If something is "true," it needs to be shown to work in the real world.
- Pragmatism is an American philosophical movement that originated as a rebuke to abstract European philosophy.
- The pragmatic theory of truth argues that truth and reality only can be understood in their relation to how things work in the real world.
- The trouble is that the theory devalues the term "truth," such that it only applies to one particular moment in time. But Charles Sanders Peirce offers a clever way out.
Think of wine. Now take away from this idea every possible property it has. Take away its redness or whiteness, its intoxicating effect, its taste, the slosh it makes, and so on. What are you left with? Nothing. An empty phoneme of the mind. An invisible color. A silent noise. Do this with any concept, and the result is the same.
This is exactly the kind of consideration that led the American Pragmatic movement. The likes of William James, John Dewey, and Charles Sanders Peirce argued that all of our concepts, and the truth of anything, are determined solely by the practical effects they have and how these extend into the real world. The idea of truth, and even of having intelligible thoughts at all, cannot be understood without reference to what that something does or how it behaves in the real world.
Pragmatic theory of truth: a very American idea
Peirce was the first to coin the term Pragmatism as a particular school of American philosophy, and it was a conscious response to the more untethered and arcane metaphysics coming out of Europe. Across the pond, and especially in Germany, philosophers since Immanuel Kant seemed to be locked in a competition to make philosophy as inaccessible and polysyllabic as possible (reaching its apogee in Georg Hegel). Pragmatists wanted to bring philosophy back and make it more relevant.
American Pragmatism gave out an exasperated and down-to-earth plea for philosophy to stop being quite so abstract.
According to Peirce, there was not any truth "out there" in the "real world" that we somehow, magically, could unearth. Instead, truth was defined by how it works in our everyday lives. So, my belief in gravity is true because of its practicality — that is, it works every day. It is true and meaningful precisely because it makes my pen drop, my coffee cup smash, and pole-vaulters come crashing down. Likewise, we know something is hard if it does not scratch easily, or if it helps you break a window, or if it hurts like heck when you hit it with your toe.
In short, we measure things by how they work and what they do. The same goes for truth.
Of course, an immediate objection comes to mind: surely the truth will change from person to person or from time to time. For instance, the Aristotelian model of gravity and the Ptolemaic model of planetary motion worked quite well for millennia. Does that mean these scientifically disproven models were actually true?! William James would argue yes, but Peirce would say no — and he offered a nuanced way out.
The coalescence of inquiry
For Peirce, "truth" could eventually coalesce or converge by the idealized agreement of intelligent inquirers. That is to say, scientists, scholars, and society will one day be so informed about the world that their answers to "what works" will be the only, final, and universal "truth" or "reality." As Peirce wrote, "The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you." And, elsewhere, he says reality is "what may finally come to be known to be in the ideal state of complete information."
For instance, Ptolemy's notion that the sun revolves around the Earth was never true but rather mistaken as true. What is true is defined by the end result of more advanced inquiry, such as that of Copernicus and Galileo. (Of course, we might still be mistaken today.) We cannot know if something is true until this perfected end point has been reached — the point when there are no alternative answers to the question, "What works best?"
Acceptance of error and self-correction
Most commentators today do not think Peirce meant there had to be an actual and future idealized end point where there would be no more debate and disagreement. Rather, Peirce's Pragmatism speaks to two broader and much more widely accepted epistemic virtues: an openness to accept error and the willingness to correct it.
Under Peirce's account, something is true or real insofar as it works within the world. This is not just for everyday experiences like gravity causing us to drop things. He meant that things must also work in the science laboratory as well.
Today, we practice science by presenting a hypothesis, which is then tested in experiments over and over again. Scientists are constantly calibrating the truth of hypotheses and theories based on how they work in the world. And, according to Peirce's Pragmatism, "although the conclusion [of an experiment] at any stage of the investigation may be more or less erroneous, the further application of the same method must correct the error."
So, we will get closer and closer to the truth as society becomes more and more informed. But this also means accepting that future societies will possibly, or even quite likely, correct what we today call truth.
The American way
Pragmatism has a certain intuitive appeal. Truth which is abstracted from how things operate in the real world often makes very little sense. The idea of a world "out there" beyond our minds — a world which is unseen, unknown, and unimaginable — is also unintelligible (as Kant pointed out) if it is not tied, in some way, both to how the world works and to what we humans can interact with.
People like Peirce should be praised for a very American Pragmatism that gave out an exasperated and down-to-earth plea for philosophy to stop being quite so abstract.
From "mutilated males" to "wandering wombs," dodgy science affects how we view the female body still today.
- The history of medicine and biology often has been embarrassingly wrong when it comes to female anatomy and was surprisingly resistant to progress.
- Aristotle and the ancient Greeks are much to blame for the mistaken notion of women as cold, passive, and little more than a "mutilated man."
- Thanks to this dubious science, and the likes of Sigmund Freud, we live today with a legacy that judges women according to antiquated biology and psychology.
The story of medicine has not been particularly kind to women. Not only was little anatomical or scientific research done on women or on women-specific issues, doctors often treated them differently.
Even today, women are up to ten times more likely to have their symptoms explained away as being psychological or psychosomatic than men. Worryingly, women are 50 percent more likely to be misdiagnosed after a heart attack, and drugs designed for "everyone" are actually much less effective (for pain) or too effective (for sleeping) in women.
Are these differences real or imagined? And what can the history of female medicine teach us about where we are today?
A mutilated male
Aristotle is rightly considered one of the greatest minds of all time and is recognized as the founding father of many disciplines, including biology. He was one of the most rigorous and comprehensive scientists and field researchers the world had known. He categorized a large number of species based on a wide range of traits, such as movement, longevity, and sensory capacity. His views on women, then, stemmed from what he thought of as good, proper study. The problem is that he got pretty much all of it wrong.
According to Aristotle, during pregnancy, it was the man who, alone, contributed the all-important "form" of a fetus (that is, its defining nature and personality), whereas the woman provided only the matter (that is, the environment and sustenance to grow the fetus, which was provided by the menstrual blood).
From this, Aristotle extrapolated all sorts of dubious conclusions. He ventured that the man was superior, active, and dominant, and the woman inferior, passive, and submissive. As such, the woman's role was to nurture children, run a household, and be silent and obedient — political and cultural manifestations of dodgy biology. If women did not provide a child's form and nature, how important could they really be?
Given this passivity, Aristotle argued that the woman must be associated with other passive things, like being cold and slow. The man, being dynamic and energetic, must be hot and fast. From this, Aristotle concluded that any defects or problems in childbirth can only be due to the sluggishness of the female womb. Even the positive biological aspects of being female, such as greater longevity, were put down to this cold rigidity — a lack of metabolism and spirit. Most notorious of all, since Aristotle believed that female children were themselves the result of an incomplete and underdeveloped gestation, women were simply "mutilated males" whose mothers' cold wombs had overpowered the warm, vital, male sperm.
Aristotle can still be counted as a great mind, but when it came to women, his ideas have not aged well in just how far they negatively influenced what came after. Given that his works were seen as the authority well into the 16th century, he left quite the pernicious legacy.
A wandering womb
But, how much can we really blame Aristotle? Without the aid of modern scientific equipment, physicians and biologists were left to guess about female anatomy. Unfortunately, the damage was done, and Aristotle's ideas of a troublesome uterus became so mainstream that they led to one of the more bizarre ideas in medical history: the wandering womb.
The "wandering womb" is the idea that the womb is actually some kind of roaming parasite in the body, possibly even a separate organism. According to this theory, after a woman menstruates, her womb becomes hot and dry and so becomes extra mobile. It is transformed into a voracious hunter. The womb will dart from organ to organ, seeking to steal its moisture and other vital fluids. This parasitic behavior caused all sorts of (female only) illnesses.
If a woman had asthma, the womb was leeching the lungs. Stomach aches, it was in the gut. And if it attacked the heart (which the ancients thought was the source of our thoughts), then it would cause all manner of mental health issues. In fact, the Greek word for womb is "hystera," and so when we call someone (often a woman) hysterical, we are saying that their womb is causing mischief.
The "solutions" or "remedies" for a wandering womb were as strange as the theory. Since the womb was supposed to be attracted to sweet smells, placing flowers or perfumes around the vagina would "lure" it down. On the flip side, if you smoked noxious substances or ate disgusting foods, it would "repel" the womb away. By using all manner of smells, you could make the womb move wherever you wanted.
The oddest "remedy" — and most male-centric of all — is that, since the wandering womb was said to be caused by heat and dryness, a good solution would be male semen, which was thought of as cooling and wet. And so, the ancient and highly inaccurate myth was born that sex could cure a woman of her "hysteria."
A lingering problem
We live today with the legacy of this kind of thinking. Freud was much taken with the idea of "hysteria," and although he did accept that men could be subject to it as well, he believed it was overwhelmingly a female problem caused by female biology. The woman, for Freud, is mostly defined by her "sexual function." What Freud calls "normal femininity" (the preferred and best outcome) is defined by passivity. A woman's ideal development is one which moves from being active and "phallic" to passive and vaginal.
Nowadays, Freud and Aristotle's legacy lies in just how easily women are defined by their sexuality. Given that men and women, both, are equally dependent on their biology, it is curious how much more often women are reduced to theirs. The idea that women are more emotional or slaves to their hormones than men is still a depressingly familiar trope. It is an idea that goes back to the Greeks.
If we think biology is important to who we are (as it most certainly is), we ought to make sure that the biology is as good and accurate as it can be.
Your life is far more arbitrary than you might think.
- Jorge Borges' story, The Library of Babel, asks us to imagine all the books that could be written using a random shuffling of 25 characters.
- Daniel Dennett argues that, in some ways, the genetic makeup of all life is similar but with only four characters.
- The history of the universe is only one possible way our story could have gone. Much of our reality is simply arbitrary.
Imagine all the lives you didn't live. A life where you never met your partner. Where you never had a brother or sister. Where you got a tattoo. Where that horrible event never happened. Or where one did. The story of your life could be written in a nearly infinite number of ways. When we reflect on the one, narrow, unlikely path that we are on now, it can feel mind-boggling.
This is one of the ideas from Jorge Borges' short story, "The Library of Babel," and it has fascinating connections to our world today — and all possible ones.
The stories never told
Borges asks us to imagine an impossibly vast library divided into a series of hexagonal rooms. Every room contains four walls of shelves that hold every possible variation of books there could be. Using 25 characters (including periods, commas, and full stops), the books are seemingly a random mishmash of gibberish. Most of the books in the library are wholly incomprehensible — a letter explosion — but somewhere in the library, there is any book that might ever have been.
There's Lord of the Rings with Sauron winning. There's Harry Potter with Hermione as a Death Eater. There's the Bible with Jesus being released. But also, there's the story of every life, including yours. One book in this library will be, word for word, the story of your existence. It will recount your first steps, all of your life events, every word you have uttered, your most private thoughts, and even how you will die.
The genetic shuffle
Borges' work resists simple interpretation, but one way to view this is through the lens of genetics.
In his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Daniel Dennett remade the idea as "The Library of Mendel." In this version, you have all the possible genomes of any organism that might exist. Rather than the 25 characters in Borges' original, in genetics you have only four — A, C, G, and T. We humans have roughly three billion of these "letters" in our genome. If you were to randomly shuffle the letters, it's mind-boggling to think of the enormous variety of humans there might be — the incredible diversity of minds and talents, as well as of pathologies and disabilities.
Of course, in the same way a random mélange of letters will create a lot of nonsense, a random shuffling of genes most often will create unviable forms of life. Certain genomes will create something that won't respire, reproduce, metabolize, or function at all. This allows us to appreciate life all the more and to recognize just how unfathomably lucky we are to be here. As evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins said, "However many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead."
Dennett's Library of Mendel also shows us just how arbitrary and improbable the diversity of our world's lifeforms actually is. For instance, the story of mankind, of intelligent bipedal primates dominating the world, is simply one story that could have been told. (It could have been lizards.) It's a story of four letters. It's the set of improbable random mutations that won.
What could have been
Borges' Library of Babel is like our universe. Given enough time, every possible story could be told — the insane and the weird, as well as the oh-so-nearly identical. A world where your skin is slimy and green, but also a world where you have one less hair strand. With every huge planetary event, as well as with every microscopic particle collision, the universe continues on one storyline. Viewing things this way gives incredible gravity to our choices.
Every decision we make and every path we choose will echo throughout the universe. When I choose to pick up a coffee with my left hand rather than my right, I have added to and defined the universe's story. We exist as the latest chapter in the book, and we are helping to write how it will go on. Though I might play an infinitesimal role, I have had the honor of adding my bit to the greatest book of all.
The ancient Greeks were obsessed with geometry, which may have formed the basis of their philosophical cosmology.
- Every triangle inscribed inside a circle on its diameter is a right triangle.
- Upon this discovery, Thales is said to have performed a great ritual sacrifice.
- Might Thales have believed that the entire cosmos was constructed of right triangles?
Thales is credited by the late commentator Proclus, on the authority of Aristotle's student Eudemus, with "discovering" geometrical propositions, some of them more generally and others more practically. Consider some of the diagrams expressing practical examples of right-angled triangles.
From left to right, we have Thales' measurement of (i) the height of a pyramid when its shadow is equal to its height; (ii) the height of a pyramid when its shadow is unequal but proportional to its height; (iii) the distance to a ship at sea from the shoreline; and (iv) the distance to a ship at sea from a tower. Note that, when rotated, they are all the same diagram!
The more general propositions also seem to be relevant to practical geometry:
We have a report about a special accomplishment of Thales. Originating with Diogenes Laertius of the 3rd century BCE on the authority of the mathematician Pamphila, it says that Thales made a splendid ritual sacrifice upon inscribing a right triangle in a circle. Obviously, he thought this was a pretty big deal. More on that a bit later.
The first thing Thales had to know is that the angles of every triangle sum to two right angles. (The angles inside every triangle sum to 180°. Two right angles, each of which is 90°, also sum to 180°.) We have an ancient report that credits Thales' generation of geometers with having grasped this fact in all species of triangles — equilateral, isosceles, and scalene. How might Thales and his geometers have done it? Consider the following diagrams:
By dropping a perpendicular from a vertex to the opposite side in each species of triangle, and then completing the two rectangles formed, one can see immediately that each rectangle (containing four right angles) is halved by the diagonal created by each side of the triangle. Therefore, each half-triangle contains two right angles. And if the two right angles at the base are removed, leaving the three angles of one large triangle, the angles sum to two right angles.
Now, consider how Thales may have proved that every triangle inscribed inside a circle on its diameter must be a right triangle. To show this, he relied on the isosceles triangle proposition and proved that the angle at A [α + β] is right-angled.
Perhaps he did it this way: Based upon the isosceles triangle proposition, Thales knows that segments BD and AD (left diagram) are equal in length because they are both radii of the circle BAC. Thus, their opposite angles — α and α — must be equal. Since every triangle is 180° (that is, contains the equivalent of two right angles) and the angle BDA at the base is a right angle, α + α must also equal one right angle. By itself, α is half of a right angle.
Next, CD and AD are both equal in length since they, too, are both radii of the circle BAC, and so the angles opposite each must also be equal — that is, β equals β. If we acknowledge that the angle at the base ADC is a right angle, and there is the equivalent of two right angles in every triangle, then β + β must equal one right angle. By itself, β is half of a right angle.
Finally, the angle at A is divided into two equal parts, α and β. Because each is half of a right angle, together (α + β) they equal one right angle.
That explains the right angle for an isosceles triangle inscribed inside of a circle. But what about all the varieties of the scalene? More or less, it's the same argument.
Consider triangle ABC (right diagram). It is composed of two triangles ABD and ACD. In ABD, AD must be equal to BD because both are radii of the circle BAC, and so the angles opposite those sides also must be equal. The same argument applies for triangle ADC. Thus, the three angles of triangle ABC are α + β + (α + β). Since we already know that the angles of every triangle sum to 180° (that is, the equivalent of two right angles), then α + β + (α + β) equals two right angles. Thus, α + β must equal one right angle.
Perhaps these lines of proof persuaded Thales and his companions that every triangle inscribed in a circle on its diameter is right. But why the great ritual sacrifice?
The ancient traditions do not give us more insight, and we are left only to speculate. Aristotle claims that Thales posited an underlying unity, water, that alters without changing. Although things look different, water is the substrate of all appearances. Water is merely altered without changing substantially. Had Thales been looking into geometry to try to discover the underlying structure of water, perhaps he followed a similar line of thought as Plato did when he identified the four elements (fire, air, water, and earth) with geometric shapes.
Thales may have identified the right triangle as the fundamental structure of water. Moreover, he now had a way to produce an unlimited number of them for further investigation simply by making a circle, drawing its diameter, and inscribing a triangle inside it.
But there is perhaps another reason for his splendid sacrifice, seen in this metaphysical light. I can imagine one of his compatriots objecting, upon hearing Thales' idea that water was the underlying nature or unity of all things and that the right triangle was its structure. The objection may have gone like this: right triangles may form the basis of every rectilinear figure, but they certainly don't form the basis of the circle. The circle is not constructed out of right triangles, is it? Thus, the right triangle is not the fundamental figure of all appearances.
Thales' reply must have been as astonishing to his compatriots as it is to many of us today. Indeed, the circle too is built out of right triangles! If we plot on the circle's diameter all the possible triangles inscribable inside a circle — starting from one end of the diameter, touching the circle, and then finishing at the other end of the diameter — we produce what modern mathematicians call a "geometrical loci." The circle itself is constructed out of right triangles!
Prof. Robert Hahn has broad interests in the history of ancient and modern astronomy and physics, ancient technologies, the contributions of ancient Egypt and monumental architecture to early Greek philosophy and cosmology, and ancient mathematics and geometry of Egypt and Greece. Every year, he gives "Ancient Legacies" traveling seminars to Greece, Turkey, and Egypt. His latest book is The Metaphysics of the Pythagorean Theorem.
The wise, the old, and the experienced matter to a full and happy life.
- Life is full of complicated and difficult moments, but we can become better at dealing with them. This practical wisdom is a cornerstone of Aristotle's ethics.
- When we practice this skill, we become more adept at seeing situations and people differently — not unlike an artist viewing a painting.
- The elderly and experienced of this world have such wisdom in spades. But those of us in the West rarely tap into this precious resource.
Who do you turn to for advice? When things are hard, and you don't know what to do, who are those people you ask for help? It might be your mom or that one person at work who knows all the answers. Perhaps it's an internet stranger on some comment board or a professional you pay. But the question is: why do you choose them?
These experts and advice givers are an essential part of our human experience. From consulting the wise old lady in the primeval village to texting your doctor-friend, humans have always needed people to rely on for advice. As social beings, we want to help each other. But what role do experts play in our moral development? This is a key part of Aristotle's moral theory.
Phronimos: a sage of ancient Greece
According to Aristotle, a full and flourishing life (or what the Greeks like to label "eudaimonia") is characterised by virtue guided by something called phronesis or "practical wisdom". Phronesis is the ability to find the middle ground in any given situation — to know what is courageous, or kind, or fair, when it's not immediately obvious. But, like any skill, this does not come naturally. It requires experience and conscious effort.
The person who has mastered phronesis is known as the "phronimos." These are the sages who have experienced enough of the world to know how to act and give great advice as a result. As the cliché goes, they have "been there, done that." Just as we seek a doctor about disease or an engineer about building a house, we turn to the phronimos to learn from their wisdom.
This wisdom manifests as a kind of perception. In the same way that an artist might see a painting differently than the untrained eye or how a wine connoisseur will taste flavors the average person will miss, the phronimos sees people differently. This ability is called "nous."
For instance, a naïve but well-intentioned boy might think honesty is always best. Honesty is, after all, a virtue Aristotle would be proud of. So, this boy tells his friend that he finds her ridiculously ugly. The phronimos, though, has the nous to see that his friend is desperately shy and incredibly self-conscious and instead decides to hold his tongue — or perhaps even lie.
Or, a new teacher might decide to punish a student for not doing their homework without noticing how fragile that student is. The phronimos teacher is one who sees the situation properly — perhaps the child has a difficult home life — and offers a kind word or some other assistance.
Phronesis comes with the hard graft of experience and conscious self-improvement. It's seeing enough of the world to know what to do — or not to do. It's to identify someone correctly as embarrassed, scared, or angry when others might miss it.
It's hard to describe, but we all know the phronimos person in our life. Aristotle's advice is to call on them as much as we can.
Text your grandparents every day
In many ways, life is just like an apprenticeship. When we're born, we have only a few basic, natural instincts to get us through the day alive. The rest we need to be shown or taught. That is why it is so important to make sure that we have the right mentors in our life.
A lot of people are lucky to have great parents who teach them most of what they need to live in modern society, but sometimes even this isn't enough. Parents, especially during a child's formative years, are often only middle-aged and have much to learn themselves.
While being elderly is not a requirement for Aristotle's phronimos, it is often the case that with age comes wisdom. Yet, as society becomes more and more isolated (even before COVID-19), and with household sizes shrinking, we rarely think to use the phronimos people in our lives.
In the English-speaking West, especially, old people are shuffled off to retirement villages or care homes, only to be brought out for Thanksgiving or little Ava's birthday party. If Aristotle had his way, you would text them every single day. After all, they have experienced it all before — and made it out alive!
Perhaps Aristotle's philosophy also reveals a deeper truth: how incredibly valuable the elderly of our society are. Besides the intrinsic cruelty of a society that isolates and forgets its old people, Aristotle asks us to ponder what we're really missing in the process. These people — these phronimos — have so much to offer. They've made the mistakes, so we don't have to. We really ought to call on their wisdom much more.