History of contemporary psychology
Prelude (From Kant to Taylor)
Taylor has argued that practical reason has fallen into disrepute as the result of modernity’s moral skepticism (the fact that moral claims lack validity and cannot be arbitrated by reason) and been displaced by the epistemological (not what is known but how it is known). Taylor’s attempt to recover a role for practical reason is then a way of undercutting the priority of the epistemological while it is charged with demonstrating and clarifying the implicit assumptions held inviolable by all interlocutors of a position. What is remarkable about Taylor’s uncovering of practical reason is that he begins with Mill’s claim that question of ends are never amenable to proof but merely of assent or dissent and hence practical reason is a matter that follows an ad hominem rather than apodictic model of reason. As a critique of Kant might note, what is at stake in practical reason is the self.
Sensitive to the naturalistic fallacy (deriving “ought” from “is”), Taylor argues that moral claims, claims of practical reason, are other than what we desire, or believe to desire, but rather what we are committed to in his notion of “strong evaluation”. Thus, Mill’s claim that assertions of assent or dissent about questions of ends are not weakly ad hominem in the sense it is these and not those ends we desire and hence cannot reason about, for showing this does nothing to settle the question of whether or not we ought to desire these but not those ends. As Taylor notes, Mill understood the naturalistic fallacy well-enough and hence appealed to the intuition of competent judges to settle the question of the ends of desire. What Mill understood well-enough was that reason cannot resolve the conflict, or skepticism, or moral ends in apodictic terms – and hence he turned to the ad hominem argument. But Taylor asks why Mill did so and he argues that Mill as the inheritor of the Enlightenment relied on naturalism to provide an apodictic model of moral discourse including, paradoxically perhaps (subjectivism), our natural desires. In other words, naturalism was extended to include the subject’s desires and attitudes towards things which while this seemed a natural progression (to include desires among the things in this world that are “given”) does not mean, as Taylor notes, that the fact of desire is more right than any other desire.
The argument against naturalism derives in large part from examination of our actual practices of moral deliberation involving discourses which are never neutral regarding our desires or attitudes (which was of course Mill’s justification for invoking the ad hominem argument). Or to move straight to Taylor’s question, “Can a naturalist epistemology, invoking metaphysics of neutrality, override our self-understanding in strong evaluative terms?” The claim that it can and does is, according to Taylor, one reason for our contemporary derision of subjectivism and its accompanying moral skepticism. Naturalism dismisses the ad hominem argument and advocates an apodictic model of reason that would totally mischaracterize the human situation as understood in terms of traditionally meaningful practices and discourses inescapably strongly evaluative and purposive. Of course this is in contrast with the 19th c. which already demarcated between the natural and human sciences, a distinction which has in many ways been subject to the overriding power of epistemology as the only model of reason which can withstand the parochialism of traditionalism and the prejudicial attitudes of a peculiar subjectivist perspective on the world. Mill’s ad hominem argument for utilitarianism was intended to by-pass any such traditionalism and subjectivism with an appeal to the (“given”) nature of human desire and, presumably, this has been utilitarianism’s strength namely in carrying foundationalism into the explanation of human nature and along with it also procedural reason (into the moral domain). Yet during this same century the evident ubiquity of ethical disagreement also led to the embrace of ethical relativism.
According to Taylor the demand that the apodictic model of procedural reason arbitrate moral claims is deeply mistaken precisely because the assumption is that arguments have criteria with the result that there can be no incommensurable positions. Taylor, MacIntyre, and others have argued that there are no such criteria but rather any effort to evaluate different moral stances or perspective always relies on some gain in historical understanding. Something very similar is at stake in various post-modern writers such as Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault. Taylor sets out three arguments in support to the claim that the foundationalist thesis is deeply mistaken in its appeal to criteria, and the effort to eliminate ad hominem models (i.e., empiricist) of practical reason.
1. Comparative judgments do not so much rely on criteria or invariant standards but on comparison or on relations among rival positions in evaluating anomalies.
2. Comparative judgments are transitional in that they are essentially historical judgments in evaluating rival positions. Here we find the 17th c. a distinction between understanding and explanation. The turn towards mechanism/Nature was deemed to require a very different sense of explanation than say the place of things in the meaningful order of Nature which relied on understanding. Pre-Enlightenment (Aristotelian) thinking requires no such distinction. However, this distinction between explanation and understanding yields even greater skepticism with respect to moral life even as it also demands that we think relationally about incommensurability such that we gain clarity in our pre-understanding and so extent our knowledge of the connections between incommensurables. Moreover, in thinking relationally we not only extend our grasp of knowledge among incommensurables we also extend our understanding of our purposes and effective practices (without invoking criteria). Thus while Taylor is sympathetic to, for example, Kuhn’s claim that there is no rational justification of transitions between incommensurables, Taylor also rejects radical incommensurability as the foundationalist account would have it. The risk here is that skepticism which accompanies explanation at the level of life as lived, also risks irrationalism in understanding historical transitions. But the connection between understanding and practice means that whenever we increase our social practices we also gain in knowledge.
3. Taylor, like Kant, begins phenomenologically, within human life, wherein understanding and practice dovetail each other. Understanding is enabling not in the sense that we are trying to convince others to change their minds but to show others that whatever assumptions they (others) adhere to cannot account for what we are urging in some moral domain. Incommensurability is then to be understood relationally in the sense that these are to be understood historically as transition between incommensurables, and as making explicit what was implicit in pre-understanding within traditions (immanent critique). Indeed, one such preconception that has confused our understanding and fostered skepticism is the foundationalist view of life as a closed system. But history and life knows no such a closed system. Not merely for the history of scientific theory but especially in the moral domain of life. As Taylor points out however none of this implies that there may well be disputes to that cannot be so resolved (i.e., ad hominem) and hence may well not allow for arbitration.
4. Obviously all efforts to uncover and make explicit assumptions in one’s interlocutor position assume that interlocutors in a dispute do share some understanding. Yet there is also a more radical move wherein there is no such sharing and where a transition between rival in a dispute involves some error-reducing move. Here the direction of the argument is reversed. Whereas from a foundationalist perspective transition is always a gain (whereas the reverse is not so), if the transition is one of reducing error then it is a gain.
In practical reason we identify a tension then try to understand that tension by dissipating a confusion which is due to some neglect in self-understanding. Understanding the tension re-situates the tension in making explicit some assumption, worn feelings, overlooked significances etc. I come to see the situation differently than I did before this self-understanding and hence the situation changes in some ways (see Taylor, 1985, Ch 2 in Phil Papers Volume 1: Agency and Language). .
In a way practical arguments (reason) are always ad hominem arguments. These arguments appeal to what the opponent is already committed to, perhaps implicitly, or at least what they cannot repudiate. The fact that we cannot convince people of the value of a premise may of course be grounds for despair and indeed practical reason may be powerless to resolve such disputes.
We can however expand the notion of practical argument by
(1) identifying a common premise which would allow for debate especially in the light of history, and
(2) even where there is no such common premise, we might claim that a transition from one premise to another is a gain, and both these are ad hominem.
Of course, just as we are never fully rational we never fully that an argument is true simpliciter. What we can claim is that an argument is a better account, and hence practical arguments are always comparative, in that it brings to light what the interlocutor cannot repudiate. A new account can make better sense of difficulties confronting alternative accounts, can explain what other accounts cannot, and is more error reducing than other accounts. Hence what practical reason attempts is to make implicit premises explicit, discern contradictions, and bring our facts that are seemingly anomalous. All of which extends the range of rational argument, assuming we appreciate that not all disputes are about fully explicit positions which they never are.
Even so not all disputes can be arbitrated in reason. Relativism has something going for it insofar as diversity and mutually incomprehensibility do mark moralities. For example we may understand little of human sacrifices and it is only our sophisticated pluralism that prevents us from making devastating judgments. Hence understanding may not be universal and may be markedly different in different cultures. Especially science and technology seem enormously influential compared to traditional sufficiency of reflection, contemplation, or understanding. Making and doing as a result of knowledge so changes our world as to alter whole ways of living. Yet we should not give up on reason in being intimidated by distance of incomprehensibility as grounds for adopting relativism.
Perhaps most relevant today is the difference in culture based on distance of cosmology. But even here even if we could demonstrate say the universality of individual rights, we may also lose something in defending universalism (equality) but this does not mean we should take an easy position on agnostic relativism. Moral arguments in our day lead to skepticism precisely because we adhere to relativism in grounding the way things are (ad hominem a la Mill). Our naturalist temper is hostile to strong evaluation and hence to making any ad hominem arguments, instead we simply assume relativism in maintaining that there are cultural social and historical differences – an instance of the naturalistic fallacy.
Along with the adherence to naturalism comes the rejection of ad hominem arguments as illegitimate (this is part of universalism-relativism continuum). We loath to reason about fundamental commitments for then we would have to acknowledge that truth is something asserted/maintained. We limit reason for the sake of the empirical natural world as being the way it is…encapsulated universal rights even as we hold to the superiority of knowledge. As if universal rights were itself a product of empirical knowledge. This knowledge invokes foundationalism which deems reason to be reason about standards, criteria based on fully explicit positions and yielding absolute judgments of adequacy. But all this makes reason incomprehensible (limits of reason) insofar as reason is collapsed unto explanation.
Problem of other minds (Lecture 1)
You are talking to a friend; the talk is animated and involves all sorts of twists and turns in the conversation. Suddenly the conversation begins to stray into idle chatter and your attention wanders. But not entirely and with half your mind can still follow the talk but the other half of your mind is in a mood of detachment staring at the face and body of your friend as he talks. There is nothing odd about this; his is the same face, familiar and beloved as always. It is only that in looking at him your own mind has been invaded by an unusual question. His lips move, his eyes gleam, and his limbs move (gesture) all of which is quite usual. But your mind suddenly places these ordinary facts in a strange light…”is he really conscious behind all this physical appearing?” We all have these moments of passing schizophrenia - and we do not attaché much importance to them. But now consider that this passing mood is supported by a solid body of theory in psychology. Thus, there are numerous psychologists, and philosophers, who maintain that consciousness is something to be dispensed with in our explanations of human conduct. These theories may vary a good deal but they have in common one feature: we can proceed as if my consciousness of my friend does not exist and we find his bodily movements sufficient for the purpose of understanding him.
Why do we have this strange fear of consciousness? Why are we so uneasy about admitting consciousness as a clear fact in our human world? Of course, there is the problem of “other minds” – after all I do not “see” the consciousness of my friend or indeed my own consciousness; theory claims that consciousness is merely something I infer from his bodily movements. As an empiricist I cannot treat consciousness (his or my own) as a basic datum in my hard-headed explanations of his conduct. I need not outright deny it of course but whenever my theoretical ingenuity can manage it, I must proceed “as if” this consciousness is not there.