INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Tom Dean
PHILOSOPHY AND CHILDHOOD

Michelle Spencer
 WHO'S TO SAY?
The Problem with Relativism

Jennifer Gagliardi
 DESCARTES' INNATE PEACE

Janice Stefane
 J. F. POST'S NONTRANSITIVE REALISM

Cindy Cottrell
 WHAT DO PHILOSOPHY MAJORS DO? 
Response to Silliman

Gail Linsenbard
 PHILOSOPHY SOCIETY MINUTES

  How do children do philosophy? By framing this question, I assume its importance. I also assume that children do think philosophically. I want to focus here on one example from my personal experience that suggests two aspects of childhood philosophizing, and examine why educators should recognize and encourage such thinking.

A year ago in the fall, when I was finishing my first semester of education courses, I ran into the mother of Sarah at a local market. The previous winter, I had substituted for two weeks in Sarah’s first-grade classroom. I recalled that Sarah had a talent for art and that she was sensitive in a way that allowed her to cry easily when upset. She also had a good sense of humor. I asked how Sarah was doing in second grade. Her mother expressed frustration with Sarah’s teacher, and said that she was considering putting Sarah in a different school. One incident, in particular, had upset them both.

Sarah’s class had been studying Columbus in October, and her teacher had been discussing how Columbus had discovered America. Sarah asked her teacher this question: "How can you call it discovering when there were already people living there?" Her teacher did not respond to the question directly, either then or later. Apparently, she glossed over Sarah’s question as an interruption, and continued with the lesson. Sarah came home from school that day very upset, and remained upset for many days thereafter.

What was going through the teacher’s mind? I can only speculate. Maybe she was nearing the end of the lesson and was having a bad day. Maybe she was distracted by other students in the class. Maybe she had never considered the question herself, and was therefore taken aback to hear such a question coming from her young student. Maybe she thought Sarah was mimicking her parents’ view of history, and she did not want to acknowledge that line of multicultural thinking. Maybe she was reluctant to field a question that seemed morally and ethically provocative. Maybe she simply was in the habit of underestimating the ability of her students to have insights of this level and degree. Certainly she missed an opportunity for a teachable moment. I wonder if she was aware how much her response upset Sarah.

I find Sarah’s question to be philosophically interesting in at least two ways. First, Sarah noticed that her teacher seemed to be using the word discover ambiguously. How can you discover something that is already there? is a perfectly valid question with metaphysical and epistemological implications. What do we mean when we say that we discover some new place? If I go for a walk in the woods and come across something completely new to me, like an ancient tree, a huge boulder, or a quiet glen, can I say to someone else that I discovered these things? I think so. Using the word discover becomes more problematic, though, when we come across other creatures. I might say that I discovered a bees’ nest or the sleeping place of a herd of deer. But I probably would not say, if I had seen the bees or the deer, that I had discovered them, although I might say that I had discovered that they were there. The discovery, then, is expressed in terms of my experience, which would also seem to be what I meant about the tree, the boulder, and the glen.

When Sarah’s teacher talked about Columbus discovering America, did she mean that Columbus discovered a whole continent when he landed on one island? Did she value the experiences of the explorers more than those of the native inhabitants of the Caribbean? By teaching about Columbus, the teacher was certainly making a case, either implicitly or explicitly, for the importance of studying Columbus. I can imagine a lesson plan that contains this argument for teaching about Columbus:

Second, knowing Sarah, I can imagine that part of her motivation in asking the question involved an empathic concern for the people who were already living in North and South America. Empathic concern is the basis of moral concern. How did the Europeans treat the Native Americans? What was it about the settlers’ worldview that made them treat the people who were already living here the way they did? Did all settlers treat their neighbors badly? These are all legitimate moral questions that can arise from empathic concern. If historians and teachers use the word "discover" in the limited sense of physical discovery when speaking of Columbus’ accomplishments, they do an injustice to the native peoples of North America by ignoring their existence. I think that on some level Sarah realized this. Unfortunately, her teacher was unprepared or reluctant to respond to Sarah’s concerns. I hold that recognizing the philosophical nature of questions like Sarah’s, and regarding philosophy as a natural activity of children, might help teachers to respond more effectively when children voice their thoughts, puzzles, and concerns.

  In his book Who's To Say? (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., Inc., 1994), Norman Melchert explores the ideological stance of relativism through the conversations of six college friends meeting for the first time in a decade. The text is broken into three conversations which debate the possibility of there being an objective standard by which one moral philosophy might be judged better than another. They explore the theories of cultural, individual, and dogmatic relativism. Each of these relativistic positions is rejected on the grounds that they are inconsistent, incoherent, or self-refuting, and the non-relativists turn to religious, scientific, and pragmatic theories in an effort to find workable alternatives.

Elizabeth -- a nonrelativist -- draws on the works of Socrates as well as her feelings toward her children in the formulation of her argument against relativism. She echoes Socrates when she says that it is better to try to learn the things we do not know than complacently to accept our ignorance. She says: "To venture out in public with what you think is true takes courage. You expose yourself. Not just your beliefs, but yourself, since you are the one who has accepted these beliefs. And that's scary." Yet, she thinks we ought to embrace this challenge rather than fear it; that we should be strong enough to challenge our beliefs if we are wrong. She now suggests that relativism is a cowardly act that actually promotes the kind of egocentrism that it is supposed to guard against. It allows the individual to refute defeating evidence in an argument by smugly saying that "it's right for me and your opinion is inconsequential."

While Elizabeth would certainly reject the idea that humanity was in possession of the "absolute truth" on most matters, she does claim that at least one thing is true: that "David and I produced two human beings is one certain truth about the world." While she may not know if the sun will rise tomorrow, she knows for sure that she and her husband produced two children. This leads her to think about the kind of world she wants for her children. What she concludes is that relativism is a reflection of the inherent selfishness of the human ego to protect itself from error. Elizabeth wants her children to live a good life rather than just protect their egos. She wants them to feel love for both themselves and for the world around them. She wants them to circumvent the pitfalls of ambivalence which could lead them into self-indulgence. Like many mothers, she hopes her children will be able to see that cruelty is wrong and caring is right, even if an individual or culture does not value those perspectives. Ultimately, she hopes they will answer the question "who's to say?" with "I am to say, and you are to say, and we are to say. These questions about the good life are not ones we can shrug off this way. They do get answered one way or another. And if we don't do our best to answer them well, the lazy, the wicked, and the self-interested will answer them for us. Or we will become like them ourselves."

Elizabeth presents a strong case for the rejection of relativism. Her conclusion parallels that of Blaise Pascal who in the Pensees claims that our beliefs come not from absolute truth but from our what we know in our heart to be right: "The heart has its reasons which reason does not know"(Pascal, Pensees, 4) . While we may only be able to approximate the truth, we need to forge forward to protect what we believe is right. This sense of right comes from the love we have for ourselves, our families, and the larger community. It is through our hearts that we will strive to approximate the truth with greater accuracy and precision. Our hearts will give us the courage to admit we are wrong and press forward to re-evaluate our beliefs so that we may be more just in our action. Relativism leads to blindness, idleness, and complacency. It allows the self-indulgent will to win over reason and justice, while it gives the ego a comfortable resting place. If relativism were the rule, we could not move toward a better world and we could not flourish; humanity would stagnate in its imperfection. Where would we be if Moses, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King, or Mother Teresa had been relativists? What if they had accepted the status quo as no better than any other system? It is the action of an individual or a community, whose heart is sickened at the sight of injustice, that rises above the crowd and yells "I am to say." That is our greatest asset and hope. In the words of Sir William Drummond in Academical Questions, "He who will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave."

  Descartes’ passion for innate ideas and objective certainty was in part a response to the need for some basis of agreement between the warring countries and religions of the seventeenth century. The turbulent times of the early seventeenth century gave Descartes a focal point for his doctrine of innate ideas. He wanted to prove that everyone who was involved in the conflicts going on around him was already in a position to know the solution to their conflicts. He believed these ideas were already innate in each one of them and that they should rely upon reason to draw out these ideas and find a solution.

In the early seventeenth century, the continent of Europe and the British Isles were recovering from a rapid breakdown of feudalism due to the rapid rise of mercantilism. The world into which Descartes came was one where wealth was starting no longer to be associated with land and a person’s place in society under a monarch. It was a society that had as its champion the modern foundation of capitalism. Much of the wealth that made this change so rapid came from the New World. The resulting warfare was one not only based on this new mercantilism, but also resulted from religious tensions stemming from reforms that had begun with Martin Luther posting his theses on a church in Wittenburg. The Protestants and the Catholics had been long disputing the position of the church in society. It was during this conflict, now known as the Thirty Years’ War, that Descartes published his Meditations on First Philosophy and Discourse on Method.

Descartes wanted to show the intellectual world that there was a solution to the ideological differences underlying the conflict. He believed that if the warring parties would recognize that each of them is capable of objective knowledge and that what they already knew was all the common ground they needed, then this was the solution that they were looking for. He believed that there was a priori knowledge and that this knowledge included the necessary existence of God. So if the existence of God was already built into our experience and knowledge of things, we all had a similar background to build on. Therefore, what was all the fighting about? The differences between the different types of religions should not be causing so much conflict when they all had the same foundation. And building on the innate idea of God, as an epistemological principle, these different religions should take their common ground and make something productive out of it. Luther was correct when he pointed out that the church needed to be reformed, but he was wrong to focus on one type of religion and not the whole idea of religion itself.

Descartes believed that reason alone could lead people to the solution. If people could use reason to understand the fundamental differences between religions and use their understanding to see that even though they were fundamentally different it did not mean that one was better than the other or that one should dominate the world.

Many conventional treatments of Descartes fail to take account of the military, religious, economic, and nationalistic developments within which he was writing. Many writings tend to take this narrow view of Descartes and treat it as though his ideas arose in a vacuum, and not relate his work to what was happening in the world in which he lived.

It is highly unlikely that Descartes’ work contributed to the end of the Thirty Years’ War, but since the end of the war and the Peace of Westphalia there has been an incremental development toward just what Descartes was arguing for. The world has gradually moved towards a society where the differences in religion have diminishing relevance in the face of scientific, technological, and economic developments. Of course, this does not apply to all countries in the world, but it is a marked improvement from the start of the seventeenth century.*

*Thanks to Matt Silliman for his editorial assistance.

  In his essay "Epistemology" (Descartes, David Weissman, Ed., 1996), John F. Post states that his point is to bring to light the deep-structural foundationalism that owes so much to Descartes and to disturb the slumber of those enthralled by an internalism and irrealism driven by the unacknowledged foundationalism and by the fallacious transitivity presupposition that underlies it (Post, 267).

Post claims that while many philosophers reject foundationalism, one becomes a foundationalist in claiming that the structure of epistemic justification is foundational. Hence, one becomes a structural foundationalist, positing a starting point for knowledge that can be justified rationally in a noncircular way. To establish noncircularity in epistemic justification, one needs to presuppose that all justifiable inferences are transitive. This escapes the regression problem in

proposing a known a priori or deductive starting point, but leads to an internalistic (idealist, irrealist) view of the world by appealing to the argument that one cannot justify the world through the world itself. Internalists suggest that realists need a "God's-eye view" to justify their view of the world through the "look- see" method. The "look-see" method supposedly allows the realist to step outside of language to see how it fits the world. But it is the irrealists' presupposition of the transitivity of inferences that makes the God's-eye view necessary for the "look-see" argument.

Post goes on to show where transitivity fails and where nontransitive inferences are successful. He presents examples of induction, abduction, and the failure of transitivity in science and mathematical probability. He continues to explain that individualism and mechanism, both results of the assumption of transitivity of inferences, fail in biology because biology is a natural-selective, abductive history of "kinds".

Post explains that, "The considerations advanced here are unlikely to persuade the skeptical; nor is that my intent" (Post, 267). Post could have taken his critique further to try and convince the skeptic. His claims are strong enough to propose a realistic view of knowledge and the world. Realism avoids the presupposition of transitivity (which has been relatively unquestioned until now) and the foundational problems of circularity or regress (such as is present in Descartes' work). He claims, "matters can be known only fallibly and by way of inference to the best possible story [abduction] (Post, 262)." This is an argument for realism, though an implied one.

  When I initially read the title of Matt Silliman's article "What Do Philosophy Majors Do When They Graduate?" (Thesis XII, 5.3) I thought, "Great, I am a graduating double major (philosophy and English) pondering that very question." However, upon completing the entire article (twice, because I thought I might have missed the point the first time I read it) I found no real concrete answer.

Matt eloquently states, "...the disposition and ability to think critically and systematically, read rigorously, construct effective and nuanced arguments, write clearly, question intelligently, and converse respectfully are the marks not only of an accomplished philosophy student...." I realized as I read and re-read that quote, that my English professors would purport to teach the exact same basic skills. Mentally I substituted the word philosophy with psychology, sociology, chemistry, etc.; the point being that any of these disciplines will tell you they teach you these necessary techniques of communication for their given fields. In any of these other fields of knowledge, it is not difficult to imagine acquiring a paying job upon graduation. Graduating with a degree in philosophy, it is a little more difficult to imagine a concrete career, other than teaching.

Slight panic began to set in when I realized Matt did not, in my opinion, directly answer the question posed to him by the student. I began to reflect (because that is what philosophers do!) about how it came to pass that I became a philosophy major. In layperson's terms, I believed that the study of philosophy was just an excuse not to be active in the world. They literally just sat around discussing life, rather than actually participating in it!

What changed my attitude was logic. This course (which I only took to avoid a mathematics requirement), taught me how I could use philosophy in my daily life. It wasn't learning about connotation, denotation, intention, extension or Venn diagrams that aroused my desire to know; it was learning the different types of fallacious inductive arguments that exist: red herring, straw person and missing the point, etc., and how these techniques are used to persuade and dissuade.

As a philosophy major, I have learned to adopt a healthy skepticism about the information I am bombarded with through the media at large, more specifically through television, radio, newspapers, and the internet. How does all this translate into a paying career? Other disciplines such as chemistry, sociology, psychology, give you knowledge in their specified fields. What you learn in philosophy can cross those imaginary barriers established by these fields.

Philosophy gives you a firm foundation on which to build a career in whatever field you choose. For example, I can imagine a good philosopher making a good lawyer. I don't think it is reciprocal that a good lawyer would in general make a good philosopher. Philosophy is the discipline from which these other disciplines emerged, so whether I chose to be a lawyer, a banker, or a candlestick maker -- I can market and apply myself well, in any field.

  The Philosophy Society of MCLA met three times during the spring semester to discuss Jean-Paul Sartre's plays, "The Flies," "No Exit," and "Dirty Hands." Our last meeting for the spring semester has been scheduled for Wednesday, May 6th, 1998. We will discuss bad faith and prejudice in Sartre's play, "The Respectful Prostitute." All are welcome to attend. Contact any member of the Philosophy Department for more information.

Professor Linsenbard began by indicating that most of Sartre's plays involve an examination of the existential attitude of bad faith, or self-deception. According to Sartre, most of us live our lives in bad faith, whereby we attempt to hide from ourselves the fact that we are ontologically free. The existential and ethical challenge, then, is to try to recognize the extent to which we are steeped in the attitude of bad faith and to attempt to overcome it. Although Sartre's ontological commitments suggest that human reality cannot avoid bad faith, he nonetheless argues that a life lived in "good faith" will, at the very least, embrace freedom as a fundamental value and, moreover, understand and accept what freedom entails morally.

In "The Flies" Sartre examines bad faith in religious attitudes. The religious struggle of the hero, Orestes, is strongly related to his attempt to achieve a deeper understanding of himself and a legitimate idea of moral responsibility. Sartre contrasts Orestes' attempted project of good faith with two studies in bad faith manifested by the people of Argos and Orestes' sister, Electra. Through symbol and metaphor (the flies represent the daily guilt and remorse of the inhabitants of Argos, who spend their days repenting for the original crime of their King and Queen), Sartre criticizes the Christian doctrine of original sin and atonement. In the final analysis, Sartre wants to show that the concept of religious or spiritual guilt (original sin and atonement) are indicative of our failure to assert our potential human worth and dignity. This assertion, of course, may only be made through freedom and responsibility. By the end of the play, Orestes, the existential hero, learns that his freedom is not authentic to the extent that it remains uncommitted and detached from others.

In "No Exit" Sartre offers a vivid psychological study of bad faith. After their earthly demise, the play's three central characters find themselves occupying the same room in "Hell." Each character attempts the bad faith project of making excuses for their former failings and mistakes. Each project, of course, fails miserably because bad faith will not allow us to lie to ourselves successfully; Sartre's theory of consciousness argues that we are always implicitly aware of the truth we are trying to hide. In "No Exit" Sartre wishes to affirm his criticism that while living we are all responsible for our acts; after our death it will be too late to make retributions. Sartre dramatically portrays his early philosophical view concerning our relation with others, which is essentially understood in terms of conflict. Each of us attempts either to (1) win supremacy over the Other, in which case we attempt to turn the Other into an object for us, or (2) avoid facing the fact of our own freedom and responsibility, in which case we attempt to become an object for the Other. According to Sartre all forms of social, political, and economic oppression and degradation derive from the conflict of subjectivities whereby the Other attempts to "steal my freedom" from me and prevent my project of transcendence. "Hell is other people," declares Garcin. Sartre, of course, means to point out that hell is in fact in this world, not in another.

"Dirty Hands" is perhaps Sartre's most candid portrayal of the moral struggle. The question of the proper relation between means and ends of action is raised when Hugo, the play's intellectual, idealistic Communist hero, must decide why he chose to kill the Party leader, Hoererder, whom he knows is a traitor to the Party. Since the time of Hugo's prison sentence, the Party has adopted Hoerderer's policy of alliance with the enemy. Upon his release from prison, Hugo must decide whether his motive for Hoerderer's death was an act of personal passion or of political principle -- his moral belief that Hoererder was wrong in sacrificing the Party's principle for expediency. Hugo chooses the latter, and in so doing opposes himself to the current Party line, and secures his imminent death at the Communist's hands. While Hugo maintains that Hoerderer should not be willing to sacrifice principle for expediency, Hoerderer claims that sacrifice may be necessary in order to save lives. Hugo, on the other hand, is willing to sacrifice lives in the name of higher principle, thus demonstrating that ideas count more than lives. Hugo refuses to dirty his hands in the name of lofty principle. Hoerderer's (and Sartre's) challenge to Hugo is that one cannot keep one's hands clean if one is committed to fighting against oppression.

  Thesis XII is published four times annually as an open forum for the discussion of all matters philosophical. Submissions reflect a diversity of disciplinary per-spectives, philosophical approaches, and topics. Those new to the discipline are especially encouraged to participate.

  Address all correspondence to: Professor David K. Johnson, Editor, Thesis XII, Department of Philosophy, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, 375 Church Street, North Adams, Massachusetts 01247. (413) 662-5448. Email: djohnson@mcla.mass.edu. Fax: (413) 662-5368.

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