How Is Truth Defined? - AJ AYER AND FC COPLESTON DEBATE ON THE BBC (JUNE 13TH, 1949) - PART II OF IX

Stephen Alexander Beach

(4566 Words) 

Here's part II/IX from a 1949 BBC debate between Thomist, FC Copleston, and Positivist, AJ AYER. This part of the debate centers around the question of how truth is defined. Ayer clearly holds that truth is equivalent to empirical verification, and so any notion of truth outside of this becomes meaningless. Copleston, tries to get Ayer to understand that there are truths which the rational mind arrives at when it follows the laws and logic of the world beyond their empirical phenomena to their ultimate explanations. 

 

Ayer's Definition of Truth is Axiomatically Limited to the Empirical

Picking up from the first part of the debate, Ayer continues on the topic of human free will, saying that if there are mysteries, like free will, that we do not understand, all that means is that more science needs to be done. This leads to Copleston moving on from the free will question to try to make his same point about philosophy raising different questions than science can ask or answer. And so he turns to the fundamentally philosophical question of why there is something rather than nothing at all. And, unsurprisingly, Ayer tries to deny the full import of this question by claiming that every "why" question is really just a "how" question at a deeper level. To this Copleston clarifies that, no, he is not asking a question which seeks simply an empirical how to things, because even if there was an infinite series of empirical causes, it would not be the same as asking why this infinite series exists at all. This is a properly metaphysical question, and is seeking an answer which goes beyond the empirical. 

Again, Ayer does not understand, and characterizes the question as seeking an ultimate empirical description beyond empirical descriptions, which he says is impossible. Copleston corrects him again, by saying that it wouldn't be a metaphysical question if he were asking for an empirical answer. Here, Copleston gives one of the best definitions of metaphysics that I have ever encountered. He says that metaphysics is the exploration of the intelligible structure of reality beyond the empirical. "... a metaphysical question concerns the intelligible structure of reality in so far as it is not amenable to the investigation by the methods of empirical science." To this Ayer still falters saying that to ask a question that has no empirical answer is to end up with no possible answer. Copleston has to correct him again by pointing out that science works by hypothesis and empirical testing, but that is not how the field of metaphysics operates, by definition. 

Rather, the discipline of metaphysics proceeds according to the mind's rational deduction of intelligible truths and laws which begin in the physical world but lead beyond it in their explanations and conclusions. Ayer questions what good it would be to arrive at a conclusion that one could never empirically experience. Copleston points out that even in science there are many conclusions which are held by postulation, not because humans can directly observe the realities. Even so, since the world does not contain the absolute explanation for its existence, it is very reasonable for the mind to be lead beyond the empirical in its search for answers. 

Ayer, again, holds that all explanations are material explanations, and so it doesn't make any sense to him to posit an explanation before all material explanations. Copleston reaffirms that metaphysics seeks the relational connections between things even if they go beyond the empirical. Ayer tries to reject metaphysical causation, too, by using the word "causation" only in an empirical sense, and thus it would, again, be meaningless to seek a causation beyond all causation. Copleston reaffirms that his philosophy does not limit itself to only the empirical, and so it is capable of pursuing reason beyond the empirical ... that doesn't make it meaningless. Rather, it pursues causality in the sense that things that don't have the cause of their existence within themselves must rely on a cause extrinsic to itself for its explanation, if the universe is to be intelligible. 

Ayer says that even if you could trace the causality of phenomena, you'd just be lead to seek another description of a previous phenomena, on to infinity. And therefore, phenomena don't need explanations. Copleston harshly objects, saying that phenomena do indeed require explanations if they are to be intelligible, just as the an ultimate cause is needed for the set of all phenomena. The problem is, again, that Ayer will not consider anything outside his philosophical boundaries that the real is empirical and the empirical is real, and that's all. 

Ayer then says that even if such a proposition about the Absolute cause of the universe were made, it's meaningless because he can't do anything practically with that knowledge, and likewise since there's no empirical experience of such a statement, one cannot make any sense of it. Copleston then points out that truth is not about "practical use", to which Ayer asks what other purposes of things are there. Ayer then claims that it must relate practically because it is in relation to the empirical world that claims can be falsified or verified. But if there is an ultimate explanation which would be true regardless of any empirical situation or circumstance, then the idea cannot ever be verified or falsified, and thus it becomes meaningless. 

This section of the debate can be summed up by one of Copleston's last responses.

"Copleston: I think that what you are demanding is that any explanation of the existence of phenomena should be a scientific hypothesis. Otherwise you will not recognize it as an explanation. This is to say, 'All explanations of facts are of the type of scientific hypotheses or they are not explanations at all.' But the explanation of all finite beings cannot be a scientific explanation, i.e. in the technical use of the world 'scientific.' But it can be a rational explanation all the same. 'Rational' and 'scientific' are not equivalent terms, and it is a prejudice to think that they are equivalent."

Transcript of Part II of the Debate

Ayer: I do not see that you can know a priori that human behavior is inexplicable. The most you can say is that our present stock of psychological hypotheses isn't adequate to explain certain features of it; and you may very well be right. But what is more required is better psychological investigation. We need to form new theories and test the theories by further observation, which is again the method of science. It seems to me that all you've said, when you've talked of the limits of science, is simply that a given science may not explain things, or explain as much as you would like to see explained. But that, which to me seems to be perfectly acceptable, is only a historical statement about a point which science has reached at a given stage. It doesn't show that there's room for a quite different kind of discipline, and you haven't made clear to me what that different kind of discipline which you reserve for the philosophy is supposed to be.

Copleston: Well, I think that one of the possible functions of the philosopher is to consider what is sometimes called the non-empirical or intelligible self. There is an obvious objection, from your point of view, against the phrase 'non-empirical self'; but I would like to turn to metaphysics in general. The scientists can describe various particular aspects of things, and all the sciences together can give, it is true, a very general description of reality. But the scientist, precisely as scientist, does not raise, for example, the question why anything is there at all. To raise this question is, in my opinion, one of the functions of the philosopher. You may say that the question cannot be answered. I think that it can; but, even if it could not be answered, I consider that it is one of the functions of the philosopher to show that there is such a problem. Some philosophers would say that metaphysics consists in raising problems rather than in answering them definitively; and, though I do not myself agree with the sheerly agnostic position, I think that there is value in raising the metaphysical problems, quite apart from the question whether one can or cannot answer them definitively. That is why I said earlier on that one of the functions of the philosopher is to open the mind to the Transcendent, to take the ceiling off the room -- to use again a rather crude metaphor. 

Ayer: Yes, but there's a peculiarity about these 'why' question. Supposing someone asks you 'Why did the light go out?' You may tell him the light went out because there was a fuse. And he then says 'Why does the light go out when it is fused?' Then perhaps you tell him a story about electrical connections, wires, and so on. That is the 'how' story. Then, if he's not satisfied with that, you may give him the general theory of electricity which is again a 'how' story. And then if he's not satisfied with that, you give him the general theory of electromagnetics, which is again a 'how' story. You tell him that things function in this way at this level, and then your 'why' answers are deductions from that. So that in the ordinary sense of a 'why' question, putting a 'why' question is asking for a 'how' answer at a higher logical level - a more general 'how' answer. Well now if you raise this question with regard to the world as a whole, you're asking for what? The most general possible theory? 

Copleston: No, the metaphysical question I have in mind is a different sort of question. If I ask, for example, how the earth comes to be in its present condition, I expect an answer which refers to empirical causes and conditions. There I quite agree with you. I go to the astronomer for an answer. And if one persists in asking such questions, I dare say one could, in theory, go back indefinitely. At least, I am prepared to admit the possibility. But if I ask why there are phenomena at all, why there is something rather than nothing, I am not asking for an answer in terms of empirical causes and conditions. Even if the series of phenomena did go back indefinitely, without beginning, I could still raise the question as to why the infinite series of phenomena exists, how it comes to be there. Whether such a question can be answered or not is obviously another matter. But if I ask whether anything lies behind phenomena, whether anything is responsible for the series, finite, or infinite, of phenomena, the answer -- supposing that there is an answer -- must, in my opinion, refer to a reality beyond or behind phenomena. But in any case to ask why any finite phenomena exist, why there is something rather than nothing, is to ask a different sort of question from the question why water tends to flow downhill rather than uphill.

Ayer: But my objection is that your very notion of an explanation of all phenomena is self-contradictory. 

Copleston: What is the contradiction? 

Ayer: The contradiction is, I think, that if you accept my interpretation of what 'why' questions are, then asking a 'why' question is always asking for a more general description; and asking for the 'why' of that is asking for a more general description still. And then you say, 'Give me an answer to a 'why' which doesn't take the form of a description,' and that's a contradiction. It's like saying 'Give me a description more general than any description, which itself is not a description.' And clearly nobody can do that.

Copleston: That is not the question I am asking. There would be a contradiction if I did not distinguish between a scientific question and a metaphysical question, but a metaphysical question concerns the intelligible structure of reality in so far as it is not amenable to the investigation by the methods of empirical science. It seems to me that when I propose a metaphysical question you ask me to re-state the question as though it were a scientific question. But, if I could do that, the question would not be a metaphysical question, would it? 

Ayer: Well, what form would your metaphysical question take?

Copleston: Well, in my opinion, the existence of phenomena in general requires some explanation, and I should say explanation in terms of a transcendent reality. I maintain that this is a possible philosophical question. Whatever the answer may be, it obviously cannot consist in a further description of phenomena. Aristotle asserted that philosophy begins with wonder. If someone feels no wonder at the existence of the physical world, he is unlikely to ask any questions about its existence as such. 

Ayer: If you say anything of that kind, it still means that you're treating your transcendent reality, or rather the statements about your transcendent reality, in the same way as a scientific hypothesis. It become a very, very general scientific hypothesis. Why not? I suppose its because you can't test it in any way. But if you can't test it in any way, then you've not got an explanation and you haven't answered my question. 

Copleston: Well, at this point I should like to remark that you're presupposing that one must be able to test every hypothesis in a certain way. I do not mean to allow that every metaphysical statement is a hypothesis; but even if it were, it would not be scientifically testable without ceasing to be a metaphysical statement. You seem to me to reject from the beginning the reflective work of the intellect on which rational metaphysics depends. Neither Spinoza nor Fichte nor Hegel nor St. Thomas Aquinas supposed that one could investigate scientifically what they respectively believed to be metaphenomenal reality. But each of them thought that intellectual reflection can lead the mind to postulate that reality.

Ayer: Well in one sense of the words, of course it can. You can penetrate disguises. If something's heavily camouflaged you can understand that it's there even if you can't see it. That's because you know what it would be like to see it independently of seeing it in disguise. Now your kind of perception is a very queer one, because you say you can discern things lying behind other things with simply no experience of stripping off the disguise and coming across the thing disguised. 

Copleston: It's not exactly a question of a disguise. I can strip off camouflage and see the camouflaged thing with my eyes. But no metaphysician would pretend that one could see a metaphenomenal reality with the eyes: it can be apprehended only by an intellectual activity, though that activity must, of necessity, begin with objects of sense-experience and introspection. After all, you yourself reflect on the data of experience: your philosophy does not consist in stating atomic experiences.

Ayer: No indeed it doesn't. Since I hold that philosophy consists in logical analysis, it isn't in my view a matter of starting experiences at all: if by stating experiences you mean just describing them. 

Copleston: It seems to me that we are discussing my particular brand of metaphysics rather than Logical Positivism. However, I should maintain that the very ability to raise the question of the existence of the world (or of the series of phenomena, if you like) implies a dim awareness of the non-self-sufficiency of the world. When this awareness becomes articulate and finds expression, it may lead to a metaphysical speculation, to a conscious thinking of contingent existence as such. And I should maintain that an intellectual apprehension of the nature of what I call contingent beings as such involves an apprehension of its relatedness to self-grounded Being. Some philosophers (Hegel among them, I think) would hold that one cannot think finite being as such without implicitly thinking the Infinite. The words "as such" are, I should say, important. I can perfectly well think of a cow, for example, without thinking of any metaphysical reality; but if I abstract from its characteristics as a cow and think of it merely as a contingent being, I pass into the sphere of metaphysics. 

Ayer: But it's precisely questions like this question about the world as a whole that I think we should rule out. Supposing you ask a question like 'Where do all things come from?' Now that's a perfectly meaningful question as regards any given event. Asking where it came from is asking for a description of some event prior to it. But if you generalize that question, it becomes meaningless. You're then asking what event is prior to all events. Clearly no event can be prior to all events, because if it's a member of the class of all events it must be included in it and therefore can't be prior to it. Let me give another instance which illustrates the same point. One can say of any one perception that its a hallucination, meaning by this that it isn't corroborated by one's own further perceptions or by those of other people, and that makes sense. Now, some people, and philosophers too, I'm afraid, want to generalize this and say with a profound air: 'Perhaps all our experiences are hallucinatory.' Well, that of course becomes meaningless. In exactly the same way I should say that this question of where does it all come from isn't meaningful.

Copleston: It isn't meaningful if the only meaningful questions are those which can be answered by the methods of empirical science, as you presuppose. In my opinion, you are unduly limiting 'meaningfulness' to a certain restricted kind of meaningfulness. Now, the possibility of raising the question of the Absolute seems to depend largely on the nature of relations. If one denies that one can discern any implication or internal relation in the existing phenomena considered as such, then a metaphysic of the absolute becomes an impossible thing. If the mind can discern such a relation, then I think a metaphysic of the Absolute is possible. 

Ayer: Metaphysic of the Absolute? I am afraid my problem still is, What questions are being asked? Now supposing one were to ask, Is the world dependent on something outside itself? Would you regard that as a possible question?

Copleston: Yes I think it's a possible question. 

Ayer: Well then you're using a very queer sense of causation aren't you? Because in the normal sense in which you talk of one event being dependent or consequent on another, you'd be meaning that they had some kind of temporal relation to each other. In fact, normally if one uses the word causation one is saying that the later event is dependent on the earlier, in the sense that all cases of the earlier are also cases of the later. But now you can't be meaning that, because if you were you'd be putting your cause in the world. 

Copleston: Well now, aren't you presupposing the validity of a certain philosophical interpretation of causality? It may be true or false; but it is a philosophical view, and it is not one which I accept. 

Ayer: But surely on any view of causality, the causal relation holds between things that happen, and presumably anything that happens is in the world. I don't know what you mean by your other-worldly reality, but if you make it a cause you automatically bring this supposed reality into the world. 

Copleston: It would bring the world into relation with the reality; and personally I should not dream of adopting any metaphysic which did not start with experience of this world. But the relating of the world to a Being outside the world would not bring that Being into the world. Incidentally, I have just used the word 'outside.' This illustrates admirably the inadequacy of language for expressing metaphysical ideas. 'Outside' suggests distance in space, 'independent' would be better. But I should like to make some remarks about this use of the word 'cause.' I am very glad you brought the question up. First of all, as far as I understand the use of the term by scientists, causal laws would mean for them, I suppose, statistical generalizations from observed phenomena. At least this would be one of the meanings, I think. 

Ayer: That makes it rather more genetic than it need be. I mean the question is not really where these scientific expressions have come from, but what use they're put to. Let us say that they are generalizations which refer to observable events of phenomena, if you will. 

Copleston: I agree, of course, that one cannot use the principle of causality, if understood in a sense which involves references to phenomena exclusively, in order to transcend phenomena. Supposing, for example, that I understood by the principle of causality the proposition that the initial state of every phenomena is determined by a preceding phenomenon or by preceding phenomena, quite apart from the fact that it may not apply even to all phenomena. But what I understand by the philosophic principle of causality is the general proposition that every being which has not in itself its reason of existence depends on for its existence on an extrinsic reality which I call, in this connection, cause. This principle says nothing as to the character of the cause. It may be free or not free. Therefore it cannot be refuted by infra-atomic indeterminism, if there is such a thing, any more than it is refuted by the free acts of men. Some philosophers would probably say that this principle has only subjective necessity; but I don't hold this view myself, nor do I see any very cogent reason for holding it. Moreover, though the principle is, in a sense, presupposed by the scientist when he traces the connection between a phenomenal effect and a phenomenal cause, the principle mentions not phenomenal causes, but an extrinsic reality. If one is speaking of all beings which have not in themselves the reason for their existence, the extrinsic reality in question must transcend them. To my way of thinking the philosophic principle of causality is simply an implication of the intelligibility of phenomena, if these are regarded as contingent events. 

Ayer: Well then, again I think I should accuse you of the fallacy of misplaced generalization. You see, what is the intelligibility of phenomena? You can understand sentences; you can understand an argument; they can be intelligible or not. But what is the understanding of phenomena? Even a particular one, let alone all phenomena? Well I think you could give a sense to understanding a particular phenomenon. You would recognize some description of it as an accurate description, and then understanding the phenomenon would be a matter of explaining this description, that is, of deducing it from some theory. Now, you say, are all phenomena intelligible? Does that mean that you are looking for a single theory from which every true proposition can be deduced? I doubt if you could find one, but even if you did, you'd want that theory again, wouldn't you, to be explained in its turn, which gives you an infinite regress? You see, phenomena just happen, don't they? Is there a question of their being intelligible or not intelligible? 

Copleston: No, phenomena don't 'just happen.' I didn't 'just happen.' If I did, my existence would be unintelligible. And I'm not prepared to acquiesce in the idea that the series of phenomena, even if infinite, just happens, unless you can give me a good reason for doing do. I think you can legitimately raise the question why there is finite existence as such. Whether it's answerable or not is another pair of shoes. 

Ayer: Well, I quite agree that many metaphysicians have supposed themselves to be asking and answering questions of this kind. But I still want to say that I don't regard these as genuine questions, nor do I regard the answers as intelligible. For example, let us take the case of someone who says that the answer is that Reality is the Absolute expressing itself. I say such an answer explains nothing because I can do nothing with it, an I don't know what it would be like for such a proposition to be true. I should say the same about all statements of this kind. 

Copleston: And why should it be necessary to do anything with a proposition? 

Ayer: Because you put this up as a hypothesis, and a hypothesis is supposed to be explained. 

Copleston: An explanation is meant to explain, certainty. What I meant was there there is no reason why we should be able to deduce 'practical' consequences  from it. 

Ayer: Well, if you don't get practical answers what kind of answers do you get?

Copleston: Theoretical answers, of course. I should have thought, as a simpleminded historian of philosophy that one has been given a good many metaphysical answers. They cannot all be true; but the answers are forthcoming all the same. 

Ayer: Yes, but the trouble still is that these answers are given not as explanations of any particular event, but of all events. And I wonder if this notion of an explanation of all events isn't itself faulty. When I explain something by telling you that this is the way it works, I thereby exclude other possibilities. So that any genuine explanation is compatible with one course of events, and incompatible with another. That, of course, is what distinguishes one explanation from another. But something which purported to explain all events, not merely all events that did occur, but any event that could occur, would be empty as an explanation because nothing would disagree with it. You might explain all events as they do occur, provided you allowed the possibility that if they occurred differently your explanation would be falsified. But the trouble with these so-called metaphysical explanations is that they don't merely purport to explain what does happen, but to serve equally for anything that could conceivably happen. However you changed your data, the same explanation would still hold, but that makes it as an explanation absolutely vacuous. 

Copleston: I think that what you are demanding is that any explanation of the existence of phenomena should be a scientific hypothesis. Otherwise you will not recognize it as an explanation. This is to say, 'All explanations of facts are of the type of scientific hypotheses or they are not explanations at all.' But the explanation of all finite beings cannot be a scientific explanation, i.e. in the technical use of the world 'scientific.' But it can be a rational explanation all the same. 'Rational' and 'scientific' are not equivalent terms, and it is a prejudice to think that they are equivalent. 

Ayer: But does a non-scientific explanation explain anything? Let me take an example. Suppose someone said that the explanation for things happening as they did was that it answered the purpose of the deity. Now I should say that would only be meaningful if you could show that events going this way rather than that way answered his purpose. But if you're going to say that whatever happens is going to answer his purpose, then it becomes useless as an explanation. In fact it's not an explanation at all. It becomes empty of significance because it's consistent with everything. 

Copleston: If I seek the explanation of the world, I am considering an ontological question, and what I am looking for is an ontological explanation and not simply a logical explanation. 

...... To be continued in part III/IX

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1 - Transcript taken from "A Modern Introduction to Philosophy: Readings from Classical and Contemporary Sources" Edited by Paul Edwards and Arthur Pap. New York: The Free Press.