Dialogues with the Dead

Author(s): Edwin Curley

Source: Synthese, Vol. 67, No. 1, The Role of History in and for Philosophy (Apr., 1986), pp.
33-49
Published by: Springer
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20116255 .
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EDWIN CURLEY
DIALOGUES WITH THE DEAD
ABSTRACT. Serious work in
history
of
philosophy requires doing something very
difficult:
conducting
a
hypothetical dialogue
with dead
philosophers.
Is it worth
devoting
to
it the time and
energy required
to do it well? Yes.
Quite
apart
from the intrinsic interest of
understanding
the
past, making progress
toward
solving philosophical problems requires
a
good grasp
of the
range
of
possible
solutions to those
problems
and of the
arguments
which
motivate alternative
positions,
a
grasp
we can
only
have if we understand well
philosophy's
past. Philosophers
who concentrate too much on the
present
are
apt
to assume too
simple
a
view of alternative theories and of
important philosophical arguments. Ryle
and Austin
offer instructive
examples
of how it is
possible
to
go wrong by ignoring
or
misrepresenting
historical
figures.
My
aim here is to reflect on the nature of what I do and to consider
whether it is worth
doing.
Not
everyone
will
agree
that the
history
of
philosophy
is worth
bothering
with.
Philosophers,
I
find,
often have
towards historians of their
subject
a disdain matched
only by
that which
creative writers often have for
literary
critics.
Studying
the
systems
of
dead
philosophers may
be
a fit
occupation
for
apprentices,
who have
yet
to learn their
trade,
or for others
incapable
of
making any
serious
contribution to
philosophy proper,
but no
philosopher
worth his salt will
want to
spend
much time
conducting
a
dialogue
with the dead.
Consider the
following
words of Michael
Scriven,
contained in a
generally
sensible
piece
of advice to
departments
on how to increase
their enrollments. In this
passage
Scriven is
recommending
the creation
of a 'two-track'
major,
one via
problems
courses ... one via
history
courses
....
Of
course,
the
history
bears on
the
problems,
but so do the
problems
bear on the
history...
and the fact remains that
many
students
today
won't take on that
heavy history trip
and
you
can't act as if all
professional philosophers disagree
with them_Some
history
will come in the back
door of the
problems
courses
-
so be it. But don't be a slave to the fact that most of
your
faculty
know a
great
deal about the
history
of
philosophy
and
hence, (a)
find it
easy
to
teach,
and
(b)
tend to rationalize its
importance.
Like the formal
logic requirement,
this is
all-too-often a case of those who went
through fraternity
initiations
...
needing
to
justify
the
hardship
-
or their own
idiosyncratic
taste
-
by generalizing
about its
necessity.
The
test of a
good major
is that
s/he
does
good philosophy,
not
good history
of
philosophy.
Few
great philosophers
are noted for their work in the
history
of
philosophy
and
many
Synthese
67
(1986)
33-49
?
1986
by
D. Reidel
Publishing Company
34
EDWIN CURLEY
were deficient or disinterested in it.
They
were into the
problems.
Let it be at least a
matter for
investigation
whether the
history requirements
are
necessary; they certainly
are a barrier
(1977, p. 233)
Thus Professor Scriven. If he did not
exist,
it would be
necessary
to
invent
him,
for otherwise it would be hard to find
displayed
in so short a
space
so
many
indefensible
prejudices.
Is it
really
true,
for
example,
that an
undergraduate choosing
to
major
in
philosophy
is
typically embarking
on a
"heavy history trip"?
Not in
my experience. Typically
the
undergraduate major
is
required
to
take the standard two-semester or
three-quarter survey
of the
history
of
philosophy
from Tha?es to
Kant, supplemented, perhaps, by
similar
surveys
of 19th and 20th
century philosophy.
But at most institutions
that do not have
graduate programs,
few advanced courses in
particular
figures
or movements are
available;
where
they
are
available,
they
are
rarely required. Typically
the
undergraduate major
takes
mainly sys
tematic or
problem-oriented
courses.
Is it
really
true that most
faculty
in
philosophy departments
know a
great
deal about the
history
of
philosophy? Perhaps
in some schools
they
do,
but not in
many
-
not if
"knowing
a
great
deal" about a
subject
implies having
an extensive set of accurate and well-founded beliefs.
How could
they?
What kind of
training
have most
faculty
had in the
history
of
philosophy?
As
undergraduates they
will no doubt have had the standard
survey
courses,
but we cannot assume that
they
will have learned much from
that
experience.
When I went
through
that kind of course some
twenty-five years ago,
we read
secondary
accounts of
Plato, Aristotle,
etc.,
in a massive textbook. Now more attention is
paid
to
primary
sources. No one should be under
any
illusions about how much can
be
achieved in a course of that
scope
within the time constraints of one
academic
year.
The
undergraduate
who knows Plato and Aristotle
only
from that kind of course will not know much about Plato and Aristotle.
As
graduate
students
they
will no doubt have taken some advanced
seminars in
Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant,
and
perhaps
one or more
of the British
empiricists.
Here
they
will
actually
have read
intensively
the whole of some
primary
texts and been
exposed
to some
fairly
sophisticated secondary
literature. But art is
long,
life is
short,
and
they
will not have read
nearly enough
to "know a
great
deal" about
Plato,
say,
unless
they happen
to have chosen him as the
subject
of their
dissertation. At best
they
will know one
figure
or movement
really
well.
DIALOGUES WITH THE DEAD 35
What would count as
knowing
a
great
deal about the
history
of
philosophy,
or,
if that seems an unrealistic
goal,
what would count as
knowing
the
history
of
philosophy tolerably
well? At a
minimum,
I
suppose,
someone who knew the
history
of
philosophy tolerably
well
would have read
enough
of the
primary
texts of the most
important
figures
to know what those
figures thought
about the central
problems
of
philosophy,
and would know
enough
about the circumstances under
which those texts were written to
place
them in some kind of relation
ship
to each other. This would
mean,
with
respect
to
Descartes, say,
having
read at least the Discourse
on
Method,
the
Meditations,
and the
more
general portions
of the
Principles of Philosophy, knowing
some
thing
about when those works were
composed
and for what
purpose,
and
knowing
how
they
are related to each other and to the similar works
of
(at
least the more
important
of)
Descartes'
predecessors,
contem
poraries,
and successors. But it would also
mean,
not
just knowing
what
Descartes said in these
works,
but
knowing
what he meant
by
what he
said.
It is one
thing
to know that in 1637 Descartes wrote a work which
opened
with the sentence:
Le bon sens est la chose du monde la mieux
partag?e:
car chacun
pense
en ?tre si bien
pourvue, que
ceux m?me
qui
sont les
plus
difficiles ? contenter en toute autre
chose,
n'ont
point
coutume d'en d?sirer
plus qu'ils
en ont.
It is
quite
another to know what this sentence
means,
that
is,
what
Descartes means
by using
this sentence. This is
a matter not
just
of
knowing
how to translate the French into
English
-
of
deciding
whether
"most
equitably
distributed' is a fair translation of "la mieux
partag?e"
or whether
any tolerably
brief
English expression
will
adequately
render
"bon sens"
-
but of
deciding
how
seriously
to take Descartes when he
says
this. On the face of
it,
the
capacity
for
making good judgments
about truth and
falsity,
which is what Descartes seems to mean
by
"bon
sens,"
is not
very evenly
distributed
among
men. Descartes' official
reason for
saying
that it is
evenly
distributed sounds ironic. Is it? Even if
Descartes is
being
ironic in the reason he
offers,
might
he not
nevertheless be serious about the
proposition
it is
supposed
to be a
reason for? What would be the
consequences
for other
things
Descartes
says
if he were not serious about it? What is the
significance
of the fact
that this
statement,
so
paradoxical
to
us,
is cited
by Montaigne
as a
common
opinion,
and defended
by
the same ironic
sounding reasoning?
36 EDWIN CURLEY
Knowing
what a
philospher
means
by
what he
says requires,
at the
very least,
having
some
well-founded beliefs about how he would
respond
to
questions
and
objections
he
may
never have
explicitly
considered. This
may
in turn
require knowing
not
just
how he did in fact
respond
to the
questions
and
objections
he did
explicitly
consider,
but
also
knowing something
of the historical context within which he was
working:
the
possible
influences on him
by previous
and
contemporary
philosophers,
the
possible
effects of
developments
outside of
philoso
phy,
in
politics, religion,
and science. And I would
say
that it also
requires
the
ability
to
analyse
the structure of a
text,
to see what the
central conclusion is and what reasons are offered for
it,
or
suggested by
implication.
If our
philosopher
were a
contemporary,
still
alive, active,
and
cooperative,
we
might,
of
course,
simply
ask him what he means. But I
have been
assuming
that an essential feature of the
history
of
philos
ophy
is that it deals with the work of dead
philosophers,
or at least of
philosophers
who for some reason are no
longer willing
or
able to
respond
to
questions
about what
they
mean. It is this fact that calls for
the historian to exercise the
special
skills of
imaginative
reconstruction
which characterize the best work in the field.
Knowing
a
great
deal
about the
history
of
philosophy,
if I am
right,
calls for a lot more than
wide
reading
and a
good memory.
I cannot believe that such
knowledge
is as
widely
distributed as Scriven
suggests.
But if
knowing
much about the
history
of
philosophy
is as difficult as I
think it
is,
is it worth the trouble? No doubt some
people
of
antiquarian
tastes will
always
be drawn to the
study
of
philosophy's past,
but is it
wise to
encourage
this
by requiring
such
study?
Isn't it in fact
true,
as
Scriven
says,
that "few
great philosophers
are noted for their work in
the
history
of
philosophy
and
[that] many
were deficient
or
disinterested
in it."
We had better concede
straightaway,
that there have been
a
number
of
great philosophers
who
were,
to
say
the
least,
disinterested in the
history
of
philosophy.
One
point
on which
Descartes, Hobbes, Locke,
Kant,
and
Wittgenstein
all seem to have
agreed
was that in their own
time
philosophy
needed,
in Kant's
words,
to "consider as undone all
that has been
done,"
and to start afresh from new foundations or from a
new
perspective.1
Still,
while this attitude has not been
rare,
I do not
think it has been
typical. Certainly
Plato,
Aristotle and
Aquinas,
Spinoza,
Leibniz and
Hegel, Dewey,
Russell and
Whitehead,
not to
DIALOGUES WITH THE DEAD
37
mention
Jaspers
and
Heidegger,
all found it worth their while to devote
serious and extensive attention to one or more of their
predecessors.
There is room for
disagreement
as to whether these
philosophers
were
good
historians of
philosophy. By
our
standards,
I
suspect
that most of
them were not. Sometimes their interests seem more
polemical
than
historical:2 and sometimes
they
seem to be motivated
by
a desire to
demonstrate that the dialectic of
history
has been
leading inevitably
towards the truth
represented by
their own
system.3
But
frequently
even
great
and
highly original philosophers
demonstrate a desire
simply
to
work out the
logic
of a
position
alternative to their
own,
and a
joy
in the
insight
this can
bring.4
Are
they misusing
their time and talents when
they
do this? I take it
that what underlies attitudes like Scriven's is the conviction that
philosophy
is not like other
disciplines
in the humanities. Great works of
literature retain their
validity
even
though
modern writers
may prefer
to
do
something quite
different. But
philosophy,
like the
sciences,
is a
problem solving discipline,
which must make
progress,
which must
get
results,
if it is to be worth
doing
at all. So the
history
of
philosophy
must
be either
a
history
of
error,
or more
charitably,
a
history
of
successively
less
imperfect approximations
to the truth we now
possess
or are about
to reach. If we are
really
moved
by
a concern for
truth,
and not
merely
by antiquarian curiosity,
we want the most
up-to-date
answers,
in
corporating
all the latest
improvements.
A friend of mine once asked
me:
"Why
waste
your
time
reading
Hume on
causation,
when
you
can
read Mackie on causation?" In
part
this
paper
is intended as a
response
to that friend.
It is
tempting
for the historian to
reply
to this
progressivist assump
tion
by taking
a
pessimistic
view of the
philosopher's ability
to
get
results. In the
past, philosophers
have often held
high hopes
for some
new
methodology:
Plato
hopes
to find
philosophical
truth
dialectically,
Descartes
by modeling philosophy
on
mathematics,
Hume
by
introduc
ing experimental reasoning
into
philosophy,
Kant
by
a
Copernican
revolution,
some of our
contemporaries by attending
to the nuances of
ordinary language
or
developing
a criterion of
meaningfulness
or
practising phenomenology.
Just as
often,
it
seems,
these
hopes
have
been
disappointed.
The
persistence
of the classical
problems
of
philosophy,
and their
apparent
resistance to
any
solution
commanding
universal
assent,
is one of the most
discouraging
lessons the historian
has for the
philosopher.
Because the
history
of
philosophy
lends itself to
38
EDWIN CURLEY
this kind of
lesson,
it
frequently
attracts
people
of a
skeptical tempera
ment,
who are content to
regard
the
philosopher's
ambition to solve
problems
as an
amusing presumption,
and to
catalogue
the varieties of
human
folly.5 Determining
what Hume
thought
about
causality,
and
why
he
thought
it,
difficult as this
may be,
can
easily
seem a more
tractable
problem
than
determining
what the correct account of
causality
is.
Nevertheless,
I would not want to base
my
defense of the
study
of the
history
of
philosophy
on
skepticism
about the
possibility
of
progress,
in
philosophy.
In
my heart,
I
suppose,
I
agree
with the view which I
conjecture
that Scriven assumes: that
philosophy
does make
progress,
that it does sometimes solve
problems,
that even its more
persistent
riddles
may someday
succumb to the
right approach.
Without
claiming
that
any
of our
contemporaries
is as
good
a
philosopher
as
Hume,6
or
that
any contemporary
solution to the
problems
of
causality
is the
right
one,
it does seem to me that there is a
perfectly good
sense in which the
discussion of
causality
in Mackie's Cement
of
the Universe is
superior
to
that in Hume. I do think that Mackie
probably
had a clearer
grasp
of the
many
issues that
causality
raises and
that,
whatever the truth about
causality
is,
he was
probably
closer to it than Hume was.7
But it's worth
asking
ourselves
why
this should be so. I would
suggest
that before he set himself to write on causation Mackie
clearly spent
a
lot of time
reading
Hume,
along
with
many
other writers on
causation,
some of them now
dead,
and that he
clearly profited greatly
from that
reading,
that his
familiarity
with the
dialogue philosophers
have been
conducting
on this
topic
since the time of Hume did a
great
deal to
sharpen
his
perception
of the
issues,
of the
range
of
possible positions,
and of the
advantages
and
disadvantages
of each
position.
This would seem to me to be
good general
advice on how to
proceed
in
philosophy: given
a
problem, acquaint yourself
with a wide
range
of
possible
solutions to that
problem
and
try
to understand
why
someone
might
be attracted to that
solution,
and
repelled by
others. Sometimes it
is said that no
philosophic
doctrine
originates
in
any
other
way
than as a
refutation of or
polemic against
some
previous
doctrine.8 As an
unrestricted
generalization
about the
origin
of
philosophical theories,
this must
surely
be
false,
if
only
because it involves a vicious
regress.
But it is
certainly
true that
philosophers regularly argue
for their views
by
first
surveying
alternative solutions to the
problem
at
hand,
enu
merating
the
many
defects of these
alternatives,
and then
presenting
DIALOGUES WITH THE DEAD 39
their own view as the
only,
or
best, way
of
avoiding
those difficulties.
The current literature in
philosophy presents
us with too
many
exam
ples
of this kind of
procedure
for there to be
any point
in
enumerating
them. But it does seem to me that
philosophers lacking
historical
sensitivity frequently go astray
in their use of this
procedure.
Consider,
for
example,
a work
which,
25
years ago,
was
generating
a
great
deal of excitement in our
field,
Gilbert
Ryle's Concept of
Mind.
Ryle began
his book
by describing something
which he
called,
variously,
"the official
doctrine,"
or "Descartes'
myth,"
or "the
dogma
of the
ghost
in the machine." The doctrine thus
stigmatized
had both a
metaphysical
side and an
epistemological
side.
Metaphysically,
it was the view that a human
being
is a
composite,
consisting
of a
material,
extended
substance,
the
body,
and an in>
material,
nonextended
substance,
the mind. These two substances are
each
capable
of
existing
without the other. And
they regularly
interact
with one
another,
the
body acting
on the mind in
perception,
and the
mind
acting
on the
body
in its
voluntary
actions. But
apart
from these
interferences
by
the
mind,
the
body's
actions are determined
solely by
the laws of
mechanics,
whereas the mind's actions are not determined
by any
cause.
On the
epistemological
side,
the
dogma
of the
ghost
in the machine is
characterized
by
the doctrine that the mind has a
highly privileged
access to its own
workings:
it
knows,
directly, infallibly,
and automa
tically,
all of its own
states,
whereas it is
only partially
and
tenuously
knowledgeable
about the states of
bodies,
and
totally
and
invincibly
ignorant
of the states of other minds. Our beliefs about the
contents,
or
even the existence of other minds are no more than
shaky
inferences
from the behavior of other
bodies,
inferences whose conclusions we can
never
directly verify,
and hence can never have
any
real confidence in.
Ryle
attributes the
origin
of the
dogma
of the
ghost
in the machine to
Descartes' concern with the
apparent implications
of the mechanistic
science of his time:
As a man of scientific
genius,
he could not but endorse the claims of
mechanics; yet
as a
religious
and moral
man,
he could not
accept
the
discouraging
rider to those
claims
...
that human nature differs
only
in
degree
of
complexity
from clockwork.9
So he invented
a
"paramechanical hypothesis," according
to which
some of the movements of human bodies have a
nonmechanical,
mental
40 EDWIN CURLEY
cause,
and all acts of the mind are outside the network of mechanical
causation.
Now
Ryle
admits,
in a historical note
(pp.
23-4),
that the "official
theory"
does not derive
entirely
from Descartes and his concern with
the
implications
of 17th
century mechanics,
that in
part
Descartes was
merely reformulating
doctrines
already existing
in the
philosophies
and
theologies
of his
predecessors.
But this concession to historical fact
does not
go nearly
far
enough.
Not
only
did Descartes not
originate
the
"dogma
of the
ghost
in the machine." in
important respects
he did not
even subscribe to it.
He
did,
so far as I can
see,
subscribe to the whole of what I have
called the
metaphysical
side of the
doctrine,
though
this is the
part
of
the doctrine which is least
aptly
called "Descartes'
myth,"
since the
conception
of the mind and
body
as two
radically
distinct substances
which interact
goes
back at least to Plato. But he did
not,
so far as I can
see,
subscribe to the most
important
elements in the
epistemological
side of the doctrine. He
did,
of
course,
hold that our
knowledge
of the
existence and states of bodies is tenuous and
imperfect,
and that the
mind is better known than the
body.
But so far as I can
see,
he did not
think that the mind is omniscient with
respect
to its own states. Nor so
far as I can
see,
did he ever commit himself to the claim that we are
completely ignorant
of the existence and states of other minds. What
the claim that the mind is better known than the
body
comes
to,
I
think,
is
that,
whenever we think we have
a
piece
of
knowledge
about
some
body,
we in fact have a
piece
of
knowledge
about our own mind
which is far more certain than what we think we know about the
body.
To claim that is to fall far short of
claiming
that we are omniscient with
respect
to the contents of our own minds.
Descartes
was,
in
fact,
working
in a
Platonic-Augustinian
tradition
which,
while
firmly
committed to
metaphysical
dualism and to the
priority
of
self-knowledge,
understood as
knowledge
of an immaterial
substance,
was
acutely
conscious of the difficulties of
self-knowledge.
So,
for
example,
Descartes writes in the Discourse on
Method,
that he
has made
a resolution to
pay
more attention to
people's
actions than to
their words
not
only
because,
in our state of moral
corruption,
few wish to
say
all that
they
believe,
but
also because some don't themselves know what
they
believe. For since the act of
thought
by
which one believes
a
thing
is different from that
by
which one knows that he believes
in,
the one often occurs without the other.10
DIALOGUES WITH THE DEAD
41
There
is,
of
course,
a 17th
century philosopher
who does
clearly
commit
himself to the
position Ryle
ascribes to Descartes. But that
philosopher
is
Locke,
and it is a matter of some interest that when Locke invokes the
doctrine that there is
nothing
in the mind of which the mind is
unaware,
he
typically
does so in the course of an attack on Cartesian
doctrines,
like the doctrine of innate ideas or the doctrine that the soul
always
thinks,
the latter an
implication
of Descartes' contention that
thinking
is
the essence of the mind. So if Descartes had been committed to the
mind's
privileged
access to its own
states,
it would have caused trouble
for some
very
fundamental doctrines in his
philosophy.
The situation is similar with
regard
to the issue of
privacy.
So far as I
can
see,
this is
an
issue which Descartes never
thought
much
about,
and
it is hard to find texts in which Descartes even seems to
say
that no one
knows the contents of other minds.
Kenny, generally
a
good
scholar,
but
very Rylean
in his
interpretation
of Descartes'
philosophy
of
mind,
does cite a letter in which Descartes
says
that
None of our external actions can show
anyone
who examines them that our
body
is not
just
a
self-moving
machine but contains a soul with
thoughts,
with the
exception
of
words,
or other
signs
that are relevant to
particular topics
without
expressing any passion.11
Kenny
comments that
No
bodily
behavior therefore can establish the occurrence of the
thought
which is
pain;
even the utterance T am in
pain,'
would 'have reference to a
passion,'
and so be
disqualified (1973, p. 122)
No doubt this is
true,
but
Kenny's neo-Wittgensteinian preoccupation
with the
example
of
pain
serves him ill here. Descartes' main
point
in
this
passage
is to defend his doctrine that it is a mistake to attribute
thought
to animals. He wants to contrast the case of
animals,
whose
exhibition of
pseudo-linguistic
behavior does not show that
they
have
thoughts,
with the case of human
beings,
whose exhibition of
genuinely
linguistic
behavior,
does show that
they
have
thoughts.12
A
generalized
skepticism
about the existence and states of other minds is the furthest
thing
from Descartes' intentions. So far as I have been able to
discover,
the first
philosopher
to entertain such a
skepticism
was
Malebranche,
though
he was followed in this
by
Locke.13
Ryle
bases his refutation of the
dogma
of the
ghost
in the machine on
a
very misleading
account of Descartes'
philosophy
of
mind,
and does
not care
enough
about the
accuracy
of that account to
try
to document
42 EDWIN CURLEY
it. Some ten
years
before the
publication
of The
Concept of
Mind,
Colling
wood had written in his
Autobiography.
From the
first,
I decided that one
thing
which Oxford
philosophy
needed was a
background
of sound
scholarship:
such a habit of mind as would make it
impossible
for an
Oxford-trained student to be deceived
by
Moore's 'refutation' of
Berkeley,
or Cook
Wilson's of
Bradley.
I therefore
taught my pupils...
that
they
must never
accept any
criticism of
anybody's philosophy
which
they might
hear or
read,
without
satisfying
themselves
by
first-hand
study
that this was the
philosophy
he
actually expounded;
that
they
must
always
defer
any
criticism of their own until
they
were
absolutely
sure
they
understood the text
they
were
criticizing;
and that if the
postponement
was sine
die,
it did
not
greatly
matter
(1978, pp. 26-27)
It is a
pity
that,
in all the
years they
were
together
at
Oxford,
Collingwood
did not teach
Ryle
that lesson.14
At this
point
I can
imagine
Scriven
protesting
that none of this
matters. The
philosopher,
as
such,
is interested in
general
doctrines,
not
in the individuals who
may
or
may
not have held those doctrines. If
Descartes did not in fact subscribe to 'Descartes'
Myth,'
then that
doctrine
may
be
ill-named,
but it remains a
doctrine which
others,
perhaps,
have
held,
and which
is,
in
any
case,
interesting enough
to be
discussed in its own
right.
If
Ryle's misreadings
of Descartes become
entrenched in the
secondary
literature,
that
may
be unfortunate from a
strictly
historical
point
of
view,
but it is of no
importance
from a
philosophical point
of view.
But this answer will not do.
Ryle's procedure
requires
him to discredit
the main alternative to his own view as a
preliminary
to
rescuing
us
from the
quandaries
into which that view leads us. If his
prime example
of a
major philosopher
who held the alternative view turns out not to
have held
it,
then we must ask whether we are in fact forced to choose
between the "official
theory"
and
Ryle's theory.
And indeed the
historical Descartes
appears
to offer a
third
alternative. He illustrates
the fact that there is no evident
necessary
connection between the
metaphysical
side of the "official
theory"
and its
epistemological
side. A
philosopher may
hold that mind and
body
are two
radically
distinct
substances and still not hold that the mind has
privileged
access to its
own states and is
invincibly ignorant
of the existence and states of
other
minds.15 If he does take that
road,
then insofar as
Ryle's polemic
is
directed
against
the
epistemological
side of the "official
theory,"
he will
be untouched
by
it. And
indeed,
readers of The
Concept of
Mind will be
aware that
Ryle's
most effective ridicule is directed
against
the doctrine
DIALOGUES WITH THE DEAD
43
of
privileged
access,
is
a reminder that we know far less about our own
minds,
and far more about other
minds,
than we are
supposed
to
according
to the "official
theory."
In the end this has
very
little to do
with a
genuinely
Cartesian dualism.
Ryle
illustrates one
way
in which it is
possible
to
go astray by doing
philosophy ahistorically: setting up your
own view as the
only
reason
able solution to a
problem
after first
caricaturing
the main alternatives.
My
second exhibit is another
distinguished
Oxford
philosopher,
whose
work took its final form a decade later than The
Concept of
Mind,
and
whose sin is not so much
misrepresenting
the
past
as
ignoring
it. The
work I refer to is J. L. Austin's Sense and Sensibilia.
Austin's concern in this work is to refute the doctrine that we never
see or otherwise
perceive,
or at
any rate,
never
directly perceive,
material
objects,
but
only
sense
data,
or our own
ideas,
impressions,
sense
perceptions,
or whatever. His book is a sustained
argument
that
this docrine is
attributable first to an obsession with a few
...
words,
whose uses are
oversimplified,
not
really
understood or
carefully
studied or
carefully
described,
and
second,
to an obsession
with a few
...
half-studied
'facts'_(1962, p.
3)
facts about
perceptual
illusions. Unlike
Ryle's,
his book is almost
entirely
critical. He does not
attempt
to set
up any positive
alternative
view. He
explicitly
disavows the doctrine that we do
perceive
material
objects,
since he feels that that doctrine involves a similar over
simplification.
There is no one kind of
thing
we
perceive,
but
many:
the
term "material
object"
has
meaning only
in contrast to the term "sense
datum";
if we
reject
the one term we must also
reject
the other. Austin
is,
I
think,
interested in the doctrine that what we
always directly
perceive
are sense
data,
not because he wants to
replace
it
by
an
alternative,
but because he sees it as
leading inevitably
to a
skepticism
which he is most anxious to avoid.16
Austin
emphasises
that the doctrine he is
attacking
is a
very
old
one,
held
by many philosophers,
from the Greeks to A. J.
Ayer.
But he
chooses as the main
target
of his attack three
contemporary philoso
phers, Ayer,
Price and Warnock. His
justification
for
doing
this is
interesting:
I find in these texts a
good
deal to
criticise,
but I choose them for their
merits,
and not for
their
deficiencies; they
seem to me to
provide
the best available
exposition
of the
approved
reasons for
holding
theories which are at least as old as Heraclitus
-
more
full,
44 EDWIN CURLEY
coherent and
terminologically
exact than
you find,
for
example,
in Descartes or
Berkeley.
(1962, p. I)17
I don't
suppose
that Austin thinks
Ayer,
Price and Warnock are better
philosophers
than Descartes or
Berkeley. Presumably
his view is that
because
they
come at the end of a
long
tradition,
their version of the
doctrine under attack will build on
past work,
incorporating
whatever
there is in Descartes and
Berkeley
which has so far
proven capable
of
surviving
criticism,
as well as the latest
improvements.
Nevertheless,
if
you
return to these
opening
words of Austin's after
having
finished his
book,
it is difficult to take this
praise quite seriously.
Certainly
the last virtues
you
would be
tempted
to find in these modern
writers,
after
reading
Austin's
critique,
would be
fullness,
coherence
and
terminological
exactitude. If
Ayer
is an
improvement
on
Descartes,
then Descartes must be
shockingly
bad. But if
you
then
go
back to read
Descartes with Austin's criticisms of
Ayer
in
mind, you may
find it hard
to
apply
them.
Austin sees the
argument
from illusion as the main
prop
of the
theory
of
perception
he is
criticising.
One of his
principal
criticisms of
Ayer
is
that,
in his use of the
argument
from
illusion,
Ayer begins by discussing
various standard cases of
perceptual
illusion
-
the stick which looks
bent when
partly
immersed in
water,
mirages,
reflections
-
and that he
gradually slips
from
characterising
these as illusions to
characterising
them as delusions. And Austin
argues
that this is verbal
sleight-of-hand,
that illusion and delusion are not the same
thing. "Illusion,"
in a
perceptual
context,
does not
suggest
that
something totally
unreal has
been
conjured up,
whereas "delusion" does
suggest something totally
unreal,
something
not there at all. And the
argument
from illusion
trades on not
distinguishing
between illusions and
delusions,
on
treating
illusions as if
they
were delusions.
Whatever the merits of this criticism
may
be when
applied
to
Ayer,
it
does not work when
you try
to
apply
it to Descartes. In
Descartes,
for
example,
the main use of the
argument
from illusion is not to
support
a
theory
of
perception,
but to
argue directly
to a
skeptical
conclusion
about our
knowledge
of the
things
we take to be around us. Whereas
Austin
can,
perhaps, charge Ayer
with
being
obsessed with a small
range
of
examples,
Descartes is
really
not much interested in those
examples
at all. In the First
Meditation,
they
are mentioned
only
to be
dismissed
immediately
as not
providing adequate grounds
for
doubting
DIALOGUES WITH THE DEAD 45
our beliefs about
things
which are neither
very
small nor
very
distant
from us. Descartes' central case is the
dream,
a case where it is
very
natural to think of
something totally
unreal
being conjured up. Austin,
concerned as he is with
Ayer,
has
relatively
little to
say
about
dreaming,
and the
passages
in which he discusses dreams are
among
the least
satisfactory
in his book. He writes as if the
proponent
of the dream
argument
had to hold that all
(or
nearly all)
dreams were
intrinsically
indistinguishable
from
waking experiences.
But Descartes' version of
the dream
argument
makes no
such
assumption.
I
argue
this in more
detail in
my 1978,
ch. III.
The moral I draw from this is that it is a
mistake to be too
preoccupied
with our
contemporaries.
A 20th
century philosopher,
expounding
an
argument
or
theory
which has a
long history, may
expound
it with
greater sophistication
and exactness than his 17th
century counterpart.
But he
may also,
perhaps
because he is
building
on
a
long
tradition and
dealing
with so familiar a
theme,
or
because he is
not a
good enough
historian and
philosopher
to have learned the
lessons of that
tradition,
fail to state it as
accurately
or
fully
or
suggestively
as an earlier
philosopher,
who cannot take so much for
granted
or who
just may
have a
better
grasp
of the fundamental issues.
Before we dismiss the work of
past philosophers
as
superseded by
subsequent developments,
we should
recognize
that it is not
alj
that
clear that we
know,
even at this late
date,
what a
philosopher
like
Descartes was
saying.
We
may
know well
enough
what words he wrote.
But
knowing
what he meant
by
those
words,
I've been
suggesting,
is a
matter of
knowing
how he would
respond
to certain
questions
about
those words. And as
philosophy progresses,
as we
develop
new
theories
and
arguments,
the
questions
we want to address to
past philosophers
keep changing.
So the
history
of
philosophy
can never be a
permanent
acquisition,
but must be written afresh in each
generation.
I
suppose
that it
may
be
possible
to write timeless
history
of
philosophy, history
of
philosophy
which is not altered
by changing
conceptions
of
philosophic
truth. But I
suggest
that timeless
history
of
philosophy
is
unlikely
to be
very interesting
or
useful. As soon as the
historian
departs
from
giving
us
merely
factual information
about, say,
Hobbes' dates and
writings,
and from
summarising
Hobbes' views in
what is
pretty
much Hobbes' own
language,
as soon as he tries to
express
what Hobbes
thought
in his
(i.e.,
the
historian's)
own
language,
or to
decide which
assumptions
Hobbes
really
needed to reach the
46 EDWIN CURLEY
conclusions he
reached,
or construct a
possible
Hobbesian
reply
to
objection
which Hobbes seems not to have
considered,
or
identify
a
contradiction in Hobbes and decide which is the best
or most charac
teristic line for Hobbes to take
-
as soon as the historian does
any
of
these
necessary things,
what he writes will be
very
much
subject
to time
and chance. Its value will
depend very
much on his own
philosophical
ability,
on the
philosophical possibilities
he is
capable
of
seeing,
and on
the level of
sophistication
and
intelligence
of the
period
in which he
lives.
We need also to
recognize
that a
label,
like "the
argument
from
illusion,"
or
"the social contract
theory," conveys
an
entirely
mislead
ing impression
of definiteness. Such labels refer
really
to a
family
of
related
arguments
and theories advanced
by
various
philosophers
in
various forms over the centuries. And in
proportion
as it is unclear what
each of those
philosophers may
have
held,
it will be unclear what the
argument
from
illusion,
or the social contract
theory
is. Someone
doing
a
really thorough study
of an
argument
like the
argument
from illusion
would have to look at it in an historical
dimension,
taking
account of its
various forms and the
interpretive
issues each author
may raise,
and
giving
some attention to the
question: "Why,
if this
argument
is
fallacious,
has it had such a
strong appeal
to so
many people
over such a
long period
of time?" If he did look
seriously
at the
history
of the
argument,
he would be
unlikely
to come to the conclusion that its
appeal
rests
merely
on verbal confusions and a few
badly
misunderstood
facts.18
When I was a student in
my
first
year
of
graduate school,
John
Passmore visited a
neighboring university
to
give
a
paper
on
the
importance
for
philosophers
of
studying
the
history
of their
discipline.
I
recall
being
much
impressed by
his
arguments
and recommendations.
They
were an
important
factor in
my subsequent
decision to
specialise
in the
history
of
philosophy.
It would be
pleasant
if I could now recall
what the
arguments
were which I then found so
convincing,
but
unfortunately
the
intervening years
have erased
everything except my
memory
of
being impressed by
them. Some
years later,
when I found
myself
a member of his
department
in
Australia,
I asked him about that
paper,
but he had never
published
it,
did not think he had a
copy
of
it,
and could not recall the detail of its
argument any
better than I can. In
this
essay,
intended
partly
as a
homage
to John
Passmore,
I have tried to
reconstruct what would have been a
satisfactory argument
for his
DIALOGUES WITH THE DEAD 47
conclusion. But I have
no idea whether
my argument
is in fact
anything
like the one he offered
on that
occasion,
or whether he would even
regard
it as a
satisfactory argument.19
NOTES
1
On this theme see Passmore
(1965).
2
Though
Plato,
who is
particularly open
to this
charge,
is
capable
of
speaking eloquently
on behalf of the need for historical
accuracy.
Consider the
following excerpt
from the
speech
which his Socrates
imagines Protagoras making
in
response
to his attack on the
doctrine that man is the measure of all
things:
You take
things
much too
easily,
Socrates. The truth of the matter is this: when
you
ask
someone
questions
in order to canvass
some
opinion
of mine and he is found
tripping,
then I am refuted
only
if his answers are such as I should have
given;
if
they
are
different,
it is he who is
refuted,
not I.... Show
a more
generous spirit by attacking
what I
actually
mean.
(Theaetetus, 166a-d,
Cornford
tr.,
slightly
modified)
I owe this reference to the article
by
Passmore cited
above,
though
he
emphasises
rather
the
polemical
side of Plato's interest in his
predecessors.
The
polemical
historian,
in
Passmore's use of the
term,
is interested
more in
general points
of view than in the
concrete individuals who
may
have held those
positions.
In its most extreme form
polemical history
of
philosophy
does not care whether
any
identifiable individual ever
held the
position
under consideration.
3
I have in mind
here,
not
only Hegel,
but also Aristotle.
4
I think here
particularly
of the excitement Russell
expressed
in the
preface
to his
Critical
Exposition of
the
Philosophy of
Leibniz at his
discovery
that "this
seemingly
fantastic
system
could be deduced from
a few
simple premisses,
which,
but for the
conclusions which Leibniz had drawn from
them, many,
if not
most,
philosophers
would
have been
willing
to admit"
(p. xiv).
5
As an
example
we
might
cite the French historian Martial
Gueroult,
who writes:
In
philosophy
...
unlike the
positive
sciences,
truths at
present
considered as
acquired
do
not revoke
everything
in the tradition which contradicts
present-day philosophy,
as if this
present-day philosophy
were a
definitely acquired
truth
subsisting non-temporally.
Nor
does
philosophy
have
anything
to do with a
process
of
acquisition,
which would be
developing
in time
a
growing
science whose
regular progress
we could
follow,
no matter
what
revolutionary
crises it were to
undergo. Philosophy's past presents
itself in effect
as a
succession of doctrines which
reject
each other
reciprocally,
without their
pretensions
to
a
timeless,
universally
valid and
permanently acquired
truth ever
triumphing. (1969, p.
572)
6
The simile attributed to Bernard of Chartres
We are like dwarfs seated on the shoulders of
giants;
we see more
things
than the ancients
and
things
more
distant,
but this is due neither to the
sharpness
of our own
sight,
nor to the
48
EDWIN CURLEY
greatness
of our own
stature,
but because we are raised and borne aloft on that
giant
mass,
has been used often
enough
to have been the
subject
of a whole book. Cf. Robert Merton
(1965),
On the Shoulders
of
Giants. Free
Press,
1965.
7
It should be clear here that I
reject
not
only
the
skepticism
of
Gueroult,
but also the
relativism of
Collingwood,
who held that the theories of
philosophers
in different
periods
were
incommensurable,
because
they
were answers to different
questions. (Cf. Colling
wood
1978, pp. 60-68.) Certainly
one task of the historian is not to be deceived
by
superficial resemblances,
and
certainly
there are enormous differences
(to
take
Colling
wood's
prime example)
between the
political
context in which Plato was
working
when he
wrote the
Republic,
and that in which Hobbes was
working
when he wrote the Leviathan.
So each will confront
questions
which do not arise for the other.
(Plato
did not have to
worry
about the threat
posed
to
political authority by
citizens who claimed
special insight
into a
higher,
divine
law.)
But it does not follow that
they
will not also confront some of
the same
questions (e.g.,
what is there about human nature which leads men to create
political
institutions? are there
arguments
to show that it
may
be rational for men to
obey
political authority
even when it seems
contrary
to
self-interest?)
If it were the business of a
political philosopher simply
to
give
a reasoned statement of the ideal of human
society
held
by
his fellow citizens
(as Collingwood
assumes,
p. 63),
then of course the fact that
ideals had
changed
would
imply
theories of
society ought
to
change
with them. But
neither Plato nor Hobbes would
(or should) accept
that as the task of a
political
philosopher.
From the fact that not all
problems
are eternal it does not follow that none
have a
long enough
life to make
dialogue possible
between
philosophers
of different
periods.
8
Gueroult in his
(1969, p. 574)
cites Mario dal Pra to this
effect,
with
apparent approval.
9
G.
Ryle,
New
York, p.
19.
10
AT
VI, 23;
HR
I,
95. The issues I touch on
briefly
here,
I discuss in more detail in ch. 7
of
my
1978. The textual situation
is,
in
fact,
highly complex:
there are
passages
which
tend to
support Ryle's reading
of
Descartes, passages
he could have cited had he
thought
it worthwhile to do
so;
there are other
passages
which cut
against
it.
Ryle
is unconcerned
with all of this. His
history
is a
priori
and need not bother with texts. A
philosopher
who
took his
history seriously
would have to ask himself: what is the
significance
of this
conflicting
textual evidence? can the
apparent
contradictions be reconciled
by making
appropriate
distinctions? if
not,
which of the
conflicting positions
is more fundamental to
Descartes'
thought?
But
quite possibly Ryle
is not even aware that there is a
difficulty.
11
Letter to the
Marquess
of
Newcastle,
23 November 1646.1
quote
the text as translated
in
Kenny's
1981, p.
206.
12
Cf. the similar
passage
in the letter to More of 5
February
1649. In
Kenny's
translation
(1981, p. 245)
the
key passage
runs: "real
speech [i.e.,
the use of words or
signs
to indicate
something pertaining
to
pure thought
and not to natural
impulse]...
is the
only
certain
sign
of
thought
hidden in a
body."
Behaviorists
may
find this
unduly
restrictive,
but
they
should not let that blind them to the fact that Descartes does at least
recognize
certain
uses of
language
as certain
signs
of
thought.
13
For
Malebranche,
see The Search
After Truth, Bk, III,
Pt.
ii,
ch.
7,
sec. 5. For
Locke,
see the
Essay, IV, xi,
12.
14
Perhaps Ryle
sensed this. In the
autobiographical
sketch he contributed to Pitcher's
Ryle,
a collection
of
critical
essays,
he
expresses
the
following regret:
R. G.
Collingwood, despite
the
great,
but
belatedly recognised
merits of some of his
philosophical writings,
had no influence at all on
me,
or I
think,
on most of
my
DIALOGUES WITH THE DEAD 49
contemporaries,
either in our student
days
or after we became his
colleagues
...
I
think,
in
retrospect,
that
my generation
was at fault in not ever
trying
to cultivate our remote
senior.
15
Locke would illustrate the same
point
in a different
way.
For while he does seem to hold
the
epistemological
doctrines central to 'Descartes'
Myth,'
he is careful not to commit
himself to
metaphysical
dualism. At best it is
probable
that the sofcl is
immaterial,
but we
cannot exclude the
possibility
that God has
given
matter the
power
to think.
Essay, IV,
iii.
6.
16
Cf. his remarks on Warnock in the final
chapter.
17
Notice how both
Ryle
and Austin create a sense that
they
are
battling
an
oppressive
orthodoxy,
the one
by speaking regularly
of an "official
doctrine,"
the other
by speaking
of the
"approved
reasons" for
holding
a
doctrine,
as if there were some sort of
government
bureau whose business it was to
certify philosophical
theories,
and whose
dictates
they
were
rebelling against.
18
Having
been this hard on
Ryle
and
Austin,
I think I should
acknowledge
that neither
of them
entirely neglected
the
history
of
philosophy. Ryle
has some
standing
as a Plato
scholar,
and Austin not
only
wrote on
Aristotle,
but also initiated the Clarendon Aristotle
series.
My complaint
about them is not that
they
were as
ignorant
of
history
as Scriven
would wish us to
be,
but that such historical
knowledge
and interests as
they
had did not
sufficiently
inform their work in
contemporary philosophy.
19
This
paper
was
originally
written for
presentation
at the
meeting
of the Australian
Academy
of the Humanities in
May 1976,
and I have read various versions of it at a
number of American universities
(Wisconsin,
Marquette,
and
Chicago).
I am
grateful
to
the
organizers
of the
Blackburg
Conference for
forcing
me to
finally get
it into a form in
which I would be content to see it
published.
REFERENCES
Austin,
J.:
1962,
Sense and
Sensibilia, Oxford,
Oxford.
Collingwood,
R. G.:
1978,
An
Autobiography, Oxford,
Oxford.
Curley,
E.:
1978,
Descartes
Against
the
Skeptics,
Harvard,
Cambridge,
Mass.
Gueroult,
M.:
1969,
The
History
of
Philosophy
as a
Philosophical
Problem',
The
Monist,
53,
572.
Kenny,
A.:
1981, Descartes, Philosophical
Letters,
University
of Minnesota
Press,
Minneapolis.
Kenny,
A.:
1973,
'Cartesian
Privacy',
in The
Anatomy of
the
Soul, Blackwell,
London.
Merton,
R.:
1965,
On the Shoulders
of
Giants,
Free
Press,
Glencoe.
Passmore,
J.:
1965,
'The Idea of a
History
of
Philosophy', History
and
Theory,
vol.
5, pp.
1-32.
Ryle,
G.:
1949,
The
Concept of Mind,
Barnes and
Noble,
New York.
Scriven,
M.:
1977,
'Increasing Philosophy
Enrollments and
Appointments Through
Better
Philosophy Teaching', Proceedings
and Addresses
of
the American
Philosophical
Association,
vol. 50.
pp. 232-244,
326-328.
Dept.
of
Philosophy
University
of Illinois
Chicago
IL 60680
U.S.A.