Some good books

(Cambridge: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1993)

A lucid and concise account of one philosopher's view of what's going on in Philosophy Departments when their members turn their hand to questions of Ethics. Very readable and yet thought-provoking.

The trouble with [P]hilosophy, some say, is that it isn't Science; if it were more like Science it would solve its soluble problems and dissolve or discard the rest. The trouble with [P]hilosophy, others say, is that is has tried to be "scientific" about matters that can only be dealt with through Art … The trouble with philosophy, I think, is that it is much harder than it looks to either Scientists or Artists, for it shares - and must share - the aspirations and methods of both. (p. 3)

Science often seems to be on the verge of telling us too much, of opening Pandora's Box and revealing some Dread Secret or other; as soon as we hear it, it will paralyze us by shattering some illusion that is absolutely necessary for the maintenance of our lives as agents. Our own rationality will undo us, because once we've seen the truth, we will be unable to deceive ourselves any longer. (p. 14)

[Philosophy] is for enlarging our vision of the possible, for breaking bad habits of thought. (p. 18)

An assault upon the fear tactics of philosophers regarding the question of free will; great fun. Concludes with a consideration of how what Dennett calls 'intuition pumps' have defined the greater part of Philosophy all along.

Though a great deal of effort has been expended on them recently, definitions of knowledge cannot help us here. The central problem of epistemology is the first-person problem of what to believe and how to justify one's beliefs—not the impersonal problem of whether, given my beliefs together with some assumptions about their relation to what is actually the case, I can be said to have knowledge. Answering the question of what knowledge is will not help me decide what to believe. (p. 69)

Some may be tempted to offer or at least to imagine an evolutionary explanation, as is customary these days for everything under the sun. Evolutionary hand waving is an example of the tendency to take a theory which has been successfully applied in one domain and apply it to anything else you can't understand—not even to apply it, but vaguely to imagine such an application. It is also an example of the pervasive and reductive naturalism of our culture. 'Survival value' is now invoked to account for everything from ethics to language. (p. 78)

Like other basic philosophical problems, the problem of free will is not in the first instance verbal. It is not a problem about what we are to say about action, responsibility, what someone could or could not have done, and so forth. It is rather a bafflement of our feelings and attitudes—a loss of confidence, conviction or equilibrium. Just as the basic problem of epistemology is not whether we can be said to know things, but lies rather in the loss of belief and the invasion of doubt, so the problem of free will lies in the erosion of interpersonal attitudes and of the sense of autonomy. Questions about what we are to say about action and responsibility merely attempt after the fact to express those feelings—feelings of impotence, of imbalance, and of affective detachment from other people. (p. 112)