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22
WHAT IS A PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM?
P.M.S. Hacker
To what extent are philosophical questions and
problems like other kinds of questions and problems,
such as the those tackled by the physical sciences?
Peter Hacker suggests that the problems of philosophy
are conceptual, not factual, and that their solution or i
resolution is more a contribution to a particular form of 5*
understanding than to our knowledge of the world. *"
"D
' 5-
The term 'philosophy' dignifies the work of many thinkers. <Q
They have been concerned with subjects ranging from cos- Q
mology, alchemy, theology and eschatology to metaphysics, ^
logic and epistemology, as well as ethics, political and legal
theory. It is improbable that scrutiny of the writings of such
diverse figures as Aristotle and Arendt, Bacon and Bakunin,
Confucius and Carnap, etc. will produce an illuminating an-
swer to the question of what a philosophical problem is. Too
many different intellectual activities have been pursued under
the rubric of 'philosophy' for such an historical investigation
to yield anything but a complex web of interrelated enquiries
into fundamental questions.
The conceptions of philosophy that have dominated the
mainstream European tradition for many centuries divide it
into separate departments. Theoretical philosophy deals with
metaphysics, logic, epistemology, and philosophy of mind.
Practical philosophy deals with ethics, political and legal
philosophy. In addition, there are the branches of philosophy
that deal with special sciences, e.g. philosophy of physics,
biology, social sciences, history and mathematics. To survey
these in the hope of finding among their very diverse prob-
lems illuminating common properties is unlikely to be fruitful
until one is clearer about what one is looking for. Only then
can one hope to finding a common thread connecting a wide
range of different strands.
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II
One might compare the question 'What is a philosophical
problem?' with 'What is a problem in chemistry (or physics,
biology, or economics)?'
First, it is striking that the latter questions are not themselves
problems in their respective disciplines. The question of what is
a chemical problem is not itself a chemical problem, and does
oo not call for an answer produced by a chemical experiment.
^" But the question of what a philosophical problem is is itself a
^ philosophical problem. It has preoccupied philosophers in the
West from Plato and Aristotle to Russell and Wittgenstein. The
^ answers they have given have been varied and conflicting.
Q For the very concept of philosophy is problematic in a way in
Q_ which the concepts of, e.g., physics and chemistry are not,
Q and the temptations to misconstrue the nature of philosophical
.U enquiry are legion.
- Second, the correct answers to problems in other fields of
O intellectual endeavour enlarge human knowledge. Correct
O^ answers to questions in physics or chemistry, in biology or
!c psychology, in history or economics are permanent contribu-
2" tions to our knowledge of the world we live in, either by way
^ oftheoryand explanation, or by way of fact, or both. If we turn
O to any of these disciplines and ask for their achievements, we
^ can be referred to whole libraries which elaborate them. But
if we turn to philosophy, the response is different. To be sure,
we may be referred to a host of books written by the deepest
thinkers in our culture over the last twenty-five centuries. But if
we ask to be referred to philosophical knowledge, knowledge
that can be compared to that achieved by the natural and
moral sciences, we are bound to be disappointed. For there
is nothing comparable that can be given to us there is no
established and indisputable philosophical theory about any-
thing, in the sense in which there are numerous incontestable
physical, chemical and biological theories. There is no corpus
of philosophical facts that one might look up in a philosophical
handbook, as one may consult a handbook in chemistry or
history to check one's facts.
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This state of affairs might be variously explained. One view
is that although philosophy is indeed a sector in the quest
for knowledge, it has 'only just recently struggled out of its
early stage into maturity'. Accordingly, despite a 2,500 year
adolescence, we can at last expect a flood of philosophical
truths and well-confirmed theories tomorrow. This view is
unconvincing. Philosophers have repeated it from century to
century, as one great genius after the other thought that he had i
at last found the key to unlocking the secrets of philosophy, 5*
and announced that we were about to enter the Promised *"
Land. But each such announcement, no matter whether by -Q
Descartes (and his new Method of Doubt) or Locke (and his ^ '
new Way of Ideas), by Kant (and his Copemican Revolution) <Q
or Russell (and his Scientific Method in Philosophy), was met Q
with disappointment. And it is wildly implausible to suppose ^
that twenty five centuries of endeavour by some of the great-
est minds of our culture should have failed to come up with ^
some solid philosophical knowledge because it is so difficult,
indeed, so much more difficult than discovering the structures
of the atom, the origins of life, the development of species,
and the character of the cosmos.
A different view, expressed by James, Russell and Austin,
is that philosophy deals with questions that are too unclear
to admit of answers. Once the questions have been clari-
fied through the endeavours of philosophers, they become
amenable to scientific treatment, and are handed over to the
special sciences. This would indeed explain why philosophy
produces no solid knowledge. But it is unconvincing. It is true
that physics was once considered a part of philosophy, and
that it became an independent discipline in the seventeenth
century. Similarly, psychology developed into an autonomous
subject only at the end of the nineteenth century. Neverthe-
less, physics does not answer questions about the unity
and persistence of substances, or about the objectivity or
subjectivity of perceptual qualities, and does not elucidate
the nature of causation or of inductive reasoning these
matters remain where they have always been, namely within
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the proper province of philosophy. Similarly, psychology has
not produced answers to questions concerning the essential
nature of the mind, personal identity, the essence of thought,
affection and volition on the contrary, they remain as stub-
bornly philosophical as ever. Moreover, as these subjects
became differentiated from philosophy, far from diminishing
it, they spawned new philosophical subjects, namely philoso-
O phy of physics and philosophy of psychology. The Jamesian
^ conception is inadequate to explain the poverty of philosophy
qua cognitive discipline.
E
0 in
Q A more promising view is that philosophy is not a cognitive
O^ discipline at all. So it cannot be its business to make discov-
Q eries about how things are in reality. It is not a quest for new
U knowledge or for explanatory and predictive theories such as
- ^ we find in the sciences. This radical suggestion excludes the
O idea that, like each science, philosophy has a special sub-
_O ject-matter of its own with respect to which it strives to attain
Zl knowledge. Hence it excludes the thought that philosophy is
^" the most general of the sciences concerned with the most
Qj general facts in the universe, or that philosophy is concerned
O with (Platonic) Ideas that underlie all being or with discovering
^ (Husserlian) Essences, or unfolding (Kantian) synthetic a priori
principles. A fortiori it excludes the idea that philosophy com-
petes with the sciences in making empirical discoveries.
Philosophy aims at a distinctive form of understanding. Of
course, it would be absurd to deny that the sciences are aimed
at understanding the empirical phenomena they investigate.
They seek for an understanding of why certain facts are as
they are. They explain their data by deduction from theory
or by means of aetiology, or both. This is not the form of
understanding which philosophy strives to attain. It strives to
apprehend not connections between facts (or derivation of
facts from explanatory theory), but connections between con-
cepts; and, since the role of concepts lies in their contribution
to thoughts or propositions, logico-grammatical connections
between propositions. That apprehension is derived not from
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(empirically confirmed) theory, but from description of concep-
tual articulations. These conceptual articulations are manifest
in the rules for the use of words, which are exhibited in the
practices of the competent speaker.
The rules with which philosophy is concerned are rules
for the use of expressions no less than are those which the
descriptive grammarian tabulates. But they are by and large
not the kinds of syntactical rules which interest grammarians. i
They are, to be sure, typically concerned with the meanings of g*
expressions but not after the manner of the lexicographer. *"
The lexicographer is concerned with tabulating the rules for the -TQ
use of a word (explanations of its meaning) which will assist ^
the ignorant in understanding sentences in which it occurs and <Q
guide them in using it correctly in speech. The philosopher's Q
interest arises not in response to lexical ignorance, but in ^
response to an entanglement in the rules, entanglements
which are manifest in a characteristic form of philosophical fo
question, namely one which looks as if it is about the objec-
tive, language-independent nature of things, but is actually a
conceptual question; or a conceptual confusion.
IV
Among the problems that human beings in our culture have
raised for the past 2,500 years are questions concerning the
nature or essence of things; or concerning the existence of cer-
tain things; or concerning how certain things are possible and
why certain other things are necessary or impossible. Some of
these are evidently scientific questions, e.g. 'What is the nature
of hydrogen?', 'Is there an intra-Mercurian planet?', 'How is it
possible to split the atom?'. Others may equivocate between
a scientific question and a question which is not amenable
to scientific treatment, e.g. 'What is the nature of conscious-
ness?' or 'How is perception possible?' The psychological
and neuroscientific conditions and processes underpinning
consciousness and perception are the concern of the sci-
ences. But other questions are involved here too. For people
(including scientists) puzzle over what it is to be conscious
and whether we can be conscious of our own consciousness,
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over whether it is consciousness that characterizes the mind
and whether there is something which it is like to be conscious
and these are not answerable by experiment. Some ques-
tions are patently not scientific, e.g. 'Do universal exist or only
particulars?', 'Can one prove that God exists?', 'Do numbers
(classes, ethical values) exist?' or 'How is knowledge of the
external world (of other minds, the past, the future) possible?',
CN 'Why can nothing be both red and green all over?', 'What is
^ the nature of logical necessity?'
^ These questions, which are philosophical, are evidently
not amenable to resolution by scientific experiment or theory.
Q But they appear to be about the objective nature of things.
Q Hence it is evident why philosophy is commonly thought to
O^ be a cognitive discipline a form of super-physics. It seems
-Q that physics investigates the empirical contingencies of the
U world, while philosophy investigates the a priori necessary
- structure of the world.
O It is true that philosophical questions are a priori, i.e. they
^ are to be solved or dissolved independently of experience, by
1c a priori reflection and argument. It is, however, mistaken to
2" suppose that philosophy investigates the necessary (or 'meta-
G> physical') structure of reality for there is no such thing. What
O appears a super-physically necessary feature of the world is
^ actually an illusion generated by the norms of representa-
tion that determine our forms of description of reality. When
philosophical questions take on such deceptive appearances,
the task of philosophy is to dispel the illusion. It must show
how this illusion is generated by misunderstandings of the
conceptual structures we deploy in describing how things are.
So, for example, 'space and time form a unity', 'every event
has a cause', 'substances persist through change' are not
descriptions of reality, but norms of description.
Other philosophical questions take the form of questions
about the nature and essence of things, e.g. of mind or mat-
ter, of perception and perceptual qualities, of goodness and
beauty. These too appear to be about the language-independ-
ent nature of things. But no empirical investigation can answer
these questions, even though, as noted, there may be parallel
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scientific ones. Rather they are to be answered by conceptual
clarification, by describing the network of logical relationships
which are constitutive of the concept in question. Philosophi-
cal questions about the nature of knowledge, for example,
are requests for clarification of the conceptual connections,
compatibilities and incompatibilities between knowledge and
truth, belief, grounds and evidence, memory, imagination, per-
ception and so on connections which ramify throughout our - i
whole conceptual scheme. =
Not all conceptual questions call for the systematic descrip- *"
tion of conceptual reticulations over a given domain. In some -Q
cases, the questions rest upon misconceived presuppositions. ^
They do not need to be answered, but to be dissolved by (Q
bringing their presuppositions to light and showing them to Q
be misconceived. So, for example, the questions 'How do we ^
know of the existence of the external world?' or 'What do the
propositions of logic (or mathematics) describe?' or 'How can K>
we understand sentences we have never heard before?' are
confused. They do not need answers, but rather deep analytic
probing that will disclose their presuppositions.
In other cases, the answers to the questions are platitu-
dinous. For example, we know what other people think and
feel because they give expression to their thoughts and feel-
ings in speech and action. But this platitudinous answer is
inconsistent with apparent conceptual commitments, e.g. that
we cannot really know how others think and feel, because
any inference from their behaviour is always shaky, merely
inductive, or analogical, or a hypothetical inference to the
best explanation of the overt movements. Here philosophical
achievement consists in disentangling the knots in our under-
standing of our conceptual commitments which stand in the
way of seeing such platitudes as perfectly correct.
In yet others, achievement consists in shaking oneself free
of a misleading paradigm of explanation, derived perhaps from
science (as in postulating entities of a certain kind in order to
explain phenomena, e.g. monads, simple natures, Tractatus
simple objects). Or it may consist in liberating oneself from
the mesmerizing influence of a misguided analogy, derived
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perhaps from a superficially similar linguistic form (e.g. as in
holding 'exists' is a predicate like 'thinks'; or that having a pain
is a form of logically non-transferable ownership, as having a
penny is a form of transferable ownership; or that feeling a pain
and feeling a pin are both forms of perception; or that mental
images are 'just like' physical images, only mental).
Illumination comes from clarification of the conceptual struc-
"vj- tures we employ, from a perspicuous representation of the
0X1
relevant rules for the use of the problematic expression, and
^ from a description of the position the relevant concept holds
within the conceptual network.
Q^ Philosophy, then, has a concern with elucidating the uses
-p of words. But its concerns differ from those of the grammar-
U ian. It is guided not by pedagogy or by the requirement for
- a systematized overview of the syntax of a language, but by
O the kinds of problems it confronts. For those problems are
_O solved, resolved or dissolved by conceptual clarification and
!c by a priori argument.
2" Nor are the words which capture the attention of philoso-
fl* phers of any special interest to grammarians or lexicographers.
O They do not dwell long on 'sensation' and 'perception', on
^ 'know' and 'believe', or on 'act' and 'omit'. Nor do they have
any special concern with the categorial concepts which so
preoccupy philosophers, such as material object, material
stuff, space, time, event, state, process and cause or even
with such general concepts as lie at the heart of much phi-
losophy, e.g. person, mind, perceptual quality, good and evil,
truth and falsehood.
Philosophy's interest is typically with categorial, general or
pivotal concepts that play a structural, or at any rate a central
role in our thought. Accordingly, their forms shed light on con-
ceptual difficulties that may arise anywhere over wide ranges
of discourse. They include, to be sure, concepts and concept-
types presupposed by the sciences hence the venerable
idea that philosophy is more general and fundamental than
the sciences. More specific concepts may also call for care-
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ful description, e.g. of pretending, or of colour exclusion. But
these are typically of interest either to resolve a specific con-
ceptual difficulty, e.g. 'Why can't a new born child pretend?',
or because of the light they shed on more general problems,
e.g. of the nature of (one form of) necessity.
Philosophical problems arise out of conceptual unclarity and
confusion. The unclarity is a corollary of lack of an overview of
a concept or field of interlocking concepts. It would be wrong to - i
claim that these problems arise only 'when language is idling'. g
#
The conceptual difficulties produced by physics, psychology, or *"
brain-neuroscience do not arise when language is idling, but -Q
when it is working, in particular when it is working, e.g., across =5"
categorially distinct domains (energy and matter, the mental ^
and the behavioural, the neural and the psychological) the Q
logical relations between which is fiercely difficult to survey. ^
The confusion stems from many sources. One primary
source is the misleading features of a language, e.g. analogies 10
in language between forms of expressions which actually have
very different uses (geometrical theorems look like descrip-
tions of spatial relations, but are norms of description; ascrip-
tions of understanding resemble ascriptions of mental states
but are of abilities; 'the mind' looks as if it fulfils an analogous
role to 'the brain', but does not). There are many other sources,
e.g. analogies from the sciences or from mathematics, which
lead us to ask misconceived questions, or to answer concep-
tual questions on the wrong model; the temptation to explain
when only description of conceptual connections is legitimate;
a natural craving for generality when it is inappropriate; an
inability to detect our most basic presuppositions on which
some of our philosophical questions rest.
VI
An overview of a conceptual field or some part thereof is es-
sential to the solution or dissolution of any philosophical prob-
lem. Once the illuminating power of an overview is understood,
the investigation may assume an autonomous interest of its
own. For there is no doubt that appropriately general enquiry
into the ways our concepts and conceptual categories hang
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together possesses its own fascination. We crave not only to
understand the world we live in, but also to grasp the overall
structure of the way in which we conceive and understand it.
Philosophy, we may then say, has a Janus-faced character.
On the one hand, it is concerned with disentangling knots we
tie in our understanding, with dissolving conceptual confusions
in ordinary human life, in philosophy and in the sciences. On
so the other, it is concerned with elucidating the fundamental,
structural components in our conceptual scheme.
Are we not reverting to a conception of philosophy as a
cognitive discipline, viz. one concerned with attaining knowl-
i!2 edge of concepts and conceptual connections? That would
0 be misleading. The concepts under scrutiny are concepts
Q_ speakers of the language already possess. If the description
-Q of the features of the concept or concept-type deviates from
U a competent speaker's use, then the description is mistaken.
For the characterization of a concept is, implicitly or explicitly, a
O specification of the rules for the use of the term that expresses
_O the concept. The connections which philosophy articulates are
!c connections which any speaker of the language must have
2" grasped in order to satisfy the criteria of understanding for any
Q> instance of the concept-type in question. So the description
O of the conceptual articulations for which philosophy strives
^ cannot be new information in the sense in which science
produces new information. These descriptions, like those
of the descriptive grammarian, are not news to be greeted
with amazement, but general characterizations to be met by
reflective recognition and realization. The fact of recognition
warrants denying that philosophy attains new knowledge. The
fact of realization may give limited support to the idea that it
does, in a rather special sense, add to knowledge. However,
it would be more misleading than illuminating to count phi-
losophy among the cognitive disciplines.
VII
The picture of philosophy and its problems which I have
sketched out is one conception of the subject. It is, I believe,
appropriate for theoretical philosophy. So it can be extended to
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the philosophies of the special sciences. Although many of the
questions they pose are different from those above discussed,
they are concerned with conceptual questions and relation-
ships, with types and structures of explanation and relations
between types of explanation. But with regard to practical
philosophy, i.e. to ethics, political and legal philosophy, it is
only part of the tale. These departments of philosophy are
concerned with more than conceptual elucidation. Why that i
must be so is itself a deep philosophical problem. g*
7T
iv
l
-
n
IX -Q
Can there then be progress in philosophy? There cannot ^"
be progress in the sense in which there is in the sciences, i.e. <Q
accumulation of knowledge and attainment of more power- Q
ful explanatory theory. However, in another sense, there is ^
progress. And there is also unavoidable regress.
There is progress in so far as clearer distinctions are drawn, K>
conceptual differences are definitively identified, conceptual
connections are rendered explicit, and confusions dissolved.
The progress often appears less than it is. Often the distinc-
tions drawn become so engrained that we no longer recollect
that they were not always available, forget that the articulate
differentiation of certain concept-types, proposition-types, or
inference patterns has often been a hard-won insight obtained
from philosophical reflection. So the progress that has been
made is not recognised for what it is. Similarly, profoundly
tempting philosophical confusions and fallacies are revealed
for what they are and some of these sink permanently from
sight and are forgotten.
However, the progress may sometimes appear greater than
it is. A conceptual field may be partially illuminated for one
generation, only to be cast into shadow again. For cultural in-
novations occur (e.g. the invention of the computer, of function-
theoretic logic) and novel scientific theories are introduced,
(e.g. quantum mechanics, the Indeterminacy Principle, rela-
tivity theory). These may cast long shadows over conceptual
articulations previously clarified, requiring old ground to be
traversed afresh from a new angle (e.g., the need to clarify
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again the concept of mind in response to the temptation to
conceive of the human mind on a computational model).
There may also be regress. Unlike the sciences, which are
hierarchical, and which build upon antecedently acquired
knowledge and confirmed theory, philosophy is 'flat'. Hence
distinctions can be lost from sight, methods of clarification may
fall into disuse and the skills they require may vanish. Con-
co ceptual confusions are comparable to diseases diseases
of the intellect. They may be cured for one generation, but
the virus may undergo mutation and reappear in even more
j virulent form. So, for example, 'internal representations' are
. merely mutant sense-impressions; 'qualia' are Wittgensteinian
Q private objects in new guise. So a new cure must be found,
O^ appropriately adjusted to the mutation and its host.
Q The work of philosophy can have no end, for the forms of
U misunderstanding of conceptual connections are endless and
unpredictable. The ground has to be ploughed over again and
O again. Knowledge can be transmitted from one generation
_O to another. But understanding has to be achieved afresh by
x : each generation.
Q.
k.
* Peter Hacker is a Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford.
U
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