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Prolegomena
to philosophy
Prolegomena
to philosophy

Jon Wheatley

University of California, Santa Barbara

Wadsworth Publishing Company, Inc.

Belmont, California
© 1970 by Wadsworth Publishing Company, Inc., Belmont, California 94002. All rights
reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transcribed, any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
in

recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

L C. Cat.Card No.: 75-122637

Printed in the United States of America

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Dedication

Professor John Austin was a great philosopher and also a great teacher of philos-
ophy. I have learned more philosophy from his writings than I have from the writings
of any other philosopher. More important, however, was what I picked up from his
work about the teaching of philosophy. I now have many of his attitudes: I believe
that teaching philosophy is central to doing philosophy, quite as much as I believe
that doing philosophy constantly is a necessary condition for teaching it well. I also
believe, with Austin, that teaching philosophy must consist principally in actively
aiding the student to do some good philosophical thinking on his own; and that the
best way to achieve this is by giving him verbal and conceptual exercises not neces-
sarily of great consequence in themselves but potentially of immense importance.
This book is organized around these ideas. It seems only appropriate, therefore, to
dedicate it to the late Professor Austin.
 Preface

The standard introductory philosophy course consists in the critical exposition of

some historical texts. It is difficult to plan an introductory course in any other way.
Yet, in such a course, philosophy tends to get lost in favor of intellectual history.
This book is designed to remedy that fault. It contains descriptions and (more im-

portant) exemplifications of what philosophy is, what philosophers do, and what
different ways there are of looking at philosophy. It also includes detailed instructions
on how to write a philosophy paper and on how to read philosophy. These matters
of detail are not easily covered in lectures, yet they are so important that not to under-
stand them is not to understand anything of philosophy. Thus, this book is designed
to be used in addition to the usual classical texts in a standard introductory philos-
ophy course. Alternatively, in a course devoted to philosophical problems, this book
could be used as the principal text. In either sort of course, students could, and
probably should, read much of the book on their own, though there is no reason why
discussion sections should not be organized around parts of it.

This book is one does not achieve profundity by being orotund.

written informally;
I address the reader directly to avoid barbarisms like "The student will readily
see .
." There is, by intention at least, no padding; one does not achieve profundity
. .

by being prolix. Because the book is not padded, one light reading is insufficient.
However, since the lack of padding keeps the book short, this is not too grave a dis-
advantage. also try to do something rather dangerous: try to communicate some
I I

of the enjoyment find in doing philosophy to the reader. Philosophy,

I must insist, I

is exciting and fun as well as serious and difficult.

VII
I try very hard not to oversimplify. Matters that are difficult in fact are difficult in this

book. In my opinion, there is no excuse for telling students what is not true because
telling the truth is too hard for them. If students are not to face things which are hard
by the time they reach the university, then they never will face them. But I do try to
be clear.

In every book, and for that matter in every course, something gets left out. The al-

ternative—writing a book which covers everything — is even worse than leaving some-
thing out. In this book, what gets left out are the historical origins of what is discussed
(Ido something to remedy this in Chapter Four). am neither unappreciative I of the
way twentieth century philosophy grew out of the past nor am uninterested I in the
historical perspective. It is simply a matter of leaving something out, and considering
the present state of the textbook market in this country, history seemed to me the
most dispensible item. Approaching the ideas presented here just as they stand does
not deny their historical development. Also, being a philosopher rather than an his-
torian of ideas, I obviously favour ideas over history.

The five parts of this book are, in the main, independent and can be read in any order.
Part One is a sustained philosophical argument on the nature of conceptual inquiry
which culminates in Chapters Four and Five. Similarly, Part Two consists in a con-
tinuing argument on the nature of language which culminates in Chapter Eight. Part
Three is workaday instruction in reading philosophy. Part Four is a piece of philo-
sophical investigation rewritten from its original journal form so that it requires no
philosophical background other than that provided in the previous three parts. I

am not sure quite how to characterize Part Five, which is a glossary of current philo-
sophical terminology. However, writing the glossary was far too much work for it
to be a simple recital of some things know just because am a philosopher. The
I I

appendixes to some chapters contain either the answers to exercises or material

which, though not necessary for a full understanding of the book, complements the
main text. Some of the appendixes, for instance those on semantic theory, are really
quite hard and should provide the especially bright student with some gristle to
chew on.

My thanks to Professors D. R. Anderson of Los Angeles Pierce College, C. L. Reid of

Youngstown University, Robert Paul Shuler of El Camino College, and especially
Avrum Stroll of the University of California, San Diego, for their valuable criticism in
reviewing the manuscript.

VIII
I invite comment, criticism, and suggestions, especially from students, and par-
ticularly when the criticism is that am not clear. The address below will get me.
I

Jon Wheatley
University of California
Santa Barbara

IX
Contents

Part one The nature

of philosophy

1. Philosophy seen as a set of puzzles 5

2. Philosophy seen as argument 17
3. Philosophy seen as the analysis of language 33
4. Synthesis 41
5. Philosophy seen as a personal commitment 45

Part two How to write

a philosophy paper 55

6. Manifesto 57
7. Meaning and definition 61
8. Asking for the use 71
9. Some common philosophical errors 79

Part three How to read

philosophy 85

10. Descartes' argument about material objects 87

11. Ayer and logical positivism 99
12. Hare on naturalism 107

XI
Part four A longer piece
of philosophy 115

13. Reasons for acting and justifications 117

Part five Modern

philosophical usage 137

14. Glossary 139

Bibliography 153

Index 155

XII
Prolegomena
to philosophy
Part one The nature of philosophy

Like any well-established discipline, philosophy defies precise definition. However,

what philosophy is does not have to remain in obscurity. There are, first of all, two
generalizations which can be fairly made about philosophy. First, philosophy is not a
body of knowledge which has to be learned but a discipline which must be mastered.
Learning philosophy is not primarily learning a set of facts but learning to handle
facts and ideas in appropriate sorts of ways. Second, the prime component of the
discipline of philosophy is simply hard thinking. To put it rather fancifully, philosophy
isnaked intelligence grappling with the riddles of life. Though these generalizations
are the only simple and straightforward facts which can be stated about the nature of
philosophy, they do not cover philosophy adequately. Here the difficulties of at-
tempting to give a precise definition arise. Part One is devoted to exploring those
aspects of philosophy which defy simple statement.

There are a good many ways to delimit the full nature of philosophy. For instance, one
could trace the history of philosophy from its earliest beginnings to the present day;
such a process would, if carefully followed, reveal the highly complex nature of
philosophy. It would also be very long and probably rather dull. have chosen a differ-
I

ent course. Philosophy can be seen under a number of guises. It can be seen as a set
of intellectual puzzles, as argument, as analysis, and so on. All these are legitimate
views of philosophy, and all have been held by some prominent philosophers. Of
course, all are partial views and do not encompass the whole of philosophy. But,
by presenting each view in turn, a composite picture of philosophy as a whole can be
built up. This procedure will be followed in Part One.

Thus, each of the following chapters presents a special view of philosophy. I have
indicated that each of these views is a special view by speaking of philosophy seen

as, or looked argument, analysis, and so on. Once we have worked through
at as,

these various views of philosophy, we can gather them together into some sort of
coherent overview. This is attempted in Chapter Four.

Again, philosophy is not a body of facts but a discipline; this much must be remem-
bered. Thus, in presenting philosophy as a set of puzzles, argument, or whatever, I

have always tried to involve you in doing philosophy in the sort of way that is being
discussed. Indeed, if you follow the instructions, you cannot help but be involved.
There is constant suggestion, pressure and instruction to get you to try to do some
piece of philosophy yourselves. Doing philosophy is completely necessary to under-
standing the nature of philosophy. It will not by any means be easy; but, with luck, you
may well find it fun.
Chapter one Philosophy seen
as a set of puzzles

Almost every intellectual discipline arises out of puzzlement and so can be seen as
the endeavor to solve a set of puzzles. Usually, intellectual puzzles are solved by some
clever theorizing and collecting new data. In philosophy we rarely gather new data.
Philosophical puzzles are more like parlor-game puzzles. We have all the relevant
facts, but we just find it very hard to manipulate them in the right way. We lack not
facts but thought. More specifically, we lack the right sort of thought.

Philosophy, then, can be seen as an endeavor to solve a set of puzzles which are in

some ways similar to parlor-game puzzles. This means that some of the techniques
used in solving parlor-game puzzles can be valuable techniques for solving philo-
sophical puzzles and that such puzzles can, with luck, lead us to interesting and im-
portant philosophical points and techniques. We will start with some parlor-game
puzzles but move quickly into more philosophical puzzles. To do this is in no sense
a joke or just a piece of fun. Your training in the discipline of philosophy starts in

the next paragraph.

There is one primary rule in solving puzzles, philosophical or otherwise: shed, or

refrainfrom making, assumptions about the problem which are not warranted by
the data given. Here is an example. Consider this puzzle: Take 6 matches of equal
length and form 4 triangles, all of which are equal in area. One tends to assume that
the triangles must be formed in just two dimensions (that is, on a flat surface) and
tries moving the matches round in this sort of configuration:
There is no way to solve the puzzle by trying to form the triangles in just two dimen-
sions. But why would they have to be formed in only two dimensions? Certainly,
there is no mention of limiting one to two dimensions in the statement of the puzzle.

The solution lies in building a pyramid in three dimensions where the four sides are
all triangles equal in area:

This point is up in the air

Why does one tend to assume that the triangles must be formed in two dimensions?
Whatever the answer to that question, it is certain that one should not make that
assumption. Solving puzzles, certainly philosophical puzzles, often involves a con-
scious process of throwing off assumptions.

Below I discuss two puzzles in detail. The first is a pure game-puzzle, though one
small but interesting philosophical point comes out of it. The second is a genuine,
if simple, philosophical puzzle. There are no tricks about these puzzles; they can
be solved by hard thinking; and there is no doubt whatever that the solution, once
understood, is the right one. That is the way it is, ideally at least, with philosophical
puzzles.

Puzzle I

Jones, the sole survivor of a shipwreck, is drifting in a small boat. He ap-

 proaches an island. He knows that on this island there are only two tribes of
natives: the first tribe, called the Nobles, always tells the truth; the second
tribe, called the Savages, always lies. make con-
Jones, of course, wants to
tact with the Nobles. So when he drifts close to the shore and sees a man
standing there, he calls out, "Are you a Noble or a Savage?" The man
answers the question but a wave breaks on the beach at just that moment
and Jones does not hear what he says. The boat drifts further down the
beach to where another man is standing on the shore. Jones asks the same
question of him. This time he hears the reply. The second man points at the
first man and "He said he was a Noble." Then he says, "I'm a Noble."
says,
The boat drifts further down the shore where a third man is standing, and
Jones asks the same question of him. This man points down the beach at the
other two men and says, "They are both liars; am a Noble and they are I

Savages." The puzzle is this: Is the data given sufficient to tell us any man's
tribe? Is it sufficient to tell us each man's tribe?

The point about this puzzle is that there is in the facts given sufficient information
to work logically through to the correct solution. Guesses, however good, are of no
value. The answer, just by itself, is of no value. What is of value is working through
the problem in a logical way. I give the solution below, but you should try to solve the
problem for yourself before reading the solution. In addition, I divide the solution into
numbered parts. Stop after each part and see if you can go on by yourself.

The solution
A. First of all, one must get absolutely clear about the problem. Like many
puzzles, the situation described is highly artificial, though that does not
matter for our present purposes. The point is that Nobles always tell the
truthand Savages always lie. So once one knows whether a given man is a
Noble or a Savage, one knows not only whether he speaks the truth but also
what is (at least a portion of) the truth. For notice, if a Savage says "I am ten
years old," we know one thing for sure: he is not ten years old. So whether
we are speaking to Nobles or to Savages we never have any trouble knowing
what to believe as long as we know whether they are Nobles or Savages.
Furthermore there are certain things that members of these tribes would
never say. For instance, a Noble would never say he was a Savage because
he never lies; and a Savage would never say he was a Savage because that
would be the truth and Savages always lie.

Coming back to the problem: though Jones does not hear the first man's
answer, he still knows what thatanswer was. What was it? Try to work it
out before going on to the next part of the solution.
 B. The first man must have said he was a Noble. For if he had been a Savage,
he would have lied and said he was a Noble; and if he had been a Noble he
would of course have told the truth and said he was a Noble. Now, because
the other speakers refer to the first man's speech, we have what appears
to be a way to work out whether they are Nobles or Savages. Go ahead, work
it out.

C. The first man

said he was a Noble, and the second man said that the first
man was a Noble. Thus, the second man is telling the truth; therefore,
said he
he must be a Noble. So we have solved one little bit of the problem. The rest
of it will yield to the same sort of working.

D. The second man is a Noble and tells the truth. The third man says that the
two men are both liars. We know this to be untrue because we know the
first

second man is not a liar. So the third man must be lying; he must, therefore,
be a Savage.

E. We now know that the second man is a Noble and the third man is a
Savage. At this point there is an easy mistake to make. When the third man,
whom we know to be a liar, says of the first two men "They're both liars,"

we might suppose that this implies they are both truth-tellers. This supposi-
tion, in turn, would imply that the first man was a truth-teller; that is, a Noble.
But this would be wrong. If we know that "They are both liars'' is false, then
all we know to be true is liars. Let me write that again
that they are not both
with emphasis added. we know is that they are not both liars. is quite
All It

compatible with what we know that one should be a liar and the other not a
liar. So from the statement "They're both liars," which we know to be false,

and the fact that the second man is not a liar, which we also know, we cannot
deduce that the first man is a Savage (or, for that matter, a Noble). Nor will
we be able to deduce from what else the third man says: "They are both
it

Savages" in the mouth

Savage does not tell us that they are both Nobles.
of a
It tells us only that at least one of them is a Noble. Nor do the second man's

statements help. Thus, with the data given, we cannot tell which tribe the
first man belongs to.

This, then, is the solution to the problem: we do not know what tribe the
first man belongs to; the second man is a Noble; the third man is a Savage.

For the present, I would like way we went about solving this puzzle
you to think of the
as an example of the sort of thing we do when we do philosophy. Notice that there is
no phony psychologizing and no talk about probabilities; we are interested in what

8
comes out of the data by a strict process of rational enquiry. Notice also that there
is a small but important philosophical point in Part E of the solution. I said there that
to know that the statement They are both liars" is false is not to know (does not
imply) that neither is a liar. Put into more philosophical jargon, if we have two state-
ments, p and q, then knowing that p and q (taken as one compound statement) is
false does not imply that p is false and in addition that q is false.

An alternative method of solution

There is another way we could have gone at this problem. Although more
laborious, it will bring the same results. This method consists in making a
table in which all possible tribal-values are assigned to the three men and
then in eliminating those combinations which contradict the data we have.
Here is the table:

First Man Second Man Third Man

1 S N N
2 S N S
3 S S N
4 S S S
5 N N N
6 N N S
7 N S N
8 N s S

This exhausts all conceivable combinations of tribal-values. We must now

note, as did before, that the first man must have said
we "I am a Noble and
that the second man correctly reports that he said it. Therefore we can
eliminate immediately any row which makes the second man other than a
Noble: that is. we can eliminate rows 3. 4. 7. 8. Then we must note that the
third man says "They're both liars, which we know to be a lie because we
already know the second man tells the truth. Therefore the third man must
be a Savage and we can eliminate any rows in which he appears as a Noble:
that is. we can eliminate rows 1. 3. 5. 7. That leaves us with the following
two rows uneliminated:

First Man Second Man Third Man

2 S N S
6 N N S

This gives us the solution to the problem because the two rows tell us that
the second man must be a Noble (for there is nothing but Ns under him)
 and that the third man must be a Savage (for there is nothing but Ss under
him) but that the man may be either a Savage or a Noble (that is, we do
first

not know what he is).

Making an exhaustive table is a completely general way of solving certain sorts of

problems. When we
have a number of things which can have a certain limited number
of mutually exclusive properties, then we can proceed to make an exhaustive table
as we did above to see which parts of it are eliminated by the data that we have.

It is important to realize that both methods involve the same sort of process. In both
methods the same questions are asked and the same kind of thinking takes place.
But you should notice that a table, such as this one, can only make a puzzle clearer;
it cannot solve the problem by itself.

Often the way to solve a puzzle, whether a philosophical puzzle or not, is to think
about it in a way different than comes naturally. One should try to go back to the be-
ginning, to see just what one
and nothing more, to think through using only
is told
the data given, and to leave behind the background of beliefs we all tend to carry
with us to problems. For instance, here is a problem which is very simple and yet
quite puzzling:

Puzzle II

A school teacher how to do addition in the follow-

regularly teaches her class
ing way. She has beans
a stock of driedsent to her by the School Board. She
then makes two piles of beans and has students count the number of beans
in each pile. Then she puts all the beans into one pile and has the students

count the beans in that pile. The total they get from the last count equals the
sum of the previous two counts. But one day a hitch occurs in her teaching
when she gets a new supply of beans from the School Board: Every time
she makes a pile of (say) 5 beans and another of (say) 6 beans, she finds that
when she puts these two piles together into one pile, there are always 12
beans. She gets similar results with other quantities of beans. What should
she do about it? Decide that arithmetic is all wrong? Go and see her doctor?
Teach something different? Start teaching that 5 + 6 = 12?

The solution
The answer to this puzzle is quite simple, and it is not saying that what is

described could never happen (of course it could; science is perpetually

10
 throwing up oddities greater than this). Nor is the answer that arithmetic
has been proved wrong; arithmetic is completely independent of howthings
happen in the world except in so far as it is useful that the results of physical
manipulation with beans coincides with the results of arithmetic. What the
school teacher should do is write to the School Board and say, "These beans
are no good for teaching arithmetic."

You may think that this solution to the puzzle is a joke. But it is not a joke. It is, just
and simply, the right answer. Yet, somehow this answer was not obvious when
plainly
one was thinking about the problem. That, often, is the way it is in seeing through a
philosophical perplexity.

Seeing that this is the right answer, not just having made a lucky guess, involves two
things: An important, if not very difficult, insight into the nature of mathematical
statements; and seeing how, with luck, solving a puzzle can establish a philosophical
point.

Exercises
Here are five more puzzles. Outline solutions to two of them are provided in the
Appendix. It is crucial that you try to solve the puzzles for yourself before you consult
the Appendix. You should remember that there is no value whatever to just under-
standing the solutions. The only point of giving these puzzles is to have you work
them out for yourself.

1. A game is played with any coins which are legal tender in the country in which you

live and any rectangular table or board. The game is played as follows: coins are
placed flat on the table; any coin is considered to be on the table, even if it hangs
over the edge, so long as it remains unsupported and horizontal on the tabletop; in
placing a coin, no previously placed coin may be moved. Winning the game consists
in being the last player to be able to place a coin on the table without moving the

other coins. The problem is this: What strategy should the person who goes first
follow to guarantee that he will win? There will be two parts to the answer: How he
will place his first coin; and what general procedure he will follow in placing all sub-

sequent coins.

What is needed here some general and vague injunction but entirely precise
is not
instructions as to how
proceed in placing the coins; you need not worry whether
to
(for reasons of visual judgment, say) these instructions would be hard to follow with

11
 (as would be necessary) complete accuracy. Here is a hint: Think first of what strategy
you would use if the board were a very thin plank, thinner even than the diameter of
any one coin. Then see how this helps you with the larger problem.

2. There was once a beautiful princess and three equally eligible suitors for her hand
in marriage. The king
was extremely worried about which suitor should be chosen for
his daughter so he decided on a three-way duel. The three young men, A, B, and C,
were not all equally good shots: A never missed: B would hit 4 times out of 5; and C
would hit only 3 times out of 5. The king therefore set up the duel this way:

• A «B

•C

Each man stood an equal distance from the other two. They were then to fire in turn.
Because C was the worst shot, he was to fire first: B was to fire second; A was to fire
last; and they were to continue firing in that order until only one man was left on his

feet. Obviously, from their positioning, any of the three could fire at either of the other

two, as he judged best.

The Princess was not indifferent to the outcome of the duel. In fact, she had been
foolish enough to fall love with C, the worst shot of the three. But she was also
in

a very clever princess. The night before the duel she did not sleep at all but sat up
puzzling about the way her lover should proceed to give him the best chance of
winning. By morning she had the solution and wrote it in a note to C. The puzzle
is this: What did she write in that note? That is. how should C proceed at the duel

to give himself the best chance of winning?

3. Here is a puzzle of a more definitely philosophical nature. In fact, the puzzle is a

simpler version of a problem that arose just after the turn of the century in work on
the foundations of mathematics.

First, we define the two new terms heterological and homological as follows: The
terms are adjectives and are defined only as they modify the word "word." A homo-
logical word is defined as a word which applies to itself. Thus, the word "word" is

homological because it applies to itself (that is, it is correct to say of the word "word"
that it is a word). Also, the word "short" is homological (because "short" is a short
word). A heterological word is defined as a word that is not homological; that is, a

12

j
word which does not apply to itself, such as "day" (the word "day" is not itself a
day) and "red" (the word "red" is not itself red).

The puzzle arises with this question: word "heterological" a heterological or

Is the
a homological word? The difficulties arise in this way: "Heterological" must itself be
either homological or heterological because clearly any word must either apply to
itself or not apply to itself. Let us suppose that it is homological. Then, by the defini-

tion of "homological," it must apply to itself. That is, it must be correct to say of the
word "heterological" that it applies to itself. But that just means that "heterological"
is heterological. So the assumption that "heterological" is homological leads to the

conclusion that it is heterological. Thus, one thing seems clear: The word cannot be
homological. Presumably, then, it is heterological. But if the word "heterological" is
heterological, then clearly it applies to itself and is thus, by definition, homological.
So now the assumption that "heterological" is heterological leads to the conclusion
that it is homological. Thus, one thing seems clear: The word cannot be heterological.
So we come to the conclusion that "heterological" is itself neither heterological nor
homological. However, because of the way the original definitions were framed (that
"heterological" just means not homological), this seems to be impossible.

One way in which this puzzle is important and not just trivial wordplay is worth giving.
What has happened here is a couple of completely inoffensive technical terms have
been defined which, when manipulated a little, produce what appears to be an in-
coherence. Quite a seemingly inoffensive definitions are framed all the time in
lot of

the sciences and mathematics and form part of important theories and calculation.
If there are ways which this process can go wrong so that making no known il-
in

legitimate moves, one ends up talking nonsense, we should know about them. Solv-
ing this puzzle, and similar ones, is the sort of way we investigate these matters.

4. This puzzle is alsomore philosophically important than some of the other puzzles
and for much the same sort of reasons as the previous puzzle. Again, an apparently
innocent use of language lands us in a paradox.

A school teacher announces to her class that there will be a surprise test during the
following week. She specifies that by a "surprise test" she means one which no one
could reasonably predict while walking to school. Immediately, one of her brighter
students claims that she has contradicted herself. He offers this argument: The sur-
on Friday, for if there has been no test up until Friday,
prise test could not take place
then from that fact and the knowledge that there will be a test any student could
predict while walking to school that he was going to be given the test on Friday. So
the test must take place between Monday and Thursday. But the same argument

13
works for Thursday. on Thursday morning, any student could deduce from
That is,

the facts that there can be no surprise test on Friday, and that there will be a test, and

as it is Thursday the correct prediction is that the test will be given that day. Clearly
the argument can be extended to show that the test cannot be given on Wednesday,
Tuesday, or Monday. The conclusion is that the test cannot be given at all. The
teacher heard this objection out and then gave the test on the following Tuesday,
surprising, in the required sense, everyone.

The puzzle here is to see what has gone wrong with the argument. Clearly the teacher

can give the surprise test. How is it the case, then, that an apparently impeccable
argument can produce the conclusion that no surprise test is possible? Again there
is a clear intellectual problem here, for in the sciences, mathematics, and philosophy
arguments are used all the time and we must have some way of detecting when these
arguments are going to lead us astray.

5. end with a very short traditional puzzle. No solution is provided in the Appendix.
I

It can be statedin one simple sentence. If there is an all powerful and benevolent

God, how could He allow there to be evil in the world? The traditional solutions to
this problem are to say that there is no God, or that there is no evil (all the apparent
evil is only an illusion), or that the existence of evil is necessary to bring out the best
qualities in man. All these solutions have clear difficulties about them; so the problem
stands.

Appendix to chapter one

This Appendix gives outline answers to the puzzles in the Exercises.

1. Consider the diagram as the board. Its lines of symmetry are marked (a line of
symmetry is simply a line along which, if a fold were made, the board would exactly

cover itself). To win, you should place the first coin at the intersection of the lines of

14
symmetry. Thereafter, every time your opponent places a coin, you should place a
coin of the same size at the exactly corresponding spot, with respect to the lines of
symmetry, in the opposite quarter of the board (see diagram). This guarantees that
whenever your opponent can find a spot to place his coin, there will always be a cor-
responding spot for you to place a coin. Consequently, you will be able to place the
last coin and thus win the game.

2. The princess tells her lover to shoot into the air. For consider, if he shoots first at

A, he either hits or misses. If he misses, that is equivalent to shooting in the air. If

he hits, then he offers B a free shot at him before he gets a shot at B. If he shoots
first at same holds. If he hits, he gives A a free shot at him. But if he fires into
B, the
the he guarantees that B will fire at A and that, if B misses, A will fire at B. That
air,

leaves him so far without having been shot at by anyone and with a free shot at the
only man left standing. This does not guarantee he will get the Princess, of course,
but it gives him his best chance, which was what was asked for.

3. Being a real philosophical puzzle, this one is harder to solve. A very nice solution
is given in an article by Gilbert Ryle called "Heterologicality" published in Analysis,
a philosophical journal, in 1951. It has been reprinted in Philosophy and Analysis
(Blackwells, 1961).

4. Again, I attempt no short solution here. There is an article you might care to read
giving what is now a widely accepted solution. The article is "On a So-Called Para-

dox" by W. V. Quine and was published in another philosophical journal, called Mind,
in 1953.

15
Chapter two Philosophy seen
as argument

Though it is undoubtedly an exaggeration to say that philosophy is nothing but argu-

ment, it is true that argument is crucial to philosophy, as, indeed, it is to every in-
was one who propounded arguments
tellectual discipline. Historically, a philosopher
which led to some Whether the conclusions were taken seri-
definite conclusions.
ously depended on the quality of the arguments. Thus, assessment of arguments is
also of great importance to philosophy. We will discuss both arguments and their
assessment in this chapter.

The word "argument" is used in a variety of ways, but in this chapter we will be con-
cerned only with its most precise and technical sense:

An argument is a group of statements in which it is claimed that one (or

sometimes more) statements follow necessarily from the other statements.

Here is a (very simple) example:

1. Any plumber could do the job.

2. Jones is a plumber.

3. Therefore, Jones could do the job.

What makes this set of statements an argument, as opposed to just a set of state-
ments, is the claim that the last statement follows from the previous two statements.
It is usual to call the statement which is said to follow from the others the conclusion

17
to theargument and the statements from which it follows the premises of the argu-
ment. Sometimes, in more complicated arguments, the conclusion to one argument
becomes a premise in a further argument.

1. All men are mortal.

2. Jones is a man.

3. Therefore, Jones is mortal.

4. Anyone who is mortal will one day die.

5. Therefore, Jones will one day die.

Statement 3 is the conclusion to the argument comprising statements 1 to 3. State-

ment 5 is the conclusion to the argument comprising statements 1 to 5. In this second
argument, statement 3 is a premise.

An argument, as we have seen, involves the claim that one statement necessarily
follows from some other statement; an argument is said to be valid when this claim
is correct. This statement appears to give a straightforward account of the notion
of validity. Unfortunately, the statement has within it something just as obscure,
namely, the notion of follows from. To get around that difficulty, we must define
"valid" without using "follows from." There is nothing in the notion of a valid argu-
ment that requires that either the premises or the conclusion of a valid argument
be true; but there is a connection between truth and validity. We use that connection to
define validity:

An argument is valid when, if the premises to the argument were true, the
conclusion would have to be true.

I spend the next several pages drawing out the consequences of this definition.
shall
However, before going on to that, here is a more informal statement of what is in-
volved in the notion of validity.

Suppose we have an argument and we wish to know whether or not it is

valid.We must ask ourselves: If the premises to this argument were true,
would that force the conclusion, would the conclusion then have to be true?
If we can correctly answer that question with "yes," then the argument is

valid.

Notice that there is no requirement in a valid argument that the premises must be

18
true. There is only the requirement in a valid argument that /'/"the premises were true,
then the conclusion would have to be true, would be forced. Take this very simple
argument as an example:

1. Jones and Smith are both fools.

2. Therefore, Smith is a fool.

If the first statement is true, then the second must be true; there The is no way out.
very conditions that would make the first statement true would also make the second
statement true. This is no matter of probabilities: it is a matter of logical necessity.
Any valid argument, however complex, has this forcing quality.

It is important to remember that the definition of validity does not say that the prem-
ises to a validargument are true. Indeed, it is easy to invent arguments where the
premises are false and the argument valid:

1. All cats speak fluent French.

2. Felix is a cat.

3. Therefore, Felix speaks fluent French.

That argument is completely valid, though statement 1 is certainly false. Of course,

with a valid argument which has one or more false premises, it is not necessarily the
case that the conclusion is true. You should notice that this property is encompassed
within the definition.

If we have an argument where all the statements are true, does not follow that the
it

argument is valid. Again, it is easy to invent an example of this sort of argument:

1. The sun is about 93 million miles from the earth.

2. Water boils at 100° centigrade.

3. Therefore, some men can run a mile in four minutes.

All the numbered statements are true, but they do not comprise a valid argument
because the truth of 1 and 2 does not force the truth of 3. One way to look at it is this:

Everything in those three lines is right except the word "therefore." Invalidity in argu-
ments comes about when something which is said to follow from something else
does not, in fact, follow.

19
The preceding example is an obvious case of an invalid argument containing only
true statements. Here is a more deceptive example:

1. All mammals suckle their young.

2. Whales suckle their young.

3. Therefore, whales are mammals.

This argument is invalid. From the data given in the argument, it does not have to
follow that because whales do suckle their young, they are mammals, although that
conclusion is presented as if it does follow from the premises. The argument simply
says that everything which is a mammal also something which suckles
its young;
is

in other words, mammals fallwhich suckle their young. And

into the class of things
that everything which is a whale is also something which suckles its young; in other
words, whales fall into the class of things which suckle their young. But the argu-
ment does not say that there are nor things which suckle their young and are not
mammals or that those things could not be whales. Therefore, it does nor have to
follow that whales are mammals.

Seeing exactly what going on in the sort of way required to understand this
is last

example is one of the prime requisites for doing philosophy. For that matter, it is a
prime requisite for any intellectual endeavor.

If we have a valid argument in which the conclusion is true, it does not follow that the
premises are true. Again, it is easy to think of an example:

1. Every elephant has three livers.

2. Any three-livered animal has a long trunk.

3. Therefore, every elephant has a long trunk.

The argument is valid, the conclusion is true, yet both premises are false.

All have brought out here are consequences of the

the properties of valid arguments I

definition given. You have not understood the examples if you have not seen these
properties as consequences of the definition.

There is a further property of validity which is more complicated than those so far

considered. It is also very important:

20
 Ifan argument is valid and the conclusion is false, then one or more of the
premises must be false.

As with the previous properties, this is a completely necessary consequence of the

definition of validity, as can easily be seen. Consider an argument (call it A) which
fulfills the above conditions; that is, A is a valid argument and its conclusion is false.

Because A is valid, if the premises were true, the conclusion would have to be true.
But the conclusion is not true. Thus, one (or more) of the premises must be false.

This reasoning can itself be set out as an argument with numbered statements:

1. A is a valid argument.

2. Therefore, if the premises of A were true, the conclusion would have to be

true.

3. But the conclusion is false.

4. Therefore, one or more of the premises is false.

The point can be put even more simply. If true premises force a true conclusion (as,
in a valid argument, they do), a false conclusion involves at least one false premise.

This property of arguments is showing some philosophical

a very useful tool for
positions to be false. Of course, does not have to be used only to show positions
it

false. We can show a position to be true by showing its negation to be false. (This is

explained in the Appendix to this chapter.) It works in this way. Suppose we have a
statement (call it S) which we want to prove false. If using S as a premise (and per-
haps other premises which are known to be true) we can construct a valid argument
leading to a false conclusion, then we have shown S to be false. This is a very com-
mon sort of argumentative technique we all use every day. Here is an example:

Suppose we wish to show that the statement "All swans are white" is false.
We find a swan which is black (there are black swans in Australia). From "All
swans are white" and "This animal is a swan," it follows validly that this
animal is white. But that is false. So (if the animal really is a swan) the state-
ment that all swans are white has been shown to be false.

Argument-forms
Inmost of the examples of arguments so far given, the premises and the conclusion
have been completely explicit statements. However, we can have valid argument-

21
 forms which do not contain explicit statements. In an argument-form the premises
and the conclusion contain variables as well as words, while an argument does not
contain variables. The point about a valid argument-form containing variables is that
any words or phrases which make sense can be substituted for the variables to pro-
duce a valid argument. Thus, in the valid argument-form,

1. Any A will B.

2. X is an A.

3. Therefore, X will B.

any substitution for A, B, and X will produce a valid argument so long as the substi-
tutions make sense. For instance, put A= girl, B = do, X = Anne. Then we have,

1. Any girl will do.

2. Anne is a girl.

3. Therefore, Anne will do.

As an exercise, put A = professional soldier, B = kill for his country, and X = Harry.

Argument-forms are a powerful tool in philosophy because they are so very general.
However, they can also be highly deceptive. At first glance, for instance, one might
suppose that the following is a valid argument-form:

1. A is B.

2. B is C.

3. Therefore, A is C.

But it is not. Consider this, which is an argument of just that form:

1. God is love.

2. Love is blind.

3. Therefore, God is blind.

This argument is not valid. (The verb "to be" is not as simple in its functioning as one
supposes at first glance.) This example illustrates how we show some argument-
forms to be invalid. That is, when we can show that an argument which is an instance

22
j
 .

of the given argument-form is invalid, we have thereby shown that the argument-
form itself is invalid.

It has been said that every valid argument is valid in virtue of its being an instance of
a valid argument-form. This is a major philosophical thesis whose truth is. in fact,
doubtful: but whether or not it is true does not have to concern us here. Nothing you
will be required to do with arguments in this book is affected by that thesis, be it true

or not However, the converse of that thesis is true. That is, an instance of a valid
argument-form is always a valid argument For this reason, the study of valid argu-
ment-forms as such can be very important in philosophy. That study is known as
formal logic, though valid argument-forms are also studied in a wider context than
that of formal logic. You should notice, incidentally, that this chapter is not about
logic but about arguments: the sort of study of arguments given here is a perfectly
good introduction to logic but does not constitute a study of logic.

You are now in command of all the essential facts and techniques to deal with philo-
sophical arguments. We will now go on to put some of these techniques to work.

Criticism of arguments
The criticism of arguments is as important and fundamental to the philosophy that
we do ourselves as it is in reading the works of other philosophers, for when we pro-
duce an argument of our own, we test it by trying to see how the argument might be
criticized. If an argument is to establish a conclusion, it must be valid and its prem-
ises must be true. Thus, we can criticize an argument because either its premises
are false or the argument itself is not valid. Below give an example of a philosophical
I

argument and then show how it can be criticized. Before reading what have to say I

about the argument you should see if you can find the error in it yourself.

The following argument in different forms, has been around a long time in phi-
losophy. The first recorded version we have of it is in the work of Aristotle, fourth
century B.C.

1 A statement is either true or false.

2. Thus, the statement "Wheatley will die in 1980" is either true or false
(though, of course, we don't know whether it is true or false).

3. Some statement of the form "Wheatley will die at t (for a definite t) is

true.

4. Because that statement is true, I must die at t; there is no way out

23
 5. Thus, the time of my death is predestined; in this respect, I am predes-
tined.

6. This argument is generalizable for everything I do, not just for my death.
So am
I totally predestined.

7. This argument is generalizable for everything anybody does, not just for
me. So we are all totally predestined.

8. Therefore, we are all slaves; freedom is a chimera.

It is easy enough to feel that there is something wrong with this argument. But if we
are to do philosophy, we must see precisely what is wrong with it. Furthermore, we
must find something importantly wrong with it. There are a lot of points at which the
argument could be criticized, but it could easily be reformulated to get around a
good many of these criticisms. We must look for a mistake in the argument that could
not be removed by a reformulation. shall go through the first part of the argument
I

premise by premise.

Premise 1 can be questioned. Are there not some sorts of things people say which
can fairly be called statements and yet are not either true or false? am not going to I

answer that question now because it is important to see that it does not matter how
it is answered. The point is this: The only use made of Premise 1 in the argument is

to substantiate Premise 2. And the statement "Wheatley will die in 1980" is either true
or false. Thus, whether all statements are true or false does not matter in the context
of this argument; even if Premise 1 were false, it would not be fatal to the argument
as a whole. (This is the sort of thing had in mind above when spoke of a criticism
I I

that only requires a reformulation of the argument.)

Premise 2 has been criticized at other times by saying that statements about the
future, because we do not know that they are true or false, cannot reasonably be
called true or false. But this is a straight mistake. Consider a very simple example.
A friend says, "I'll be in the library this evening." That is a statement about the future,
and it is most certainly either true or false. Either the friend will be in the library this
evening or he will not be. Statements about the future, even when we do not know

whether they are true or false, are true or false (and are true or false now). To put it
another way, a statement's truth value is independent of when it is uttered. So Prem-
ise 2 is all right.

Premise 3 has a small difficulty associated with it. It contains the assumption that I

am not immortal. That seems a reasonable enough assumption in its own way, but

24
assumptions of this type should not play a part in philosophy. However, this objec-
tion is easy enough to get around. As an exercise, reformulate Premise 3 to get
around this objection.

You should notice that each of the premises so far discussed can be criticized but
that none of the criticisms actually kill the argument. At the strongest, they force
reformulation. The real mistake lies in Premise 4, and it lies in one word: The word
'because.'

It is important to see what the matter with the argument here. In essence, Premise
is

4 states that because the statement "Wheatley will die at t" is true. So
I shall die at t

to speak, the truth of the statement will kill me. But it's not that way around at all. It
is because I shall die at t that the statement "Wheatley will die at t" is true. The point

about "because," as it is used here, is that it implies a cause and effect relationship
and it implies it the wrong way around; that is, it makes the cause the effect and
the effect the cause. Put it this way: When die will not be killed by the truth of a
I I

statement but doubtless by a car driven by a maniac. A badly driven car is the sort
of thing which kills people whereas the truth of a statement is not.

It is important to see that this objection completely kills the argument. There is no
way to remove this mistake or reformulate the argument to get around To convince
it.

yourself of this and as an exercise, you should try to reformulate the argument in such
a way that it avoids this difficulty and still seems plausible.

So have given examples of arguments only in schematized form with numbered

far I

premises. have done this for ease of exposition. However, most arguments in philo-
I

sophical writing are not presented in this way but are more discursive. Here is a very
simple example:

Since all men are mortal and Jones is a man, it

follows that
Jones will one day die.

Equally, it is not necessary that the conclusion come at the end. The previous argu-
ment could as well have been presented as follows:

Jones will one day die because all men are, after all, mortal and Jones is a
man.

25
It is sometimes useful to put discursive arguments into a schematic form (I do this in
Chapter Nine, for instance), but it is not necessary all the time.

Exercises

1. Is the following argument valid? Explain your answer.

a. If a man is short, then he's nice.

b. Jones is a man.

c. Jones is not nice.

d. Therefore, Jones is not short.

2. Give a statement which, if added to the following argument, would make it valid:

a. Horses have long ears.

b.

c. Therefore, horses appreciate light music.

The rest of the exercises are arguments in which something is importantly wrong.
You should notice that these arguments are also puzzles. Looking at philosophy as
argument, we have in no way left behind the notion of philosophy seen as the solving
of puzzles.

3. Criticize the following argument by finding at least one thing importantly wrong
with it.

a. The meaning of a word is given by its definition.

b. Not all words can be defined (we would just run out of words).

c. Therefore, some words have no meaning.

4. Criticize the following argument by finding one important thing wrong with it.

Justify your answer.

a. A noun is the name of a person, place, or thing.

b. The word "table" is a noun.

c. Therefore, "table" is the name of a person, place, or thing.

26
 d. "Table" is not the name of a person or place.

e. Therefore, "table" is the name of a thing. But what thing?

f. "Table" is not the name of all the tables there are, for that is not a thing
but a collection of things.

g. In general, "table" is not the name of any collection of things.

h. "Table" is not the name of any one table in the world.

i. Therefore, "table" is the name of a thing which is not in the world but
elsewhere.

j. This argument is generalizable for a great many nouns, such as "chair,"

"stool," "book," and so on.
k. Therefore, there must be another realm (perhaps in the mind, perhaps
not) which contains a large number of entities which are the things nouns
name.

5. The next argument is harder because there are some important things right in it

as well as some important things wrong with it. Find at least one important thing
wrong with the argument, and then see if you can construct another argument (it

will be longer) which catches what is right in this argument.

a. What I see depends on the state of my sense organs.

b. Physical objects do not depend on the state of my sense organs.

c. Therefore, I do not see physical objects.

6. Finally, here is an argument which is still very much a matter of debate today.
Some people claim that John Austin in his paper "Other Minds" (originally published
in 1945 and available now in his book Philosophical Papers) broke this argument.
But as yet there is no consensus.

a. If I know something, then I cannot be wrong about that thing.

b. There is nothing where I am dead sure I am not wrong about it.

c. Therefore, knowledge is impossible.

This is one of the classical arguments to scepticism (the thesis that knowledge is im-
possible). As with the previous argument, the simplicity is very deceptive. What is in-
volved here is not simple at all.

27
More types of arguments
So farhave been talking about arguments which are pretty rare in practice and are
I

not the sort we use either when considering what to do (or what not to do) or when
establishing scientific or quasi-scientific hypotheses. The reason for this is simple.
In virtually all the arguments so far considered, the truth of one or more of the
premises seems to be as hard, if not harder, to establish than the truth of the con-
clusion. This comes about because one of the premises is almost invariably a uni-
versal statement; that is, a statement which concerns everything of some given type.
For instance, take "All cats speak fluent French," a premise in an earlier argument.
To establish that the premise is false is easy: all we need is one cat which does not
speak fluent French and such a cat is easy enough to find. But to show that the
premise is true, we would have to test an awful lot of cats for fluency in French.

In this short section, I give an indication of how we can use types of arguments
which are not quite so useless. Remember that give only the smallest cross-section
I

of such arguments to show that the field is not entirely impenetrable. am concerned I

here, then, with arguments which are not based on universal premises but which
can lead to scientific or quasi-scientific conclusions. In Part Four go into a good I

deal more detail in discussing arguments without universal premises leading to con-
clusions about the justifiability of actions.

The types arguments given below, though they are the simplest instances of the
of
general type, tend to be more complex than the types of argument so far considered.
However, it is easy to find arguments of the required type which are not too complex.
Here is an example:

1. The barometer is falling rapidly.

2. Big, black clouds are building up.

3. Premises 1 and 2 are both reasons for supposing it will rain.

4. There are no reasons to suppose it will not rain.

5. Therefore, we are justified in supposing (believing, asserting) that it will

rain.

Of course, given that the premises are true, it does not follow that it will rain. But
that, quite precisely, is nor what the conclusion says; what it says is that we are
justified in supposing that it will rain, and that does follow. Much of the time in this
uncertain world we have to be satisfied simply with what it would be reasonable to
believe, justifiable to suppose, and so on.

28
The argument given above can be generalized. Suppose that P is some prediction
and R(P) is a reason for supposing P true. Then we have the argument-form:

1. R,(P)

2. R 2 (P)
3. There are no facts which comprise R(not-P).

4. Therefore, we are justified in supposing (believing, asserting) P.

(There is no need for a premise corresponding to Premise 3 in the first argument, for
it is already specified that R(P) is a reason for P). You should notice that this argument

ismore general than it looks. There is no limit to the number of reasons for P which
can be given, though there are troubles, considered briefly below, when there are
also reasons (weaker reasons if P is to be asserted) against P.

The difficulty of getting a conclusion of the form 'It will rain' one of the
rather than
form "We are justified in asserting that it will rain" is particularly cogent within sci-
ence. Scientific theories get superseded so quickly that it would be folly to suppose
that at some point in time we had a (dead) true theory. What we have at any given
moment are some well-founded theories, or theories which are entirely justifiable to
assert or to believe (while we keep an open mind for new theories and, particularly,
for more refined theories).

Here is an argument leading not only to the justified assertability of a simple predic-
tion but also to the justified assertability of a scientific theory or hypothesis. It is

essentially of the same form as the preceding argument. Here, H is a scientific

hypothesis (a proposed scientific theory).

1. All previously recorded data confirm H.

2. A crucial experiment to test H yielded positive results.

3. At the present state of scientific knowledge there are no more crucial

experiments which could test H and no experiment which could discon-
firm H.

4. Therefore, we are justified in offering H as a properly established theory.

The most famous scientific theory backed by this kind of argument was the theory
of relativity. When the theory was first published, observation of the perihelion of
Mercury was the only crucial experiment which could be performed to test it; of

29
 course, more tests have been performed since, most obviously in cyclotrons. The
philosopher Karl Popper made a world reputation for himself by exposing the im-
portance of this form of argument.

The argument given above can also be generalized. Let R(H) be a reason for suppos-
ing H is true.

1. R,(H)

2. R 2 (H)
3. Having conducted a thorough search we have found no facts which
comprise R(not-H).

4. Therefore, we are justified in offering H as a well-established theory.

As with the previous argument-form, which it closely resembles, there is no limit to

the number of reasons for H which can be given, though troubles arise when there
are also reasons against H. We will now consider that case.

I shall offer the generalized argument-form straight away because any example tends
to be very complicated. (The premises of this argument are not numbered because
an indefinite number of premises is possible.)

R,(H)
R 2 (H)

R n (H)
R,(not-H)
R 2 (not-H)

Rm(not-H)
The reasons R,(H) •••
R n (H) are stronger than the reasons R,(not-H) ••• Rm
(not-H).
Therefore, we are justified in offering H as well-established theory.

This is the general form of a great many (but not all) scientific arguments leading to

30

j
the establishment of a scientific theory. It is not as complicated as it looks. All it

amounts to is saying that there are such and such reasons for an hypothesis and
such and such reasons against it, that the reasons for the hypothesis are stronger
than the reasons against, and that, therefore, we are justified in offering the hypothesis
as established. Of course, in such an argument, the really difficult premise to estab-
lish is the one that says the reasons for the hypothesis are stronger than the reasons
against it; but that is a problem do not propose to go into now. The point about the
I

above argument-form is that it is valid; that is, if the premises were true then the
conclusion would have to be true.

The material offered in this section has been discussed briefly and quickly. However,
thorough treatment would be not a section of a chapter but a text in the philosophy
of science, and am not concerned with that here. have simply given you an indica-
I I

tion of these argument-forms. have done so for two reasons: To give you an idea of
I

perfectly valid arguments which are not as confined as were those offered earlier; I

and to introduce these argument-forms which will make brief use of in Chapter Five.
I

Appendix to chapter two

Indirect arguments. In this appendix I give an account of a type of argument more

complex than any so far considered.

In Chapter Two, made the following point about valid arguments: just as true prem-
I

ises in a validargument force a true conclusion, so a false conclusion to a valid argu-

ment requires that at least one of the premises be false. This property of valid argu-
ments is extremely important, for it allows us to construct what are called indirect
arguments. An indirect argument works this way. Suppose we have a statement (call
it S) which we want to prove to be true. If, using not-S (the negation of S) as one prem-

ise and other premises which are true, we can construct a valid argument leading to a
false conclusion, then we have shown S to be true. There is a very famous example
of indirect argument which was first recorded by Euclid in the fifth century B.C. It is
harder than any of the examples used so far.

Euclid wished to prove that the square root of 2 cannot be expressed by a fraction.
He did this by an indirect argument. First, he assumed that the square root of 2 could
be expressed by a fraction, being precisely the statement he wished to show false.
He then went on to show that on this assumption an argument can be constructed
which leads to a false conclusion. In this case the conclusion is false because it con-

31
tradicts one of the assumptions made in forming the argument. The argument goes
this way:

Assume

-a
where c and d are whole numbers having no factor in common. There is nothing the

matter with assuming that c and d have no factor in common; for c and d did have a
if

factor in common, that factor could be cancelled out without altering the value of the
fraction (for instance, the fraction 8/10 can be reduced to 4/5). Square both sides of
the equation:

>=$
Multiply through by d 2 :

2d* = c2

Now, since the left hand side of the equation is even, the right hand side of the
equation must also be even. As a consequence, c must be even. Thus it is perfectly
proper to write 2e instead of c(c = 2e). We then get

2d- = (2e)
2
= 4e 2

Divide through by 2 to get

d2 = 2e 2

But now, because the right hand side of the equation is even, the left hand side must
be even. Thus d must be even. But this contradicts the original assumption that c and
d have no factor in common, for both c and d are seen to be even. Therefore, the
original assumption must be false; that is, the square root of 2 cannot be expressed
by a fraction. The point we set out to show is shown.

It is worthwhile going through this argument you understand it fully. Don't be

until

led astray by the fact that "assumptions" are made. We had to make assumptions to
form the argument, but the conclusion does not depend on any assumptions; the
conclusion is just true.

32
Chapter three Philosophy seen
as the analysis
of language

The title of this chapter includes two slightly different views of philosophy. They are
"philosophy seen as analysis" and "philosophy seen as the description of the forms
of our language." How these views come together and how they differ will be dis-
cussed at the end of the chapter.

First, an historical note. The first philosopher to explicitly center interest on the
activity of analysis was G. E. Moore, who greatly influenced philosophy in the first
half of the twentieth century. The idea that philosophy is fundamentally concerned
with describing the forms of our language originated with Ludwig Wittgenstein in

the early 1930s. Both views are still very prevalent today.

Generically, the notion of philosophical analysis isthis: we analyze a certain utterance

by seeing what is involved in saying such and such. Thus, to analyze the notion of
intelligence, we see what is involved in saying that Smith is intelligent, we investigate
what grounds would lead us to say that dogs are more intelligent than cats, and so
on. To investigate right conduct (to do ethics) analytically, we endeavor to see what
is involved in saying that some act is justifiable or obligatory, what is involved in

saying Smith ought to do such and such, what is involved in saying that Jones was
right in doing such and such, and so on.

I shall lead into this way of doing philosophy by discussing a substantial philosoph-
ical thesis which is itself of importance in understanding the nature of philosophy.
You will find the discussion difficult, because it is difficult, but it will yield to careful

reading. The thesis is this: Disciplined discussion is the foundation of any rational
inquiry.

33
First, someobvious observations. Working alone and talking to no one can lead
fairly

one most grotesque errors. One can find oneself solidly embracing some
into the
obvious falsehood and spending one's time worrying about its consequences without
ever noticing the fundamental mistake. This can happen in any field and in any way:
it can happen in physics, in pharmacology or in philosophy; it can happen in the
assessment of evidence, in the criticism of an argument, or in the supposed cogency
of a reason. In any intellectual discipline, nothing is ever quite obvious. We protect
ourselves from this sort of error by exposing our ideas and theories to the critical

appraisal of others. That is, we expose our ideas to disciplined discussion.

The same point can be put another way. There no general procedure which has
is

built into it the guarantee that, if correctly used, it will produce nothing but truth.

Truth is extremely elusive and will not submit to codification in this way. To get at the
truth, or at its nearest approximation we can manage at any point in time, we must
always submit a thesis to the critical appraisal of others. Thus, every form of intel-
lectual or rational inquiry falls back, in the end, on free, unhampered, well-disciplined,
well-informed discussion among intelligent and open-minded men.

The position that any intellectual or rational inquiry has disciplined discussion as its

foundation is particularly true of philosophy. Other disciplines usually have methods,

established long before the present, which produce the desired result over at least
a limited area. Once such a method is established, its basis in discussion often tends
to be forgotten, even though these methods can be, and often are, challenged. But
in philosophy there are very few well-established methods; therefore, the open-

discussion aspect of the discipline is very much more at the surface. It is not a bad
description of a philosopher to say of him that he is a man who will discuss any
intellectual position. If he is a good philosopher, he will do so reasonably and care-
fully and honestly.

I said no general procedure which has built into it the guarantee

above that there is

that if correctly used,produce nothing but truth. This is true. But even if it were
it will

not true, it would not mean that disciplined discussion, though not itself a procedure
which guarantees truth, would not be fundamental to any intellectual or rational
inquiry. The point is simply made. To establish that some procedure was a truth-
guaranteeing procedure, we could not use that procedure; to establish the truth-
guaranteeing procedure as the truth-guaranteeing procedure, we would have to fall

back on disciplined discussion. We are inclined to forget this fact in an age when
many limited truth-producing formulae have been discovered.

34
We reached this point: the only general and fundamental truth-discovering
have so far
formula there can be is free, unhampered, well-disciplined, well-informed discus-
sion among intelligent and open-minded men. Let us call that the D-formula (short
for "discussion formula"). We must ask now how we establish that the D-formula
is the only general and fundamental truth-discovering formula. Immediately we are
in a difficulty. For one of two things is presumably the case:

1. The D-formula is established by disciplined discussion.

2. The D-formula is established other than by disciplined discussion.

If 1 is true, we appear to be assuming that the D-formula is a truth-discovering

formula in order to show that is a truth-discovering formula. And that will not do
it

at all. On the other hand, if 2 is true, there appears to be a truth-discovering method

more basic than the D-formula — namely, that method by which the D-formula is
established.

Before we go on, you should notice that the paradoxical situation in which we find

ourselves is typical of philosophy. Philosophical problems tend to arise just where

we have some statement which appears to be clearly true (in this case, that the D-
formula is the only general and fundamental truth-discovering formula) but which
leads to paradoxical consequences. The paradoxical consequences in this example
are that the D-formula both is and is not the most fundamental truth-discovering
method.

Of the two alternatives given above, 1 must be false. We can prove anything at all
if we assume that it is true in order to prove that it is true. So the solution to the para-
dox does not lie in that alternative. The D-formula must be established other than by
use of the D-formula. The important question now is whether it is possible that the
D-formula could be established on grounds other than the D-formula and yet not
lose its status as the only general and fundamental truth-discovering formula.

To discuss obviously desirable to inspect an actual proof that the

this question, it is

D-formula has the required status. But suddenly we are in a difficulty. For how could
we ever carry out this proof? What conceivable set of premises are going to provide
a valid argument whose conclusion is that the D-formula is the most fundamental
method It appears at least that such an argument is just not pos-
of rational inquiry?
sible anyone produced an argument which purported to establish the D-
because if

formula as the most fundamental method of rational inquiry, he would, by producing

35
that argument, have shown that the D-formula was not fundamental; his argument
would presumably be more fundamental. Paradox indeed.

But we need not give up. It is the case that no argument could establish the D-formula
in the required way. So we will now proceed in a reverse direction; we will see what

would be involved in doubting that the D-formula is fundamental to rational inquiry.

Suppose someone goes through this train of thought: "I am trying to find out what is
involved in a rational truth-discovery method: want to know what is basic to ra-
I

tional truth-discovery method; want to know what is basic to rational inquiry. con-
I I

sider a number of possibilities. It could be intuition. It could be reading the Bible.

It could be following what dreams seem to say. It could be the taking of auguries —
that is, being guided by the disposition of the entrails of animals. My problem is

to decide which of these constitutes genuine rational inquiry." What does one say
to such a man? In fact, what does one say to anyone who doubts that rational inquiry
consists basically in the D-formula? If he thinks that any of the above alternatives
could be basic to rational inquiry, then he simply doesn't know what the phrase
"rational inquiry" means. One can only say about him that he needs education in
the English language (or whatever language he was speaking at the time). Anyone
who thinks that the D-formula is not the basis of rational inquiry-that it is not the
basic truth-discovery method — just does not understand what is involved in the no-
tion of rational inquiry.

Let us return to the beginning for a moment. Our question was this: Is it possible
that the D-formula can be established on grounds other than the D-formula and yet
not lose its status as the only general and fundamental truth-discovering formula?
The answer to this question is not quite "Yes" and not quite "No" (a position in which
we often find ourselves in philosophy). To establish that the D-formula is basic to
rational inquiry, we had to look at the nature of the language, at what is involved in
one of our most basic concepts (the concept of rational inquiry). To do this is more
fundamental than the D-formula in the sense that it is the only way to establish the
D-formula as fundamental to all other rational inquiry. But the D-formula never really
needed establishing at all. As the process of establishing it showed, anyone who
understood the language and the structure embodied in it would need no such dem-
onstration. And all the "demonstration" consisted in was to point out, or offer re-
minders of, the nature of language in the relevant area.

The method of demonstration illustrated here is very important in philosophy. It

is therefore important to see the strength and nature of this demonstration. To show
this, I offer another illustration.

36
Consider a man who is interested in investigating whether or not all crows are black.
He looks at all the crows he can find, reads every report on crows he can find, and
always looks, of course, where he would expect to find, or find reports of, nonblack
crows (for instance, he reads reports from arctic explorers, since he knows that many
animals in if any white crows were sighted). Let us
the arctic are white, to find out
suppose no reports of crows that are not black. Then, subtly his inquiry
that he finds
begins to change. "Perhaps," he says to himself, "I really don't know black when I

see it; its just that all crows look black to me." But other people also report that crows
are black. He answers, "Perhaps they don't know black when they see it either;
perhaps every English-speaking person doesn't really know black when he sees it."
Now what he is doubting is whether black is really black. Phrased another way, he
is doubting the propriety of the English word 'black' meaning what it does mean.
But this doubt is now ridiculous. To say "Perhaps what all native speakers of English
call black is not really black at all" is to talk nonsense. The criterion of what is black
is that all native speakers of English call it black.

Now the crucial point about our original investigation of rational inquiry can be
brought out. Someone who doubts that rational inquiry involves the D-formula is

doing something as essentially ridiculous as the person who wonders whether what
all native speakers of English call black is black. His doubts are at a deeper level and
are more tempting, but they amount to the same thing.

The foregoing sort of inquiry is completely fundamental to philosophy, and it is there-

fore worth laying out in detail exactly what is involved. In essentials, the inquiry
is really simple enough. Take an ordinary statement couched in English: "My car is
gray." To keep matters straight, assure you that the statement is true — my car
I

is gray. The statement is true on two sorts of bases: (a) because the sentence used to

make the statement means what it does mean; (b) because my car is gray. Claim (a)
sounds confusing, but it is in fact quite straightforward. Every true statement is true,
in part at least, because the words used in making it mean what they do mean and the

grammatical structure of the sentence used in making it has the function it does have
in English. If "gray," for instance, meant something different from what it does now

mean, then the statement probably would not be true.

One might be tempted to suppose that all two bases.

true statements are true on these
This, however, would not be the case. There are some statements which are true,
not because of anything in the world (like my car being gray), but solely on the basis
of what is involved in the statements themselves. They are true purely because the
words used in making them mean what they do mean and the grammatical structures

37
of the sentences used in making them have the function they do have in English. A
simple example of such a statement is "All bachelors are unmarried." This statement
is not true because actual individuals in the world are unmarried; it has nothing to

do with the world at all. The statement is true because it means what it does mean,
and that is all there is to it.

There are many more complex and interesting examples of the sort of statement
which is true purely on the basis of what it means. For instance, here is one that I

used earlier: "To say that what every native speaker of the language calls black is
not black at all is false." Similarly, the essential claim of the earlier part of this chapter
is as follows: the statement "The D-formula is fundamental to rational inquiry" is

true in just this sort of way. These sorts of statements have been called analytic state-
ments. As the concept plays an important, if often ambiguous, role in philosophy,
it is worthwhile giving it formal definition:

An analytic statement is a statement which is true purely because the words

used in it mean what they do mean and the grammatical structure of the
sentence used in making it has the function it does have in the language in

which it is couched.

Analytic statements are frequently said to be necessarily true because no observation

of what goes on in the world could ever lead one to retract one of them. The argument
goes this way: analytic statements are true solely in virtue of the way language is

used; thus, they say nothing about the world; thus, they cannot be refuted by anything
which goes on in the world; thus, they are necessarily true. But to say that analytic
statements cannot be refuted by experience is only partly correct. A purported
analytic statement can be shown to be false (and not to be analytic) by showing that
itdoes not accurately reflect the way in which the language is used; it is refuted by
citing how the language actually is used. And this depends on some form of observa-
tion, namely, observation of how the language is used. So the really fundamental
activity here, one might say, is to see or exemplify or describe how our language is

used, for it is on the basis of these activities that analytic statements are themselves
established.

The structure of this chapter has a number of branches. It is therefore worth sum-
marizing before going on. I first pursue the notions of phi-
indicated that I wished to
losophy seen as analysis and philosophy seen as the descriptions of the forms of
our language. To exemplify these views of philosophy, pursued the question "What I

is the fundamental truth-discovering method of rational inquiry?" This took a good

38
deal of space, but the upshot was that the D-formula was this fundamental method
and that the D-formula itself was substantiated by looking at the nature of our lan-
guage and, in particular, by looking at the notion of "rational inquiry." illustrated I

this method of substantiation in a simpler form by discussing a more transparent

but relatively trivial example about the criteria for saying of something, "That is
black.'' It was necessary to take a harder example first to show you that this sort of

inquiry, though it can be pretty trivial, need not be. then codified the sort of inquiry I

involved by defining and giving the role of analytic statements. All this was necessary
to illustrate clearly, but in a non-trivial way, what was involved in philosophy seen
as analysis. We are now in a position to return to that topic explicitly.

Philosophy seen as analysis is the view that it is the job of philosophers to analyze
language, possible utterances, and fundamental notions like that of "rational in-
quiry." Put another way, philosophy seen as analysis is philosophy seen as a dis-
cipline which produces analytic statements that govern or are embodied in the use
of the language, or at least important bits of it. In substantiating the position that the
D-formula is the fundamental method of rational inquiry, I was doing this sort of
philosophy. On the other hand, philosophy seen as the description of the forms of
our language is the view that the appropriate subject matter for philosophy is the
data on the basis of which we can make analytic statements.

With this background, can now explain why ran together the notions of philosophy
I I

seen as analysis and philosophy seen as the description of the forms of our language.
We verify or some
confirm that analytic statement is true by seeing, exemplifying,
or describing how our language is used. And the view that philosophy just is the de-
scription of the forms of our language is the view that what philosophers should do
is describe or exemplify the actual way our language is used. Thus, whether one sees
philosophy as the description of the forms of the language or sees it just as the analy-
sis of thelanguage amounts to almost exactly the same thing. In the one case, the
emphasis is placed on the way we substantiate analytic statements which govern
or are embodied in our use of the language; ana in the other case, the emphasis
is placed on the production of these analytic statements. The difference between

them is a difference of emphasis.

Above I have defined the technical term "analytic statement." Before going on to the
next chapter, want to define another valuable technical term: entails. An entailment
I

relation can only hold between statements. We say that one statement entails another
statement when the truth of the first statement forces the truth of the second. In

its forcing aspect, entailment is like validity; and, indeed, the notions are related in

39
a very definite way: When we have an argument which
valid, the conjunction of the
is

premises entails the conclusion. To say of an argument that its premises entail the
conclusion is just another way to say that the argument is valid. The notion of entail-
ment is formally defined as follows:

Where p and q are statements, "p entails q" is true if and only if p being true
involves necessarily that q is also true, forces q to be true.

Entailment and analytic statements are connected in a number of ways, not all of
which concern us here. The most important connection is this: when p entails q,
the statement "either not-p or q" is itself analytic. You should verify for yourself
that this follows from the two definitions.

So far in this book I have defined four technical terms: argument, valid, analytic,
and entails. Except for quoted passages from other philosophers in Part Three (where
the appropriate terms are explained), these are the only technical terms you have
to understand to read this book. Their meanings should be carefully learned so you
can use them easily.

40
Chapter four Synthesis

All that I have so about the nature of philosophy has been broadly within one
far said
tradition of philosophy. Another tradition is discussed in the next chapter. With the
possible exception of a few philosophers in the last hundred years, no philosopher
has ever been wholly in the one tradition or wholly in the other. However, it is con-
venient to separate the two traditions for the sake of exposition.

Inthe previous three chapters, have discussed philosophy seen as a set of puzzles,
I

philosophy seen as argument, philosophy seen as analysis, and philosophy seen as

the description of the forms of our language. I have taken you through what has been
the development of many individual philosophers and through what, with fitful stops
and has been the evolution of the idea of what it is to do philosophy. Philosophy
starts,

started with puzzlement about something, as must almost any intellectual discipline.
A solution to the puzzle is propounded. Before the days of Plato that was the end of
it; the supposed solution was simply announced. But the proposed solution may be
wrong. What one does then is either produce cases which contradict the proposed

solution; or alternatively, one argues against the proposed solution. Ideally, in argu-
ing against one shows the view in question to contain a covert contradiction or to
it,

be empty. Equally, one perhaps produces a solution to the puzzle of one's own. This
proposed solution one argues for; or alternatively, one offers it publicly and specifi-
cally invites either contrary cases or argument against it. This notion of how to do
philosophy is to be found fully developed in Plato's work.

However, once argument is seen as important this way, it is clear that some argu-
ments are good and others bad. So the next step is to investigate the nature of

41
argument itself. Thus, we find Aristotle, a pupil of Plato's, undertaking the first
systematic study of argumentation. At this point in history, there was a remarkable

accident. Aristotle'swork on argument was extremely good. As a consequence, it

hypnotized later philosophers into supposing that it was infallible and that their task
was therefore necessarily confined to elaborating it and clearing up the odd obscure
corner. This situation continued for roughly 2.200 years; it was not until the nine-
teenth century that philosophers began thinking seriously about the nature of argu-
ment outside the limitations of the Aristotelian model.

At this point, about 1850. On the one hand, there were

work on argument divided.
those philosophers who continued to think of work on the nature of argument only
as a philosophical tool. On the other hand, there appeared a new variety of phi-
losopher who studied some very specialized forms of argument for their intrinsic
interest and as a tool for use in the foundations of mathematics. This second dis-
cipline is now known as formal or symbolic logic and is almost entirely irrelevant to
philosophy. The old study of argument as a philosophical tool is sometimes known
as informal logic, sometimes just as logic, sometimes as argument. It is essential to
philosophy.

In the early twentieth century, philosophers began to look into arguments in anew
sort of way. An argument where the premises are not true, though it may be of some
interest in itself, is valueless to establish a conclusion. Of course, individual premises
may themselves have premises which must be shown to be true. Thus, argument must
stop somewhere; the truth or falsity of the premises in the most fundamental argu-
ments must be established by some method other than argument. Furthermore, in
most cases at least, the premises cannot be established by observation of what goes
on in the world, experiments in laboratories, and so on. This is the case not because
establishing premises in this way is in some sense undesirable but because that sort
of argument belongs within science. The necessity in philosophy of establishing
premises other than by argument gave rise to the notion of philosophy as the analysis
of concepts and types of utterances. Producing such analysis provided the premises
for the arguments which were propounded. It should be realized that there was no
sense in which the notion of argumentation as essential to philosophy was super-
seded or dropped. The rise of an interest in analysis among philosophers was. in the
main, to establish the premises of arguments, not to provide a substitute for argu-
ments. However, there is a tendency now for arguments to be used more frequently
as ways to show some position wrong (via reductio ad absurdum arguments) than
to establish a position.

42
The old question arose again. How does one establish that an offered analysis is in
fact correct? As a practical question for someone doing philosophy, this is not a
particularly worrying question. An analysis is propounded, and it is offered as a candi-
date for contrary cases. If after a long period of discussion and consideration of
putative contrary cases none can be found, the analysis is taken to be established.
But this is still theoretically unsatisfying. The answer to this question, propounded
independently by Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Austin, was in outline as follows:
Our language has a structure, a semantic and grammatical structure in a very broad
sense of "grammatical"; an analysis of a concept or a type of utterance is correct, if
it is, because it accurately reflects this structure. This gives the theoretical backing

to the procedure previously used. It also gives an alternative philosophical method

to producing analyses: Describing the structure of the language directly.

I have so far represented the philosophical situation as if philosophers moved on

from puzzlement to argument to analysis. This is not quite accurate. Though phi-
losophers have moved on in this way, they have never left behind what went before.
Philosophy still starts with puzzlement, argument is still of central importance, and
the analysis of conceptual structure in no way supersedes these activities. There is
an important sense in which it is true to say that ever since Plato's day philosophy
has contained all of these elements. What is different today is that we are much more
explicitly aware of what these elements are than was Plato.

That philosophy has developed in the way I have described has not been without its

critics. Just as some people think that introspection should never have been drop-
ped from psychological investigation, so others think that philosophy should have
stopped at some point in its development. This view is worth considering briefly.

The principal complaint of those who dislike the present analytic approach to phi-

losophy is that it trivializes philosophy; they complain that the deep and persistent
concern with language is somehow a comedown from the good old days when,
whatever they did, philosophers did not say that their principal concern was with the
forms of our language. One writer, for instance, coined the word verbosopher for
those philosophers who are concerned with language in the way described and went
on to say that verbosophers have sold "their truthright for a mess of verbiage." The
first thing one might notice about this view is that it is inaccurate. If any philosopher

was deeply and explicitly concerned with language, it was Plato. So there is no ques-
tion here of turning away from the good old days. Thus, the criticism must be taken
to be directed against pretty well all of philosophy, though especially against its
modern manifestation.

43
I think it fair to say that criticism of philosophers for being concerned with language
is based not so much on an inaccurate idea of what philosophy is as on an inaccurate
idea of what it is to have a language. The point is this. Our language is not just a code

by which we express our thought. It is deeply enmeshed in our lives. Suppose we

analyze the concept of "democracy." We would not be analyzing just a word; we
would be analyzing a way of life, one which a good many people think important. At
a deeper level, the following thesis has been offered by analytic philosophers: If it
is the case that someone ought to do something, then it is necessarily the case that

he can do that thing. This thesis can be represented as a problem of analyzing what
is involved in the words "ought" and "can." "Does 'ought' imply 'can'?" But if this

position is correct (or, for that matter, if it is not), it is clearly a thesis with enormous
implications for the way we live our lives. For instance, take the statement "Everyone
ought to love his neighbor." It is undoubtedly true that some of us are just incapable
of feeling love for all our neighbors. If it is true that "ought" implies "can," then the
statement that everyone ought to love his neighbor is either false or else it constitutes
a rather odd way of saying something like "Everyone ought to (at least) behave in a
loving way towards his neighbor." The argument is now well under way. These are
not trivial questions. Answering them is one way to get at the nature of man, at the
nature of his obligations, and at the nature of society. In many ways, the analytic
method is the most fundamental way to get at these questions, for it consists in laying
bare the conceptual structure within which all other discussions must proceed.

44
 Chapter five Philosophy seen
as a personal commitment

I shall start this chapter with a disclaimer. The philosophical tradition within which I

work has been outlined in the last four chapters. Without much doubt, this tradition
is the central tradition of philosophy and has a continuous history going back to
Plato. Alongside this tradition there is another tradition in which do not do serious
I

academic work. Granting, then, that I cannot write about this other tradition from the
inside the way I can for the tradition discussed in the preceeding chapters, I shall
only attempt to outline its basic structure here.

I call this tradition the philosophy of commitment because at some point in the argu-
mentative or analytic process an element of personal affirmation enters. As individ-
uals, each of us holds to some such philosophy, at least in a vestigial form. When I

said above that I do not work in this tradition, I am not suggesting that I do not hold
such a personal philosophy; indeed, without having some sort of personal philo-
sophical commitment, one could hardly live one's life at all. However, doubt that I

a (my, your, John Doe's) philosophy of commitment belongs in the serious academic
discipline of philosophy. (The one possible exception to this is a political philosophy,
but that does not concern us here.)

These, then, are my biases. If you like, they constitute my philosophy of commitment
in the limited area of what belongs and does not belong within academic philosophy.
Having these biases will show itself in my writing about the philosophy of commit-
ment, and there is no earthly use in supposing it will not. But knowing my biases
should protect you against them.

45
A philosophy commitment involves at some point an element of personal affirma-
of
tion; if it did not, then it would not be a philosophy of commitment but just philoso-
phy. This does not imply that argument and analysis are absent from a philosophy of
commitment or that elements of philosophy proper cannot be interwoven with a
philosophy of commitment (indeed, is doubtful that any philosopher has ever been
it

exclusively interested in propounding a philosophy of commitment). However, for

a given piece of work to constitute a piece of philosophy of commitment, one or more
of the arguments or analyses it contains must depend explicitly or implicitly on some
form of personal affirmation.

There are two ways in which a personal affirmation can enter into the structure of a
philosophical argument. discuss them in turn.
I

First, in the last chapter we saw how emphasis on argument changed to emphasis
on the establishment of the premises on which the argument rests. In that chapter
we discussed establishing these premises on the basis of the structure of language.
But there is another possible source for such premises. They can be the statement of
one's immediate experiences or of one's reaction to one's immediate experiences.
There are obvious difficulties about describing one's immediate experiences because
the language is public and not adapted to the description of what is intrinsically
private. But it is usually fairly easy to state one's personal reaction to one's experi-
ences. To take a well-known example, one can say that looking at human life and the
human condition makes one nauseated. It is customary (but without much
in general
doubt deceptive) to make this view more emphatic by saying not only that the human
condition makes one nauseated but also that the human condition is (intrinsically)
nauseating. There is a tendency to go even further and to say that anyone who does
not see thehuman condition as nauseating is deceiving himself. (This is one of the
positionsmade famous by the contemporary French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.)
But remember, all of these ways of saying that viewing the human condition as nause-
ating are in fact personal affirmations. The enormously forceful statements by pro-
pounders view that the way they react to the world is the only proper way to
of the
react should all be regarded as devices for emphasis. Indeed, this is not just the way
to regard them, it is what they are -merely ways of stating their personal reactions
to immediate experience.

Premises which are personal affirmations can be organized into completely con-
ventional and valid arguments. Of course, some of the arguments lead to conclusions
which are fantastic, and others to conclusions one may wish to accept. But in all

46
 cases, propounding and accepting these arguments and conclusions is a matter of
personal idiosyncrasy. The premises themselves are neither true nor false; they are
only statements which some person wishes to affirm or does not wish to affirm.
Whether one wishes to accept the conclusion is equally and consequentially a matter
of personal decision.

Working with arguments and suitably chosen premises which are personal affirma-
tions can lead to almost any conclusion. For instance, there is nothing illogical about
a philosopher who says that the only important philosophical question is "Why
should I not commit suicide?" So long as this statement is based on a premise such
as "The world is intrinsically nauseating," it is entirely reasonable to consider it.

But we must realize that everything depends on that entirely personal premise or, at

least,on a similar one; drop the premise, and one can be prepared to say that other
philosophical questions are quite as much worth considering.

However, the importance of arguments dependent on premises which we affirm as a

personal matter cannot be, and should not be, ignored when we consider how to
conduct our lives. Let's take a down-to-earth example. Tom Smith, let us say, feels
(affirms) thatwhat is offered at universities is pedantic and sterile nonsense. As a
consequence, he drops out. So long as the premise is genuinely affirmed and not an
excuse for laziness or something similar, Tom's position is nothing but reasonable.
We all govern our lives, in large part at least, on this sort of basis; and, given a cer-
tain personal honesty in one's affirmations, it is the most satisfactory way to govern
our lives. Exactly how this works I discuss in Part Four.

The second way that philosophy can be seen as a personal affirmation is this: some
arguments, though perhaps about important matters and where the conclusion is
based on good reasons, are not conclusive. In this case an additional premise is af-
firmed as a matter of personal commitment, but it is an importantly different sort of
premise from one which states a personal experience or reaction to an experience.
Ihere outline what is involved.

In the section entitled "More types of argument" in Chapter Two, gave a general
I

form of an argument leading to some scientific hypothesis H. Here is the argument

again, you have forgotten what led up to it you should go back and reread
though if

that section. (HereH is some hypothesis — it doesn't have to be a scientific one in the
ordinary sense — and R(H) is a reason for H):

47
 R,(H)
R 2 (H)

R n (H)
R,(not-H)
R 2 (not-H)

Rm(not-H)
The reasons R,(H) •••
R„(H) are stronger than the reasons R,(not-H) •• R,„

(not-H).
Therefore, we are justified in asserting H.

This sort of argument can frequently be formed; it occurs most obviously with a good
many statements about God or about right conduct. But there is one trouble with the
argument-form. It is often the case (especially when H is about what conduct is re-

quired of us) that the premise before the conclusion literally has no truth value.
last

That premise asserts that one set of reasons is stronger, or more cogent, than an-
other set of reasons. Frequently we have ways to decide between the strength of
reasons (as we do in science), but as frequently we have no way to make the claim
that some set of reasons is, for sure, stronger or more cogent than another set of
reasons. In that sort of situation, we can as individuals and on a personal basis as-
sign a truth value to that premise or turn believing the premise into a personal affirma-
tion or commitment.

Obvious examples of this sort of philosophy of commitment are arguments from the
state of the world to the existence of God. In the present context, the point about
such arguments is that if one is reasonably open minded, one cannot help but see
reasons which go both ways. Looking at the world aboutwe see reasons for sup-
us,
posing that there is a powerful and knowledgeable Being who watches over us and,
as well, reasons against this hypothesis. People who argue in favor of a God in this
way tend to cite notable examples of self-sacrifice, of extraordinary good fortune, or
of just the beauty to be found on earth. But there are also reasons of the same type
which bear an opposite direction: The decimation of a population by plague, the
in

ingenious atrocities of a man like Hitler, the existence of people even in this century
who will die of starvation, and so on. This situation fits excellently onto the argument-
form given above except that there seems to be no way to decide which set of reasons

48
 is the stronger. Atheists argue that the unpleasant things outweigh the pleasant;
theists either argue that the existence of (so much) unpleasantness is necessary as
a chance for man to show off his good
qualities (self-sacrifice and so forth) or else
argue just that the pleasant things outweigh the unpleasant. There is no way, it ap-
pears, to decide the issue. At this point we tend to get what is, theologically, an
entirely conventional move. Part of belief in God, it is very commonly said, is faith.
And faith enters, presumably, at just that point where we face the premise whose
truth value is rationally undecidable. In affirming that premise, the element of com-
mitment enters.

You should not suppose that this sort of situation arises only in the area of religion.
In fact, very commonly in our personal lives we must affirm some premise about the

comparative strength of reasons for and against doing something on the basis of a
personal commitment. This sort of case is discussed in more detail in Part Four.

It is worthwhile, in the light of this example, comparing philosophy as discussed in

the earlier chapters with a philosophy of commitment. A philosopher faced with the
above cannot reach any conclusion about God. All he can
sort of situation illustrated
do is lay out what is actually involved, as have done rather simplemindedly above,
I

and leave the matter there. Where he cannot demonstrate he cannot, as a philoso-
pher, go. On the other hand, a practitioner of the philosophy of commitment can, and
does, go further. He recognizes no prohibition against affirming a premise whose
truth-value is undecidable and proceeding on that basis. As we have seen, an in-
telligent and reasonable theologian is a prime example of this type of practitioner of
a philosophy of commitment.

The criticism of a philosophy of commitment

I propose to criticize only that sort of philosophy of commitment where one of the

premises in an argument is a statement of a personal experience or personal reaction

to a situation, the first type described above. For the sake of continuity and because
the position is widely discussed. shall take as my stalking horse the premise that the
I

world is intrinsically nauseating. As we have seen, this position is a personal affirma-

tion, a statement of one's reaction to something, in this case the world.

I begin by saying that Sartre has no exclusive right to react to things. In criticizing his

position one has a perfect right to record one's own reaction. In fact, the critic has
two things to react to: he can react to the original affirmation and also to what was
originally reacted to. in this case the world. So I will state my own reactions. First.
my reaction to Sartre's affirmation is that it tends to be self-stultifying. Second, my

49
reaction to the world is not, like Sartre's, a single reaction but a whole set of varying
reactions. I shall take these in turn.

First, Sartre's reaction to the world appears to be self-stultifying for this sort of
reason: In we contrast those things which are nauseating, like the
the ordinary way,
conduct Eichmann, and those things which are not, like the conduct of Albert
of
Schweitzer. Of course, one can draw parallels between the conduct of these two men,
though to do so is a bit outrageous. The point is that there are also clear differences-
differences that it seems worthwhile to remark. Against Schweitzer
might be said, it

for instance, that he did what he did for tiresome neurotic reasons, although we at
least can be pleased that his neuroses led him to help rather than injure other people.
It may be that burying oneself in the African jungle is a fairly negative thing to do and
the concept of charity involved leaves something to be desired. But one must still

insist that there are very important differences between such a man as Schweitzer and
such a man as Eichmann. And the point about saying that the whole of human life
is nauseating is to lump such men together— in fact, is to lump everything together —

and this just seems to be perverse. One can put the point more strongly. If everything
is nauseating, to say of something that it is nauseating is not to contrast it with any-

thing. Thus, if everything is nauseating, to say of some individual thing that it is

nauseating is just to say that it is part of the world. Precisely because "nauseating''
is said to apply to everything, the word is evacuated of virtually all meaning.

Second, remembering Sartre's statement, we can just look at the world which sur-
rounds us and ask ourselves whether it is all nauseating. Sartre tells a tale about a
man who appears to have nothing to live for and is, at the time of the story, in a dull
provincial French town; the high point of his life there, in so far as it has a high point,
is copulating with (to say "making love to" would be to misdescribe his actions) the

proprietress of the local cafe who does not even bother to remove her stockings for
this operation. Sartre's hero realizes that life is nauseating. Well, that doesn't seem
too unreasonable an opinion for him to arrive at, though he might have tried living

in some slightly less depressing way and locale. But to say this misses Sartre's point.
Sartre was interested in pressing the thesis that the position of his antihero is some-
how the position of all men. Though we may not realize it, we are all living in the
equivalent of a dull provincial French town and all are copulating with the ugly cafe
proprietress for our recreation. This is a serious and depressing view of the world.

To consider this thesis we must stop thinking for a moment about Sartre's antihero
and ask ourselves seriously and personally whether Sartre has given a fair descrip-
tion of our lives; one cannot get away from the highly personal nature of this style of
philosophizing. So am driven to considering my own situation. live in a house half
I I

50
way up a mountain, surrounded by trees and with a view over the Pacific. The sun
shines a good deal. Suppose it to be a day on which my work is going well and the
sun is shining-such days do occur. Life, I am told, is intrinsically nauseating. The
statement is simply false.

To give shows, according to Sartre, that am suffering from self-de-

this reaction I

ception. Advocates of his view frequently go further than that. They suggest that
someone who insists on the sort of thing have pointed out above is somehow un- I

subtle, simpleminded, and unperceptive. One must see this move for what it is: not
an argument at all but simply an ingenious way of insulting anyone who disagrees
with their position. And this way of persuasion is not, philosophically, worth bother-
ing with.

Let us return, then, to the original argument. It is the case that the sort of description

of my situation I gave above is an oversimplification. That is, in giving the description,

I ignored the possibility of crippling disease. I ignored the existence of need, and
want, and hunger in the world. What
answer does one give to this? The fol-
sort of
lowing, I think: I, must live with the knowledge of such things
like everyone else,
(doing, one hopes, if in a small way, something about them). But even with all this
depressing knowledge, the sun still shines now; the magnificent play of greens get I

in bright sunlight from the leaves outside my window remains. It is all as real, and

surely as important, as the situation of Sartre's antihero. Furthermore, it would make

little difference to the situation now if, in the next five minutes, started showing I

violent symptoms of the dropsy or if someone interested in liberating mankind in the

time-honored way dropped an atomic bomb close enough to kill me slowly. An un-
relievedly depressing view of the world is as wrong in its own way as an unrelievedly
optimistic view of the world. Our lives are neither all roses nor all nettles; indeed,
we only notice the nettles and the roses because both are not everywhere.

The way to meet and to criticize a philosophy of commitment is to try to take it sensi-
bly and unhysterically and to think closely about it. Most particularly, a philosophy of
commitment involves personal involvement, and one can only answer by drawing on
one's own personal involvement with the world. Nor should one be scared of doing
this. In philosophy proper, one's personal reaction to the world is, in the main, be-
side thepoint-what matters there is accurate analyses and valid arguments. But
once another game is being played, other tactics are in order.

Conclusions
This chapter is the last, and only, treatment you will find in this book on philosophies
of commitment. The reason is simple. How you live your lives, what ideals or reactions

51
to human life you commit yourselves none of my business. In fact, is no one's
to, is it

business but your own. To form your own philosophies of commitment is your birth-
right, and would hate to
I see you giving
it away to anyone, whether to pessimistic
Frenchmen or middle-aged professors of philosophy. However, the analytic and
argumentative tools you will acquire in understanding this book will provide you with
the means to think through your own philosophies of commitment and the means to
criticize the philosophies of commitment pushed at you in this society by everyone
from the local clergyman to the advertising agency of General Motors. At least, that
was one of my aims in writing this book.

Embedded in the last paragraph you will find my philosophy of commitment on the
role of a university teacher. You should take it or leave it. It is the last sermon you will

get from me. However, in Part Four you will find a careful analytic attempt to lay out
where personal commitment can logically enter into our practical and moral rea-
soning. But, of course, seeing where it can enter is not to say what should enter:
That is your affair. One further point about Part Four. Since Sartre has been rather
harshly dealt with in this chapter, it is perhaps worth mentioning that in Part Four I

point out that an important position of Sartre's (though not his position about every-
thing being nauseating) is clearly correct.

52
-
 Part two How to write
a philosophy paper

Writing philosophy and doing philosophy amount to almost exactly the same thing.
It is only when we discipline our thoughts sufficiently to get them down on paper that
the thoughts themselves are likely to be any good. So you should not think that writ-
ing philosophy is a simple matter of recording what you have already thought; the
writing itself is part of the creative process.

At this point a disclaimer is in order. Even at a fairly elementary level, writing a phi-
losophy paper requires two things: The use of certain techniques and a certain
amount of philosophical talent. In this section, I try to outline the techniques which
are required, but I cannot infuse you with philosophical talent. Thus, in this Part, I

lay out some philosophical theory which will aid you in writing a piece of philosophy,
I give some useful rule-of-thumb techniques, and present some step-by-step ex-
I

amples of the process of writing a philosophy paper. do not give a set of rules which,
I

if faithfully followed, will result in a good philosophy paper. It cannot be too strongly
emphasized that this is just impossible. All can do is give you some tips and work
I

through some examples designed to get you doing philosophy yourselves. After that,
it is up to you.

55
I know no one who can write a piece of decent philosophy in a first draft. You must
of
expect to rewrite and re-rewrite any paper. Don't rewrite the whole paper at one time.
Once you have some sort of a draft, go through it and rewrite the pieces which ob-
viously need it and then put the whole thing together again and repeat the process.
At some point you should read the paper aloud to yourself, listening carefully to
yourself as you do it. Imagine the sorts of objections people might bring to what
you are saying and rework what you have written to make these objections inapplic-
able. Then start on the whole thing again. This is obviously a rather time-consuming
process, and for this reason, when set a philosophy paper,
I never expect great I

length, only real thoroughness. The paper topics offered at the end of this part are
designed to be suitable for papers running from three to ten pages.

Writing a philosophy paper is hard. It is also enormous fun. There is, for me at least,

nothing comparable to struggling with something quite difficult and going on with
it until it's exactly right. Of course, one usually falls short of this ideal, but one can
come close enough for the task to be extremely rewarding.

56
Chapter six Manifesto

The Count of Coffin Clocks in a story of James Thurber's said, "We all have flaws, . . .

and mine is being wicked." Every philosopher has his biases as to how to best write
philosophy and mine is clarity. As a matter of fact, don't really regard this as a bias
I

at all. However, there is no way can demonstrate my position, and there are philoso-
I

phers who appear to think that too great an effort towards clarity inhibits the best

philosophy. So let us leave it that I am biased in favor of clarity. In this chapter I offer
my bias in a suitably hortatory tone of voice, which is the reason I called it "Mani-
festo." In subsequent chapters I revert to less controversial matters and a less em-
phatic style.

Here, first of all, are two quotations from recognized literary masters:

People think that I can teach them style. What stuff it all is. Have something
to say and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style.
Matthew Arnold

A scrupulous writer in every sentence that he writes will ask himself, What
am I trying to say? What words will best express it? And he probably asks
himself, Could put it more shortly? But you are not obliged to go to all this
I

trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing open your mind and letting the
ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences
for you-even think your thought for you-and at need they will perform the
important services of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself.
George Orwell

57
To the opinion these experts a few words directed more specifically to the writing
of
of philosophy can be added. In philosophy we seek to say what is true and say it
shortly, simply, and There are a number of words or idioms which often
precisely.
trap us in confusion and nonsense. This is not to say that these words or idioms can
never be used successfully; only that they are best used with care during one's ap-
prenticeship.They are grouped here into four classes, granting that there is a good
deal of overlap between the classes.

Polysyllabic trap-words (those nice, long words, usually with Greek or Latin roots,
which, unexplained, mean next to nothing): "subjective," "objective," "relative,"
"absolute," "emotive," "universal," "signification," "connotation," "pragmatic,"
and so forth.

Honorific trap-words (those pretentious and portentous words which we often feel
tempted to use instead of the more ordinary word which does the job better): "sym-
bol" and "sign" (for "word"); "proposition" (for "statement"); "category" and "set"
(for "group" and "class"); "perceive" (for "see," "hear," and so forth); "volition"
(for things better said using "decide," "intend," and so forth); "replica" (for "copy");

"nomenclature" (for "name"); and so on through countless pretentious pieces of

imprecision.

Jargon trap-words (the floating population of technical terms which, used properly,
can often be of the greatest value but which, used imprecisely, have only negative
value): "sense datum," "sensa," "a priori," "a posteriori," "analytic," "synthetic,"
"normative," "verifiable," "metaphysics," "existential," and so forth.

Phony morphological variants (those words created from ordinary and unpretentious
words of the language by a morphological variation which they do not properly take):
"the Real," "Being," "concrescence," "the Absolute," and that ugly threesome "the
Good," "the True," and "the Beautiful." All these words have, unfortunately, a certain
respectability from their appearance in philosophical literature of the past. This
should not lead you to use them except with the greatest care.

It sometimes said and often supposed that philosophy is a discipline

is which
in

people state what they feel or believe, or express what they feel. This is not so. There
are lots of places appropriate to the expression of one's feelings: literary magazines,
the happy home, and the offices of impertinent civil servants. Equally, it is entirely
appropriate to tell one's girl, one's clergyman, or one's psychiatrist how one feels or
what one believes. However, a philosophy paper is the logical equivalent of neither
a literary magazine nor a psychiatrist's couch. To remind one of this fact, it is as well
to avoid the following idioms in writing a philosophy paper: "I think," "I believe,"

58
"I know intuitively," "my emotions (my senses) tell me" (this should always be
avoided; one's emotions and one's senses, though at times disturbing, are never
articulate), "I just know," "I feel," and so on.

All the prohibitions and exhortations given above have been broken from time to
time by philosophers of stature, just as Bach, at one time or another, broke every rule
of counterpoint. But during one's apprenticeship, it is as well to follow the rules and
to wait for one's maturity before breaking them.

Some students have great difficulty in writing philosophy because they have the
greatest difficulty in writing clearly at all. Such a student should secure access, closer
than the library, to a good dictionary (Webster's third edition or The Oxford English
Dictionary), Roget's Thesaurus, and Fowler's Modern English Usage. There is also
an excellent little book, written originally to help civil servants write intelligibly, called

The ABC of Plain English by Ernest Gowers. Part Five of the book you are reading
gives a glossary of the commonest philosophical terms.

59
 Chapter seven Meaning and definition

Paper topics in philosophy are generally designed to get you to sort out what is

involved in some philosophically important concept. Often, to make your job easier,
a topic is given in which it is only necessary to sort out part of what is involved in the
concept. Thus, the topic 'Can One Keep a Promise by Accident?' only involves getting
clear about one aspect of the notion of promising: namely, whether keeping a promise
involves intending to keep it (whether promise-keeping isnecessarily an intentional
activity).

In the next two chapters I shall outline various ways

answer philo-of attempting to
sophical questions. I shall more than the second)
use as running examples (the first

the topics What Is the Difference between a Justification and an Excuse?' and Can
One Make a Judgment in a Dream?' The first question explicitly asks forsome delinea-
tion of the notions of a justification and an excuse, both obviously important for moral
philosophy. In the next chapter give an outline of the answer to it, and in Part Four,
I

Itackle what is essentially the same question very much more thoroughly and funda-
mentally. The second question is more oddly phrased; perhaps unfortunately, it is
characteristic of the way philosophers ask questions. However, the question is in
no sense silly or trivial. To answer it successfully, it is necessary to say a good deal
about the nature of a judgment. In Chapter Eight, and with a good deal of diffidence, I

give a model answer to the question of whether one can make a judgment in a dream.

You should not underrate the importance of getting clear about what is involved in
a concept in the sort of way discussed, whether in philosophy or outside of it. To take
the most obvious example, the starting point for the theory of relativity was Einstein's
attempt to get clear about what is involved in the notion of simultaneity.

61
Suppose, then, that we are to write on the topic What Is the Difference between a
Justificationand an Excuse?' Many students wantto say, first of all, "That depends on
what you mean by 'justification.' " Alternatively, they want to say, "That depends on
how you define 'justification.' " And they want to say the same thing about the other
key terms, like "excuse." This sort of response involves some important confusions
which are worth clearing up immediately.

As we saw in Chapter Four, every statement which is true is true, in part at least,
because the words used in making the statement mean what they do mean. If say I

that the moon is about a quarter of a million miles from the earth, that statement is
true, in part at least, because the words used in making the statement mean what they
do mean. But this is, in a sense, uninteresting. We speak a common language, we all
know how to use it competently. It goes without saying that the words we use are
used normally. Suppose ask you whether it is true that the moon is about a quarter
I

"
of a million miles from the earth. To reply "That depends on what you mean by mile'
is ridiculous. speak the English language; whether the statement is true depends on
I

how far the moon is from the earth.

There is a second aspect to this confusion. I shall give the response I am discussing
"
again, adding special emphasis: "That depends on what you mean by justification.'
This contains the suggestion that can, so to speak, mean what damn well please
I I

by any word use. There is a sense in which this is true. can, if wish, define a techni-
I I I

cal term of my own; and how define my own technical terms, so long as the defini-
I

tion is coherent, is no one's affair but mine. can even use an ordinary word in a
I

special way, though shall be writing very deceptively if do not announce that am
I I I

doing so. All this is true. But cannot use any word any way please or shall just
I I I

cease talking intelligibly. Suppose say to you that my car is in the garage. You go
I

look; it isn't there. You accuse me of lying. "Not so," reply. "By my car' meant what
I I

a bag of cement' means. If you go look in the garage you'll find wasn't lying." You I

look; no bag of cement. You come back to me again. say, "By garage' mean
I I

'patio.' " Now this process cannot go on indefinitely; at some point in explaining to
you what meant by various words, have got to start talking normal English or you
I I

will never understand me. We can go further than that. Not only must this process of

using words in special senses stop somewhere; it seems an excellent idea that it
should never start. If wanted to say that there is a bag of cement on the patio, and
I

had full command of the words "bag of cement" and "patio," then there seems every
reason for me just to say right at the start: "There is a bag of cement on the patio."

In a way have made too strong

I a case here. In any discipline there is usually a place
for certain technical terms and sometimes a case for using an ordinary English word

62
in a special sense. However, the presumption must be with most words that they are
being used entirely normally, just the way anyone who is in command of the language
uses them every day. Thus the answer to the question 'What Is the Difference between
a Justification and an Excuse?' if it is asked with no warning that words are being

used peculiarly, does not lie in what you or mean by "justification." By the same I

token, it does not lie in how you or define "justification." I

The standard response, when these points are grasped, is to say that the answer must
lie in how the word "justification" is defined (as a word of the English language).

That position we will now discuss.

Some words any language are definable. For instance, we can define the word
of
"autobiography" by saying that it is the story of at least part of a person's life told
by himself. It is a myth, fostered I suspect by certain high school English texts, that
every word in the language is definable in this sort of way. Just as a matter of fact,
this is not the case. Try to define — that is, give the necessary and sufficient conditions
for the correct use of —the word "rabbit." Long ears are not necessary; a rabbit can
have an accident and lose part of its ears without ceasing to be a rabbit. Nor is a white,

fluffy tail required, and so on. Or, to take a philosophically interesting example, try
to define "language."

Not only is it in fact not the case that every word of English is definable, but it is also
easy to show that the notion of definition is not necessary for a completely viable
language. I give a proof of that statement in an Appendix to this chapter.

Let us return to the original problem. It may be that the words "justification" and
"excuse" are definable. And if they are, giving the definitions will nicely answer the

question of what the difference is between a justification and an excuse. But one rea-
son why the topic poses an interesting philosophical question is that "justi-
at least
fication" and "excuse" are not simple to define. Trying to answer the question
"What's the difference between a justification and an excuse?" may, in fact, lead us
part way to producing definitions of these words. But we are not going to answer the
problem just by trotting out well-known and widely accepted definitions because
such definitions just do not exist.

The standard response to this last point is to say, in essence, that dictionaries provide
such definitions. People who say this do not spend much time looking in dictionaries.
In the first place, dictionaries very often do not define words; and when they do, the

definitions are frequently unexplicative; not unusually the definitions are wrong. For

63
instance, here is the relevant entry from The Oxford English Dictionary for "justifi-
cation": "The action of justifying or showing something to be just, right, proper;
vindicating oneself or another; exculpation." The first thing to notice about this
entry is that we appear to be offered three definitions, not just one, and that these
definitions do not look as if they are equivalent. More important, the first of these
definitions is unexplicative and the other two are wrong. Let us start with the last one.
A justification, we are told, is an exculpation. To exculpate oneself or another is, of
off blame. It is true that if one has done
course, to get oneself (or the other person)
something, and one successfully offers a justification for doing that thing, then no
one can blame one for doing that thing. But that is not the same as saying that the
meaning of "justification" is exculpation. Before one can get off blame one must
have first been blamed, accused. But to give a successful justification for doing
something one does not have to be blamed for doing it first. Similarly, there are a
number of ways of getting oneself off blame for doing something and not all of them
are justifications for doing that thing. In the most obvious instance, a successful
excuse gets one off blame. So it just does not define "justification" correctly to say
that it is an exculpation, even though it is true that a successful justification excul-
pates. Exactly the same objections apply to saying that a justification is a vindication.
So the second and third definitions are just wrong.

The first definition, that "justification" means "the action of justifying or showing
something to be just, right, proper," is notably unexplicative. We are concerned about
what it is to give a justification, and we are told, for instance, that it consists in show-
ing that the act is just. All we some information as to how the root
get out of this is

just takes morphological variation, nothing much about the notion of justification.
So we still appear to be as far as we ever were from solving our problem.

Dictionaries, then, will not solve our philosophical problems for us. But they can be
of value. When discussing unexplicative definitions said that, even when we com-
I

mand such a definition, we still appear to be no further ahead in solving our problem.
But appearances can be deceptive; there is in fact a way to use unexplicative defini-
tions in getting at a philosophical problem. For instance, one way to start on the prob-
lem of giving the difference between an excuse and a justification would be this:
Look both words up in a good dictionary, ignoring archaic or technical uses of the
words. This will give one a fairly large collection of closely related words (for example,
"just," "right," "proper"). Look up these words in turn. Before very long the process
will become circular; that is, the words one started with will begin turning up in the

definitions one gets from the dictionary. When this sort of circularity occurs, one has
a group of words, probably no pair of them being exact synonyms, which are the
important ones in the area of interest. Sometimes working with such a group of words

64
is a good deal and more revealing, than working with just one word like "justi-
easier,
fication." method does not solve any problems. The most it can do is
However, this
make the problem more fully available for solution. have discussed it only to show I

how the dictionary can be of aid, if carefully used, in solving a philosophical problem.
However, this technique is probably not a very good way of doing philosophy in one's
apprenticeship simply because it is a technique and nothing more. Like the table
used in the Alternative Method of Solution to the first puzzle in Chapter One, it will

not solve any problems for you, though it may make a problem easier to tackle.

As an historical note, it is worth saying that one of the most famous philosophers of
this century, John Austin, who died in 1961, thought that the technique outlined
above was a very important way of going at a philosophical problem. He elaborated
thismethod in a paper called "A Plea for Excuses," which appears in his book Philo-
sophical Papers.

So far in this chapter I have said that one does not solve a philosophical problem by
saying that the solution what some individual means by a word, nor by defining
lies in

the word oneself, nor by looking it up in the dictionary. How then does one go about
trying to solve such a problem as giving the difference between a justification and an
excuse? There is a standard answer to that question; it was first given by the philos-
opher Ludwig Wittgenstein in 1 931 He said, "Don't ask for the meaning, ask for the
.

use." A whole set of philosophical theses about language have grown up round that
particular remark and do not propose to go into them here. The point about Witt-
I

genstein's remark, for our purposes here, is that it is excellent advice for someone in
the apprentice stage of doing philosophy. How one goes about asking for the use,
instead of the meaning, is the subject of the next chapter.

First appendix to chapter seven

Verbal definition and the semantic basis of language. The ideal way to give the

meaning of a we tend to feel, is to give a verbal definition of it. Thus, if

word, or so
for instance say that the word "procrastinate" means to put things off, we feel
we can
we have impeccably fulfilled the demand to give the meaning of the word "pro-
crastinate." However, the notion of verbal definition as such is not the foundation of
the meaningfulness of words. Here is the proof: Take the English language with
vocabulary V . Put V in serial order (alphabetical order will do). Working down the
series, eliminate the first verbally definable word. This forms a new vocabulary V,.
Proceed identically with V,. Continue until a vocabulary V„ is achieved such that no

65
word is verbally definable. Clearly V„ is not empty, for there would have been no
words in which to define the last word. In the language associated with V„ it is the
case that (a) anything which can be said in English can be said in it (with the excep-
tion of remarks about vocabulary items of V which are not also vocabulary items of
V„) and (b) no word is verbally definable. Thus, the language associated with the
vocabulary V„ is, in important respects, equivalent to English; though it has a trun-
cated vocabulary, it is hardly a truncated language. It might be somewhat less ex-
pressive than English, but that is the only limitation it would have. The crucial point
about the language associated with V„ is the combination of the two properties that
(a) it is in important respects equivalent to English and (b) no word in it is verbally

definable. Thus, verbal definition cannot be the foundation, or anyway the entire
content of, semantic theory. This is the point which was to be shown.

Second appendix to chapter seven

Some theories of meaning. Certain theories of meaning exercise a peculiar fas-

cination on the human mind.* They crop up again and again in the literature and often
seem so obvious to their proponents that any suggestion that they are wrong is met
with simple surprise. However, as is now well known (but not as widely known as one
could wish), these theories are wrong. think it fair to say that if and when we have a
I

really watertight theory of meaning, it will certainly be very much more complex than
that presented in any of these theories.

Below I offer a reasonable cross-section of such theories along with outline refuta-
tions of them. Where there is a detailed refutation in philosophical literature, I cite

the reference.

1. Words are names. If names are names, then common nouns, adjectives, verbs,
and so forth are not names. If someone says "The President of the United States is
a man," he has given the president's sex, not his name. The word "man" is not a
name. In other respects also this theory is just perverse. The crucial difference be-
tween names and common nouns is this: a common noun can be correctly applied
to many different things, but a name can only be correctly applied to one thing. Yet
it is just this crucial difference that the theory that nouns are names or the theory that

words are names ignores. (See Ryle, "The Theory of Meaning.")

'This appendix appeared originally in a book of mine, Language and Rules (Mouton, The Hague,
1969). It is republished here by permission.

66
If, words are not names the way proper nouns are names, in what way are they
then,
names? The standard answer is to say that words are names because they stand for
things.

2.Words stand for things. a word stands for something and is thereby meaning-
If

we can quite reasonably ask what thing

ful, stands for. Take the word "table."
it

What thing does stand for? Clearly not this table am now writing at, for
it thisI if

table were destroyed, the word table" would not have its meaning destroyed. Nor
can it stand for all the tables there are, for that is not a thing but a collection of things.
Equally, if it did stand for all the tables there are, the word would change meaning
every time a new table were built or an old one destroyed. Again,
word "table" if the
stood for every table, how could we ever talk about a particular table? We would have
no way of referring to it. (See Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations; Ryle, "The
Theory of Meaning." See also the sample argument in Chapter Two of this book.)
Faced with these criticisms, proponents of the theory that words stand for things
generally change the sort of thing for which they say words stand. They now adopt
the theory that words are meaningful because they stand for ideas in someone's mind.

3. Words stand for ideas. Again, one wants to ask, whose ideas? Yours and mine?
So we mean different things by every word we use; that is, when two different people
use the word "table," "table" in its two uses stands for different ideas. Furthermore,
ideas in the mind are private; one person's ideas are not necessarily like those of
another person. So if words mean something because they stand for ideas, then every
word is as many times ambiguous as there are speakers of the language. Nor is it
a way out to say our ideas are at least similar because we describe them in the same
way. When we describe something, we do so in words; and words, we are told, stand
for ideas in our minds. Therefore, using the same words in the description as another
uses is no guarantee that the ideas are even similar. (See Alston, Philosophy of
Language.)

The notion which causes much of the difficulty in these last two theories is the notion
of stands for. Pronouns stand for nouns, it is sometimes said. What is meant by
this, think, is that a certain noun (or noun phrase) can replace the pronoun in any
I

given utterance without altering what is said. This is true of some pronouns (it
is not, of course, true for all: My is a pronoun and no noun simpliciter can replace

it, only a noun in the genitive case; and a noun in the genitive case has the functional

properties of an adjective). In the sense of stands for where at least some pronouns
stand for nouns or noun phrases, the phrase makes perfectly good sense. But in

67
this sense of stands for, it is obviously false that words stand for things or ideas; it

is not just that they do not, it is logically impossible that they should.
There does not
seem to be any other suitable meaning for stands for which makes any sense out of
the theories that words are meaningful because they stand for things or ideas. (See
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations; Ryle, The Concept of Mind.)

4. Words are signs. As with the previous two theories, we must ask what words
could be signs of (for)? The theory has more plausibility than the last two because
words perfectly well can be used as signs, and indeed often are. That is, "PIZZA"
outside a place of business is a sign; "35" over a boarding area in an airport is a sign.
But these are words used as signs ("pizza" is not always a sign) and are not words
used as they are always used. Equally some words or phrases signify things or, any-
way, refer to things. For instance, proper nouns and most phrases of the type "The
first dog to be born at sea" refer to things. But though these words and phrases do
refer to things, they are not signs for these things,
which is an entirely different mat-
ter.The theory that words are signs is a slightly more plausible variant on the theory
that every word is a name; and it is incorrect for the same reasons that the other
theory is incorrect.

5. An utterance is an encoded message. This theory is a modern manifestation

of an old and ubiquitous philosophical error: a human being doing anything other
than on the basis of stimulus-response (that is, doing it consciously) is doing two
things: thinking and acting. Thus, driving a car carefully consists of driving the car
and taking care; acting intentionally consists in thinking out what one is going to do
and then doing it. On this theory, speaking, which is an intelligent and conscious
activity after all, consists in making up a message and then encoding it. The errors
in this theory run so deep that it is impossible to go into them here. shall therefore I

make just two points, (a) Although we sometimes do have intentions and later act
them out, it is quite clear that we often act intentionally without going through any
such process. When I enter my room and do not think about turn-
turn on the light, I

ing on the light before doing so; yet there is no sense in which do not turn the light I

on intentionally, (b) The notion of encode hangs loose when we talk of encoding a
thought into language. One can encode a piece of English into Morse code, of course;
there is a correspondence between elements of the language and bits of the code.
But what does encoding a thought amount to? Presumably annexing to each thought
or idea the corresponding word. So here the theory entails a variant of the theory
that words stand for ideas. (See Ryle, Concept of Mind.)

6. The primary (sole) function of language is to X. There is no value for X such

68
that the theory is both informative and correct. There is a sense which one can
in

substitute communicate for X, but this is uninformative. All other substitutions which
have been offered (state facts, inform, communicate our emotions, communicate our
ideas, and so on) are incorrect and for the same reasons: language has no prime or
sole function; it is a human institution whose "function" is to do what anyone can
successfully make it do.

The trouble with these theories is not so much that they are incorrect but that they are
ambiguous A proponent of one of them tends, in defending the theory, to broaden
.

the meaning of one or more of the key terms (sign, stand for, idea, message, encode)
until the theory becomes vacuous. When such a proponent says "Words are signs,"

he does not mean that words have the properties of signs at all, or so it seems in
discussion. What he means, he would have us believe, is that he proposes to use
"sign" synonymously with "word." But then, when the theory is no longer being
defended, the meanings of the terms contract again and we get, for instance, talk of
"sign and thing-signified," which is incorrect and grossly misleading.

69
Chapter eight Asking for the use

I wish first to give a disclaimer. You will find this is the least satisfactory chapter of
PartTwo. The reason is simple. Up to now in Part Two, have been discussing matters I

which are well known and well understood within the philosophical community. In
this chapter I am depending on strictly contemporary work, most of it based on the
writings of Austin and Wittgenstein. The distinctions I make in the first part of the
chapter, though they are extremely valuable as philosophical tools, are not as clear
as they should be for theoretical work. This does not make them worthless; it only
means that they must be used with the greatest care. This is the way it always tends
to be with tools or techniques in philosophy (recall Chapter Three).

There are advantages as well as disadvantages to the difficulties you will find here.
In struggling with the problems of this chapter you will be struggling with problems

which occupy a good many philosophers today. It is, of course, unlikely that at this
stage of the game you will actually produce important research. However, the un-
likely can happen: If there is a young Austin or a young Wittgenstein among you, he

well might do so.

So much for the disclaimer. We will now turn to the job at hand.

"Asking for the use" is a great deal more complex an affair than at first it looks. How-
ever, there are at least two relatively clear and clearly different things which can be
involved: (1) We can ask what sort of thing a word is usually applied to (supposing
it is applied to anything). (2) We can ask what the use or function of a certain type of
utterance is. I shall illustrate this distinction.

71
 '

1. We can ask what sort of thing the word "pig" is applied to (when it is applied). Or,
to take a philosophically more interesting example, we can ask what sort of thing the
word "justification" is applied to. This is roughly equivalent to asking for the meaning
of the word in it is a better way to ask what we want to ask be-
question. However,
cause the question does not appear to be only answerable by giving a definition.
For instance, if someone asks what the word "pig" means, the only reply anyone can
give is something like "A pig is a long, low, rotund animal with a snout, a curly tail

and a characteristic smell" and so on. That does not give a definition of the word
"pig," but it is the best answer that can be given (apart from showing the person
some pigs). The point about the statement is that it is the obvious (and correct)
answer to the question "What sort of thing is the word "pig" applied to (when it is
applied to anything)?" We should also notice that another obvious way to answer the
question is to produce a pig, preferably several pigs. To do so does not define the
word "pig," but it goes a long way towards giving what sorts of thing the word "pig"
is applied to. This explains the extensive role played by examples in most modern

work on philosophy (the philosopher concerned is showing us his pigs). Of course,

if we really want to explain the use of the word "pig" to someone, we will have to

show him a whole range of pigs, atypical as well as typical ones, and say why the
atypical ones really are pigs and not, for instance, large hairless dogs. This explains
why worry over borderline cases of the use or application of a word plays such an
extensive role in most contemporary work on philosophy. Borderline cases occur
relatively infrequently with pigs, for reasons to do with evolution, but outside the
biological sphere there are often borderline cases which must remain as borderline
cases. For instance, there is no firm demarkation point between a large armchair
and a small love seat used to think it is a matter of the number of cushions, but it
(I

is not).

2. Wecan ask what the use or function of a certain type of utterance is. There are
usually multiple answers to this question, though not always. For instance, there is
only one answer to the question "What is the function of saying promise to do X?' 'I

That answer is, under an obligation to do X. But with a simple subject

to put oneself
predicate sentence of the type "A is B," there is an enormous multiplicity of uses.
The sentence "Smith is a pig" may be used to state a simple fact (the fact that a given
pig is called Smith). On the other hand, it may be used to evaluate Smith (a man). If
you say about Smith, an undoubted man, that he is a pig, you are making some sort
of value judgment about him.

The use or function of a type of utterance as explained here is distinct from the
purposes or intentions someone may have when making such an utterance. It is the
function of "I promise to meet your train tomorrow" to put the speaker under an

72
obligation to meet a particular train. But the speaker's purpose in saying what he
said may be to embarrass the person to whom he is speaking who (let us say) does
not want to be met. The function of a type of utterance may coincide with the pur-
pose of the person making the utterance or it may not. There is a connection between
the function of a type of utterance and people's purposes or intentions when making
utterances of that type but it is not an entailment relation. The nature of this con-
nection is the subject of a great deal of debate today.

As I mentioned earlier, these two ways of asking for the use (and there are others as
well) are not as clear as one could wish. It will be a major philosophical breakthrough
(also a breakthrough in semantic theory) when these distinctions can be made really
clear.

In working on a philosophical problem, it is often the case that one of the ways of
asking for the use is paramount, usually because the answer to the other question

is obvious. In asking philosophical questions about justification, it is the use of

justification" (what sort of thing the word is applied to) which poses the important
problem because it is easy to see what the principle function of justifications is (to

get us off blame). On if we are concerned with philosophical problems

the other hand,
about belief, we be principally concerned with the function of utterances of the
will

type "I believe that p.' The very hardest questions are often those where we have to
ask for both the use and the function. Suppose we are interested in philosophical
questions about knowledge. Here we must ask what the use of "know" is and also
ask what the function of know that p" is: or so at least it has been very cogently
I

argued in the literature.

Ishall now illustrate how we can work on a philosophical problem using these two
ways of "asking for the use." For my first illustration shall discuss the difference
I

between a justification and an excuse.

Justifications and excuses

When we try to justify or excuse something we have done or failed to do. we are.

as a rule, trying to get ourselves off the hook: we are trying, in the portentous lan-
guage of the dictionary, to exculpate ourselves. That is the principle function of
justifications and excuses and is what they hold in common. However, that does not
mean that excuses and justifications amount to the same thing or even to the same
sort of thing. It is by looking at what types of things the words "excuse" and justi-
fication are applied to that the distinction will become apparent.

73
When discussing the use of a word, it is always a good idea to have some concrete
examples. We then have some sort of protection against talking the sheerest non-
sense. Here is a set of examples. Smith is accused of having been drunk the night
before. He might reply in a number of different ways:

a. "Jones put brandy into my glass of milk and I didn't notice."

b. "Yesterday was the Sabbath and my religion calls for the celebration of
the Sabbath with the consumption of large quantities of spirituous
liquids."

c. "I was celebrating" or "I got promoted today."

d. "I wasn't drunk at all, I was just happy and excited."

e. "Sure. So what?"

And so on. These are the sorts of replies that we make in the face of an accusation
every day.

We must now ask which of these are excuses, which are justifications, and which
perhaps are neither.

Here is the point where everything I have written so far in this book comes together.
I shall explain.

Ihave suggested above that the question now arises of which of these examples are
excuses, justifications, or neither. But does this question seriously arise? speak the I

language; so do you. Surely, granting we speak the language, we can spot a justifi-
cation or an excuse when we see one. Indeed, if we could not, it would be wrong to
say we did command the English language, at least in the area concerned. Thus, if
we approach these examples without preconceptions (remember solving puzzles),
we should just on the basis of being speakers of English know which of the examples
are justifications, which excuses, and which neither. And of course we do know that.
Igive the answers below. You may find what say unconvincing. you do, you should,
I If

ideally, discuss with me; but anyway, find someone to take my side and fight
it it

out (discussion is the final court of appeal; remember Chapter Three). Either am I

wrong, or you are, or the English language is chaos. The last alternative is wrong, so
one of the other two must be right.

In the examples above (a) is an excuse and an attempt at a justification.

(b) is at least
The two examples under (c) are, as they stand, undetermined in this sense; on the

74
basis of the information we have, we do not know whether Smith is trying to justify
or to excuse his conduct. We will return to these cases. In the last two examples,
(d) is neither a justification nor an excuse; and (e) is also neither a justification nor an
excuse, though (e) probably implies that getting drunk (anyway under certain cir-

cumstances) can be justified.

If one looks closely at these examples, it is clear what the difference is between (a),
the excuse, and (b), the justification. In (a) Smith is claiming that getting drunk was
not really something he did but something which was, in one way or another, done to
him. The person to blame here, he is claiming, is Jones. In (b), on the other hand, he
is doing something quite different; he is giving the principles upon which he acted.

It is interesting to notice that the type of justification offered in (b) is the same type
which has been tried several times in the courts to justify the use of marijuana.

Thus, we have the difference between this excuse and this justification; of course,
we do not yet have the difference between excuses in general and justifications in

general. However, let us consider the undetermined case (c) — "I was celebrating."
As it stands, the statement is an explanation for an action, just as the statement "I'm
an alcoholic" The statement "I got promoted today" is a reason for acting, though
is.

not necessarily a very good reason. By questioning Smith, we can find out whether
he regards "I got promoted today" as justifying getting drunk or, though it is the
reason he got drunk, he gives it only to excuse himself. Suppose we ask him, "Do
you think it right (justifiable) for anyone to get drunk when they're promoted?" If
his answer is "Yes," then he was offering (c) as a justification. Of course, whenever
someone offers something as a justification, it does not follow that he succeeds in
justifying whatever act is in question. That is another matter.

I added (d) andthe list because it is important to see that every sort of answer
(e) to

to an accusation does not have to be either an excuse or a justification. Equally, you

should notice that the other concepts which are grouped around actions are all
different. For instance, consider this case: Jones shoots Smith's cat. His reason for
doing so was that Smith poisoned his (Jones') cat. The justification he offers, quoting
the Old Testament, is "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." His motive was,
of course, revenge.

I do not propose to go on in detail want to

with justifications and excuses because I

look at a different type of example, so approximate solution to the

I shall outline the

problem. When a person offers an excuse for doing A (an action), he is doing one of
three things: (1) saying, essentially, "I didn't (really) do A" (in the full sense of "do");

75
samples of this sort of excuse are "I did it "I was pushed
inadvertently, accidentally,"
(tripped)"; (2) saying, essentially, "I was and didn't realize (know,
really (just) doing B,
think) that A would result"; this sort of an excuse is usually phrased just by plead-
ing ignorance: "I didn't know he had a weak heart," "No one told me he was stand-
ing there," "I never realized he would take it so seriously"; (3) offering a reason for
doing A while agreeing that the reason was not adequate; here is a sample: "Why
did you hit him?" "(I know it's not an adequate reason but) he was the third person

to step on my toe today." On the other hand, a justification consists in citing reasons
for doing what was done and claiming (explicitly or implicitly) that they are adequate
reasons for doing it. Justifications usually take one of two forms: (1) citing some
principle, as when a person says "One ought always tell the truth" or "My country
right or wrong"; (2) giving the reason for acting where the claim that it justifies that
action is implicit; for instance, challenged about punishing a child severely, a person
says, "It was the third time he ran across the road without looking first for cars."
We get borderline cases between excuses and justifications when the excuse is of
type (3) and the justification is of type (2), for both can have an identical verbal form.
That is, the difference between an excuse of type (3) and a justification of type (2)
is that in the second, but not in the first, the reason given is regarded as sufficient
reason for what was done. In extreme cases, the person who acts may not be sure
whether he regards some reason given for an action as a justification or merely as
an excuse.

This solution is, I However, there is a sense in which it is

think, basically correct.
not a solution at because a large part of the solution depends on the notion of a
all

reason for acting and the notion of the adequacy of a reason in justifying a given act.
Both these notions are themselves philosophically problematic, and do not propose I

to go into them here. In Part Four have given what think is a solution to these
I I

problems.

Dream judgments
For the second example, I shall offer "Can one make a
an answer to the question

judgment in a dream?" This is an easier problem than the one about justifications

and excuses, though there were reasons for treating it second. shall give what I

Ithink is a complete solution to the problem and shall do it in a way more formal
than the previous example. In fact, the following is a short paper of the type you
should be writing. Here, we shall be primarily concerned with the second way of
"asking for the use"; that is, asking the function of a type of utterance, namely
judgments.

76
Can one make a judgment in a dream?
Someone who claims that it is impossible to make a judgment in a dream
might be claiming one of two things. he might be claiming that it was
First,

scientifically impossible, which would involve that no accurate account

ever given of a dream included "At that point, judged it best.
I
." This . .

claim would presumably be false and is, in any case, of no philosophical

interest. Second, he might be claiming that there is some conceptual difficulty
about making a dream judgment: something logically improper in the actual
notion of a dream judgment.

The fact that the phrase "dream judgment" appears to make perfectly good
sense is not decisive. "Dream" here acts as an adjective, and some adjec-
tives can qualify a noun (call it N) such that the objects to which the phrase
then applies are not Ns. Thus imitation caviar is not caviar. The many phrases
containing "dream" often have this vitiating character. The function of "In
a dream, S" is usually not to assert S; thus, "In a dream I cracked up the
car" precisely does not assert that cracked up the car. However, this does
I

not decide the issue about dream judgments to the effect that a dream judg-
ment is not a judgment: "dream" in an adjectival position is not unambigu-
ously of the "imitation" type.

We must make at least a partial inquiry into the nature of judgments. Here
are some properties:

1. Many judgments do not announce themselves as judgments; that is, they

do not come in the verbal form "I judge that S." However, it seems reason-
able to suppose that when we do judge that S, should be perfectly ap- it

propriate to say "I judge that S." This excludes from the class of possible
judgments such statements as "I am ;n pain." It would make no sense to
say that one judged oneself to be in pain; if one's in pain, one knows it. A
judgment, to be a judgment, must be open to disconfirmation by future
experience.

2. Judgments made by ourselves and others are the basis upon which we
act. That is, we mostly have reasons for what we do. When this is the case,

reasons will consist in giving a number of judgments (so long as condition

(1) above is fulfilled). Thus, "Why did you bring in the garden furniture?"
"It's going to rain" ("I judge that it's going to rain").

3.There are behavioral signs of having made a judgment: We can find out
about other people's judgments in more ways than by listening to what

77
 they say. If you see Smith hastily carrying in the garden furniture, it is a good

guess that he's made some judgment, though you may not know what it
is. This property is merely the counterpart of (2).

These three properties of judgments, though they are not all the properties
of judgments, are central to the concept of a judgment. They show judg-
ments to be part of the fabric of our lives both personally and socially. Cut
off from our and put in a dream, what is a judgment? The mouthing of
lives

a statement? Not even that: we can perfectly well make a judgment with-
out mouthing it and vice versa. Perhaps it is, in some very broad way, the
contemplation of a possible statement? But this is not in any sense a judg-
ment; as we have seen, there's more to a judgment than that.

Let us run judgments beside promises for a moment. Promises, when we

make them, are bound up with the fabric of our lives in the way judgments
are, but what about dream promises? In a dream, promise Smith $1,000.
I

Am under any obligation to pay Smith this money? A dream obligation to

I

do so, perhaps? But is a dream obligation an obligation? Not to Smith cer-

tainly. But to the dream-Smith? Do pay in dream-money? Dream promises
I

are not promises because the most obvious feature of promising (placing
oneself under an obligation) vanishes and no other feature remains, except
the remembered mouthing of words. So it is with judgments. A dream judg-
ment is not a judgment because the central features of judgments vanish
and no other feature remains, except the remembered mouthing of words.

You might care to notice that the form of argument used here is of the reductio ad
absurdum type discussed in the Appendix to Chapter Two.

78
Chapter nine Some common
philosophical errors

In this chapter I discuss the most common philosophical errorsmade by students in

writing philosophy papers. Each error has own abbreviation, which use in mark-
its I

ing papers to avoid having to write out the same thing again and again; perhaps your
instructor will also use these abbreviations. With luck, of course, he won't have to;
the mistakes that have been discussed here you should not, after all, make.

Auth: Using an authority. There are no authorities in philosophy; that is, there is

no person such that, if he said something, that thing is therefore true. In general, if

the only argument for a point is that someone else has made it, then there is no argu-
ment for the point and it is best dropped.

BQ: Begging the question. One begs the question when one fails to answer it, usually
by answering another very much simpler question instead. Here is an example: Sup-
pose that the question is "Can one keep a promise by accident?" The following
answer would beg every question of interest here: "If by 'keeping a promise' one
means just physically doing what one has said one will do, then keeping a promise
by accident is perfectly possible." This begs the question because everything that
is interesting (and hard) about the original question lies in whether keeping a promise

does involve just and only physically doing what one has said one will do.

BRQ: Bad rhetorical question. It is a good idea to avoid rhetorical questions alto-
gether in writing philosophy. It is my experience that just at the point students think
everything is obvious and express this in rhetorical questions, the major difficulties

arise.However, rhetorical questions can be used legitimately. They are so used when
the answer to the question is obvious and this obvious answer is correct. One gets a

79
bad rhetorical question when one or other of these conditions is not fulfilled. Here
is an example actually taken from a student's paper: "Who would ever suppose that

man should act from duty alone?" The "obvious" answer was "No one." The cor-
rect answer is "To take one example, the very great German philosopher Emmanuel
Kant."

BSQ: Bad scare quotes. Scare quotes are quotation marks placed around a word
to indicate that the word is being used in some special sense. In general, it is a good
idea to avoid using scare quotes altogether because they tend to lead one astray.
But one uses scare quotes badly when, having used them and thus having indicated
that in a special way, one then fails to explain the way one was
one has used a word
using Sometimes, of course, it is clear what the word which is in scare quotes
it.

means from the context (as in the entry above), but this is a good deal rarer than most
students think.

CT: Cliche thinking. That is, thinking in cliches.

E!: English! That is, bad English. I am not talking here about splitting infinitives or
ending a sentence with a preposition, which does not matter at all. Bad English in
students' papers is usually a matter of ambiguity or unintelligibility with a gram-

matical origin.

HTW: Honorific trap-word. See Chapter Six.

I!: Irrelevance. When you write a philosophy paper, go through afterwards and ask
yourself of every sentence whether it bears on the original problem and whether it

moves us further towards the solution of that problem. If any sentence does not ful-

fill both these conditions, then cross it out.

MST: Muddled style. I write this when there is a muddle in your paper which is, I

suspect, stylistic in origin rather than philosophical. To correct it, you should just

think through what you want to say more clearly.

NAQ: Not answering the question. Questions are set quite carefully to lead you into
an interesting philosophical problem. By not answering the question you often avoid
the problem to the detriment of your paper. In general, make sure you always answer
the question asked. Then, when you have done so, it is of course your privilege to go
on to discuss other similar questions if you think that will be interesting.

NOB: Not obvious. I write this when you offer something as obvious when it is not
obvious (usually when it is just wrong as well).

NS: Hon-sequitur. This is self-explanatory. You have a non-sequitur when you say,

or imply, that one statement follows from another or some others when it does not.

80
OTM: You are operating with an odd (and wrong) theory of meaning. See the second
appendix to Chapter Seven.

PMV: Phony morphological variant. See Chapter Six.

PSTW: Polysyllabic trap-word. See Chapter Six.

QM: Quotation marks! This means, as a you have failed to use them when
rule, that

you should have; but it may mean you have used them wrongly. In general, if you
mention a word or talk about a word (as, for instance, when you write "The word
'table' is a noun") that word should always appear in quotation marks. Great phil-

osophical confusion can arise through failing to use quotation marks in these in-
stances. Take this, for example, a mistake made frequently in actual papers: The
statement made is "Everyone means something different by love." If this means,
"Everyone means something different by the word 'love,' " then it is wrong (see
Chapter Seven). If, on the other hand, it means something like "Love plays different
parts in everyone's lives; everyone or most people have different attitudes towards

love," then it is doubtless true, but less startling than the original statement.

TBS: True by stipulation. Here an example. Someone says, "By 'pain' mean that
is I

state someone is in when they moan and groan and cry out." It then follows, with
no trouble at all, that no one can ever pretend to be in pain by moaning and groan-
ing and crying out. But the solution is spurious just because it is not correct that what

"pain" means is the state someone is in when they moan and groan and cry out. The
possibility of pretense has been stipulated out of existence, which is not a useful
way to solve a philosophical problem.

TNS: This needs support. write this opposite any statement which is offered as
I

obvious, or anyway is unsupported, and which needs some form of support.

UIF: Unnecessary intrusion of facts. Sometimes straight factual material about the
world or one's situation in it or something similar is necessary in a philosophy paper.
However, this is rare. In the ordinary way, such straightforward factual matter, when
it appears in a philosophy paper, just clutters it up and constitutes an unnecessary
intrusion of facts.

UIS: Unnecessary intrusion of science. This is a subspecies of UIF worth mention-

ing only because it is peculiarly tempting. Students often feel that, for instance, to
talk sensibly about the meaning of a word like "red" one has to talk about wave-
lengths of light, Angstrom units, and so on. In certain peculiar contexts, or within
some bits of the philosophy of science, this may be so. But in the main it is not. The
word "red" had a perfectly good meaning and meant what it does now long before
scientists investigated the nature of light.

81
URP: Unreferred pronoun. The mistake is self-explanatory, but it is so common that
it is worth emphasizing. When you read over a draft of any paper you write, always
ask yourself, of every pronoun, whether or not it is completely unambiguously re-
ferred to some suitable noun or noun phrase.

WMS!: Words mean something! use this as something close to a cry of despair
I

when some student appears to be going on the assumption that words mean nothing,
or can mean anything one chooses they shall mean, or one of the many variations on
this error.

Exercises for part two

These exercises are paper topics which lead into interesting philosophical problems.

Some topics of limited compass:

1. Can one break a rule while playing chess?

2. Something is one meter long when it is the same length as the Standard Meter
in Paris. How long is the Standard Meter? (No undefined technical terms allowed.)

3. Can one keep a promise by accident? If not, what is involved in keeping a promise?

4. Language is a rule-guided activity. Why must it be? Or might it not be? What would
a "language" which was not rule-guided be like? (The explanation of the scare
quotes is your job.)

5. Could one have a language without common nouns? (Proper nouns — that is,
names-are allowed.) What would be its fundamental characteristics? Could we do
everything with it that we can now do with our language?

6. What if everyone lied all Would

the time? that destroy the language as a viable
instrument for communication? Change it? If so, how?

7. If I claim to know something, must be I able to prove that thing? If I claim to know
something, must I also be prepared to claim that I know that I know it?

Some topics of less limited compass:

82
 .

8. In considering a matter of fact, what should count as evidence in a court of law?

What should count as a proof? (proof = show beyond reasonable doubt). Don't
give a lesson in legal practice; the question asked is what should count, not what
does.

9. Is free action incompatible with universal causality? (A hard one; be careful.)

10. What's the difference between pretending to A and doing A (A = an action).

(This topic lends itself to trivial partial solutions, so be careful.) How do we ever
detect a good pretense? (Again, watch for partial solutions.)

1 1 On what occasions do we correctly say, "X intended to do A"? (The answer does
not lie, exclusively or even mainly, in talk of mental states.)

12. What's the relation between promising and intending, predicting, and expecting
(the first and the last three)? (This is a hard one precisely because it looks so easy.
Along the way, answer the question: Is it conceivable that people should say "I

promise to do X" and never do it. This question constitutes a hint.)

83
Part three How to read philosophy

Reading philosophy is an art in itself. There are reasons for this. One of the things

a philosopher is often trying to do is lay bare the structure embedded in our language
and our thought. But he is only human. In thinking about the structure of our thought,
he has to think within that structure; and in writing about the structure of the lan-

guage, he must use the language. no wonder that such writing is often com-
It is

plicated and obscure. In addition, almost all original work in any field is usually ob-
scure: The process of discovery is always approximate and it often takes decades
after some
thesis has been offered to get really clear about what is involved. However,
there one heartening note in all this. In the present century there has been a great
is

deal of work on the nature of meaningfulness within language and, at a low level,
on ways just to be clear. Thus, contemporary philosophers are, at least sometimes,
easier to read than the philosophers of the past.

Although works in philosophy are often long, not all of what is written in a single
piece of philosophy is always of equal importance. For instance, philosophical writ-
ing often has this form: First the writer says what he is going to do or what area con-
cerns him. Second, he offers an argument leading to an important conclusion. Fin-
ally, he draws out obvious consequences of his conclusion. In reading such a
fairly

piece of philosophy the first concern must be with the central argument. The con-

85
sequences of the conclusion to that argument do not matter until the conclusion is

established, or at least understood. The introductory remarks are probably not of

any great importance. So the first task in reading a piece of philosophy is to locate
the important, central arguments or positions. cannot give you instruction in how
I

to do this; there no set procedure. What do in the following chapters is take

is just I

several fairly short passages by famous philosophers and exemplify the process of
finding the crucial premises and digging out the central argument or position.

A word of warning: The passages which follow are torn out of context to exemplify
a particular sort of philosophical writing. Although the passages are all from famous
philosophers, you should not suppose that you know anything of the work of these
philosophers just by reading what is reprinted here. I chose the passages not to give
you Descartes or Hare in a capsule but to exemplify a certain type of philosophical
writing and methods for reading and understanding it.

86
Chapter ten Descartes' argument
about material objects

The following is a passage from Meditations on a First Philosophy by Rene Descartes

first published in 1 641 . Descartes, who lived from 1 598 to 1 650. is usually considered
to be the modern philosopher. The argument given below serves as an integral
first

part of a system which Descartes was developing in the Meditations. However, it can
also be looked at as an argument in isolation, which is the way we will treat it here.
The passage quoted was originally written by Descartes in Latin. In general, the trans-
lation used is a good one. But there is one piece of linguistic knowledge which may
help you: the word "understanding" in sentence (24) was in the Latin mens which
means, generically, "mind." have numbered the sentences in the passage for easier
I

reference; otherwise it is exactly as Descartes wrote it.*

(1) Let us now consider the commonest things, which are commonly be-
lieved to be the most distinctly known, namely, the bodies which we touch
and see. (2) do not intend to speak of bodies in general, for general no-
I

tions are usually somewhat more confused; let us rather consider one body
in particular. (3) Let us take, for example, this bit of wax which has just

been taken from the hive. (4) It has not yet completely lost the sweetness
of the honey it contained; it still retains something of the odor of the flowers
from which it was collected; its colour, shape, and size are apparent; it is
hard and cold; it can easily be touched; and, if you knock on it, it will give
out some sound. (5) Thus everything which can make a body distinctly

known is found in this example.

*From Rene Descartes, Meditations, translated by Laurence J. LaFleur, copyright © 1951, 196G
by the Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the Liberal Arts Press Division.

87
 (6) But now while I am talking I bring it close to the fire. (7) What remains
of the taste evaporates; the odor vanishes;
its shape is its colour changes;
lost; its size increases; it becomes
one can hardly touch
liquid; it grows hot;
it; and although it is knocked upon, it will give out no sound. (8) Does the
same wax remain after this change? (9) We must admit that it does; no
one denies it. (10) What is it then in this bit of wax that we recognize with
much distinctness? (11) Certainly cannot be anything that observe
so it I

by means of the senses, since everything in the field of taste, smell, sight,
touch, and hearing is changed, and since the same wax nevertheless re-
mains.

(12) The truth of the matter perhaps, as I now suspect, is that this wax was
neither the sweetness of honey, nor that odor of flowers, nor that whiteness,
nor that shape, nor that sound, but only a body which a little while ago ap-
peared to my senses under these forms and which now makes itself felt

under others. (13) But what is it, to speak precisely, that I imagine when I

conceive it in this fashion? (14) Let us consider it attentively and, reject-

ing everything that does not belong to the wax, see what remains. (15) Cer-
tainly nothing is left but something extended, flexible, and movable. (16)
But what is meant by flexible and movable? (17) Does it consist in my pic-
turing that this wax, being round, is capable of becoming square and of
passing from the square into the triangular shape? (18) Certainly not; it
is not that, since conceive it capable of undergoing an infinity of similar
I

changes, and could not compass this infinity in my imagination. (19) Con-
I

sequently this conception have of the wax is not achieved by the faculty
I

of imagination.

(20) Now what is this extension? (21) Is it not also known? (22) For it

becomes greater in the melting wax, still greater when is completely

it

melted, and much greater again when the heat increases still more. (23)
And would not conceive clearly and truthfully what wax was if did not
I I

think that even this bit of wax is capable of receiving more variations in
extension than have ever imagined. (24) We must therefore agree that
I

I cannot conceive what this bit of wax is by means of the imagination, and
that there is nothing but my understanding alone which does conceive it.
(25) say this bit of wax in particular, for as to wax in general, it is still more
I

evident. (26) But what is this bit of wax which cannot be comprehended
except by the understanding, or by the mind? (27) Certainly it is the same
as the one that see, that touch, that imagine; and finally it is the same as
I I I

I always believed it to be from the beginning. (28) But what is here im-

88
 portant to notice is that perception is not a vision, a touch, nor an imagina-

tion, and has never been that, even though it formally appeared so; but is
solely an inspection by the mind, which can be imperfect and confused as
it was formerly, or clear and distinct as it is at present, as attend more or I

less to the things which are in it and of which it is composed.

This passage is clearly very muddled (which is what makes it a good example for my

present purposes); but when you criticize it for this, remember that Descartes was
writing in the seventeenth century when not even the most elementary points about
argument and about how to achieve clarity were well understood. It is worth re-
cording, therefore, that the Meditations have been seriously, and in my opinion
rightly, classed as containing some of themost important philosophical advances
ever made. So contempt is not in order. But sorting out the muddle is.

There are two distinct steps which you must go through to understand a passage
like this. (1) You must identify what point the writer is trying to establish: that is, you

must identify his conclusion. (2) Secondly, you must untangle the argument by which
he attempts to establish this conclusion. It is frequently the case in philosophy that
we cannot fully understand some thesis until we understand the argument which
leads up to it. (It is for this reason that the summaries of a philosopher's position
found in histories of philosophy are just useless.) I shall now go through these two
steps in detail for the Descartes passage.

Descartes first gives his conclusion (he repeats it later) in sentence (24): "We must
therefore agree that I cannot conceive what this piece of wax is by means of the
imagination, and that there is nothing but my understanding alone which does con-
ceive it." Put more shortly, he is saying this: what this piece of wax is (its nature)
can only be grasped by the mind independent of the senses. Clearly, he intends this
conclusion to be generalizable: what he saysis intended to apply to any particular

object, not just to this one piece of wax (see sentence (25)).

Descartes' thesis in this passage, then, is that what an individual object is (its nature)
can only be grasped by the mind independent of the senses. This seems to be a pretty
remarkable thesis. However, it is not as remarkable in one respect as it might at first
appear to be. Descartes does not say that we learn about individual objects without
using our senses; he offers no opinions on the learning process. All he says is that
when we grasp the nature of an object, we do so by the mind (the understanding)
alone.

89
Having got hold of Descartes' conclusion, we must now untangle the argument by
which he tries to establish it. There is no set formula for doing this. The only gen-
eral advice which one can offer is that you should read the passage very carefully.
This is a process which can only be exemplified. shall go through the passage sen- I

tence by sentence showing what is involved in getting straight about it. Then shall I

reconstruct Descartes' argument.

In sentence (1) Descartes tells us what he is going to be concerned with ("the com-
monest things"). In (2) he holds to one side what he is not going to be concerned
with ("bodies in general"). In (3) he tells us the particular example he will work with
(the piece of wax). In (4) he points out that the piece of wax has the normal sensible
properties. In (5) he suggests that the argument he produces about the piece of wax
will be generalizable. This paragraph does no more than set the stage for the main
argument.

We get the first serious move in the argument at the beginning of the next paragraph.
In sentences (6) and (7) Descartes says that all the sensible properties of the piece
of wax can change. In (8) and (9) he claims that nevertheless it remains the same
piece of wax. This is the first point of substance that he makes. It amounts to saying
that all the sensible properties of one and the same object can change. In (10) and
(11) he draws out a consequence of his first substantial point. Here he says that, since
all the sensible properties of one and the same object can change, what the piece
of wax is ("its nature") cannot lie in its sensible properties. But, as he realizes, the
argument cannot be as simple as that, and he comes back to the point later.

In sentence (12) Descartes repeats in more vivid terms what he said in (10) and (11).

In (13) he poses the question he wishes to answer: what then is the nature of the piece
of wax if not the sum total of its sensible qualities? There is something really quite

complicated going on in (12) and (13). Descartes has already made the point that all

the sensible properties of an object change with time; now he is asking what re-
mains unchanged through these changes. We will return to this point later. For the
present letus just notice that there seems to be an assumption here, namely, that
there is something which does remain unchanged through all changes in sensible
properties. In (14) end of the paragraph Descartes is answering an imagin-
and to the
ary objection (in terms of his whole philosophical endeavor in the Meditations, he
is doing something else as well; but we will not concern ourselves with that here).

Descartes is imagining someone saying to him, "Not all the sensible qualities of an
object change with time. For instance, this piece of wax remains extended, flexible,
and movable through all possible changes" (15). Descartes counters by asking what

90
is meant by saying that the piece of wax remains extended, flexible, and movable
(16). He never answers this question. He instead posits an answer in (17) which he
rejects in (18). In (17) he suggests that perhaps it means that one could imagine
("hold in the mind") all the different shapes the piece of wax could take on. In (18)
he rejects this: there is an infinity of such shapes and he could not hold that infinity
in his mind. Consequently, he says in (19) that his conception of the wax does not

lie in his having all its possible shapes in his imagination ("mind"). This is a muddled

passage, and we will return to it later; it forms a crucial part of Descartes' argument.

The argument from sentences (16) to (19), discussed in the previous paragraph,
concerned flexibility and movability. In (20) to (24) he repeats the same argument
for the property of being extended. As he has now rejected the three things the wax
did seem to retain through sensible change (the properties of being extended, flex-
ible, and movable), he feels he can conclude that it is not by the faculty of imagination

(not by holding sensible properties in the mind) that he conceives the piece of wax
and that therefore it must be through his mind alone that he does so (24).

This completes the central argument. However, the rest of the passage is worth no-

ticing. In sentence (25) Descartes wishes to generalize beyond a particular object.

That is, he is claiming that for the notion of wax in general, not just this piece of wax,
the argument works quite as well. As we are not yet clear about his argument about
the particular piece of wax, we will leave that to one side for the present. In (26) and
(27) he says that what he has been talking about, this thing which can only be com-
prehended by the mind, really just is the piece of wax he started with. Again, we can
only discuss that when we are clear about the original statement. In (28) he repeats
his main thesis in an obscurer form.

What have given you

I what we might call a first reading of
in the last few pages is

the Descartes passage. Now we should be able to go back and reconstruct the actual
argument. do so below. In fact, give an argument of slightly greater generality
I I

than Descartes; the reason for this is explained later. At the end of each statement
in the argument, put in brackets the number of the sentence in which it appears in
I

the passage we are considering.

Schematization of Descartes' argument:

a. The sensible properties of one and the same object change with time (1 1 ).

b. The possible changes in sensible properties of one and the same object
are infinite (18).

91
 c. Therefore, I cannot hold in my mind (imagination) all possible sensible
properties of the same object through change (18).

d. Therefore, our knowledge of an object cannot lie in holding the totality

of its sensible properties in the mind (imagination) (18).

e. Therefore, our knowledge of the nature of an object lies in a conception

of the mind (24).

The one point at which I have diverged from Descartes is in b. Descartes makes this
point only for the qualities of extension, flexibility, and movability, while I make the
point for all sensible qualities. Descartes has reasons, internal to his philosophical
position, for worrying only about these three qualities. However, if the argument
works and movability, then it is clearly going to work for
for extension, flexibility,
all sensible properties (a point which Descartes himself did not realize, though later

philosophers did); keeping the argument general in the way have done has ad- I

vantages in ease of exposition.

This argument, as I hope you have already seen, does not work. Every premise with
the exception of the first it is offered as the conclusion from previous
(whether or not
premises) is in though that does not mean the premises are necessarily
fact dubious,
wrong. For instance, it is not obvious that the possible changes in sensible properties
of one object are infinite rather than just very many. Nor is it obvious that cannot I

hold in my mind an infinite set of properties. Clearly, could not do so, so to speak,
I

in numbered slots, for there would not be enough room for all the slots. But could I

perhaps do so by remembering a continuum. There are, for instance, at least a very

large number of different colors in the spectrum, and yet it seems reasonable to say
that know each of them, though not of course by name. Furthermore, the conclusion
I

does not follow from the premises as given, for Descartes assumes without explana-
tion or justification that there are only two possible ways to gain knowledge of an
object: either via sensible properties or by a conception of the mind. This assumption
needs defending.

These points against Descartes' position are not conclusive. However, do not pro- I

pose to develop them further here. As an exercise you should try to see which, if
any, of these objections are serious. The real trouble with the argument lies in a far
deeper and more subtle pair of assumptions which Descartes makes.

To say made an assumption is not necessarily to say that the con-

that Descartes
clusion to the argument in which is made is wrong. But, at the very least, making
it

assumptions is a dangerous procedure. And one of the assumptions is false, then

if

92
unless it can be shown to be unnecessary, we must say that the conclusion offered
does not follow from the argument given. So it is worthwhile digging out the assump-
tions and getting them down clearly on paper.

In my analysis of the passage first assumption in sentences (12) and (13).

I located the
This is only partially correct. Theassumption has not really got a location, in
first

any precise sense; it underlies the whole argument. The assumption is this: behind
the changing sensible qualities of any one object there remains something unchang-
ing; it is by virtue of there being this unchanging somewhat that it is correct to speak
of the object as one object rather than as several different objects. The sensible
qualities of objects are, for Descartes, like the clothes a man wears: the man may
change his clothes but he remains, through all changes of dress, the same man.
Later in the same book, Descartes makes this analogy explicitly himself. He writes.
"I might be tempted to conclude that one knows the wax by means of eyesight, and
not uniquely by a perception of the mind. So may chance to look out of the window
I

and notice some men passing in the street, at the sight of whom do not fail to say I

that see men. just as say that see wax: and nevertheless what do see from this
I I I I

window except hats and cloaks which might cover ghosts or automata which move
only by springs?" Thus, objects are clothed in their sensible qualities just as a man
at a party is clothed in his glad rags.

This is assumption Descartes makes. The second depends on the first. He

the first

not only assumes that there is an underlying and unchanging somewhat by virtue of

which it is correct to say that something is some one thing; but he also assumes that
he, Descartes, knows about it. When, in his final conclusion. Descartes speaks of
our knowledge of the nature of an object lying in a conception of the mind, it is the
knowledge of this somewhat which he is talking about.

Itis easy to show that these two assumptions are crucial to Descartes' argument.

For instance, if we consciously do not make Descartes' second assumption, we can.

using his premises, construct a rather different argument. It goes as follows:

a. The sensible properties of one and the same object change with time.

b. The possible changes in sensible properties of one and the same object
are infinite.

c. Therefore, I cannot hold in my mind (imagination) all possible sensible

properties of the same object through change.

d. Therefore, I can never have a full knowledge of objects.

93
Indeed, this argument seems a good deal more plausible than Descartes', though it

still has the first assumption underlying it.

We can go further than have done here. It is possible to invent an argument similar
I

to Descartes' which explicitly leads to the denial of the first assumption. It is as

follows:

a. The sensible properties of one and the same object change with time.

b. The possible changes in sensible properties of one and the same object
are infinite.

c. I cannot hold in my mind (imagination) all possible sensible properties

of the same object.

d. Therefore, I cannot know an object through its sensible properties.

e. There are no non-sensible properties.

f . Therefore, there is no unchanging somewhat in virtue of which it is cor-

rect to say that something is some one thing.

I am not, of course, claiming that this argument is without difficulties. For instance,
there are clearly a lot of which cluster around premise b. However, it
difficulties
seems to be as good as Descartes' original argument and has a diametrically opposed
conclusion. These are difficulties which anyone wishing to defend Descartes' posi-
tion must clear up.

The argument above brings out another aspect of Descartes' first assumption. His
assumption is that what makes an object the same object through change is some-
thing which is not sensible and does not change. In this assumption, he makes a
jump from saying (a) that the sensible properties of an object cannot give us what
makes it the same object through change, to saying (b) that it is an intuition of the
mind which gives us what makes it the same object through change. This jump ig-
nores what many people might consider to be the obvious solution to his problem.
To explain this, let us put Descartes' problem this way: What is it which allows us
to say of an object that it is one and the same object even though in the course of
time it changes all its sensible properties? The obvious common-sense answer is
this: The changes in its properties themselves take place continuously in time (and

for that matter, its changes in location, if it does change location, take place in time).
This is often summed up by saying that what allows us to say correctly of some object

94
that it is one and the same object even though its properties and position change is

that it is spatio-temporally continuous with itself.

Ido not propose to pursue this possible solution any further here, though you should
not suppose that this means that it is the right solution. Furthermore, even if it is
basically the right solution, a lot more work has to be done to get clear about the
jargon phrase "spatio-temporally continuous with itself."

There is a further point worth making here. In the passage quoted, Descartes ex-
plicitly says that he is considering one particular body, the piece of wax (2). However,
he later claims that what he has said about the piece of wax holds for bodies in gen-
eral; in this case, wax
general (25). What he has in mind here is this. In the bulk
in

of the passage he has been concerned with the problem of how we know that,
through many changes of sensible properties, some single object remains that single
object. By his reference to "bodies in general," he is referring to the problem of how
we can say correctly of two undoubtedly different objects, which have very different
sensible properties, that they are both some one type of thing; in his example, both
wax. The answer he clearly wants to give to the second problem is that it is not
through any identity of properties that we can correctly say some two things are both
wax but again that it is through the understanding alone (25).

We should first notice that the two problems which Descartes is endeavoring to solve

identically are certainly not as similar as he supposes them to be. Wording them
slightly differently, these are the problems:

i. How do we know that what is said to be the same piece of wax really is
the same piece of wax when its appearance has changed?
ii. How can we correctly apply the same word (say "wax") to different objects
which differ markedly in appearance?

The first of these is sometimes known as the problem of bodily continuity; the second
is at least one formulation of the problem of universals (how some one word can be
correctly applied to many different things). We can see that they are likely to have
different solutions in this way: The notion of spatio-temporal continuity, granting
its does seem to be at
obscurities, least highly relevant to the solution of the first
problem; that is, at least one of the criteria we have for saying of an object that it is

the same as the (perhaps very different looking) object we saw some time ago is that

95
it is spatio-temporally continuous with itself. On the other hand, spatio-temporal
continuity has nothing whatever to do with correctly identifying two completely dif-
ferent objects as pieces of wax, which is what is involved in the second problem.

One reason that Descartes supposed these problems to be more similar than they
are is the way he formulated them for himself. This way of formulation was the usual
way when Descartes lived and had been usual for over 1,500 years. Descartes for-
mulated the first problem this way: what unchanging somewhat is that allows us it

to say correctly of two things which look very different (at different times) that they
are in fact the same object? He wanted to formulate the second problem in the same
way. That is, he wanted to ask: what unchanging somewhat is it that allows us to
say correctly of two things which look very different that they are both in fact wax
or (for instance) both chairs? It is the assumption involved in the formulation of both
these problems, which took some time to uncover above, which leads him into
I

difficulties.

I have not, so far, discussed whether this assumption which Descartes makes is in
fact one which can be defended. do not propose to do so here. However, most cur-
I

rent work on these problems explicitly rejects the assumption. The most famous
statement of the rejection of the assumption in solving the problem of universals
appears in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein.

In this chapter I have tried to give an example of how to go about analyzing a piece
of philosophical writing. I have not tried to solve every problem in the passage
quoted; all I have tried to do is show a few of the complexities involved in some
philosophical writings and the sort of thought-processes which you should use in

trying to understand and unravel them.

Exercise
Below I give another passage from Descartes. It is not as hard a passage as the one
already considered. You should try to work it out in the way exemplified above.*

Everything which I have thus far accepted [Descartes means: Up tonow in

my life] as entirely true has been acquired from the senses or by means of
the senses. But have learned by experience that these senses sometimes
I

mislead me, and it is prudent never to trust wholly those things which have
once deceived us.

*From Rene Descartes, Meditations, translated by Laurence J. LaFleur, copyright 1951, 1960 l

by the Bobbs-Merrill Company. Inc. Reprinted by permission of the Liberal Arts Press Division.

96
 But it is possible that, even though the senses occasionally deceive us about
things which are barely perceptible and very far away, there are many other
things which we cannot reasonably doubt, even though we know them
through the senses — as for example, that am here, seated by the I fire, wear-
ing a dressing gown, holding this paper in my hands and other things of
this nature. And how could deny that these hands and
I this body are mine
unless I am to compare myself with certain lunatics. . . .

Nevertheless, must remember that am a man, and that consequently

I I I

am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that

lunatics imagine when awake, or sometimes things that are even less plau-
sible. How many times has it occurred that the night made me dream that

I was here, clothed, and sitting by the fire, although was in fact lying un- I

dressed in bed! It seems apparent to me now, that am not looking at this I

paper with my eyes closed, that this head shake is not drugged with sleep, I

that it is with design and deliberate intent that stretch out this hand and I

perceive it. What happens in sleep seems not at all as clear and as distinct
as all this. But am speaking as though
I never recall having been misled,I

while asleep, by similar illusions! When I consider these matters carefully,

I realise so clearly that there are no conclusive indications by which waking
can be distinguished from sleep that am quite astonished, and my be-
life I

wilderment is such that am almost able to convince me that am sleeping.

I I

This argument is a variant on a more general argument which goes roughly as fol-

lows: all that I am ever aware of is images, sensations in my own mind. Each time I

suppose that there is an actual physical object before me, therefore, I do so only on
the basis of an inference from my present images to the existence of a physical object.
But this inference is not always correct, for there are occasions on which I have the
images and there is no physical object there at all (dreams, hallucinations, mirages,
and so on). But if the inference is not always correct, on what occasions is it correct?
Descartes, in the passage above (he later changes his mind), thinks that there is no
way to tell when it is correct: "There are no conclusive indications by which waking
life can be distinguished from sleep." Clearly, this is a situation which requires sort-

ing out.

97
Chapter eleven Ayer and
logical positivism

The term "logical positivism" was coined in the 1920s to characterize the philosoph-
ical position of a group of scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers who gave
themselves the name "The Vienna Circle." The leading philosophers in the group

were Moritz Schlick, Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, Herbert Feigl, Friedrich Waismann,
Edgar Zisel, and Victor Kraft. They propounded a highly "scientific" view of philos-
ophy which derived principally from the eighteenth century Scottish philosopher
David Hume. Logical positivism as a philosophical position has never been widely
accepted, but it has somehow been elevated by non-philosophers to the position of
being one of the leading philosophical schools of the twentieth century. Indeed,
there has been a tendency in some quarters to label any philosopher who tries to
be reasonably clear and reasonably precise a logical positivist. For that reason it is
worthwhile reviewing the well-known incoherencies in the position. Just to keep
the historical record straight, it should be added that if there are any logical positivists
under 40 alive today, they keep very quiet about their existence.

I most famous statement of the logical positivist position in English.

shall use the
It comes from book Language, Truth and Logic, first published in 1936.
A. J. Ayer's
Ayer himself, no longer a logical positivist, is presently a professor of philosophy at
Oxford University.

The first sentence of the first chapter of Language, Truth and Logic reads: "The tra-
ditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are
unfruitful." The justification offered for making this charge is that most philosophers
"produce sentences which fail to conform to the conditions under which alone a

99
sentence can be literally significant." Ayer then goes on to formulate what he con-
siders to be the conditions for literal significance, which is the passage reprinted
below.

There are three technical terms in the passage: 'tautology,' "verification," and
"proposition." The word "tautology" in this context is synonymous with "analytic
statement" as defined Chapter Four. The word "verification" Ayer explains him-
in

self. "Proposition" is harder to deal with because there has been a great deal of

philosophical controversy about what the word could mean. If in the following pas-
sage you substitute the word "statement" for proposition, you will not be led seriously
astray. For a fuller discussion see the entry under "Proposition" in Part Five. As
before, the only alteration I have made in the passage is to number the sentences
for easy reference.*

(1)The criterion which we use to test the genuineness of apparent state-

ments of fact is the criterion of verifiability. (2) We say that a sentence is

factually significant to any given person, if. and only if, he knows how to
verify the proposition which it purports to express-that is. if he knows what
observations would lead him. under certain conditions, to accept the propo-
sition as it as being false.
being true, or reject (3) If, on the other hand, the

putative proposition such a character that the assumption of its truth

is of
or falsity is consistent with any assumption whatsoever concerning the
nature of his future experience, then, as far as he is concerned, it is. if not a
tautology, a mere pseudo-proposition. (4) The sentence expressing it may

be emotionally significant to him; but it is not literally significant. (5) And

with regard to questions the procedure is the same. (6) We enquire in every
case what observation would lead us to answer the question, one way or
the other; and. if none can be discovered, we must conclude that the sen-
tence under consideration does not, as far as we are concerned, express a
genuine question, however strongly its grammatical appearance may sug-
gest that it does.

Ayer later modifies what he means by "verifiable" in this passage. To find if any
putative statement is verifiable, we have to ask. Would any observation be relevant
to the determination of its truth or falsehood? It is only if a negative answer is given
to this . . . question that we conclude that the statement under consideration is non-

"From A. J. Ayer. Language. Truth and Logic. Reprinted through permission by Dover Publica-
tions. New York.

100
sensical." By "observation" here Ayer does not mean observation of how the lan-
guage is used.

You should first notice that this magnificently iconoclastic passage is completely
different in manner of presentation from the Descartes passage. Where Descartes
its

offers an argument leading to the conclusion he is after. Ayer just announces his
position with the implied challenge Knock me off it." Both are equally good as meth-
ods in philosophy, but they are very different. Since the Ayer passage contains
nothing but exposition, it is easier to understand: but exactly the same process of
digging into the position which we followed with Descartes must be followed here.

Clearly, the crucial bit of this passage comes in sentence (2): "We say that a sentence
is factually significant to any given person, if. and only if. he knows how to verify

the proposition it purports to express." But this position is not as clear as at first it

looks. In the first place. Ayer refers to sentences as being factually significant. This,
on the face of it. is implausible. A sentence is a collection of words in a certain order
and conforming to certain grammatical rules. If we consider the sentence "My car is

grey' strictly as a sentence, then the notion of factual significance just does not
seem to come
up. If Jones uttered the sentence seriously it would be. let us suppose,
true: while Smith uttered it seriously it would be. let us suppose, false. But just as a
if

group of words it is neither true nor false. In addition, if Brown uttered it. it might
well be neither true nor false because Brown, let us suppose, has no car. However,
this difficulty over Ayer's use of sentence " is really no more than a slip on his part,
for elsewhere in the passage he says that he is interested in putative statements,
which is clearly the right thing to say. This gives just what he wants. The point here
is that Ayer wants to find a criterion such that, given a list of what appear to be state-

ments (or what are held up as being statements), he can judge which really are
statements and which are "mere pseudo-propositions": that is. not really statements
at all. Sentence (2) should therefore be read more in this way: "We say that a putative

statement is factually significant to a given person, if. and only if, he knows how to
verify the proposition it purports to express.

There is in sentence (2). Ayer speaks of a putative statement being

a further slip
"significant to any given person if. and only if " This appears to be just plain

false. The statement "The sun is about 93 million miles from the earth" said to some-

one of. very limited schooling is clearly significant to him however much he knows
nothing of the astronomical observations which are required to verify it. What Ayer
wants here is this: "A putative statement is factually significant if. and only if. some-
one (not necessarily the person involved) knows how to verify it."

101
There is a third slip in sentence which he picks up in (3). Ayer does not wish to
(2),

exclude tautologies (analytic statements) from significance (they are significant,

he claims elsewhere, in a different sort of way), so his significance criterion should
include this condition.

I shall now restate Ayer's criterion of significance in different and clearer terms.

A putative statement is literally significant if, and only if, it is either (a) a
tautology (an analytic statement) or (b) verifiable.

When this position was first offered to the public it was greeted with a howl of protest.
Not only, as Ayer claimed, did it eliminate much philosophy, but it also appeared to
eliminate most theology as well.
In addition, ethical statements, aesthetic judgements,

and so on were all condemned to insignificance by the criterion. As a consequence,

it came under enormous emotional attack even more than under philosophical
scrutiny. However, the emotional attack was misplaced. There are completely de-
cisive and unemotional reasons which show this position to be wrong. You should
try to think these out for yourself before reading on.

I shall now give the reasons why the criterion of significance given above is incorrect.
To do so, l shall first develop a small piece of theory.

Inphilosophy we often deal with positions of great generality. That is, positions are
developed as to the nature of perception, the nature of physical objects, the basis of
significance, the composition of knowledge, and so on. Sometimes these positions
cover such a wide range of cases that they also cover themselves. Here is an example.
It has been said from time to time that all truth is relative to some historical epoch.
In more precise terms, this amounts to this position: For any statement p, the truth
of p depends on the date (or epoch) of the utterance of p. This statement is so gen-
eral, it covers such an enormous range of possible statements, that it applies to itself.

That is, it is a statement about the truth of statements; what it says about the truth
of statements must therefore apply to its own truth. Thus, if the truth of a statement
depends on the epoch of its utterance, then the truth of the statement "The truth of a
statement depends on the epoch of its utterance" depends on the epoch of its ut-
terance. From this it follows that (in another epoch perhaps) it is entirely possible
that the statement "The truth of a statement depends on the epoch of its utterance"
should be false. But this is self-stultifying. The whole point of the thesis was to cover
all epochs. To put it another way, the thesis itself, if it is true, constitutes a contrary

case to itself. Thus, the thesis is incoherent.

102
There are many positions in philosophy which have this quality of referring to them-
selves and sometimes, as in the case above, this causes difficulties. Ayer's position
is of exactly this type. Ayer claims that a putative statement is literally significant
only if it is either a tautology or verifiable. Clearly, Ayer's statement is not, in Ayer's
own definition of the word, verifiable; that is, there are no observations which would
be relevant to determining whether it is true or false. Thus, if it is to be true, it is going

to have to be a tautology; that be true solely because of the meanings of the words
is,

in it and the grammatical form of the sentence which expresses it. But clearly Ayer's
statement is not a tautology; the word "significant" is used for a far wider variety
of utterances than just for verifiable or tautological statements. In particular, ethical,
aesthetic, and theological statements, which were some of the most important sorts
of statement which the verifiability criterion appeared to rule out, are often significant

in a very ordinary sense of the word "significant." So Ayer's position is entirely self-

stultifying. One can put it very shortly: If Ayer's statement is true, then it is meaning-
less (not significant); so, whatever else it is, it is not true.

This may sound complicated; in fact it is very simple. Here is the same argument
in more compact form:

1. Ayer claims that a putative statement is literally significant if and only if

it is either (a) a tautology, or (b) verifiable.

2. If this is true, then Ayer's statement must itself be:

a. without significance, or
b. tautological, or
c. verifiable.

3. Ayer's statement is not verifiable by his own definition.

4. Therefore (and by his own criterion), if it is to be true, it must be a tau-

tology.

5. It is not a tautology because the word significant is used far more widely
than he allows.

6. Therefore, if Ayer's statement is true, it must be without significance.

7. Thus, Ayer's position is incoherent.

See exactly what's going on here. If we take Ayer's criterion seriously, we are forced
to the conclusion that it is insignificant. And that's the end of it.

Logical positivism is one of the very few philosophical positions which can be easily
shown to be dead wrong, and that is its principal claim to fame. However, the fact

103
that logical positivismis wrong does not mean that all the work done by logical

was wrong. A great deal of their work, most obviously in logic and the
positivists
philosophy of science, was completely independent of the central thesis of logical
positivism, and much of it stands to this day.

Exercise
Ayer held a number of philosophical positions which, though they formed part of his
logical positivist position, are nevertheless independent of it. The most famous of
these is his position of ethics. Although he himself justified it in logical positivist
terms, other philosophers who were not logical positivists have also held the position.
It is therefore worth independent consideration. The following passage outlines
that position, known as the emotive analysis or the emotive theory of ethics. You
should try to sort out its obscurities and then see whether it is right or wrong; or
perhaps wrong under certain interpretations and right under others.*

The presence of an ethical symbol in a proposition adds nothing to its factual

content. Thus if say to someone, "You acted wrongly in stealing that
I

money," am not stating anything more than if had simply said, "You stole
I I

that money." In adding that this action is wrong am not making any further I

statement about it. I am simply evincing my moral disapproval of it. It is as if

I had said, "You stole that money," in a peculiar tone of horror, or written it

with the addition of some special exclamation marks. The tone, or the ex-
clamation marks, adds nothing to the literal meaning of the sentence. It
merely serves to show that the expression of it is attended by certain feelings
in the speaker.

If now I my previous statement and say, "Stealing money is

generalize
wrong," produce a sentence which has no factual meaning — that is, ex-
I

presses no proposition which can be either true or false. It is as if had I

written "Stealing money!!" -where the shape and thickness of the exclama-
tion marks show, by a suitable convention, that a special sort of moral dis-
approval is the feeling which is being expressed. It is clear that there is
nothing said here which can be true or false. Another man may disagree
with me about the wrongness of stealing, in the sense that he may not have
the same feelings about stealing that have, and he may quarrel with me on
I

account of my moral sentiments. But he cannot, strictly speaking, contradict

me. For in saying that a certain type of action is right or wrong, I am not

*From A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic. Reprinted through permission by Dover Publi-
cations, New York.

104
making any factual statement, not even a statement about my own state of
mind. I am merely expressing certain moral sentiments. And the man who is

ostensibly contradicting me is merely expressing his moral sentiments.

So that there is plainly no sense in asking which of us is in the right. For
neither of us is asserting a genuine proposition.

105
Chapter twelve Hare on naturalism

It is sometimes said that philosophy is which there is no advance, only

a discipline in

change. This is certainly false. Philosophers stand on each other's shoulders as

surely as scientists do, though in slightly different ways. The passage quoted in this

chapter illustrates this point fairly well. The full degree to which the quotation il-

lustrates the advance of philosophy can be seen only if one is, to some extent at
least, acquainted with the history of "Naturalism," the philosophical doctrine which
Hare discusses. But there are several things that will be obvious. In the first place,
Hare is very much clearer than any of the other philosophers quoted in previous
chapters. Secondly, the passage from Hare contains no obvious mistakes and am-
biguities; the sorting out process has already been done for us.
at least partially
Thirdly, the considerations Hare brings to his argument are a good deal more subtle
than anything which has gone before. This does not mean, of course, that Hare is a
better philosopher than Descartes; it means that there has been advance between
Descartes' time and today.

The quotation given comes from a small book entitled The Language of Morals by
R. M. Hare, first published in 1952. Hare is presently a professor of philosophy at
Oxford University. He is a materially younger man than Ayer.

In this passage, Hare is using a form of reductio ad absurdum argument (see ap-
pendix to Chapter Two): he is to prove a position false by assuming it is true and
then showing that this leads to a definitely false conclusion. The position he wishes
to prove false is naturalism, an old and ubiquitous philosophical theory or, better,
a set of related theories. Hare is using the term quite strictly in this sense: Naturalism

107
 '

is the theory that there is "a set of characteristics which together entail a thing
being good" (the quotation is from an earlier passage in Hare's book). This would
involve that there is a set of defining characteristics for "good" or, perhaps, only
for such phrases as "good action" or "good picture." There are no other technical
terms in the passage except the word "definiens." This word refers to that portion of
a definition of the form "The word 'W means X" which replaces X. The passage
appears in exactly the form in which Hare wrote it.*

Let us suppose for the sake of argument that there are some "defining char-
acteristics" of a good picture. It does not matter of what sort they are; they

can be a single characteristic, or a conjunction of characteristics, or a dis-

junction of alternative characteristics. Let us call the group of these char-
acteristics C. "P is a good picture" will then mean the same as "P is a picture
and P is C." For example, let C mean "Having a tendency to arouse in people
who are at that time members of Royal Academy (or any other definitely
specified group), a definitely recognizable feeling called admiration.'
The words "definitely recognizable" have to be inserted, for otherwise we
might find that words in the definiens were being used evaluatively, and this
would make the definition no longer "naturalistic." Now suppose that we
wish to say that the members of the Royal Academy have good taste in
pictures. To have good taste in pictures means to have this definitely recog-
nizable feeling of admiration for those pictures, and only those pictures,
which are good pictures. If therefore we wish members of
to say that the
the Royal Academy have good taste in pictures, we have, according to the
definition, to say something which means the same as saying that they have
this feeling of admiration for pictures which have a tendency to arouse in

them this feeling.

Now this is not what we wanted to say. We wanted to say that they admired
good pictures; we have succeeded only in saying that they admired pictures
which they admired. Thus if we accept the definition we debar ourselves
from saying something that we sometimes do want to say. What this some-
thing is will become apparent later; for the moment let us say that what we
wanted to do was to commend the pictures which the members of the Royal
Academy admired. Something about our definition prevented our doing
this. We could no longer commend the pictures which they admired, we

*From R. M. Hare, The Language of Morals (London: Oxford University Press, 1952) Reprinted
by permission of The Clarendon Press, Oxford.

108
 could only say that they admired those pictures which they admired. Thus
our defining condition has prevented us, in one crucial case, from com-
mending something which we want to commend. That is what is wrong
with it.

Let us generalize. If "P is a good picture" is held to mean the same as "P is a
picture and P is C," then it will become impossible to commend pictures for
being C; it be possible only to say that they are C. It is important to realize
will

that this difficulty has nothing to do with the particular example that have I

chosen. It is not because we have chosen the wrong defining characteristics;

it is because, whatever defining characteristics we choose, this objection

arises, that we can no longer commend an object for possessing those

characteristics.

As this passage is intrinsically much clearer than any of the preceding passages,
there is less sorting out work for us to do. However, it does not follow that the whole
passage is dead right. There are a number of areas where, at the least, there is room

for agood deal of argument. shall endeavor to open up some of these areas, without
I

deciding the issues one way or the other, by elaborating some questions. The first
difficulty comes with the definition of "naturalism." Clearly, Hare has this sort of
thing in mind: In a naturalistic theory, the word "good" is defined in entirely neutral
terms in English; that is, terms which whenever they are used, just attribute a prop-
erty.Take the term "red," which, if there are any neutral terms, is surely as neutral
as they come. Now consider a very conservative lady commenting on the color her
neighbor has painted his house: "My dear, it's bright red."

It may be objected that this example really involves a use of the word "red," which
is true enough. But this brings out another difficulty of Hare's position. He wants to
say that "good" cannot be defined because it is not itself neutral:
in neutral terms
when we say something is good we are commending it and this commending function
is lost if "good" can be defined in purely neutral terms. But there are troubles with

this on two counts. In the first place, for various types of things, saying that something
or other is a good example of that thing does not necessarily involve any commenda-
tion. Suppose say of a friend who breeds prize poodles that he has one very good
I

poodle. What constitutes a good poodle is laid down by the various rule books of the
Poodle Association (or assume it is). When say my friend has got a good poodle,
I I

I presumably mean that he has a poodle which very closely conforms to the standards
laid down in the Poodle Association rulebook for good poodles. It is quite possible
that I don't want to commend his poodle at all (in fact, let us suppose that I hate dogs,

109
and poodles and when say that he has a good poodle, am just saying
in particular), I I

that he has a poodle which conforms very closely to what the poodle books lay down
as being a good one.

Secondly, just off the bat, commending appears to be the function of an utterance,
not of a word or a sentence. Take this example: Suppose say of someone know I I

(who has no royal lineage) "Jack is a prince"; then, doubtless, am commending I

Jack. The word "prince" means the son of a king and does not mean a fine fellow.
Nevertheless, by using the word in the way posited and with the meaning quite un-
changed, succeed in commending him. Could not "good" work like that? That is,
I

could it not be that "good" can be defined in what Hare would call "naturalistic
terms" (that is, neutral terms) and yet be used in certain utterances to commend
something or someone? To put it more bluntly: is it not entirely possible that a word
should be definable in entirely naturalistic terms and yet be used, on occasions, to
commend something? If this is the case, why should "good" not be a word like that?

One of the crucial points in Hare's argument is this: if we say that what is good is

what the members of the Royal Academy are disposed to admire,we then remove
the possibility of saying that the taste of the members of the Royal Academy is good.
But consider this situation. In Paris there is a standard meter made of some un-

reactive metal and guarded carefully against alteration. Some rod or stick is one
meter long exactly if, and only if, it is the same length as the standard meter in Paris.

Now suppose that someone is walking through the building where the standard meter
is housed and sees it. He points to it and asks, "How long is that?" He is told, "One

meter exactly." Is he being told a lie? Yet saying of the standard meter that it is one
meter long is exactly like saying, in terms of Hare's example, that the members of the
Royal Academy have excellent taste in pictures. Is it so ridiculous to say of the stand-
ard that it is the standard or that it has the properties in terms of which the standard
is defined?

I am not suggesting, and indeed do not believe, that all these questions, when an-
swered correctly, will be to Hare's disadvantage. However, they are questions you
should consider; and if you are going to say that Hare is correct, you must be able
to answer these questions in a way which is consistent with Hare's central thesis.

Exercise

Below I give another passage from the same book of Hare's. In this passage, he is

ostensibly just defining a technical term, but the definition of the term involves an
argument about a logical property of the word "good." You should consider the

110
argument in the ways exemplified above. Remember that you must expect the errors,
if there are any, to be really quite subtle. On the other hand, you are going to say the
if

argument is you must consider the implications of that statement on what

correct,
conclusion you have reached with respect to the argument of Hare's offered earlier.
Apart from the words "supervenient'' and "consequential," which are defined in the
passage, there is only one technical term in the passage. It is the word "logic" used
in the sense expressed in the phrase, "the logic of a word," which appears at the

very end of the passage. Roughly, the logic of a word is given by the statements im-
plied by key statements made using the word in question. Thus, what Hare is doing
in this passage is attempting to point out one aspect of the logic of "good," and

contrasting it with the logic of "signed." There is a fuller treatment of the notion of
the logic of a word under the appropriate heading in Part Five. Again, the passage
appears exactly as Hare wrote it.*

Let me illustrate one

most characteristic features of value words in
of the
terms of a particular example. It is a feature sometimes described by saying

that "good" and other such words are the names of "supervenient" or "con-
sequential" properties. Suppose that a picture is hanging upon the wall and
we are discussing whether it is a good picture; that is to say, we are debating
whether to assent to, or dissent from, the judgment "P is a good picture."
It must be understood that the context makes it clear that we mean by "good

picture" not "good likeness" but "good work of art" -though both these
uses would be value-expressions.

First let us notice a very important peculiarity of the word "good" as used
in this sentence. Suppose that there is another picture next to P in the gal-
lery will call it Q). Suppose that
(I a replica of Q or Q of P, and we
either P is

do not know which, but do know were painted by the same artist
that both
at about the same time. Now there is one thing that we cannot say; we can-
not say "P is exactly like Q in all respects save this one, that P is a good
picture and Q is not." If we were to say this, we should invite the comment,
"But how can one be good and the other not be, if they are exactly alike?
There must be some fu rther difference between them to make one good and
the other not." Unless we at least admit the relevance of the question "What
makes one good and the other not" we are bound to puzzle our hearers;
they will think that something has gone wrong with our use of the word
"good." Sometimes we cannot specify just what it is that makes one good
and the other not; but there always must be something. Suppose that in the

"From R. M. Hare, The Language of Morals (London: Oxford University Press, 1952). Reprinted
by permission of The Clarendon Press, Oxford.

111
 attempt to explain our meaning we said: "I was any
didn't say that there
other difference between them; there is just this one one is
difference, that
good and the other not. Surely you would understand me if said that one
I

was signed and the other not, but that there was no other difference? So
why shouldn't say that one was good and the other not, but that there was
I

otherwise no difference?" The answer to this protest is that the word "good"
is not like the word "signed"; there is a difference in their logic.

112
Part four A longer piece
of philosophy

So have been discussing certain basic philosophical techniques and notions

far I

along with a few snippets of actual philosophy. It is time now for you to get down to

considering a longer, more connected piece of philosophy which has not been pulled
out of context. It was my original intention to use the whole of a longer article by a
contemporary philosopher for this part, if for no other reason than to give you a
rest from me. However, almost all the papers published in journals, which is where
the best philosophy tends to come out nowadays, assume
knowledge of previous
a
articles or controversies. I therefore took one of my own
which had already
articles
been published and expanded it so that no additional knowledge is required to under-
stand it. This also had the advantage that could use this part of the book to clear up
I

a number of matters left dangling earlier. However, because have added to the paper
I

to make it suitable for inclusion here, you should not suppose that is, in some sense, it

junior philosophy. What it is, in fact, is completely current work. As a consequence,

it is probably not dead right-almost no piece of new philosophical work (like work in

any other field) is completely free of mistakes. You should therefore regard it as a set
of philosophical theses offered for you to knock down. Remember that what is true
ultimately in philosophy is what can stand the fire of controversy, attempted con-
trary cases, and tries at refutation (recall Chapter Three). would not be a philosopher
I

if I did not offer this piece as the subject for controversy and attempted refutation.

115
One stylistic note: So far in this book I have largely avoided footnotes because they
are distracting and annoying; however, in this part they cannot be avoided. Some
things need to be said which form no part of the main argument. These supplemental
remarks have been added in footnotes; I have tried to keep them to a minimum.

In what follows, I offer a firm description of the structure of a justification for acting
in a certain way and, as a necessary preliminary, a definition of the notion of a reason
for acting. At the beginning, there amount of repetition of what was said
is a certain
in Part Two. However, quickly go beyond this to more sophisticated considerations.
I

What follows is not padded; you should expect to have to read more than once to it

understand it.

One word on the importance of what follows. It is a piece of analytic philoso-

further
phy as described in Chapter Three. As mentioned in Chapter Four, analytic philoso-
I

phy is sometimes accused of being trivial. claimed there that this accusation comes
I

about through a misunderstanding of the nature of philosophy and of language. The

thesis is illustrated here. am not, in this part, concerned solely or mainly with the
I

word "justification"; am concerned with what it is to give, or be able to give, a justifi-

I

cation. If we can succeed in stating what it is to give a justification, we have clearly

solved one of the major problems which lie at the heart of moral philosophy. If that is
trivial, nothing is serious.

116
 Chapter thirteen Reasons for acting
and justifications

Introduction*

The conceptual framework within which we operate when we discuss our actions,
especially those actions for which we have been challenged or blamed, is a great
deal richer than is usually realized. In this paper I wish to discuss the notions of the
justification for an action and of a reason for acting. However, I begin with a wider
inquiry into the sort of concepts which are involved when we talk about our actions.
My treatment of these notions incomplete (most obviously the treatment of ex-
is

planations for actions); but, by intention at least, do say enough to isolate reasons
I

for acting and justifications, which is the area that concerns me.

Many of the theses I put forward here are exemplified and then announced without
argument. The reason is simple. I am here describing a very basic piece of our con-
If my theses are correct, there is nothing more to be said beyond
ceptual structure.
announcing and exemplifying them; if the theses are wrong, they can, and must, be
shown to be wrong by contrary cases. At this most basic level, philosophy really is
purely descriptive. 1

Justifications and excuses

I shall first try to separate justifications from their nearest neighbors, excuses. To
this end, I shall consider, initially at a common-sense level, the different sorts of re-

*The original version of this paper was published in Dialogue (June 1969).
'This a restatement from an early work of Wittgenstein called The Blue Book. For the rationale
is
behind this view of philosophy, see Chapter Three.

117
 "

plieswhich can be given in the face of an accusation about our conduct. We must not
suppose that every response to such an accusation will be a justification for that
conduct, or even that it will necessarily be an excuse for, or an explanation of, that
conduct.

Suppose that Smith is accused of being abominably drunk the night before. The

following are a fair cross-section of the sorts of responses which he could give:

a. "Jones put brandy into my glass of milk and I didn't notice."

b. "Yesterday was the Sabbath and my religion calls for the celebration of
the Sabbath with the consumption of large quantities of spirituous liquids.
It is by this means that we put ourselves in contact with the Great In-
effable."

c. "I was celebrating" or "I got promoted today.

d. "I wasn't drunk at all, I was just happy and excited."

e. "Sure. So what?"
f . "I'm an alcoholic. I get drunk every night."

And so on. Granting we command the English language, it is not difficult to type most
of the examples given above. It is clear, surely, that (a) is an excuse, or at least an
attempt at an excuse (whether it will successfully excuse is another question). Simi-
larly, (b) is an attempt at justification. The two examples under (c) are more difficult.

Clearly, they are, in some measure, attempts at explanations of why Smith acted the
way he did. But without further information we cannot say whether they are attempts
at justifications, Example (d) is not a justification, excuse, or
or excuses, or neither.
explanation for Smith doing what he accused of doing; it is a denial of the charge
is

plus an explanation for why Smith's accusor (may have) made the mistaken charge
he did make. It is an explanation, but it does not explain the same thing that (a), (b),
and (c) explain. We must be extraordinarily careful in talking about explanations
because this sort of switch on what is explained frequently takes place. Example (e)
just dismisses the accusation. To dismiss an accusation in this sort of way legiti-
mately presupposes 2 some such position as that getting drunk is justifiable or that
getting drunk is one of those acts (like breathing, for instance) which needs no justi-

fication or whatever. However, this is a matter which I do not propose to go into here.

-One statement presupposes another in this way. If s presupposes r, then for s to be legitimate,
r must be true. Thus, "All John's children are bald,'' to be legitimate, presupposes that "John
has children" is true.

118
Example (f) is most obviously an explanation. It could not be a justification, but it

may act as an excuse. If, in the human context in which it is uttered, alcoholism is

regarded as simply a disease and if, in addition, last night was not an occasion when
it was especially desirable that Smith remain sober (his daughter's wedding, the one
night of the year when he was
dangerous machinery), then it will pre-
in charge of
sumably act as an excuse. Explanations of our conduct in the face of an accusation
often (but not always) have this ambiguous role: it depends on the human context
whether they act as excuses.

Ifone looks closely at these examples, it is clear that the difference is between (a), the
clear excuse, and (b), the justification. When Smith says "Jones put brandy into my
glass of milk and didn't notice," he is claiming that getting drunk was not something
I

that he (deliberately) did but something which was, in one way or another, done to
him. Though he did, indeed, get drunk and though he admits that getting drunk is
something for which one can be blamed, the person to blame here, he is claiming, is
Jones. On the other hand, when Smith claims that getting drunk on the occasion in
question is part of his religion, we are clearly being offered an attempt at justification.
It may not work, as so far the attempt to justify the use of marijuana on this basis has
not worked, but clearly the attempt is to justify getting drunk. Without more fully

knowing the context, it is impossible to see exactly what the mechanisms of the justi-
fication are.Smith might, on questioning, claim that anything which was part of a
genuine religious practice was justifiable (which however would be odd of him: Hu-
man sacrifice has been part of a genuine religious practice). Or he might have a more
complex thesis which involved the pros and cons of this particular religious practice.
How this works in detail will be discussed in later sections. One point, however, is
clear: When he gives the justification, Smith is implying, among other things, that
under the same circumstances he would deliberately do the same thing again.

This, I think, gives the difference
not, of course, give the difference
general. However, between this
at a generalization. Someone
himself by doing one of three things:
between this excuse and this justification; it does
between excuses in general and justifications in
analysis and the examples, we can now have a stab
is accused of doing A (an action). He can try to excuse

a. By saying, essentially, "I didn't (really) do A" (in the full sense of 'do').

Samples of this sort of excuse are "I did it inadvertently, accidentally,"

"I was pushed (tripped)."

b. By saying, essentially, "I was really (just) doing (trying to do) B and I

didn't realize (know, think) that A would result." One usually phrases

119
 excuse just by pleading ignorance of the condition between
this sort of
B and A. Thus, "I didn't know he had a weak heart," "No one told me he
was standing there," "I never realized he would take it so seriously."
c. By offering a reason for doing A while agreeing that the reason was not
adequate to justify what was done. Here is an example: "Why did you
hit him?" "(I know it's not an adequate reason but) he was the third per-

son to step on my sore toe."

In allthese cases, the doing of A (in a weak sense of do) is admitted and admitted to
be undesirable, but an attempt is made to remove, transfer, or at leastmitigate blame.
The principal difference between justifications and excuses is that in a justification
one does not admit that the action concerned is blameworthy at all. However, we
can give a more accurate delineation. If someone is accused of doing A, he can
attempt to justify himself in two different ways:

a. By citing a moral (practical) principle and claiming that the action in

question falls under that principle. Thus, one attempts to justify saying
something unpleasant but true by saying "One ought never tell a lie";
or if one is a Nazi, one justifies murdering Jews with "My country, right

or wrong." have deliberately added this outrageous case to bring out

I

some of the oddities of this way of justification. It receives detailed treat-

ment below.'
b. By giving the reasons for doing A and claiming, implicitly or explicitly,

that these reasons taken together, and with due note of the reasons
against doing A, are sufficient to justify doing the act in question. Clearly,
this way of justifying, fully given, requires that some sort of argument be
given where the premises involve giving reasons for doing A and balanc-
ing these reasons against reasons for not doing A. This also is discussed
in detail below. In actual circumstances, unless pressed, we usually just
give the relevant reasons for doing the action. Thus, "Why did you pun-
ish the child so severely?" "It was the third time today he ran across the
road without looking first for cars."

One gets borderline cases between excuses and justifications with excuses of type
(c)and justifications of type (b). These come about because in giving justifications
or excuses of this type one usually just cites the relevant reasons for acting and

'The oddity is even greater than that brought out here. See sections entitled "Reasons and Prin-
ciples" and "Arguments Using Self-affirmed Principles."

120
 further questioning is required to find out if the reasons were offered as a justifica-
tion or an excuse.

The above account gives at least a rough delineation of the difference between
excuses and justifications and a partial description of justifications. However, the
account of justifications rests on an uncritical employment of the notion of a moral
or practical principle and, more important, the notion of a reason for acting. These
are the notions for which wish to give a more thorough and precise analysis now.
I

Reasons, obligations, and interests

In talking about reasons for acting,two things must be noticed immediately. First,
not every reason for doing (or failing to do) A is in fact a reason for acting. To answer
"Why did you break your appointment" by "I forgot" is to give an explanation for
one's conduct (and is doubtless an attempt to excuse it), but it is not to give a reason
for acting in any particular way. Second, to have a reason for acting in some way
does not entail that acting in that way is necessarily justifiable. In what follows, I

speak first of reasons, later of justifications. shall this time start with the general-
I

ization and then go on to exemplify it.

It is a necessary condition of there being a reason (R) for a person (X) to perform an
action (A) that either (a) there is an independently established obligation of X such
that his doing A serves that obligation, or (b) there are interests, likes, dislikes, pains,
pleasures, needs, happiness, comfort, discomfort, and so forth of someone or some
group (I shall abbreviate this in what follows by the phrase "interests of someone")
which are served by X doing A.

I shall first illustrate these points and then go on to explicate what is involved in the
notion "interests of someone" and how obligations or interests can be "served."

Why did you do A?

R1 Itwas my duty as a citizen.
R2 Because promised (swore, undertook) to do
I so.
R3 Because the judge (the CO.) ordered me to.
R4 Because God commanded it.

(The because in R2 to R4 is not strictly part of the reason). With R1 to R3, we have
clear cases of an independently established obligation being served. R3 brings out
the reason for the phrase ". . . obligation of X . .
.": the CO. ordered the Chief of

121
 Staff to do something is not necessarily a reason for the Chief of Staff to do that
thing, or anything. R4 is more
God is always odd. But one thing seems
difficult:

clear: if "God commanded be a reason, then there must be an independently

it" is to
established obligation to obey God's commands. This may be seen as follows: sup-
pose, instead of R4, the reason

R5 Because Smith commanded it

is given. If now
can honestly reply, "But who the devil's Smith (to tell me what to
I

do)," then, if R5 is to be a reason for me to do something, an independently estab-

ished obligation to obey Smith must be cited.

Why did you do A?

R6 I wanted to.
R7 Smith wanted me to.
R8 I knew it would please her.
R9 If hadn't, would have been injured.
I I

R10 If hadn't, you would have been injured.

I

With these reasons, that the interests of someone are being served is explicitly
claimed. Equally, they are completely central types of reasons, the sort that we give
all the time.

R11 If hadn't, the house would have

I fallen down.
R12 To make some money.

In these cases, that the interests of someone are being served is not explicit. But it
is easy to see that such service is implied by their being reasons. R11 just would not
be a reason if the house's falling down were a matter of complete indifference to
everyone. Similar considerations apply to R12. When something is offered as a rea-
son and its status as a reason is challenged ("What makes that a reason for doing
A?"), we answer satisfactorily only by bringing out the connection between doing A
and the interests of someone (or an obligation of X).

Interests of someone: Above spoke of the interests, likes, dislikes, wants, pains,
I

pleasures ... of someone or of some group as being the interests which can be

122
j
served for there to be a reason for acting. This, of course, is only a partial list, and
the principle of compilation for a full list needs to be given.

It is now a truism in philosophy that there is a non-contingent relationship 4 between,

for instance, wanting and trying to get. This is not, of course, confined to wanting.
There are a great many inner states which are linked non-contingently to avoidance
behavior or acquisition behavior. 5 Call the words for these inner states AV-words
and AC-words respectively. Then the principle of compilation for a complete "in-
terests of someone" list is thatit should contain all the AV-words and AC-words in

the language. 6 The individuals whose interests are appropriately considered here are
not, of course, confined to human beings. That the cat is hungry is a completely
straightforward reason for feeding it.

Serving an obligation or an interest: One serves an obligation one has not only
by fulfilling it but also by, for instance, doing something which is a condition of ful-
filling it;actions which serve an obligation are a wider class than those which just
fulfill it.The same sorts of considerations apply to serving someone's interests; serv-
ing someone's interests includes, of course, helping him avoid what, for example, he
dislikes.

Reasons and facts

There are important differences between something being a reason, something being
someone's reason, something functioning as a reason, and something counting as
the giving of a reason. These are brought out nicely in considering the relationship
between reasons and facts.

Most often, to give a reason is to state a putative fact. Facts are what true statements
state. A statement, to function as a reason, must be taken to state a fact. Of course,

"For an explanation of this term, see the entry under NON-CONTINGENT RELATIONSHIP in
Part Five.
5
In Analysis (March 1967), tried to define this non-contingent relationship exactly (I called it
I

engagement). also give there what have avoided discussing here, namely, the sorts of things
I I

between which this relationship holds.

"There is one minor set of exceptions to this formulation. Where a reason for doing A is re-
quested, to say "I intended (planned, proposed, etc.) to do A" is not to give a reason for doing
A (though to say "I intended (planned, proposed, etc.) to do B" may well be). This is the case
because in discussing doing A, the notion of doing A intentionally is built in; unless A was done
intentionally, there is no necessity for having reasons to do A at all. Thus, we must exclude from
possible reasons-for-doing-A statements using AC-words where the fact that the AC-word ap-
plies is part of (in the full sense) doing A.

123
being human and fallible, we may suppose that some statement is true when it is

not. Thus, if a statement is offered as a reason for doing A, it is only a reason if it is

true; it may, however, be my reason for doing A even if it is false, though I must be-
lieve it to be true. Thus:

Why did you hit Smith?

R13 He poisoned my cat.

For R13 to be my reason for hitting Smith, must believe that he poisoned my cat; for
I

it to be a reason, it must be true that he poisoned the cat (it would only be a reason
of course if I, for example, dislike people who poison my pets; it passes as the giving
of a reason because most of us do dislike- hate, want to hurt, and so on -those who
poison our pets).

The sorts of statements offered appropriately as reasons need not be of the straight-
forward "S is P" type.

Why did you forbid your son to play in the street?

R14 Because he might get run over.

Statements of possibility, probability, likelihood, and so on work entirely normally

as reasons.

Some reasons are odd in that they refer to, or appear to refer to, what does not exist:

Why do you lock all the doors at night?

R15 Because I am afraid of the tigers.

But there are no tigers in this part of the country. However, the oddity here is only
apparent. If it is the case that Smith fears for tigers, the fact that he is afraid in this

way can perfectly well be his reason for locking the doors, even though there are no
tigers. This sort of belief can even be a reason. Thus:

Why do you leave the light on in Johnny's room at night?

R16 Because he is afraid of hobgoblins coming when it's dark.

Above said I that, most often, to give a reason is to state a putative fact. But when we

124
give a reason, we do not necessarily make a statement. For instance:

Why did you put the kettle on?

R17 To make the tea.

There is a temptation to say that R17 is shorthand for either "It serves someone's
interests that I make the tea" or "I am under an obligation which making the tea
serves." Saying this has the obvious advantage that it becomes a necessary condition
of something being a reason that it is a fact. It has the disadvantage that it plays fast
and loose with language. What R17 would not be a reason for put-
is the case is that
ting the kettle on unless either "It serves someone's interests ." or "I am under an . .

obligation ." were true. Giving reasons of the R17-type does not consist in making
. .

a statement but in citing a suitable situation or occurrence; what makes the situation
or occurrence suitable is that it involves an interest or an obligation as discussed
above. Once this is noted, this type of reason can be fitted in beside the commoner
sort of reasons with no difficulty.

The necessary and sufficient conditions for a reason for acting: The necessary
and sufficient conditions for R being a reason for X to do A are:

1. R must be a fact or cite a situation or occurrence such that it is a fact

that this situation or occurrence relates appropriately to interests or obli-
gations.

2. R must involve either (a) an independently established obligation of X

such that X doing A serves this obligation or (b) the interests of someone
such that X doing A serves those interests. (We sometimes show that a
putative reason for X doing A is in fact a reason for X doing A by making
the involvement with (a) or (b) explicit.)

3. X must be able to do A.

That something fulfills the conditions for being a reason for X to do A does not mean
that it is a decisive reason or a justification for X doing A. This is not surprising. Life
being as complicated as it is, there are usually, for any contemplated action, reasons
for not doing it (or doing something incompatible with it) as well as reasons for doing
Thus, to say that many reasons are not decisive, or not decisive enough to justify
it.

doing what is contemplated, is not to say anything very odd. consider justifications I

in the following sections.

125
The general form of a reason for having acted in a certain way: X did A because:

R: in doing A, X did something which fulfilled one of the following condi-

tions: (a) it served this particular obligation of X or (b) it served these
people's (this person's) interests. 7

A similar general form for a contemplated future action can be produced by changing
tenses throughout and adding the condition that X can do A.

When we give a reason, we do not usually make everything explicit, including what
makes it a reason, in way given in the general form" above. However, some-
the if

thing is to be a reason for X having done A, then some appropriate instantiation of

the general form must be true. Let us call something of the general form R "a fully

explicit reason.''Any fully explicit reason, if it is correct to say that it is a reason

(rather than justsomeone's reason), is a true statement. In what follows shall be I

concerned with arguments whose premises are reasons or statements about reasons.
In all such cases, the reason referred to should be understood as a fully explicit

reason for X doing A: such a reason is symbolized by R(A). R(not-A) is a fully explicit
reason for X not to do A or for X to do something incompatible with A.

In the analysis and examples so far given, I have not considered this sort of case:

Why did you say that?

One ought always tell the truth.

The citing of a principle in such circumstances is a complicated matter. It is con-

sidered in the section called "Reasons and Principles" below.

Some putative contrary cases

The most obvious sort of putative contrary cases to my thesis about reasons for
acting are those we run up against when concerned with the mentally disturbed.
This should make us suspicious of these cases right from the start: One of the well-

known signs of mental illness is an aberrant use of language.

7
There an ambiguity in the symbolism here: are we talking about "X doing A" or about "A
is

getting done as a consequence of what X did." It makes a difference to some wives whether a
present was bought by their husband or their husband's secretary. To work this into the general
form is complex and theoretically uninteresting.

126
It easy enough to construct a suitable putative contrary case. Suppose Smith
is

attempts to commit suicide. In the course of talking about it afterwards he makes the
following claims.

1. He did it to punish himself or just to hurt himself.

2. He did not think he deserved to be punished (that is, he did not see him-
self under any obligation to punish himself in this way).
3. He did not think it served his own or anyone else's interests to punish or
hurt himself in this way.

We can respond in a number of ways

The first and most
to this sort of situation.
obvious response is Smith once grants that he was
to call in professional help. For, if

under no obligation to punish or hurt himself, then we do not know what to make of
the notion of punishment here. And it is when, in important areas, a man handles
the conceptual framework oddly that we do call in professional help. The psychia-
trist, when he arrives, will not be bothered by philosophical scruples: He will just

assume that Smith is speaking falsely when he makes one or more of the claims given
above and will look for what he will doubtless call "the real reasons" Smith did what
he did. In other words, he will endeavor to force the sort of conceptual structure I

have been outlining onto the situation described. It is not accidental (nor a scientific
discovery) that Freud suggested that everything we do stems, in one way or another,
from our wanting (if subconsciously) to do that thing or something believed to be
causally related to that thing. Freud's analysis was, of course, too simple. But what
he saw was that we can only handle human conduct if we understand the notion of
a reason for acting in some such way as he gave.

About such cases as these, then, I want to say that we can only treat something as
being a reason when it fulfills the conditions have given; and that being able to
I

treatsomething as a reason is what is required conceptually for it to be a reason. 8

Thus, if someone is asked why he hit Smith and replies

Because the kettle boiled;

and, questioned, admits no connection between the kettle boiling and interests or
obligations, then we have to say either that he is not telling the truth or that we can-
H
This not a new necessary condition for something to be a reason. It is a general condition
is

on language use. That is, it is a necessary condition of a K being a K that it can be treated
all

as a K. To say "This is a perfectly valid proof; but you cannot treat it as a valid proof, cannot ask
any of the usual questions about it and cannot challenge it in any of the standard ways" is to
say that the supposed "proof" is not a proof.

127
not understand him. To say we cannot understand him in this context just means that
he has violated the conceptual structure in some way; in this case, failed to use the
notion of a reason correctly. To answer "Why climb Everest?" with "Because it's

there" is a joke precisely because it does not seem that a reason has been given at
all.

The second obvious sort of contrary case to my thesis would be this: Suppose Smith
kills Jones. Asked why, he replies that he did it because he didn't like Jones. Clearly,

Smith-not-liking-Jones does not justify him in killing Jones; but that is not what is
at issue here. What is at issue is this: Is not-liking-Jones a reason for killing him at

all? am clearly committed to the position that it is a reason if, obviously, a very poor
I

reason. And that position is surely correct. The difference between citing not-liking-
Jones as a reason for ignoring him and as a reason for killing him is that in the first,
but not in the second, case the reason may also be a sufficient reason for doing the
action mentioned. To this notion, that of having a sufficient reason or a justification
for doing something, we must now turn.

Reasons and justifications

In this section I shall be concerned with practical argument-forms leading to the

conclusion that some act is justifiable or justified. Similar, but not identical, argu-
ment-forms can be uncovered leading to the conclusion that some act is permis-
sible, required, and so on.

The classic form of practical argument to the conclusion that some act is justifiable

is this (where P is a positive principle):

F1 P
X doing A under P.
falls

Therefore, X doing A is justifiable.

But this form of argument does not sit well beside much modern work in ethics. In
the most obvious instance, it has been said that every true practical and ethical
principle is defeasible." If this is the case, then the argument-form F1 is not, as it

stands, valid. What is the case, of course, is that F1 is the completely proper stand-

H
An indefeasible principle is one to which there are no exceptions whatever. shall not argue I

the thesis that there are no true indefeasible principles here, though take it to be correct. The I

way to show the thesis false, if it is to be shown to be false, is to produce a contrary case. The
only plausible candidate in the literature is some variant on
Treat different people differently only on the basis of relevant reasons.

This is a perfectly true statement about the conceptual structure embodied in our talk about ac-

128
ard argument-form within casuistry 10 and only works with indefeasible principles
(if there are any). I shall return to this matter later.

Most practical arguments are arguments in which reasons are given in an attempt to
justify (show permissible, show obligatory) certain acts. However, the forms of argu-
ment appropriate when arguing on the basis of reasons are a good deal more com-
plex than

F2 R(A)
Therefore, X doing A is justifiable.

This, in fact is the old casuist form of argument with the major premise left out. The
simplest (but only the simplest) valid form of argument based on reasons to a con-
clusion of the form "Therefore, X doing A is justifiable" is as follows:

F3 R(A)
There are no reasons for X not to do A (reasons for X not to do A include
reasons for X doing something incompatible with A).
Therefore, X doing A is justifiable.

Mostly, of course, in the rough-and-tumble of life, this simple argument-form is

inapplicable. It is easy to see a general argument-form, however, which will always

be applicable if a truth value can be assigned to its premises (F3 is a special case of
it). It is as follows:

F4 R(A), •••
R(A) n
R(not-A), ••• R(not-A) m
R(not-A), ••• R(not-A) m are all the reasons for X not to do A.

tions (I say "statement" because it is surely not the sort of thing we would normally call a princi-
ple at all); it is fully encompassed in what is said below about practical arguments. The problem
with the statement is the word "relevant," which appears to make it nearly vacuous. This prob-
lem is considered here in the discussion of what I call "the comparative strength premise."

'"Because the practice of casuistry has fallen into disrepute, the word is no longer common.
However, use it here quite normally. Here is the relevant dictionary definition of it: "Applying
I

the general rules of religion (morality) to particular instances." The practice of casuistry can
take place only where we have an ethical or religious code which contains what are taken to be
indefeasible moral rules. Casuistry has largely vanished because of the widespread acceptance
of the thesis that there are no true indefeasible moral principles.

129
 The combined reasons R(A), •••
R(A) n are stronger than the combined
reasons R(not-A), • R(not-A) m .

Therefore, X doing A is justifiable. 11

This is a completely valid argument-form though there are, of course, a great many
subsidiary arguments possible: Whether there are more reasons than those cited,
whether the putative reasons are really reasons, and so on. However, these argu-
ments are about the truth of the premises and do not affect the validity of the ar-
gument-form.

There is also another difficulty with F4. The final premise before the conclusion (call

it the "comparative strength premise") is logically rather odd. In some particular

cases it can be known to be true, but only in very few of these. For instance, if the
reasons in the argument refer only to my personal wants then, in favored cases at

least, I can know the truth value of the comparative strength premise. However, in

almost every other case (and in pretty well all interesting cases), there is just no way
to find its truth value. When in such cases the argument is employed, a truth value is

assigned to this premise. I discuss how this is done in the next section. At present I

want only to no general confirmation procedure for a com-

emphasize that there is

parative strength premise. is meant by this. The nature

It is important to see just what
of a reason for acting is embedded in our conceptual structure; anyone who denies
that something which has the properties have outlined is a reason for acting is (if I

my analysis is correct) trying to change the conceptual structure. However, there

are no facets of the conceptual structure which dictate a general confirmation pro-
cedure for the comparative strength premise. That is what is meant by saying that

there is no such general procedure.

A note on this section: It might be said that F4 above is not a very practical
final
argument-form because the truth of all its premises is so hard to discover. This is
just a complaint. In practice we tend to use a slightly different but clearly related type

of argument. I give it in simplified form as the general form is complicated without

being of greater theoretical interest:

F5 R(A)
R(not-A)

"You should note the similarity (but also the differences) between this and subsequent argu-
ment-forms and the argument-forms in the section called "More Types of Argument" in Chap-

ter Two.

130
 R(not-A) is the only reason for X not doing A that X knows about.
R(A) is stronger than R(not-A)
X has thought and looked very hard to find additional reasons for his
not doing A and has found none.
Therefore, X is justified in doing A.

This argument-form seems me

be entirely valid. It should be noticed that a
to to
comparative strength premise appears in it; such a premise must appear unless there
are literally no reasons for X not doing A (which, as noted earlier, is a rare occur-
rence). Thus, this argument-form does not help us out of the difficulties associated
with the comparative strength premise.

Reasons and principles

In the most obvious instance, principles designate a certain type of action and
proscribe or prescribe However, we have been told that every practical principle is
it.

defeasible. By this it is meant that, for cases which fall under the principle, the prin-
ciple is binding unless there are (strong) reasons why, on this occasion, it should not
be binding (the injunction not to lie is binding unless there are (strong) reasons to
lie on this occasion). Such principles fit in with the argument-form F3 above nicely.
But, as we saw, in the rough-and-tumble of life, F3 is rarely applicable. It does not
appear that there is any way that defeasible practical principles can fit into the general
argument form F4. This needs sorting out.

Let us take as our stalking horse the (defeasible) principle which states that lying is

proscribed (or, if the emotive overtones of lying are a problem, that telling untruths
is proscribed). We would substantiate this principle by citing those reasons, about

which we all know, which show that in general lying is against everyone's interests.
But because we cannot know what other reasons there may be for telling a lie on a
particular occasion, this does not show that it is never justifiable to lie; all it shows is

that in general lying is not justifiable. But what now tempts us to refer to this per-
fectly good practical generalization as a principle? What we have, and all we have,
is a generalization which is as true as any generalization has any right to be; as true,
for instance, as the generalization that dogs have a very acute sense of smell. To
keep this fact before us, I shall adopt the following verbal conventions: I shall speak
of practical generalizations for defeasible principles as outlined above; and of prin-
ciples only in the sense where a principle is indefeasible. It has still to be shown,

of course, that there are any principles in this usage; that is, any indefeasible prin-
ciples.

131
Practical generalizations enter into practical deliberation in this way: The gener-
alization that one ought never tell a liereminds us that there are reasons for not lying
to people. Thus, in justifying telling a lie the burden is on the justifier to find reasons
for telling that lie. This way generalizations enter into practical deliberation is not
very exciting; such cases the only thing they do is remind us of what anyone of
in

normal intelligence and perceptiveness knows already. The function of practical

generalizations in our lives is, suppose, to provide quick answers to practical ques-
I

tions arising in entirely unexceptionable circumstances. In addition, they doubtless

have some role in the training of children.

This, however, is not the end of the story. Principles (that is, indefeasible principles)
can also enter into practical deliberation and have a function in our lives. First it
must be shown that there are principles as use the term. This is simply done. A I

pacifist does not take the stand that there is a well-founded practical generalization
against killing (a defeasible principle proscribing killing): That, in any case, would
not be a stand but simply correct. The pacifist's stand (and it is a stand) is that there
is an (indefeasible) principle proscribing killing. Nor does this principle enter into
practical deliberation as a reminder of anything, the way practical generalizations do:
It can either be used in arguments of the form F1 or, on particular occasions, it

definitely dictates a truth value for the comparative strength premise in a practical
argument of the form F4. A principle with these possible functions could not be
defeasible and still perform the functions. Such an indefeasible principle is not
demonstrable, any more than a general confirmation procedure for the comparative
strength premise is deducible from the conceptual structure. However, such prin-
ciples serve a function in the conduct of our lives: Holding to such a principle defines,
at least partially, one's stance in the world. It has often been missed, one I think, that
important function of a person's practical decisions is and
to define himself for others
sometimes, doubtless, for himself (this is one point which Sartre makes and one on
which he is surely right).

Two final notes on this section: Refusing to call practical generalizations principles

does not deny that there are many types of action where there are clear and obvious
reasons against performing actions of this type and that, as a consequence, to per-
form such actions justifiably requires one to produce reasons for doing so. However,
it does cut down on the number of principles we have about, which is surely an ad-

vantage. Secondly, in speaking of principles used to assign a truth value to a com-

parative strength premise, am not suggesting that we always must decide this
I

premise on the basis of principles. What is the case, however, is that there is a well-
founded practical generalization (a defeasible principle) that a person decide the
same comparative strength premise in the same way on different occasions.

132
 Arguments using self-affirmed principles

One of the things I have tried to do in the previous section is draw the line between
those elements which are required by the conceptual structure and those elements
which are open to personal, though serious, choice. That there is a division between
what is required by rationality and what is open to conviction and commitment is
reflected in our ordinary lives. The pacifist often does not suppose that others are
called upon to be pacifists as well (are irrational if they are not pacifists); neither
does he think his own position is irrational. If my analysis is accurate, he is entirely
correct in this.

It is sometimes opening the door to personal commitment in this way lets

felt that
in, is not so. Consider the following
as justifiable conduct, almost anything. This
argument-form which has sometimes, though wrongly, been taken to be valid:

F6 X holds to the indefeasible principle P.

X doing A falls under P.

Therefore, X is justified in doing A.

This is To see this, it is only necessary to put "It is always right

quite certainly invalid.
to obey the orders Head of State" for P and "Killing Jews (or Vietnamese)"
of the
for A. One then comes up with the conclusion that Eichmann acted justifiably, which
is absurd. The most which can be produced by way of even a plausibly valid con-

clusion from the premises of F6 is

Therefore, X is justified in his own eyes in doing A.

Iam uneasy myself with even that conclusion. suspect that the only sort I of argu-
ment-form which could be valid here is the following:

F7 X holds to the indefeasible principle P.

X doing A falls under P.
Therefore, X must hold that he is justified in doing A.

That form is valid. Nor is it obnoxious. It is by use of this argument-form that we con-
vince someone that certain principles he holds are principles he should not hold.
We do this by showing, by use of this argument-form, that unacceptable conclusions
follow from some affirmed principle.

133
Conclusions
In this paper I have tried to argue the following complex thesis: That the notion of
a reason for acting is well defined within the conceptual structure. That the giving
of reasons can lead validly to the conclusion that some action is justifiable (obliga-
tory, permissible). But that, with many possible actions, there is one premise in the
practical argument about that action which must be assigned a truth value on the
basis of a decision or on the basis of personal commitment. If someone acts in de-
fiance of what is given by the conceptual structure (ignores what are reasons, does
not accept the conclusions of valid practical arguments, and so on), he is irrational.
But within the demands of rationality there remains a fairly large area where how
we act is something deeply personal, not just logical. Life would be a lot less excit-
ing than it is were this not the case.

134
Part five Modern philosophical usage

New philosophical ideas and theses in this century appear predominantly in learned
journals rather than books. For the most part, papers which appear in these journals
are mercifully free of jargon. However, there are a few technical terms which you
must command to read the journals. In this part I give a glossary of these terms. The
aim is to open the journals to you so you can read them on your own.

As the hints,
title have modeled my discussion of philosophical technical terms on
I

Fowler's Modern English Usage. Like Fowler, have not written a dictionary; few
I

terms are defined, and even with those that are, the definition does not take up the
bulk of the entry. What do is the following: If a term has a widely agreed upon defini-
I

tion, give it. If, as is more commonly the case, no precise definition of what the
I

word means is agreed upon, give a description of roughly what is meant by it, how
I

roughly depending on the term itself. More important, where philosophical contro-
versy has developed about a term — whether it can be coherently defined, what pit-
falls and so forth — indicate at least that there is a con-
there are associated with it, I

troversy going on and approximately what it is about. You must realize that one of
the characteristics of philosophy in this century is distrust of much philosophical

terminology. This has come about because has often been shown that what is
it

most important in a problem is hidden by some term. This being the case, any cut-
and-dried set of definitions would completely misrepresent the temper of the age.

137
The glossary follows Fowler in another respect. He did not hesitate to state his opin-
ion on what he thought good and bad about the way the words he discusses were
used. I follow the same procedure. My biases are here, built in, but they are also ob-
vious. As a consequence of this, indeed to make my biases clear, some of the entries
are deliberately outrageous (see, for instance, the entry on absolute). know of no I

better way to bring out what tricks have been played by philosophers (often on them-
selves) by an uncritical use of a special vocabulary.

Although the glossary looks like a reference work and can be used in that way, I did
not include it in the book primarily for reference purposes.
designed to be read It is

more or less straight through. The concepts discussed here are central to contem-
porary work in philosophy and a discussion of them seemed the best introduction
to this work. However, I have added cross references so that the glossary can be used
for reference purposes as well.

There is a systematic set of omissions which it is worth remarking. With very few ex-
ceptions, do not discuss the names of philosophical schools or philosophical posi-
I

tions like phenomenalism, idealism, scepticism, transcendentalism, and so on. The

explanation for not doing so is given in the article on vacuous terminology.

A few stylistic notes are in order. Following the practice usual in dictionaries, I use
italics frequently for sample words and phrases. When a word in the text is boldface,
this means that there is a special entry on that word in the appropriate place in the
glossary. Minimum references are given in the body of the text; full information on
any given work is provided in the Bibliography. I have used the abbreviations OED
for the Oxford English Dictionary and Fowler for Fowler's Modern English Usage.

138
Chapter fourteen Glossary

Absolute: A perfectly good word in ordinary speech where it, and its associated
adverb, act mainly as intensifiers: He is an absolute idiot; You are absolutely right. It
also has a perfectly respectable use as a technical term in various sciences: absolute
zero, absolute alcohol. From time
word has been taken into philosophy
to time, the
as an abstract noun (the Absolute); it is assumed that its meaning is completely
transparent, presumably because we command the normal use of the adjective and
adverb. But this is sheer tomfoolery; unless specially defined, absolute under these
conditions is quite vacuous (see vacuous terminology). To realize just how silly the
move is, consider the English adjective utter which, in the ordinary way, has a very
similar function to absolute. Again we have such acceptable idioms as He's an utter
fool and am utterly dumfounded. Now suppose someone starts speaking, with no
/

explanation, of the utter or the Utter. The move is no more ridiculous than speaking
of the Absolute.

Alienation: Occurs primarily in the vocabulary of existentialists but is now more

widely used. It concerns, generally, the notion of a man cut off from his fellow man,
usually psychologically rather than physically (a man on a desert island is not neces-
sarily alienated). More sometimes used as a feeling-word (that is, such
precisely, it is

that to say one is to say one feels cut off) and sometimes as a
alienated from life is

state-word (that is, such that to be alienated is to be cut off from life). In the second
sense, it is appropriate to say one has a feeling of alienation. Alienation is often
allied to the notion of communication, such that one who is alienated is one who is

(or feels) unable to communicate with his fellow man. When someone is alienated
from himself, he is, or feels, cut off from his real nature, usually by identifying with
some role in society.

139
Allowable substituend: An appropriate value for a variable in an open sentence.
See that entry for a more detailed account.

Analytic statement: A statement which is true purely because the words used in

it mean what they do mean and the grammatical structure of the sentence used in

making it does have in the language in which it is couched. As

has the function it

analytic statements are true solely because of the nature of the language, they are
often said to be necessarily true (see Chapter Three). Statements which are neces-
sarily false purely because of the nature of the language are sometimes said to be
analytically false. (See also a priori.)

Analytic-synthetic: The usual distinction is this: on the one hand we have analytic
statements, and on the other we have every other possible statement; all these other
statements are synthetic. All statements, when they are true, are true in some measure

because the words of the language mean what they do mean (see Chapter Three).
The difference between analytic and synthetic statements is that analytic statements
are true (when they are) solely because the language is the way it is while synthetic
statements are true (when they are) in part on the basis of what is the case in the
world. Thus, "All bachelors are unmarried" is analytic as is "Nothing can be red and
blue all over at once," while "Jones is a fool" or "The table is round" are synthetic.
These are the conventional distinctions. They have been very powerfully called into
question during the last thirty years. See Quine, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," and
Austin, "The Meaning of a Word."

Atomic fact: A technical term from logical atomism; see Russell, "The Philosophy
of Logical Atomism," and Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus. Used now
rather loosely for a statement which appears to be in no way complex. Except in

writing about logical atomism, it is a term best avoided.

A The term is a
posteriori: was introduced importantly into phi-
foil for a priori. It

losophy by Kant and is nowin common

means from experience. In practice,
use. It

philosophers have meant bya posteriori knowledge the sort of knowledge which is
acquired from experience: most obviously, scientific knowledge and knowledge
about particular matters of fact.

A priori: A term introduced importantly into philosophy by Kant and now in common
use. It means literally from the first. In practice, philosophers have meant by a priori
knowledge knowledge which is independent of any particular bit or type of experi-
ence. The relationship between statements known a and analytic statements
priori

is still a matter of debate; Kant certainly did not think them the same, though many
philosophers have asserted that they are.

Concept: Fowler remarks that "concept is a philosophical term and should be left

140
to the philosophers"; the question is what we should do with it. The OED
propounds
a definition entirely dependent on eighteenth century psychological notions and
then, peculiarly enough, quotes Sir William Hamilton that "concepts are merely the
results, rendered permanent by language, of a previous process of comparison."
None of this is very helpful. Concept as used today in most philosophical work is a
grammatical place holder. Thus, The concept of a cause involves priority in time
translates into A cause necessarily preceeds its effect; and We have a concept of
red translates into We use "red" successfully in discourse. The translation of con-
cept into idea in the mind should be resisted. When we command concepts, as we do,
we are not marshalling a set of ideas in the mind (see the second appendix to Chapter
Seven). If concept is to be more precisely delineated, the following would appear
to be the way to do it. To have a concept of W is to command all the logical connec-
tions in which X is (a)W forms the antecedent or the consequent. However, the notion
of a logical connection in this context should not be construed such as to include
only entailment relations. See logical connection.

Conceptual structure: A fashionable phrase today. It is now frequently said that all
(most, much, a significant part) of philosophy consists in uncovering the conceptual
structure embodied in our language. The notion of conceptual structure comes about
in this sort of way: Our language has a structure. It is this which limits what we can

sensibly say and, for that matter, what we can sensibly think. It conditions our lives,
our science, and our social forms. This structure, at least at the most basic level,
appears to be common to all known languages. (See Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory
of Syntax.) Clearly, the concept of conceptual structure is not particularly precise.
The best that can be said is, think, that to give all the logical connections in our
I

language would be to lay bare the conceptual structure of the language. (See logical
connection and Chapter Three.)

Conditional: Any statement of the type p then q; that is, any statement where
if

something (in this case q) is asserted only under a certain condition (in this case the
condition that p is true). The statement p is often referred to as the antecedent of
the conditional and q the consequent of the conditional. This terminology is irra-
tional, for q is not a consequent of the conditional but of p; however, the terminology
is now too well established to be changed.

Consequent: See conditional.

Contingent: See analytic-synthetic and logically necessary-contingent.

Counter factual conditional: A conditional statement, like if p then q or p implies

q, where p is false. See material implication.

Criterion (Plural, criteria): This word now has two distinct uses in philosophical

141
literature, the normal academic use and a special use (which may in fact be the man-
in-the-street's use) introduced into philosophy by Wittgenstein. In the normal aca-
demic use, a criterion of something being an X is a necessary condition of it being
an X. The criteria of being an X are the necessary and sufficient conditions of being
an X. In this use, the notion of criterion is closely tied to the notion of verbal defini-
tion. Wittgenstein's use of the word is less cut and dried. For Wittgenstein, to say
that C is a criterion of X is to say that there is a logical connection between C and X
which is not necessarily an entailment relation. The most famous example of this is

Wittgenstein's position that moaning and groaning (pain behavior) is a criterion of

pain.

Entailment: The following is the formal definition: Where p and q are statements,
p entails q is true if and only if p being true involves necessarily that q is also true.
It should be noticed that to say that p entails q is to say more than that if p is true

then (as a matter of fact) q is true; what is required for entailment is that q is true, if
it is, because p is true. It is this which makes entailment non-truth functional. En-

tailment and analytic statements are connected in a number of ways, not all of which
need concern us here. The most important connection is this: When p entails q then
the statements if p then q and Either not-p or q are analytic. However, the converse
is not necessarily true. That is, when the statements if p then q and Either not-p or q

are analytic, it does not automatically follow that p entails q (though it does follow
that p materially implies q (see material implication).

Excluded middle (law of): See negation.

Existential situation: Not a type of situation but a term which draws attention to
what about a given situation is important. When a situation is referred to as an ex-
istential situation, one or both of two things are implied: That it is the details, lost in
most descriptions of situations, which are important; or that it is one's personal and
detailed reaction to the situation which is important. In the first sense, existential
situations are taken to be practically but not logically unique; in the second sense,
they are private to the individual. There are interesting similarities between the phil-
osophical use of existential situation and some uses of the teen-agers' term scene.
The sense of scene in the utterance Every scene is different, which take to be an- I

alytic in teen-tongue, has obvious affiliations with the existentialists' use of ex-
istential situation.

Fact: Facts are what true statements state. They are not in the world nor parts
of the world. One cannot trip over a fact nor spill coffee on them. The exact status of
facts has been subjected to a great deal of debate. See Austin, "Truth" and "Un-
fair to Facts"; and Strawson, "Truth," (1950).

142
Hypothetical (statement): A statement of the form if p, then q and, less often, a
statement of the form p implies q. See conditional.

Implication: One of those words which lead an interestingly ambiguous

life between

philosophy and ordinary language. In philosophy, it is synonymously usually used

with either entailment or material implication; usually the context indicates which
meaning is intended. Rarely, implication is used in the ordinary language sense rel-
evant to philosophy. In this use, when p implies qf, the truth of p provides good, but
not necessarily conclusive, reason for supposing q true. Thus, His going implied
indifference to the cause. Austin in "Other Minds" uses the word in this way, and he
discusses this use in "Lecture IV" of How to Do Things with Words. Inference and
implication are related in this way: statements and people imply things, while only
people infer them. From Smith's remarks can infer that he dislikes me, but the re-
I

marks themselves infer nothing, though they may imply things. In general, when p
implies q, anyone in command of p is at liberty to infer q. The ambiguity on imply
discussed above applies equally and in the same way to infer.

Imply: See implication.

Infer: Best discussed comparatively with imply. See article on implication.

Inference: Best discussed comparatively with implication; see that article.

Instantiation: The term is used formally for a sentence which produced by plac-
is

ing allowable substituends for the variables in an open sentence. See open sentence
for a fuller discussion.

Law of excluded middle: See negation.

Logic: The study of valid argument-forms. Symbolic logic is the study of valid argu-
ment-forms using only symbols and carried out in a mathematical mode. However,
logic need not be symbolic. Some of the material offered in Chapter Two could fairly
be called the beginnings of logic; and the portions of Part Four concerning argu-
ment-forms is a type of logical inquiry. Symbolic logic, which is as valuable in mathe-
matics as in philosophy, is probably in the process of becoming an autonomous
discipline outside philosophy.

Logic of a word: This is a piece of contemporary jargon which is not particularly

well defined. Usually, at least in the competent philosophers, it is plain what
hands of
is meant in context. Some what is involved in giving
sort of general description of
the logic of a word can be given as follows: Let us consider the word W. (1) Let us
suppose that W can appear importantly in analytic statements. To give these analytic
statements gives part of, or an aspect of, the logic of W. Thus, to say Nothing can be
red and green all over at once gives an important aspect of the logic of red and of

143
green, indeed of color words. (2)
all W
will appear typically in certain sorts of sen-
tences or open sentences. The statements which can be expressed by these sen-
tences, or statements about these sentences, stand in certain logical relationship
to other statements; these relationships will most obviously be entailment but will
also include other logical connections which are not entailment. Giving these rela-
tionships gives aspects of, or part of, X is red entails X
the logic of W. Thus, to say
is colored gives an aspect of the logic of red; and to say that being in pain is logically
tied, though not by entailment, to pain behavior gives an aspect of the logic of pain.

(3) The sentences or open sentences in which W typically appears may be used to
perform certain functions within the language and in our lives. To give these func-
tions is to give an aspect of the logic of W. Thus, the function of saying promise to /

X (instantiated) is under an obligation to do something, and stating

to place oneself
this fact is to give an aspect of the logic of promise. (See Chapter Eight.)

Logical atomism: A philosophical position originally presented by Russell in a

series of lectures in New York in 1918; the lectures were published under the title

"The Philosophy of Logical Atomism." A

and more sophisticated version
different
was offered by Wittgenstein in Wisdom,
Tractatus Logico Philosophicus. See also
"Logical Constructs," and Urmson, Philosophical Analysis. The school flourished in
English in the 1920s but is now defunct.

Logical connection: The most obvious form of logical connection is entailment.

That is, if p entails q, there is a clear logical connection running from p to q. However,
as was pointed out by Wittgenstein and Austin, there are other sorts of logical con-
nections similar to, but weaker than, entailment. They are logical because they are
based in our language and are logical connections in that, if such a relationship
obtains between p and q, the truth of p is a good reason for supposing q to be true.
The most famous of these relationships is the connection between a person being
in pain and the natural signs of pain (moaning, groaning, crying out). Someone can

be in pain and, stoically, not show it, so the relationship is not that of entailment;
yet there is a connection. A better example, perhaps, is the relation between what
we see and what is there to be seen (what is there in the world). If we see what we
take to be a certain friend, this does not entail that our friend is there; we may be
dreaming or hallucinating. Nevertheless, our judgments as to what is there in the
world must be based, at least in large part, on what we see. In this case again, we
have a logical connection which is not entailment. The jargon phrase most often
used for these connections is non-contingent relationships. Austin used to speak
of aweak sense of "imply" (see "Other Minds"); Wittgenstein spoke of criteria.

Logical positivism: One of the few names for schools in philosophy which means

144
something reasonably precise. A logical positivist was a philosopher who held, as
a minimum, that no statement is significant unless it is verifiable or analytic. See
Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic. Over and above this basic position, individual
logical positivists held many different views. The school flourished in Vienna and in
parts of the United States during the 1920s but is now more or less defunct. See

Chapter Eleven.

Logically impossible: A statement is said to state a logical impossibility when it

is false and no conceivable occurrence in the world would show it to be true. See
logically necessary-contingent.

Logically necessary-contingent: A statement is said to be logically necessary

when it and no conceivable occurrence in the world would show it to be false.
is true
In all cases where the second condition does not hold, the statement, though true

if the first condition holds, is not logically necessary. A statement which is not logi-

cally necessary is contingent. Thus, Every bachelor is unmarried is logically neces-

sary: No conceivable occurrence would show it to be false. To find men who said
they were bachelors but were secretly married would not be to show Every bachelor
is unmarried is false but would be to find men (married man, indeed) who were liars. On

the other hand, No man can jump ten feet, though true, is not necessarily true and
is contingent: All that would be required to show it false is a very good jumper. The

distinction given appears to be simple and straightforward. However, it is not really

so straightforward and has been seriously brought into question in the last few years.
Whether every logically necessary statement is also an analytic statement is equally
open to a good deal of debate.

Logically possible: A statement is said to state a logical possibility when neither

it nor its negation are logically necessary. See logically necessary-contingent.

Material implication: The technical name for the relation designated by the "D"
sign in symbolic logic. This relationship was first specifically discussed by Philo,
a pupil of Diodorus Cronus. (See Sextus, Pyrrhoneiae Hypotyposes.) Material im-
plication is defined as follows: when p materially implies q, then either q is true or p
and q are both false; alternatively, p materially implies q when either p is false or q is
true (these two definitions are equivalent). Material implication is not a synonym for
entailment. This is most obvious in the case of what are called counter factual con-
ditionals. A counter factual conditional is a statement of the form if p then q or p
implies q, where p is false. For instance, If Hitler had invaded England in 1940, then
he would have won the war is a counter factual conditional. If this statement is con-
sidered to assert a connection of material implication, then (purely on the basis of
the definition and the fact that Hitler did not invade England in 1940) it is true. Under

145
the same If Hitler had invaded the United States in 1940, then he would
interpretation,
have been made Pope is also true. Clearly, if these statements are considered to
assert a connection of entailment, they would not be true. Thus, entailment and ma-
terial implication are distinct. At least one reason for this is that material implication
is truth functional and entailment is not; this point is discussed in more detail in the
article on entailment. Although material implication and entailment are very dif-
ferent relations, to reason using a true material implication statement will never lead
to error. The most obvious way we do reason using material implication (and the
other ways cause no trouble) is this: If p is true, and it is true that p materially implies

q, then we say that q is true. This rule avoids problems over counter factual condi-
tionals because it cannot be used when p is false. When p is not false, the definition
of material implication requires that for p materially implies q to be true, q must be
true;so concluding q will always be correct. This state of affairs has led some phi-
losophers to talk as if material implication is very like entailment, the one point of
difference being counter factual conditionals. This way of talking is wholly mistaken;
the two relationships are totally different and are conflated only at the risk of monu-
mental error and confusion. (See entailment.)

Materialism: With a word of such enormous generality, it is best to take refuge in

the dictionary. The OED has, for the philosophical sense of Materialism, "The doc-
trine that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications; also,
that the phenomena of consciousness and will are wholly due to the operation of
material agencies." Somewhat more precisely put (and therefore running greater
dangers of including more or less of what at least some philosophers who call them-
selves materialists consider to be important), materialism states that any true state-
ment either is about matter or material objects, or can be translated without loss
into statements about matter or material objects. Even stated in this way, the doctrine
is remarkable for its lack of specificity. (See vacuous terminology.) There are a great
many relatively precise philosophical questions which are clearly connected with
materialism; for example, consciousness a brain process? Are statements about
is

people's beliefs analyzable into statements about how they do (would) behave?
Many of these questions are, or can be made, quite specific; which means, in turn,
that there is some hope of answering them. Perhaps in that day (far off, one feels
sure) when these and a host of similar questions are carefully answered materialism
will become a specific theory whose truth can be fairly assessed.
Material object (material thing): The word is usually ill-defined and has no precise
ordinary use. Customarily, we are told that material objects are things like chairs,
tables, pictures, books, flowers, pens, cigarettes (see Ayer, The Foundations of
Empirical Knowledge). But usually no effort is made to decide even the most ele-
mentary questions about the logic of the word. For instance, when we cut a material

146
object in do we get two new material objects or two halves of one material
half,

object? Cut a table in half and you get two halves of a table. But it has been frequently
maintained that we can never see the insides of material objects because every time
we cut into them we just form new material objects where all we can see is their
surfaces. Clearly, if this is the case, material objects are, in one important respect
at least, most unlike chairs and tables. If material object is to be used in a serious
philosophical discussion, it should be defined. (See also sense datum.)

Material thing: An alternative expression to material object.

Meta: For the origin of this prefix see metaphysics. It is now used generally as
follows: Work in Meta-A is work about, or about the nature of, A. Thus, metamathe-
matics is the study of the nature of mathematics; meta-ethics is the study of the
nature of ethics (strictly speaking, most work in "ethics" done by philosophers today
is work in meta-ethics); and meta-criticism (a term I have never seen used) would
be the study of the nature of criticism. It is sometimes said, though dangerously,
that philosophy is the only discipline which includes its own meta-discipline; that is,

philosophy and meta-philosophy amount to the same thing. Whether this is the case
or not, meta-philosophy usually plays some considerable part in the writings of great
philosophers.

Metaphysics: The derivation of the word is as follows: That part of Aristotle's work
which concerned metaphysics (then unnamed) stood after (Gk: meta) the part con-
cerned with physics (Gk: ta phusika) and thus became known as the meta-physics.
The word was adopted for the type of philosophy Aristotle was concerned with in
that section. Metaphysics now has three distinct uses: (1) The study of necessary
existence; what willy-nilly has to be. It is in this sense of the word that Aristotle was
doing metaphysics in the passage cited, and it is therefore the original meaning of
the term. (2) The study of the ultimate nature of the universe or at least the production
of very general statements about the universe or human life. (3) The propounding
of statements which are unverifiable (see verification). Deriving from (3), we have
(3a) the propounding of nonsensical statements. In the context of philosophy, the

(3) and (3a) senses are always derogatory. It is often thought that these uses derive

from the logical positivists, though this is inaccurate: For instance, Descartes uses
the word in this way: Sense (1) is the only respectable use for metaphysics, but (2)
is doubtless here to stay. There is no defense for senses (3) and (3a). If a statement is

unverifiable or meaningless, let us say that it is and not via an ambiguous synonym;
and if we wish to denigrate another's position, let us say it is idiotic and drop the pre-
tentious verbal flourish.

Negation: The negation of a statement is formed by placing It is not the case that
before the original statement. Thus, the negation of Paul loves Mary is It is not the

U7
case that Paul loves Mary. The negation of a statement, say p, is often written not-p.
It is a dogma of most formal logic that it is the case that a statement or its negation

must be true (this is sometimes known as the law of the excluded middle). This myth,
which originated with Aristotle, is just wrong. Someone comes to the door and asks
if Smith is at home. A true Aristotelian must say that either Smith is at home is true

or that Smith is not at home (It is not the case that Smith is at home) is true. But
Smith is in fact dead upstairs. Which of the two statements is true? In any natural
idiom, neither is true, neither fits the facts. The appropriate answer to the person at
the door is not Yes or No but He's dead, or words to that effect.

Non-contingent relationship: This is a jargon phrase coined to take care of this

sort of situation: was asserted that there is a non-contingent relationship between,
It

for instance, pain and the expression of pain (moaning, groaning, crying out). By
this was meant that the concept of pain is tied logically to the ways in which it is
characteristically expressed. This connection is not, of course, one of entailment
because people can both moan and groan when they are not in pain and not show
it when they are in pain. So a non-contingent relationship is a logical connection
similar to, but weaker than, entailment. (See logical connection.)

Open sentence: There are a number of alternative terms used instead of open
sentence, the most popular being propositional function and sentential function.
An open sentence is a grammatically correct sentence which has had variables
placed for one or more words in To exemplify, from the grammatically correct
it.

sentence My car is red we can form the open sentences My car is A, My A is B, C is D,

and so on. The variable need not, of course, be written with a literal (the first example
given above could as well have been written: My car is .). The concept of an open
. . .

sentence is allied to the notion of an allowable substituend. Allowable substituends

are simply those values which the variable or variables in an open sentence shall,

as a matter of stipulation, be allowed to take on. One speaks of an open sentence

being instantiated when allowable substituends have been placed for the variables.
To take an example using all these different concepts: From the sentence My car is
red we can form the open sentence My car is A. Let us suppose that it is specified
that an allowable substituend for the variable is any word which, substituted for the
variable, forms a grammatically well formed sentence; then red, blue, yellow, old,
fast, expensive are all allowable substituends. My car is old would be one instantia-

tion of the open sentence. The idea of an open sentence was first presented in a
relatively formalway by Aristotle in the Prior Analytics, and it is fair to say, think, I

that no important theoretical work has been done since that time without making
use of the notion in some way. Certainly it has been claimed that it is a completely
necessary category of explanation in any work on language.

148
Ostensive definition: What, precisely, is involved in ostensive definition is still

very much a matter of debate. However, this much may be said: That ostensively de-
fining a word involves giving examples of its correct application and adding that any-
thing relevantly similar to the examples used can also have that word correctly ap-
plied to it. Thus, to ostensively define house one points to several different houses
saying that these, and things relevantly similar to them, are houses. There are many
difficulties with this description. Most obviously, relevantly similar seems to be sys-
tematically ambiguous in this context. There are other, more subtle, problems which
were brought out by Wittgenstein: Pointing itself appears to be systematically am-
biguous. Someone points at a house; how does the learner understand that it is the
house he is pointing at and not the shape, the materials out of which it is built, the
color, and so on? No satisfactory answer has been given to either of these problems.

Paradigm (pronounced 'paradim): The notion of a paradigm or, more often,

paradigm use or paradigm case was introduced into contemporary philosophy as a
central concept by Wittgenstein. A paradigm use of a word is a completely central
and typical instance of its correct use. Thus, the paradigm use of a word can be seen
as a pattern or model which can, with luck, guide us in our use of the word in more
doubtful cases. There is a whole set of articles in Analysis on the notion of paradigm
from 1959 to 1963.

Performative (performatory): Performative and performatory are exact synonyms,

being different words used at different times for the same thing by the man who in-
vented the notion, John Austin. In the more common form of performative, it is now
very much contemporary philosophical scene. As the term is Austin's,
part of the
I what is, essentially, his explanation of it. It should be realized, however,
shall give
that he never produced an explanation which he himself regarded as being entirely
satisfactory. Performatives are utterances which fall into "no hitherto recognized
grammatical category save that of 'statement.' " Nevertheless (1) they do not describe
or report anything nor are they true or false and (2) the utterance is, or is a part of, the
doing of an action. Austin gives as examples the words uttered in a marriage cere-
mony ("I do," "I will"); what one says when christening a ship ("I name this ship
the Queen Elizabeth") or when bequeathing something; the making of a bet ("I do");
and so on. For further information the first chapter of How To Do Things with Words
should be consulted.

Performatory: An alternative name for performative. See that article.

Proposition: A technical term with a fuzzy background. (1) Propositions can be

considered to be, by definition, the allowable substituends for certain of the variables
in a symbolic logic, their nature not otherwise delineated. What they are in addition

then becomes the result of investigation, not of definition. (2) Proposition is often

149
used as a more portentous synonym for statement. In this use, statement is always
preferable. (3) It has been said that propositions are the meanings of statements.
This stipulation allows those interested to speak of two or more statements ex-
pressing the same proposition. This, however, is a redundant addition to the lan-
guage; it provides no more than a different way of saying that two or more statements
state the same putative fact; it should therefore be avoided. There is an additional
disadvantage to saying that propositions are the meanings of statements. Proposi-
tions are also frequently said (sometimes as part of the definition) to be true or false;
philosophers greatly interested in artificial vocabularies have even wanted to say
that propositions are the only things which can properly be said to be true or false
(statements being true or false only in so far as they express true or false proposi-
tions). But the idea of propositions, in the sense where propositions are the meanings
of statements, being either true or false is sheer nonsense. Imagine someone saying
"Was the meaning of his statement true?" Sense seems to be the only useful way
(1)

to use proposition: The other uses are all confusing when they are not incoherent.
Sense (1) also has the advantage of not requiring a decision in advance as to what
are the allowable substituends for the variables in a symbolic logic.

Propositional function: See open sentence

Sense datum (plural, The root idea behind the notion of sense data is
sense data):
that they are the raw, uninterpreted somewhats that we get from our senses (that
we have in virtue of having senses and being placed as we are). Thus, the colored
patches and shapes, the noises, the smells we experience are all sense data. Lately,
it has been very much called into question whether the notion of sense data is

coherent at all (see Austin, Sense and Sensibilia).

Sentential function: See open sentence.

Statement: A statement is not identical to the sentence in which it is made. give I

first an excellent quotation from Austin. "A sentence is made up of words, a statement

is in words. Statements are made, words or sentences are used. We talk of my

. . .

statement, but of the English sentence. The same sentence is used in making
. . .

different statements (I say It is mine,' you say 'It is mine): It may also be used on

two occasions or by two persons in making the same statement. We speak of the . . .

statement that S,' but of 'the sentence "S," not of 'the sentence that S.' " ("Truth")
'

Making a statement is a use to which some sentences may be put. The mere uttering
of a sentence, even one whose most obvious use is statement-making (for example,
All crows are black), is not necessarily to make a statement. An uttered sentence is

a statement when it is offered in certain ways, when certain challenges or replies

are considered appropriate, and so on. This can cause writing difficulties when
actually doing philosophy; frequently one wishes to consider some statement which

150
one does not actually want to make. What one does in fact is write or utter an ap-
propriate sentence. If it is clear from the context that this sentence is being con-
sidered as a statement, there is no harm done; but to forget this condition is to court

error.

Synthetic statement: See analytic-synthetic.

Truth functional: It is only compound statements (that is, statements composed of,

or containing, other statements) that are or are not truth functional. A compound
statement is truth functional if and only if the truth of the compound statement is
determined by the truth of the component or contained statements. Thus, John both
drives a car and is a student is true if and only if the two statements John drives a
car and John is consequence, it is truth functional. On the
a student are true; as a
other hand, John believes that the moon is made of green cheese does not depend
for its truth on the truth of The moon is made of green cheese (John, along with the
rest of us, has some false beliefs). Thus, John believes the moon is made of green
cheese is not truth functional.

Truth value: A statement or a statement-like utterance is said to have a truth value

when it is true or false, whether we know it is true or false. Thus The moon is about a
quarter of a million miles from earth has a truth value (namely, true) and The moon
isabout ten miles from earth also has a truth value (false). On the other hand, /
promise to meet you at six has no truth value (whether or not the speaker breaks his
promise) and nor, presumably, has such a remark as The stars are lamps to light us
home.

Vacuous terminology: Tends to arise in two ways in philosophy. (1) In the nine-
teenth century something odd happened to philosophy as taught in universities.
Previously, philosophers were expected
do philosophy before a class, to argue
to
substantial theses publicly. This, of course, is a dangerous occupation involving

the risk of refutation by some bright student. As a consequence, many philosophers

became historians of ideas and lectured on the positions other philosophers had
propounded. From here it was an easy step to putting other philosophers into neat
little bags labelled materialist, idealist, empiricist, sceptic, and so forth. There is a

major disadvantage to this procedure: Philosophers of any stature tend to be highly

individual in the theses they propound; and, as a consequence, to note that, for
example, Descartes was a rationalist is to note what is least interesting about his
position. One can go further than that. The names for these schools, to include more
than one philosopher in be very vague. As a consequence,
any given school, have to
to say of some man that he is a member of a certain school is not only to note the
least interesting aspect of his position but is also effectively to say nothing at all.
Thus, both Berkeley and Hegel were idealists: A grotesque grouping. give a de- I

151
 .

tailed example of a piece of vacuous terminology of this type in the article on materi-
alism. (2) The second way vacuous terminology arises is this: Some philosophers
find that what they want to say cannot be said in a normal vocabulary and they there-
fore invent a special vocabulary of their own. If the terms of such a special vocabulary
are carefully defined, the philosophers concerned are doing no more than following
a normal procedure of any academic discipline. However, sometimes it is thought
unnecessary to define the new terms; instead, they are generated from ordinary
words of the language by morphological variation they do not properly take. Alter-
natively, a word is turned into a part of speech which it is not without benefit of
morphological variation. An example of the first is concresence (from concrete)
and of the second absolute used as a noun. give a detailed example of this type of
I

vacuous terminology by considering absolute in a special entry.

Verbal definition: The concept of a verbal definition is more complex than is usually

realized. Let us first take a simpler notion. A word W is verbally definable when there
is at least one value for the dot-variable in the open sentence The word "W" means . .

such that, when that value is substituted for the variable, the sentence formed ex-
presses a true statement. That statement then gives a verbal definition of W. This
gives a sufficient condition for a word being verbally definable and for the notion
of verbal definition. However,
does not give a necessary condition, for there are
it

many variations on the open sentences which can be used to give a verbal definition.
Trivially, the open sentence, The word "W" is defined as follows: would do as well. . . .

Less trivially, if the adjective A can only be used to modify the noun N and if N is
verbally definable in the way given above and the phrase AN is verbally definable in
the way given above, then we want to say that, as a consequence, A is verbally de-
finable. There are many further ramifications possible, but we need not go into them
here. Essentially, giving a verbal definition of a word W involves specifying a transla-
tionprocedure such that a sentence containing W can be translated into another
sentence or other sentences which do not contain W.

Verification: Started out its philosophical life in its completely normal use where
to verify a statement was to show it to be true. However, once the notion was sub-
jected to close philosophical scrutiny, a number If it was a
of difficulties arose.
general law which was under discussion, conclusive was seen to be im-
verification
possible.As a consequence, the verification of any given statement was considered
to be those things which were evidence, if not conclusive evidence, for the original
statement. But this, in turn, was seen to be too broad. The debate continues.

152
Bibliography

(The following abbreviations are used: PAS for Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society and PASS for the Supplementary volume of those proceedings. I list works
by the same philosopher in chronological order.)

Alston. William P. Philosophy of Language. Englewood Cliffs. N.J.: Prentice-Hall,

1964.
Austin. John L "The Meaning of a Word. " in Philosophical Papers. London: Oxford,
1961.
Other Minds. PASS, 1946. Reprinted in A. N. Flew. ed. Logic and Language.
second series. New York: Philosophical Library, 195.
Truth. PASS, 1950. Reprinted in G. Pitcher, ed. Tnjth. Englewood Cliffs.

N.J.: Prentice-Hall. 1964.

Unfair to Facts, in Philosophical Papers. London: Oxford. 1961.
"A Plea for Excuses. PAS. 1956.
Philosophical Papers. London: Oxford. 1961. (Contains all the papers listed
above.)
Sense and Sensibilia. Toronto: Oxford. 1962.
How To Do Things with Words. Cambridge. Mass.: Harvard University Press.
1962.
Ayer. A. Language, Tmth and Logic. New York: Dover Publications. 1936.
J.

The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge. London: Macmillan. 1940.

Chomsky. Noam. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge. Mass.: M.I.T. Press.
1965.
Hare. R. M. The Language of Morals. Toronto: Oxford. 1952.

153
Quine, W. Van Orman. "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," in From a Logical Point of
View. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961.
Russell, Bertrand. "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism," Monist, 1918-19. Reprinted
in Robert C. Marsh, ed. Logic and Knowledge. New York: Macmillan, 1956.

Ryle, Gilbert. The Concept of Mind. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1949.
"The Theory of Meaning," in C.A. Mace, ed. British Philosophy at the Mid-
Century. New York, Macmillan, 1957.
Urmson, J. O. Philosophical Analysis; Its Development between the Two World Wars.
London: Oxford, 1956.
Wisdom, John. "Logical Constructions," Mind, 1931-33.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractus Logico-Philosophicus, London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1955.
Philosophical Investigations. New York: Macmillan, 1953.

154
Index

a posteriori, 140 concept, 140

a priori, 140 conditional, 141, 143
absolute, 139, 150 consequent, 141
alienation, 139 contingent, 141
allowable substituend, 140 counter-factual conditional, 141
Alston, William, 67 criterion, 141
analysis, 33 ff. criticism of arguments, 23 ff.

analytic-synthetic, 140, 141, 151

analytic statement, 39, 100, 140, D-formula, 35 ff.

142, 143, 145 definition, 61 ff.

argument, 17 ff.
Descartes, Rene, 87 ff., 107, 148, 151

argument, criticism of, 23 ff.

dream-judgments, 77-78
argument, indirect, 31
Einstein, Albert, 61
argument forms, 21 ff.
emotive theory of ethics, 104
Aristotle, 23, 42, 149
entailment, 39-40, 141, 142, 143,
Arnold, Matthew, 57
144, 146, 148
atomic fact, 140
Austin, J. L, 27, 43, 65, 71, 140, 142,
errors, philosophical, common, 79 ff.

Euclid, 31
143, 144, 149, 150
99
excluded middle (law of), 142
Ayer, A. J., ff., 145, 147
excuses and justifications, 73-76
existential situation, 142
Berkeley, George, 151
experience, 46

casuistry, 129 fact, 142

Chomsky, Noam, 141 Freud, Sigmund, 127

155
Hamilton, Sir William, 141 Moore, G. E., 33
Hare, R. M., 107 ff. morphological variants, phony, 58
Hegel, G. W. F., 151
honorific trap-words, 58 names, 26-27, 66
Hume, David, 99 naturalism, ethical, 107
hypothetical (statement), 143 negation, 142, 143, 148
non-contingent relationship, 148
ideas, 67
implication, 143 open sentence, 140, 143, 144, 148, 150
imply, 143 Orwell, George, 57
indirect argument, 31 ostensive definition, 145
infer, 143
inference, 143 paradigm, 149
instantiation, 143 performative, 149
performatory, 149
jargon trap-words, 58 Philo, pupil of Diodorus Cronus, 146
judgments, 77-78 Plato, 41, 43, 45
justifications, 117 ff. polysyllabic trap-words, 58
justifications and excuses, 73-76 Popper, Karl, 30
principles (moral), 133 ff.

Kant, Emmanuel, 80, 140 professors of philosophy, middle-aged,

52
law of excluded middle, 143 proposition, 58, 100, 149
logic, 23, 143 propositional function, 150
logic of a word, 111,112, 143, 147 puzzles, 5 ff., 26
logical atomism, 140, 144
logical connection, 141, 142, 144, 148 Quine, W. V. O., 15, 140
logical positivism, 99, 144, 148
logically impossible, 145 reasons (for acting), 1 1 7 ff.

logically necessary-contingent, 141, 145 relativity, 29

logically possible, 145 Russell, Bertrand, 140, 144
Ryle, Gilbert, 15, 67, 68
marijuana, 75
material implication, 141, 142, 143, 146 Sartre, Jean Paul, 46, 49, 50, 51, 52, 132
material object, 146, 147 science, 28 ff.

material thing, 147 science, philosophy of, 131

materialism, 146, 152 sense datum, 147
meaning, 61 ff. signs, 68
meta, 147 stands for, 67-68
metaphysics, 147 statement, 142, 143, 144, 150

156
Strawson, P. F., 142 validity in virtue of form, 23
synthetic statement, 140, 151 variable, 22
verbal definition, 142, 151
tautology, 100 verbosopher, 43
Thurber, James, 57 verification, 148, 151
truth functional, 142, 146, 151
truth value, 151
Wisdom, John, 144
universals, problem of, 95 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 33, 43, 65, 67, 68,

Urmson, J. O., 144

71, 96, 140, 142, 144, 145, 149
use (of a word, a type of utterance), words, 61 ff.

71 ff.
words and ideas, 67
words and names, 26-27, 66
vacuous terminology, 139, 146, 151 words and signs, 68
validity, 18-20 words and things, 67

157
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