That the scope of philosophy is limited, that it particularly should silently pass over concrete ethical and empirical issues, is a familiar line. Familiar, too, is that philosophy faces powerful competitors on traditionally philosophical grounds — metaphysics, metapsychology, metaethics and so forth. However, philosophers have been keen to maintain the superiority of the specifically philosophical method, rational intuition, over other methods of acquiring fundamental beliefs. Wrongly so, argues Stephen D. Hales — not only is philosophy limited in scope, but so is the validity of its results: Philosophical beliefs delivered by rational intuition are at best relatively true.

Hales is careful to avoid the pitfalls of global relativism that would hold the self-defeating thesis ‘everything is relative (except from relativism)’. Instead, he argues for the more moderate, but still rather disquieting thesis that “philosophical propositions are true in some perspectives and false in others.” (1) The term ‘philosophical propositions’ denotes those fundamental philosophical beliefs that are delivered by appeal to rational intuition alone and thus no further justifiable by argument or inference. Extensively surveying historical and contemporary philosophical literature, Hales concludes that rational intuition, a kind of intellectual vision, is the genuine method of arriving at the very first principles of philosophy, not only for confessing rationalists, but even for those philosophers who try to dispense with it. The concept of rational intuition Hales scrutinizes is old — implicitly already entailed in the Socratic appeal to commonsense as warrant for his conceptual analysis, explicitly laid out in Descartes’ Rules for the Direction of the Mind. It entails four claims, that it is about propositions, that intuitively known propositions are necessary truths, foundational for further deductive processes, and indubitable (15, 36). From a rationalist’s point of view, these claims suffice to justify the use of rational intuition as method to arrive at philosophical knowledge and its superiority over other methods of gaining non-inferential beliefs (e.g. Christian revelation). Hales’ enterprise is dedicated to undermine the fourth claim whilst maintaining the first three (accepting the foundationalist consequence that the use of rational intuition as knowledge-gaining method is self-justifying, 33). He argues that rational intuition is not infallible — its results can be overruled by empirical data or by competing a priori propositions that are better integrable into the existing philosophical set of beliefs. Moreover, the reliability of rational intuition stands on a par with the reliability of other methods when it comes to delivering basic knowledge that provides the basis for a consistent, coherent and comprehensive view of the world. Interestingly and unconventionally, Hales does not draw on philosophical alternatives to rationalism, but instead on Christian revelation and the consumption of hallucinogenic substances. He shows that the three belief-acquiring methods (BAMs) share in how they get from the ‘vision’ of basic beliefs to the establishment of a full-blown conceptual scheme. Being struck by the insight in some basic proposition alone is a necessary, but not sufficient justificatory condition for maintaining it and introducing it into the overall set of beliefs one started with, because they could be at odds with other previously acquired/held beliefs. Additionally, such propositions must be integrated into one’s existing conceptual system, bringing this into a reflective equilibrium. Unless they meet minimal rational standards, they are likely to be overruled. In short: the justification of BAM-gained beliefs does not only comprise their method of delivery, but also being mutually adjusted with other scheme-constitutive beliefs (41).

Since different perspectives (i.e. conceptual schemes individuated by the BAM entailed) are on a par as regards their reliability, their rational consistency once they are set up, and their relevance for everyday life, Hales concludes that absolutism respective rational intuition is an indefensible stipulation. Rationalism, taken as the one and only method to arrive at philosophical propositions, leads into the “rationalist Trilemma” (90): Regarding the truth of philosophical propositions, we face the choice between skepticism (there is no knowledge of philosophical propositions because they lack epistemic justification), nihilism (there are no philosophical propositions, hence there is nothing to know. This includes naturalism, holding the lossless reducibility of philosophical to empirical propositions) or relativism (there are at least and more than one viable BAMs).

However, he is neither interested in promoting skepticism with respect to philosophical propositions, which he takes clearly self-refuting (90ff.), nor in bereaving his profession of its raison d’être. So he goes for a ‘local’ relativism with regard to philosophical (not empirical) propositions (119): (1) If skepticism is false, and (2) if there is no perspective superior in its BAM, and (3) different BAMs deliver mutually exclusive basic beliefs, then (4) relativism is true. QED. Reality is “not the same for everyone.” (141)

Hales’ argument for relativism is a witty, historically profound and logically stringent crusade against those philosophers who still deem metaphysics or prima philosophia, respectively, the royal road to ontological truths. If philosophy cannot acknowledge the incompleteness of its axiomatic grounds, its method comes suspiciously close to autocratic stipulation, which significantly reduces its chance to be taken seriously from other perspectives. Rational intuition is not any more trustworthy than other BAMs even if the obeisance to rational principles is demanded for transforming non-inferential beliefs into a coherent conceptual scheme (an insight that is already acknowledged by Kant).

Philosophers who have expected an argument towards relativism within philosophy will be disappointed. Hales does not engage in playing off phenomenology against conceptual analysis, rationalism against empiricism, physicalism against dualism, which are grounded in incompatible metaphysical or epistemological basic beliefs. But if these do not present different perspectives in Hales’ sense, it seems that their disagreements sooner or later must vanish in an overall philosophical ‘reflective equilibrium’. And if they do, why argue? Then the intraphilosophical discussion of metaphysics, metaethics, metapsychology etc. can at best deliver hot air. The questions, What is philosophy about? and, Why should we engage in philosophy? are as open as before, and philosophy has not been released from justifying its method and presence among other perspectives. Maybe this is the source of Hales’ honest discomfort with his own conclusion, pace Nietzsche by whom they are inspired so much (184). But why should philosophers be disquieted once philosophy has fallen from metaphysical cloud-cuckooland back to the rough grounds of everyday science? Such worries are appropriate for those assuming philosophy could reveal absolute ontological truths and so disclose the truth about reality. Alternatively, relativists could — and maybe should — go a more audacious road and deny that the role of philosophy consists in the delivery of a consistent set of ‘philosophical propositions’ at all. Rather than a contested explanatory doctrine, it is the activity of clarifying what propositions are ever present in everyday, empirical, shamanic or philosophical commonsense.

© 2010 Ulla Schmid

Ulla Schmid, MSc (philosophy), Universität Basel