Philosophy and the Masses Protagorean Humanism by Andrew McCallum ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Of all things a measure is man: of the things that are, that they are; of the things that are not, that they are not. This is the statement with which the Sophist, Protagoras of Abdera (c.490-420BC), opens his treatise on Truth. Its meaning is open to dispute; but it is generally agreed that the most plausible interpretation is: that For anyone A, and anything O, and any predicate p: if A judges that O is p, then O is p; and if A judges that O is not p, then O is not p. Read thus, the statement seems outrageous. What it proposes is that things are just what we each, individually, take them to be; that, if one judges something to be so, then so it is. Truth, in the Protagorean scheme of things, is entirely subjective and, in this sense, human. For each and every one of us, 'I' is the standard by which truth is to be measured. Indeed, the statement seems so outrageous that, over the centuries, few have taken it seriously. Some have seen it as an exercise in irony. Others have taken it as a sophistical display of cleverness, designed merely to shock or create a sensation. Protagorean humanism, however, can also be read as a serious attempt to overcome a long-standing philosophical problem. One of the lessons that the history of philosophy teaches is that it is always possible to produce arguments of equal force both for and against any position; hence the 'interminability' of our philosophical disputes. Certainly, some arguments can be found to be, in fact, better than others: one of the functions of philosophy is to uncover the respective strengths and weaknesses of contrary arguments; and it is undoubtedly true that, in fact, some arguments can be shown to have greater strengths and fewer weaknesses than their rivals. However, as the history of philosophy also teaches, no argument is ever absolutely sound: the overall strength of a thesis is only ever relative to the weakness of its antithesis; the 'strongest' argument can always be undermined, and the weaknesses in any argument, once discovered, can always be strengthened. So, in principle at least, as the Sophists and, indeed, Socrates were so adept at demonstrating, it is always possible to make the weaker argument the stronger and vice versa. Now, if this is so, and it is always possible to have as good a reason to accept any proposition as true as to reject it as false, we find ourselves in a bit of a quandary: there seems to be no rational way of deciding whether any given proposition is acceptable or not. Faced by such a quandary, three possible options are open to us. Firstly: we could simply 'toss a coin' or 'consult an oracle' and decide, more or less arbitrarily, to accept or reject the proposition. But this would be to forsake reason. Secondly: we could retreat into scepticism and refuse to either accept or reject the proposition, on the grounds that, while it must certainly be either true or false, since there is no reasonable way of determining which, the only rational course is to reserve judgement. Scepticism, however, for those with a commitment to reason, is a counsel of despair. Thirdly: we could take the view that the proposition can be both true and false. This is the option made possible by Protagorean humanism. The problem with this third option is that it appears to fall foul of the logical rule of non-contradiction, which states that a proposition can never be both true and false at the same time. Protagorean humanism, however, can argue that its transgression of this rule is more apparent than real. Suppose I say that O is p, while you say that O is not p. According to Protagorean humanism, we are not really contradicting each other and the truth of what I am saying is perfectly compatible with the truth of what you are saying. It is a basic logical truth that not every pair of statements of the form 'O is p.' and 'O isn't p.' express contradictory propositions. I might say, for example, that 'Snakes are horrible.' and you might say that 'Snakes are not horrible.'; and what you are saying is perfectly compatible with what I am saying, for the reason that the truth of what we are each saying is subjective, in the sense that the truth of what I am saying is a truth about me rather than a truth about the objective world - a truth about how I find snakes rather than about snakes themselves - while the truth of what you are saying is likewise a truth about you - about how you find snakes. Statements like these, whose truth appears objective but is in fact subjective, are sometimes described as 'crypto-subjective'; and many philosophers have argued that crypto-subjective statements are far more common than we might care to think, especially in ethics. According to Protagorean humanism - and this is the crux of the entire Protagorean position - all seemingly objective statements are crypto-subjective; every statement of the form 'O is p.' expresses the truth 'O is p to A.', or 'A finds O to be p.', where A is whoever it is that utters the statement. The truth-value of any proposition is always dependent on and, therefore, relative to the perspective of whoever it is that is making the proposition. Hence, it is always possible for a proposition to be both true relative to one perspective and false relative to another. But what reason can we have for supposing that all statements are subjective? Common sense would seem to suggest - and, in modern times, empiricism certainly suggests - that all truths are ultimately based on experience. If this is the case, however, it would appear to follow that none of our statements can be anything other than subjective. For the truths which my statements express can only ever be, in the last analysis, reports of my experiential states. And, if I am thus bound to my own experiences, the truths I assert can never escape my own subjectivity. Consequently, whenever I say anything, the statements I use to express myself may well have an objective form; but, since these statements can only ever be expressions of my own experience, they cannot be in their content anything other than crypto-subjective - statements which say only how I find things, as distinct from how things might be supposed to be apart from and independent of how I find them. Empiricism starts with subjective experience; and a perennial problem for empiricism has been that of making the essential subjectivity of experience a foundation for a genuinely objective knowledge. Protagorean humanism dissolves this problem by renouncing epistemological objectivism altogether and embracing a full-blooded and unequivocal subjectivism. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Andrew McCallum lives and works in the Scottish Borders. As a youth and community worker employed by a prominent international humanitarian organisation, he uses (among other things) philosophy to empower groups and individuals who are seeking to overcome disadvantage through self-help initiatives. A staunch libertarian in the Scots tradition, he despises deference in any shape or form, `tartanism', and other anglicisations of his culture. His mentor was the late poet, Hugh MacDiarmid. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ To discuss this article, go here. 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