Persons: A Study in Philosophical Psychology PDF
Preview Persons: A Study in Philosophical Psychology
PERSONS By the same author Ethics and Metaethics Ethics for Modern Life The Philosophical Imagination PERSONS A Study in Philosophical Psychology RAZIEL ABELSON ProfessorofPhilosophy Neui Tork Uniuersity © Raziel Abelson 1977 Softcoverreprint ofthehardcoveristedition1977978-0-333-21415-2 Allrightsreserved. No partofthispublicationmaybe reproduced or transmitted,in anyform or by anymeans, withoutpermission First published 1977 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Associated companiesinNew York Dublin Melbourne '[ohannesburg and Madras ISBN 978-1-349-81498-5 ISBN 978-1-349-81496-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-81496-1 This book issoldsubject to the standard conditions 0/the Net Book Agreement ToGabriel 'Everybody has to be somebody to somebody, in order to be anybody.' (Forbes, in Reader's Digest) Contents Acknowledgements IX Introduction Xl ConceptualDualism I PsychologicalLanguage 2 PsychologicalExplanation 7 2 AuthorityandFreedomtoAvow TypesofSelf-DescriptionsandtheRole ofAvowals Avowals Proper AvowalsandPsychologicalGeneralisations Incorrigibility 3 CauseandReason TheConceptualRevolution CausesandReasons Doing, Causingand Causing-to-do 4 Motivation Reasons andReasonTerminators ReasonTerminatorsand Explanation Reasons, DesiresandFeelings Emotion 5 TheIncoherenceofDeterminism TheIrrelevanceDefence TheDualisticInteractionDefence TheIdentityDefence ObjectionsandReplies 6 Person andSeH P-Predicates Personal IdentityandSeH 7 Self-DeceptionandAkrasia TheParadoxesofSelf-Deception ProposedSolutions ASynthesis ANewStart WeaknessofWill Vlll Contents 8 SelfandCommunity 110 Self-Interestand Morality 111 Conclusions 118 Notes 119 SelectedBibliography 127 Index 01Names 131 Index 01Subjects 134 Acknowledgements I am grateful to the American Council of Learned Societies and to the Arts and Science Research Fund of New York University for grants enablingme topreparethisvolume. I wish to thanktheJournal 0/Philosophy,the AmericanPhilosophical Quarterly, Mind and Philosophical Studies (Reidel) for their kind permission to reprint portions of articlesof mine that have appeared in those journals. Thanks are also due to Basil Blackwell and Mott Ltd for permission to use extracts from Philosophical Investigations by LudwigWittgenstein. I am indebted to my friends, Professor Chauncey Downes, of New York University,and Professor MichaelLockwood,ofAllSoulsCollege, Oxford, for their patient reading of earlier drafts and for their helpful comments. I would like also to express my appreciation for the valuable criticisms I received of sections of this work when read to the faculty and students of the following colleges and universities: New York University, Cornell University, SUNY Binghamton, University of Pittsburgh,Universityof CaliforniaatBerkeley,UniversityofCalifornia at Santa Barbara, University of Southern California, Long Island University, Hamilton College, Rutgers University, William Paterson College andSuffolk CountyCommunityCollege. R.A. Introduction For some years I had been working on particular problems in philo sophy of mind surrounding the concept of reason-giving, problemsinto which I was led by earlier studies in ethical reasoning. In various papers I had explored the concepts of emotion, feeling and wanting, the differences between rational explanation and scientific explanation, the relations between knowledge, belief and faith, and the paradoxes of mind-body identity theories. At some point, all these pieces seemed to fall together into a general picture, which I have here baptised 'Conceptual Dualisrn', in which the human agentappears asa creative force interveningin an otherwisedeterministicworld,somewhatasGod was once thought to do (arbitrarily, for Duns Scotus, rationally for Aquinas and Leibniz). The combined attacks on dualism and mechan ism by ordinary language philosophers (Wittgenstein, Ryle, Austin), which punctured the modem mythology of scientific determinism, and their demonstrations of the extraordinarily subtle logic of ordinary language (compared to which mathematical logic appears a crude approximation, somewhat like a computer grinding out a soap opera scenario as compared to The Brothers Karamazou) convinced me that a transformation of ourvision of man and his place in nature has been taking place and is now ready to be formally inaugurated as the New Order. The guiding principle of this conceptual revolution has been the recognition of the normative character of the language in which we describe human conduct. Normative judgments are, for good reason, eschewed by natural science as irrelevant to its theories, laws, and predictions. When a natural scientist allows hirnself the luxuryofvalue judgmentshe does soduring coffeebreaks, or afterhourswhen reading The Times or complaining to his (or her) spouse. Yet, in anything intelligible we say about human conduct, we express or at least pre suppose judgments of good and bad, right and wrong, successful and unsuccessful, judgments that, when not mere prejudices, are grounded on reasonswhichin turnmaybeevaluated asgood orbad. Until this revolution in philosophy got under way in the second quarter of this century, almost all philosophers (with the exceptions of Hume and Kant) assumed that ethics is an applied science, based on biology, history and psychology. The conceptual revolution of which (and for which)I speak consists in areversal of this classical perspec tive (perhaps this isthe real Kantian 'Copemican revolution', although some sceptics would call it the Ptolemaic counter-revolution) a
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