Editorial: 8th Issue June 30th 2018

Blog: http://michaelrdjames.org/
Journal site: https://www.aletheiaeducation.eu/

The first lecture is entitled “The Third Centrepiece lecture on The Philosophy of
Education” and it is the third lecture given by Jude Sutton, one of the main
characters in the recently published Philosophical/educational novel “The
World Explored, the World Suffered: The Exeter lectures”.

The lecture explores ethics and language from the point of view of the
philosophy of education in partly Kantian and partly Wittgensteinian terms.
Sutton claims that the epistemological view of our souls and the world bears the
responsibility for much of the confusion in what are essentially metaphysical
areas: areas where philosophical principles are operating. A particular view of
Language and Psychology follows from Sutton’s approach:

But before we take up this issue let us talk about language. We obviously see something as
something when we see certain physical movements of a man’s face and the sound he emits
as a wince of pain. Where does this ability come from? One suggestion is that we see
something as something because we are language- users, and it is a major function of
language in virtue of its possessing a subject predicate structure, to say something about
something. This translates eventually into thought and in virtue of this linguistic capacity we
can think something about something. The capacity also transforms our animal like
perception into the more human form in which see something as something, for example, I
see those physical movements and that sound as a wince of pain. And here we have the later
Philosophy of Wittgenstein overturning the earlier, and producing what has been referred to
as the Wittgensteinian Copernican revolution. All Philosophical problems , Wittgenstein now
argues, can be resolved by investigating the philosophical or as he calls it grammatical
structure of our language.”

An examination of Charles Stevensons theory of ethical language gives rise to a

comparison between the language uses in the areas of aesthetics and ethics and
Sutton ends up with the following analysis:

Now it is important to realize the difference between an ethical judgment about what is good
in the world of action, and an aesthetic judgment about what is good in the world of fashion
and taste, in which the winds of change blow our taste first in one direction and then in
another. In the language game of aesthetic judgment we concern ourselves with things such as
strawberries and raspberries and how things appear rather than what they are in themselves.
Any imperative or ought –judgment in the aesthetic language-game does not relate to our
obligations to do something but rather to our desires for pleasure and happiness. Ethical
obligations, on the other hand, do not arise from how the world appears to us to be, but rather
from how it ought to be for everyone.
The second lecture which will appear in the next volume of the trilogy of
lectures is entitled “The History of Psychology: Freud and Observationalism”.
It is the final lecture in the series of the History of Psychology and its focus is
Psychology in the twentieth century:

The twentieth century, it is maintained, was largely obsessed by observationalist assumptions

and reactions to observationalism such as behaviourism. Initially upon the declaration of
independence, the definition of Psychology accepted by many leading researchers was “The
science of consciousness” but it was then discovered that consciousness could not be
observed and could not, therefore, fit into the theoretical scientific framework of being
manipulated or measured as an experimental variable. The “scientific” response to this was
to redefine Psychology as the “science of behaviour” and this move merely further reduced
the circumference of the investigative circle and much that was of interest in the Philosophy
of man was ignored.

Freud’s theory is characterised as contesting the above obsession in favour of a

more holistic approach:

At the same time the medical model, operating in what Brett called the technological
therapeutic mode was emphasizing a moral treatment of patients that demanded that the
Doctor listen to his patients both for the purposes of diagnosis and for the purposes of
treatment. This ethical focus was probably a consequence of the need of Psychiatry and
Psychoanalysis to view humans holistically if the practical problem of restoring man to
health was to be solved. Freud’s initial training was in the Physiology of the brain. This was
complemented with a medical training because, as a Jew, he could not look forward to a well-
paid research position at Vienna University. Both of these largely theoretical educations
proved to be inadequate to solve the kind of problem Freud was faced with in private practice.
He was forced to resort creatively and experimentally to various “technologies” such as
hypnotism in order to address the complex symptoms of his patients. But Freud was also a
man of culture and we know he was familiar with the writings of Kant and this perhaps
prevented him from engaging in the various forms of quackery that was a sign of the times.
Paradoxically it was probably Platonic, Aristotelian and Kantian Metaphysics and
Transcendental Philosophy that turned this Physician into a leading figure on the world stage
in the 20th century.

The twentieth century is also the century of the testing of the child and
personality and quantitative techniques supplemented observationalism and ithe
nstrumentalism of sociologically oriented theories(Marx etc). Sutton concludes
in the following manner:

The overall impression of Peters is that during the 20th century there emerged a proliferation
of “schools” of Psychology all operating on either different assumptions or with different
methods or with different concepts and that this has in no small measure contributed to what
many philosophers regard as the “conceptual confusion” in the subject.
The final lecture is part of an Introduction to Philosophy course text book which
will be published at the end of 2019. It is entitled “Part two--Aristotle,
Metaphysics and Philosophical Psychology” .

Aristotle discusses the Principle of Non contradiction(PNC) and focuses upon

two formulations. This is his characterisation of a metaphysical application of
the second formulation:

Returning to our second formulation of PNC, can we then not say that Socrates’ humanity is
the primary principle or form or essence ot primary being of Socrates? : and is this not that
which explains what Socrates ontologically is? Aristotle believed that all living things
possessed souls of different kinds or in his technical language from De Anima a soul is “the
actuality of a body that has life”. But living things take different forms and Aristotle therefore
constructed a matrix of life forms which defined a living things form or essence partly in
terms of the physical organ system it possessed and partly in terms of the power the thing as a
whole possessed. He begins with simple plants, their simple physical structures, and their
powers of growth and reproduction. The matrix seems to be organized in terms of a
continuum of a possible infinite number of forms only some of which are actualized because
of the physical conditions of the elements of the world(earth water air fire) and their
accompanying processes of wet and cold, hot and dry. The next stage of the continuum
manifests itself in animal forms possessing animal organ systems and the powers or
perception and locomotion(in addition to the previous plant like power). The penultimate
stage of the matrix is that of humanity or the human being which possesses a more complex
organ system and also more complex powers of discourse, memory and reasoning(in addition
to all the lower powerts previously mentioned). This matrix was an attempt to transcend the
dialectical discussions of dualists and materialists and present a hylomorphic theory of the
soul which would not fall foul of the PNC. This matrix is a matrix of agents and powers
which in its turn is of course embedded in an environmental matrix of space, time and
causation(discussed in part one).

Aristotle’s hylomorphic theory is submerged by both materialist and dualist

concerns at the gateway of our modern era but Freud and Wittgenstein
respectively and in different ways use some of the assumptions of hylomorphic
theory and open the way to a theory of nature that P M S Hacker explored in his
work :

Hacker is of course one of the foremost commentators and interpreters of the work of
Wittgenstein who, he claims, restored hylomorphic theory in the seminar and lecture rooms of
our dialectical Universities. Consciousness in its non- Cartesian form enters into modern post
Wittgensteinian discourse in terms of the reflective nature of the human being that possesses
an awareness of their powers(unlike a magnet or snake which possess powers unreflectively).
This reflectiveness, in its turn, according to Hacker, gives rise to powers that can be willfully
used, i.e. powers that we can choose to exercise or not. It was this mental space that appeared
to be absent in the mental space of many of Freud’s patients and it was this lack that drove
Freud to postulate that the principle driving much of their activity was unconscious and in
accordance with the so-called pleasure-pain principle. Hacker calls “volitional powers” in
which choice is involved, “two-way powers”. Included among such powers were the powers
to perceive, remember, think and reason.

Aristotle’s teleological assumptions in the realms of the human and the natural
are discussed and Teleology, it is argued, is restored to its former position as a
possible mode of explaining human action and institutional action.