What is a philosophical inquiry? Claudine Tiercelin, professor at the Collège de France, discusses the mechanisms of acquisition and revision of our beliefs and shows that in metaphysics as in politics, the notion of truth is indispensable to us.
Editing: Vincent Boyer
Interview Transcript
The Life of Ideas: What is a philosophical inquiry?
Claudine Tiercelin: Philosophical inquiry is what allows you to seek the truth and have knowledge as your ideal. Plato and Aristotle were already investigating philosophically. The model of Socratic inquiry is as follows: do I ask this question? do I answer this question? is what I believe true and can be justified by reasons? When I say that I favor the model of inquiry over the model of knowledge, one might think that I am part of this Socratic model of questions and answers. A model that also had its moments of glory among American pragmatists, notably Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey.
I try to preserve as much as possible what were the three axes necessary for any investigation that wants to follow a classical model, by answering the question: what is a justified true belief? Indeed, knowledge must meet three necessary and sufficient conditions: 1) when someone knows something he believes something, this is the condition of belief; 2) this belief must be true, this is the condition of truth; 3) this belief must be justified by reasons, this is the condition of justification. Any philosophical investigation is an effort to try to fit into this model of knowledge posed by Plato in the Theaetetus.
Why does the strictly pragmatic model of inquiry add an additional dimension? When we try to investigate, we question very closely the conditions of possibility of knowledge, of course, but we also try, which is more original, to question the conditions of possibility of doubt that can affect our beliefs. Philosophical inquiry has much to gain from understanding this back-and-forth mechanism that is constantly operating between beliefs that we think are true, and sufficiently justified, and the doubts that we may have with regard to these beliefs. For example, it may happen that the experience that we encounter creates such a shock that it goes totally against our beliefs, to the point that we are obliged to revise them. Inquiry must be able to inform us a little more about the mechanisms of acquisition of the formation of our beliefs, and to question the conditions of possibility of knowledge and doubt.
The second very important element of inquiry is that inquiry challenges a kind of classical ideal of knowledge as being based on infallibility, or on dogmatic certainties, or on certain principles of necessity and apodicticity. Our concept of knowledge, particularly in science, has forced us to revisit this imperial model of knowledge a little bit and also forces us to return to a more Socratic style: we must constantly try to make sure that the beliefs we have correspond to what is: a fallibilist approach to knowledge is therefore necessary. We must imperatively follow an intellectual ethic which is such that if we encounter something that goes against what we believe, then we must revise that belief.
La Vie des Idées: What are the specificities of metaphysical inquiry?
Claudine Tiercelin: I conceive of metaphysics as the most general study of what is, in the sense of general metaphysics, and also in the sense of the examination, which I believe to be possible, of the nature of the properties of reality. From the moment that I have this great ambition in metaphysics, it is obvious that this imposes on me a very particular method.
In the first phase of metaphysical inquiry, we must ensure that the problems we are thinking about are not pseudo-problems. The turning point of logical positivism is here, but also the Kantian turning point: a certain number of critiques of metaphysics have passed through there and have made us realize how difficult it is to say something that is not totally devoid of meaning in metaphysics. We must therefore put our metaphysical statements to the test of meaning and nonsense. There are conditions of assertability of our statements in metaphysics to which we must indeed submit.
The second moment of the metaphysical investigation is this time a little less therapeutic. We must proceed to a conceptual analysis that allows us to determine not only what is, but also what is possible and what is conceivable. Metaphysics, unlike the empirical sciences, tries to determine the field of possibilities. To do this, conceptual analysis must deal with what ordinary language makes available to it, but very often it must also try to use the means of formal logic to account for what being signifies. This conceptual analysis is done at an a priori level, even if we must not economize on a certain number of intuitions that we can have in metaphysics. We must rely, in this phase of conceptual analysis, on a certain energetic massage of the intuitions that we can have on substance, change, free will. We have intuitions, which are often contradictory, and we must play on these intuitions, make them work.
The third level of inquiry consists of trying to determine whether the analyses that we have been able to clarify on the a priori level can meet a certain number of data provided to us by the empirical sciences, for example biology or cognitive psychology. These sciences provide a whole series of information and we must test our conceptual analyses using them, otherwise we are doing weightless metaphysics.
La Vie des Idées: Why is an investigation into political facts necessary?
Claudine Tiercelin: The question is whether social facts are different from other types of facts. Is there really a dividing line between the facts that the political philosopher can account for and the facts that the philosopher of science or the scientist can account for? Talking about a certain number of political phenomena, political facts, is based on a different ontology: the fact that there are bank notes is a socially constructed fact, and it is not the same thing as taking into account, for example, the fact that dinosaurs existed before we were here. Similarly, the facts discussed on the internet today are no longer quite of the same order, it is the question of big data. There is therefore a hierarchy to be established between the types of facts and it is obvious that the philosopher, whatever his specialty, will have to reflect on the modification which is taking place on what a fact truly is.
La Vie des Idées: What can pragmatism bring us today?
Claudine Tiercelin: Pierce always said that the social principle was rooted in logic. He was convinced that pragmatism implied realism: that meant something very strong, since it supposed that there were even real universals. The reason why pragmatism can have something to offer us is perhaps at least as much in its Peircean reading as in its Jamesian reading. We must be careful of the fact that truth is a serious thing – and not something that can mutate as James thought – that is to say that it is not simply something that is useful, that is paid for, that is verified, but something that remains independent of what we think. There are indeed, beyond the values that we have, beyond the ideas that we can have, a certain number of facts of the matterof facts, which it is our responsibility to make heard. We therefore perhaps do not have all the means at our disposal by simply appealing to our experience, an ethics of communication, of discussion. We need, in politics, a much stronger conception of truth.
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