The Puzzle of Empiricism

Even the most ardent opponent of empiricist epistemology will concede that it is not wholly wrong. It may be that much knowledge is not based on experience, and it is no doubt true that knowledge requires more than mere experience, but surely it is undeniable that some knowledge comes from the senses. Not all knowledge is a priori; some things we can only know by experience. You can only know by means of the senses that the sky is blue or that it’s raining or that all birds have feathers; reason alone cannot assure you of these truths. For the ascertaining of some facts you need to employ your senses; nothing else will do. There is room for debate about what exactly the empiricist doctrine maintains—what is meant by “experience”, and what is it about the senses that is so essential? Do we mean the actual human senses or can we include other non-human senses, real or imaginary? Is it experience as a subjective state of consciousness that is necessary? Thus we might allow for Martian senses different from ours, and we might relax the requirement of conscious experience so as to take in people with blindsight (maybe they can have empirical knowledge and yet never experience conscious sensations of external objects).    [1] Perhaps the doctrine should be formulated not in terms of experience as a conscious state but in terms of causal interaction with external objects: there is a type of knowledge which is such that it can only be acquired by causal interaction with the objects of that knowledge. But putting these refinements aside, it seems indisputable that some knowledge is possible only by using the senses; pure ratiocination is never enough. Humans and animals have senses for a reason: the senses are what enable them to know about the world around them—nothing else will do the job.

            It may be wondered how strong this claim is: is it a necessary truth that certain facts can only be known by sense experience (to revert to the traditional formulation)? What if Plato is right about some possible beings that know everything by means of recollection from a previous life?    [2] They never experience anything themselves (in this life) but know about the natural world by remembering what their previous life revealed (presumably by experience). Or perhaps there could be beings whose genes encode a lot more information than ours—containing an encyclopedia of knowledge concerning what for us is known by post-natal experience. These beings are simply born knowing that the sky is blue and that all birds have feathers. This doesn’t seem logically impossible. So maybe empiricism is true of us and beings like us but not true of all possible knowing beings. But even these counterfactual possibilities don’t undermine the essential thrust of the empiricist doctrine, because someone had to interact with reality in order to lay down the knowledge in question, either in intergenerational memory or in the genes. There had to be some sort of imprinting of reality on minds or brains, not just a priori cogitation: for surely it is impossible to figure out by reason alone that the sky is blue or birds feathered. You need to have a look. The facts have to impress themselves on your sensorium, shaping your view of things: at a minimum some sort of causal connection is required. The paradigm is vision: the visual apparatus has to be activated by external facts and experiences thereby generated—these being the basis for justified belief. Empiricism is the doctrine that nothing else can act as the source of certain kinds of knowledge. Testimony can supply it, to be sure, but only because at some point someone cast a sideways glance at the world. In short, experience is the root of (and route to) knowledge of the external world. This is a necessary (and indeed a priori) truth.

            Although I have strong rationalist leanings, this at least seem correct to me: there is a large grain of truth in empiricism. Historically, empiricism was set against rationalism and certain forms of intellectual authoritarianism; the latter was perhaps the more powerful motivator. Experience is a better source of knowledge than the Bible, the Church, or Aristotle’s writings. Here the empiricists had an invincible argument at their disposal, though I don’t recall them ever using it, namely that we can only know what is in the Bible, or what priests say, or what Aristotle and his interpreters say, by sense experience. We have to look and see, or listen and hear, in order to find out what these supposed authorities maintain. So even scriptural knowledge is based on personal sense experience (as is true of all testimony knowledge). And surely it is uncontroversial that rationalism is hopelessly implausible if offered as a general theory of human (and animal and alien) knowledge—which is why no rationalist has ever tried to claim any such thing. The question was just whether there is any knowledge apart from sense-based knowledge—for there is surely a great deal of knowledge that is derived from the senses, necessarily so. It is not an unwarranted dogma of empiricism that human knowledge includes sense-based knowledge! On that point we can all agree (accepting the emendations that might be required when we start to explore logical space).

But that is not the end of the story, because a question remains outstanding: why is this so? What is the explanation of the fact that some knowledge can only be acquired by empirical means? There exists a partition of facts such that one side consists of facts known by pure reason and the only side is known (and can only be known) by means of the senses: but what distinguishes these facts? This is what I am calling the puzzle of empiricism—the puzzle of why it is that certain facts call for sense-based knowledge, as a matter of a priori necessity.    [3] Why is it that the fact that the sky is blue is necessarily only knowable by means of perceptual experience? What is it about that fact that makes this so? How does the ontology dictate the epistemology? What makes these facts special in this way? Granted, it is quite true that they can only be known in the empirical way, but what makes this the case—why this restriction on the mode of knowing? It is sometimes maintained, with some plausibility, that mathematical propositions can be known both a priori and a posteriori, but that propositions about the external world can only be known empirically; the former seems like the natural states of affairs, since ontology cannot dictate epistemology, but the latter also seems indisputable. This is puzzling. The empiricist owes us an answer to the question of why fact and knowledge must line up in this way. To put it bluntly, why are some facts such that they can be known only by being experienced? Not all facts have this property (a priori facts), so why do some? Isn’t it strange that the world should have written into it that it can only be known in a certain way? How can it be that God had no degrees of freedom with respect to epistemology when he decided on the ontology of material objects with properties? Experience is not always required for knowledge, so why in this instance? It isn’t as if the facts in question are experience!

            Here is the kind of answer we might hope for: empirically known facts have a different structure from facts known a priori. In the former case the predicate of the fact is not contained in the subject of the fact, while in the latter case it is. The facts differ ontologically, and in a deep and principled way. We can know truths of the a priorikind by recognizing the containment relation between subject and predicate (what Kant called “explicative knowledge”), whereas we have to go beyond the subject to ascertain the predicate in the empirical case (Kant’s “ampliative knowledge”). Now this may or may not be an adequate account of the matter, but I think it is clear that it doesn’t answer our question, since it is obscure why lack of containment should necessarily require knowledge by sense experience. After all, we have the category of the synthetic a priori, so lack of containment is consistent with the absence of an experiential basis. Nothing about an “ampliative” fact entails that it should be knowable only by experience. So there is nothing here about the fact as such that correlates with being knowable only empirically. Nor would it be right to say that the fact is precisely a material fact, unlike the facts of mathematics: for (a) the same points apply to facts of psychology, and (b) there are material-object facts that are known a priori, e.g. the fact that all material bodies are extended, or the fact that Hesperus is self-identical. So we are still bereft of any distinguishing feature that explains the epistemological necessity we are puzzling over. We still don’t know what makes a fact knowable only by means of sense experience. Thus empiricism remains curiously puzzling, though apparently perfectly true.

            An alternative explanation invokes the notion of intelligibility. Some facts are inherently intelligible, it may be said, but some are not. Facts known a priori fall into the former category while facts known a posteriori fall into the latter category. If every fact in the world were internally intelligible, then all knowledge could be a priori; but that is not actually the case. Accordingly, not all facts can be known a priori, and empirical knowledge steps in to take up the slack: it saves the day when the rational faculty struggles with an absence of intelligibility. Thus the senses are our only means of grasping a non-intelligible world—a world of contingency, accident, and happenstance. Empiricism therefore follows from the lack of universal rational intelligibility. The trouble with this explanation is, again, that it is not clear why the alleged contingency of the world should require a sensory faculty to take in its accidental nature. Why couldn’t there be another way to know these non-intelligible facts? What is it about brute facticity that requires the operation of the senses—those specific organs for gaining knowledge? It doesn’t require any specific sense, so why any sense? Does God need senses to know about the world just because it has an accidental character? Also, there can be no denying the centrality of vision in the empiricist outlook; the other senses play at best a subsidiary role. It is difficult to see how we could have acquired our extensive empirical knowledge of reality by relying only on our non-visual senses. So is it that the non-intelligible nature of the world demands a visual sense in order to be known (or at least one analogous to vision)? Thus we derive “ocular empiricism”. But the contingency of the connection here undermines any idea of logical necessitation from fact to faculty. Empirical knowledge is certainly not identical to the experiences that prompt it, but builds upon such experience; the experience triggers the knowledge. But then why couldn’t something else trigger it—as testimony can? As long as it is triggered somehow the knowledge results, so the sense experience seems logically redundant; it isn’t a conceptually necessary condition of having the knowledge in question. Again, the truth of empiricism seems strangely ungrounded—not at all transparent. It is (dare I say it?) mysterious.

            And there is this further point: sense-based knowledge is far from ideal from an epistemological point of view. So it isn’t some unimprovable type of knowledge that steps royally in to deliver the goods. On the contrary, it is subjective, extremely limited, in need of supplementation, susceptible to skeptical assault, and downright primitive (no doubt deriving from our animal ancestors: it is the way fish know things). Not for nothing are the senses denigrated in comparison to Reason. So empiricism is saying that our knowledge of certain facts is necessarily mediated by a pretty dismal epistemic faculty—poorly designed at best, riddled with error at worst. Why should this be what the objective world demands in the way of methods of knowing about it? Isn’t it rather insulting to the objective facts to say that they are condemned to be known by such a puny and flawed collection of faculties? What if we only had smell and taste to go on—wouldn’t empiricism seem troublingly hobbled? Doesn’t the world deserve something grander, more hi-tech, and more penetrating? At least reason seems to live up to its object, giving real insight into what it makes known, but the senses just graze the surface—couldn’t there be a better way to know the facts in question? Empiricism elevates to the epistemic pinnacle what is in truth a lousy way of learning about the world. Maybe we are stuck with it, just miserably out of luck, but it hardly qualifies as the epistemic be-all and end-all. It is beginning to appear almost paradoxical—not merely puzzling and mysterious—that the senses are the only conceivable route to knowing about the natural world. It is just inexplicably bad epistemic engineering. What is puzzling is that it still seems quite true that we can only know external reality by sense experience. Those facts will grant epistemic access only to the senses as methods of gaining insight into them, for reasons hard to fathom. The undeniable (and large) grain of truth in empiricism thus hides a mountain of mystery.    [4]

Col

    [1] There is also the possibility of subliminally acquired knowledge in which information gets in unconsciously. Not all knowledge is acquired by means of conscious experience.

    [2] Plato doesn’t believe that all knowledge arises by recollection, only a priori knowledge does, but we can extend his theory to include a posteriori knowledge too.

    [3] We can’t help noticing that empiricism itself is contrary to its own tenets: for how can it be a matter of empirical knowledge that empiricism is an a priori necessity? We might then view total empiricism as self-refuting—which no doubt it is (though this is always a rather cheap objection to a philosophical theory). As Hume would say, where is the impression that corresponds to our knowledge that empiricism is an a priori necessity? In fact, of course, the theory is offered as a piece of (speculative) ratiocinative knowledge in the grand rationalist style.

    [4] Is it that the self-evidence of empiricism, construed in the restricted way suggested, has blinded us to asking why such a surprising thing should be true? It seems so obvious that we can only know that the sky is blue by experience that we forget to enquire into the rationale for this fact. Certainly, the classical empiricists seem quite untroubled by the question, not even raising it (to my knowledge).

The Futility of Reduction

The idea of reduction is rampant in contemporary philosophy, particularly in relation to the mind. Thus we hear talk of reductive materialism or reductive behaviorism, or of reductionism about the mental. Likewise, though less frequently, we have reductive views of the moral or even the physical (as with reductive phenomenalism). It is supposed that there is a viable notion of reduction and that this notion might be invoked in philosophical theories of various subject matters. Where did this notion come from? Supposedly from science: science is thought to contain examples of successful reduction, these providing the model for philosophical reductions. We are told that pain can be reduced to C-fiber stimulation in just the way heat has been reduced to molecular motion or water reduced to H2O or light reduced to a stream of photons. So we know what it would be to provide a reduction and then the question is whether such a reduction might be true of the mental: it’s just like that. I think this whole approach is mistaken: in fact, there have been no successful reductions in science, and the case of the mind is not analogous to the kinds of cases that have been cited. The notion of reduction has been misunderstood and mischaracterized; there is really no such thing, as commonly conceived. This is actually quite obvious on reflection.

            Consider the standard example: heat and molecular motion. The claim is that scientists have reduced heat to molecular motion. But why use the word “reduced”? They have identified heat with molecular motion, to be sure—they have discovered what heat is. Similarly, astronomers identified Hesperus with Phosphorus, discovering the truth of an identity statement, but did they reduce Hesperus to Phosphorus? That sounds like a strange thing to say. The reason is not far to seek: as the dictionary reports, “reduce” means “make or become smaller or less in amount, degree, or size”, with “reduction” meaning “the action of reducing”. That is, there has to be some sort of elimination to count as a reduction—some removal, some subtraction. Mere identification is not sufficient: that is just saying what something is, not saying that it isn’t after all. In general there has to be an impression of diversity in order to speak of reduction—it has to seem as if there is more than one thing there. If I seem to see two dogs in front of me and form the belief that there are two dogs there, but then discover that I have double vision, I can conclude that there are fewer dogs than I thought: I have reduced the number of things I believe in. But in the case of heat is there any such impression? Am I under the illusion that heat is different from molecular motion—that there are two things here not one? Does it seem to me that heat is not identical to molecular motion—as it seems to me that blue is not identical to red or square is not identical to triangular or space is not identical to time?    [1] It does not—heat gives me no such impression, nor do my senses. It is simply that I have discovered an identity and can therefore make a “theoretical identification”: but where is the reduction here? You might say that the sensation of heat is distinct from molecular motion, and that is perfectly true: but no one is claiming that the sensation of heat is identical with molecular motion—only that heat is. If you were very confused, you might suppose that the discovery that heat is molecular motion is the discovery that the sensation of heat is molecular motion, and thus that you have reduced the sensation to its object—got rid of it as an independent reality. But that is simply a gross misunderstanding (“a non sequitur of numbing grossness”): it is heat that is claimed to be molecular motion not the sensation of heat (which might be a brain state or a state of an immaterial substance). The scientist takes this distinction for granted and merely claims to have discovered what heat is—and similarly for water, light, etc. There is no cutting down on what the world apparently contains, because there was no impression that heat isn’tmolecular motion—though there is certainly an impression that the sensation of heat isn’t molecular motion. Who could have thought that it is? Heat is in the object; the sensation is in the subject: there is no impression of identity here. In fact, we can imagine beings that investigate the physical world and have no sensations of heat at all—though they observe what hot objects do in the physical world. These beings can discover that the thing they call “heat” is molecular motion, but there is no question in their mind about the identity of the sensation of heat, which they don’t have. Once we distinguish heat from the sensation of heat we can see that there is no putative and problematic identification of the sensation with a condition of hot objects. All that is happening is that an empirical identification is being made—but there is nothing that is aptly described as reductive going on. In the same way, scientists have discovered that genes are constituted by DNA molecules, but this is not a case of reduction in the ordinary dictionary sense: there was no lessening of the number of things thought to exist. The truth is that putative reductions are always eliminative in the sense that they reduce the number of things apparently contained in the world: this is why the word “reductionism” is typically used pejoratively—because it is a denial of reality to what appears perfectly real. Strictly speaking, we should restrict ourselves to talk of theoretical identification, or maybe constitutive explication. It is finding out what stuff is made of. These are not instances of successful reduction. Perhaps the removal of vital spirits from biology counts as reduction, because it is plausible to say that organisms give an impression of something beyond the merely physical (mechanical, machinelike); but here again it is elimination that is really in question—such vital spirits are declared fictional, i.e. non-existent. It is not that biologists have discovered that vital spirits are in fact identical to mechanical processes; they have discovered that there are no vital spirits. It is really a choice between identification and elimination; the concept of reduction occupies a poorly defined middle ground. It would be better to drop the word altogether, because it conflates identification and elimination. You can discover that Hesperus is identical to Phosphorus, or you can discover that Vulcan doesn’t exist, but there is nothing hovering between these two—say, discovering that Vulcan is reducible to Mars. This is why I say that there have never been any successful reductions (in the contemporary sense) in science—though there have been plenty of theoretical identifications (and some eliminations: vital spirits, phlogiston etc.). The concept of reduction is a misbegotten concept.    [2]

            Still, it may be said, we can continue to draw an analogy between heat and pain: both are cases of successful theoretical identification (constitutive explication). We can drop the misguided idea of reduction but retain the benefits of citing scientific precedent. But there is a reason why people so readily invoke the concept of reduction in this connection: for the mind does give the impression that it is not identical to the brain and body. So if it turns that it is, that is tantamount to denying that it has the kind of existence we thought—as with biology and vital spirits. It seems to us that the mind is not the brain—but it doesn’t seem to us that heat is not molecular motion (though it does seem to us that the sensation of heat is not molecular motion). So this would count as a genuine reduction, if it were true. We wouldn’t nonchalantly say, “Oh, it turns out that the mind is the brain, by the way–an interesting discovery perhaps, but nothing to get in a tizzy about”. On the contrary, a tizzy would be fully warranted—because it sure as hell seems to us that this is not the case. It would be tantamount to a deep revision in our ontological assumptions—a dramatic form of eliminativism no less. Things would be different if pain were distinguishable from the sensation of pain, as heat is distinguishable from the sensation of heat: for then we could happily identify pain with C-fiber stimulation while insisting that the sensation of pain is no such thing. But that is exactly what we cannot do, for reasons made clear by Kripke and others: pain just is the sensation of pain—as heat is emphatically not the sensation of heat (Hesperus is certainly not the sensation of Hesperus!). If the sensation of heat turned out to be identical to molecular motion, then we would have a real reduction on our hands—the world would be less populous than we were led to believe—but that is not what anyone is claiming. Likewise, if the sensation of pain turned out to be identical to C-fiber stimulation, that too would pack a reductive punch; but then the pain case is not analogous to the heat case. The crucial point of dissimilarity is that we can’t separate pain from the sensation of pain, as we can separate heat from the sensation of heat. So we have no precedent in science for the kind of identification of mind and body that is being proposed. That would be a type of reduction, unlike the heat case, but then it isn’t analogous to the heat case: in the case of heat we have no qualms about identifying heatwith molecular motion, because it never seemed not to be (though the sensation of heat certainly did). But we have plenty of qualms about identifying pain with C-fiber stimulation, precisely because pain is the sensation of pain. In other words, identifying the sensation of heat with molecular motion would be exactly as revisionary as identifying pain with C-fiber firing. So the heat case affords no encouraging scientific precedent for so-called reductive materialism: the former is not reductive at all while the latter surely is—and hence clearly eliminative. If pain turned out to be C-fiber stimulation, that would be like nothing else that has ever been discovered—a peculiar hybrid of genuine reduction (i.e. elimination) and straightforward ontologically conservative theoretical identification. It may be doubted whether this makes any sense: how could the identity theory be both ontologically conservative and eliminative? It would have to be both reductive and non-reductive: reductive because eliminative, and non-reductive because merely identifying. You can’t have it both ways. This is why nothing in science sets the stage for so-called reductive materialism: the cases usually cited are all cases of non-reductive identification, once we analyze them correctly. They simply identify one physical phenomenon with another (heat with molecular motion, water with H2O, and light with a stream of photons), while being careful to distinguish these things from the corresponding sensations. But this is not what is being envisaged for mind and brain—quite the opposite. Thus there is no precedent in science for what is being proposed—and hence no conferred respectability or antecedent plausibility deriving from that quarter. Worse, the very idea of psychophysical reduction is deeply confused, wavering incoherently between identification and elimination. There is no such thing as non-eliminative reduction—as the very words imply. The idea was foisted on the philosophical community by a misguided analogy to certain scientific discoveries that were never reductive (reductionist) to begin with. The scientist would be within his rights to protest at being called a reductionist: “I am no reductionist, young man—for I abhor such denials of manifest reality—I am merely an honest inquirer who tries to find out what things are beyond their appearance”. Why should it be thought reductionist (or even reductive) simply to say what heat really is: where is the reducing here? There is no lessening, no winnowing, and no rejecting—just finding out what things really are. The project of philosophical reduction is therefore futile: no such thing is possible or desirable. Indeed, it is contradictory under a normal interpretation of terms.    [3]

            The difficulty is not confined to attempts at psychophysical reduction. Take the doctrine of reductive phenomenalism: the idea (roughly) is to reduce material objects to sense data. But is this merely a case of theoretical identification—are material objects simply identical to collections of sense data? It doesn’t feel like that—it feels more…rejectionist. Why? Because we are under the firm impression that material objects are more than sense data—that they are mind-independent, substantial, and objective. And those impressions are being denied: there aren’t really any objects like that, but only subjective, wispy, mental things. By attempting to reduce material objects to sense data we are denying their essential nature, thus eliminating them from our ontology. The alleged reduction is accordingly felt as disguised elimination: the inhabitants of reality are radically reduced, cut down. We are being offered metaphysical depopulation. But this is not true of standard scientific “reductions”: nothing in our ordinary conception of heat rebels at the suggestion that heat is molecular motion, since there is nothing about heat that can’t be captured in terms of molecular motion (again, distinguishing heat from the sensation of heat). Phenomenalism really is a form of reductionism, precisely because it is tacitly eliminative: it is not merely conservatively explicative—a mere analysis of what we ordinarily believe. It is not just a matter of straightforward identification. But it can’t be both: it can’t be reductive and merely identifying (explicative). Thus the notion of reductive phenomenalism, as normally understood, is inherently confused, even contradictory—unless it is clearly offered as outright elimination. The same can be said of reductive efforts with respect to morality: attempts to reduce values to facts, to put it crudely. If this is offered as merely explicative, it is apt to meet with anti-eliminative resistance: for it feels eliminative, given the way we ordinary conceive of morality. It might, on the other hand, be offered in a frankly eliminative spirit, and then there would be no objection of disingenuousness or incoherence. But if we are told that it is not intended in that spirit, but only as an account of what moral values actually are, we are apt to protest that the real thing is being denied. Why? Because values don’t seem to us antecedently to be identical to non-value facts—they seem like something above and beyond such facts. If this seeming is veridical, then no reduction is possible, because it would involve denying the essence of the moral. Again, the idea of conservatively reducing the moral to the factual emerges as incoherent, since that could not be anything other than disguised elimination. This is not so for the scientific cases, which is why they don’t have an eliminative flavor. So no precedent can be found in them for the kind of philosophical reduction being mooted. The conclusion I would draw from this is that the whole idea of a philosophical reduction is a monster—a mythical monster. So is the philosopher’s idea of a scientific reduction: there is no such thing (except in the rare eliminative sense). Identifications, yes: reductions, no. The real problem with putative reductions is not that they are guilty of reductionism; it is that they are conceptually confused. We can certainly analyze water into its constituent molecules and heat into the dynamic constituents of hot objects and light into its photonic composition, but none of these qualifies as a reduction—they are not at all reductionist. They are more amplifying than reducing. The same is true of philosophical analysis: we can analyze knowledge as true justified belief (etc.), but this is not a reduction of knowledge to true justified belief. The concept of reduction (as opposed to analysis) really has no place in philosophy, as that concept is customarily intended. This is not to say that the mind could not be the brain (under some description), just that it is wrong to speak of this as an instance of “reduction”. And if it is the brain (somehow conceived) this has to be a truth of a quite different order from that found in science as we now have it. The alleged scientific precedents are mischaracterized as reductive, and are not

    [1] In the case of time, restating everything in terms of space-time is apt to come across as eliminative, since it appears to deny the essence of time, as we normally understand it. We normally regard time as something quite separate from space, clearly so. Anything that denies this is bound to seem eliminative (the same is true of attempts to replace talk of time with talk of clocks). In any case, time certainly seems different from space, which is why the concept of space-time strikes us as revolutionary–however things may be theoretically.

    [2] There is another notion of reduction that is sometimes employed—theory reduction. This is conceived as defined over sentences or statements or propositions, not objects or properties: it is a relation between language-like items. The thought is that we can replace one theory with another, thus eliminating the reduced theory in favor of the reducing theory. This is in accordance with the dictionary definition of “reduce”, since we are reducing the number of sentences that need to be included in our theory of the world; the reduced sentences can be eliminated without theoretical loss. But this notion clearly does not entail any reduction of the denoted objects or properties. If we make a use-mention confusion, however, we can find ourselves speaking of the reduction of the entities referred to in a theory. In any case, I am not here addressing the question of theory reduction, which I don’t regard as a solecism.

    [3] It is an interesting question whether physical accounts of color qualify as reductive. Are they perhaps the only examples of successful genuine reduction? The matter is controversial but I would say that they are reductive in the proper sense, i.e. eliminative not conservative. This is because our ordinary concept of color links colors constitutively to sense experience, and physical reduction to wavelengths and the like severs this connection. Thus the reductive claim involves denying that colors exist in the ordinary sense (as properties of the surface of objects)—there aren’t really any colors in objects but only color experiences in minds. So the alleged reduction is not really conservative, simply identifying what colors intrinsically are, but tacitly eliminative (which is how it intuitively strikes us). If we insist on incorporating the experiential connection, on the other hand, we deny the possibility of reductive (sic) identification. So, again, this doesn’t count as a successful piece of philosophical reduction: it is either tacitly eliminative or false. I do, however, think that the dualistic leanings of color are less obvious than in the case of the mind: they don’t seem as non-physical, if I can put it simply.

Economic Altruism

No less an authority than Pope Francis has this to say: “Feverish consumerism breaks the bonds of belonging. It causes us to focus on our self-preservation and makes us anxious”. Why consumerism should “break the bonds of belonging” (whatever quite that means) is not made clear: why should buying stuff interfere with desirable social relations? We often buy things together or as gifts for each other, and buying things alone for oneself is hardly a source of social breakdown. Also, why does consumerism (itself undefined) make us anxious and focused on self-preservation? We are already anxiously focused on self-preservation for obvious reasons (death, disease, war, etc.), and our purchases often ease these concerns by affording us security and protection (clothes, homes, electricity, food, etc.). Would we be less anxiously focused on self-preservation if we didn’t buy ourselves anything? Hardly. Perhaps the author intends all the argumentative weight to be carried by “feverishly”: it is consuming feverishlythat brings about these woes. But doing anything feverishly is liable to have untoward consequences—even giving money to charity if done feverishly (imagine a person feverishly working all the hours of the day in order to give money to charity, neglecting his family, working himself into an early grave, a monomaniacal loner). The pope obviously realizes that a little bit of consuming is not necessarily a bad thing, so he qualifies his condemnation by prefixing “feverishly”; but then the force of his criticism is blunted—what precisely is he criticizing? He doesn’t say so, but I assume his underlying complaint is that consuming is a selfish thing to do—and selfishness is a vice: all that spending money on yourself, treating yourself to this and that, buying yourself toys and fancy meals—instead of giving your money to charitable causes. Why not be more altruistic and give some money away instead of selfishly buying what makes you happy? Consumerism is thus the enemy of morality: it is pure selfishness. This has been a common complaint throughout the ages and is certainly part of traditional Christian teaching: we should be more altruistic and not so selfishly consumerist. Stop spending so much money on yourself (feverishly or calmly) and give more to others!    [1]           

            I think this moral position ignores an important aspect of consumption, even when what is consumed is entirely self-directed (which it often isn’t): namely that, in buying things for ourselves, we give money to others.Buying is also giving. We do the vendor a favor by buying from him, even when our aim is entirely egoistic. If I buy a new tennis racket in order to play better tennis, I make a donation to the seller of the racket—I provide him with an income. If I didn’t, he wouldn’t have one. If everyone stopped consuming, everyone would be out of work—no spending, no receiving, and hence no income. Someone might in fact spend with entirely altruistic aims: he doesn’t want anything for himself, but he consumes in order to provide others with an income. Of course, he could just hand the vendor the money and get nothing in return (unalloyed charity), but that has obvious disadvantages: people like to work and earn their money; we need functioning industries and other forms of work to live well; we would be depleting our own resources for nothing in return, which may lead to destitution and death. It’s better to make your transfers of cash to people who give you something in return: it’s better for everyone that way. This is not to say that you should never give to charity—you clearly should in certain circumstances—but it is to say that not doing so by consuming instead is not a purely self-benefiting act. It is altruism by egoism. That is the nature of purchase: you take from others by giving to them. There is nothing immoral about this arrangement, nothing culpably selfish (every time you eat you are acting “selfishly”). Self-preservation is not ipso facto morally bad (pacethe pope, apparently). You should pay a fair price, to be sure, but if you do you benefit the vendor—you make his life better. You are not unfairly depriving him of anything; you aren’t stealing. Consuming is perfectly moral; notconsuming is what is immoral. If you are a habitual miser, you decline to give your money to others for services rendered, thus reducing their income—an economy full of misers quickly tanks. Even strenuous (“feverish”) consuming is morally commendable, so long as you are handing over cash to other people; or at least it is not morally impermissible. Okay, don’t do it all the time, leaving no room for other worthwhile activities and interests, but there is nothing amiss with doing it regularly (compare other human activities that the church has seen fit to prohibit). It is a form of wealth distribution. It is not just selfishly hoarding up stuff for your own pleasure without regard for the welfare of others. There is no need for guilt as you make that big purchase—many people will benefit from it. Instead, think of all the good you are doing to complete strangers: thanks to you they have food on the table, happy children, a worthwhile life. Admittedly, we don’t want too much economic inequality in our society, or grotesque McMansions, or fleets of carbon-emitting sports cars: but that has nothing to do with consumerism as such. Spending is really just like charity, except that the recipient has to do something in return. If he can’t, then charity is appropriate; but if he can, there is nothing objectionable about getting something in return. Indeed, it is positively desirable from a moral point of view—you are actively helping people. This fosters social bonds; it doesn’t break them. People like being paid by you. Christianity has given consumerism a bad name by associating it with greed and anti-social behavior, but it is no such thing—not considered in itself.    [2] Charity can be a bad thing too if done thoughtlessly or from egoistic motives or without regard for consequences, but that doesn’t imply that charitable giving is somehow unethical (the vice of “giver-ism”). It is the same with the kind of giving that occurs in an economic transaction—capable of abuse but not inherently immoral. It is a bizarre form of puritanism to suppose that consuming is antithetical to morality—on the grounds that the consumer gets some pleasure out of it. It is not necessary to suffer in order to be a good person; self-deprivation is not the essence of the moral life, despite what the Catholic Church may have to say. True, the consumer is no rabid ascetic, but that is not a moral criticism. The wise consumer is a happy consumer, not least because of the altruism manifested in his acts. Remember that you are a person too and thus deserve moral consideration, from yourself as well as from others; it is not moral to treat yourself badly. So the consumer is not immoral simply because he treats himself well: he treats himself well by treating others well—by handing them money. He receives, but he also gives, necessarily so.

            And there is this not inconsiderable point: in charitable giving the recipient is in the donor’s debt, but not so in economic exchange. We always put people in an awkward position by giving to them—because then they owe us—but we can give without incurring the recipient’s indebtedness if we buy from someone. There is no burden of gratitude, no feeling that you must somehow reciprocate. This can fray relationships and break bonds—indeed, some people do it precisely in order to gain a moral edge over others. We can bypass all this by always receiving as we give. Everybody is happier that way. In an ideal society there would be no charitable giving (and so no moral indebtedness), but plenty of non-charitable giving—otherwise known as buying stuff.    [3] Perhaps we should re-label the consumer: she is actually a payer, a giver, and a producer (of other people’s wellbeing). Even a feverish one of those is not to be condemned (the sin of “producer-ism”).

Coli

    [1] This position ignores the fact that it is possible to consume for the sake of other people—you like to buy stuff and then give it away. So there is no necessary link between consumerism and selfishness. But let’s ignore this obvious point so that we can focus on a more interesting fault in the pope’s reasoning.

    [2] It is not to be confused with capitalism, for reasons too obvious to mention.

    [3] We should also reject the stereotype of the consumer as someone who accumulates manufactured goods beyond any real need (hundreds of shoes, dozens of cars, multiple homes). We can also consume music lessons, books, the works of local artists, the services of lawyers, gym memberships, and many other worthwhile goods and services. Many of the things we consume are indisputably good for the soul. Don’t Catholics consume things as part of their religion—such as the teachings of the pope (someone has to pay for his upkeep)? What about cathedrals?