Sherlock Holmes and Philosophy

by Josef Steiff

  Our choice then seems to be between Watson copying the newspaper clipping incorrectly (I assume here that the newspaper would not make such a large mistake as to misstate the day of the week of a recent crime) which allows the A Study in Scarlet narrative to remain as written, or to imagine that given Watson’s “pledge to secrecy” in the Band case, he made it seem as if the events of A Study in Scarlet occurred prior to the events of “Speckled Band.” The second seems plausible given that in The Sign of the Four Holmes does not point out the factual error of the day of the week, instead objecting to the “romantic” element as unnecessary.

  If Only We Could Ask the Book. Or Holmes

  Perhaps it’s because it’s impossible to “separate the sensational from the criminal” (“Adventure of the Cardboard Box”) that Holmes’s attempts to be his own chronicler come across just as adventurous as when Watson writing. After all, the stories must be written such that they “may interest the reader” (“Adventure of the Blanched Soldier”). Complain as he might, Holmes refrained from simply advancing from the data to the conclusion, preferring instead to mimic Watson’s method of keeping the reasoning process hidden until the case has been solved.

  “Blanched Soldier” even includes the classic Holmes trick of telling another about his background in an astounding case of observation. If Holmes truly wrote this tale, it no doubt would be far more straightforward. We do see something more like a Holmesian reticence in “Adventure of the Lion’s Mane,” the ‘other’ Holmes narrated tale. Therein Holmes admits to his own slowness in determining the cause of death, and refuses to accept the thanks of those involved. So what are we to make of “Blanched Soldier” and the third-person narrated “Mazarin Stone,” “Last Bow,” and the Utah chapters of A Study in Scarlet? None of these seem to match the methods and style of Watson and it seems unlikely that Holmes would have written them in the manner given. Perhaps they are, like Pseudo-Platonic writings, early attempts to write in the literary style of another. Early pastiche pieces, so to speak.

  All of this confusion points back to a shortcoming of texts that no doubt you have already experienced in reading this volume. In many ways written texts are inferior to a person recounting an event or telling a story. Indeed, Socrates in the Phaedrus explains that a problem with writing is that it stands in “solemn silence” when questioned (line 275d). Thus it can be difficult to find truth through writing because the writings are not able to defend themselves against attacks, always in need of a “father’s support” but remaining alone (line 275e). Similarly when we try to unravel some of these problems in the Holmes’s stories, we have no proper audience to ask. The texts themselves cannot respond to our queries, and careful examination leads to more confusion. Given that our narrator is obscuring facts and shifting both times and locations, we are faced with an even more insurmountable task than Socrates had envisioned. Further, as Watson and Holmes are clearly pseudonyms, we lack even the ability to know for certain who it is that we wish to question. (If only we knew Watson’s real name we might be able to track down his original notes and thus solve some of the problems.)

  No Holmes-related puzzle is perhaps more needing of an honest interlocutor than the question of Watson’s wives. While he clearly had at least two, some Holmes scholars have placed the number as high as six! How marvelous it would be to simply ask the texts a question and get an answer, but alas it is not to be. The best we can hope for is to attempt to use our reasoning process to discern the answer to this and other puzzles. I will therefore leave the puzzle of enumerating Watson’s wives to the reader, though I will helpfully point out that Watson wife is visiting her mother in “Five Orange Pips,” that Mary Morstan’s mother is dead in The Sign of the Four, in “Blanched Soldier” Watson is with his wife, and that Holmes knew of Watson’s “sad bereavement” in “Empty House.” That should be enough of a start to work out the puzzle for yourself. Or at least to become puzzled.

  But It Is Not Deduction!

  But it is just at the process of reasoning that we begin to have problems. Throughout the corpus of Holmes adventures we are continually informed that he is doing deduction. Indeed, in the “Science of Deduction” chapter of A Study in Scarlet, we read a reprint of Holmes’s “Book of Life” wherein he refers to “The Science of Deduction and Analysis.” But of course, as demonstrated elsewhere in this tome you are now reading, Holmes is (generally) not utilizing deduction itself in his reasoning. With few exceptions, Holmes is utilizing inductive reasoning, or more precisely in most instances abductive reasoning. Induction is probabilistic reasoning wherein more information can change the strength of the conclusion. Deductive reasoning involves an argumentative structure such that in valid deductions the conclusion follows with certainty from the premises. No additional information can change the valid deduction to an invalid deduction, whereas more information can either strengthen or weaken the conclusion of an inductive argument.

  This distinction is one which philosophers are more apt to make than non-philosophers, and we might be inclined to forgive Watson’s use of the wrong term as his usage does conform with how physicians and scientists tend to use the term. For non-philosophers, we utilize deduction if we move toward a particular conclusion from a larger set of possibilities. Yet, Holmes’s use of the term is puzzling. Certainly we read early on that Holmes had no knowledge of philosophy (A Study in Scarlet), or more precisely “Nil.” But this flies in the face of Holmes’s later spending his retirement years studying agriculture and philosophy (Preface, His Last Bow). Of course it’s always possible that someone as interested in precision would late in life come to find solace in the theoretical purity of philosophy, so this might well be a dead end. (Or indeed, it could be the case that Watson’s early list of Holmes’s shortcomings was based upon Holmes’s own playing a prank on his new friend and flat mate.)

  Even if we grant Holmes’s general ignorance of things philosophical, it would seem odd indeed for Holmes not to know the works on logic done by John Stuart Mill and C.S. Peirce. Mill’s System of Logic was published in London in 1843—nearly forty years before Watson and Holmes meet. In Mill’s amazing advancement of inductive logic he explains various approaches that have come to be known as Mill’s Methods. Consider for a moment this description of the Method of Residues: “Subducting from any given phenomenon all the portions which, by virtue of preceding inductions, can be assigned to known causes, the remainder will be the effect of the antecedents which had been overlooked, or of which the effect was as yet an unknown quantity” (p. 464). Now consider this from The Sign of the Four: “Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.” Or this, “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”—this appears first in The Sign of the Four, then throughout the corpus.

  Surely Holmes owes a debt to Mill. Mill’s writings on inductive reasoning predate Holmes’s work, feature systematic analysis on reasoning and determining causes for events, and are in the same vein as Holmes’s work in “Book of Life.” That Holmes repeatedly uses ‘deduction’ for ‘induction’ seems to indicate either that Holmes did not have a grounding in the theory of reasoning—which seems unlikely as he publishes a monograph on the subject—or that someone (Watson? Doyle?) edited Holmes’s own work to ensure that a non-philosophically astute readership would not be confused by a technical difference in terminology between philosophers and the rest of the world.

  We could perhaps go so far as to wonder if the American philosopher C.S. Peirce’s development of the terminology of ‘abduction’ to refer to those instances wherein we move from facts to theory was an attempt to smooth over this gap. Peirce’s work was being published around the same time as Watson’s accounts of Holmes’s exploits, so Peirce might have seen his neologism as a way to address this difficulty. Peirce’s abduction is one where we “start from the facts, without, at the outset having any particular theory in view, though it is motivated by the feeling that a theo
ry is needed to explain the surprising facts” (p. 137). Slightly later, Peirce notes that “Abduction seeks a theory.” It is the job of induction to test that theory. But it remains the case that we can only get certainty from a deduction. Surely with Holmes as interested in reasoning as he was, he would have been keeping current with discussions on the nature of the scientific method and logical reasoning—precisely the topics Peirce is writing on during the time period of Holmes’s adventures.

  All We Want Is the Truth

  Holmes’s own passion for discovering the truth took many forms, from the laboratory, to the streets, to reading and writing treatises in the sitting room at 221B Baker Street. This voracious search is in keeping with Plato’s remark that “we all ought to be contentiously eager to know what’s true and what’s false about the things we are talking about” (Gorgias, line 505e). In light of this, we should consider again Watson’s list of Holmes’s knowledge gaps. Perhaps it’s because he has found no need to discuss literature or astronomy that he had not sought out the truth of these subjects. But surely there would be some aspects of these disciplines which could lead a consulting detective to solve a case more quickly. Of course Watson’s inclusion of not only literature but also sensational literature complicates matters. Indeed, it seems more and more likely that Watson’s early accounting of Holmes’s knowledge base is off. So much so that William Baring-Gould quotes Edgar Smith’s statement that this list should be “headed by the specification: 1. Knowledge of Sherlock Holmes.—Nil” (Volume 1, p. 156n).

  Holmes’s own use of abduction reasoning largely operates through the elimination of false possibilities. This is in many respects in agreement with Aristotle’s belief that “everything that is true must in every respect agree with itself” (Prior Analytics, line47a8). By understanding that no individual truth can be self-contradictory, we can come to understand that an understanding of the larger Truth would involve a larger investigation. This investigation is one in which, for Aristotle, “no one is able to attain the truth adequately, while on the other hand, no one fails entirely, but every one says something true about the nature of things, and while individually they contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed” (Metaphysics, lines 993a30–993b4).

  Here, perhaps, we can see the genius of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes displayed. Each can determine with high probability the cause of a given aspect of the world—from the source of the soil on ones cuffs to the birthplace of a visitor—but also can bring together a vast amount of information such as to draw upon the wisdom of the masses in forming a particular conclusion. The Holmes brothers’ analytic ability comes from their knack of being able to “amass” a considerable contribution to our understanding of the truth of the world.

  Failing the Truth. Or the Truth in Failing

  Certainly throughout the canonical stories we see many attempts by Holmes to display for Watson what it means to find the truth of a situation. Strangely for a successful physician/scientist, Watson seems to never be able to quite get the hang of the situation. I say strangely because surely Watson’s diagnostic ability depends at least in part on the observation of particulars of a patient and placing them together in a meaningful fashion. Indeed, Holmes is greatly worried about Watson’s ability to diagnose him at a glance in “The Dying Detective.” So we should take seriously that Watson’s faults in the stories are not actual faults, but instead faults included in order to throw the serious reader off of the hunt for the truth of the situation. But in all of his carefulness, Watson may have gone a bit too far. Consider the problem of dating the “Disappearance of the Lady Francis Carfax.” Unlike the problems raised above in regards to dating the Drebber-Stangerson murders in A Study in Scarlet, here we see issues arising not out of our own assumption of facts, but from conflicting possibilities.

  Consider that the story was first published in 1911, perhaps making it one of the later adventures. Indeed, Watson complains of feeling “rheumatic and old” that seems to point to it being so. But beyond this tidbit, which may be a false signal on Watson’s part, we know that Holy Peters’s ear was bitten off in a saloon fight in 1889. Further, we know that Watson is not currently married—he was sitting with a woman in a hansom cab, which limits the possibilities somewhat. This case is not one of those provided in “The Golden Pince-Nez” as having occurred in 1894. In 1896 and 1902 we know Watson was not living at Baker Street (“Veiled Lodger,” “Blanched Soldier”). So how are we to date this story?

  Baring-Gould dates it to July 1902, which we know cannot be correct as Watson was away with a wife at that time. (Though to his credit, Baring-Gould does state that this dating is rather arbitrary.) Jay Christ places the story in 1903, based upon the discovery of a case of a missing “Miss Sophie Francis Hickman, a lady M.D.” (emphasis added). This Lady Francis disappeared in August of 1903, and Christ thus believes that he has found both the actual identity of Lady Francis Carfax and the date of the adventure. Ernest Zeisler is far more reticent, placing it as occurring in either 1895 or 1897–1901.

  But again, how are we to date this story? It seems as if we both have too little information and too much. Too little in that barring Christ’s discovery of a likely case we have nothing external to utilize. And unless we go the way of Baring-Gould and guess, we are apparently left with Zeisler’s rather unsatisfactory multiple possibilities. We also have too much in that we have again encounterered the problems of Watson’s wives and a singular reference to a date (1889) that may or may not be accurate. Watson has foiled us again.

  But in our failure to see how to go forward here, we can see something very telling about the nature of truth. As long as we rely upon external data and coherence with other known facts, we will be hampered by the uncertainty of various aspects surrounding us. To use a far more contemporary example, if we struggled to date a mentioning of the “eight planets of the solar system,” we could be dealing with a pre-1930 or a post-2006 statement.

  The seventy-odd year reign of Pluto as a planet is something which provides us with information, but only in a circuitous fashion. And indeed, given that many reject Pluto’s downgrading we might be tempted to place it in the earlier time frame. There is always the possibility that the speaker misspoke. Or that the statement was edited following the later categorical shifts. Pluto, like Holmes, can vex us in determining the truth of the situation. Surely there is a truth as to how many planets the solar system has. Yet testing a statement against that truth can quite escape us. As we find in “The Red Circle,” we are in a situation wherein there is “a ragbag of singular happenings! But surely the most valuable hunting ground that ever was given to a student of the unusual.”

  Is It All Meaningless?

  Returning again to the question of Holmes’s supposed ignorance of things philosophical, it may well be that given the amount of controversy on matters metaphysical, Holmes had taken an early move toward what Rudolf Carnap would later declare, that the statements of metaphysics were “meaningless,” in that metaphysical claims are not statements as they cannot be empirically observable. As seen above, much of the analysis of Holmes that we can do continues to stumble across moments where we cannot go forward. From Watson’s deceptions to Doyle’s amendments, to lack of information necessary in order to properly place the cases, we may be forced to find that in Holmes we can find little that is certain, observable, or meaningful. Consider also Ludwig Wittgenstein who famously quipped at the close of the Tractatus Logio-Philosophicus that “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Holmes, perchance, was a logical empiricist before they had even come into being. But alas, we cannot be certain of that so we ought not speak.

  As for the larger question of the truth of Watson’s accounts, it seems prudent that we rely upon the advice of Jacques Derrida. In his consideration of truth, Derrida states that “Truth is always that which can be repeated” (p. 246). We can certainly repeat the process of Holmes’s induction, and get—with
a great amount of probability—the same answers. Further, our continual rereading of the Holmes canon causes us to rethink and reconsider puzzles. Thus, we cannot say that any given number of Watson’s wives is true, nor any complete chronology, or even partial dating. But we can say with certainty that Holmes did not wear that fool hat. That is true. We can repeat it. Those who do so should stop falsely imitating the master detective and reasoner par excellence.

  Chapter 18

  Dark Rumors and Hereditary Tendencies

  Sawyer J. Lahr

  What Holmes does is poetic. His work as a consulting detective is an art like poetry or sculpture. He can’t be confined to the category of forensic detective as we know it from television series today, CSI or Law and Order. The title never existed in the late 1800s yet our unofficial poet detective certainly pioneered the occupation in fiction.

  In two recent BBC adaptations of the Holmes stories, actors Rupert Everett and Benedict Cumberbatch portray the detective as a cryptic poet trapped in the body of a consulting detective. Holmes can see the reflection of criminal artists in the evidence left by their dirty work. It takes a dark imagination to retrace a murder plot. He puts himself in the perpetrators’ shoes and asks himself what he would do if he were the criminal. He goes as far as breaking and entering homes, endangering others, and donning disguises to identify with the offender in order to meet him face-to-face, but Holmes’s ultimate goal is not always to put someone behind bars. His reckless nature sometimes leads to a criminal’s death rather than his arrest, escape, or release.