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10 questions ignored by philosophy

Raymond Geuss, Agnes Callard, Tommy Curry, Kate Manne, Julian Baggini, Sundar Sarukkai, Maria Balaska, Sara Heinämaa, Robert Sanchez, and Robin R. Wang on contemporary philosophy’s blind spots.

For this year’s World Philosophy Day, we asked ten leading philosophers from around the world, working in different philosophical traditions, what are the most important questions mainstream philosophy ignores or has forgotten about today. With analytic philosophy having dominated the English-speaking world and beyond, we can often forget that there are other philosophical traditions alive and kicking. They operate under different sets of assumptions, take different texts as their starting points, and end up in different places. But even within analytic philosophy, there are philosophers that are pushing the limits of that tradition, asking new and original questions, or re-invigorating an otherwise a-historical line of thought with forgotten but still relevant questions from the past.

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A quale is supposed to be "the qualitative feel of an experience" (Chalmers"), or it is such a thing as "the redness of red or the painfulness of pain" (Crick). Qualia are "the simple sensory qualities to be found in the blueness of the sky or the sound of a tone" (Damasio) or "ways it feels to see, hear and smell, the way it feels to have a pain" (Block). According to Professor Searle, conscious states are "qualitative in the sense that for any conscious state...there is something that it qualitatively feels like to be in that state." According to Nagel, for every conscious experience "there is something it is like for the organism to have it." These various explanations do not amount to the same thing, and it is questionable whether a coherent account emerges from them.

Bennett, Maxwell, et. al. Neuroscience & Philosophy: Brain, Mind, & Language. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. 157. Print.

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One cannot but agree with Searle that the experience of tasting beer is very different from hearing Beethoven's Ninth, and that both are different from smelling a rose or seeing a sunset, for perceptual experiences are essentially identified or specified by their modality, i.e. sight, hearing, taste, smell and tactile perception, and by their objects, i.e. by what they are experiences of. But to claim that the several experiences have a unique, distinctive feel is a different and altogether more questionable claim. It is more questionable in so far as it is obscure what is meant. Of course, all four experiences Searle cites are, for many people, normally enjoyable. And it is perfectly correct that the identity of the pleasure or enjoyment is dependent upon the object of the pleasure. One cannot derive the pleasure of drinking beer from listening to Beethoven's Ninth, or the pleasure of seeing a sunset from smelling a rose. That is a logical, not an empirical, truth, i.e., it is not that, as a matter of fact, the qualitative 'feel' distinctive of seeing a sunset differs from the 'feel' distinctive of smelling a rose — after all, both may be very pleasant. Rather, as a matter of logic, the pleasure of seeing a sunset differs from the pleasure of smelling a rose, for the identity of the pleasure depends upon what it is that pleases. It does not follow that every experience has a different qualitative character, i.e. that there is a specific 'feel' to each and every experience. For, first, most experiences have, in this sense, no qualitative character at all — they are neither agreeable nor disagreeable, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, etc. Walking down the street, we may see dozens of different objects. Seeing a lamp post is a different experience from seeing a post-box — did it have a different 'feel' to it? No; and it didn't have the same 'feel' to it either, for seeing the two objects evoked no response — no 'qualitative feeling' whatsoever was associated with seeing either of them. Second, different experiences which do have a qualitative 'feel', i.e. which can, for example, be hedonically characterized, may have the very same 'feel'. What differentiates them is not the way they feel, in as much as the question, 'What did it feel like to V' (where 'V' specifies some appropriate experience) may have exactly the same answer — for the different experiences may be equally enjoyable or disagreeable, interesting or boring.

Bennett, Maxwell, et. al. Neuroscience & Philosophy: Brain, Mind, & Language. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. 41-42. Print.

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Granted that neuroscientists may not be using these common or garden concepts the way the man in the street does, with what right can philosophy claim to correct them? How can philosophy so confidently judge the clarity and coherence of concepts as deployed by competent scientists? How can philosophy be in a position to claim that certain assertions made by sophisticated neuroscientists make no sense? We shall resolve such methodological qualms in the following pages. But some initial clarification here may remove some doubts. What truth and falsity is to science, sense and nonsense is to philosophy. Observational and theoretical error result in falsehood; conceptual error results in lack of sense. How can one investigate the bounds of sense? Only by examining the use of words. Nonsense is generated when an expression is used contrary to the rules for its use. The expression in question may be an ordinary, non-technical expression, in which case the rules for its use can be elicited from its standard employment and received explanations of its meaning. Or it may be a technical term of art, in which case the rules for its use must be elicited from the theorist's introduction of the term and the explanations he offers of its stipulated use. Both kinds of term can be misused, and when they are, nonsense ensues — a form of words that is excluded from the language. For either nothing has been stipulated as to what the term means in the aberrant context in question, or this form of words is actually excluded by a rule specifying that there is no such thing as .... (e.g. that there is no such thing as 'east of the North Pole', that this is a form of words that has no use). Nonsense is also commonly generated when an existing expression is given a new, perhaps technical or quasi-technical, use, and the new use is inadvertently crossed with the old, e.g. inferences are drawn from propositions containing the new term which could only licitly be drawn from use of the old one. It is the task of the conceptual critics to identify such transgressions of the bounds of sense. It is, of course, not enough to show that a certain scientist has used a term contrary to its ordinary use — for he may well be using the term in a new sense. The critic must show that the scientist intends using the term in its customary sense and has not done so, or that he intended using it in a new sense but has inadvertently crossed the new sense with the old. The wayward scientist should, whenever possible, be condemned out of his own mouth.

Bennett, Maxwell, et. al. Neuroscience & Philosophy: Brain, Mind, & Language. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. 11-12. Print.

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I begin to outline my compound reductionist account. Give it a read!

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The Power Of Philosophy: Why We Should All Care

By Teddy McDarrah

The discipline of philosophy is not regarded as some educational necessity. On the contrary, it is generally seen as esoteric, or only understood by specialists. 

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4 Black Philosophers to Teach Year-Round

Weaving philosophy lessons into your curriculum can tease out bigger questions about identity, human rights, and artistic expression.

By Hoa P. Nguyen

When Liam Kofi Bright was five years old, he spent a long time obsessing over the difference between a big number and a small number. Eventually, Bright decided that anything over four was big and anything below four was not. When his mom asked him, “What about four?” he started crying.

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Why I do not identify as an American in a nutshell. I hate the base individualism in this country.