How to Think Straight: An Introduction to Critical Reasoning

by Antony Flew

  5.23 But expressions such as “the income and wealth of the nation,” “the national wealth,” “Gross Domestic Product” (GDP), and “Gross National Product” (GNP) are all systematically misleading because they systematically confound the sums of the income or the wealth of all the individual citizens and of all the privately owned firms in a nation-state with the amounts of income collectively acquired and wealth collectively owned by that state as such. Except in socialist states, in which all or almost all productive equipment is owned by the state itself, sums of the former kind are bound to be very much larger than sums of the latter sort.

  5.24 In this understanding of the meaning of the word “socialism” nearly all presently existing states either already are or are in the process of becoming nonsocialist states. Therefore, if in such a state it is thought that the actual distribution of wealth and income is not “fair and acceptable,” then what is here described as social justice apparently requires that some of what we must, albeit defeasibly, presume to have been the justly acquired income and wealth of those considered to get and to have more than is “fair and equitable” must be compulsorily extracted from them by the state in order to transfer it—less, inevitably, some handling charge—to others who have not previously succeeded in justly acquiring and retaining the amounts which it is considered to be “fair and equitable” for them to acquire and to have. Because the author of that Irish report failed to make the crucial distinction between the two senses of such expressions as “the national income” he also failed to notice how very far removed what is here described as social justice is from old-fashioned, without prefix or suffix, justice. On socialist assumptions it may be fairness. But at least on more traditional nonsocialist assumptions it is scarcely justice. (The most famous favorable account of such social justice is provided by Rawls 1971.)

  5.25 Much that has been said earlier in this book must by now appear obvious. But obviousness is not something which should always be despised. There are many moments when we need to remember that a truism may be both true and important but nevertheless often superciliously and to disastrous effect ignored. Obviousness, too, really is, as truth and validity most emphatically are not, a matter of how it happens to seem to a particular person or set of persons at some particular time or times. What seems obvious to you may well not seem obvious to me; and what once to him appeared obviously untrue may now appear, even to him, an equally obvious truth.

  5.26 For instance, it should be obvious to anyone possessed of the most minimal understanding of the nature of deduction that it must be impossible validly to deduce conclusions more precise than the premises from which they are supposed to follow. Yet very able people do sometimes attempt to do this. Or take the philosophical problem of mind and matter—the problem, that is, of the logical relations or lack of logical relations between talk about thought and consciousness, on the one hand, and talk about nonconscious things and nonconscious stuff, on the other hand. Certainly some very able people have attempted to resolve this by proposing so to redefine the word “experience,” which at present carries an essential reference to consciousness, that it would refer only to bodily movements, with no embarrassing reference to consciousness at all. Yet this proposal only begins to look sensible if we mistake it that one and the same word “experience” could carry simultaneously both its present and a new and incompatible sense; and hence that experience, which essentially involves consciousness, could be reduced to mere bodily movements, which do not. (For one lucid and extremely readable venture into this area, see Ryle 1949.)

  5.27 It is time to say something more about what can and cannot be achieved by definition. First, it is just worth saying that there is no call to try to define every term. Definition of one word in terms of other words can be profitable only insofar as there are other words that are already sufficiently understood. To demand either a definition or any other kind of explanation where there is no relevant confusion or uncertainty to be removed is tiresome and obstructive. There could be no better authority here than Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), the compiler of the first substantial and, in its day, comprehensive Dictionary of the English Language (1755). According to James Boswell’s Life of Johnson, he once said: “Sometimes things may be made darker by definition. I see a cow; I define . . . ‘Animal quadrupes ruminans cornutum.’ But a goat ruminates, and a cow may have no horns. ‘Cow’ is plainer.” I think, too, of a New Yorker cartoon that showed an indignant wife confronting her contentedly drunken husband: “No, I will not begin by defining ‘soused’!”

  5.28 Nor, second, is the ability to produce an adequate definition a necessary condition for possessing a sufficient understanding of the meaning of a term. It is tempting, but wrong, to argue with the Socrates of Plato’s Republic that: “if I do not know what justice is, I can scarcely know whether it is a virtue or not, and whether its possessor is or is not happy” (354C). For one may be able to employ some word correctly and with understanding on all ordinary occasions without being able to respond to such a “What is . . .?” question with a formal definition.

  5.29 It is a point made in his own way by St. Augustine (354–430 C.E.), one of the Four Great Doctors of the Christian Church, in his Confessions (400 C.E.): “And I confess to thee, O Lord, that I still do not know what time is, while . . . I know that I am saying this in time” (XI [xxv]). Certainly this venial ignorance did not stop him and will not stop us from employing ordinary temporal expressions correctly and with understanding. We all know perfectly well what he meant when in his unregenerate days he prayed: “O give me chastity, but not just yet!”

  5.30 The moral is that we need definition or other explication only where there already is, or where we may reasonably expect that there will be, some relevant confusion or uncertainty about meaning. A third point is that in such suitable cases for treatment the right prescription is not always a formal definition beginning “X is . . .” or, better, “The word x means. . . .” Suppose someone is talking about alienation. If that person gives us a definition, this will most likely be in terms of other theoretical notions derived from the young Karl Marx. But what is really required is some indication of how this theory engages with, and of how its truth value might be determined by reference to, what actually happens. Hence, the illuminating question is not: “How would you define the word ‘alienation’?” but “How could you tell that a person was or was not or was no longer alienated?” When, but only when, we are equipped with workable criteria for alienation can we entertain such theories as possible contributions to sociology as a science (see paragraphs 3.17–3.22).

  5.31 A fourth point, already suggested in the previous three paragraphs, is that definitions are of words or their meanings and not of whatever the words might be used to refer to. It is good practice always to bring this out by putting both the word or expression to be defined (Latin, the definiendum) and the supposed or proposed equivalent (correspondingly, the definiens) between quotation marks. The act of definition thus consists in saying either that the definiendum is or that it is to be equivalent in meaning to the definiens. Where the claim is that by established correct usage the two already are equivalent, we speak of a descriptive definition. Where some innovation is involved, we speak of a prescriptive or stipulative definition.

  5.32 Some people who grasp our fourth point too well may, like Humpty Dumpty, be carried away by the possibilities of stipulative redefinition. Remember that often-quoted exchange from chapter 6 of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass:

  “I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’ ” Alice said. Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’ ” “But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a knock-down argument,’ ” Alice objected. “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many dif
ferent things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “Which is to be master—that’s all.”

  5.33 Certainly it is a matter of human choice rather than natural law that in particular languages particular sounds and particular collections of letters have the meanings they have. Yet this fact of ultimate and collective human decision must not be mistaken to imply that it is either right or possible for any of us individually to endow any such shape or sound with whatever meaning we may happen to wish on it.

  5.34 It was all very well for whoever first introduced the concept of gas to give its present employment to the previously unemployed monosyllable “gas.” It is a different thing altogether to announce that you now propose to use some already serving word in a sense other than that determined by what is now established usage. Again I quote Dr. Johnson, although he brings in the rather special case of names: “My name might have been ‘Nicholson’ originally as well as ‘Johnson’; but if you were to call me Nicholson now, you would call me very absurdly.”

  5.35 To do what Humpty Dumpty did and what too many real people also do is not merely to speak “very absurdly.” It is also to act in bad faith. For to express oneself in a public language is to undertake to speak and ask to be understood in accordance with the established meaning conventions of that language. So to say something in some public language and then afterward to insist that you intended it to be interpreted in accordance with some private and previously unexplained personal conventions of your own is to break the contract which you implicitly made when you started to speak in that language.

  5.36 The fact that it is dishonest to make substantial departures from accepted usage without due notice is, however, no reason to rule out all stipulative redefinition. Like all other human institutions languages can be made better, as well as worse, by deliberate acts of policy. But reformers do need to take full account of the facts that linguistic habits are habits and that, like other habits, they take a lot of changing (see paragraph 4.12). It is one thing to stipulate a meaning for a fresh term. This is to ask us to acquire the corresponding fresh verbal habits. It is quite another to prescribe a change in the meaning of a familiar word. This is to demand not only that we learn new skills and new associations but also that we unlearn old ones. This unlearning can be difficult and slow. Some people may never achieve it, even if they do really try to do so.

  5.37 If, therefore, we want to advance understanding and to communicate in a straightforward way, we shall not propose new senses going clear against the grain of current usage. Any redefinitions of familiar everyday words will involve modest redirections, not revolutionary reversals. One classic object lesson in what not to do is provided by the American sociologist Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929). In The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) he introduces the expression “conspicuous waste” in a technical sense, stipulating most emphatically that in his book it is not to carry the customary overtones of condemnation. As he ought to have realized, and perhaps did, such old and strong associations cannot and will not be broken at a stroke. It soon becomes clear that he himself, like his readers, continues to construe “conspicuous waste” in an unfavorable sense (Veblen 1899, pp. 97ff.). What pretends to be neutral and impartial social science thus becomes partisan sociological moralizing.

  5.38 Mention of Veblen’s characteristic employment of the expression “conspicuous waste” leads us to notice that many words and phrases carry such built-in value commitments. Since Aristotle first made this observation in his Nicomachean Ethics (1107A9–12), literary critics, psychologists, linguists, philosophers, and others have given a deal of attention to this fact and have developed various distinctions: between neutral or purely descriptive meaning on the one hand, and expressive, emotive, normative, or evaluational on the other. In a short introductory book such as this one I cannot afford to say very much about these distinctions. But there are three points that absolutely must be made.

  5.39 The first is that there is nothing wrong with the second sort of meanings nor with the words whose meanings are partly or wholly of this second sort, as such. If there were it would paradoxically be wrong to say so. For the word “wrong” is obviously one that must itself fall under any such all-inclusive embargo. (Compare the rebuke once allegedly characteristic of “progressive” parenting: “You mustn’t say anything is wrong. That is very naughty.”)

  5.40 Of course, excessive employment of incendiary terms will prevent or disrupt rational discussion of the issues so presented. Heat is frequently the enemy of light. But to prohibit all purely or partly evaluative language is to put every form of valuation beyond the pale of rationality. The now popular misconception that this is how things are or ought to be does a lot to bring about a state in which, in the words of the Irish poet W. B. Yeats:

  The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

  (“Second Coming”)

  5.41 The truth is that it is neither relevant nor sensible to object that discourse contains emotive words and value judgments, if its object just was to establish conclusions about what attitudes ought to be adopted or what action ought to be taken. What is offensive to reason and what does constitute a ground for objection is any arbitrariness in the application of these words or any failure to deploy appropriate good reasons for whatever such judgments are in fact made. Veblen’s proceedings were not obnoxious because he was denouncing conspicuous waste. Waste, whether conspicuous or not, ought to be denounced and, even better, stopped. What was wrong was that Veblen was actually denouncing conspicuous waste and wasters while pretending to be a neutral scientist. The point was not that there should not be sociological moralists, but that no one has any business, when acting in that quite different capacity, to wear a scientist’s laboratory coat.

  5.42 The second point about this second sort of meaning concerns arbitrariness. Everyone can conjugate the highly irregular verb which is supposed to run: “I am firm,” “You are obstinate,” and “He is pigheaded.” It is then easy, and consequently common, to draw the diametrically wrong moral. The temptation is to construe this wayward conjugation as supporting a general theory put forward by the always bold, not to say reckless, Thomas Hobbes. In 1651 he suggested in chapter 6 of Leviathan that all terms that carry any meaning of this second sort are to be defined with reference to the speaker: “whatsoever is the object of any man’s appetite or desire, that is it which he for his part calleth ‘Good’; and the object of his hate and aversion ‘Evil,’ and of his contempt ‘Vile’ and ‘Inconsiderable.’ For these words ‘Good,’ ‘Evil’ and ‘Contemptible’ are ever used with relation to the person that useth them. . . .”

  5.43 This Hobbist view is nowadays widely expressed. Although it is popularly known as relativism, it would be better described as subjectivism. It has a strong appeal both to the cynic in all of us and to the secular conviction that value is not a natural fact independent of the existence and activity of the human race, but is somehow a projection of human inclinations and human aversions. But cynicism is not always what it always claims to be: realism. And we have already seen in the surely similar case of meaning that to say that something is not a natural fact independent of all human desire and human choice is not immediately to license the conclusion that it is a creature of any and every individual caprice (see paragraphs 5.32–5.35).

  5.44 The crucial objection to this first Hobbist theory was put exactly a century later by David Hume (1711–1776) in his Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (1748). (Since Hobbes also offered another more social theory, according to which value must be the creature of sovereign power, we could call the present suggestion his Humpty Dumpty thesis.) No one could have been more convinced than Hume of the fundamental secular point that value is not a natural fact independent of all human beings. Yet he insisted on a distinction: “When a man denominates another his ‘enemy,’ his ‘rival,’ his ‘antagonist,’ his ‘adversary,’ he is understood to speak the language of self-love, and to express se
ntiments, peculiar to himself, and arising from his particular circumstances and situation. But when he bestows on any man the epithets of ‘vicious’ or ‘odious’ or ‘depraved,’ he then speaks another language, and expresses sentiments in which he expects all his audience are to concur with him” (IX[i]).

  5.45 Because Hobbes and Hume express themselves in the idiom and the prose rhythms of their different centuries both passages may require, as they will certainly reward, a second reading. The upshot is that it must be wrong to abuse words and phrases from Hume’s second class by treating them as if they belonged to his first class—the class to which Hobbes apparently wanted to consign all valuing words. Suppose we allow, as we surely must, that all the phases of the supposed irregular verb “I am firm” belong in Hume’s second category. Then the man who commends his own conduct as firm, when he would condemn the same conduct in a third person as pig-headed, is being arbitrary. His arbitrariness consists in discriminating between two relevant cases for no good reason. He is like the woman who indignantly denied the charge of hoarding on the grounds that she was only taking care to stock up before the hoarders got everything.

  5.46 The conclusion to draw is, therefore, not Hobbist but Humean. Sincere debate about values, and in particular about morals, largely consists in the discovery and removal of such arbitrary discriminations. Furthermore, it is an important part of what it means to maintain that some protest or stand or attitude is moral—as opposed to merely personal or partisan—that that protest or stand or attitude appeals to principles and that the principles to which it appeals are to be applied consistently and impartially, if not universally. Everyone knows why we impugn the sincerity of selective moralists or, better, “moralists.” They profess a moral objection to, say, the use of poison gas. But when poison gas is being used by some party they happen to favor then, as the Greek tragedians used to say, a great ox sits on their tongues.