Buddhist, Confucian, Daoist and Shinto ideologies. As a primary school of Buddhism, Zen adopted the main tenets such as the Three Marks of Existence, dependent co-origination (pratītyasamutpāda), and emptiness (śūnyatā). The Three Marks of Existence are characterized as 1) Impermanence (anitya/mujō), indicating that everything is constantly changing, rising and falling, coming into being and then ceasing; 2) Suffering (duhkha), signifying that life is a continuous struggle generating feelings of anxiety and discontent in every person; 3) No-self (anātman/muga), meaning that all phenomena are without a permanent or fixed self. Dependent co-origination indicates the idea that all phenomena are dependent upon one another for existence. Therefore, everything is interconnected through an infinite web of relationships. Emptiness or voidness (śūnyatā) follows from the first mark of existence and dependent co-origination because if everything is impermanent and interrelated, then everything is empty of enduring and separate identity.

In China, Confucian concepts influenced Zen, including the emphasis on observing ritual propriety and custom (li), and practicing “authoritative conduct” (ren), representing one’s whole cultivated person as expressed in one’s roles and relationships. Concepts such as “way-making”1 (dao), harmony (he), and “letting be,” or “action without action” (wu wei) were also transmitted to Zen from Daoism. In Japan, the indigenous Shinto tradition became embedded in Zen philosophy. Shintoism is an animistic nature religion and Shintos believe that nature manifests kami or spirits. Thus nature is especially revered in Shintoism. In addition to these characteristics adopted from various customs, Zen primarily begins with the supposition of a strict non-dualism. In connection with dependent co-origination, there is no dichotomy between self and other, body and mind; instead, there is interpenetration relating the two. For instance, Zen master Dōgen did not distinguish the body from the mind, but rather described one collective entity called shinjin `ichinyo or “oneness of body-mind”. Consequently, the self is not seen as something independent and separate from the other (whether it be another person, or one’s environment). On the contrary, for Zen there is only a relational self, which is associated and connected to the rest of the world. Thus nothing can be de-contextualized or divided from this web of interconnection. In order to overcome the suffering that comes with separating one’s self from the world, one must maintain a harmonious relationship with nature. Zen emphasizes that realizing interconnection requires a return to the present moment of experience. Herein lies the scope through which one can examine the philosophy of John Dewey.

In step with Zen, John Dewey also assumes non-dualism at the heart of his philosophical cosmology. His insistence on a continuum between doing and undergoing, as well as between means and end marks a paradigm shift within Western philosophy. He argues that at every moment of means there is an end-in-view, and the two are immersed and folded into one another. Experience cannot be reduced to the sum of mere moments, but can only be understood and appreciated holistically, with the past and future pulsating inevery moment of the present. Just as the means cannot be extricated from the end-in-view, an organism cannot be separated from its environment. In Art as Experience, Dewey writes,


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“The first great consideration is that life goes on in an environment; not merely in it but because of it, through interaction with it” (AE 12). The interaction between organism and environment requires constant adjustments and modifications on both ends in times of tension to regain the harmonious rhythm of equilibrium. Dewey takes the middle way amid the extreme views of individualism and collectivism, and asserts that the individual is not something independent from the world, but rather is something associated with the world in a field of relationships. Thus for both Dewey and Zen, the live creature is not fixed and private, but is changing and communal, adapting to the environment which is shared with others. Rather than insist on conceptualizations about a Reality that is behind or beyond life, John Dewey decided to focus on the Reality of life itself present in the here and now. Dewey generated yet another paradigm shift in Western philosophy when he gave primacy to everyday human experience. Van Meter Ames writes in Zen and American Thought, “Dewey agrees that what is most needful is ‘the possession of the unquestionable Present’” (Ames 217). The present moment, for Dewey, reveals the direct interaction between the human and nature, organism and environment. Hence it is only through immersed engagement with the undeniable present that one is able to realize harmony and interconnectedness in both Zen and John Dewey.

Accordingly, there are certain philosophical dispositions shared between John Dewey and Zen including emphases on non-dualism, holistic experience, and a relational ontology. In the philosophies of Zen and John Dewey, the qualities of immediate experience like the aesthetic, religious, and social are interconnected. We may come to appreciate the social quality of experience through exploring the aesthetic, and recognize that these two elements intertwine in the holistic expression of the self. Dewey characterizes aesthetic experience as consummatory, and for him, any kind of consummate experience is going to include the social. Aesthetic experience is a shared experience, and a work of art initiates a dialogue or communication between creator and audience. The social individual is aesthetic when both the overall community and each person grows and flourishes in their reciprocal relationship. We commit the philosophical fallacy in assuming that the social and aesthetic features of experience are separate. If we are to understand experience holistically, we must recognize the intertwining nature of the aesthetic and social.

Art as an Ode to Experience

Aesthetic matters are fundamental for the harmonious development of both society and the individual. - Friedrich Schiller

In Art as Experience, John Dewey hopes to restore the continuity between works of art and everyday experience. Until his time, most Western aesthetic theories viewed a work of art as an object or a thing which had no inherent relation to ordinary life. A work of art represented an ideal notion of beauty that was above and apart from reality. Dewey notes how museums reinforce this view since they decontextualize and separate artworks from their original, cultural, and historical contexts. Art begins, above all, with experience. Dewey writes, “In order to understand the esthetic in its ultimate and approved forms, one must begin with it in the raw; in the events and scenes that hold the attentive eye and ear of man, arousing his interest and affording his enjoyment as he looks and listens…” (AE 3). Ancient works of art such as spears, bowls, rugs and musical instruments found today in museums were not mere objects put on display for awe and admiration, but were “enhancements of


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the processes of everyday life” (AE 5). They were integrated and used by organized communities in daily life.

Art is not simply an isolated method of “self-expression”, but rather is a communal process of shared experience. It is communal and social in that it represents the interaction between the artist and his/her environment, as well as between the artist and the audience. Through a work of art, the artist communicates or shares consummatory meaning with the rest of the world. Any aesthetic theory that simply focuses on either the creator or the consumer of art generates a dualism that widens the gap between aesthetic and ordinary experience even further. Staying true to his premise of non-dualism, Dewey generates a theory of aesthetics by going back to ordinary, concrete, lived experience.

Life is an activity that takes place in an environment. As Dewey himself states, “The first great consideration is that life goes on in an environment; not merely in it but because of it, through interaction with it” (AE 12). The living creature’s activity is anchored in its intimate transactions with nature and other living creatures. Life is also a temporal process of ebb and flow, balance and counterbalance. When the environment becomes perilous, the living creature adjusts to his/her/its surroundings to regain a temporary equilibrium. When an organism falls out of step with its environment, it experiences pain and suffering. The living creature grows when it does not merely return to a prior state upon recovery with its surroundings, but is enriched by the condition of inconsistency and struggle through which it has overcome. The momentary chasm transforms the intimate interaction between organism and environment into a more expansive harmony through growth. Dewey writes, “And, in a growing life, the recovery is never mere return to a prior state, for it is enriched by the state of disparity and resistance through which it has successfully passed” (AE 13). This interaction involves a rhythmic transaction in which moments of tension produce a temporary equilibrium.

Even below the organic level, form and order are achieved through “relations of harmonious interactions” that result in a balance (AE 13). Organic order is not entailed from without but is present at each moment of opposition to guide change. Tension triggers emotional involvement on the part of the living creature. Emotion converts into interest when there is a desire for the re-establishment of unity. Since an artist is concerned with form and union, he/she does not avoid moments of tension and resistance, but transforms them into consummating moments of harmony. Dewey writes, “Since the artist cares in a peculiar way for the phase of experience in which union is achieved, he does not shun moments of resistance and tension. He rather cultivates them, not for their own sake but because of their potentialities, bringing to living consciousness an experience that is unified and total” (AE 14).

Form and order develop only through a temporal and rhythmic pattern of change. They are not static or mechanical, but move in a dance of ebb and flow. Form also derives from the ability of experience to be assimilated and whole. The sense of resolution, satisfaction, and inner harmony may be discovered in the primordial capacity of an organism to come to terms fruitfully with its environment. The adjustments and adaptations made on the part of the whole organism bring about feelings of happiness and delight through a fulfillment that recedes to the depths of its being. Dewey properly notes how most conscious mortals live in awareness of a split between their present existence and their past and future. People constantly obsess over mistakes made in the past, living in a world of ‘should haves’ and ‘could haves’. The past oppresses and burdens the present instead of being an aid by which to make conscious decisions for present and future action. The live


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creature accepts its past with all its faults and errors, and uses them as cautions to inform present living. Time itself is holistic. The present moment is thick, full of not only what Santayana calls “hushed reverberations” of the past, but is also surrounded by a halo of the future. People often live in apprehension and anticipation of what the future might bring. Feelings of anxiety and worry cause us to subordinate the present “to that which is absent” (AE 17). Thus the present moment is left forgotten amid the entanglement of regrets about the past, and eagerness for the future.

Only when one is not perturbed by concerns for the past and future is a being completely connected with his/her/its environment and hence fully alive. Contrary to most conscious mortals, the live creature, namely the aesthetic creature, is fully immersed and integrated in the undeniable present. Dewey states, “The live animal is fully present, all there, in all of its actions: in its wary glances, its sharp sniffing, its abrupt cocking of ears. All senses are equally on the que vive. As you watch, you see motion merging into sense and sense into motion” (AE 18). The live creature understands the present not simply as a mere moment, but as a dynamic process wherein the past is absorbed in the present, which persists and progresses into the future. The live creature participates directly in the events of his/her/its surroundings through sense organs. Immersion in the present brings a “heightened vitality” in which the live creature is most attentive and alert of his/her/its environment, and is ready for action. The height of this experience signifies a harmony that is rhythmic, transactional, holistic, and developing. This, for Dewey is the seed of the aesthetic experience.

In an aesthetic experience, the work of art signifies the artist’s active participation in the world, celebrating the living moment. The artist utilizes his/her perception as an approach for lively exploration with the world. Perception encounters sensation with curiosity, interest, and wonder. Art symbolizes a process of action, of doing and creating. In Art as Experience, Dewey distinguishes between the common moments of experience characterized by “distraction and dispersion,” which are left unfinished, and those rare moments in which “the material experienced runs its course to fulfillment” (AE 36). An experience is the outcome of a directed process of action which coordinates and unifies experience by a distinctive quality that persists throughout the experience. This sense of fulfillment is not mere completion or cessation; it is a consummation and an initiation. An experience is an event of temporal and flowing development. Dewey explains, “In such experience, every successive part flows freely, without seam and without unfilled blanks, into what ensues. At the same time there is no sacrifice of the self-identity of the parts. The enduring whole is diversified by successive phases that are emphases of its varied colors” (AE 38).

Because of unyielding integration, there are no holes or chasms in an experience. There may be moments of pauses and punctuations, but they converge and contribute to the unity of the experience. The chapters in a novel merge and coalesce to form the overall work. Each chapter prompts the next one forward until the novel reaches a conclusion. This conclusion is present at every phase in the work, and represents the “consummation of a movement” (AE 39). An experience may be characterized as a progression, yet its movement cannot be located in any one phase. An experience is holistic; it cannot be reduced to the mere sum of its parts. Emotion serves as the “moving and cementing force” that gives the experience a qualitative unity (AE 44). Action and reaction are intertwined in one incessant experience whose successive meaning grows out of preceding events. Art unifies and harmonizes the transaction of doing and undergoing to produce a holistic experience. Doing represents the execution of the artist and what has been accomplished or


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achieved in the work, while undergoing symbolizes the perception of the artist and what needs to be fulfilled. A work of art thus embodies both a process and its completed product.

The work of art that results from an aesthetic experience embodies meaning and consummation in a medium that is sharable among many. It communicates the resistance, tension, continuity, and gradual harmony experienced by the artist to a larger audience. Art thus provides a storehouse of shared experience. However, this requires an active role on the part of the audience. Dewey well notes that there is no word in the English language which combines the two processes of “artistic” and “aesthetic” into one term. “Artistic” mainly denotes the act of construction and creation, while “aesthetic” refers to the act of perception and enjoyment. For Dewey, the two terms cannot be separated. He writes, “To be truly artistic, a work must also be esthetic – that is, framed for enjoyed receptive perception” (AE 49). Again, aesthetic experience is necessarily holistic. The relationship between creator and appreciator must be reciprocal or mutual. As an artist works, he/she both creates and critiques, assuming the roles of maker and appreciator. In order to really see and understand what the work is trying to reveal, the perceiver must also take on the role of creator, and reconstructs the doing and undergoing of the artist. The act of perception replaces simple recognition and identification. The appreciator cannot just passively admire. He/she must be receptive in order to take in what the artwork presents. To perceive is also to receive. The appreciator must also create his/her own experience with interactions similar to those the original creator undertook. He/she recreates the unity of the elements present in the work. Accordingly, the producer and perceiver share a relationship that is reciprocal and communal.

Zen aesthetics illuminates and epitomizes the very continuity between ordinary and aesthetic experience that John Dewey hopes to achieve with his theory. Zen stresses a heightened awareness of living in the present moment. Enlightenment or satori is not some romanticized ideal that is only experienced a few times in one’s life. Enlightenment consists in being completely integrated in the moment so that the past and future are not forgotten, but melt and fuse together to produce the present.2 Satori is also to penetrate into the mystery of being, and this also connects with the aesthetic experience. D.T. Suzuki writes, “Every art had its mystery, its spiritual rhythm, its myō” (Suzuki 220). Because Zen centers itself around ordinary, lived experience, the aesthetic dimension enveloped everyday experience. The spiritual aspect of Zen blends with the artistic to produce a religio-aesthetic experience. Many Zen practitioners do not only practice mediation, but also some kind of art form, whether it be calligraphy, ink-wash painting, poetry, flower arrangement, gardening, cooking, or the tea ceremony. Aesthetic experience was not something put aside for special occasions; it was observed everyday and could be utilized in all daily activities. There was an artful way to washing the dishes, sweeping, cleaning, and even walking. While many Zen art forms could be used to illuminate John Dewey’s aesthetic theory, this paper will focus primarily on the haiku poetry of Bashō, and Buson.

Haiku is a style of Japanese poetry that consists of seventeen syllables with three metrical phrases of five, seven, and five syllables respectively. Haiku usually contain a seasonal reference or kigo, and a cutting word (kireji) to provide structural support. Haikualso typically tend to disclose a great deal about the poet’s surroundings, as well as some understood Zen reflections on nature such as impermanence, and interconnection. More so, haiku normally include distinct Japanese aesthetic ideas that are clearly connected to Zen concepts. These include: mono no aware or the sad beauty of perishability or evanescence; yūgen (or myō) which means mystery or depth; sabi, meaning solitude or loneliness; and wabi which


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refers to rustic poverty or austere simplicity. The seventeenth century haiku poet Bashō was a hermit who travelled through the country for inspiration for his poetry. His poems are mostly known for their elements of sabi and wabi (the two often go together), as well as the quality of mono no aware. The following are examples of his haiku from The Essential Haiku, edited by Robert Hass:

Winter solitude -in a world of one color

the sound of wind.

This is an excellent model of combining the elements of kigo and sabi, as illustrated by the first line. Even with the minimalist technique of haiku, the poem uncovers the immediate vivacity of the moment. The second line reveals the image of white snow blanketing every object in view, which converges with the gray-white hue of the sky. One hears the howl of the wind blowing everything in sight, and one feels the loneliness that is brought with the chill of winter. The poem also reveals the poet’s heightened awareness of sense perception, as given by his use of color and sound, and the feeling of aloneness. Thus the audience is able to relive the experience sensed by Bashō, who was so captivated by the feelings and imagery aroused by the moment that he felt the need to share it with the world.

A crowhas settled on a bare branch –

autumn evening.

Again, this haiku discloses the season, and also the qualities of sabi and mono no aware. The author is clearly very aware of his surroundings, and does not attempt to interfere with what is going on around him. The image of the bare branch resembles the lone poet who is experiencing it. The poem also divulges the sad reality of impermanence through the crow. As the poet-perceiver sees the crow fly and land on a branch, he realizes that the crow may fly away at any moment. The crow perching on the tree illustrates the reality of time, for the present moment of stillness includes the past and future movements of flight.3 The temporary rhythm of the crow caught in the ebb and flow of transience combines with the spatial location as it lands on a branch in an autumn evening. This haiku also reveals the interdependence shared between both the poet and the crow. Without the crow, Bashō would not have written this poem, and without Bashō, the crow would not have been written about.

The haiku poet Buson is known for his mastery of haiga, an art form which combined painting with haiku. Because he was a painter, Buson’s poetry is known for its imagery and artsy style. Many of his haiku use images of color and shape, with references to senses.

Blow of an ax,pine scent,

the winter woods.

Whereas Bashō’s haiku usually convey something about his mood, Buson’s poetry typically only relates something about the objects being experienced. Here three senses are associated to complete the poem. One hears the thump of an ax, one smells the thick odor


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of pine, and one sees the forest covered with white snow. The combination of the three senses produces a striking effect on the audience. One experiences the keen sense of awareness and attention to the environment as demonstrated by Buson. The author lures us back to the present moment of experience. What beauty, what mystery, and what vividness the present has to offer us!

Listening to the moon,gazing at the croaking of frogs,

in a field of ripe rice.

Again Buson plays with the senses to generate a most arresting effect on his audience, though this time in an even more remarkable and curious way. This is no longer a mere juxtaposition of senses, but rather an interfusion of senses that creates an experience of synesthesia. In pre-reflective experience, the actions of listening and gazing merge into one experience of looking-hearing. Buson shows how experience is never just one-sided perceiving. As we gaze at the moon, we also listen to the croaking of frogs, and in that moment of awareness, subject and object melt away, and we can no longer differentiate how we perceive the moon and the frogs. We simply experience the interpenetration of the senses, and the interconnectedness of moon and frogs, and the self is not even mentioned. The only thing that discloses our existence is our being located in a field of ripe rice.

These haiku serve as excellent examples for illuminating what John Dewey sees as the consummatory nature of aesthetic experience. The poets’ heightened sense of awareness discloses the immediate vitality of the moment. Most importantly, these haiku reveal the poets’ recognition of being in a certain environment, and the haiku results from the poets’ active and attentive immersion with his surrounding environment. Still the haiku is not achieved without difficulty, as poets must choose their words carefully, and thoughtfully, and yet to the reader, the culminating beauty of the haiku makes it seem effortless. Moreover, haiku not only uncovers the struggle experienced on the part of the poet, but it also often exposes the tension of temporality and impermanence. In Zen, the tension of transiency is given an aesthetic quality, characterized as mono no aware, and this quality is celebrated in various art forms. Thus the haiku symbolizes the poet’s recovery and growth from moments of tension, which produces a new sense of harmony. In the moment of harmonious interaction, the poet feels compelled to write the experience down in order to share it with others, and to communicate it beautifully, and poignantly. Yet the experience is only a one-sided affair without the participation of the observer. If an aesthetic experience is to be holistic, the perceiver or observer must partake in the re-creation of the artist’s experience. For Dewey, art epitomizes shared experience, which “is the greatest of human goods.” Hence the communal and shared quality of aesthetic experience illuminates the social nature of the person.

Self as a “Social Individual”

Man is by nature a social animal. – Aristotle

Until the time of John Dewey and American Pragmatism, the Western philosophical tradition was embedded in the notion of an individualistic, egocentric self. This Western sense of self was independent and individualistic in nature, determining the role it assumes in


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its contexts. Primacy was given to personal autonomy, self identity, and individual liberty. The self was seen as a self-sufficient entity made separate from others and from the rest of the world. In contrast, the Japanese Zen sense of self has always been interdependent, holistic and relational, determined by its various roles in certain contexts. This self cannot be separated or detached from its relationships with others. Instead, the self is consummated and given meaning only in its relationships and roles with other people and with nature. Thus the two traditions arrived at quite opposite conclusions about the self, until John Dewey came along and radically shifted the Western notion. Through the work of the twentieth century Japanese philosopher, Watsuji Tetsurō and his ningen model of selfhood, one comes nearer to the concept of John Dewey.

At the beginning of his career, Watsuji Tetsurō published works on Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, but later experienced a radical shift in his interests and began studying Asian and Japanese culture, including Confucian and Zen Buddhist traditions.4 Consequently, his ningen model of Japanese selfhood is said to be a syncretism of Zen and Confucian concepts of self. As a moral philosopher, Watsuji developed his concept of ningen as he was writing his work on ethics, called Ethics as a Study of the Person. He believed that ethics should center around a study of philosophical anthropology, which is essentially concerned with the problem of the person. Thus he found it necessary to elucidate his idea of ‘person’ or ningen. Watsuji contends that Western philosophy has been unsuccessful in generating an adequate system of ethics because of its assertion of “individualism.” He maintains that words for person in the Western tradition such as anthropos, homo, man and Mensch simply indicate the individual man, and if man is innately a social animal, then concepts such as “betweenness” or society cannot be detached from man. In contrast with words common in the West, his word for person (ningen), “discloses the true nature of man as a social being anchored in the spatial-temporal structure of existence” (Odin 53).

As a twofold character comprised of nin and gen, ningen represents the double-barreled nature of existence. For Watsuji, the self is consummated and holistic in being both individual and social. Nin is the character signifying the individual who exists temporally, and gen is the character representing the society within which a social individual exists spatially. Thus the combination of ningen discloses not only the dialectical nature of the person as individual and social, but it also reveals the person as a spatial-temporal continuum. For Watsuji, society is comprised of not just the person’s family and community, but also extends to nature. Furthermore, ningen also embodies a dialectical unity between self (ji) and other (ta), creating a fundamental wholeness of communal existence. This communal existence or individual-society relationship is formed by an internal structure of “betweenness” or “relatedness” (aidagara). Aidagara is the connecting force between individual and society, self and other, time and space. Ningen indicates what Watsuji calls a “betweenness of person and person” (hito to hito to no aidagara), upon which the human self becomes identified as both an individual and a part of society (Odin 55). Hence ningen modifies the person from mere individual to social individual.

Watsuji’s ningen concept of selfhood is composed of ideas taken from both Confucian and Buddhist traditions. As he was conducting his studies on Confucius, Watsuji was deeply influenced by his social ethics. He then characterized ningen as a center of human relationships and called Confucianism the “Way of ningen.” Watsuji sees the Confucian model of the self as an ever-growing nexus of social relationships which represents broader social groups. He appropriates this view and establishes a communitarian ethics based upon the communal existence of ningen. The ningen model of selfhood is particularly Buddhist in that


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it requires a mutual emptying on both sides of the individual and social spectrum. This concept of emptiness (śūnyatā, kū) underlies all forms of Buddhism, but it is especially present in Zen Buddhism.

Watsuji utilizes a Zen Buddhist approach of mutual emptying whereby both individual and social group are negated in kū or emptiness. In Zen everything is impermanent and all things are inter-dependent upon one another, leaving them empty of enduring and separate identity. Thus the person (ningen) arises out of a double negation in which the individual develops, “only as a negation of totality when the whole is emptied into the ego-self, just as the totality of man is established by the negation of individuality when the ego-self is emptied into the totality” (Odin 57). Therefore, Watsuji develops his ningen notion of holistic selfhood as an individual-society communication based on the Confucian model of a relational self, as well as on the Zen Buddhist concept of a double negation of mutual emptiness (kū).

Interchangeability between metaphysical, ethical, religious, psychological and aesthetic qualities pervades Zen Buddhism. Thus while Watsuji was most notably a moral philosopher, he was also interested in the aesthetic implications of his ningen theory of selfhood. The person as ningen exists in the aidagara or “betweenness” of its relationships to an incarnate spatial context of nature or society. He saw in the category of aidagara or “betweenness” a connection to the religio-asthetic ideal of ma or “negative space.” Madenotes the opening, blank, pause, gap, or void in which the empty space between all persons and events comes to manifestation. In this way, ma indicates the “space and or/time ‘in between’” (Odin 59). In Japanese sumi-e ink-wash style painting, ma represents the excess void in the blank background which envelops the black object(s) in the foreground. In his essay “Buddhism and the Japanese Literary Arts,” Watsuji shows how different Zen styles of art and literature, particularly linked verse (renga) and the tea ceremony (chanoyu) convey the idea of “betweenness” or aidagara of the individual and society. The tea ceremony and linked verse represent a kind of social art form, as both are produced by several individuals interacting together in a shared context. Moreover, he demonstrates how the Zen principle of kū or emptiness common in Japanese art and literature also implies the idea of engi or dependent co-origination. The moment of negation is said to express the essential relatedness shared between all persons and events.

Watsuji thus utilizes aspects of the Confucian relational self, the Zen doctrine of kū or emptiness, whereby individuals and society are connected through mutual emptying, a new concept of ethics as the study of philosophical anthropology, which assumes as its main issue the problem of the social individual, as well as the aspect of ma found in traditional Zen-influenced styles of art to compose his ningen model of selfhood. Ningen may ultimately be understood as a “contextualist” theory of selfhood which finds harmony (wa) between the individual and society. The individual is never to be separated from his/her environmental and/or social context. This theory of “contextualism” is not opposite the notions of “individualism” and “collectivism,” but rather is a compromise between the two. The social individual is neither an introverted ego-self who isolates him/herself from society, nor an extrovert who loses his/her inner self by becoming so engrossed in society. As a social individual located in an environment, the person (ningen) and the context are mutually dependent and reliant upon one another for existence. The person (ningen) thrives on interpersonal relatedness or “betweenness” (aidagara) as the connecting force linking the individual to society. Ningen therefore represents a holistic structure of selfhood as the person embodies a dialogue between the individual and society. Moreover, as an integrated


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model of selfhood, ningen plays a vital role in understanding the theory of selfhood developed in America by John Dewey.

In his work entitled The Public and Its Problems, John Dewey notes how Western philosophers have been unable to resolve the correct relation between the individual and society. By giving primacy to either one, the two become opposed to one another, and the problem arises of reconciling the two. The old philosophical fallacy persists in doing this, as the dilemma turns into a debate of concepts such as individualism and collectivism, instead of an investigation of what the individual actually is. John Dewey thus believed that a reconstruction of the individual was necessary. Rather than rely on conceptualizations, Dewey thought it vital to return to immediate experience in order to form his notion of the individual. In Experience and Nature, Dewey describes the “generic qualities” of immediate experience as transformative, holistic, continuous, qualitative, situational, social, and aesthetic. Like Zen, Dewey believes these terms are interconnected, and he uses them interchangeably throughout his works. He identifies immediate experience as occurring in a process of interaction and transaction between organism and environment. Like the focus/fringe model of “pure experience” by William James, the organism in the foreground of immediate experience exists within a background field. The organism can never be isolated from its environment, but rather thrives and exists only in relation to its surrounding context. Thus like an organism, the individual is not merely a discrete entity, but is located and found only in an environmental or social context. The relation of organism and environment, or individual and society is not simply an interaction between two divisions, but is a continuous transaction which connects two distinctions within a whole.

Based on his observations in immediate experience, Dewey constructed the notion of the self as a “social individual.” He writes in “Ethical Principles Underlying Education,” “[T]he individual and society are neither opposed to each other nor separated from each other. Society is a society of individuals and the individual is always a social individual. He has no existence by himself. He lives in, for, and by society, just as society has no existence except in and through the individuals who constitute it” (Dewey 55). As an individual existing in a society, the social individual finds significance in his/her social transactions and relationships, which emerge through participation and communication. His social individual is a holistic concept of selfhood, in that it gives primacy to both the individual and society. As a philosopher interested in such topics as education and democracy, Dewey focused greatly on the theme of community. The social individual lives in the context of a community, and achieves individuation only through his/her relationships with other people.

Individuality is not something that a person starts with, but is instead realized in his/her various roles. Self realization is reciprocal and cooperative, insofar as the needs of the community are satisfied while the social individual is able to express and fulfill his/her own capacities. He explains, “The kind of self which is formed through action which is faithful to relations with others will be a fuller and broader self than one which is cultivated in isolation from or in opposition to the purposes and needs of others” (Dewey 118). For Dewey, “the greatest of human goods” is shared experience. Shared experience unifies and connects the social individuals who represent a community. Communication also plays a vital role in Dewey’s formulation of the social individual, as it serves as a connecting force in shared experience. Communicative interaction involves mutual participation and sharing on both sides. Dewey believes the aesthetic experience serves as an excellent example of shared experience as it involves the participation of both creator and observer. Dewey also emphasizes the essential role of language in the social formation of the human self. He


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understood language not as a means of ‘expression,’ but as a process of communication. John Dewey’s theory of the self as a social individual thus induced a gestalt in

twentieth century Western philosophy. Like Watsuji’s ningen model, Dewey’s holistic model of selfhood represented a middle way between the extreme views of individualism and collectivism. For the first time in Western philosophy, primacy was no longer given to the individual, but to the social. Dewey has been criticized for this, as many argue that Dewey’s model focuses too much on the social, and ignores the individual. However, if one understands Dewey’s model in the light of Watsuji’s, one finds that the individual is not simply pushed aside and ignored. The individual and the social are mutually dependent upon one another in their “relatedness” or “betweenness,” or in Dewey’s terms, in their “participation” or “communication”. The person thrives and grows when both the social and the individual flourish together and because of one another. Contrary to what was believed, John Dewey showed how the individual cannot be decontextualized from his/her social environment. Like Watsuji, he then created a system of ethics based on his revolutionary theory of selfhood. Before acting, social individuals should think about how the consequences of their actions will affect not only themselves, but the community as a whole. Thus Dewey’s non-dualistic approach produced a theory of selfhood that transformed Western individualism by giving primacy to the double barreled nature of the social individual, which he then applied to his systems of ethics and aesthetics.

Conclusion

If one hopes to explore and understand John Dewey’s holistic philosophy, it is rather relevant to do so with a holistic approach. An “East-West” dialogue between John Dewey and Zen is quite appropriate, particularly because both begin with similar cosmological assumptions, including non-dualism, holistic experience, and a relational or transactional ontology, among others. This conversation is one, I think, John Dewey himself would approve of in the context of a cross-cultural philosophic community. From such a dialogue, one may arrive at a better understanding of not only John Dewey’s philosophy, but of Zen as well. If Zen is to have any kind of credence in the twenty-first century, then it is important to keep it in novel conversation with other philosophies. While Zen’s connection to Pragmatism is clear in Nishida Kitarō’s conception of “pure experience,” which he adopted from William James, Watsuji Tetsurō’s ningen model of selfhood also provides a parallel with John Dewey’s social individual. The aesthetic experience as outlined by John Dewey, and as illuminated by the Zen haiku poetry of Bashō and Buson, exemplifies the relationship shared among the individual and society. For both Zen and John Dewey, the act of living is done so socially and beautifully, and if one is living fruitfully, then the two are done so harmoniously.


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Notes

1. Here I am using the unconventional translation of dao, as translated by Ames and Hall in their philosophical translation of the Dao De Jing. It is important to note that dao does not merely indicate a noun meaning “the Way”, but rather denotes a way of acting, or becoming.

2. Dōgen’s concept of being-time (uji) especially elucidates this point. Uji not only represents the inseparability of beings and time, but also implies the notion of right-now (nikon), that is the urgency of the present, and the idea of ranging or flowing (keireki or kyōryaku), indicating that the present is not simply a static moment, but is a merging of past and future. While this concept of being-time has been compared to Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology Being and Time, I think it could also serve as an important point for comparison between Dōgen and John Dewey, particularly in his essay “Time and Individuality.”

3. William James himself relates the alternating flights and perches of a bird to the course of a conscious experience in his essay “The Stream of Consiousness” (178).

4. This shift is most likely influenced by the change in thought of his own sensei Sōseki Natsume, the leading novelist of modern Japan, who renounced Western individualism and criticized its influence on Japanese thought and lifestyle.


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Works Cited

Alexander, Thomas M. John Dewey's Theory of Art, Experience, and Nature: the Horizons of Feeling. Albany: State

University of New York, 1987. Print.

Ames, Van Meter. Zen and American Thought. Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 1962. Print.

Dewey, John. Art as Experience. New York: Capricorn, 1959. Print.

Dewey, John. The Essential Dewey. Ed. Larry Hickman and Thomas M. Alexander. Bloomington: Indiana UP,

1998. Print.

Dewey, John. The Moral Writings of John Dewey. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1994. Print.

Hass, Robert, Basho Matsuo, Buson Yosa, and Issa Kobayashi. The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and

Issa. Hopewell, NJ: Ecco, 1994. Print.

Odin, Steve. The Social Self in Zen and American Pragmatism. Albany: State University of New York, 1996. Print.

Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro. Zen and Japanese Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1970. Print.

Agnitio 43

An Interview with Fred Dretske

This year, Agnitio is proud to present an interview with philosopher Fred Dretske. The Duke University Senior Research Scholar has made notable contributions to the fields of epistemology and philosophy of mind. He is the author of the books Seeing and Knowing, Knowledge and the Flow of Information, Explaining Behavior, and Naturalizing the Mind, and a collection of his essays, Perception, Knowledge and Belief, was published in 2000. In 1994, Dretske received the Jean Nicod Prize awarded annually to a leading philosopher of mind. In what follows, Professor Dretske responds to a series of questions asked by the AgnitioEditorial Board.

1. How has neuroscience changed the way you approach philosophical questions? Is neuroscience a threat to the status quo of philosophy of mind? Is it a supplement?

Fred Dretske: If neuroscience--any science--were a threat to the philosophy of mind, then the philosophy of mind would be in deep trouble. Science isn’t infallible, of course, but given its self-corrective nature, it would be irrational to bet against it. So if one is going to do philosophy of mind, one has to keep abreast of current developments in those sciences (psychology and neuroscience are the two most obvious sciences) that describe human (and animal) operation and performance. When I got interested in visual perception (back in the 60’s when I was teaching in Madison, Wisconsin) I attended seminars in cognitive psychology and computer science (the topic was pattern recognition). When my interests shifted a bit (toward philosophy of mind) in the 70’s I felt the need to study information theory since this was (and remains) a widely used tool in cognitive science. In the last twenty years neuroscience has aroused philosophical interest because of its challenging results. One can’t do philosophy of mind and ignore these developments. So (to answer the question): No! Neuroscience has not changed the way I approach philosophical questions. What has changed is not whether to stay engaged with science, but which science to stay (most) engaged with. That usually depends in which philosophical problems one happens to be struggling with at the moment.

2. If you had to explain problems with the Descartes’s Cogito argument to an undergraduate in an introductory course, what would you say?


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FD: Most people don’t have problems with Descartes’s Cogito argument. I don’t either. I think the argument is valid and the premise is true for everyone who thinks it is true. The only question I think deserves some attention is whether (and if so, how) the premise is known to be true. How do people know they think?

I am sure the editors asked me this question because they know I hold peculiar (some call them crazy) views on this topic. I don’t believe you know you think in any way I can’t know it. You have no privileged, no exclusive, access to your own thoughts. You probably think you do. The reason you think you do, I submit, is that you are confusing what you think (to which you have special access) with your thinking it (to which you don’t). Why do I say this? Well, this gets to be a long story--too long, I’m afraid, to develop here--but I reached this conclusion by thinking about children who (around the age of three years) think, but do not yet realize they think. They do not yet understand what thinking is. They are, nonetheless, aware of what they think: that, for instance, Daddy is home or that the dog is on the couch. They do not know, however, that these are things they think. They must learn this from (or with the help of) others. Once one follows out this developmental process, I would argue (if I had the time), one arrives at the conclusion that although we are all authorities on what we think (that is why others ask us, they don’t tell us, what we think), we enjoy no special authority--Cartesian or otherwise--on the fact that we think it. About this Descartes was wrong.

3. What practical gains can be found (or recovered) from the study of epistemology and/or philosophy of mind?

FD: Unless you happen to be looking for a job teaching epistemology or philosophy of mind, I don’t know whether there are any practical gains in studying these topics. The fact (if it is a fact) that there are none didn’t stop me from going into philosophy (from engineering) many years ago. It didn’t stop me from doing philosophy for the last 45+ years. It doesn’t diminish the fascination of philosophy. So it is not a question I think much about. It is still a question, though, a question that presumably has an answer. I often hear that the study of philosophy trains the mind to think more critically about all manner of topics (not just philosophical topics). That may be so. I have no evidence that it is so. I once had a colleague who tried to acquire evidence on this matter by giving a diagnostic test to his students both before and after the course. It was designed to show whether their reasoning ability had improved. It came out negative. They hadn’t improved. That may only say something about the test (or maybe the professor).

4. What do you feel is the most misleading philosophical argument in your specific fields? Would philosophy progress if the argument was scourged from the face of the earth?

FD: I don’t know whether it is the most misleading, but I have encountered the following argument often enough to nominate it for a prize:

(A) It would be crazy (silly, nonsense, ridiculous, etc.) to say that P; therefore not-P.

Philosophers know that this is a dumb argument, but it keeps popping up anyway. We know (A) is fallacious because (Moore’s Paradox) although it would be silly to say it is raining but I


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don’t believe it is raining, what is said might nonetheless be true. The speaker might not believe it is raining when it is pouring rain. Another example: The refrigerator is empty, but it has lots of things in it. Even if this sounds silly (nonsensical, self-contradictory) it might be true. Can’t an empty refrigerator have lots of air molecules in it? As Paul Grice taught us, there are logical anomalies (things that can’t be true) and conversational anomalies (things one would never say). The above examples are probably innocent enough examples of (A), but there are more serious cases. I give just two examples from my own experience.

(a) Many years ago I advanced a claim about knowledge. I said that it was not closed under known implication. One could know that P is true, know that P implied Q, and still not know that Q is true. I have been criticized on the grounds that it would (I was told) be crazy (silly, absurd, etc.) to say that I know I have hands but don’t know I’m not a handless brain in a vat. Yes, I agree, that would be a silly thing to say. I can’t imagine a sane person saying it. What does that show? That it is false? No! There are all kinds of true things that it would be silly to assert. All kinds of true things that no sensible person would say.

(b) No sensible person would say I see a kumquat, but I don’t know what it is I see. Does this show a person cannot see a kumquat without knowing what it is? Of course not. I have nonetheless been told that the absurdity of saying things like this showed that perception (of kumquats and other objects) required knowledge of them (that seeing is knowing).

5. Is there necessarily an “explanatory gap” between any model of consciousness and what consciousness is? Is there one at the present? If yes, will it close in the near future?

FD: There is, at present, an explanatory gap. At least many philosophers think there is. Others (I’m not going to mention names) think there was a gap but they closed it. They just haven’t (yet) convinced others that they closed it. I happen to occupy a middle ground here. I think there is a promising approach to consciousness (it is called representationalism) that narrows the gap. It doesn’t quite close the gap. There are some stubborn residual problems that remain (the mind is a messy thing). Representationalism says that the character of your conscious experience is to be identified with the properties that your brain represents the world (including your own body) to have. Given the way representations work, this means that by misrepresenting the world (as a result of a blow to the head or drugs in the blood stream) one’s brain can generate conscious experiences of all kinds of strange things (color, shapes, movements, sounds, tastes, etc.) that do not exist in one’s material surroundings or, indeed, anywhere in the material world. There doesn’t have to be a real dagger for Macbethto have a conscious experience of a “dagger”. So materialists (like me) don’t need mind stuff to explain this puzzling kind of consciousness. They do, however, need a theory of representation that explains how brains acquired these impressive representational powers. I have my own theory about this, but there are a number of different ones for sale. Take your pick.

6. Are philosophers too hasty to assume that psychological abnormalities (such as change blindness, blind-sight, unilateral neglect and split brains) should change the status quo of philosophical thought? How have these abnormalities altered the way philosophers treat the core problems (if at all)?


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FD: They certainly changed the way I treat these problems. Forty years ago I talked about perception without bothering to mention that I meant to be talking about something that involved conscious experiences (of the things perceived). I just assumed that seeing X was a way--a visual way—of being conscious of X. Today I couldn’t do that. If (as blindsight shows) people can receive information about X through the eyes without being consciously aware of X, and this is to count (as it does for many scientists) as perception of X (when the information is usable in behaviorally relevant ways) then one has to carefully distinguish perception of X with awareness (of X) and perception of X without awareness (of X). One suddenly has two problems where before there was (or at least appeared to be) only one. One now has to say not only what it takes to perceive X (is this just getting information about X through the eyes?) and then--second problem--what it takes for that perception to be conscious. Maybe there were always two problems and one should have been smart enough to distinguish between them. I wasn’t.

7. Does self-knowledge require a tangible idea of what a self is? Would an eliminativist or a fictionalist account of selfhood change anything?

FD: I’m not sure what a “tangible” idea is (a clear and definite idea, I assume), but I don’t think self-knowledge requires much beyond the notion of a person and an understanding of the first-person pronoun “I.” Self-knowledge is simply knowledge of the person you are with the understanding, of course, that you know you are that person. It won’t do, for example, for me to know all about Fred Dretske (by reading his CV say) if I don’t know I am Fred Dretske. I would not count that as self-knowledge even though it is knowledge of the person I happen to be. I have to know that I am that person. I have to know that this is myCV.

When philosophers talk about self-knowledge they usually have in mind knowledge of mental affairs (that I’m thinking this or feeling that), not the fact that one has freckles or is flat broke. If an eliminativist is someone who doesn’t think there are any mental affairs (we don’t have minds, just brains and behavior), then, of course, there is no self-knowledge in this restricted sense. You can’t know you feel depressed if feelings don’t exist. This might look like the eliminativist has a snappy answer to questions about self-knowledge. There isn’t any. There isn’t any because there are no (mental) truths to be known. So much for psychology and commonsense.

Frankly, I don’t understand eliminativism (or fictionalism) about the mind. It seems to meDescartes got it right when he said it doesn’t make sense to doubt or deny that you (the doubter or denier) think if doubting and denying are (as they were for Descartes) forms of thinking.

8. What is your next project?

FD: At my age one doesn’t make long term plans. Short term plans, yes. I have to finish the piece (on introspective knowledge) I’m working on. It seems I have been working on this topic (if not this particular paper) for ten years. I am determined to get it exactly right this time. That is my next project.

duke agnitio spring 2011 issue

Documents

philosophy of science

undergraduate publication

notion of progress

nature of truth

correspondence theory

problematic concept

clever animals

human serpents