Lost and Found: Philosophy / Perdida y encontrada: filosofía

Ángel: Jim ¿has leído el articulo de Willard Van Orman Quine titulado “¿Ha perdido la filosofía el contacto con la gente?”?

Jim: No, not yet. What’s it all about?

Ángel: Citando a varias figuras relevantes para la filosofía, Quine hace una fundamentación de ésta como auténtica ciencia que busca una concepción organizada de la realidad e incluso, más allá y cómo el resto de las ciencias deben su nacimiento y gran parte de sus logros a ella, cabeza de primera categoría; así mismo, menciona dos grandes disciplinas que ha impulsado la filosofía en los últimos dos siglos, a saber, la Filosofía del Lenguaje y la Lógica. Después de decir que  lo que es filosóficamente importante, no tiene que ser necesariamente de interés común, concluye afirmando que lo que debe mover al filósofo estudiante es la curiosidad intelectual.

Jim: That’s interesting. But I do quite agree in a way that Quine asked the question, “Has Philosophy lost contact with people?” Because based on my few years of teaching philosophy in college, I find it quite hard, challenging and sometimes frustrating to get my seminarians get interested in philosophy.

Angel: Yo no tengo experiencia sobre la enseñanza filosófica. ¿Cuáles son los problemas que has encontrado en tu Seminario?

Jim: First, teenagers, including seminarians, have lots of interests which occupies their minds (games, excursions, dates, the opposite sex, etc). And for them these are more interesting than what some dead philosophers said hundreds of years ago. Secondly, they have a short attention span. Perhaps it’s the fault of the modern technology that every information can be obtain by simply clicking a mouse. Too much information yet no time to process or reflect on them. Which is quite sad considering that “An unexamined life is not worth living.” Thirdly, with regards to seminarians, philosophy is not considered as important as theology which is a mistake if you read Fides et Ratio.

Angel: Pero si dentro de los medios que el hombre tiene para el conocimiento de la verdad y dar respuesta a las preguntas esenciales de la vida se levanta imponentemente el pilar de la filosofía. Ella ayuda a llegar a lo universal, necesario y evidente en la medida que la razón pueda alcanzarlo, cuya labor, atendiendo a la recta razón, hará más digna la existencia personal.

Puesto que hay un deseo natural en el hombre de saber y conocer la verdad, la razón es una herramienta indispensable con la que el espíritu humano se eleva hacia el descanso en la verdad. Además, el responder a las cuestiones fundamentales de la vida, mediante el conocimiento de la realidad y del mundo lleva a un conocimiento más íntimo de sí del sujeto mismo que se arriesga a recorrer la aventura de la sabiduría.

Jim: (Jokingly laughs) Wow, for a while I got lost with what you said. I thought the great Socrates just spoke to me!

But I do quite agree with you. Wisdom has its inherent value which should be sought by all. But the reality is that teenagers don’t think that way. They are at an age when wisdom takes a backseat to thrills and adventure. Even if such things are superficial compared to profound joy found in philosophizing. And I do want to impart that sense of joy to my students.

Angel: Atendiendo a su bien y el de la Iglesia, considero que es necesaria una disciplina académica más rigurosa y exigente. Pues necesitarán un adecuado sustento racional para la Verdad revelada en la cual depositan su fe, misma que han de proclamar. ¡Nuestra fe no es ciega!

Jim: Again, I agree with you. But it is very easy to impose. I may threatened them with failing grades or coax them to do better. But if they do not instill in themselves that love and awe for philosophizing, then it’s useless. They must see philosophy classes not simply as a boring obligation in order to get a degree but as something they do because they love wisdom. They must learn to have that love for the search for the truth.

Ángel: Si se quiere escalar la verdad se necesita la herramienta adecuada del estudio y la reflexión, hay que tener un espíritu atento y constante, apoyarse de las estacas firmes que ya otros han puesto, ir subiendo cautelosamente con las cuerdas de la razón y descansar, de vez en cuando, en los paraderos de los grandes filósofos. Ah, no olvides llevar despertador para no dejar dormir a la curiosidad intelectual, la cual nos mueve para llegar a cima.

Jim: There you go speaking metaphorically again! But I do think it’s also a challenge for us teachers to adapt to the situation of our students with the way we teach. We must make philosophy relevant for them.  That philosophy is  something fun and cool to do.

But speaking of searching for truth, Padre Ángel, may I invite you for a glass (or a bottle) of wine?

Ángel: ¡por su puesto! Según los romanos, “in vino veritas.” (en vino, hay verdad)

The Power of Words

     A little boy was once brought to the police precinct. He was found wandering around in the streets apparently lost. So a policeman asked for his name. The boy responded, “Demoñito” (little devil). Puzzled, the policeman continued asking, “Who is your father?” And the boy (or Demoñito) answered,        “Satanás” (Satan). 

     “Your mother?” 

     “Bruja.” (witch) 

     “Where do you live?” 

     “Infierno (hell),” the little boy meekly replied. 

    The policeman was clearly puzzled by the response of the boy but he decided to ask around in the neighborhood until finally someone recognized the boy and pointed the policeman to the proper address of his house. While they were a still far off, the policeman can already hear shouting from the little boy’s parents. They were fighting. The mother shouted at her husband (the boy’s father), “Hoy, Satanás! Where is your son, the little devil (demoñito)?” And the father hollered back, “You witch (bruja)! I don’t know! I am going out, this house is Hell (infierno)!” Hearing all these, the policeman finally understood the boy’s answers. 

     Another story (this time a true story): A father along with his daughter would daily drop by the nearby bakery to buy fresh bread. And every time the baker would see the little girl he would smile and ask, “How is my little Miss America?” The little girl would giggle and laugh at such a compliment. Years later, when the little girl got older, she won the Miss USA title. 

     Words. They are powerful. They can change a life or ruin it. 

     The common view in analytic philosophy is that words are chiefly bearers of truth-values, they simply state facts, being "true" when they succeed and "false" when they fail in that role. But for John Langshaw Austin, the function as truth-value is but a small role that words play. They do not just represent how things are, they ask questions, give commands, make suggestions, give advice, tell jokes, make promises, even insult, persuade and intimidate. Austin turns his attention particularly to “performative utterances” or simply performatives. These words or sentences are not used to describe (hence, they have no truth-value) but when one utters one of these sentences in appropriate circumstances, it is not just to “say” something, but rather to perform a certain kind of action. He would further make three-fold distinction between different types of “speech act”: locutionary act (the act of saying something), illocutionary act (an act performed in saying something) and perlocutionary act (an act performed by saying something). 

     This last type (perlocutionary act) emphasizes the fact that the words we say affect others. They elicit response or reaction. We read many instances in the Bible when words have such powerful effects – when God created the world (“Let there be light . . .”) to when Jesus used words to heal, to forgive and to calm storms. As such, I cannot help but wonder on the tremendous gift that God has given mankind when he gave us the power of words. But as I reflect on man’s capacity for language, perhaps this is simply not a result of man’s rationality. Perhaps this gift was given because God trusts us to be responsible in using such power. 

     As I narrated in the stories above, words can have a positive or negative effect on lives depending on how we use them. But let us all be warned: negative words (when we use them to insult, hurt or discourage) have a more lasting effect than positive words. These negative words also have the tendency to be believed in more than the positive ones. It is true what they say, “A pen is mightier than a sword.” For a sword can only hurt or kill the body, but words have the potential to crush the soul. Such is the power of words. 

     One last story: There was an old teacher who asked his class one day to make a research in a certain poor neighborhood in the city. They were to interview 20 (one for each student) children and make a paper with their conclusion on the future prospect of each child. After a week, they submitted their report and all of them concluded that the children would have no future in society. Either they get killed early or live a life of crime and drugs. After class, the old teacher stayed behind the classroom and read each report in silence and reflection. Then he made a decision. 

     Some twenty years later, a new teacher found some old files which included the interviews made by the students. He decided to ask his class to follow up on the children in the report papers on their status now as grown-ups. After a week, they returned and told the teacher that all of the children became successful people (some were doctors, lawyers, even a politician). The teacher asked the students how such result came to be so opposite of the conclusions arrived at by former students years before. The students replied that when they asked each person why he/she became successful, all of the twenty interviewees started with the words. “Well, there was this old teacher who inspired me . . .” 

     

     Words.   Words are powerful. They can inspire us to hope and to dream.

(Note: While browsing in the youtube.com, I came upon these clips (the other one is in spanish). They present a different approach from my article yet the message remains - words are powerful. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzgzim5m7oU&feature=share  and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNLmrv7-6OY&feature=related )

Fides et Rorty

Fides et Ratio, Pope John Paul II’s encyclical, which deals with the relationship between faith and reason in the modern world, is quite direct in its criticism of modern philosophy’s relativistic and pluralistic tendency and some philosophical traditions such as pragmatism: 

Rather than make use of the human capacity to know the truth, modern philosophy has preferred to accentuate the ways in which this capacity is limited and conditioned. . . . This has given rise to different forms of agnosticism and relativism which have led philosophical research to lose its way in the shifting sands of widespread scepticism. Recent times have seen the rise to prominence of various doctrines which tend to devalue even the truths which had been judged certain. A legitimate plurality of positions has yielded to an undifferentiated pluralism, based upon the assumption that all positions are equally valid, which is one of today's most widespread symptoms of the lack of confidence in truth. (FR, n.5) 

No less dangerous is pragmatism, an attitude of mind which, in making its choices, precludes theoretical considerations or judgments based on ethical principles (FR, n.89). 

In the face of such position of the Church, it would seem that the philosophy of Rorty, and pragmatism in general, should be discussed with caution or even be avoided. Especially since Pragmatism has elements which may endanger our faith: fallibilism, pluralism, relativism, skepticism, etc. All of these points with accusing fingers to its inherent dangers. And to add an ad hominem argument, Rorty is an atheist! If we were in the middle ages, Rorty would be burning at the stakes. 

But let us not be quick to judge. For if we examine his arguments and that of the pragmatists, our personal faith may have more things in common with them than we wish to acknowledge. In fact, they may even serve as a guide for us in our journey of faith. 

When Moses asked God for his name, God gave a cryptic answer “I am who am.” Personally, I think God did not give Moses a direct answer, a fact about his name. What He did, however, was to give Moses a promise – a promise that in the fullness of time, God will reveal himself in our human history. This promise was fulfilled in Jesus Christ – God’s fullness of revelation. But God’s revelation does not stop with Jesus Christ. He continues to reveal Himself to us throughout our history. We just have to look carefully. 

Now, the truth of our faith is an objective fact. This is what we believe in and what the Church sought to preserve and protect. Yet, subjective manifestation of this faith is quite another matter. We believe yet the truth of our belief as applied in our daily lives is oftentimes forgotten or ignored. Primary evidence: we sin. This evidence points to the fact that while there is the truth of our faith, the subjective possession of this truth still involves a long and arduous process of trying to live up to our faith. This is true even in the Church. Throughout history, the Church has made and will still make mistakes. And the Church constantly corrects her ways. This means that our faith is not static but a dynamic process. 

Faith, without practice, is dead. This is where pragmatism comes in. Christian living involves theory as well as praxis (See Mt. 7:21). As Christians we are fallible –we have sinned, we sin and we will sin (see Jn. 8:7). But rather than taking this negatively, this points to another reality – we must rise up from our sins. We learn from our mistakes and this makes our faith stronger. And this constant “conversion” might as well a sort of relativism. That our life as Christians is “trial and error.” We constantly adopt methods and means (or paradigms) that will make us better Christians. Pluralism is also reflected in the fact that God individually and uniquely calls us to Him. There is no single path to holiness (or truth). We have to discover our own personal path that leads us back to God. And this pluralistic approach, instead of endangering our faith, enriches it. We enrich each other’s faith by our individual faith experiences. Each of us contributes to the progress of our common journey/pilgrimage to God. According to Professor Nubiola, “No es la verdad fruto del consenso, sino que más bien es el consenso el fruto de la verdad.” Together we discover and arrive at the same truth of our faith. 

While it is true that we must remain vigilant against philosophies, such as pragmatism, which contain elements that may undermine our faith, we must not close our eyes to the truth (however partial) which they may contain. For God continues to reveal himself in our history, even in various secularist philosophical thoughts. Faith and reason are complementary. Together they can help us become better and faithful children of God.

More Than Words

“Rev. Jim Cerezo was ordained as a priest at the St. John Cathedral on the 30th of November 2004.” This is a very straightforward and factual statement. It consists of a subject (I, Rev. Jim Cerezo), an event (ordination to the priesthood), a place where such event occurred (St. John Cathedral) and the date of occurrence (November 30, 2004). Such event occurring would be corroborated by hundreds of witnesses (which included my bishop, my fellow priests, my relatives and friends). If this is not enough to substantiate the facticity of this event, I have numerous photographs and a video to prove it. As such, the above statement is not only valid and true but also verifiable in fact. 

Yet, something is missing. While it is true that the above statement is a factual description of the event, it would be a grave understatement to say that it truly captured everything that is all to such event. The descriptive proposition fails to capture my feelings (of ecstatic joy, of being unworthy yet blessed, of walking as if I was in the clouds), my thoughts, the collective consciousness of the people, and the rituals that served to sustain and magnify the sacredness of the event. If the above statement is all that it is, then it would be no different if I just went to the bishop and ask him to ordain me right away in the cathedral with just the two of us and without all the fanfare and hooplas of a usual ordination rite. Such two contrasting ways of ordination, one in a context of a religious event and the other done hastily as if it was a minor business transaction, would still reflect the fact of the statement “Rev. Jim Cerezo was ordained as a priest at the St. John Cathedral on the 30th of November 2004.” 

Ludwig Wittgenstein in his seminal work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, wrote, “A proposition is a picture of reality. A proposition is a model of reality as we imagine it (4.01).” And further he would say, “A proposition can be true or false only in virtue of being a picture of reality (4.06).” If not, then such language is relegated to the unsinnig – nonsensical. Professor Nubiola would say, “Meaning is the method of verification.” What cannot be verified is senseless or meaningless. Thus, Wittgenstein set out to put a limit to the bounds of language, outside of which was the realm of nonsense. Sadly, relegated to this realm of non-sense are the traditional metaphysics and, consequently even moral, ethical and religious discourses, which became victims of Wittgenstein’s purgation in his quest to “clarify propositions (4.112).” To further seal their fate, Wittgenstein admonishes us – “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence (7).” 

Indeed, if such is the case, then most of the things in this world we hold dear (like friendship, love, religion, etc.), majority of which cannot be verified strictly in fact, are what Wittgenstein would call unsinnig. If such is the case, then we are better of as mutes – unable to say anything at all. 

The statement about my ordination is an example of how a factual, verifiable proposition can be insufficient to describe or picture the reality that took place. We hear the expression often enough – “Words just can’t describe it.” And we have our share of such experiences. The statement, “His first child was born.,” cannot capture the father’s joy when he holds his child the first time or the statement, “His mother died.,” is insufficient as a proposition to describe the anguish of such a lost to a child. Yes, propositions picture reality but more often than not these propositions are just means to a higher or bigger reality that is simply indescribable by words. 

“Light travels at 300,000 km./sec.” is a proposition that is a fact and verifiable and tested by many scientists. “My friend loves me.” is a proposition that, strictly speaking, cannot be verified. For all I know he might be deceiving me and hides this deception very well or a practitioner of Sun-Tzu’s adage, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” How does one quantify or prove a friendship? I just have to rely on my trust (or faith) that this friend does love me. Now, of these two statements, which one is significant for me? If I have not consulted the internet, I would not know what the speed of light is. Yes, it is a fact but a fact that I simply don’t care about. But the unverifiable statement about my friend, while it would qualify as non-sense for Wittgenstein, is something that I do care about. 

Meaning yields significance. What is meaningful for me are those things that I consider significant and even essential in my life. But I notice that the higher the significance of a thing, the lesser empirically verifiable it is. Friendship, love and values are significant for me yet it would be hard for me to prove them as verifiable facts. Yet this does not diminish their meaning for me. If I climb a mountain and on top of that mountain as I survey my surrounding, I exclaim, “God!” I am not uttering a nonsensical word. I am certainly aware of the fact of the beauty of the scenery yet beyond this fact is a recognition of a higher reality – God. When I say “God” it is not non-sense for me, I am expressing a fact, a fact based on the reality of things yet somehow beyond what is seen in this reality. 

Language is complex. Its propositions can state verifiable facts but also on some occasions refer to realities that are simply beyond descriptions. What it can hope to do in these occasions is to simply “point” to these realities and as such cannot be simply descriptive of facts. Limiting significant language only to those which can be verified in fact or to what is logical or to what can “picture reality” would not only consign us to silence but imprison us to a poverty of spirit.

The Beauty of Vagueness

“All language is vague.” As a student trying to learn the Spanish language, I can somewhat empathize with these words by Bertrand Russell. I remember during my first days here in Spain when my initial problem consists of learning the translation of words. In one instance, I was asked how I am coping with the language barrier. I tried to mentally translate the phrase “I am embarrassed” in Spanish. As I remembered that some Spanish words share some similarity with English words, I haltingly said, “Yo estoy . . . embarazado.” The other person gave me a puzzled look which I only understood later on when I consulted the dictionary and found out that embarazado means pregnant. How embarrassing indeed! 

Yet, what is the meaning of vagueness? Russell would say that vagueness (and precision) has “to do with the relation between a representation and that which it represents”. In this way, vagueness is a problem of meaning in so far as Russell sees meaning as the relation between a word and the thing it means. This view is significantly different from the modern diagnosis of vagueness as, first and foremost, a problem of truth-value gluts or gaps. Russell would further contrast vagueness with accuracy which he defined as “a one-one relation” of a representing system to the represented system. A representation is vague because the relation is not one-one but one-many. For Russell, “In an accurate language, meaning would be a one-one relation.” Yet, as he himself acknowledges, this cannot be in the actual world where words, more often than not, have many meanings. 

This many meanings of words are not only relegated to the words themselves but to the context of their use. Consider my experience when one person exclaimed to me, “¡Que barbaro!” when I narrated a personal story. I was shocked and felt insulted because I was quite certain that barbaro means barbaric or uncivilized. But my indignity was placated when I learned later on that the phrase in that context means, “that’s great” or “that’s cool.” Even the context of culture influences the meaning of some words as the Spanish verb coger (to get) has a quite different and unpleasant connotation to a Mexican. 

Now, is vagueness a problem? For Russell, who wishes to solve the problems of philosophy by clarifying meanings, it is a problem. And on a wider scale, international conflicts as well as domestic ones brought about by misunderstanding could be minimized or even eradicated if we perfectly understand each other. The words we say exactly convey a uniformed meaning without any hidden connotations or implications. Surely, with such accurate and precise language, philosophy, not to mention worldly and personal affairs, would surely progress. 

Yet something is amiss. Language is what distinguishes us rational beings from animals. It reflects our ingenuity and our capacity to soar with our thoughts and imagination. Language is not something learned from the textbook, our whole being is immersed in it. It is multi-layered in its meaning which bares open its doors for us to discover it. Consider a joke. The beauty of a joke is its double or even multi-meaning. We laugh and appreciate it when we are able to decipher its meaning. We “get” the joke and we somehow pity someone who does not “get” or understand it. We have the ability to digest what is meant in its actual context and transcend its literal form. 

Every language is beautiful. It is rich and its richness lies in its multiplicity of meaning and context. Learning a language is an adventure we set out to thread from our infancy. It is not plain or easy. We sometimes stumble in grasping it. We learn the twists and turns of its complexity as we travel along its path. It is an on-going process that will only end in death. Removing vagueness in language, while it clarifies meaning, entails sacrificing the beauty of language. It will make it tepid, one-dimensional and boring. It will suppress language’s growth and hence stagnate our own creativity. Vagueness is very much a part of the beauty of language. While at times it can prove to be an irksome inconvenience, its outright removal or exorcism from our language by having a systematic one-one relationship of signifying terms and the thing signified will be quite a disaster. The only solution, I believe, is to immerse ourselves in untangling the enigma of language, to “get” what is truly meant – to treat language as an adventure of discovery.