Scottish Philosophy Research Articles

Hawthorne the Unreliabilist: His Epistemology in “The Custom-House” and Other Prefaces

Hawthorne the Unreliabilist: His Epistemology in “The Custom-House” and Other Prefaces Zachary Turpin (bio) Jesus answered,‘ . . . For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth . . . ’ Pilate asked him, ‘What is truth?’ (John 18:37–8) In a letter dated 4 February 1850 and addressed to his friend Horatio Bridge, Nathaniel Hawthorne offers a brief explanation for the inclusion of a prefatory sketch, “The Custom-House,” in his latest novel, The Scarlet Letter. “There is an introduction to this book,” he writes, “giving a sketch of my custom-house life, with an imaginative touch here and there, which may, perhaps, be more widely attractive than the main narrative. The latter lacks sunshine, etc.”1 The novel’s gloominess is unquestionable, making it tempting to take Hawthorne entirely at his word (his remarks are made in a private communication, after all) and to assume that the sketch’s sole purpose is to enliven an otherwise dreary narrative. However, considered in light of the shifting epistemological ground of “The Custom-House,” Hawthorne’s brief allusion to “an imaginative touch here and there” gains a wry added significance. The author of this sketch does, of course, play somewhat loosely with the facts of his tenure as a customs inspector. But, more generally, he expends a great deal of energy on both establishing and undercutting the “truth” of “The Custom-House.” I enclose the word truth in quotes because Hawthorne’s frequent insistence on verisimilitude gradually loses the ring of [End Page 487] sincerity, given his increasing reliance on imagination as a gap-filler. The “truths” of the “Custom-House”—that it recounts real events as experienced by the narrator; that it presents the contents of a discovered document; that it adheres as closely to historical fact as can be expected—become complicated by Hawthorne’s exploration of the interplay between truth and belief, history and memory, fact and imagination. Explorations of this type are today categorized within the term epistemology, with which discipline, I will argue, Hawthorne repeatedly flirts in “The Custom-House.” However, I will further suggest that Hawthorne writes his prefatory remarks less in the service of epistemological transparency than as a method of demonstrating that truth may be found even in the absence of clarity. Nineteenth-century epistemology had already covered a great deal of ground by the time Hawthorne had reached maturity, but I will suggest that in his prefaces, and particularly in “The Custom-House,” he effectively creates a new theory of knowledge. This novel epistemology is founded on the belief that all truth-justification processes are unreliable but that one may still derive meaning and value from human relationships. The term epistemology derives from the Greek ἐπιστήμη (épistéme), meaning “knowledge,” hence the field’s older and still quite serviceable name, the theory of knowledge.2 Though the subject itself has been around for at least 2,500 years, the word “epistemology” first appeared just four years after the publication of The Scarlet Letter (1850), coined by Scottish philosopher James Frederick Ferrier in his Institutes of Metaphysic.3 At its most basic, epistemology is a philosophical discipline dedicated to questioning how we know what we know. Common queries in epistemology include What is truth?, What can be known?, How do we know anything?, and What comprises knowledge? Pontius Pilate, quoted in this essay’s epigraph, thus qualifies as a rather sarcastic epistemologist. [End Page 488] One of the first philosophers to address these preoccupations at length is Plato (ca. 428–347 BCE), whose answers to the problem of knowledge vary, like Hawthorne’s, and are at times incompatible. In his Phaedo, for example, Plato famously posits that we do not know the things of this world so much as we sense their purer counterparts, known as “Forms,” on the intangible plane of abstraction. However, he notes that only the true philosopher may view the Forms, via his higher intellect. But, if ideas exist on an inaccessible plane of abstraction, how could such a person possibly access them? This is perhaps the first epistemological stumper, and Plato’s answer is less than satisfactory: the knowledge of the Forms, he says...

JUSTICIA Y PROPIEDAD SEGÚN THOMAS REID

Este artículo propone que, de acuerdo con el escocés Thomas Reid (1710-1796), la justicia debe ser entendida como una virtud moral de carácter natural entre los seres humanos, o bien como una cuestión de especie con respecto a ellos, y no como una virtud de tipo artificial o convencional, a manera de una creación de sus colectividades sociales y acaso como cuestión de sociabilidad entre dichos seres humanos. Sin embargo, propone también que en sus reflexiones sobre la justicia, Reid suscribiría una concepción objetable de la noción de propiedad, en cuanto patrimonio de riqueza básicamente repartible o distribuible, pero no de bienes que ante todo se generan o producen, como llegaron a plantearlo sus contemporáneos David Hume y Adam Smith.

Los liberalismos de José María Vigil y Antonio Caso y el realismo directo

José María Vigil (1829-1909) y Antonio Caso (1883-1946) fueron dos defensores de la democracia liberal y de la posibilidad de un limitado, aunque efectivo, manejo consciente de los asuntos públicos y sociales dentro de los contextos adversos de México durante la administración de Porfirio Díaz y en el periodo post-revolucionario. Ambos autores basan sus posiciones en una crítica concerniente al positivismo y al determinismo social, que apuntaría hacia una manera de pensar muy distante del pensamiento subjetivista, aunque muy cercana a un “realismo directo” epistemológico que establece que el mundo no es de hecho una construcción subjetiva o intersubjetiva que debe interpretarse subjetiva o intersubjetivamente. Sin embargo, esto no es algo que pueda saberse a través de una copia mental o representación de sus entidades y procesos. Tal vez el defensor más evocador del realismo directo en la historia ha sido el filósofo escocés del siglo XVIII, Thomas Reid (1710-1796), un gran “sensocomunista” explícitamente recuperado por Vigil y reivindicado tácitamente por Antonio Caso.

From Francis Hutcheson to James McCosh: Irish Presbyterians and Defining the Scottish Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century

SummaryThis article examines the disputes amongst Irish Presbyterians about the teaching of moral philosophy by Professor John Ferrie in the college department of the Royal Belfast Academical Institution in the early nineteenth century and the substantive philosophical and theological issues that were raised. These issues have largely been ignored by Irish historians, but a discussion of them is of general relevance to historians of ideas as they illuminate a series of broader questions about the definition and development of Scottish philosophy. These are represented in the move from two philosophers who had strong connections with Irish Presbyterianism—Francis Hutcheson, the early eighteenth-century moral sense philosopher and theological moderate from County Down, and James McCosh, nineteenth-century exponent of modified Common Sense philosophy at Queen's College Belfast and a committed evangelical. In particular, this article addresses three important themes—the definition and character of ‘the Scottish philosophy’, the relationship between evangelicalism and Common Sense philosophy, and the process of development and adaptation that occurred in eighteenth-century Scottish thought during the first half of the nineteenth century.

Adam Ferguson in the Scottish Enlightenment: the Roman past and Europe's future

Although overshadowed by his contemporaries Adam Smith and David Hume, the Scottish philosopher Adam Ferguson strongly influenced eighteenth-century currents of political thought. A major reassessment of this neglected figure, Adam Ferguson in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Roman Past and Europe's Future sheds new light on Ferguson as a serious critic, rather than an advocate, of the Enlightenment belief in liberal progress. Unlike the philosophes who looked upon Europe's growing prosperity and saw confirmation of a utopian future, Ferguson saw something else: a reminder of Rome's lesson that egalitarian democracy could become a self-undermining path to dictatorship. Ferguson viewed the intrinsic power struggle between civil and military authorities as the central dilemma of modern constitutional governments. He believed that the key to understanding the forces that propel nations toward tyranny lay in analysis of ancient Roman history. It was the alliance between popular and militaristic factions within the Roman republic, Ferguson believed, which ultimately precipitated its downfall. Democratic forces, intended as a means of liberation from tyranny, could all too easily become the engine of political oppression--a fear that proved prescient when the French Revolution spawned the expansionist wars of Napoleon. As Iain McDaniel makes clear, Ferguson's skepticism about the ability of constitutional states to weather pervasive conditions of warfare and emergency has particular relevance for twenty-first-century geopolitics. This revelatory study will resonate with debates over the troubling tendency of powerful democracies to curtail civil liberties and pursue imperial ambitions.

La criminalización de la desigualdad en la teoría de la justicia de David Hume

El presente trabajo tiene por objeto el estudio de una parte específica del pensamiento ético-político del filósofo escocés David Hume: sus descripciones acerca del origen de la justicia y el gobierno. Ambas son analizadas con la intención de esclarecer el tratamiento de la desigualdad que en ellas se ofrece. Nuestro objetivo es describir el particular proceso de criminalización de la desigualdad natural que comienza a producirse con la moralización de las leyes de la justicia tras la primera convención y se consolida tras la génesis del<br />gobierno y el Estado.<p style="text-align: justify;">El principal objetivo durante el ejercicio descriptivo de esta investigación será identificar el perfil y la función de los diversos protagonistas, así como la aparición del paternalismo moral y el dominio en la interactuación de los mismos. Por último, trataremos de ofrecer una solución verosímil a uno de los conflictos perennes en la literatura secundaria sobre la filosofía ético política humeana ‒la paradoja de la motivación‒, reinterpretando el sentido de la estrategia adoptada por la figura del sensible knave.</p>

An Artifact of Postmedieval European Preconceptions: The Chiefdom Model Versus the Principle of Actualism

Subordinating actual ethnographic and historical data to a European doctrine is not scientific, and it can be pernicious. The pervasive, taken-for-granted model in American archaeology of cultural evolution band-tribe-chiefdom-state is 19th-century imperial European conjectural history (perceived as such by Scottish philosopher Dugald Stewart at the time). Tribe was shown by Morton Fried, 1975, to be used by imperial powers to denigrate small nations at their frontiers. Chiefdom has no actual ethnographic instance (noted by William Sturtevant) and as used, denies evidence that pre-contact North American societies included kingdoms or states. The persistence of the 19th-century imperialist model of America as wilderness of savages led British Columbia Chief Justice McEarchern in 1991 to reject claims of two First Nations to timber rights in their homelands. These terms are neither scientific nor purely academic: they uphold racist injustices.

The Science of Applied Ethics at Edinburgh University: Dugald Stewart on Moral Education and the Auxiliary Principles of the Moral Faculty

In examining Dugald Stewart's contribution to ethics, the Scottish philosopher and historian James Mackintosh wrote that ‘few men ever lived, who poured into the breasts of youth a more fervid, and...

Epistemology, Parachutes, and “Yeah, but” Interventional Stroke Trials

Epistemology is a branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge. The term was introduced by the Scottish philosopher Ferrier.1 It seeks to address questions like What is knowledge? How do we know that we know something? To what extent is it possible for a particular subject to be known? Broadly speaking, epistemological knowledge can be divided into 2 categories: knowledge that and knowledge how. Most animal behavior, for example, a newborn bird learning to fly or a child learning to ride a bike, are of the knowledge how category. In contrast, most of the subsequent discussion surrounds the knowledge that category. This addresses questions like How do we know that the sum of the squares of the 2 sides of a right-angled triangle equals the square of the hypotenuse? or How do we know that antibiotics work for meningitis? Humans are probably alone in the capacity not only to know something but also to know that they know it, and to consider the foundations of this knowledge. Although most of us know it would be a bad idea to jump from an airplane in flight without a parachute, it is harder to justify how we know that with such certainty. Each of us has clearly not tested that out for ourselves and most would agree it is absurd to test this as a hypothesis. Rather, our knowledge comes from experience in relevant parallel situations (eg, seeing what happens when one jumps from 10 feet and extrapolating it to 10 000 feet), mechanistic understanding of gravity, and inborn instincts for self-preservation. Much of this knowledge is arguably innate: a 4-year-old child knows when it is not safe to jump off a height; so does a baby monkey. But this raises a classic question of particular importance to …

Teoria racional das tradições e o processo judicial

This article discusses some points of the rational theory of traditions proposed by the Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, who lives in the US. In this context, it focuses on the relation between rational theory of traditions and judicial process, in the sense of seeking procedural objectivity, without denying the infl uence of traditions on judicial decisions.Key words: MacIntyre, reason, morals, materialism, formalism, process.

L'universalità di Spinoza

Spinoza’s philosophy symbolized universal thought. Firstly, it was the last philosophy to bring about a dialogue between Latin philosophy, Jewish philosophy and Muslim theology. Secondly, it was the intellectual center around which the three cultures that led to the seventeenth century being considered the golden century were reunited: those based on Dutch, Spanish and Scottish philosophy. Thirdly, Spinoza’s philosophy was universal in that it was the only modern philosophy to play a substantial part in that intercontinental movement which was the modern scholasticism of the seventeenth century. Fourthly, it was also universal because it traced Renaissance culture back to the two fundamental principles of Greek thought.

Risk and reward

It seemed to be good news when a company of worldwide fame started marketing cutting-edge medical devices. But, it has become disastrous now that all of the people responsible for patient safety have overlooked their duties. This is the story of Articular Surface Replacement (ASR) from Johnson & Johnson's DePuy Orthopaedics. The ASR was, at first, a popular metal hip implant designed to solve the problems of previous models consisting of metal and plastic. An ASR has a cup component that would fit into a recipient's hip socket, and has an internal groove against which a doctor can locate a surgical appliance during the operation. This groove, in itself, restricted the device's ball movement inside the cup. Consequently, severe wearing with metal debris resulted from frequent collision between the edge of the cup and the body of the ball part. This phenomenon inevitably led to early failures of the ASR, and some practitioners reported their serious concerns to the company. The device showed a failure rate of approximately 40% within 5 years of implantation. In the beginning, the DePuy hip implant did not achieve an acceptable wear rate in their internal test performed in the company's own lab. However, instead of reporting this issue to doctors and patients, DePuy intentionally changed the test until they obtained favorable results. To our disappointment, the company's interest was not patient safety but financial gain. It is also questionable whether the physicians, who then worked as consultants to that company, fulfilled their responsibility and sounded the public alarm as soon as they should have. Therefore, nearly 120,000 patients around the world received this defective biomedical device without correct information from the manufacturer and the consulting physicians. Although numerous lawsuits over this device are awaiting court decisions, the court of public opinion has already ruled this situation a case of amorality and nescience. In this sad moment, the Scottish philosopher David Hume's writing can be appreciated. In A Treatise on Human Nature, he observed that we humans tend to search for a justification to do whatever we please: All morality depends upon our sentiments; and when any action or quality of the mind pleases us after a certain manner we say it is virtuous; and when the neglect or nonperformance of it displeases us after a like manner, we say that we lie under an obligation to perform it. Let this tragic case be a lesson to us. We already know it is only a matter of time before science without validation becomes harmful superstition. To maintain the standards of science and protect our patients, we must simply remain determined, even when it inconveniences us, to keep our virtue.

Adam Ferguson and ethnocentrism in the science of man

The Scottish moral philosopher Adam Ferguson (1723–1816) is recognized as one of the founding fathers of sociology and social science more generally. This article examines his early ruminations on what has come to be seen as one of the most pressing methodological concerns for social science: the problem of ethnocentrism. The article explores Ferguson’s attempts to deal with this problem and his attempt to plot the relationship between empirical research, theory formation and normative moral judgement. It argues that Ferguson was well aware of the danger of cultural bias and that his understanding of moral science is marked by a concern that empirical and normative judgements are freed from the danger of such bias.

Scotland's Migrant Philosophers and the History of Scottish Philosophy

SummaryThe history of Scottish philosophy in the nineteenth century is written by migrant philosophers attempting to use the Scottish tradition as the foundation for philosophy in their new homelands. In the accounts of John Clark Murray (Canada), James McCosh (the United States) and Henry Laurie (Australia), different evaluations are made of the continuing relevance of the Scottish Common Sense School, but all are committed Christians for whom David Hume cannot be part of a Scottish tradition. As a result, none of these accounts gives any suggestion of there having been a ‘Scottish Enlightenment’. That concept was only made possible by the radical reinterpretation of Hume by Norman Kemp Smith, which linked his philosophy to Hutcheson and dismissed his opposition to Reid. The subsequent emergence of ‘the Scottish Enlightenment’ eclipsed nineteenth-century Scottish ‘idealism’, shaped by Edward Caird, which Murray, Laurie and Kemp Smith had regarded as the foundation of their own philosophies.

Resisting the Enlightenment's Instrumentalist Legacy: James, Hamilton, and Carlyle on the Mechanisation of the Human Condition

SummaryIn the early post-Enlightenment period, informed by the history of Scottish and European thought, Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) and Sir William Hamilton (1788–1856) alerted readers to a melancholy future emerging from mechanical theories of the mind. Opposing a Lockean strand in British and French philosophy, their concerns involved predictions about, among other things, a descent into pessimism and nihilism, and the end of metaphysics and moral philosophy. Arguably influenced by Carlyle and Hamilton, William James's (1842–1910) much later Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) evinces a similar opposition to medical materialist psychology. Confronting a profound shift within Enlightenment thought, towards the increasing dominance of mechanical theories, Carlyle, Hamilton, and James were variously resisting the mechanisation of the human condition and an agency-eradicating instrumentalism. Part of that resistance involved humour and certain indications of hope for humanity that, as Carlyle put it, ‘mechanism is not always to be our hard taskmaster’. Once immensely influential, Carlyle, Hamilton, and James are presently marginalised figures. However, Jürgen Habermas's distinction between communicative and instrumental rationality suggests that what was at stake for these thinkers is of continuing relevance. Their work deserves to be explored to recover nineteenth-century Scottish philosophy's participation in a discourse of transnational status and significance.

Introduction: Scottish Philosophy in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World

SummaryThe Introduction contextualises the development of Thomas Reid's Common Sense philosophy as the foundation for what would be known as the Scottish School of Common Sense. This introductory discussion of Reid's philosophical system bridges his thought in the Scottish Enlightenment with the special issue's focus of Scottish philosophy in the nineteenth-century Atlantic World.

A new heart for Turkish soccer: a virtue ethics diagnosis and treatment

Turkish soccer is presently in a downward spiral. All its constituencies, players, clubs, fans, coaches, owners and institutions are accountable for this. Goal oriented rather than process invested, the actual goals in Turkey come scarce and not too beautiful. This results from a misunderstanding, on the part of the aforementioned elements, of what soccer is all about. Relying on the work of Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre and careful interpreters in sport philosophy, we posit soccer as a practice that flourishes when its internal values are embraced, diagnose the ills that plague Turkish pitches and propose an alternative that emphasizes the things that matter: playing beautiful soccer on the field for the right reasons.

Reforming Witherspoon's Legacy at Princeton: John Witherspoon, Samuel Stanhope Smith and James McCosh on Didactic Enlightenment, 1768–1888

SummaryThe College of New Jersey (which later became Princeton University) provides an example of how Scottish philosophy influenced American higher education in an institutional context during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This article compares the administrations of John Witherspoon (served from 1768 to 1794), Samuel Stanhope Smith (served from 1795 to 1812) and James McCosh (served from 1868 to 1888) at Princeton and examines their use of Scottish philosophy in restructuring the curriculum and reforming its institutional purpose. While presiding over Princeton during its most significant transitional moments, these philosophers of the Scottish School of Common Sense instituted different versions of moral education. Meanwhile, Witherspoon's legacy of balancing the interests of Evangelicalism and Scottish philosophy as Princeton's driving purpose influenced the creation and reception of nineteenth-century programmes of moral education. The broader question this article addresses is: how did the interconnecting points among Scottish philosophy, Calvinism and moral education inform notions of didactic Enlightenment at Princeton across a century?

‘Elementary Principles of Education’: Elizabeth Hamilton, Maria Edgeworth and the Uses of Common Sense Philosophy

SummaryBoth Maria Edgeworth and Elizabeth Hamilton drew extensively on Scottish moral philosophy, and especially on the work of Dugald Stewart, in constructing educational programmes that rested on the assumption that women, and especially mothers, were intellectually capable of understanding the importance of the early association of ideas in the training of children's emotions and reasoning powers. As liberals they found in Stewart's work routes toward intellectual and social progress—both for women and for their society as a whole—that stopped short of radical politics and preserved moral certainties compatible with Christian faith. Both were assailed by Evangelical critics; Edgeworth acquired an undeserved reputation for infidelity, but Hamilton resolutely defended her committed but nonsectarian Christian faith, as she broadened her ambitions towards making her own contribution to the philosophy of mind, which she argued was relevant to the education of all classes in a modernising society.

Introduction

Summary The Introduction sets the contributions to this special issue in the context of existing scholarship on Dugald Stewart. The main points are the great advance in our understanding of Stewart's intellectual development, his complicated relationship to his predecessors and contemporaries in Scottish philosophy, and his important role in the European republic of letters.