Filling in the Gaps
by Joseph Rowlands

One of the problems with bad philosophical standards is that it leaves you without guidance in areas that aren't covered. You end up filling in the gaps, but in ways that are often the opposite of the original standards.

We can start with an example from morality. Someone may accept an altruistic standard of morality, believing he should help other people. In practice, altruism is viewed as a morality with limited scope. You may have to donate some money each year, you may have to jump into a lake to help a drowning person, or you may have to help a little old lady cross the street. This form of altruism demands that you act altruistically in certain uncommon situations.

The interesting part about this view of altruism is that it leaves most of your day to day decisions unguided. You can essentially do whatever you want. What this means in practice is that you end up having a second moral standard, although you might not call it that. You need a way of making choices when you aren't commanded to act in one of the altruistic situations. How do you make that choice? You have to have some goal, some standard of evaluation. You need some way of comparing your choices and selecting them.

Since the altruistic moral standard doesn't tell you how to make every choice in your life, you need to fill in the gaps with some alternative standard. And interestingly enough, that alternative standard is usually aimed at your own well being and interests. It ends up the opposite of the altruistic standard.

A different case where a philosophy can leave a gap is in epistemology. If you accept rationalism as the proper method of reasoning, you will have similar issue. Rationalism in this context is an epistemological view that upholds deduction as the only real means of acquiring knowledge. Rationalism views deduction as a source of certainty, and the only path at achieving certainty. Induction is viewed as inherently flawed from this perspective.

There are many problems with rationalism, but I want to focus on the gaps it leaves. Rationalism focuses on deduction, which makes it unable to deal with degrees. So when degrees are required, rationalism has no guidance. You see this in attempts at thinking about moral virtues in terms of all or nothing. A rationalist wants his virtues to be yes or now options. So honesty is about lying or not. Rationality is about evading or not. And independence is restricted to the mental sphere, since independence in practice is all about degrees.

The gaps is degrees, and rationalism can't handle them. So what does a rationalist do in cases where degrees matter? He says it doesn't matter. So when it comes to independence in the physical world, it doesn't really matter. There's no particular moral virtue associated with it, so anything goes.

It's worth noting here that there is a strong connection between rationalism and intrinsicism. The connections are very deep, but here the important connection is that they can't handle degrees. An intrinsic value is a value without reason and without context. It is true or false. Rationalism ends up promoting intrinsicism in practice because it can't deal with degrees, even when it comes to moral judgment. Judgment requires a weighing of options, and that means degrees. Rationalism is okay with saying never do X, or always do Y, but it can't deal with sometimes.

And when degrees matter, like in independence, rationalism abandons moral guidance at all. So how are you supposed to decide how much independence is the right amount? Rationalism says it doesn't matter. And so it leaves you with a subjective choice. So rationalism/intrinsicism leaves a gap, and that gap is filled with subjectivism.

This is common in false dichotomies. Often in a false dichotomy, the problem is that each side is missing something important. And that means each side leaves a gap that needs to be filled.

An empiricist approach, which is the other half of the false-dichotomy with rationalism, doesn't accept the validity of generalizations. It doesn't accept the validity of induction either, but instead of sticking with floating abstractions, it wallows in the world of concrete. But in practice, you have to deal with generalizations. You can't live at the concrete level forever. And so to fill that gap, they use generalizations while claim that they are simply social conventions or inaccurate models. And so in the world of generalizations, they end up promoting a version of rationalism. They take these generalizations, and manipulate them, while never connecting them back to facts.

This means that rationalists often have areas where they act and think as empiricists, and empiricists have areas where they act and think like rationalists. Once induction is discounted and abstractions are severed from concretes, the two halves are bound to look similar. This is seems to be true frequently for false-dichotomies.

Consider the mind-body dichotomy. In one version, the soul is treated as elevated and pure, whereas the body is treated as animalistic and crude. But that leaves a gap. You might want to live a life of the mind, but your body has needs as well. So how do you satisfy those needs? Often through mindlessness. If you have to work in order to eat, and work is tainted by the physical world, then it the mind has nothing to offer. It expects you to act like an animal. Or how about sex? Since it is a lowly thing, there is no guidance. This approach would say that if you do have sex, it should be mindless, valueless, and crude.

The physical half of the dichotomy is just as bad. It treats the mind as useless, and claims that action is all that matters. But what about your internal world? What about your emotions? What about your understanding? Since the premise is already accepted that the mental world is disconnected from the real world, if you have to deal with the mental world, it would be dealt with as a disconnected end in itself. You might pursue emotions for the sake of emotions, for instance. Ideas are disconnected from practice.

For these false-dichotomies, the positions are usually which half is the preferred half. The rationalists prefer the abstract world, while the empiricists prefer the concrete world. But if they deal with the other world, the similarities are often the same.

The original example of altruism and self-interest is not an example of a false-dichotomy. So the larger point is that certain philosophical views only cover a subset of cases, leaving gaps behind that need to be covered through some other mechanism. And because the first mechanism is limited for some reason, it often means the gaps are filled in with something radically different.

Discuss this Article (0 messages)