The Tripartite Nature of Philosophy

As a general rule, philosophy is pursued in the hope that it will provide understanding, guidance, or meaning.  Let us call these the alethic, teleological, and therapeutic modes of philosophical inquiry insofar as the first is focused on truth, the second on purpose, and the third on the easing of suffering.  In most philosophical schools, these three philosophical projects are considered to be thoroughly interrelated and, therefore, pursued jointly, though it is typical for the alethic to be given the central or foundational role.  Plato, for instance, gives pride of place to the pursuit of truth, not only because he believes that most beliefs are generally unfounded and, at best, partial truths, but because he is convinced that once we overcome our default state of ignorance we will discover both the depths and heights of the form of the Good, which can then guide belief and action and, being eternal and immutable, offer a stable calm against the vicissitudes of life.  Alternatively, we may consider the Buddhist philosophical system whose primary aim appears to be therapeutic but bases its prescriptions on profound truths about existence, such as the ubiquity of suffering.  Stoic philosophy grounds its therapeutic prescriptions on a deterministic metaphysics that leaves no room for relief in anything other than mastery of one’s own thinking.  Aristotle, perhaps most famously of all, derives his moral prescriptions from his observations about human nature, arguing that what we ought to do and what we will find fulfilling will follow from knowledge of what kind of creature we are.  And so on.

 

One can certainly conceive of a discipline that puts the reduction of suffering ahead of understanding.  For instance, if suffering can be alleviated by medication, then there is the possibility of finding relief in life directly rather than via the pursuit of any truth other than the truth concerning which medication eliminates which symptoms.  So, there is certainly room for  direct medical therapy as distinct from the indirect philosophical kind.  

 

One can similarly imagine purpose being found in traditions that are adopted without any particular interest in prosecuting their evidential basis or truth simply because they offer a narrative context in which daily activities and life goals find a place.  Hence, there is room for religious or cultural institutions to serve the pursuit of guidance and meaning in ways that are distinct from the traditionally philosophical ways of so doing.

 

We see, then, that what distinguishes philosophy from other pursuits that aim at purpose and peace is the commitment to grounding the latter two in the deepest possible understanding of ourselves and reality.  Philosophy seeks to address the most important human problems via the pursuit of truth rather than via tradition, religion, fads, or medicine.  This is not to say, of course, that addressing the problems of life in these latter ways is necessarily inappropriate or wrongheaded.  It is just to say that what makes the pursuit of purpose or meaning philosophical is to approach it through the deepening of one’s understanding of the world rather than some other path.  

 

It is, furthermore, possible that non-alethic pursuits will be of service in the philosophical journey.  For instance, perhaps the experience of addressing anxiety via the ingestion of psychedelic substances will lead to new hypotheses concerning human consciousness that can be tested scientifically, thereby allowing us to come to a deeper understanding of the nature of mind.  Still, what makes the pursuit philosophical is the ultimate nature of the pathway to purpose and meaning, i.e., whether the road is the road of deeper and higher quality truth or something else.  

 

The examination of the history of philosophy leaves it all but impossible to deny any of this.  From Thales to Democritus to Pythagoras to Plato to Aristotle to Aquinas to Descartes to Kant to Schopenhauer to Russell to Chomsky, the common thread is manifest: if we are to address the deepest problems of the human condition we must understand it at the deepest possible level, even if our investigations ultimately lead to the conclusion that we are incapable of such understanding, for that then is, on this skeptical view, the deepest understanding from which the truths of purpose and meaning will be derived (perhaps that there is no purpose or meaning).

 

This is a large part of why philosophical writing is often unnatural, fine-grained, and technical.  The philosopher aims to go beyond and below ordinary thinking, so there is a real danger that standard terms and concepts will not be well-suited to the job; hence, a semi-mathematical, logical vocabulary that is stripped of the connotations of ordinary language is employed as an inoculation against importing the pre-conceptions of the superficial level of thought into the pursuit of secrets of the deep.  At the same time, the opposing danger lurks as philosophers can be guilty of creating jargon that masquerades as deep thought but in fact functions as no more than an opaque repackaging of trivial ideas or the expression of meaningless nonsense.  To do philosophy properly, let alone well, is no easy feat and there is no guarantee of success even after diligent, honest labor.

 

Another reason that philosophy is often written in semi-mathematical “logic-ese” is its long-standing and historically symbiotic partnership with natural science.  2500 years ago, Pythagoras argued that the nature of reality is mathematical, and ever since Newton natural science has progressed primarily in proportion to its mathematization.  To paraphrase Galileo, mathematics is the language of nature.  Nonetheless, human nature has resisted our attempts, mathematical or otherwise, at comprehensive understanding.  To this day such questions as the nature of language, perception, consciousness, truth, the mind-body relation, and so on, remain about as mysterious as ever.  Still, given that we are part of nature, and that non-human nature is best understood in mathematical terms, there is a perfectly understandable, even if ultimately misguided, urge to understand humanity by working out theories in terms of some kind of formal language, as seen in philosophers such as Plato, Leibniz, Frege, Russell, early Wittgenstein, Carnap, Quine, etc.  

 

Analytic philosophy is often accused of “logic chopping” i.e., of focusing on minute semantic or syntactic distinctions that are divorced from any larger concerns such as purpose or meaning.  It is understandable why one who is accustomed to the grander, narrative style of a Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, or Rorty would feel this way.  And, while it is certainly true that some analytic philosophy pursues question of no serious significance, I do not think the larger complaint is on target, for the reasons just outlined.  Philosophy, whatever it is, is the alethic route to purpose and meaning and if one wants deep purpose and meaning then it is natural to want deep investigation into the nature of reality.  Hence, the search for the right language, the right framework, and the right tools, are all of genuine importance.  It is not a surprise, then, that philosophy since the beginning of the 20^th Century has ended up significantly preoccupied with questions such the nature of language and logic, even if it goes overboard at times.

 

Should philosophy, especially of the analytic variety, be more focused on issues of meaning and purpose?  Perhaps, but it is not as if such questions haven’t been pursued by analytic philosophers such as Bertrand Russell, Adolph Grünbaum, Nicholas Rescher, Noam Chomsky, Daniel Dennett, Thomas Nagel, David Lewis, John Leslie, Shelly Kagan, Samuel Scheffler David Benatar, etc., etc.  The questions are asked, answers proposed, objections considered, and the logic of the language used put under scrutiny.  It may not be to everyone’s taste, but it is certainly squarely in the 2500-year tradition of philosophy.  

COVID-19, Probability, Risk

In a recent article in Scientific American, authors Nathan Ballantyne, Jared Celniker, and Peter Ditto examine the question as to whether images of the impact of COVID-19, such as ill people in hospital beds, can help bypass the “persuasion fatigue” that is setting in as people tire of arguing over whether the disease is sufficiently serious to justify the series of lockdowns and other restrictions imposed by governments around the world.  If sharing arguments and statistics hasn’t settled the issue to date, then perhaps graphic photographic evidence will do the trick by shocking doubters into agreement with those who preach the seriousness of the disease and the appropriateness of government action.

 

As the authors point out, the efficacy of even explicit photographs is minimal.  The problem, they argue, is that photographs have a powerful emotional impact, such as shock or disgust, primarily for those already convinced of the terrible nature of the situation represented in the picture.  If, on the other hand, “you entered our study doubting the threat, the images didn’t shock you and, accordingly, didn’t move your thinking… one person’s shock is another person’s shrug”, write the authors.

 

The limitation of photographic evidence to persuade, they conclude is a result of an “empathy gap” whereby we mistakenly assume that what moves us is what moves others, and in similar ways.  This is a kind of emotional question-begging, whereby “when using images to persuade, we may take for granted precisely what we’re trying to prove” (italics in original).

 

I think this is all basically correct, but I think that the failure of “empathy” in these cases is in fact a disagreement over risk.

 

To see this consider the economic concept of expected value.  When considering whether to undertake some action, A, one generally considers two factors: first, what is likely to happen should A be undertaken; secondly, what is the impact of those possible happenings.  For example, in deliberating whether or not to attend law school, one may try to estimate the probability of getting a legal job upon completion with all the benefits that entails, such as easily paying off student loans.  This will be balanced against the probability of not getting such a job and having to pay off student loans in those circumstances.  This combination – probability (legal job) x benefit (legal job) + probability (no legal job) x cost (no legal job) – is the expected value of the decision to attend law school.

 

Notice that even if the cost of failing to secure a legal job is very high – suppose the student loans will take a lifetime to pay off in that case – one may reasonably decide to ignore that outcome if the probability of it happening is sufficiently low.  If, for example, there is a 99.9% chance of getting a job as a lawyer upon completion of the law degree, then it may make perfect sense to take on very large student loans to complete the degree assuming a lawyer’s salary is high enough.  If, on the other hand, the salary of a lawyer is not very high, then it may make no sense to pursue a law degree even if there is a 100% chance of getting a job at the end.  Similarly, if one considers an outcome to be sufficiently bad, then even a very low probability of occurrence might be compelling; for example, one may refuse to skydive because one takes the very low probability of death to outweigh the enjoyment of the very high probability safe landing.  What matters, in other words, is not just the goodness or badness of the outcome but its probability of occurrence, and a decision can only be assessed if both dimensions are taken into account.  

 

Consider, for example, something very familiar: getting in a car and driving to work.  We all know that a serious car accident, such as a highway collision, is a very bad outcome: death or serious injury usually result.  Still, one will likely be willing to get on the highway and drive to work every day so long as the probability of such a bad outcome is sufficiently low, which in fact it is.  In such a case, one will take the chance knowing how bad the outcome is.  Even if one is shown a gruesome image of the aftermath of a highway collision, then one will likely continue to drive to work because the image addresses the cost of an accident not its probability.  This is a general feature of a photograph: because it shows a single incident, it cannot tell us very much at all about the probability of such an incident occurring.  Similarly, an image of a victim of a violent mugging in another city will not cause one to stay home at night unless one is convinced that such a beating is sufficiently likely to occur to oneself when out on the street.  If not, then the picture will have minimal impact.

 

Something important should be made explicit, however: there is a subjective element to all of this, namely, at what probability does a bad outcome become too risky?  There is no agreed upon answer to this.  We each have our own set of risk tolerances.  

 

So, the logic of the “empathy gap” is in fact a disagreement over what counts as a reasonable risk.  Some believe that COVID-19 poses a probability of suffering or death sufficiently low to be worth risking exposure.  For them, images of such suffering or death simply miss the point: they may make vivid how badly things may go but not how likely it is that they will go that way.  These are like people who continue to drive to work knowing that there is a chance they die in the process.  For those, on the other hand, sufficiently moved by the badness of the disease to think that even a very low probability of death or suffering is not worth the risk, then a graphic image will just reinforce what they already believe: that the disease is too horrible to take a chance on.  They are like people who refuse to skydive despite the safety record or parachutes.  

 

In other words, for one side, the low probability outweighs the magnitude of the outcome while, for the other, the magnitude of the outcome outweighs the low probability.  Showing a photograph is not so much a matter of taking for granted what one is trying to prove – “the outcome of COVID-19 is horrible” – as it is an irrelevant gesture in this debate. Since a photograph doesn’t tell one how probable what it depicts is, it cannot address those who think the risk is low enough to be worth taking.  

 

What of those who think the disease is no worse than the flu or who think it is a hoax?  The former would be those who dispute the consensus of the medical community: how likely are they to see one or two photographs as convincing?   The latter are those who dismiss the evidence and opinions of the medical community as bogus: how likely are they to see some photographs as veridical, rather than fakes?  In both cases we have a similar problem of assessing probabilities.  The first group, for whatever reason, considers the medical evidence to date to give a low probability to the proposition that COVID-19 is much worse than the flu, so is likely to see a few bad photographed cases as outliers, the kind of thing that happens in any flu season.  The second group assigns no significant probability to anything the medical community has to say on the matter, so will assign a higher probability to the photograph being a fake than anything else.  In short, for those who have lost trust in the medical establishment, some gruesome pictures will be dismissed as irrelevant or fakes.  For those who have not lost their trust, a photograph cannot tell them the probability of what is depicted therein, so cannot impact their assessment of the risk involved in locking down or not.  

We see, then, why there is no way to close an empathy gap with any photographic intervention: the problem is a logical one of probability plus outcome underdetermining risk tolerance, which is subjective.  Photographs simply don't address that issue.