The Big Questions

Book Review:

Simon Blackburn, "Think: A compelling introduction to philosophy", Oxford University Press, 1999.

Why did I read this introductory philosophy text? Well, firstly, to refresh my knowledge, and secondly, because it was suggested by Conceptually.org  as a book that can improve one's "cognitive toolkit" (the other books are on my to-read list as well).

I will say upfront that this book deals only with Western analytic philosophy, and that it does not even cover all the influential philosophers and their theories within analytic philosophy. For example, Hobbes, Rousseau, Bentham, Peirce, Ayer, Popper, Rawls and Searle are nowhere mentioned in Think. That being said, the book does a fair job of presenting the core areas and classic thinkers of philosophy:

• Chapter 1 is about knowledge (or epistemology), or how we can think about the relation between our perceptions of reality and reality itself. Simon Blackburn begins with René Descartes's "Meditations" -- using the idea of a duplicitous Evil Demon to cause us to doubt all our beliefs, except the famous "cogito, ergo sum" (I think, therefore I am). Descartes then uses the trademark argument to assert that because we can conceive of a perfect being, this idea must have been caused by God, and that God would not let us be deceived by an Evil Demon. However, this argument is flawed, because (a) it need not be the case that a cause bears resemblance to its effects; and (b) it is a circular argument to say that we can only trust our perceptions if we first know that God exists, but to know that God exists we must first have clear and distinct perceptions of Him. David Hume criticized Descartes, arguing that there is no "original principle" from which we can deduce all our beliefs. Rather, our system of beliefs is based on our natural experience, which we simply have to trust while correcting for illusions and mirages. This leads us to the four main positions in epistemology:
• Rational foundationalism, as attempted by Descartes.
• Natural foundationalism, as attempted by Hume.
• A further position that shrugs off the need for any foundation, and instead says that our beliefs should hang together in a coherent structure. This is called coherentism.
• Finally, the view that there is no knowledge: scepticism.
• Chapter 2 is about the philosophy of mind, or how to understand the place of our minds in nature. Here again, Blackburn begins with Descartes, who said that mental events (e.g. subjective experiences) are made of a different substance than are physical events (e.g. electrochemical impulses in the brain). This doctrine is called substance dualism. However, if we accept this view, then how can we be sure that other people are conscious, or that their mental events are in any way similar to ours? Moreover, what does consciousness or the lack of consciousness actually do? At this point, Blackburn introduces the philosophers John Locke, who believed that mind-body interaction is mediated by the "arbitrary will and good pleasure of God"; and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who disagreed and argued that the reason for mental events must be located in the physical. In passing, Blackburn notes a couple of 20th-century thinkers (Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore, W.V. Quine) who tried to use analysis to reduce the mental to the physical. For example, a mental state like pain might be described in terms of behavioral dispositions. However, other qualia (e.g. the taste of coffee) are harder to describe this way. In the case of colors, the science of retinal cones can help us solve the mystery; but in the case of thoughts themselves, we have been less successful.
• Chapter 3 is titled free will, which is self-explanatory. Although we feel like we are free, we cannot control the past -- and therefore, we cannot control the present or the future, since those are determined by the past. But the stranger dilemma is that even if we deny determinism, we still lose freedom and responsibility, since events would happen by random chance. Here Blackburn quotes Arthur Schopenhauer, who argued that just because we aren't conscious of the causal background needed for us to act, it doesn't mean that we are conscious of its absence. However, we can construct an argument for compatibilism -- i.e. the view that our decisions are outputs of causal routes, but that since these routes pass through our brains' "software modules" (e.g. we absorb information, generate options, rank the options etc.), we can still say that we choose the output. Hence, we are part of the causal order; the way in which the past controls the future. Indeed, there is a kind of argument called the lazy sophism: "the future is already written, so do nothing". Blackburn challenges the lazy sophism, saying that whether you do nothing or you get cracking makes a difference, so you might as well do the latter, since only then will you reach the summits of mountains.
• Chapter 4 dives more deeply into how we think about the self. Many people, including Descartes, believe that "the I" is not merely an animal body, but some kind of soul or essence that can change shape and form and even exist without a body. The philosopher Thomas Reid argued that the soul is not composite, and is therefore indivisible. His contemporary John Locke, however, pointed out that we regard plants and animals as having the same identity even after their material substance changes, so why do we even need to postulate an "immaterial soul substance" to ensure the survival of persons through time and change? Likewise, Immanuel Kant argued that such an immaterial substance would be opaque to our understanding, and for all we know might also change. Meanwhile, Hume thought that the self is merely an aggregate of experiences; an unowned "bundle". But does it make sense to talk about unowned experiences when experiences are always attached to some subject? Blackburn, paraphrasing Kant, says that we need to think in terms of a self when we interpret the positions of objects in space and time, because only then can we differentiate between stationary and moving objects.
• Chapter 5 is about God, or the philosophy of religion. Some folks maintain that religion is a matter of social or emotional expression rather than a matter of true or false statements, but Blackburn reminds us that religions have made definite claims about the world, and this chapter essentially comprises a number of arguments for the existence of God along with rebuttals. Similar to Descartes' "trademark" argument is the ontological argument of St. Anselm, which says that something that exists in reality is greater than something that only exists in the imagination, and since God is defined as the greatest entity, He must exist. But with this argument you could prove the existence of the greatest anything! The cosmological argument by St. Thomas Aquinas says that the physical universe must have a first cause which is itself uncaused, and that is God. Hume criticized this argument by saying that the term "necessarily existent" is meaningless, and that in any case the material universe itself might be the independently existing entity. A similar argument is the argument from design, which says that based on our experience, it looks like the universe was designed by a "wise architect". However, experience actually tells us that a fragile physical cause (e.g. evolution) is more likely to be responsible than a self-sustaining mind. Indeed, there is the well-known problem of evil: why would an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving God allow a world containing suffering and death? Some people see reason for faith in the occurrence of miracles; but the problem with miracles according to Hume is that it would be less surprising that the testimony of an event is false (due to e.g. deception, lapses of memory, delusions, misunderstandings etc.) than that the event actually happened. Other people, like Blaise Pascal, believe that the potential payoff of believing in God, whether He exists or not, is higher than that of not believing. But here the problem is that we don't know whether this scenario is in fact the choice that we face. At this point, some people retreat to the virtue of blind faith (fideism).
• In Chapter 6, Blackburn takes the reader on a tour through methods of reasoning, including formal logic, inductive and scientific reasoning. Formal logic, with its concern for validity (i.e. that there is no way for the conclusion of an argument to be false if its premises were true) dates back to Aristotle. However, it was only after the work of Gottlob Frege that people were able to "look inside" a proposition and understand it in terms of the subject-predicate form of information. Using quantifiers, we can explain why statements like "everyone has a mother, so there is someone who is everyone's mother" are wrong. However, formal logic is not that great at dealing with implicature in everyday human language; and moreover, we often don't need watertight reasoning, but merely plausible or likely conclusions. We make inferences about the future based on past experience. Unfortunately, this kind of reasoning suffers from the problem of induction (explicated by Hume). While we can use equations like Bayes's theorem (named after Thomas Bayes) to calculate the probability of some hypothesis given the evidence, we cannot "prove" it. Nevertheless, induction plays a prominent role in science. According to Thomas Kuhn, the paradigms of scientific explanations can change via revolutionary science; which is not to say that all possible paradigms are equally good -- indeed, the scientific process is self-corrective.
• Chapter 7 is about the world (or metaphysics and ontology). Since the days of Galileo Galilei people have perceived a distinction between primary qualities (e.g. spatial and temporal properties) and secondary qualities (e.g. red colors, sweet tastes, foul smells, or loud sounds) of objects. This brings us back to Cartesian doubt: our senses may not provide us with clear and distinct data, because that is not their purpose -- their functioning in helping us survive and flourish does not depend on the subjective experience we get (as long as they stimulate the right kind of action). Hence the dualism between the scientific/absolute image of the world, and the manifest image of the world as it appears to us through our senses. George Berkeley objected to this kind of view, arguing that when you subtract the secondary qualities, you're left with nothing. Berkeley's philosophy is known as subjective idealism. Kant also disagreed with the idea that our internal mental images resemble external objects, but unlike Berkeley he thought that concepts (like space, shape, time etc.) are still related to the "real world" because our minds use them as organizing principles for interpreting data. Kant's view is called transcendental idealism, because the way we think about the world determines the manifest image. But does this mean that nothing exists outside our own minds? Well, there are three traditional perspectives:
• Realism, which says that the rules that govern our use of concepts have a real, objective existence. One version of realism is called Platonism.
• Conceptualism, which says that rules are created by our shared responses arising from our shared human natures. For example, a conceptualist may say that the concept of "hysteria" is useful if it helps us draw the boundaries around a particular kind of condition (even if it's not a "real" phenomenon).
• Nominalism, which says that there aren't really any rules at all, and that any word is as good as any other; all there is are humans who have dispositions to use words. According to Blackburn, this view is prevalent in "postmodernism" (whereas "analytical philosophy" favors realism or naturalism).
• Finally, Chapter 8 is concerned with the issue of practical reasoning and ethics; i.e. what to do. Blackburn uses the word "concerns" to refer to factors which move us into action, including desire, duty, or even habit. Sometimes we want to avoid losing our concerns or being deceived about whether our concerns are met; other times we do not identify with our concerns (e.g. the case of addiction). People have many different concerns, but we expect people to have certain concerns, such as being honest. There are common components of "a good life" (e.g. health, happiness, achievements, dignity, friendships, love, family) as well as boundaries of proper conduct (e.g. being honest, cooperative, considerate, fair, well-meaning etc.). Out of the latter arises the golden rule: "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." However, there is a debate between cognitivism and non-cognitivism: do we have the concern to promote X because we think X is a good reason for action (cognitivism) or do we think that X is a good reason for action because one of our concerns is to promote X (non-cognitivism)? If the former is correct, then ethics can have a basis in some kind of Truth; but Blackburn asserts that the latter side has the advantage because whether or not some fact weighs with an agent is always contingent. This does not mean that all sets of concerns are equal; those concerns that lead to lives that are "loyal, friendly, grateful, prudent, sympathetic, fair" (p.286) are better than those that lead to the opposite. Ultimately, our concerns can change as the result of practical argument. This kind of debate need not be manipulative -- we can do it while taking into account and addressing others' points of view. But what about relativism? Well, Blackburn says that we can still see some cultures as trespassing boundaries that matter to us, and express our sympathies and values, perhaps inspecting them in the process; after all, that is what practical reasoning is about.

In addition to the names highlighted in bold above, Ludwig Wittgenstein is also mentioned on several occasions throughout the text, although not really in detail. It seems like, in terms of coverage, Blackburn thinks the most important Western philosophers are Descartes, Locke, Kant and Hume.

Naturally, the book does not cover all the contributions of even these four thinkers, and (perhaps more importantly) my summary of it does not cover all the points made in the book. One of the main reasons to read Think is to follow Simon Blackburn's chain of reasoning, and to see how he approaches various philosophical challenges. As other reviewers of the book have noted, it's not necessarily an easy book to read despite being an introduction, because it actually requires you to think! (This is appropriate given the title.) If you want a quick overview of the history of Western philosophy, an engaging book that I would suggest is Nigel Warburton's "A Little History of Philosophy". Scott Alexander recommends Bertrand Russell's "A History of Western Philosophy" and Luke Muehlhauser recommends Norman Melchert's "The Great Conversation" (although I can't vouch for either of these two). Nevertheless, Blackburn's Think is a good choice if you want a book that takes the arguments seriously and engages with them (rather than merely describing them).

Although the content of Think is very concise, the author writes using clear language and sometimes fits in a joke or quip. The chapters cover different issues in philosophy, yet Blackburn manages to show how they link together. For example, Cartesian dualism shows up in chapters 2, 3 (the "Real You" having interventionist control), and 4 (the immortal soul). Overall, the book is not a bad book.

I rate this book 3/5 because (a) its introduction to philosophy is somewhat incomplete -- it doesn't mention the different theories of truth (e.g. correspondence theory, coherence theory, pragmatist theory) nor the different theories of ethics (e.g. utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics) nor theories of political philosophy (e.g. liberalism, communitarianism, distributive justice); (b) the subject matter is mainly theoretical and abstract, without discussion of practical issues like animal rights, euthanasia, abortion, charity, CEO compensation etc. -- which are no doubt issues that would draw many people to philosophy in the first place; and (c) Blackburn claims at the end of the book that he "[has] not tried to coerce people into one set of doctrines or views", yet he clearly favors atheism over theism, and non-cognitivism over cognitivism, and realism over nominalism, and compatibalism over incompatibilism, and he is critical of substance dualism.

Perhaps I am being slightly unfair to this book because I was familiar with most of the content before reading it, so I cannot judge it from the perspective of somebody who knows less about philosophy. Someone else might very well give it 4/5 stars.

In any case, Think provides a collection of useful mental models:

• The apparent conflict between determinism and free will
• The difference between descriptive and prescriptive (normative) language when talking about reasons that move people
• Bayes's Rule as a case of inductive reasoning
• The difference between validity and soundness in argumentation
• The idea of a paradigm shift in science

It also reminds us of the role of philosophy: to help us reflect on questions that are harder to answer empirically; questions about knowledge, reason, truth, mind, freedom, destiny, identity, God, goodness and justice. Questions like "What am I, and could I survive my bodily death?" "Why does causation always run from past to future, and why does nature keep on in a regular way?" "What is knowledge, and how are we to tell whether our opinions are objective or just subjective?"

Such questions matter because (i) we might choose to value self-reflection for its own sake; or (ii) that reflection influences how we conduct our lives in practice; or (iii) that reflection helps us resist unthinking oppression. Hence Blackburn's definition of philosophy as "conceptual engineering": the study of the structure of thought.

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For those who want to get better acquainted with philosophy, I would recommend Think but supplemented with one or two of the following titles:

• Blackburn, S. (2001). Being Good. Oxford University Press.
• Chalmers, A. (2013). What is this thing called science? New York: McGraw-Hill Education.
• Creel, R. (2001). Thinking Philosophically: An introduction to critical reflection and rational dialogue. Oxford: Blackwell.
• Horner, C. & Westacott, E. (2000). Thinking through Philosophy: An introduction. Cambridge University Press.
• Swift, A. (2014). Political Philosophy: A beginner's guide for students and politicians. Cambridge: Polity Press.