What Is Philosophy – On ‘The Cat That Isn’t There’: A. Circularity (Column 157)

With God’s help

Dedicated to Yishai, in appreciation for his steadfast devotion to the goal, in memory of days gone by

In the last two columns I proposed a general definition of philosophy, and also pointed to several perplexities concerning that definition and certain aspects of philosophy itself, such as the fact that it is non-empirical and seemingly treads water rather than progressing. Many accuse philosophy of being nothing more than word games. Most of those who make that accusation do not really understand the matter. It is a kind of light-minded ignorance, comfortable hurling unexamined and dismissive accusations instead of probing things in depth—a hobby especially common among scientists, who very much enjoy strengthening themselves and their field by disparaging philosophy (see, for example, a seemingly balanced and measured version of this in Bill Nye – Bill Nye, “the Science Guy,” here)[1].

Ron Aharoni’s critique, which will be discussed here, is different—both in the systematic knowledge and familiarity with philosophical issues displayed by its author, and in the seriousness of the thesis and its presentation. He does not throw around accusations and declarations, but presents a reasoned and properly constructed thesis based on knowledge and not merely on superficial impression, as is customary in these circles, and he demonstrates it through several of the most central issues in philosophy. This is the most serious critique of philosophy that I know of (although of course I do not know the literature of this criticism well enough, certainly not that written in other languages).

A word about the cat

I have already mentioned previously, and again at the end of the last column, the book by Ron Aharoni, a professor of mathematics at the Technion, bearing the strange title The Cat That Isn’t There – A Riddle Called ‘Philosophy’.[2] This title is based on a saying of William James (the pragmatist), brought as the book’s motto, which describes philosophy as follows:[3]

A philosopher is a blind man searching in a dark room for a black cat that isn’t there.

You can already smell the flavor of the critiques mentioned above.[4] This book is written with extraordinary sharpness, and it presents a unique and far-reaching thesis. According to Aharoni, all philosophical issues are nothing but different expressions of a single failure—circularity: a conflation of the inquiry with the object of inquiry, or of the human being as subject and as object. His claim is that this is indeed a fallacy, and not even a particularly complicated one, so it is no wonder that philosophy is stuck, says little, and does not progress at all. According to Aharoni, philosophy is a project in which one cannot advance because contradiction is built into it.

The main beauty of this book, beyond the manner of presentation and the sharp definition it gives of philosophy (which, as noted, portrays it as an empty shell), lies in its survey of the central problems of philosophy and its pointing to a single infrastructure underlying all of them, every last one. That is what most surprised me. For with an issue like Descartes’ cogito (“cogito ergo sum” – I think, therefore I am), the connection to this conflation is obvious and natural. But what does this have to do with the issues of determinism, skepticism, and solipsism, with problems in analytic philosophy (such as reference, color, and meaning), and so on? Aharoni grounds all of these in this specific fallacy, and that in itself is already a rather impressive achievement.

When I first read the book, I was quite shaken. It seemed to me that he was right, and if so, then I had devoted quite a few years of my life to dealing with nonsense. Even before that, my initial feeling was: how dare he?! Is he wiser than all the great philosophers in history? Exactly like the reactions I receive to some of my own radical statements in the areas of Judaism (thought and Jewish law). Precisely because of that, I stopped and told myself that I had to address his claims substantively. One cannot dismiss out of hand the possibility that perhaps he is right, and I am obligated to be honest and examine the matter on its merits.

After reading the first parts of the book I began corresponding with him by email, but the correspondence was interrupted and never ripened into a meeting (because he was abroad). Since then I have continued reading the book, as well as another of his books, Circularity, which among other things presents the same problems, and I came to the conclusion that he is not right. Even so, I remember the book as a thrilling and unsettling masterpiece. His devastating critique is certainly worth surveying and discussing, as much as space here will allow.

Warning, suggestions, and a request

Warning: my critique of Aharoni will require more than one column (not many—probably one or two more).

Suggestions: I ask and recommend that anyone reading this first read at least column 155, and very preferably also 156, before entering this column. For those who want to get the most out of it, it is also highly recommended to read Aharoni’s book before all these columns, so as to form your own impression. When one learns about some subject through a text that criticizes it, an injustice is done to the subject and the discussion is flattened.[5] I promise you that despite my critique, his book is definitely worth it. It is a real intellectual adventure, and I remember very few like it.

Request: in any case, anyone who has not read the previous columns is asked to be fair and not send questions in the comments to this column. Please spare my time.

Two preliminary remarks

It is important to understand that even if we do not agree with Aharoni’s assumption that this is a fallacy, one achievement he has apparently certainly attained: to place all of philosophy on a uniform foundation and offer this elusive field a consistent and comprehensive definition. If he is mistaken and this is not a fallacy, then Ron Aharoni has actually saved philosophy from several harsh critiques, since he has effectively shown that this is a field with its own place and a consistent, systematic definition. He came to curse and ended up blessing.[6]

A further remark, somewhat opposite in direction. The assumption that this is indeed a fallacy is also important for the methodology of the discussion itself. The fact that it is a fallacy strengthens the claim that this really is the foundation underlying all philosophical issues, because such a fallacy can explain the riddles that accompany philosophy (see above regarding the critiques, and we will return to these questions later): why it appears so detached and vague, and why there has been no progress in it over the years. It is really just churning water. By contrast, if we become convinced that this is not a fallacy, then perhaps there is room to reexamine whether it is indeed clear that this is truly the foundation of all philosophical issues, since that support for the thesis falls away.

From this it follows that, in approaching this book, we must examine the following two things: 1. Is this conflation indeed a fallacy? 2. Does it indeed stand at the basis of all philosophical issues? As noted, there may also be a connection between these two.

A look at the fallacy

Because of the importance of the fallacy itself, I will devote this entire column to the book’s introduction, which deals with it. It opens with an “allegory (in place of an introduction),” and then proceeds to reality. The reader will be able to see that the critique here essentially exhausts the discussion, and shows that it is rooted in what I wrote in the previous two columns. As for the rest—the remainder of the book and its analyses of the issues—those you can study in the columns to come. From this too you can see the debt of gratitude I owe Aharoni. The analysis and definition proposed in the previous two columns are a direct result of reading his book and responding to his critiques.

The allegory

The introduction begins with a story about an enlightened king of an enlightened country, which was run with exemplary order and integrity under the direction of the Auditor’s Office. One day the king awakens in terror, with a nagging fear in his heart that perhaps corruption has spread within the Auditor’s Office itself, since there is no one who audits it. Perhaps all that order and integrity are merely a hollow appearance, because the auditor receives bribes in order to overlook irregularities in other offices. The proposal to appoint a committee of four exceptionally upright people to audit the auditor did not calm the king’s mind, for the affliction could spread among them as well. It was then proposed that each day the four should review their conduct on the previous day and see whether they had acted properly. But this too did not convince him, since it might be too late. He therefore decided that they must examine their conduct in real time. Every time they do something, they must simultaneously examine whether that very act is proper and upright. That is, within their audit of the activities of the Auditor’s Office, they must also include their own act of examination itself (as noted, the four are a department within the Auditor’s Office).

His advisers told him that a person cannot examine the very act of examination itself, just as he cannot lift himself by clutching his own forelock. He can examine others, or his own past actions, but not the act of examination itself. But our determined king was unconvinced, and he established a committee of four as a department within the Auditor’s Office and, as stated, charged them with examining everything, including their own process of examination. Since a royal decree is a royal decree, the committee was established and began its impossible work. All of its actions were duly documented, as is customary, and of course those thick volumes contained tortuous lines of thought, riddles, and paradoxes, for a self-contradictory task that cannot be carried out naturally gives rise to a collection of such things.

Is every circularity problematic?

Before we come to the moral of the story (philosophy), I will already present here my main point of criticism regarding the claim that this is a fallacy. This thesis is not so simple. Aharoni assumes that one cannot audit all the activities of the Auditor’s Office, including the act of auditing itself, but I am not at all sure that this is true. If one examines modes of conduct in general, and those modes govern this audit as well, then such an audit is not impossible. One can conduct an examination while placing all actions under the microscope, including the act of examination. Later he gives several examples, such as the proposal to build a flashlight that illuminates itself or an eye that sees itself, but these are examples that are not necessarily relevant. The problem with the flashlight and the eye is not logical but physical. There is no logical impediment to a mechanism—and certainly a conceptual mechanism—that also acts upon itself. A flashlight and an eye are built in such a way that they cannot act upon themselves, but this is not a general principle that is always true. Therefore, at least on the principled level, there may well be a mechanism that examines itself as well (including the process of examination).

I have already mentioned here in the past Bertrand Russell’s theory of types (which appears in the introduction to his book with Whitehead, Principia Mathematica). Within that framework Russell proposes to solve all the paradoxes raised by self-reference, such as the liar paradox or the barber of Seville paradox (who shaves all the people who do not shave themselves), and the like. His proposal was to create a hierarchy of types of propositions, and to establish a rule in the language according to which each proposition may refer only to propositions from levels lower than its own (not including its own level). Thus all paradoxes of the self-referential type would be avoided, and all would be well.

The main problem with this solution (there are several others) is that it prohibits quite a few meaningful statements that are perfectly well-formed and do not lead to contradictions (at least not necessarily). In effect, it throws out a great many babies with the bathwater. There are quite a few statements that refer to themselves and to statements of their own type (=level) and do not lead to any paradox whatsoever. Take, for example, the following sentence: all sentences are composed of words. This sentence refers to itself as well (for it too is a sentence, and it too is composed of words). So indeed there is circularity here of the type Aharoni criticizes. But is there any paradoxicality here? I do not see one. Circularity that remains coherent (consistent) can certainly be legitimate.

The conclusion is that pointing to a circular dimension in some field or some claim is not enough to disqualify it or show that there is a fallacy in it. Not every self-reference or circular statement is a paradox. There is no doubt that self-reference is prone to creating paradoxes and fallacies, but it is not true that circularity is always paradoxical. Therefore, by merely pointing to the circularity in the king’s proposal (and in philosophy, which is the moral of the story), Aharoni has still not met the burden of proof.

This remark is also important because Aharoni writes, in the paragraph that concludes his introduction, the following:

It is clear to me that my definition of philosophy looks strange. Could an entire field be based on a mistake? Could tens of thousands of intelligent people have erred over hundreds of generations? Could serious thinkers have wasted their time on problems that stem from an absurd assumption? Could the general public’s regard for the field be rooted in misunderstanding? To this I have three answers. The first is that “strangeness” is not a substantive argument: even a strange claim may be true. My second answer is that this is indeed a strange claim, but it does not even come close in strangeness to philosophy itself. And since, as I shall try to show, all of philosophy’s enigmatic qualities are explained by this definition, it solves far more of a riddle than it poses…

He argues here that his definition not only poses a riddle (which is an argument against it) but solves several riddles, and that itself supports its validity. But if circularity is not necessarily a fallacy, then this explanatory advantage (the solving of the riddles) falls away. His proposal does indeed pose a riddle—an ad hominem one—but it does not offer an explanation for the enigmatic characteristics of philosophy (see further below). This is a possible connection between the two planes I pointed to in the section “Two preliminary remarks” above.

Two views of reality, or: the cat and I

Aharoni argues that the fictional allegory presented above is nothing but a parable for the essence of philosophy. I will cite his words in his own formulation through fairly extensive quotations from the introduction, and comment on them.

Here is the moral:

The field in question is philosophy. Without doubt the strangest and most distinctive among the branches of human thought. Ever since its birth it has been enveloped in a fog that refuses to disperse. On the one hand, it is easy to identify by the feeling it arouses: the absence of a point of support, the ground slipping from beneath one’s feet, the feeling of hanging in the air with no object to cling to. On the other hand, for thousands of years it has slipped like a slick eel from the grasp of those who try to define it. Even philosophers themselves have difficulty reaching agreement about what their field deals with, what its questions concern, and what would count as an answer to them.

Already here I would note that, in light of the analysis in the previous columns, much of this sense of mystery disappears. It may accompany philosophical paradoxes, but not the very enterprise of philosophy itself. Beyond that, I think the definition I proposed captures its meaning quite well. The slippery eel is nothing but a sturdy crocodile. The feeling of lacking a point of support does indeed exist, but I explained it by saying that philosophy deals not with sensory observations but with observation through intuition. This is a tool that is not uniform in all of us, and therefore there is a feeling (in my opinion not always justified) that it is hard to ground such arguments in a clear and persuasive way.

He now continues:

My aim is to solve this riddle. That is, to find the characteristic of a problem that people identify as “philosophical,” that element which, when hidden in a question or in a discourse, causes them to feel that this is philosophy…

As noted, I have a good explanation for that sense of the philosophical: when a person says something that sounds plausible but has no anchor in sensory observation, many of us find it very confusing. The fact that you think something does not make it true (as I noted, the world owes us nothing; it was here before us). As stated, the explanation that this is non-sensory (intuitive) observation gives entirely reasonable meaning to the sense of the philosophical that he describes.

Consider, for example, how we examine our own thoughts (something Aharoni also accepts. See below). Is this done by means of the senses? Certainly not. On the other hand, he himself argues forcefully that this is empirical examination in every respect. The meaning of this is that we have a capacity to observe things not by means of our senses. So why should we not also observe things outside us in a similar way? Whence the assumption that only the senses are a means of knowing the world, when the entire history of science (which, as noted, also contains non-empirical components) and philosophy shows the opposite? The assumption that only the senses can yield information about the world is what lies at the basis of the feeling of lacking a point of support that he describes, but this is a mistaken assumption.

Aharoni goes on to write:

Although this book deals with philosophy, it is not at all philosophical. Philosophers may appropriate the question “what is philosophy?” for themselves, but in truth it belongs to psychology—more specifically, to the psychology of thinking. Its meaning is: how does the concept of philosophy operate in human minds? The recognition of what structure of thought causes the concept-light to blink in their minds? And this is an entirely psychological question. Its solution requires observation of reality, and as philosophers themselves agree, a philosophical question cannot be answered through observation of the world…

Here another assumption of his is exposed. From his perspective, the question of what philosophy is is a descriptive question: what people call philosophy, and therefore the way to address it is with scientific tools of observation. But as I argued in the previous column, people can also be mistaken (indeed they make extensive use of that ability). Therefore the important question is not what people think, but what the field itself is. This is a question about the idea and not about what people think about it. In other words, the question concerns not the concept or the linguistic term, but the idea itself, which is part of reality. But observing the idea (as distinct from observing people) is not a scientific-observational act, as he assumes.

And in his own terms, philosophers may perhaps agree that one cannot answer a philosophical question through sensory observation of the world, but the more clear-headed among them must admit that we use another mode of observation, which is also some kind of observation of the world. Aharoni is in effect translating philosophy into empirical science—psychology, in this case—the very mistake against which I warned in the previous two columns. He is simply begging the question. He assumes that there is no field that is neither science nor subjective hallucination, and arrives at the surprising conclusion that … there is no philosophy; either it is science or it is subjective hallucination.

He now continues and writes:

I claim that there is a very specific structure of thought that creates the sense of the philosophical. This is the structure that appeared in the allegorical story: the assumption that there is no separation between investigator and investigated, that is, self-observation, out of the (mistaken) belief that the system being observed is the one being used for the observation. That assumption cannot be correct, because the inquiry is supposed to perform an impossible feat—to be an eye that sees itself without the help of a mirror, or a flashlight that illuminates itself.

I have already commented above on the eye and the flashlight. These are examples that do not necessarily reflect a logical necessity. The sentence “All sentences are composed of words” refers to itself as well, and there is no principled problem with that. Therefore there is no principled impediment to a system that investigates itself as well. The claim that circularity here creates paradoxes or problems requires proof, and Aharoni has not yet provided that proof (that is of course what is done later in the book, when he moves on to analyze the philosophical issues and show that resolving the circularity causes them to evaporate. See on this in the following columns).

He now sharpens the problem:

The story is simple: philosophers investigate human thought. But human thought is part of the world and is in principle no different from the thought of baboons, whose investigation arouses no such sense of the philosophical. The uniqueness of philosophy lies not in what it investigates, but in the way it investigates. As noted, it is a way that does not separate subject and object, investigator and investigated. The philosopher assumes that he investigates human thought from two positions simultaneously: from within and from without. From within, as the possessor of the thought, and from without, as an observer of it…

I agree with all of this. Human thought is part of the world, and therefore its investigation requires observation of this part of the world. But I do not agree that this is no different from investigating the thought of baboons. It is very different, because observing baboons requires ordinary scientific observation, whereas observing ourselves requires the use of intuition rather than sensory and scientific tools of observation. Moreover, as I explained, philosophy is not the study of human thought. It is the study of ideas by means of intuition. This inquiry clarifies concepts and ideas, and therefore it appears to be a clarification of terms and conceptual notions. But it is not. The clarification of concepts is only the result of the philosophical inquiry—that is, of observing ideas—and not its essence.

From here we can also understand why his conclusion is not correct:

Proper self-observation cannot proceed in this way. A system that observes itself must divide itself into two separate domains, investigator and investigated. Once it does so, the observation will in every respect resemble observation of another person, and as we shall see throughout the book, the investigation of a person wholly separate from you cannot be philosophical.

I, by contrast, claim that proper philosophical inquiry certainly can proceed in this way, for two reasons: 1. Separation is not necessarily required, since not every circularity is a paradox. 2. Contrary to his assumption, philosophy is not the study of our thinking but the study of non-material parts of reality itself (ideas), which are inaccessible to observational science. In my opinion these are the two basic errors in his entire book. At first glance this seems very persuasive, but on second thought, and after internalizing the definition of philosophy described in the previous two columns, one can quite easily see where he goes wrong. My claim is that there are two views of reality. The cat’s view (presented in Aharoni’s book) is one of them, but there is another—mine—and it too is coherent and reasonable, no less so and perhaps more so.

A concise summary of Aharoni’s view

Aharoni summarizes his main thesis:

All this may be summed up in two statements:

• Observation of another is not philosophy.
• Proper self-inquiry is in every respect similar to inquiry into another.

…to prove my definition of philosophy, I undertake to show that every philosophical problem disappears or ceases to be philosophical when it is transposed onto another person… The conclusion from these two statements is that the sense that something is philosophical stems from an improper conceptual structure. In proper inquiry there is no philosophy.

This describes the mechanism of the discussion throughout the book. What he does in every philosophical topic is to show that, once one makes the distinction between investigator and investigated, the problem “evaporates” as if by magic—that is, it becomes either a scientific problem or a pseudo-problem. Therefore, in his view, no niche remains that deserves a separate label (philosophy). My task in what follows will be to show why the problem is well-defined and does not evaporate even according to my own conception.

Summary

So far we have seen that the fallacy to which Aharoni points is not necessarily a fallacy. But as I explained at the beginning of my remarks, that is not enough. We must now examine each philosophical issue and see whether Aharoni indeed succeeds in converting it into either a scientific problem or a pseudo-problem by separating investigator from investigated. If the conversion is convincing, then perhaps he is right and the source of philosophy lies in a faulty conflation. That is, perhaps a circular conflation of investigator and investigated really is like the flashlight and the eye, and is indeed a faulty conflation. But if the conversion is merely possible and not necessary, then we will have to decide whether, in our opinion, this is faulty circularity or rather legitimate circularity (unlike the flashlight and the eye).

Moreover, even if the scientific conversion he proposes is correct, one may still argue that although separating investigator from investigated turns the problem into a scientific or an illusory one, since it is not correct to separate investigator from investigated, there remains a parallel problem that must be solved, and that is a problem in philosophy. In other words, every problem and issue in philosophy may in fact decompose into two different problems: 1. a scientific problem (when investigator and investigated are separated) and a philosophical problem (when they are not separated). Since there are two different problems here, we must solve them both. A scientific solution does not eliminate the philosophical problem, although perhaps the reverse can happen (a good philosophical analysis can make scientific treatment of these issues unnecessary).

Take, for example, the question of the definition of philosophy itself, which as noted is also a philosophical question, and which Aharoni too converts into a descriptive-scientific question. Even if Aharoni is right that it can be converted into a scientific question—why people call something philosophy (and even that not entirely, since no ordinary use of the senses is involved here)—one can still ask, in parallel, what philosophy itself is (the idea), and that is already a philosophical question. In other words, asking what philosophy is is entirely analogous to asking what democracy is. One may discuss the term and the concept (in which case it is a descriptive-scientific discussion), and one may discuss the idea (in which case it is a philosophical discussion).

A brief appendix in closing

Aharoni himself speaks of investigating human thought through scientific observations—of others or even of myself (with the necessary separation). I already asked above: by what tools, in his view, is this investigation carried out? After all, the senses are not involved. I do not grasp my thinking through the senses, but directly.[7] On the face of it, his proposal to separate investigator and investigated does not really transfer the problem from the realm of philosophy to the scientific realm, since even in this formulation it is not accessible to the tools of scientific observation. Above I remarked that perhaps self-perception is done through intuition and not through the senses, and therefore the investigation of my own thinking is always philosophical in character and cannot be translated scientifically. I already mentioned in the previous column Leibowitz’s remark about the humanities, which do not use sensory observations because they study the subjective dimension that is inaccessible to objective tools of observation. I explained there that when a person observes himself he is indeed doing something quasi-scientific, but not by means of the senses. I will now elaborate on this a bit more.

I should preface the discussion with Schopenhauer’s remark on Kant. Kant distinguished between the world of things as they are in themselves (the noumena) and the world of things as they appear to our eyes (the phenomena). Schopenhauer noted that there is one exception to this distinction:[8] self-perception. When a person perceives himself, he perceives the noumenon and not the phenomenon. Moreover, he does so not through the senses, and therefore this is not science in its usual sense. It is observation by means of non-sensory cognitive tools, apparently something like intuition.

In this case, however, I am not sure that this is intuition. There may perhaps be room to say that this is scientific perception not through the senses. When we perceive some external object, the senses transmit the information to us and the intellect translates it (by means of the brain), and thus information is formed within us and stored in the brain. When we observe ourselves (self-awareness), we do so without the mediation of the senses. Here the scientific information is formed directly and stored in the brain. According to this, perhaps this is truly scientific inquiry (and not philosophical-intuitive inquiry), except that in this case it is carried out without the need for mediation by the senses.

[1] I will return to this critique, and to the critique written about it, in one of the columns to come.

[2] Magnes, Jerusalem 2009.

[3] From his essay Some Problems of Philosophy, chapter 1.

[4] And if the alternative is pragmatism, a ridiculous philosophical approach (which is really just inconsistent skepticism), that is all the more astonishing.

[5] Like learning about Christianity or evolution from the books of the late Avraham Korman, as was common in our youth.

[6] This reminds me of what I once thought about homosexuality. Many people today struggle with the question whether there is a halakhic-interpretive mechanism that could justify a halakhic permit for homosexual relations. At first glance it seems that there is not, since this is a prohibition stated explicitly in the Torah (something even the Sadducees acknowledge). But as I once wrote here, specifically Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, who came to take a stringent position regarding homosexuals, may provide a basis for such a consideration. He writes that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not place before people a challenge they cannot meet, and therefore it is clear to him that this is not nature but the evil inclination. He intended to be stringent regarding the phenomenon, but if he is right, that itself may serve as a possible basis for changing the conclusion in the opposite direction: if we become convinced that homosexuality is nature and not inclination (at least in some cases), then the conclusion is that the Torah does not prohibit it for such people (for according to his assumption it does not demand of a person a task he cannot fulfill). What it prohibited is only such relations between people for whom this is not their nature (or at least those who have another option, such as bisexuals).

[7] One can of course convert this into research on people’s actions. If I accept that a person’s report represents his thinking, then I can investigate his thinking through my senses (sight and hearing). I listen to or read his words and infer from this what he thinks. Aharoni will probably describe the psychology of thinking in this flattened way. This is a field concerned with describing the ways people express themselves (which apparently reflect their thinking). But he ignores the fundamental importance of self-observation, which underlies even our observation of others (I interpret them through what I know about myself. Even the assumption of the very existence of a mental dimension in them is the basic problem of other selves). See the discussion of the cogito in the previous column.

[8] See in this connection Shalom Rosenberg’s interesting article, HaRe’iyah and the Blind Crocodile (=Schopenhauer), in the collection Le-Oro.