Above and Beyond Philosophy

By Michael D. Halliday

Above and Beyond Philosophy is a book of critical metaphilosophy which scans philosophy’s main branches and demolishes most of their content. The author salvages what relatively little is left. There are chapters on metaphysics, theory of knowledge, logic, language and ethics. It also briefly examines philosophy’s fractured history, it’s defects of method, some of the appalling influences it has had on history, politics and culture, as well as evaluating it’s worth and providing pointers to a truncated future.

The book is accessible to the intelligent layman with no previous knowledge of philosophy, whereas most philosophy these days is written in technical language by university academics detailing small refinements to unprovable theories. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Oct 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9781805146988

Michael D. Halliday

Michael D Halliday is a retired scientist, teacher and senior manager who holds an Oxford University MA and an MBA. He is the author of 10 previous books, mainly in philosophy and the social sciences, as well as 3 collections of modern poetry. 

Book preview

1

How Can We Get Into Philosophy?

This book is about examining philosophy critically with a view to its evaluation. Philosophy is, contrary to popular opinion, neither knowledge nor wisdom, nor is it a resigned attitude to adversity. But as an academic discipline philosophy seeks to study the world at its most abstract and general, together with the concepts, classifications and methods with which we think about it.

Traditionally, philosophy has a heart or core, comprising several branches which have very different contents, but are nevertheless all bound by the same aims described above. Philosophers argue about everything, including which branches constitute its core. Modern trends tend to limit this to something like metaphysics, epistemology, logic, ethics. Other branches are sometimes considered part of the core, and those include language, mind, and aesthetics (philosophy of the Arts).

Metaphysics deals with fundamental reality, Epistemology is also called ‘theory of knowledge,’ and concerns the general nature of knowledge and how it may be obtained from what sources. Logic looks at reasoning, inference, and argument, with a goal of distinguishing truth from falsehood. While ethics (or morality) analyses good and bad, right and wrong, in our human conduct and thought.

Philosophy may seem unusually opaque to outsiders, so we will start by briefly considering how best to creep up on it. Originally, and frequently still, the teaching approach was via the chronological history of philosophy, with especial attention to the so-called giants of the subject, sometimes via their original works. These, by the way, were mostly written hundreds or even thousands of years ago. Some have to be read in translation from European tongues. They start with the ancient Greeks.

No doubt these early thinkers had the advantage of being first in the field – men like Plato, Aristotle, Descartes and Kant. We have them to thank for identifying many of the major issues of philosophy. The greater number of these are still awaiting satisfactory and widely agreed answers. Which should raise eyebrows in those new to the subject. In this regard there is no other subject quite like philosophy.

Whilst it may well be interesting to study in this historical way, and even valuable in helping to form an overview and perspective, the approach is confusingly cyclical as to the problems, which crop up over the ages in various formulations. There is a fair point, too, in the complaint that philosophy is stuck in the past, correspondingly skewed against contemporary developments. Some will therefore write it off as irrelevant to the modern world, a subject as dead as Latin. Indeed, when I was young during the 1960’s many practitioners, such as A.J. Ayer, were actually refugees from classical scholarship, then starting its retreat from the universities.

Another approach sometimes advocated in the trade is via concepts and their accurate elucidation and usage. Whilst an important part of an analytic philosopher’s armoury, this is inevitably a rather incomplete approach. Perhaps surprisingly, lots of concepts defy definition and have an elusive wooliness of meaning. To illustrate, if we take a central philosophical concept like ‘truth,’ when we have pinned down its meaning, we have still to start with solving its key associated problems, such as how to attain truth and how it relates to ‘knowledge.’

You could try studying via the schools or movements of philosophy which spring up from time to time, examples being stoicism, logical positivism, or existentialism. But these rarely produce a comprehensive coverage. They can also be restrictive in another way, being prone to ideological assumptions. In any case they are often fashions which come and go, neither achieving ascendancy, nor being entirely debunked either.

So my own considered preference is that philosophy is best studied through a problem -solving approach with the aid of suitable modern texts. This can be both systematic, broad and deep, if the contemporary versions of the main outstanding, unresolved problems in philosophy are chosen for a syllabus. Elements of the historical will come through here with particular problems, but the approach will highlight the strengths and weaknesses of proposed solutions. It will also provide appropriate starting points for personal reflections on the problems.

I do note, however, that it is, to say the least, distinctly unusual to have radically different ways into a subject, with no definitive approach having been demonstrably agreed to be better than the rest. As it seems to me, here is a key and telling feature of the many which render philosophy itself vulnerable to attack and render it unhelpfully different from all other subjects.

2

Philosophy’s Fractured History

This is a big subject, but I do not intend to go into it at length. I simply wish to illustrate some disturbing aspects from the point of view of those who would hope for progress in tracking truth.

So why do I say ‘fractured’ history? Don’t get me wrong, it can be very entertaining to read the thoughts of great sages from the past. There are also lots of colourful characters among them as well, like the Cynic, Diogenes, who reportedly lived in a barrel. Yet when you do read them along with the clever reasoning you will discover lots of daft ideas when seen through modern eyes. Some are mentioned in what follows. You will not, however, find sustained development a feature of philosophy’s different branches. Although some philosophers, like Plato, had their disciples, others, such as Spinoza or Schopenhauer did not. The history of philosophy has in addition been plagued by lots of transient fads and fashions. Some, including logical positivism, were demonstrated to be flawed. Others simply lapsed into neglect, an example being Leibniz’s fantastical ‘monads.’ Monads were supposedly the only true substances. They were mental, self-sufficient, capable of perceiving each other. They were the claimed constituents of every object, so a stone, for instance, would consist of millions of the things.

Reverting to the Ancient Greeks, who effectively kicked off Western philosophy as it has been practised ever since, it is very difficult for a scientist to take their views seriously. Because back then there were only crude divisions between the various subjects of study, and works of philosophy and the sciences were intermingled. Formal methods of investigation were lacking. Consequently, some of these beliefs and conjectures made sense within the narrow confines of what was known, but would now seem ridiculous to the educated. Consider the notion that the stars revolved around a central Earth. This belief took hold for hundreds of years with fierce and violent Catholic support, including persecution of the astronomer Galileo, before it was dispelled. Other deeply held, but profoundly mistaken ideas included that the basic, irreducible elements were earth, wind, fire and water. Modern chemistry, of course, has learned a great deal about the over 100 naturally occurring elements and their interactions, with many uses being harnessed as a result. Of course, the long view does remind us that looking back from many years in the future (if the human race survives) will probably show some of contemporary science to be somewhat primitive in its turn.

And in fairness, some good preliminary work was done then. Plato and Aristotle are credited with the status of being big brains of the era, principally owing to their pioneering role, which gave them the opportunity to frame some of the main problems in what later became the philosophical branches of metaphysics, epistemology, logic and ethics. Of these two, Aristotle was altogether the more scientific. Anyhow, the subsequent unyielding intractability of the problems has ensured their continuing fame ever since.

Overall there were important gains from the Ancient Greeks, it is true. Aristotle himself invented categories for classification, as well as founding elementary logic. Zeno produced paradoxes that have improved our understanding of such concepts as time and movement. Then there are the ethical movements – stoicism, epicureanism – and the reaction to epistemology of the sceptics.

After the Roman Emperor Justinian closed down Greek philosophy, thinking became taken over by the authority of the Church. Heretics were brutally persecuted, often tortured and murdered for their beliefs. Christian doctrinal orthodoxy thus put an effective brake on intellectual development – for