Charles Landesman

Examining the sapir-Whorf hypothesis, The author addresses the questions whether language affects perception and whether grammatical categories affect conceptual categories. He argues that advocates of linguistic relativity have attributed to language an unjustified degree of causal efficacy and that linguistic idealism is contradicted by the results of experimental psychology. Then, Considering the claimed correlation between grammatical and conceptual categories, He argues that grammar has no metaphysics and does not influence thought. The author concludes that language in use embodies a point of view only in the weak sense that relations and distinctions implicit in necessary concepts constitute a philosophical theory about reality. (staff)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Philosophy’s Second Revolution: Early and Recent Analytic Philosophy by D. S. Clarke, and: The Rise of Analytic Philosophy ed. by Hans-Johann Glock, and: Early Analytic Philosophy: Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein. Essays in Honor of Leonard Linsky by William W. TaitCharles LandesmanD. S. Clarke. Philosophy’s Second Revolution: Early and Recent Analytic Philosophy. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company, 1997. Pp. xii + 232. Cloth, $42.95. Paper, $19.95.Hans-Johann Glock, editor. The Rise of Analytic Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997. Pp. xiv + 95. Paper, $19.95.William W. Tait, editor. Early Analytic Philosophy: Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein. Essays in Honor of Leonard Linsky. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company, 1997. Pp. viii + 291. Cloth, $54.95. Paper, $26.95.A remark once made by a justice of the Supreme Court about pornography may also apply to analytic philosophy: one can’t define it, but one knows it when one sees it. Can one do better than this? For D. C. Clarke, Western philosophy has undergone two revolutionary breaks with its past: the first initiated by Descartes directed against classical philosophy and the second initiated at the turn of this century that came to be known as analytic philosophy. (Continental philosophy is barely mentioned. Heidegger is briefly referred to as a bad example of a philosopher who “employs vacuously general language better designed for expressing attitudes than for advancing claims vulnerable to criticism” [192].) A revolutionary shift of framework, for Clarke, eliminates a whole set of problems. Even though the problems discussed by analytic philosophers seem similar to many of those discussed by Plato and Descartes, in fact the relation is tenuous, and current problems have new meanings (190).Clarke offers little help in defining analytic philosophy for “we find today the clear sense of purpose of analytic philosophy which flourished forty years ago being replaced by a variety of programs sharing no easily discernible common thread” (xi). It looks as if the revolutionary élan has been replaced by business as usual. Clarke’s volume is not, however, a history of analytic philosophy but a survey intended for students and the general reader of the views of analytic philosophers on a selected group of problems: approaches to language, the relation of mind to body, the nature of belief, knowledge, and understanding, the relation between philosophy and science, ethics, and philosophical method. Clarke discusses each issue with clarity and insight and argues for his own views, which are always interesting. He criticizes the current tendency in analytic philosophy toward excessive specialization and argues that the special task of philosophy is to search for a framework capable of integrating various aspects of culture. He emphasizes the importance of the study of the history of philosophy: “The central concepts of any integrating framework are few.... The history of philosophy is an indispensable aid in providing such understanding in choosing those [End Page 481] concepts that can serve this function in the present” (191). This book can be recommended for courses in analytic philosophy and in the history of philosophy in the twentieth century.Most of the essays in the volume edited by Glock are concerned to advance ways of characterizing analytic philosophy. Most of them reject Dummett’s claim that analytic philosophy is distinguished by its concern with explaining thought by giving an account of language. In his essay, Dagfinn Føllesdal recognizes the difficulty of constructing any useful classification of intellectual trends. Because analytical philosophy cannot be characterized by reference to doctrines or problems, he proposes to distinguish it by reference to its approach to philosophical problems: “analytic philosophy is very strongly concerned with argument and justification. An analytic philosopher asks: what reasons are there for accepting or rejecting this position?” (7). The interest in language is merely an offshoot of this more fundamental concern. It follows that “the analytic/non-analytic distinction runs across other divisions.... Whether one is an analytic philosopher depends on what importance one ascribes to argument and justification” (14). Thus Aquinas and Descartes, among others, count as analytic philosophers but not Heidegger or Derrida because “they predominantly make use of rhetoric” (12). Føllesdal thinks that there are ethical reasons for being an analytic philosopher...

THE PRESENT SITUATION in the philosophy of mind may be roughly summed up in three generalizations. First, Cartesian dualism is no longer widely accepted as a genuine option. For many reasons it is no longer taken seriously by experimental psychologists. Perhaps their best reason is that the dualistic hypothesis can provide no satisfactory explanation of behavior since it would seem to make no sense to ascribe to an immaterial substance an internal structure and activity which could be causally linked to behavior. Among philosophers, A. J. Ayer has expressed a characteristic attitude in his admission that he does not find the hypothesis intelligible. Second, a version of materialism, let us call it physicalism, is now being taken seriously as an alternative to Cartesian dualism. According to this version, while it is admitted that mentalistic discourse may not be logically reducible to physicalistic discourse, nevertheless all true statements about the mind are in fact either statements about the behavior of the human body and its organs or about tendencies to behave. Finally, the concept of action has come to the forefront of discussion, and it is being explored primarily by those who reject Cartesian dualism but find something wrong with physicalism. Here is an attempt to construct an alternative to both views by developing a new kind of dualism, namely a distinction between persons as physical organisms and persons as agents, as beings who can act and who have intentions, motives, reasons, desires, and so forth. According to this view, persons are creatures to whom it is essential that teleological concepts apply, and teleological discourse and modes of explanation are not reducible, either logically or empirically, to physicalistic discourse and modes of explanation. Advocates of the new dualism are just as anxious to deny the existence of a ghost in the machine as are the materialists. But, to state roughly what they are after, it is claimed that there are at least two mutually exclusive language games or conceptual schemes which we use to talk about human beings. They are exclusive not in the sense of being about different entities but in the sense of using methods of explanation and concepts which are contextually incompatible with one another. To understand an agent's actions in terms of his intentions and motives is to rule out in that particular context a causal-physiological explanation. Physicalism ignores or fails to appreciate what is distinctively psychological in human life.

Charles Landesman deals with the philosophical problems of perception and with the status of color properties and he comes to the surprising conclusion that nothing at all has any color, that colors do not exist. In making the case for his "color skepticism," Landesman discusses and rejects historically influential accounts of the nature of secondary qualities-such as those of Locke, Reid, Galileo, and Hobbes-as well as the more recent work of Kripke, Grice, and others.Philosophers have debated whether colors are real qualities of bodies, merely dispositional properties, or mental entities caused by the impact of light upon the visual system. The author argues that none of these alternatives can be adequately defended and that they all assume that a correct theory of color must preserve, to some extent, our commonsense beliefs. Instead, Landesman defends a view called color skepticism, that nothing has any color, neither bodies nor appearances. Since this view is based upon an argument that includes certain empirical premises, he distinguishes it from the radical skepticisms about the external world identified with the thought of Descartes and Hume.Color and Consciousness treats an area of philosophy that is currently of great interest to those concerned with the theory of knowledge, metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, and the psychological theory of perception. Author note: Charles Landesman is Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College and at the Graduate School of the City University of New York.

One can agree with the critics of the Aristotelian theory of essences who say that the determination of the essence of a thing rests upon a linguistic decision, without accepting the conclusion that "a controversy as to whether rationality is of the essence of man is ultimately verbal." For linguistic decisions, that is, the acceptance of a classificatory scheme together with its associated system of definitions, may be motivated and justified by our knowledge of facts or our appreciation of values. If, say, a Freudian and an Aristotelian were disputing the adequacy of defining man as a rational animal, the former might reject the definition on the grounds that the conscious intellect plays less of a causal role in human decisions and thinking than was once believed, whereas the latter might claim that reason ought to play a greater role if the good life be possible. Conflicts over definitions reflect theoretical and ethical differences. Once these differences are reconciled, the verbal conflict is no longer important. But the easing of the verbal conflict is not solely a verbal affair. It presupposes a harmonious adjustment of values and beliefs. The function of a philosophy of human nature is to formulate and discuss a definition of man which proposes certain human attributes as essential and which is to be justified to the extent that it best summarizes those features of human life which are of greatest causal and ethical significance. It is to be expected that, in order for a satisfactory definition to be reached, any number of philosophical problems would have to be dealt with along the way. A philosophy of man is a judgment about what is important in human affairs, but it is not for that reason arbitrary unless one is convinced that value judgments are arbitrary, that one cannot provide reasons, good or bad, for them. When, in the context of ethics, Aristotle cites the rational faculty rather than the capacity to laugh as the function of man, he was stressing that reason has greater importance than a sense of humor in moral deliberation. And when Marx, in his Theses on Feuerbach, claims: "The human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of social relations," he was indicating that in order to understand why men act and think the way they do it is necessary to understand the society in which they live.