Appendix 2:
Transcripts of Philosophy Fluency Podcast Season 8 Episodes on Mary Shepherd
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Season 8 Episode 1
Published 17th January 2024
'Mary Shepherd and my Research Thoughts'
https://anchor.fm/philosophyfluency/episodes/8-1-Mary-Shepherd-and-my-Research-Thoughts-e2ehr28
Hello and welcome to the first episode of Season 8 of Philosophy Fluency! I'm planning to talk about all things Mary Shepherd this season, including my Volume 2 book on her and surrounding topics and recent scholarship on her. I had planned to do all this in Season 6 before Hamas attacked Israel in the most barbaric of ways. So I turned my attention to Israel. This was followed by my commenting on philosophy talks I'd been to and ending with my agnostic upbringing which, unlike the vast majority of people, had no religious element in it whatsoever. I'm surprised people find it so unusual especially considering atheism is the second largest belief system in the world.
However, it doesn't mean I forgot about Shepherd. I was still thinking about who she was as a person. She aligned herself with Priestley so that started me thinking maybe she was more of a materialist Christian dissenter. Could she have been a deist? Or an atheist? Atheists did exist in her day but were not loud and proud. So Shepherd would hardly want to come across as one. But it might mean she would be inclined to publish anonymously. So, I started reading about atheism in philosophy and was shocked at how badly they were treated as a group. Hobbes seemed to function as an atheist and philosopher, and Cavendish did know him but, nevertheless, couldn't be seen to know him.
How religious was Cavendish? I see her as very similar to Shepherd. Both were excellent scientists. Although Cavendish would equally not wish to be seen as atheist. She could see that it wasn't plain sailing for Hobbes whom she knew well. Unlike D'Holbach who fared better as an atheist in France. He was someone I wished to incorporate into my PhD research for my thesis on Hume and Rousseau. I mentioned D'Holbach to a lecturer at Kent University when emailing him my request to undertake a PhD with him, together with an overview of my PhD pre-proposal.
I had studied Hume and Rousseau at London University so I was confident researching them. It helps if you start your research in a topic or philosophical texts that you have studied at university. This is why my Spinoza books raced ahead of Shepherd and Cavendish. Not only was I taught Spinoza at uni but I supplemented the teaching with attending further talks and conferences, both while a London University student and afterwards. Furthermore, I didn't just rely on university lectures and conference talks by various speakers: I did my own extra reading which I found for myself on Spinoza, simply out of interest, mostly during the summer holidays after exams before the following autumn term.
In contrast, no women philosophers were taught in my compulsory History of Philosophy modules, and there are barely any talks or conferences on Cavendish and Shepherd, and very little secondary literature on them. If somebody does present a paper on Cavendish it's not necessarily advertised or shared on social media philosophy pages so you can miss that it's even going on. Cavendish's 400th anniversary last year went by very quietly in the Philosophy world, there was none of the usual fanfare that past philosophers, such as Hume, receive when there's an anniversary year of their birth or death. The most prolific scholarship on Cavendish is in the field of English Literature and therefore not relevant to philosophy, politics or science; and scholarship on Shepherd has only very recently revived, that was basically after both of my conference talks on Shepherd in 2016 and 2017 and after publishing my Volume 1 ebook on her in January 2018.
So, when I was researching and writing my volume 1 book on Shepherd, there was no recent scholarship to spark off from, hence I focused on her primary text. However, while writing my volume 2 on Shepherd, I was pleased to see that there's some recent scholarship from various philosophers to build on, because reading other interpretations of Shepherd generates academic discussion through papers and books, which starts me asking myself questions and having ideas. This, I began my volume 2 on Shepherd by entering into a scholarly debate by responding to Boyle's paper about Shepherd, and shall continue to reply to other scholarship in further chapters of my volume 2 on Shepherd which I'm currently working on.
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This episode is a bridge between the mini series in Season 7 on Margaret Cavendish and this season's return to the philosopher, Mary Shepherd. Today I shall talk about Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) who shares common ground with these two women philosophers. Both Cavendish and Priestley have a vitalist approach to their materialism, while Shepherd directly refers to Priestley as having a similar outlook to her.
But Priestley is generally a very pivotal thinker, scholar, passionate freethinker, teacher and polymath who was mostly self-educated. Yet he is largely neglected by the philosophy community.
Here's an overview of
Priestley's achievements:
Apart from being a political theorist, he was, like Margaret Cavendish, a natural philosopher and, like the geologist Shepherd, a metaphysician. Natural philosophy is a field of study that was the precursor to modern science. It spanned a broader range of experimental and theoretical sciences under one umbrella for the study of nature, encompassing botany, zoology, biology as well as physics. It wasn't until as late as the 19th century, that scientific disciplines were split up into narrow, separate fields, such as biology, chemistry, physics and so on. His metaphysical writings are thought to have influenced Utilitarianism, including key figures of that school of thought such as Bentham and JS Mill.
Alongside his natural philosophy, he was an outstanding scientist who most notably wrote on electricity; authored a book on optics and was an astronomer (Spinoza's scientific specialisations) and discovered the carbon cycle as well as 10 gases, most famously, oxygen. He is also well-known for his 'Bell Jar Experiments' which examined how animals and plants breathe and how photosynthesis occurs. He was interested in scientific methodology and how to apply science in a practical way to solve problems, which sometimes rather misfired when, for instance, he thought up soda water as a cure for scurvy. It turned out not to be but it did end up a fantastic business venture for Schweppes drinks who see him as the father of their carbonated mineral water!
Priestley was an educational theorist who also wrote educational books on grammar and history. He taught modern languages and rhetoric at Warrington Academy, despite apparently wanting to teach maths and natural philosophy.
As was common in those days, men tended to have to become clergymen in order to be in academia and university life. So many agreed to it just to get the education at university then didn't become or stay a congregational minister afterwards and were never that religious. Let's take James Mill, for instance, who lived between 1773–1836, and was the father of JS Mill. James Mill knew Shepherd very well yet was an anti-clerical atheist. I say yet because 17th Cavendish was not confident in being seen with the atheist Hobbes. So something shifted between the two centuries. Nevertheless, James Mill went along with being helped by ministers so he could receive an education from primary school level through to university, but then it was expected that he would also become one himself which he did train to do after his degree. Nevertheless, unlike Joseph Priestley, James Mill renounced his faith once he'd finished his education and had just become a licensed minister and instead, worked hard at various other jobs.
However, Priestley himself came from a dissenting family so was barred from going to university in the first place simply for being the wrong sort of Christian, that is, one that rejected the Church of England. So his only option was to go to a dissenting Academy called Daventry Academy to study Theology.
Which raises the question: Where are the dissenting academies these days? I thought I went to a uni equivalent for my Philosophy BA but quite the contrary. I had checked they didn't have a Theology department, so there couldn't be a slippage, which they didn't, so I thought I was on to a winner. They were clearly not religious then or so I thought. I also noticed that there were some famous Labour alumni there, such as Ramsay MacDonald, the first Labour Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, so left leaning too then. But again found to the contrary.
Not being religious enough was constantly an obstacle for Priestley, as indeed it is now, not only in education but also for work. For example, Priestley was not allowed to take the opportunity of being an astronomer for Captain James Cook’s second voyage simply because the crew objected to his dissident religious stance. How preposterous!
Priestley taught at the Warrington Academy which later moved around to various locations. At one point, it was with London University (where I gained my BA in Philosophy) and located at Gordon Square (where I had uni lectures) before eventually becoming Harris Manchester College, Oxford University, where I attended the Upton Lecture a couple of months ago.
While at Harris Manchester College for the talk I had the opportunity to see a wonderful oil painting of Joseph Priestley's wife, Mary, post-talk where drinkies were on offer. I didn't have time for drinks because I was too busy enjoying the paintings on the walls around the room. That's something I missed at my uni - no paintings on the walls. There were a few exceptions but they were rooms that were rarely used.
To finish, I'll leave you with something to mull over about Priestley which could be very relevant to Shepherd: his favourite book was
David Hartley's 'Observations on Man' (published 1749) in which he put forward the suggestion that the mind is material.
This started me thinking. Was Shepherd, like Priestley, a rational dissenter who, as a fellow scientist, saw the mind as material and therefore was a materialist although still very much with an open mind about God. Indeed, possibly in line with the Unitarian Minister and principal of Warrington Academy, (then renamed Manchester Academy and relocated to York) Charles Wellbeloved, who stated in 1809 that he refused to label the Academy as Unitarian because he wanted students to arrive at the Academy with an open mind and to draw their own conclusions from what they learn there, even if in the end they don't choose to be unitarian in their belief and outlook but rather believe in animism.
Now that's the sort of attitude one expects from universities today but sadly doesn't transpire in practice, 200 years later! Education not Indoctrination, should be the motto! And every individual student should be treated with respect, kindness and supported, not held back in any way from achieving the best they can academically so that they reach their true potential.
Do join me next week for more hot coffee and Philosophy Fluency. Have a good, open-minded week! Wrap up warmly!
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Season 8 Episode 2
Published 24th January 2024
'The Relevance of 18th Century Materialism to Mary Shepherd'
https://anchor.fm/philosophyfluency/episodes/8-2-The-Relevance-of-18th-Century-Materialism-to-Mary-Shepherd-e2erl4g
Hello and welcome to the second episode of Season 8 of Philosophy Fluency. Let's pour out some comforting coffees to focus the mind during this ongoing dreadful weather, full of constant storms and drizzly, blustery weather.
As I mentioned in the last episode, Priestley's favourite book was written by David Hartley (1705-1757), a British Philosopher who also became a medical doctor. Indeed, not only did Hartley deeply influence Priestley, but his book 'Observations' became a fundamental text taught at dissenting Academies, and Hartley's theories went on to influence James Mill and his son JS Mill, inspiring James to write his philosophy of mind and psychology book: 'Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind'.
You don't really hear much about Hartley now in the Philosophy world but he was a very pivotal and influential philosopher in the 18th century and his philosophical theories were heavily based on scientific and psychological thought. He is perhaps best known as the founder of the Associationist school of psychology, which expounds the doctrine of mental association.
Incidentally, Hartley was a vegetarian. So I don't know why so many philosophers these days look upon vegetarianism, veganism and a scientific, as opposed to a religious, approach to philosophy as though it is newfangled and shocking. Although Hartley was not an atheist, he was a Christian non-conformist.
After graduating from Cambridge University, he refused to sign the 39 Articles, meaning he escaped having to become a minister like his father - he was somewhat a dissident because, contrary to the Church of England, he thought salvation is automatically for everyone and he is thought to have not believed in the trinity.
So what's the relevance of Hartley to Mary Shepherd? Answer: he is important historical background for assessing to what extent Shepherd may have been a materialist in her era and what non-atheistic approaches to mind, body, soul and materialism were accessible to her as well as being persuasive for philosophers in the 18th and 19th centuries. I argue that Shepherd needs to be interpreted against the background of 18th and 19th century dissents who balanced materialism with non-conformist Christian views. Otherwise one falls into the trap of assuming Shepherd can't possibly be materialistic in any way, simply because we wish to pigeonhole all materialists as hard atheists and she doesn't seem to fit this description. Thus, we are inclined to forget that there were theist, soft materialists in her day, so Shepherd wouldn't stand alone in taking this stance.
Do join me later in the week for a continuation of this episode. Until then, have a good week.
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During the week, you may have been wondering: why specifically Hartley as opposed to somebody else if he's simply providing historical background? How is he directly relevant to Shepherd? Well, one of the main reasons is that he is actually mentioned by Shepherd, albeit merely in passing alongside other names, in her 1824 treatise: 'An Essay Upon the Relation of Cause and Effect'. However, in the History of Philosophy, this does tell us a couple of vital things:
1) Shepherd was aware of him. This is important to know as a researcher when drawing parallels between thinkers, whether it is to draw similarities or dissimilarities as you compare and contrast their ideas. Unlike many other researchers in philosophy, I don't just use methodological principles from Logic and Philosophy, I also sometimes draw on methodology from the Research Methods I learnt in both Sociology and Psychology. One principle I use is termed the Correlation Coefficient, which although it comes from maths and statistics, it was heavily emphasized in my Sociology and Psychology courses.
For present philosophical purposes, it's a way of assessing whether the link between two things is just an accidental similarity of no meaning or relevance, or whether it is showing a strong, meaningful link, or correlation between the two things we are assessing. In the Social Sciences, the Correlation Coefficient will be presented as a scatter graph that shows how weak or strong the correlation is between two variables or datasets. However I think we can still make use of the underlying logical reasoning behind this mathematical principle by cross-applying it to Philosophical Methodology, albeit in a more generalised way.
For instance, when suggesting an interpretation of a past philosopher, we can ask: what variables are being matched up with the philosopher? Is there a strong or weak correlation between the philosopher and that variable or variables; or dataset?
That's very abstract thinking, so I'll give an example.
In her book:
Spinoza on Philosophy, Religion and Politics:
The "Theologico-Political Treatise"
the philosopher Susan James puts forward her suggestion that we can understand Spinoza and his philosophy through seeing it within the context of the Dutch debates going on around him during his lifetime. This gives rise to her Contextual-Argument-Analysis interpretation. So I can assess the strength of this argument and interpretation through the key idea behind the Correlation Coefficient: is there a strong correlation between Spinoza's philosophy and the Dutch debates around him? Well, yes, there's obviously an extremely strong and indubitable correlation between the two, so she's providing a very strong interpretation of Spinoza.
2) Shepherd was obviously familiar with Hartley's ideas and outlook, because in a passage from Shepherd's treatise 'An Essay Upon the Relation of Cause and Effect', we can see she was familiar enough with Hartley's work to argue against Lawrence's claim that all philosophers only talk of an immaterial being behind thought but not sensation. So in her contra, she cites Locke, Bishop Butler, David Hartley, Bishop Berkeley as providing evidence to the contrary.
So, given 1 & 2 that I've just explained, Hartley, as well as other thinkers Shepherd mentions in her treatises, are a fruitful point of discussion. I think this is especially true when she is referring to people that were famous in her day but we are unfamiliar with them today. The problem with this is she will assume we have greater depth and breadth of knowledge of these ideas than we possess so she'll assume knowledge rather than explain every detail to us. After all, she'll assume, much as we do today, that certain famous people will not go out of favour and drop out of the philosophical canon. Hence, it is very surprising that Hartley is hardly ever mentioned because his theory that people have mental associations is still prevalent in modern Psychology.
Proviso: I'm assuming that, in addition to my points 1 & 2 above any such history of philosophy research has to be also reasoned through thoroughly and logically using solid supporting evidence, otherwise it will introduce a wobbly methodology which will undermine the project, despite following the 2 points I've made.
Do join me in a couple of days for more Philosophy Fluency!
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Season 8 Episode 3
'Shepherd, Mr Lawrence and the Mirror'
Published 30th January 2024
https://anchor.fm/philosophyfluency/episodes/8-3-Shepherd--Mr-Lawrence-and-the-Mirror-e2f27hf
Hello and welcome to the third episode of Season 8 of Philosophy Fluency. You may like a pot of coffee on the table next to you ready to think about Shepherd. I'll continue my discussion of the academic debates surrounding her and how she responds to them. I'll therefore carry on introducing some of the now lesser-known thinkers she refers to in her treatises in order to put her somewhat soft materialist perspective into the context of her era.
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In the passage I mentioned in my last episode, Mary Shepherd refers to Hartley while arguing against Mr Lawrence.
So a reader of Shepherd will wonder: Who was the Mr Lawrence that Shepherd responds to in her writings? She's referring to Sir William Lawrence, 1st Baronet (1783 – 1867) who was a surgeon to Queen Victoria and a physician who wrote from a materialist perspective.
Why would Shepherd read and academically debate with someone who was a surgeon but not a philosopher? Others she mentions had worked in medicine, but they were also philosophers. It's quite rare for a past philosopher to engage with a non-philosopher in a philosophical treatise. I think this may be because, in Shepherd's era, metaphysics was considered fundamental to and a prerequisite for other fields, including physiology. So being a good metaphysician was prestigious, it generally gave a thinker status, and it was academically important for writing about various fields, from moral philosophy to scientific discourse. Shepherd seems in keeping with this ethos when she maintains that metaphysics and philosophy are and ought to be the basis for physiology.
Indeed, Shepherd writes explicitly, and I quote from page 173 of her treatise published 1824: 'An Essay Upon the Relation of Cause and Effect, Controverting the Doctrine of Mr. Hume, Concerning the Nature of That Relation':
"It is to be lamented that the use of pure metaphysics has not been more strictly adopted into the researches of physiology, since the just application of these sciences to each other, would tend to the advancement of both."
Shepherd also argues that Philosophy generally is required for advancements in physiology.
So here we see Shepherd advocating for an even bigger role for metaphysics in science and physiology, with the aim of advancing both the fields of metaphysics and science. Hence, I think she engages with someone writing about pure physiology to demonstrate how his methodology and argumentation is weaker because it is not underpinned by the rigorous methods of metaphysics, which she naturally peppered with analytical philosophy and logic, as we shall see in a moment with Shepherd's mirror counterexample to Lawrence.
Unlike some philosophers today, for Shepherd, involving metaphysics in scientific methodology was not just an excuse to introduce religious doctrine. Whereas Lawrence was apparently against involving both metaphysics and theology in science, although maybe his dislike of metaphysics in science was simply out of concern that it tends to introduce religious bias and interference thus restricting science. Well, I agree! Religion does interfere with science and hold back scientific advancement and knowledge, such as the terrible strife that occured between scientists and Christians over stem cell research and research on embryos. So I can see both sides of the coin: I agree with Lawrence that metaphysics shouldn't be involved in science, but only because it runs the risk of religious interference and censorship within science. Why? Well, religion and theology have a tendency to hitch a ride on the back of so-called metaphysics (or medical ethics) in order to slide in somewhat undetected. On the other hand, I don't think Shepherd is wrong to argue that metaphysics could enhance scientific discovery. I think that, if metaphysics is conducted rigorously, logically, methodologically soundly and without religious bias then it has the potential to advance both philosophy and science.
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Now for Shepherd's Mirror counterexample to Mr Lawrence.
Shepherd likens Lawrence's methodology and thinking as being akin to mistakenly believing that a mirror is no more than polished glass for the simple reason that they both consistently share the features of being polished, reflective and made of glass. That's the brief overview of her counterargument.
In the mirror example, beginning page 190, Shepherd takes apart what she considers to be Mr Lawrence's error about causation, which she thinks stems from Hume's inadequate definition of causation. So her contra to Lawrence's methodology doubles up as a contra to Hume's definition of causation, by showing the illogicalities it leads to in scientific reasoning. By going along with Hume's notion of causation amounting to a constant conjunction between two things, it means that there's a cause and effect relationship between the two things, which, to her mind, is a notion that falls into error. Hence, on page 190, she refutes such "illogical definitions" of causation and on page 192, she wonders why they have been "so long admired, adopted and unanswered", despite malfunctioning. So she answers the issue herself and provides us with an alternative.
Shepherd's mirror counterexample is very intricate: She maintains that Lawrence is mistaken in assuming that: if variables appear together consistently, then this is a sign that there's a cause and effect relationship between them. Shepherd argues to the contrary. Just because variables consistently appear alongside each other, it doesn't logically follow that this must be due to causation. 'Polish', 'glass' and 'reflection' always go together when looking at a mirror and a mirror ceases to function as a mirror when it becomes too scratched. But these variables are not what causes the mirror. What causes a mirror to come into existence is a process which involves various tools to make it.
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What can we learn from Shepherd's references to Lawrence? Well, it shows us that:
1 There are examples of thoroughgoing materialists in her era, we cannot assume that everyone before the 20th century was pious and that atheism is some newfangled notion that shows how people have recently lost their way.
2 We can't assume that Shepherd is a pious Christian simply because she lived in that pre-20th century era and because she argued against the likes of Lawrence and Hume, who were seen as Materialists or Atheists.
She's not the only one to be critical for non-religious reasons either. For instance, Thomas Brown, a philosopher Shepherd mentions in her writings, is interpreted as criticising Charles Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, for epistemological reasons not religious ones or because he rejected materialism.
Furthermore, Shepherd isn't just refuting all the materialists she can find either - she's engaging with various thinkers, religious or not, materialist or not, and using their arguments as a springboard for putting forward her own philosophy and body of work.
3 Shepherd isn't having a religious angst about Lawrence's materialism (despite the fact that he was hysterically accused of Atheism and blasphemy by Conservatives and religious Ministers to the detriment of one of his books). Her main concern is academic rigour, and putting forward her own theory of causation and solid methodology. So it's a purely technical, academic observation. Elsewhere in her treatise, she agrees with Lawrence and his biological "notion of life" as an "inward motion of the 'organs' ", so it's not his scientific materialism that is the root cause of her scholarly objections to his methodology. She writes, and I quote from page 183:
"My notion of life therefore agrees in this respect with that of Mr. Lawrence, viz. " That it is a peculiar inward motion of the "organs." "
This leads us to Shepherd's own brand of Soft Materialism in which she takes the middle ground between Hard Materialism (which claims everything is matter) and religious people's anti-materialist arguments which are motivated by persuading people that there's an immaterial soul that achieves immortality. She argues for this by writing that while the Materialists are mistaken in arguing all is body, at the other end of the spectrum, religious people are also mistaken, and unnecessarily fear, that any argument which involves the body for thought might imply the mind is not immaterial, which would undermine the notion of an immaterial soul, immortality, and so on. Shepherd also states that religious people are also in error when they claim that questions about materialism are of fundamental relevance and importance to religion. So we learn that Shepherd obviously didn't see such questions in philosophy and metaphysics as being domains religion should be interfering with and, furthermore, materialistic claims do not automatically clash with theism.
Indeed, Shepherd shows us the fundamental importance of philosophy when she argues that Lawrence holds back the strength of his scientific claims by not knowing his philosophy and which philosophers argued what. She writes that Lawrence is, and I quote (p173-4):
"guilty of a very great oversight in supposing philosophers speak of an immaterial being as wanted for thought, and not for sensation,"....
…."this mistake shows the little attention he has paid to these authors." (Here she is referring to Locke, Bishop Butler, David Hartley, and Bishop Berkeley)
So, in conclusion, Shepherd and I have a takeaway message: have philosophy fluency (without a religious bias) even if you work in a different field.
Do join me next week for more Philosophy Fluency and in the meantime have a good week.
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Season 8 Episode 4
'Mary Shepherd in the Context of the Philosophers and Debates in her Era'
Published 6th February 2024
https://anchor.fm/philosophyfluency/episodes/8-4-Mary-Shepherd-in-the-Context-of-the-Philosophers-and-Debates-in-her-Era-e2fdd55
Hello and a warm welcome on this drab February day. A hot cup of coffee should raise our spirits with maybe a slice of vegan no-bake chocolate, strawberry cake as I begin Season 8, Episode 4 of Philosophy Fluency. Previously, I've discussed the importance of Hartley and Mr Lawrence whom Shepherd mentions in one of her texts. Today, however, I will focus on Mr Thomas Brown and Dugald Stewart. Brown started in Law, didn't like it, changed to a successful career in medicine but greatly preferred writing poetry and philosophy so remained in academia instead. He wrote a book on cause and effect (which Shepherd discusses) and was heavily influenced by Dugald Stewart (another philosopher Shepherd refers to in her philosophy). His main areas of interest were Metaphysics and Ethics.
So who was Dugald Stewart? I had never come across him until recently despite him being one of the top men of the later Scottish Enlightenment. Like many men in this era he first studied Maths, medicine and Philosophy. The latter being a subject nearly every educated person was well versed in during this century stretching from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. He was a dissident rationalist.
Many were influenced by Stewart most importantly J S Mill and Brown. But who influenced Stewart? It seems as though the honour goes to Francis Hutcheson who was Chair of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow university who himself was influenced by Girshon Carmichael, who was his lecturer at Glasgow university. He went on to build on his lecturer's textbook on moral philosophy titled A Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy (1747). The result was Hutcheson's System Of Moral Philosophy. Hutcheson is a philosopher I came across while attending a conference on the Emotions back when I was a university student and studying Hume as well as emotion in contemporary ethics. Hutcheson was an important figure in the Scottish Enlightenment who bridged Shaftesbury and Scottish Common Sense Realism school of thought. He is well known as a Scottish sentimentalist who believed morality arises from moral feeling. This belief is based on how we emotionally react to our experiences to help us work out what is moral or immoral. It's a subjectivist style of stance. In other words, people react emotionally to something rather than see it objectively. For instance, some people don't like gays purely as an emotional reaction on hearing the word, hence the don't say gay slogan. All this hate is an emotional reaction which could well spring from indoctrination in childhood. Another glaring example is Israel. People's irrational, emotionally negative reaction to Israel is not in line with the facts. Even when Israel is the victim of terrorism, the indoctrinated anti-Israel individual prefers to support terrorism. How often have we heard the stupid question: How did the Holocaust happen? Why didn't the Jews stand up for themselves? Well. I think we have the answer now.
So. According to Hutcheson, morality is not based on reason but rather emotion. I agree with this. But I disagree that it should be so: it should be a healthy combination of the two, held together by a philosophical love of truth. Furthermore, I argue that morality should be based on empathy for others which, simply put, means treat people with kindness and compassion. Be capable of feeling their emotional pain and respond empathically by, for instance, giving them a hug. Which brings me to the nonsense about not touching others. A spontaneous hug can do a great deal. If, however, you start laying down rules about touch, you block empathy in people and isolate them from each other which makes for a very unpleasant society and can cause mental illness unnecessarily. And I think there's good evidence for this in some of the case studies I analysed in my Psychology course, which focused on Experimental Psychology.
To return to Hutcheson, like many freethinkers, he taught in a dissenting academy. The academy was in Ireland which was his country of birth. His contribution to moral philosophy was that he thought people should form their own judgements based on evidence that makes sense to them. This, I think, is very much in line with present day astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson. Unlike Dworkins, who wants to convince people that science is the truth, Tyson believes each individual has to make up their own mind about what they believe. You can only present arguments and evidence but, in the end, it's up to them. If their religion makes more sense to them then so be it. But that doesn't entitle the latter to start imposing their beliefs onto others especially those who think differently or are atheists. Absolutely so!
Our emotions shape our moral behaviour. I'm sure psychology has a great deal to say about this. But there's a danger that psychology takes over as more important than philosophy because it helps people cope with life's challenges but, I argue, philosophy can do the same. Especially for those of us who prefer to use reason as well as emotion.
Philosophy is, according to Hutcheson, and I agree with him, a practical discipline although it appears the present government hasn't quite realized this. Out of all the subjects and professions, Philosophy was at the heart of the Scottish Enlightenment. Philosophers tend to involve themselves in public life especially politics and science, and have a vast amount of past knowledge to draw upon from Plato, to 17th century Spinoza, and Cavendish, to 18th century Hume, Hutcheson and Shepherd, to the 19th century Mills and 20th century Quine and Foucault. And many more.
Tune in next week for more Philosophy Fluency. Have a good week!
