Post on 11-Jan-2023
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Pragmatist Themes in Van Fraassen’s Stances and
Hegel’s Forms of Consciousness
The aim of this paper is to establish a substantial
positive philosophical connection between Bas van Fraassen and
Hegel, by focusing on their respective notions of ‘stance’ and
‘form of consciousness’. In Section I, I run through five ways
of understanding van Fraassen’s idea of a stance. I argue that
a ‘stance’ is best understood as an intellectual disposition.
This, in turn, means that the criteria for assessing a stance
are ones which ask whether or not a stance adequately makes
sense of things. In Section II, the discussion turns to Hegel’s
notion of a ‘form of consciousness’. I argue that Hegel’s
notion of a ‘form of consciousness’ is best understood as
comprising a worldview. The principal advantage of
articulating stances in a Hegelian way is that such an
interpretation explicitly details both the theoretical and
affective attitudes that van Fraassen is after. Therefore, why
Hegel is potentially an especially illuminating source of
understanding stances is that, unlike the other accounts,
forms of consciousness most clearly illustrate the pragmatist
elements of a stance.
I
Bas van Fraassen’s The Empirical Stance (van Fraassen (2002))
has received considerable attention from philosophers. After
all, as Richard Rorty wrote in his review of the work, “[the
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book is an] ambitious, absorbing, iconoclastic,
metaphilosophical treatise”.1 One particular ambitious,
absorbing, iconoclastic, and metaphilosophical feature of The
Empirical Stance is van Fraassen’s presentation of a novel
conception of a philosophical position. A philosophical
position, according to van Fraassen, is understood as a
‘stance’; and each stance is composed of a specific set of
propositional attitudes, such as beliefs, and “something
other than factual theses: attitudes, commitments, values,
goals”.2 What exactly van Fraassen means by this has been the
subject of various discussions by philosophers of science.3 Of
course, though, the concept of a stance is not intended by van
Fraassen and these philosophers to be restricted to philosophy
of science. As Darrell Rowbottom & Otavio Bueno note, the idea
of a ‘stance’ bears important relations to “rationality, and
issues such as voluntarism, the rationality of theory change
(and theory construction), rational belief formation (and
Bayesianism), and the relationship between a posteriori and a
priori forms of inquiry”.4 In what follows in this paper, I
offer a new way of understanding the very idea of a stance –
one which is rooted in the work of Hegel.
However, before moving to articulating stances in a
Hegelian fashion, I would first like to begin with a
discussion of the passage in which van Fraassen introduces the
empiricist stance: 1 http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/23164-the-empirical-stance/ 2 B. Van Fraassen, 2002: 48. 3 See Teller (2004), Rowbottom (2005), Monton (2007), and the special issueof Synthese in 2011 that is devoted to the topic of ‘Stance and Rationality’.4 D. P. Rowbottom & O. Bueno, 2011: 2.
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A philosophical position can consist in something otherthan a belief in what the world is like. We can, forinstance, take the empiricist’s attitude toward sciencerather than his or her beliefs about it as the morecrucial characteristic. […] A philosophical position canconsist in a stance (attitude, commitment, approach, acluster of such—possibly including some propositionalattitudes such as beliefs as well). Such a stance can ofcourse be expressed, and may involve or presuppose somebeliefs as well, but cannot be simply equated with havingbeliefs or making assertions about what there is.5
What van Fraassen appears to be mean by a ‘stance’ here is a
kind of orientation in thinking that is composed of various
propositional attitudes, such as ‘I believe that human beings
evolved from single-celled amoeba’, but is not ultimately
composed of those various propositional attitudes. This is
because what properly constitutes each stance is the specific
set of attitudes, commitments, approaches each enquirer has in
addition to their various beliefs.
Though we can grant a clear distinction between beliefs
and stances, it is still not entirely clear what a stance is.
We can perhaps dispel some of the mystery by reflecting on
five ways of understanding the notion of a stance. The first
of which involves interpreting ‘stance’ in terms of Kuhn’s
famous concept of a paradigm: according to Kuhn, paradigms
refer to disciplinary matrixes that involve “the entire
constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared
by members of a given community”.6 As Rowbottom argues, “[w]hen
we look at van Fraassen’s characterisation of a stance, we5 Van Fraassen, 2002: 47-8. 6 T. Kuhn, 1996: 175.
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should be struck by the considerable similarity”.7 Rowbottom’s
justification for this claim is that a stance is characterised
by the following: attitudes, commitments, approaches, beliefs,
and other propositional attitudes; whilst a disciplinary
matrix is characterised by the following: values, techniques,
beliefs, and exemplars. He goes on to claim that attitudes are
effectively the same as values; approaches are effectively the
same as techniques; the beliefs involved in a stance
effectively amount to the beliefs involved in a disciplinary
matrix; and that commitments are connected to disciplinary
matrix beliefs.8
The second way of understanding what exactly is a stance
is one which adopts a Kantian-McDowellian interpretation of
‘stance’. Under such an account, a ‘stance’ is understood as a
perspective or standpoint or a way in which we have the world in view. What
this involves goes beyond adopting certain propositional
attitudes or even adopting certain values – it principally
consists in the exercise of our conceptual capacities in such
a way so as to grasp the mind-world relation in a manner which
settles sceptical questions. For example, the main thrust of
the Critical Philosophy is to persuade rational enquirers to
abandon the standpoint of transcendental realism in favour of
the standpoint transcendental idealism. Likewise, one of John
McDowell’s principal interests in Mind and World is to reject
7 D. P. Rowbottom, 2011: 112. 8 Cf. Rowbottom, 2011: 113. I wish to note two things here: firstly, that aparadigm operates at the group level, whereas a stance operates at theindividual level; secondly, while Rowbottom draws an analogy between Kuhnianparadigms and Van Fraassenian stances, Rowbottom regards paradigms to bedifferent from stances principally insofar as the former involve exemplars.
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both ‘bald naturalism’ and ‘rampant Platonism’ and to
successfully avoid an “interminable oscillation”9 between the
Myth of Given and the absence of any external constraint on
our judgements.10
The third way of understanding what exactly is a stance
is one developed by Paul Teller (2004). We can think of
stances as epistemic policies. By conceiving of each stance as
a specific epistemic policy, a stance is not judged to be
truth-apt: a stance is not a belief. Rather, it is a “certain
attitude of investigation”.11 As such, the criterion of
assessment for stances is crucially different to the criteria
of assessment of beliefs. For, we do not judge policies as
being true or false, but as being successful or unsuccessful.12
The fourth way of understanding what exactly is a stance
is one proposed by Rowbottom & Bueno. They argue that a stance
is characterised by the combination of three components: “(a)
a particular mode of engagement, (b) a style of reasoning, and (c)
certain propositional attitudes (such as beliefs, desires, and
hopes)”.13 By a ‘mode of engagement’, I take them to mean
adopting a way of understanding the world. Such a mode of
engagement can be
active/passive/critical/dogmatic/scientific/non-scientific/sys
tematic/piece-meal. By a ‘style of reasoning’, Rowbottom &
Bueno just mean a way of making inferences or providing
9 J. McDowell, 1994: 9. 10 Cf. McDowell, 1994: 8-9. 11 Rowbottom & Bueno, 2011: 8. 12 This also points to a convergence between Teller and Rowbottom, sinceparadigms, like policies, cannot be true or false. 13 Rowbottom & Bueno, 2011: 9.
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justifications for certain claims or describing facts about
thus-and-so. For example, meteorologists will
characteristically use various images of weather fronts and
use certain computation models to describe current
climatological situations and predict further climatological
developments. Intuitionists in the philosophy of mathematics
will characteristically use particular inference rules when
coming up with various mathematical proofs. And Formula 1
engineers will characteristically reason about the current
state of a car during practice/qualifying/race situations
basing their analysis of data received by their computer
networks and general observation of the car’s performance. To
put this more simply, a style of reasoning “incorporates
patterns of inference, diagrams, templates, and other useful
devices that are invoked when reasoning about a given
situation”.14
With regard to adopting certain propositional attitudes,
one way of understanding what this involves can be seen by
grasping the kinds of beliefs that are characteristic of
various philosophical positions. Consider, for example, the
propositional attitudes that appear to be characteristic of
scientism: proponents of scientism, such as Alex Rosenberg,
believe that the empirical and natural sciences are the only
authoritative intellectual disciplines and the only
intellectual disciplines to be properly valued. Rosenberg, in
particular, also has various hopes as additional propositional
attitudes in his variety of scientism – namely, he hopes that
14 Ibid., p. 9
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many abandon (i) their commitments to the manifest image of
man, (ii) the belief that the humanities represent a
substantive and valuable contribution to human knowledge, and
(iii) the belief that religion is a respectable and serious
form of life. Not adopting these specific propositional
attitudes would thereby constitute not adopting the
scientistic stance. This is because these specific
propositional attitudes are commitments. And what distinguishes
commitments from ordinary propositional attitudes is that as
long as two or more adherents of, say, scientism, share all the
commitments of scientism, then any difference between their
respective ordinary propositional attitudes does not involve a
difference in stance. For example, Rosenberg may think that
ospreys are more interesting than nightingales; whereas
Patricia Churchland may think that nightingales are more
interesting than ospreys. This difference would not mean that
they adopt different stances. However, by contrast, it could
well be that both Rosenberg and Alvin Plantinga agree that
nightingales are more interesting than ospreys, but one would
hardly think that sharing the same ordinary propositional
attitude means that Rosenberg and Plantinga have the same
stance.
Though this way of explicating the intimate connection
between propositional attitudes and stances is helpful to an
extent, such an interpretation of Rowbottom and Bueno’s
account crucially neglects how their articulation of stances
is meant to be compatible with Van Fraassen’s
metaphilosophical critique of ‘Principle Zero’, namely the
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idea that to hold a philosophical position X is to hold some
essential dogma or doctrine X+ required to believe position
X:15 central to Van Fraassen’s project of replacing talk of
philosophical positions in terms of adopting essential
dogmatic propositional attitudes with talk of philosophical
positions in terms of stances is his wish to avoid the idea
that empiricism necessarily involves a dogmatic commitment to
a thesis such as ‘All knowledge begins in experience’. For,
according to van Fraassen, conceiving of empiricism as
comprising a central thesis not only makes empiricism
dogmatic,16 but also prevents empiricism from being
consistently articulated. As Teller writes, “[i]t is required
only that [X]+ says or implies that experience is the only
source of contingent information, that [X]+ itself cannot be
supported by appeal to experience, and that [X]+ is itself
contingent. All of these are very plausible conditions for a
wide range of candidates for [X]+. But if all these conditions
obtain, it seems plain that any effort to maintain [X]+ would
be self-defeating”.17 Furthermore, I think an additional
concern about construing stances exclusively in terms of
collections of specific propositional attitudes is that
philosophical positions, such as empiricism and naturalism,
are transformed from historically contingent ideas into
‘natural’, timeless, hermetically sealed group identities
which foster illiberal pressures towards conformity against
15 Cf. Van Fraassen (2002: 41). 16 See Rowbottom (2005); especially p. 216. 17 Teller, 2004: 159-60.
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supposedly inauthentic members.18 The move, then, from doctrine
to stance seems to be Rortyan, insofar as to conceive of a
philosophical position as a stance rather than just as some
collection of propositional attitudes come what may appears to
democratic in its explicit insistence on fallabilism and
revisability.
The fifth and final way of illustrating what exactly is
a stance can be provided by Matthew Ratcliffe’s Husserlian
notion of a stance. As Ratcliffe writes, “[Husserl’s theory of
a natural attitude] is not akin to the propositional attitude
of believing that some x, called the world, exists. Rather it
is something that we already inhabit when we adopt propositional
attitudes. It comprises a pre-articulate sense of (a) there
being a world, (b) what the world is like and (c) the nature
of one’s relationship with the world”.19 Under such an
interpretation of the notion of a stance, we are invited to
understand stances in more phenomenologico-metaphysical ways
than in the previous four accounts: stances are now conceived
as conveying existential orientations.20
Of course, it is reasonably clear that all five ways of
conceiving stances share lots of things in common and arguably
merely differ in verbal idiosyncrasies rather than in
substantive philosophical matters. However, a proper
comparison of these five means of interpreting the idea of a
stance is the task of another paper. The various ways of
18 The different advocates of scientism may well differ in any of hopes Ihave listed. 19 M. Ratcliffe, 2011: 122. 20 Cf. Van Fraassen (1994).
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articulating the notion of a stance all appear to share an
underlying concept: a stance is not a typical belief; it is
more of a normative disposition to one’s cognitive environment. By virtue of
it being a normative disposition/outlook/Weltanschauung, it
requires a different standard of assessment than an ordinary
truth-apt standard. I take the ubiquity of normativity in the
various layers of a stance to signify that stances are judged
on the basis of their claims to adequately make sense of things, to
use Adrian Moore’s term.21 In other words, a stance is judged
to be good or bad in terms of how best it makes sense of
things. Or, to put this in more Sellarsian terms, the best
stance is the one which satisfies the Sellarsian dictum of
establishing how things (in the broadest sense of the term)
hang together (in the broadest sense of the term).22
In our discussion thus far, we have looked at various
ways of construing the very idea of a stance. What this has
enabled us to conclude is that the notion of a stance is a
rich and multi-layered, one which blends together certain
metaphysical, methodological, epistemic, and phenomenological
concepts: stances are normative dispositions towards our
cognitive environment and are typified by their attempts to
21 Cf. Moore (2012). One may well be rather surprised at how I have appearedto construe stances as various instances of sense-making enterprises. For,part of the drive of The Empirical Stance is in fact a critique of metaphysics.However, I think there is compelling reason to think that just because vanFraassen is highly critical of various analytic versions of metaphysics,such as Australian materialism, it does not necessarily follow that vanFraassen abjures metaphysics simpliciter. However, even if van Fraassenbelieves that the way metaphysics aims to make sense of things does notreally make sense of anything much, he can still accept Moore’s basic thoughtof sense-making, which is needed to characterise a stance. 22 Cf. W. Sellars, 1963: 35. See Jones (2011) for a discussion on thisSellarsian-esque theme.
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make the world rationally intelligible to human mindedness and
our intellectual endeavours of critically understanding
reality as a whole. Given what is characteristic of stances, I
think there is a very fruitful and philosophically significant
connection to be drawn between van Fraassen and Hegel. This is
because there is a remarkable parallel between van Fraassen’s
concept of a stance and Hegel’s concept of a form of
consciousness. In what follows in the next section of this
paper, I shall explain the specific ways in which a stance and
a form of consciousness relate to one another; and I shall
argue that because the concept of a form of consciousness
brings about explicitly the connection between theoretical and
affective attitudes, the Hegelian articulation of stances is
especially illuminating.
II
Unfortunately, there has not been much scholarly
attention devoted to clarifying Hegel’s concept of a form of
consciousness. This is made all the more perplexing when one
considers how such a notion occupies so central a role in the
Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel introduces the notion of a form of
consciousness in the Introduction to the Phenomenology. Having
sketched the dialectical method in some detail in §s 85 and
86, Hegel makes the following claim:
In each and every case of a non-truthful knowledge, allthe results which come about may not simply converge intosome kind of empty nothingness; rather, each result mustnecessarily be apprehended as the nullity of that of which it is
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the result, a result which contains whatever truth thepreceding knowledge has in itself. Here it presents itselfas follows. Since what at first appeared as the object forconsciousness descends into a knowledge of the object, andthe in-itself becomes a being-for-consciousness of the in itself, thislatter is the new object. As a result, a new shape ofconsciousness also emerges for which the essence issomething different from what was the essence for thepreceding shape. (PS: §87)
In this passage, Hegel explains how the idea of sublation is
supposed to work with regard to the examination of failed
attempts at knowledge. However, what is disappointing in
Hegel’s writing here is a lack of any significant
clarification or explanation of the term ‘form of
consciousness’. All we appear to be able to conclude from
Hegel here is that a form of consciousness is obviously some
kind of understanding of the content of experience. Not only
that, forms of consciousness appear to be revisable. Thus far,
we can say that a form of consciousness is something epistemic
and revisable in the face of experience. Of course, this is
hardly satisfactory as a working definition of the term. We
then have to wait until §369 for the term to be re-introduced.
Fortunately, however, it seems that matters are slightly
clearer in this passage, where Hegel is discussing ethical
concerns about how self-consciousness understands the good
life:
An actuality confronts this heart, for within the heart,the law exists initially merely on its own, not yetactualized, and thus at the same time it is something otherthan the concept. As a result, this other is determined asan actuality which is the opposite of what is to be
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actualized, and it is thus the contradiction between the lawand individuality. On the one hand, actuality is thus a law bywhich singular individuality is oppressed, a violent orderof the world which contradicts the law of the heart – andon the other hand, it is humanity suffering under thatorder, a humanity that does not follow the law of theheart, but which is instead subjected to an aliennecessity. This actuality, which appears in the presentshape of consciousness as confronting it, is, as it has becomeclear, nothing but the preceding estrangement betweenindividuality and its truth, that is, a relationship ofdreadful necessity by which individuality is crushed. (PS:§369)
Although Hegel provides no ostensible definition of the term
in this passage, there is good reason to regard it as
illuminating what he means by a form of consciousness. The
language of confrontation, contradiction, estrangement, and suffering
seems to suggest that a form of consciousness is not simply a
belief about certain things in the world, but more of a
complex set of beliefs about the world that constitute a
normative attitude towards one’s cognitive environment. A form
of consciousness that treats something as confronting it or
being in conflict with it does so on the grounds that it
treats the relevant phenomenon as opposed to its understanding of
the world itself. But the conflict is not a mere
acknowledgement of a difference between the form of
consciousness and the ‘problematic’ phenomenon. Such a
conflict can potentially cause the form of consciousness to
abandon its pretences to knowledge. I think the only
reasonable explanation for why a form of consciousness would
regard something in such a manner is due to that form of
consciousness having a set of attitudes to the world of
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experience. And these attitudes are normatively significant.
For, the reason why a form of consciousness will feel in
conflict with the world or will enter into a state of
alienation or estrangement is that consciousness recognises
that the world is forcing it to question its understanding of
the world. To put this differently, what is at stake for
someone when they adopt a form of consciousness is more than
just how representationally accurate, how descriptively
accurate a form of consciousness is; they are also putting
their entire worldview before the tribunal of experience.
Perhaps the final clue to grasping what a form of
consciousness is can be found in ‘Absolute Knowing’, where
Hegel discusses the historical and cognitive development of
Spirit. The irony here is that we have to look at the end of
the Phenomenology of Spirit, in order to understand the beginning
of the text as well as the meaning of ‘form of consciousness’
– and this may well have been Hegel’s intention. At the end of
§789, Hegel writes:
Rather, it [absolute knowledge] is in part a shape ofconsciousness per se and in part a number of such shapesthat we gather together, within which the totality of themoments of the object and of the conduct of consciousnesscan be pointed out merely as having been dissolved in thetotality’s moments. (PS: §789)
The crucial term in this passage is ‘conduct’, for this adds
an extra dimension to what we have already seen when
reflecting on what a form of consciousness is. One should
readily accept that ‘the conduct of consciousness’ refers to
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the entire development of thought through human history.
However, how this is related to the forms of consciousness is
by understanding each form of consciousness as having a
conduct of their own. What I mean here is that every form of
consciousness, in addition to having certain beliefs about the
world and certain normative attitudes towards the cognitive
environment, provides the phenomenological subject with a set
of affective dispositions. These dispositions, moreover, are based on
the theoretical commitments of the relevant form of
consciousness. In order to see what this means, I want to
briefly discuss two forms of consciousness – Stoicism and
Absolute Knowing.
‘Stoicism’ represents the first attitude to coping with
the dialectic of mastery and servitude: having been subjugated
at the hands of another self-consciousness, the slave is
compelled to seek an alternative means of achieving at
homeness in the world.23 Aware of their position as a slave,
and so aware of their status as not free, Hegel argues that
the slave must aim to achieve a notion of freedom to cope with
their current state of non-freedom: the first notion is a
sense of mastery of the surrounding environment, for the slave
can manipulate and change the objects around him to suit his
various purposes. However, this notion of freedom is obviously
unsatisfying. The slave then moves on to the following
position: even though they are not free to do certain things,
what the master and what the world cannot do is force the
slave to think in certain ways or to even have beliefs. And this
23 See Pinkard (2012).
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notion of freedom is used by the slave to make themselves
indifferent to their state of servitude – they achieve
‘freedom’ by regarding themselves as cognitively autonomous,
and such cognitive autonomy is designed to not just enable the
slave to look past their status but to also provide conditions
for them to realise their rational self-consciousness. So,
under the Stoical form of consciousness, we have a set of
theoretical commitments about the world: (a) the world
manifests a form of rationality, insofar as we are able to work
well in our environment, cf. Taylor (1975: 157) and Stern
(2002: 88); (b) given the successful nature of our labour in
general, we can start to see ourselves as being at home in our
environment. Crucially, though, these commitments possess
immense normative and existential significance, for thinking
about the mind-world relation in this way serves as a
structuring principle for how we interact with our environment.
Since Stoicism focuses on seeing the rationality of nature,24
the slave is led to ignore their status, and being indifferent
to their status is meant to enable the slave to cope in the
world. Nevertheless, despite the Stoics’ insight into the
rationality of the world as a whole, Hegel is explicitly
critical of the content of Stoic rationalism: firstly,
conceiving of freedom as cognitive autonomy appears to amount
to a slave Weltanschauung; and secondly, the Stoic idea of
living in accordance with reason lacks any specific content,
and as such is mere platitude, cf. PS: §200. Ultimately,
Stoicism fails to make us at home with the world, given the
24 Cf. PS: §197.
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dogmatic nature of their rationalism and their insistence on
indifference as a path to achieving eudaimonia. Thus, what is
relevant here is how the Stoics’ theoretical commitments
determine their attitude towards themselves, the world, and
the community.
By contrast, when the phenomenological subject arrives
at the final form of consciousness, Absolute Knowing, their
orientation in thinking dramatically changes. Because
consciousness now has a network of beliefs that suggest
communion with the world and a kind of intimate embeddedness
in one’s cognitive environment, then thinking as being at home in
the world translates into genuinely feeling at home in the
world. This is the ultimate accomplishment of consciousness in
Absolute Knowing, where the Stoics’ abstract rationalism and
their inchoate notion of being in the world is perfected by
the concrete universal. By this, I mean that the
phenomenological subject now conceives of the world as
fundamentally intelligible in itself; and that because the
world is fundamentally intelligible in itself, consciousness
is able to reconcile its own rationality with the intrinsic
rationality of the world. As such, Absolute Knowing is not
just a “form of holistic explanation, which shows how all
finite things are parts of a wider whole”,25 it also crucially
involves a set of affective attitudes which determine how one
feels about themselves, their community, and reality as a whole.
What the discussion of these forms of consciousness
should enable us to see is that there seems to be a remarkable
25 F. C. Beiser, 2005: 165.
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parallel between van Fraassen and Hegel: stances and forms of
consciousness appear to share more or less everything in
common: both are characterised by the relevant values,
commitments, norms, attitudes, and propositional attitudes.
Both are ultimately existential orientations, to use an
expression from van Fraassen. Given their nature as
existential orientations in thinking, the criteria for
assessing forms of consciousness, as with the criteria for
assessing stances, is one which tests their success at sense-
making. For, the dialectical movement of the phenomenological
subject through the various forms of consciousness, ranging
from sense-certainty to absolute knowing, is the rational
enquirer’s laboured and often-fraught attempt to understand
reality as a whole, to make sense of things. The
phenomenological subject transitions from one form of
consciousness to the next when they find reasons that the form
of consciousness they initially adopted fails to give them
rational satisfaction;26 this is because that form of
consciousness contained contradictory elements and therefore
26 It is important to note here that there is a very interesting debate tobe had between Hegelians and Kuhnians on this subject: both Hegel and Kuhnwould agree that a movement from one form of consciousness to another / aparadigm shift is caused by encountering anomalies that contradict thecurrently accepted form of consciousness / currently accepted paradigm.However, it is not obviously clear that both Hegel and Kuhn would agreethat what underwrites the dynamical relation from one form of consciousnessto another / one paradigm to another is a concern for rationalsatisfaction. To put this more simply, Hegelians will want to claim thatthe structure of scientific revolutions is a rational one, in the sensethat we move from paradigm to paradigm as part of a grand teleologicalnarrative, whereas Kuhnians are less inclined to claim that the structureof scientific revolutions is rational in this sense of the term. However, Ithink it is also worth mentioning that some post-Kuhnians, such as LarryLaudan (1977, 1981), are more rationalistic and even sound quite Hegelian.
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prevented the enquirer from having a rational grip on reality
as a whole. Only absolute knowing is regarded to properly make
sense of things, since only absolute knowledge has the
necessary elements in its normative structure to enable us to
reconcile mind with world and therefore give us rational
satisfaction. As Hegel writes, “this last shape of Spirit –
the Spirit which at the same time gives its complete and true
content the form of the self and thereby realises its Notion
as remaining in its Notion in this realisation – this is
absolute knowing; it is Spirit that knows itself in the shape
of Spirit, or a comprehensive knowing” (PS: §798).
The main question to ask now is what exactly is the
value of claiming there is a clear and substantive parallel
between Hegel and van Fraassen? We have previously seen
various ways of articulating stances, ranging from
understanding stances as epistemic policies to conceiving of
stances as Husserlian natural attitudes. What makes the
Hegelian approach to stances especially illuminating? The answer to
this question lies in how the Hegelian interpretation of
stances is better equipped than the other five interpretations
to make sense of van Fraassen’s pragmatist commitments. This is
because while the other reflections on stances correctly
stress how a stance is effectively a worldview, they do not
seem to bring about the intimate connection between
theoretical attitudes and affective attitudes as explicitly as
Hegel does with his concept of a form of consciousness.
Because Hegel is so adamant about establishing such a
connection, this is compelling reason to think that Hegelian
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forms of consciousness shed great light on van Fraassenian
stances. To see why, I would like to consider Hegel and van
Fraassen in relation to two important features of classical
pragmatism.
If we look back at the structure of a form of
consciousness and the structure of a stance, we will be
reminded of the familiar talk of attitudes, values,
commitments, etc. Now, what is central to the notions of
attitudes, values, and commitments is a distinctively anti-
Cartesian conception of thought. According to both Hegel and
van Fraassen, thought is not a “theoretical detachment”.27 To
be a thinking subject is not to be a disembodied res cogitans that
is separate from the world and is little more than a cognitive
voyeur. Rather, to be a thinking subject is to be an embodied
being embedded in the world.28 As Ratcliffe writes, “[w]e do
not philosophise as disembodied loci of rational thought,
stripped of our practical, affective, bodily attunement to
things”.29 Such anti-Cartesianism is central to classical
pragmatism, and is made most explicit in the work of William
James:
Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at workwhen form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will,
27 Ratcliffe, 2011: 126. 28 See the following: “We are indeed beings of flesh and blood … It meanssimply that we persons manifest ourselves in the first instance through ourbodies and bodily movements and equally, in a seamlessly woven fabric, byhow we choose and arrange our clothes, environments, rooms, houses, thepaths we take to work and the work itself, all the incarnate activities andprocesses into which we enter”. (Van Fraassen, 2002: 192) 29 Van Fraassen, 2002: 126.
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taste, and passion co-operate just as they do in practicalaffairs …30
Philosophical enquiry, for James, must not be conceived of in
the way that early modern rationalism characterised
philosophical enquiry. While the Cartesian project of pure
enquiry aimed to provide substantive conceptions of truth and
knowledge by avoiding corporeality and sociality, James
conceived of pragmatism as the philosophical school of thought
to provide substantive conceptions of truth and knowledge by
embedding all human capacities in the world. As he famously wrote, the
most pressing problem with early modern rationalism is that it
“seems too buttoned-up and white-chokered and clean-shaven a
thing to speak for the vast slow-breathing unconscious Kosmos
with its dread abysses and its unknown tides”.31 Such a
critique appears to be characteristic of opponents of
Cartesianism, ranging from the post-Kantian idealists, through
Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, to Rorty.32 Though all
these philosophers differ from one another in important
respects, they are all committed to the view that the mind-
world relation must be understood in terms of cognitive
intimacy rather than cognitive voyeurism. And to do so
necessarily involves emphasising how thinking is necessarily
bound up with direct bodily engagement with things and
implicit social relations with other rational agents in the
world.
30 W. James, 1956: 92. 31 James, 1912: 277-8. 32 See Taylor (1972) for an excellent discussion of this topic.
22
Van Fraassen himself allies with James in the Third
Lecture in The Empirical Stance,33 by claiming that shifts in stance
involve a kind of multi-layered transformation of the world –
where the transformation of the world involves both shifts in
how we theoretically represent our cognitive environment and
our emotional responses to our cognitive environment. For that
matter, it seems reasonable to suppose that part of what
motivates van Fraassen’s critique of analytic metaphysics is
in fact a Jamesian objection to metaphysics being overly
abstract. As James writes on this subject:
[The abstract philosophical universe is] far less anaccount of this actual world than a clear addition builtupon it, a classic sanctuary in which the rationalistfancy may take refuge from the intolerably confused andgothic character which mere facts present. It is noexplanation of our concrete universe, it is another thingaltogether, a substitute for it, a remedy, a way ofescape.34
Given what James argues in this passage, where he objects to
thinking of abstract metaphysical thinking as an explanation of
the world, we can see why van Fraassen conceives of a movement
away from analytic metaphysics to constructive empiricism in
terms of a shift in stances: the shift is based on the
transformation of our dispositions to metaphysics. And such a
shift in stance is determined by our reflection on both our
33 See, for example, this quote from van Fraassen: “William James camenearest, among the various views I highlighted, to the true character ofour epistemic life”. (Van Fraassen, 2002: 90) 34 James, 1981: 14.
23
theoretical representation of the world as well as our
emotional responses to the world.
This pragmatist commitment, namely the idea that
philosophical thinking involves transformation, is also shared
by Hegel, who understands philosophical critique in terms of
transformation: for Hegel, the dialectical critique of the
forms of consciousness is regarded as enabling us to arrive at
the standpoint of Science. This involves two transformative
notions: first, we move from seeing the world as
unintelligible/irrational to seeing the world as fundamentally
intelligible and rationally structured; and second that we
move from conceiving our autonomy in terms of radical
domination over other rational subjects to conceiving our
autonomy in terms of symmetrical recognitive relations with
other rational subjects. Given the transformative dimensions
of the Phenomenology, Hegel’s Phenomenology is a Bildungsroman both
in terms of its function and its hermeneutical presentation:
we are in some sense the protagonist of the Lesedrama, and the
text is designed to reflect how we observe and reflect on our
cognitive development as we progress through the various forms
of consciousness.
We have already seen that Hegel takes the forms of
consciousness to amount to existentially significant
Weltanschaungen. But what we now need to see is what the
relation between existentially significant world-views and
phenomenological critique is for Hegel. The answer to this
question lies in the Introduction to the Phenomenology, where
24
Hegel conceives of philosophical critique in the following
way:
[Philosophical critique] can be taken to be the path ofnatural consciousness which presses forward towards trueknowledge, or it can be taken to be the path of the soulas it wanders through the series of the ways it takesshape, as if those shapes were stations laid out for it byits own nature so that it both might purify itself intospirit and, through a complete experience of itself,achieve a cognitive acquaintance of what it is in itself.(PS: §77)
In this passage, Hegel is making a clear analogy between the
stages of moving through the various forms of consciousness
until arriving at Absolute Knowing and the various Stations of
the Cross that Christ passes through on the road to Calvary
and ultimately his resurrection. Now, Hegel makes this analogy
because of the parallels he sees between subjecting oneself to
complete rational critique and the Passion Christ undergoes in
order to realise himself. A crucial component of both
subjecting oneself to complete rational critique, where one’s
worldview is brought under scrutiny, and Christ’s Passion is
that both phenomena are self-imposed: consciousness forces
itself to question whether or not its conceptual structure is
coherent, and Christ forces himself onto the Via Dolorosa. Both
activities are in some sense self-legislating and authentic,
since no external force or principle or agent is the author of
the respective performance. Additionally, both the rational
enquirer and Christ undergo this pathway of despair in order
to achieve self-transformation: the practice of subjecting
25
oneself to bringing one’s entire worldview under rational
scrutiny, to the extent that one might even believe that one’s
experience of the world only justifies a thoroughly negative
form of life, is designed to make the subject wholly open and
sensitive to what constitutes a good form of social existence.
We change as we reflect on worldviews, because we discover
what counts as a proper and rational justification for certain
ways of thinking and certain ways of acting in the world. As I
understand Hegel, the function of rational enquiry goes
further than just a cognitive isomorphism between mind and
world / thought and being: the principal goal is to provide
the conditions for the subject of experience on their own terms to
achieve at homeness in the world by altering their conception
of their rational agency from one which dissociates them from
their world and prevents them from establishing symmetrical
recognition with other agents. As such, for Hegel, the
‘purification into spirit’, refers to the idea of rational
agents properly understanding who they really are as rational
agents embedded in a social world.
With regard to Christ, his self-transformation occurs
through his being prepared to sacrifice his entire life in
order to redeem mankind. Christ embeds himself in the world to
the ultimate extent, in that when carrying the cross his back
is cowed at all times, his eyes are firmly fixed on the
ground, and he is both bearing the evil of mankind yet
encountering virtue on the road to Golgotha, where virtue is
personified by Simon of Cyrene. His transformation is not some
trans-ontological change in which his material nature is
26
destroyed and he becomes an immaterial being. Rather, he is
transformed in the way that he understands himself and the
world and that in doing so he is able to realise his humanity.
Christ’s divinity, then, is not to be conceived of as being
something in opposition to or distinct from his humanity: his
becoming most human is what constitutes him becoming divine.
As such, the relationship between divinity and humanity ought
to be explicated in terms of an Aristotelian notion of the
actualisation of humanity, rather than in terms which suggest
some form of ontological move from one kind of being to
another kind of being.
What is important to note in the comparison between the
cognitive via dolorosa and Christ’s via dolorosa is that the
progression to a state of hope and flourishing cannot be
understood to be genuinely possible unless this end is bound
up with immense suffering. Hegel is committed to the idea that
the development of rationality from poor or insufficient
philosophical attitudes to correct or sufficient philosophical
attitudes is not something one can realistically achieve
unless the rational enquirer is prepared to force themselves
to be subjected to complete rational critique. As William
Bristow writes, “the development of a human being in relation
to its end is distinguished from that of a natural organism
exactly through its being critical. Since the human subject must
relate itself to its end – that is, must determine its own end – it
must submit itself to the crisis, hence to self-loss and to
transformation, as a condition of attaining its end”.35 For
35 W. F. Bristow, 2007: 246.
27
Hegel, philosophical enquiry faces a particular kind of
crisis: while according to Kant, the crisis is the state of
metaphysics; according to Hegel, the crisis is not just the
state of metaphysics but also the genuine threat of systematic
sceptical irrationalism. Such a threat must therefore compel
us to thoroughly embed ourselves in our environment and
critically reflect on everything that makes us human, both our
cognitive and affective lives.
It should be clear that both Hegel and van Fraassen are
committed to the classical pragmatist anti-Cartesian
conception of thought. However, this is not the only
pragmatist commitment both Hegel and van Fraassen share. For,
what I think partly motivates both philosophers’
metaphilosophical concerns is a commitment to a Deweyean
notion of growth. In other words, the reason why exactly Hegel
spilled so much ink on the notion of a form of consciousness
and the reason why van Fraassen insists on talking about
stances36 is that both Hegel and van Fraassen think that a
failure to get one’s approach to the world and one’s relation
to experience ‘right’ is disastrous for not just our cognitive
lives, but crucially our everyday lives as well. For van
Fraassen, it is clear that he thinks that what is symptomatic
of professional philosophy, namely the kinds of debate had by
academic philosophers and the ways in which those debates are
structured, is deeply problematic. Such is the extent to which
the way philosophy is being practised on van Fraassen’s
36 See his discussion of the conflict between secularism and religion interms of a conflict between stances.
28
understanding of the contemporary philosophic culture that it
warrants substantive revision. As he writes in a Rorty-esque
manner:
But I do think we must change, or change back, the way wedo philosophy. Technical work is required; there are manyproblems to be solved, but this work should be in aid ofan authentic, engaged project in the world, self-consciousand conscious of what sort of enterprise it is. Thatmeans, in the first place, consciousness of its ownlimits.37
What underlies van Fraassen’s powerful message that philosophy
needs to become less abstract and more engaged with the world
appears to be the Deweyean concern for growth and self-
development. Namely, that we fail to become properly rational
agents if we are not disposed to think in certain ways, ways
which promote active, reflective, and critical thinking. It is
unclear from this passage whether van Fraassen is also
committed to Dewey’s view that by becoming properly rational
agents we can thereby become properly civic and democratic
participants. But even so, it is clear that van Fraassen
shares the concern that thinking in abstract and disengaged
manners is debilitating for our cognitive welfare and our
everyday welfare as well. For, the kind of stance one adopts
has normative significance for all aspects of the human
condition; and stances which promote dogmatic or prejudicial
or insensitive modes of reflection are hardly conducive to
have a genuinely adequate grasp of oneself and one’s limits.
37 Van Fraassen, 2002: 195.
29
Perhaps it may well be that Hegel could provide the
model of how we ought to do philosophy. For, not only does
this famous passage from the Phenomenology indicate the kind of
stance we ought to adopt, it also crucially captures the sense
of growth and development beloved by Dewey:
The more that conventional opinion holds that theopposition between the true and the false is itself fixedand set, the more that it customarily expects to finditself in either agreement or in contradiction with anygiven philosophical system, and, if so, then in anyexplanation of such a system, the more it will merely seethe one or the other. It does not comprehend thediversity of philosophical systems as the progressivedevelopment of truth as much as it sees merelycontradiction within that diversity. The bud disappearswhen the blossom breaks through, and one might say thatthe former is refuted by the latter. Likewise, by virtueof the fruit, the blossom itself may be declared to be afalse existence of the plant, since the fruit emerges asthe blossom’s truth as it comes to replace the blossomitself. These forms are not merely distinguished fromeach other, but, as incompatible with each other, theyalso supplant each other. However, at the same time theirfluid nature makes them into moments of an organic unitywithin which they are not only not in conflict with eachother. Rather, one is equally as necessary as the other,and it is this equal necessity which alone constitutes thelife of the whole. However, in part, contradiction withregard to a philosophical system does not usuallycomprehend itself in this way, and, in part, theconsciousness which apprehends the contradiction generallyneither knows how to free the contradiction from its one-sidedness, nor how to sustain it as free-standing bytaking cognizance of its reciprocally necessary moments,which themselves take shape as conflicts and as apparentincompatibilities. (PS: §2)
What I hope to have achieved in this paper is provide
reasons to think that a Hegelian interpretation of stances is
30
illuminating. If such an account has been convincing, then it
seems more than reasonable to suppose that the idealist
tradition and the pragmatist tradition have more in common
than traditionally thought. Furthermore, it would now also
appear that the neo-Hegelians in the analytic world are not
predominantly confined to Pittsburgh, but also have an
important base of operations in San Francisco.
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