PHILOSOPHY A.S. UNIT 2 PAPER, JUNE 2009 SUGGESTED ANSWERS TO SELECTED QUESTIONS In writing the answers to past exam questions, I have referred to AQA s mark schemes (available on their website) as far as possible. However, my answers should not be treated as carrying AQA s stamp of approval. They represent my considered opinion as to how these questions might reasonably be tackled. The BPA takes no responsibility for the examination performance of students who have used these answers. There are of course a range of valid ways of tackling most of these questions and mine represent, in each case, just one possible approach. Theme 1: Knowledge of the external world 1) Outline and illustrate the differences between sense data and physical objects. (15 marks) In the sense-datum theory of perception: Sense-data are considered as the immediate objects of perceptual awareness, in contrast to physical objects, which, it is claimed, are only perceived by the intermediary of sense-data. Sense-data only exist for as long as someone is actually aware of them, whereas the continued existence of physical objects is not normally dependent on perceptual awareness by anyone. A subject s having a sense-datum does not necessarily imply that there is any corresponding physical object present, as the subject may just be having a hallucination. The character of the sense-datum may not be a faithful reflection of the properties of the physical object, e.g. a straight stick in water may present to the subject a sense-datum that suggests a bent stick. This is how sense-datum theorists explain perceptual illusions. Sense-data are private objects. My sense-data cannot be known with any certainty by anyone but myself. In contrast, physical objects provide publicly accessible knowledge. My knowledge of my own (current) sense-data is often considered infallible I have a special first-person authority in relation to them that noone else can have. In the representative theory of perception, sense-data are correlated with the brain states which are the physical effects on my brain of the presence of the physical objects indirectly perceived by me. Sense-data are mental entities, unlike physical objects, which exist independently of the mind. N.B. There are obviously more points here than you need for full marks.
2) The existence of the external world is a reasonable hypothesis Consider what can be said both for and against this view. (30 marks) To common sense, the existence of the external world the world beyond one s own mind hardly seems like a hypothesis, as this would imply that it is subject to some degree of uncertainty. But according to the rigorous standards of traditional epistemology, only my own sense-data can be known to exist in the first instance. The claim that there exists an external, physical world must be considered a hypothesis, justified or not with reference to this core of personal, sensory knowledge. So, is it a reasonable hypothesis? Suppose (if it is possible to imagine) that we did not understand reality in terms of a stable and publicly observable system of physical entities, but instead as a series of unconnected and mostly short-lived sense-data. This would make it impossible to either predict or control our future sense-data, as we depend on our physical world-view for causal laws that make such prediction and control possible. We would be in psychological turmoil. However, while it may be granted that the physical world-view is an effective system for predicting and controlling our future sense-data, it does not necessarily follow from this that it is true. Might it not be that the totality of our sense-experience proceeds just as if physical objects were real, whereas in fact they are no more than mythical? Such a viewpoint would not imply that we ought to stop thinking in terms of physical objects. As already pointed out, it is scarcely possible for us to do that. It tells us rather that we should think of the physical world-view as a useful fiction. So-called realists about the physical world (which I guess includes most of us) would probably find such a view very strange. But how can it be avoided? How, in other words, can we bridge the gap between the idea of the physical world as a useful myth and the idea of it as something that is, in some sense, really there? One popular strategy is to argue that a belief in the literal truth of the physical hypothesis can be grounded on an inference to the best explanation. Both common sense and science provide plenty of examples of cases where we adopt a particular hypothesis because it is the one that seems to explain the totality of our evidence or experience better than any alternative. To see how this works in the present case, note firstly that there are alternative explanations of our sense-data besides the physical world-view. For example, there is the view (perhaps attributable to Berkeley) that we have the mental states we do because God has these mental states and he is letting us participate in his mental life. Now it will be argued by most philosophers that physical realism is a better explanation of our experiences than this one, presumably on the grounds of its greater simplicity. They will argue that the simplest explanation of the fact that the pattern of our sense-data is just as if physical things were real is that they are real. However, a difficulty can be raised for this strategy, which is as follows: how do we know that inference to the best explanation will lead to the truth? The reason we trust inference to the best explanation as a (generally) reliable method is that we have known it to work in many cases and rarely known it to fail, and so we infer from this that it will work in other cases too. This implies that we have been able to confirm independently in many cases that the explanation inferred using the method was the
correct one. In a sense, this is true, but the problem is that once the existence of the physical world is put in doubt, what we ought to say is that we have been able to confirm in such cases that our experience is just as if the explanation were true, not that the explanation actually is true. In that case, our backing for the method of inference to the best explanation only supports the thesis that explanations inferred using the method that are cast in purely experiential terms are likely to be true. Obviously, this will not do for the physical world hypothesis, since by its very nature, it cannot be cast in purely experiential terms it concerns what lies beyond experience. Perhaps we should have avoided going down this road in the first place. Perhaps it was wrong to talk about the hypothesis of the existence of an external world; in other words, it is an illusion to think that there is really anything to be uncertain about here. There are two main ways of supporting such a position. One is to suggest that the starting-point is wrong. It is simply incorrect to think that we are in the position of solitary minds with access only to private sense-data, from which we must either construct or infer a physical world. This is not the line I will pursue here. Instead I will briefly investigate a different approach. It is that the hypothesis idea is wrong because the distinction between everything s being just as if there were a physical world, on the one hand, and there being a physical world, on the other, is a false one. The suggestion here is that once we know that the overall pattern of our experience is such as to suggest a physical world, this in itself is all we need to confirm that precisely such a thing exists. The assumption, made throughout this essay up to now, that there is some kind of gap here is simply a mistake. This suggestion may seem like a non-starter. Surely, it will be said, the difference between the way things seem and the way they are is fundamental. But notice that whenever in everyday life we establish that things are not as they seem, we do so using evidence of some kind and this evidence comes to us ultimately in the form of sensations. The problem with the idea of a physical world hypothesis is that it is considered to be something that holds or does not hold independently of our sensations and this makes no sense. We cannot make sense of the idea that the physical world does or does not exist if that does not boil down to some difference in the sensations we have. It might be thought that this is just a form of phenomenalism, the view that the physical world is a construct from sense-data. But that would be a mistake. I am not saying that physical things are ultimately unreal or that they are in any sense created by our mental states. These are first order statements about the relationship between our mental states and the physical world. I am not making any specific claims of this sort here. I am only making a second order claim about our statements or thoughts regarding our mental states and those regarding physical things, which is that there is a tight logical relation between them, with the result that the statement There are no physical things, even though our mental states are just as if there were makes no sense. No doubt more needs to be said in order to be sure that this position does not collapse into phenomenalism, but there is insufficient space to do so here!
Theme 2: Tolerance 3) Explain and illustrate two reasons why tolerance should not rule out being offensive. (15 marks) Some people, following John Stuart Mill, would claim that we should not try to interfere with others freedom unless their behaviour is harmful to others. Offending other people could cause them real harm in extreme cases. For example, insulting Mohammed could traumatise a devout believer. The difficulty is in knowing whether that has indeed been the effect. One cannot necessarily take the believer s own claim at face value, as he/she might exaggerate the negative effect of the offence. One would be in danger of creating a situation where those who shout the loudest are able to exert control over what people can say, which would be extremely unfair. One of the main reasons for supposing that society should be tolerant of diverse opinions is that it is only through free, unfettered discussion that truth can ultimately be known. It might be thought that offensiveness would make no significant contribution to this process, since any particular opinion expressed in an offensive way could also be expressed without the offensive element with no loss to its cognitive content. However, this would be to take too narrow a view of the process of debate within a free society. It is not enough for certain views to be expressed: in order for them to make their contribution to the debate they must get noticed. One way of getting your ideas noticed is to express them in a lively, vigorous or humorous way. Satire directed at religion would be an example of this. While it may offend those who adhere to the religious beliefs in question, the irreverent expression of the ideas helps to gain them attention, without which they might perish. While this does not justify the most hurtful and vicious kinds of expression, it does justify an approach to the expression of certain ideas that is not overly sensitive to the views and feelings of those who are opposed to them. 4) Discuss the claim that society should be tolerant because the benefits of toleration outweigh the costs. (30 marks) We need to begin by clarifying what is meant by tolerance, as this is a very broad concept. What exactly does tolerance involve and what is it that society is required to tolerate? I shall defend the classical liberal answer: society should tolerate everything except the infliction of demonstrable harm on others. What tolerance of X involves is abstaining from any coercive action designed to prevent X and perhaps also abstaining from the active discouragement of X. These answers themselves no doubt raise many questions, but will suffice for the purposes of this essay. I shall consider first the costs of this policy. One is the fact that if society tolerates a wide range of (non-harmful) types of behaviour and the expression of a wide diversity of opinions, this may lead to many people being deeply offended by behaviour or opinions that they strongly disagree with. This in itself may be thought to be a bad thing, but there is the additional fact that it may lead to dangerous social conflict. Although the actions of individuals involved in this conflict are likely to be harmful to
others and therefore legitimately prohibited by the state, such prohibition may not be entirely successful and the acts of punishment that it involves may be considered additional costs to be set alongside the costs involved in the conflict itself. I shall refer to this type of cost of tolerance as its threat to social cohesion. A further type of cost will be experienced by people who have a richer conception of the good life than is embodied in the principle of non-harm. This applies to almost all of us, since nearly all of us think that we ought not only to desist from harming others, but also (other things being equal) to avoid upsetting them and in some cases to take positive steps to help them (to be a good Samaritan ). On the conception of the tolerant society that I have in mind (a fairly standard one), we are required to tolerate indifference or even unkindness to others if this falls short of actual harming and these may be considered to be, or to lead to, costs that we should be concerned about. Others with even richer conceptions of the good life (e.g., those dictated by various religious views) will find even more costs in this kind of tolerance, due to the fact that people will not be required to live their lives according to their particular standard. Obviously, though, there will be much more disagreement about these sorts of costs than about those already mentioned and little chance of obtaining a publicly acceptable way of resolving these disagreements. So much for the costs. What are the benefits of societal tolerance? One of these concerns specifically the consequences of tolerating a wide variety of ideas and opinions. It is argued that doing this assists discovery of the truth, since the only way of attaining truth is to allow the expression of the widest diversity of views, which can then be tested in the court of public opinion (or perhaps in more specialised arenas in the case of more technical matters). The widest diversity of views is needed, since we cannot rule out in advance what might turn out to be the case on any given matter. (That the world is a sphere must at some time have seemed an extraordinary idea that could not possibly be true, yet it turned out that it was.) There is also the tolerance of different lifestyles to consider. Here it is argued that such tolerance allows a range of experiments in living. As in the case of the truth of opinions, we cannot know in advance the best ways for human beings to live, so our only viable course as a society is to let people live the kinds of lives they want to (subject to the non-harm constraint) and examine the results to determine which is best. Identifying the main costs and benefits of tolerance is one thing, weighing them so as to reach a conclusion about its overall desirability is a more difficult matter. But perhaps the task can be made more manageable by noting that not all these costs are beyond our control. For example, we can perhaps minimise the costs in terms of the threat to social cohesion by instituting strong propaganda in favour of tolerance, promoting its virtues. This can be reinforced by introducing pro-tolerance ideas into the education of young people from the earliest opportunity. Additionally, the state can seek to reduce those factors that tend to exacerbate social conflict, e.g., poverty and lack of opportunity, employing such means as redistributive taxation and antidiscrimination laws. In such ways the cost to social cohesion can be reduced considerably. What of the costs relating to the thinness of the tolerant society s conception of the good life, its refusal to enforce a richer morality than that of mere non-harming? Notice that a refusal to enforce a morality is not the same as an
indifference to whether it is realised. There are some aspects of rich morality that the state would do well to actively foster, even if (quite rightly) it does not attempt to enforce them. These include kindness to others and a willingness to help them, at least when the costs to oneself would be minimal. This should not be taken to imply that the state should support even by mere encouragement all elements that have ever been thought by anyone to be parts of morality. That would obviously lead to contradictions, as many moral systems are mutually inconsistent. (For example, one cannot simultaneously support a system that requires arranged marriages and denounces them.) In view of these considerations, it is plausible to suppose that the costs of the tolerant society can be reduced to such an extent that they are outweighed by its benefits in terms of enabling rational discussion and experiments in living. The argument can be further strengthened by noting that not only does tolerance have benefits, nontolerance has costs, namely those punitive actions that involve enforcement of whatever standard it is thought necessary to impose on people. Not only are these serious in themselves; they also risk, by a slippery slope effect, the emergence of a totalitarian state. Theme 5: Free will and determinism 9) Contrast determinism with fatalism, illustrating your answer. (15 marks) Suppose I consult a palm reader, who sees that my love line is rather short and tells me that I will always be unlucky in love. If I believe the palm reader, then I am a fatalist, at least about my love life. Fatalism is the view that what will be true is true now and has always been true and is thus incapable of being altered by human action. In my example, I will think that I am going to be unlucky in love whatever anybody does, including myself. Thus fatalists believe that certain things are inescapably destined to happen to us, and that human action cannot prevent them. In contrast with this, determinists will not think that human action is generally useless in affecting events in our lives. For determinism may be defined as the thesis that a determinate set of conditions can only produce one possible outcome given fixed laws of nature. In other words, the conditions, together with the laws of nature, fully determine the outcome via some set of causal processes. An example of a deterministic explanation would be the movements of the planets according to Newton s law of gravitation. However, there is no reason why the relevant causal processes should not sometimes involve human actions, and so the determinist is not committed to asserting that human action is never efficacious. 10) Explore the claim that We make the choices we do because of our nature. (30 marks) The claim can be interpreted as meaning that we make the choices we do only because we are the sorts of people we are genetically. According to this view, the circumstances of our lives, e.g., the way in which we were brought up (our nurture ), do not fundamentally affect what choices we make. Thus interpreted, the claim is an empirical one and almost certainly false. Both common sense and much research in
social psychology supports the view that the circumstances of our lives, such as our cultural inheritance and the influence of our parents, can profoundly affect what choices we subsequently go on to make. Of course, no-one would deny that our genetic nature has an important role to play. But the suggestion that it is only our genetic nature that is important is very implausible. Alternatively, the claim might be understood in a weakened way to mean that it is mainly our nature that determines our choices. In that case it is not obviously false, but it is still an empirical claim that can only be substantiated by empirical research. What is the connection between this claim and the issue of moral responsibility? There is an important argument (due to Galen Strawson) which tries to argue from the premise that all our choices are due to our nature to the conclusion that we are not morally responsible for them. It runs as follows: 1. All our choices are due to our individual natures. 2. We do not determine our individual natures. 3. Therefore, we are not morally responsible for our individual natures. 4. Therefore we are not morally responsible for our choices. However, for this argument to work, a person s nature must be understood in a broader sense than it has been so far in this essay, i.e., broader than it is in the nature vs. nurture debate. In this broader sense, my nature consists in everything that I intrinsically am at a given time, irrespective of whether it derives from my genes or the influences from my life so far. Let us examine each of the steps in turn. First: step 1, the premise that all our choices are due to our natures, i.e., the claim cited (in slightly different wording) in the exam question. It seems that when the term nature is understood in the broad way indicated, there is only one way that this premise could fail to be true, which is that there could be indeterminacy affecting our choices, i.e., that to some extent, our choices cannot be explained by anything at all. Of course this does not make them totally random. A person s choices must be affected by her nature to some extent, probably to a very large extent. The claim would only be that to some degree (perhaps so small as to be undetectable), there is pure randomness involved, e.g., there is a probability of a given individual with a given nature making a given choice in a given situation of 99.9% rather than 100%, and there simply is no deeper explanation for precisely why the choice goes one way rather than the other. This is conceivable, and in principle at least, science allows a way in which it could happen quantum indeterminacy. However, the importance of this should not be overestimated. If we were to appeal to this to save moral responsibility, we would be letting the latter depend on recognition of randomness in the world. This does not seem to make very much sense. For moral responsibility, we would surely need, not the absence or incompleteness of an explanation, but rather a particular kind of explanation, one that sees my choices as being due to me in some very deep sense. Of course, explaining my choices as being due to my nature could fit the bill if I can be identified with my nature. But if the rest of the argument goes through, this cannot be done without detriment to my moral responsibility.
Let us now turn to the second step in the argument, which is the statement that a person does not determine her own nature. Now clearly this must be true for the most part. My nature is basically my character and I did not form my own character. (It was formed by some combination of my genes and my environment.) However, it is not clear that I am completely impotent in the formation of my own character. For example, if I want to turn myself into a kinder person, perhaps I could start by forcing myself to perform some kind acts, in the hope that after a while such behaviour will become more habitual for me and thus capable of being considered part of my character. This may be possible, but it does not undermine the claim that I cannot form my own character. For what determines my decision to try to change my character? If the first step in the argument is correct, i.e., if all my choices are indeed due to my nature, it must be some part of my nature that determines this. We are back to where we were before, for the question then arises: how could I determine that part of my nature that determined this decision? An infinite regress threatens. It seems that this can only be avoided by conceding that I cannot in fact have any control over the development of my own nature. The third statement, that we are not responsible for our individual nature, seems to follow once the second is accepted. As I had ultimately no part in forming it, how could I be held responsible for it? How could I legitimately be blamed for any of its flaws or praised for any of its virtues? The fourth statement does appear to follow from the first and third. It implicitly appeals to the principle that if I am not responsible for X and Y is entirely due to X, then I cannot be held responsible for Y either. This appears to be a necessary truth and so, given the premises of the argument, the conclusion that we are not morally responsible for our choices, seems unassailable. The above argument provides an interesting alternative to the simple appeal to determinism for supporting the idea that we lack moral responsibility for our actions. Of course, acceptance of this conclusion remains hard, since the idea of moral responsibility seems to be deeply involved in almost everyone s moral understanding. Whether this points to a genuine conceptual connection is another matter, which cannot, however, be explored here.