Empiricist Theory Of Knowledge Research Articles

British Idealism and the Concept of the Self, edited by W. J. Mander and Stamatoula Panagakou

Reviewed by: British Idealism and the Concept of the Self ed. by W. J. Mander and Stamatoula Panagakou Adela Pinch (bio) British Idealism and the Concept of the Self, edited by W. J. Mander and Stamatoula Panagakou; pp. xii + 335. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, £89.99, $119.99. It is not often that philosophy books are reviewed in the pages of Victorian Studies. While the authors in this collection of essays, British Idealism and the Concept of the Self, clearly feel they fight an uphill battle in encouraging their colleagues in their own discipline to take seriously what these Victorian writers can contribute to philosophical discussions about the nature of the self, my task is to persuade readers of this journal how relevant this book is to Victorian studies in other fields. Scholars of Victorian cultural history and literature have long pondered what is distinctive about what Victorians thought and felt about being, or having, a self, but recent decades have largely sent us running to empiricist psychology for answers. The work of associationists and physiologists such as Alexander Bain, George Henry Lewes, James Sully, and others has appealed because its principles chime well with our own: the self is located at the intersection of body and experience; it is a bundle of sensations, and hence contingent, fragmented, in flux. British Idealism and the Concept of the Self is a fine gateway drug for readers interested in learning about an alternative, adjacent body of thinking. The outstanding introduction by the editors, W. J. Mander and Stamatoula Panagakou, clearly lays out what is distinctive, intriguing, and challenging about ideas of the self in the major British Idealists treated in the book: James Frederick Ferrier, F. H. Bradley, Edward Caird, T. H. Green, Bernard Bosanquet, R. G. Collingwood, and J. M. E. McTaggart. Mander and Panagakou provide historical background for the flourishing of Idealism in Victorian Britain: it arose not only from the impact of Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel, but also from dissatisfaction with the shriveled understanding of self implicit in empiricist theories of knowledge, and with the narrowed ethical responsibilities for the self under utilitarianism. In response, the Victorian Idealists crafted concepts of a self that—while immanent in the empirical self—exists fundamentally outside of time and space. By positing a self that is "connected with the spiritual world of values which expands before and beyond their immediate existence," they sought above all to provide a new model for the self's relation to community (158). The sequence of the fourteen essays in British Idealism and the Concept of the Self largely follows chronology, and moves as well from historically focused pieces on individual philosophers to broader essays that address the ways the Victorian and early-twentieth-century [End Page 494] British Idealists speak to enduring philosophical issues. Thus, for example, in the first essay, Jenny Keefe explains how and why the earliest Victorian Idealist, Ferrier, devoted An Introduction to the Philosophy of Consciousness (1838–39) to demolishing the notion of the "mind" that was the object of study in the empiricist psychology of the era, and to replacing it with philosophical reflection on the nature of subjectivity. Thence follow several essays each on the central figures of the 1870s and 1880s—Bradley, Caird, Green, and Bosanquet—focusing in many cases on the relation between these writers' metaphysics of the self and their ethical and political thought. They argued that if there is to be an ethics of free will, personal agency, and responsibility, there must be a continuous, non-contingent self. In the last of the author-focused essays, Gary L. Cesarz considers the ways in which McTaggart's account of the self as immaterial substance (in Some Dogmas of Religion [1906], but I would add "The Further Determination of the Absolute" [1890]) solves some logical problems in both materialist and social-constructionist accounts of the self, both then and now. In my view, the chapter that may be most helpful in clarifying what was at stake in the Victorian Idealists' non-empirical self is Mander's penultimate summary essay, "Idealism and the True Self." If one of the surprises in this book...

Systematic Thought and the Early French Enlightenment

The Enlightenment critique of the esprit de systeme and its tendency towards eclecticism have often been interpreted as symptoms of speculative shallowness. The article analyses the origins of this prejudice, with special reference to the early French Enlightenment (1700-1750). It then attempts to counter such a preconception by providing a relevant counterexample. The case study presented is that of Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, usually considered a typical instance of the anti-systematic proto-positivist philosophe. In discussing his philosophy, epistemological and cosmological issues in particular are emphasized, showing how Maupertuis’ thoroughly empiricist theory of knowledge led him to apply mathematics to all domains of human knowledge in order to reduce their uncertainty. It is concluded that Maupertuis is the author of a rich and interesting work, which brings some novelty to the philosophical scene of his own times, if not to the whole history of modern philosophy.

Selecting is not abstracting

Barsalou's hypothesis that mental representations are constructed by selecting parts of percepts encounters the same difficulties as other empiricist theories: They cannot explain concepts for which instances do not share perceptible features (e.g., furniture) or for which there are no relevant percepts (e.g., the end of time). Barsalou's attempt to reduce falsity to failed pattern matching is an elementary error, and the generativity of his simulators cannot be attained without nonterminal symbols. There is not now, and there never was, any reason to be interested in empiricist theories of knowledge. Abstraction is a fundamental aspect of human cognition.

The Politics of Epistemology

It has often been asserted with great confidence that the purest parts of philosophy are political in nature, that even a theory of knowledge may be identified with a particular political point of view. Although this idea has been associated with the far left, anyone familiar with the history of thought knows that the far left has not been its sole advocate. John Dewey condemned Aristotle's epistemology as antidemocratic; William James once exclaimed about how democratic pragmatism was;' John Locke, as we shall soon see, thought that the doctrine of innate ideas was a tool of those he called the dictators of principles; and John Stuart Mill, as we shall also see, regarded his own empiricist theory of knowledge as a tool of liberal reform. But how confidently can one defend such attributions of unique political significance to theories of knowledge? I want quickly to add that I am not at all dubious about, nor concerned here with, attributions of a certain general political effect to something like Aristotle's statement that some men are slaves by nature. Its undemocratic effect has reverberated through history for the past two thousand years, and I find it very hard to see how it could be inserted in any ode to liberty, unless that be the liberty of some men to oppress others. Rather, I am concerned here with historians or philosophers who speak of the exclusively undemocratic nature of Aristotle's theory of knowledge, or of the democratic character of pragmatism, empiricism, or materialism by contrast to the allegedly conservative or reactionary character of, say, idealism.

Necessity, Certainty, and the A Priori

Empiricist theories of knowledge are attractive for they offer the prospect of a unitary theory of knowledge based on relatively well understood physiological and cognitive processes. Mathematical knowledge, however, has been a traditional stumbling block for such theories. There are three primary features of mathematical knowledge which have led epistemologists to the conclusion that it cannot be accommodated within an empiricist framework: 1) mathematical propositions appear to be immune from empirical disconfirmation; 2) mathematical propositions appear to be known with certainty; and 3) mathematical propositions are necessary. Epistemologists who believe that some nonmathematical propositions, such as logical or ethical propositions, cannot be known a posteriori also typically appeal to the three factors cited above in defending their position. The primary purpose of this paper is to examine whether any of these alleged features of mathematical propositions establishes that knowledge of such propositions cannot be a posteriori.

John Locke and Natural Law

It has been said, and few would deny, that John Locke is as important as the founder of philosophical liberalism as he is as the founder of the empiricist theory of knowledge. Though he was a most versatile thinker, writing on philosophy, politics, medicine, education, religion, and economics, and on all these with the knowledge of an expert and the influence of an authority, his fame no doubt derives on the one hand from his treatises on Toleration and Civil Government, and from his Essay on Human Understanding on the other. Whenever these are expounded by scholars, the political writings are discussed independently of the Essay and the Essay independently of the political writings. The reason for this is obviously that scholars have seen very little connexion between Locke's principal works. This has been changed with the appearance of a manuscript in which are preserved eight essays on the law of nature written by Locke in Latin shortly after the Restoration of 1660 and thirty years before the appearance in print of his major works. This manuscript has been published by me, and it is now possible to recognize that Locke's two main bodies of doctrine, namely his political theory and his theory of knowledge, have a common ground and that this lies in his early doctrine of natural law. Admittedly, the notion of a natural law can be seen to be of central importance in his treatise on Civil Government and it also plays its part in the Essay.