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18th April 2020
'Pseudo Problems' in Philosophy
There are few, and perhaps no, genuine 'problems' in philosophy, and the majority are self-inflicted ones arising from holding inappropriate presuppositions.
A 'problem' is a difficulty, something which needs to be resolved or removed but that cannot be done easily. Sometimes, when attempts at resolution fail, the reason why is that the problem has been approached in a wrong way because the problem has been misidentified.
All, or most, philosophical 'problems' are like that, and, instead of pushing on in the same old way, with counter-counter-examples upon counter-examples, and then counter-counter-counter examples upon them, in a parody of Ptolemaic ellipses, what is required is a complete reversal and reflection upon what we are inappropriately presupposing. The clearest example of this is that of the long-standing 'Gautier' problems arising from the accepted or 'standard' definition of knowledge as 'true-belief plus good reasons or evidence'. But what else can they be but ones we know and do not merely believe to be both true and also to support our claims to know the object in question. It takes no great intelligence to realise that this generates an ever-growing infinite number of infinite regresses. Yet so far I have not met any acknowledgement of this.
So, what is the inappropriate presupposition behind this 'problem'?
It is that a clear line can be drawn be drawn between 'mere' belief and knowledge.
Instead we need to recognise that knowledge, and all our thinking and action, rest on 'mere' belief in the form of certain absolute presuppositions which we hold acritically because any attempt to 'criticise', 'found' or 'justify' them necessarily depends upon absolutely presupposing and tacitly using them. Such absolute presuppositions are that our memories, perceptions and other mental powers are generally reliable, but can err, so that we cannot but trust them until we have good reasons to modify or reject them. Philosophically we need a 'scale of forms', as set out by Collingwood, of degrees of knowledge from mere guessing via estimation, and degrees of probability, to a coherent system of interlocking beliefs. In other words, a fiduciary and falibilist epistemology, like his own and like Michael Polanyi's.
Moreover, the books and articles on 'the problem of knowledge' contradict themselves at the outset. For if knowledge were necessarily, essentially, and always a 'problem', how could we know that it is? Any such claim would be riddled with the same 'problem' that it would be supposed to state. Problems of lesser degrees may occur with respect to knowledge, but there can be no 'problem' of knowledge itself.
I shall return to this theme with the examples of the 'problems' of free will and determinism, 'other minds', and values and value- scepticism.
Richard Allen/R.T. Allen
Welcome to my website!
For my publications I prefer 'R.T. Allen' because there are many other 'Richard Allen's on the web. But some editors have automatically and without my permission used 'Richard Allen' and, still worse, 'Richard T. Allen' which I strongly dislike. Please check my Bibliography to see if a publication which has either of the latter pair as the author, is really by me.Horton4rdHorton4rd
After a few biographical details, these notes will focus upon my academic and other interests.
D.O.B: 7th August, 1941; at Horton (with Hackleton and Piddington), 6 miles south east of Northampton
1945-1953 Attended Hackleton Primary School
1953-1960 Attended Northampton (Town & County) Grammar School for Boys—a wholly local authority school.
GCEs: (General Certificate of Education, for Grammar schools in England and Wales)
'O' Levels (Ordinary Level for school-leaving at 15 for Grammar Schools) 1956:
English, Maths, French, Latin, Greek, History, Religious Instruction.
'A' Levels (Advance Level at 18 for entry to university and professions) 1959:
Economics, History, Pure Maths
Pure Maths was a great mistake! No one told me it was very different from '0' Level Maths , my 3rd best subject. The Senior English Master suggested that I should take English, and the Senior Classics Master to take Latin (my 2nd best subject) and Greek, which would have made me work harder! I would not have secured a place to read Greats at Oxford—Latin and Greek for 2 yrs and then Philosophy or Ancient History for finals—but I might have worked more at Philosophy, which by the time I left school was my real interest rather than Politics (with History and Philosophy subsidiary) at which I began at Nottingham but soon changed to he full course in Philosophy with History subsidiary.
1960 British Constitution.
'S' Levels (Scholarship Level, specifically for entry to University; to show how candidates can use what they know):
Economics and History, 1959.
School Prizes 1960: Economics, History, Public Speaking (Debate at London School of Economics, seconding William Rees-Mogg proposing 'That the defence of the Pound Sterling should the prime aim of British Economic Policy')
P.S. This record may look good but I did not take full advantage of what I was offered at the time nor later: e.g. at school I didn't read the books by Marshall and Keynes which our Economics master lent me, nor the Republic that the Headmaster lent me. Again in my B.A. courses, I didn't read Plato in the Greek, Descartes and Spinoza in the Latin, nor Leibniz and Sartre in the French, nor read as much as I should around the set texts.
For my work in teaching at a school, Colleges of Education and Universities go to Academic CV and Bibilography
Between appointments I had various jobs and periods of unemployment, ending with 4 years as a mostly part-time driver at a local car auction.
I still live in Loughborough, am married, since 1977, with 2 grown up children, and write, edit and publish books and articles on philosophy. I began the journal, Appraisal, in 1996, and then founded the British Personalist Forum which continues to publish Appraisal, now relaunched as Open Access, and to organise workshops and conferences on British and other personalist philosophers and philosophies, and to promote original contributions to personalist philosophy. My special interests are the philosophical works of Michael Polanyi, R.G. Collingwood, Max Scheler,Gabriel Marcel, Aurel Kolnai and Lucian Blaga, Romania's most important philosopher and 2nd most important poet. See also Current Projects and Miscellaneous unpublished papers
My other interests are:
Theology. To improve my unsystematic knowledge of theology I studied for my external BD, which then allowed me to work for an external PhD. I also began to teach Religious Studies at Loughborough. But we failed to recruit sufficient students. My interest is mostly in the philosophical aspects of theology including how Christian theism can be applied to human life.
As for my churchmanship, I favour more 'High Church' traditions and now attend All Saints, the historic Parish Chruch of Loughborough
Politics. I have been a loyal Conservative even during the lean of years of decline, knee-jerk Keynesianism, specious 'modernisation' and sheer incompetence under Macmillan, Heath, Major, Cameron and May. Since returning from Trinidad I have been a candidate in several local elections in unwinable wards. My politics have been those of Edmund Burke ever since reading his Reflections on the Revolution in France in 1958. That is social conservatism and tradition plus free market economics as the default economic policy.
History. I have always liked to read history books and biographies (but not those of contemporary persons), especially ones on political history and more recently military history.
Literature. I prefer books, poems and plays prior to about 1960, with the exception of those by Muriel Spark, historical 'mystery' novels especially by C.S. Ransom, Steven Saylor and Lindsey Davies, and the more literary detective stories by Raymond Chandler, Ian Rankin, P.D. James and Henning Mankell, and almost everything by Alexander McCall Smith. My favourite poets are John Betjeman and T.S. Eliot.
Music. As with literature, little after about 1960. My favourite composers are late Romantics, above all Rachmaninoff, plus Samuel Barber, Dvorak, Sibelius, Rodriguez, Puccini; British composers: first and foremost Elgar and Vaughan Williams, then Parry, Holst, Ireland, Finzi, Moeran, Howells, Gurney and other English 'pastoral' composers; and Walton. I am not so keen on Britten.
Even more so with light and popular music, my tastes were fixed by 1960 after which 'rock'and 'pop' drowned out most singers who could really sing and songs with singable tunes. Before then Eric Coates and Albert Ketelby; the 'romantic dramas with music' by Ivor Novello, 'Bless the Bride' by Vivian Ellis, tunes by Charles Williams especially 'The Dream of Olwen', Franz Lehar's The Land of Smiles, and the songs in Sir Thomas Allen's Songs My Father Taught Me and 'More Songs My Father Taught Me, plus the compilation DVD English Song. The BBC's Radio 2 used to have programmes full of such music, especially on Friday and Sunday evenings, but now they are little different from the non-stop 'pop' on Radio 1. At least Radio 3 plays some as well as featuring British serious music in almost every broadcast.
Visual art. Like many people, I suppose, I respond less to painting and sculpture than to literature, drama and music. I do not like 'modern' and abstract art, though I do grasp the meaning of and respond to Picasso's Guernica. I particularly like the later El Greco when he was in Spain, Velazquez, Goya, Constable and Turner, the Impressionists and Cezanne. I particularly dislike painters of the 16th-18th centuries who painted scenes of classical myths or included classical motifs such as putti, especially in Biblical scenes, irrespective of the manifest mastery of their media.
Films. I grew up on Westerns and still have a soft spot for such as the original Stage Coach and Ford's '5th Cavalry' trilogy. But by far the best are High Noon and Shane, which transcend all others. They have the classic ingredients but end as tragedies: in 'High Noon' the townsfolk desert Gary Cooper, the town Marshall who faces 4 gunmen out to kill him, and Grace Kelly abandons her Quaker pacifism to save him by shooting the last gunman but one in the back, who is about to do the same to Cooper. They leave the town in disgust. In 'Shane', having stopped Starrett from facing the rancher's professional gunman, Shane proves quicker on the draw; is alerted by Bobby, turns shoots the rancher who is about to shoot him in the back. But then, to avoid dividing the Starrett family with whom he has found a new life, rides off into the sunrise, and, it is implied, back to his old life as a gunman. Other favourites are Laura and finest firm, Vertigo.
Otherwise I like the classic British films from Dangerous Moonlight to Lawrence of Arabia, including The Red Shoes, Olivier's Henry V, The Third Man, Brief Encounter, The Importance of Being Earnest, Kind Hearts and Coronets, Passport to Pimlico, The Ladykillers.
Cricket. Though I have had few chances to play cricket I like to watch County and Test Cricket. From 1960 I regularly watched Northamptonshire in Northampton and would travel to watch them play on others of their 'home' grounds and also at their opponents' grounds. On returning from Trinidad, I purchased a Life Membership for £700 which repaid itself within a few years. But over the last 9 years I have seen little, and some years nothing because of the cost of petrol, bad weather, and inconvenient days, or their poor performances. There is no Test Cricket on TV because the England and Wales Cricket Board has for several years sold TV rights to the subscription channel SKY TV, and so there is no cricket on the BBC and other freeview TV. That is no way to promote cricket to a wider audience and especially to the young.
Finally Railways and Model Railways: go to My model railway.
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