A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action: Volume 4(P M S Hacker: Human Nature: The Categorical Framework)

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Hacker’s work “Human Nature:The Categorical Framework” is an attempt to widen the perspective of his earlier grammatical investigations into that area of Philosophy Aristotle described as “First Philosophy”. The first part of the title “Human Nature” obviously reaches back to the Hylomorphic conception of man as a “rational animal capable of discourse”: a definition implying a synthesis of living matter and organising principles. The second part of the title “The Categorical Framework” echoes one of the major concerns of Kantian Critical Philosophy, namely the crucial role of the Categories in contexts of description and explanation. The combination of these two concerns flags this work as belonging in both the Classical and the Enlightenment genre of Philosophical Projects. Whatever its ultimate intention it assists in the cultural task of reestablishing hylomorphic and Critical Philosophy on the stage of “Modern” Thought.

Hacker wishes this work to be in the name of establishing a “Philosophical Anthropology”(P.10). Part of his concern is to construct the above discipline with the aid of a grammatically established framework. The major categories of the investigation are “Substance, Causality, Agency, and Power”. There is a greater degree of commitment in this work firstly to metaphysics and secondly to a limited version of rationalism. Non-empirical investigations into language-use in everyday and theoretical contexts is the chosen methodology. The aim is both to describe and explain but there is an interesting classical reference to the Socratic insistence that we philosophers are only midwives in a process of recollection or recall of what we already know. The focus of these investigations are highlighted in the following:

“we are interested in the concepts of agency, mind, body, person, consciousness, self consciousness, and so forth.”(P.16)

Hacker also clearly wishes to distinguish between the above form of philosophical investigations and scientific investigations, between the forms of rationally and empirically-based knowledge. This Project of Philosophical Anthropology surprisingly, however, pays scant attention to Kant’s “Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View”, claiming that there are only two great paradigms for this discipline, namely the Platonic dualistic paradigm and the Aristotelian biologically/logically inspired hylomorphic paradigm. Psuche is rightly identified with the principle of life and levels of principle (correlating with forms of life) are not specifically named, but are implied by the following:

“What is distinctive about the human soul is that it incorporates not only the vegetative powers of growth, nutrition, and reproduction, and the sensitive powers of perception, desire and motion, but also the uniquely human rational faculties of the will and intellect. The soul is not an entity attached to the body but is characterised in Aristotle’s jargon as the “form of the living body”(Human Nature: The Categorical Framework, Oxford, Blackwell, 2007, P.23)

The above quote delineates the physical/anthropological grounds for a hierarchical differentiation of different “principles” in a complex life-form such as the human being. These principles are of course present in Aristotle but not named as such. They are: the Energy Regulation Principle(ERP) which constitutes and regulates all physiological activity of tissues, organs, and limbs, the Pleasure-Pain Principle(PPP) which regulates the behaviour of attraction and repulsion to objects of experience, and the Reality Principle which regulates all behaviour, cognition, emotion, and consciousness in a person. A person, according to Hacker, is the moral/legal vicissitude of the biological/psychological human being. The Powers of a man are obviously related to more than one principle. Desire, in the form of appetite relates to both the ERP and the PPP. The power of reasoning relates principally to the RP but is regulative of Desire.

How these powers relate to the will and its striving activity finds articulation to a great degree in Freud’s later work. The agency of the Ego, for example, whose primary areas of concern in life are to Love and to Work operates over the biological/psychological domain of protecting the body from damage and danger(ERP, PPP) up to the more intellectual concern with the moral law and the more strategic “work” of integrating the superego into the Ego. The agency of an integrated ego for Freud is the key to a healthy person-ality. Its concern is not merely with the demands of the superego but also the demands of the id and the external world. The ego,then, strives to work in accordance with the RP in relation to both our belief and actions systems: the ancient concerns of the Truth and the Good are the overarching concerns of these systems that are committed to Civilisation via the activities of discourse and Reason. Surprisingly there is no reference to Freud in this work of Hacker’s.

Hacker pays much attention to the way in which the Cartesian concept of res cogitans redefined thought and marginalised the biological aspects of mans existence, and he points to the empirical commitment to materialism as manifested in the reflections of Hobbes, La Mettre, D´Holbach and Diderot(P.25). The Kantian synthesis of Cartesian Rationalism and Empiricism is, however, completely bypassed in this description of the historical development of “Modern” Philosophy. He attributes to Wittgenstein the successful refutation of Cartesianism overlooking the fact that Kant had previously directed decisive critical arguments at the Cartesian position. These Kantian arguments against both materialism and dualism have largely been overlooked by British Philosophers because of the suspicion that Kant was a “German idealist”. This is a curious omission especially given the title of Hackers work, “The Categorical Framework” and Wittgenstein’s praise for the Kantian approach to metaphysical problems.

Hacker begins his “investigations” into the category of Substance by pointing out the central importance of “purpose”. He argues that Science demands a determinate unambiguous system which is not necessary for the classification systems we use in everyday discourse. For example, in the case of ordinary everyday discourse it may not matter if we have no clear and distinct criteria for distinguishing “trees” from “shrubs”. This lack of clarity would not be acceptable in many scientific areas. Hacker wishes to claim that rigorous classification of particular substances is necessary for the later activity of explanation and this might be true but it neglects to take into consideration explanations of the kind “All life forms are mortal” which require an understanding of the relation of concepts to each other, rather than a relation of a concept to a particular. Insofar as ordinary everyday discourse is concerned there is clearly a sense in which the concepts of “trees” and “shrubs” are generalisations for use on more than one occasion, but the presence of a small middle ground of uncertainty does not prevent the concepts from having a purpose and representing significant sectors of this form of life. In such usage, however, it is important to note that usage is more concerned with description than explanation. Hacker approves the Aristotelian account of Substance and points to the various distortions of this Category of Existence(logical category) by Descartes(largely in the name of Science). In this discussion of Substance we are also provided with some insight into why the Kantian account is neglected. It is clear in Hackers reflections on this issue that the extent to which Critical Philosophy is committed to Aristotle’s hylomorphic account is underestimated. This oversight might be connected to a belief that Substance is best conceived of in terms of “particulars”(a position adopted in Aristotle’s early work on the Categories). The focus upon what is termed “special ontology” of the later work(“Metaphysics”) was marginalised on the above interpretation of Aristotle. On this latter account “substance” is one kind of Being and Being is the major area of concern for an account of “General Ontology” that regards “Substance” as related to “Prime Matter”(about which nothing can be known except that it remains what it is throughout a process of change). Prime Matter lies on a continuum which reaches through “forms” to the Pure Form of God which is one terminus of explanation/justification. “Substance” , for both Aristotle and Kant, then, is a theoretical category to be distinguished from other categories such as “Agency” and “Power”, both of which are practically oriented categories, carrying their own “meanings of Being” and related to rationality in very different ways. A reason why a being is as it is, is a very different kind of reason for a form of life that is in the midst of a process of becoming what it can be by means of the use of its agency and powers. It also needs to be pointed out that there is no great difference between the Aristotelian and Kantian accounts of substance, especially if one bears in mind the distinction between special and general ontology. Substances interact very differently if they are animate living substances with powers of life and consciousness. This interaction can of course be characterised in terms of an ontology of event subsumed under the category of causation but this kind of explanation does not answer all the aporetic questions that can be raised about this kind of interaction.

Hacker points to the interesting fact that the Greek “aiton” was translated into the Latin “causa” which he claims is connected with “guilt”, “blame” and “accusation”. This may be an interesting translation of the use of “aiton” that is related to the interrogative “Why did you do X?” in a context where it is obvious that the questioner was clear over what was being done but did not approve of what was being done. There are many meanings of “aiton” that are not connected to contexts of guilt, blame, and accusation. For Aristotle this term could also designate the material and efficient explanations(aitia) of what is happening and why. Asking, for example, why the tree burned upon being struck by lightning is, according to Aristotle, requesting a material explanation of what happened, e.g. “The tree burned because it was made of wood”. Similarly, upon encountering a burning tree(if one had not witnessed the lightning strike), posing the question “Why?” expects the answer “Because it was struck by lightning”: this is an efficient cause/explanation. This leaves one wondering how the Latin translation of “aiton” dealt with such meanings. The complexity of translation from Greek to Latin was compounded by , firstly, the Scientific rejection of Aristotelian metaphysics by Descartes and Hobbes, and secondly, the Humean account of “causation”, (specifically directed at the rejection of the rationalist position which enabled seeing the cause-effect relation in terms of one global necessary change). The Humean account of “causation” encouraged regarding causal change as an interaction between two contingently related events which are logically independent of each other. Hume as we know accused rationalists of “projecting” necessity into what are essentially contingent relations in reality: a state of affairs that he diagnosed as a consequence of expectations that are contingently associated in the mind. He appears otherwise to have argued in his Treatise that if there was a necessary connection between these two events it would lie beyond our powers to discover such a connection. Hacker points out that this account was rejected by Kant, who, like Aristotle, appreciated that the relation of global necessity was not projected but rather categorically “thought” in our judgements about events that are related in accordance with our categorical judgements. For Kant, as for Aristotle, the Categories were powers the understanding possessed to organise reality and these categories were appealed to in particular in contexts of explanation/justification. These categories were “independent of experience” and were regarded as a priori forms of thought by Kant. The Kantian idea of the thing-in-itself or noumenal reality was “ideal” in the sense of not being empirically determined by experience. It was also part of a polarised continuum between Prime Matter and Primary Form that bracketed what was empirically real in our experience. The so-called formal and final causes/explanations are tied logically to the ends of rationality(nexus finalis) whereas efficient cause/explanation are tied to real events in nature(nexus effectivus). In the former nexus the parts of the whole are reciprocally cause and effect of their “form”. When power and agency are situated in this realm of ideal ends the context changes from a context of exploration/discovery to a context of explanation/justification.

In Aristotle’s hylomorphic theory the tissues, organs and limbs of an animal are part of a nexus finalis and it is this structure that constitutes them as parts of a being that is a self organising entity. One can atomise the parts of a whole if one wishes to, and investigate their properties in order to accumulate facts that may or may not be relevant to the concept of the whole organism we possess, e.g. the properties of the tissues of human beings provide us with facts about rational animals capable of discourse but such facts about tissue composition, relating to the ERP, will have little to do with the rationality and discourse elements of the above essence- specifying definition: these latter elements are principally constituted and regulated by the PPP and the RP. According to Kant in his “Analytic of Teleological Judgement”:

“Organisms, are, therefore, the only beings in nature that, considered in their separate existence and apart from any relation to other things, cannot be thought possible except as ends of nature. It is they, then, that first afford objective reality to the conception of an end that is the end of nature and not a practical end….they supply natural science with the basis for a teleology…”(P.24)

(Kant’s Critique of Judgement, trans Meredith J. C., Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1973)

A better defence of hylomorphic Philosophy would be difficult to find. Kant goes on to claim that the above teleological principle cannot rest on empirical grounds of observation and experimentation. He presents us with a dialectical exchange over the power of reason in relation to the empirical mechanisms of external nature. In his introduction to the solution of the above antinomy,Kant writes:

“We are wholly unable to prove the impossibility of the production of organised natural products in accordance with the simple mechanism of nature. For we cannot see into the first and inner ground of the infinite multiplicity of the particular laws of nature, which, being only known empirically are, for us contingent, and so we are absolutely incapable of reaching the intrinsic and all sufficient principle of the possibility of a nature–a principle which lies in the super-sensible…”(P.39)

Kant underlines the above argument by claiming that natural laws and mechanical explanations would never suffice to explain the origins of a simple blade of grass. Reasoning about this state of affairs leads us to the threshold of the super-sensible realm of noumena which our human minds cannot comprehend fully, neither by intuition nor by the categories of the understanding, nor by the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. The world as a totality refuses to show its origin and essence to human beings. Appealing thus to a single category, namely causation, as science does in such discussions is therefore otiose. Kant does not in any way intend to diminish the importance or underestimate the value of mechanical explanation via material and efficient forms of explanation. Indeed he uses this form of reasoning to provide us with a pre-Darwinian hypothetical theory of evolution:

“It would be as if we supposed that certain water animals transformed themselves by degrees into marsh animals, and from these after some generations into land animals. In the judgement of pain reason there is nothing a priori self contradictory in this. But experience offers no example of it.”(P.79)

In this context Kant also refers to the role of teleological explanation in this reasoning process. The origin of the above processes is mother earth:

“Yet for all that he is obliged eventually to attribute to this universal mother an organisation suitably constituted with a view to all these forms of life, for unless he does so, the possibility of the final form of the products of the animal and plant kingdoms is quite unthinkable.”(P.79)

What is the nature of this attribution? It is clearly not a matter of Humean “projection” given the presence of rational argumentation throughout this section of the Third Critique. Projection is a power of the imagination. The psycho-physiological power of the imagination is discussed by Kant in a section on dream activity:

“For when all the muscular forces of the body are relaxed dreams serve the purpose of internally stimulating the vital organs by means of the imagination and the great activity which it exerts–an activity that in this state generally rises to psycho-physical agitation….Hence, I would suggest that without this internal stimulating force and fatiguing unrest that makes us complain of our dreams, which in fact are probably curative, sleep, even in a sound state of health, would amount to a complete extinction of life.”(P.29)

This is a Freudian reflection: a reference to the life instinct and the wish to sleep Freud thought so important in his theory of dreams. Imagination, is, of course, an inner power regulated by the ERP and PPP and this distinguishes the imagination from reason which is a two way power related to the RP–a power which is directed outward and conscious of itself.

For Kant, man as the only being possessing understanding and rationality, is therefore entitled to be regarded as the “lord” of Nature. These powers enable man to willfully set ends for himself and employ nature as a means to such self determined ends. The ultimate end of such activity is Culture(P.94). Part of the essence of cultural activity involves the Greek idea of liberating man from his unnecessary desires. Cultural processes of this kind for Kant, however, requires postulation of a cosmopolitan totality in which nation-states submit to a discipline of international law and order: a state of affairs in which war is prohibited and diplomatic activity strives for a “perpetual peace”. The capacities for discourse and rationality obviously play an important role in the establishment of the rule of phronesis that is the aim of the phronimos. In a Culture the civilising activities of skill regulated by areté as well as esoteric activities aiming at the goods for the soul together help to constitute that Culture.

Kant also points to the tension that exists between lower level ERP and PPP activities relating to the survival of the species and the more “cultural” activities involved in actualising the potential of rationality in humanity(P.97). Such an actualising process uses discourse as a medium and in this medium we can speak sometimes with a universal voice about our desires and feelings of pleasure and pain. Kant elaborates upon the tension between life and Culture:

“The value of life for us, measured simply by what we enjoy(by the natural end of the sum of all inclinations, that is, by happiness), is easy to decide. It is less than nothing. For who would enter life afresh under such conditions? Who would even do so according to a new self-devised plan(which should, however, follow the course of nature; if it also were merely directed to enjoyment?….There remains then nothing but the worth which we ourselves assign to our life by what we not alone do, but do with an end so independent of nature that the very existence of nature itself can only be an end to the condition so imposed. “(P.97-8)

These are, the three constitutive phases, to which are attached three regulative mechanisms articulated in the above reflection: life, the enjoyment of life, and the contentment associated with leading a worthwhile life. There is also the suggestion of the presence of a theoretical attitude involving the comprehension of Nature as an end-in-itself. This attitude is tied to a super-sensible principle that in turn is connected to an attitude man has toward himself(as noumenon):

“Now we have in the world beings of one kind whose causality is teleological, or directed to ends, and which at the same time are beings of such a character that the law according to which they have to determine ends for themselves is represented by them themselves as unconditioned and not dependent on any thing in nature, but as necessary in itself. The being of this kind is man, but regarded as noumenon.”(P.99)

The chain of beings existing in nature as inorganic states of affairs stretches past organic forms of life of various kinds up to the terminus of man for Kant. Kantian metaphysics to some extent regards God as a Deus absconditis in relation to this natural chain but the divine being is omnipresent as a factor in our ethical reasoning about the good flourishing life. “One gets what one deserves” is an ancient Socratic reference to the consequences of diké(justice), and this element is present in the Kantian account in the form of a purely ethical judgement rather than as a religious fear of Judgement Day.

Hacker’s position on the issue of man the noumenon, is ambiguous. His view of teleology is clearly Aristotelian with a Wittgensteinian twist, maintaining that discourse and thought manifests a concern for what things are for, and does so in a way that gives them the status of what is real. In this discussion Hacker criticises the above Kantian account of the teleology of Nature on the grounds of maintaining that it forms part of a Design argument. Hacker claims that the Darwinian appeal to mechanism of nature undermines teleological explanation and thereby any appeal to an architect of Nature. This is a puzzling claim given the earlier “theory” of evolution presented by Kant and also the following:

“if the name of natural history, now that it has one been adapted, is to continue to be used for the description of nature, we may give the name archeology of nature, as contrasted with art, to that which the former literally indicates, namely an account of the bygone or ancient state of the earth–a matter on which, though we do not hope for any certainty we have good grounds for conjecture. Fossil remains would be objects for the archeology of nature, just as rudely cut stones, and things of that kind would be for the archeology of art. For as work is actually being done in this department, under the name of a theory of the earth, steadily though, as we might expect, slowly this name would not be given to a merely imaginary study of nature, but to one to which nature itself invites us.”(P.90 ftnt)

We can see from the above reasoning that there is no rush to an argument from Design for God or a creator. In fact there is an open-mindedness on this question that is quite unusual for a pre- Darwinian thinker:-

“But now it is an open question, and for our reason must always remain an open question , how much a mechanism of nature contributes as means to each final design in nature.”(P.73)

If Kant is a hylomorphic Philosopher as we maintain, then, the essence or nature of a thing is best explained or justified by reference to the notions of “form” or “principle”. Primary Form, or God obviously lies beyond the full comprehension of human understanding and reason, and for Kant this part of the noumenal ream must be the most difficult to access via theoretical reasoning and its categories of judgement/understanding. Resting at non-primary forms or principles is , however, possible for us who use the categories and principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. Hacker points out that contrary to popular opinion, Darwin did not eliminate teleological explanations of nature (P.193). He also points out, however, that Darwin did intend to eliminate all forms of design explanations. Given what we know biographically about Darwin’s life and times and his initial reluctance to publish his work during his lifetime for fear of religious repercussions we may remain sceptical about this claim by Hacker. Darwin described himself in 1836 as a “orthodox Christian”. Also, towards the end of his life we find him saying:

“It seems to me absurd to doubt that man may be an ardent theist and an evolutionist.”

This would have been a fair description of Kant’s relation to both Natural History and God. We should pause to mention in this context, however, that the ancient Greeks also felt uncomfortable with postulating natural creative powers on the part of the gods, allocating all such materialistic activity to the demiurge whose powers are clearly inferior to those of the superior beings of the gods. Hacker, would appear, therefore to be unnecessarily exaggerating the differences between the accounts of Kant and Darwin. Hacker also problematically rejects using the term “cause” for teleological explanation. He states the following position:

“Citing it(efficient causation) explains not by identifying a cause, but by pointing to an end.”(P.197)

Hacker is here clearly succumbing to the temptation to reduce Greek terms to their (problematic) Latin translations. Different kinds of explanation are, for Aristotle, different kinds of cause. All the different kinds of cause are answers to the question “Why?”. “Why did the tree burn?”–“Because of the lightning strike on the tree”. “Why are you cutting the tree down?”–“Because I wish to use the wood for my fence”. Both of these responses to “Why” questions are “Reasons for” the phenomena that need to be explained. The relation between the fact and the reason is logical or rational. The question “Why?” also appeals to the understanding and the capacity to categorise phenomena in a context of processes of actualisation. In the case of material and efficient forms of explanation there may be an ontological commitment to “Events” in order to explain changes in the world but universalisation of these forms of explanation is limited. Event designations also presume a framework of something remaining constant throughout the process of change and appeal to principles therefore seems necessary. In contexts of human action it is human agents with a battery of intellectual and moral powers and dispositions that bring about various kinds of change. Conceiving of change in such a framework entails that one cannot logically separate the product of an agents power(e.g. a completely built house) from the process of producing the object(the building process). From this point of view the building of the house and the house are one and the same in logic(Logos). When we are considering an agents moral dispositions we are talking about a different kind of non-instrumental, categorical power but the logic remains the same with the reservation that building houses may be civilisation-building activities, whereas on the other hand, doing what one ought to do because it is ones duty aims at a state of future social existence that is “Cultural”, e.g. A Kingdom of Ends lying one hundred thousand years in the future. Of course, we are not slaves being dragged about by such an idealistic vision but rather feel a sense of worth in making our small contribution to this “Cultural Project”. This project is, for Kant, the telos of mankind:

“Have we any ground capable of satisfying reason, speculative or practical, to justify our attributing a final end to the supreme cause that acts according to ends?….such a final end could be nothing but man as subject to moral laws, maybe taken a priori as a matter of certainty; whereas we are unable to cognise a priori what are the ends of nature in the physical order and above all it is impossible to see that a nature could not exist apart from such ends. “( Critique of Teleological Judgement, P.112)

This supreme cause is not necessarily a creator or a designer(craftsman) but rather the supreme condition of all that is conditioned. In other words, for Kant, the supreme being is a Moral legislator and not a craftsman like the demiurge. This is as close as Kant comes to a proof for the existence of Deus–a moral proof that appeals to the principle that man is subject to moral law. This kind of proof is not the concern of theology. There is, in Kant , continual and consistent references to man striving for moral perfection and we see this also in his account of the Sublime. Standing in the presence of a powerful waterfall, Kant argues, we are at first overwhelmed by the magnitude or power of this natural phenomenon only to recover from this experience via the power of thought that involutes the awe and wonder we experience onto ourselves–onto our moral nature. This tendency is also present in our experience of the beauty of nature:

“in all probability it was this moral interest that first aroused attentiveness to beauty and the ends of nature.”(P. 129)

For Kant, it is the practical use of reason that is the royal road to the super-sensible realm of noumena and God. From a theoretical point of view we must content ourselves with not knowledge but faith in the existence of Deus. From a practical reasoning point of view the rational idea of Freedom transcends the theoretical ideas of God and the immortality of the soul. These two theoretical ideas form the focal points of the “science” of Theology.

For Hacker the practical use of reason is a power that a person possesses to actualise the potentiality that defines the human form of life. In this context Hacker discusses the categorical judgements of the potential, the actual, and the necessary. His discussion is very Aristotelian but it does not recognise the important distinction Aristotle draws between capacities(lower level dispositions) and dispositions. Aristotle tends to use the term disposition to designate virtue-related activities. Hacker discusses the concept of disposition in relation to the major ontological difference that exists between organic and inorganic beings:

“It is striking that, unlike distinctively human dispositions, an inanimate substance may, and most commonly does, possess natural dispositions which are never actualised. Obviously not every poisonous substance(thing, or partition or specific quantity of stuff) poisons anything, not every brittle substance breaks, and not every soluble thing dissolves.”(P.94-5)

Hacker goes on to claim that insofar as human potentialities are concerned it is the case that, human dispositions are theoretically achievable and practically actualised, e.g. the capacity for discourse is necessarily actualised in the human form of life as is theoretical and practical reasoning. An animal’s prime concern is life(to survive). We do not know what capacities and dispositions are important for the gods given the fact that we do not think as they do. The telos or disposition for rationality, although a distant goal, contains the idea or form of the Good, which (according to Aristotle’s work the Nichomachean Ethics) the human form of life strives for. In the context of this discussion Hacker makes the important point that many human powers are so-called two-way powers. These powers are tied to the Freedom to choose to discourse or to reason and thereby to actualise an essential human potentiality(P.95)

Rivers may flow and watches may tick but these activities are not actions or deeds. The active powers of inanimate substances are not self-initiated. The kinds of explanation we encounter in relation to the powers or capacities of inorganic forms usually fall into the classes of material and efficient causes. Watches that tick on until they stop are obviously to some extent dependent for their most important function on human beings to wind them up, unplug them, or change/charge their batteries. Watches have been designed by human beings to perform the functions they do. As a consequence of this “human” connection we say of them that they “tell the time”. The appeal to a designer of the whole universe may well be a category-mistake that involves the imposing of this craftsman analogue upon more natural organic and inorganic processes. This kind of attribution, indeed appears to be a case of “Projection”. The attribution of the form of the good upon all human activity that we find in Plato, Aristotle, and Kant, would not appear to be an imaginative projection but rather a rational attribution of a super-sensible form to organic forms of life of a human kind. This super-sensible form is superior to that of the form of a demiurge which embodies a subordinate instrumental principle.

Hacker, in his discussion, does not refer to the Kantian categories of the potential, the actual, and the necessary, nor does he invoke super-sensible rational principles but prefers instead to characterise these matters in terms of grammatical investigations into what we say and do. Hacker points to the obvious fact that we cannot see the powers of a thing when they are not being actualised and he also refers to three kinds of confusion that he attributes to this fact: scepticism about the existence of powers, reduction of powers to their actualisation, and the reification of these powers(P.99). The first two confusions are encountered on a regular basis in the work of scientists in the fields of Anthropology/Psychology and Ethics: the scientific obsession with observation, measurement and observable causal transmission contribute to these confusions. In the above realms of concern we often encounter this viewing of the relation between a power and its actualisation as a causal relation between two kinds of substance rather than that of the relation between a principle and its application.

Hacker also refers to the confusion caused in reducing a power(principle, conceptual entity)to its vehicle(body, brain etc). This is confounded by an unfounded agency attribution, e.g. the brain becomes the agency behind the power. Hacker calls this confusion the mereological fallacy. According to Hacker two way powers belong to every capacity that is subject to voluntary control of an agent.

O Shaughnessy in his work “Consciousness and the World” discusses one form of these two-way powers, namely Perception:

“For Perception is the epistemological bridge conducting us to the phenomenal occupants of the World(with the sole exception of our self and mind). It is the “royal road” to physical reality, indeed to the World in its ultimate ontological form. …If Physicalism is true, then a self conscious being is a part of physical reality which epistemologically is in touch with a special part of physical reality, namely its own mind…then only in perception does consciousness make epistemological contact with Reality in its true or ultimate(i.e. physical) form”(P.7)

Hacker claims that Perception as a power has both voluntary and involuntary aspects. Seeing, feeling, and hearing “happen to one” in accordance with the Kantian ontological schema and this category of activity is not subject to the control of the will. Observing, looking, scrutinising, gazing, peeking, watching, listening etc, on the other hand are ontologically on Kant’s schema what we make of ourselves and our world using a repertoire of two-way-powers amongst which are to be found understanding and reason: these powers are paramount in forming the relations to the goods of the external world, the goods of the body, and the goods of our soul. One can of course regard Perception epistemologically, describing its activities and explaining its mechanisms in isolation from these powers. If this “analytical” procedure is followed the relation of perception to thought will in such a case be purely theoretical and object-directed. The side of the mountain, its shape, and surface radiate light to the eye and in such a mechanical process a number of processes relating to the colours perceived “happen”. Of course, the presence of the mountain announces itself and as a consequence many practical tasks may suggest themselves to consciousness thereby activating the will and desires rooted in our practical understanding of what is possible and necessary.

Hacker criticises the Cartesian strategy of extending the concept of thought to sensible forms of experience that include sensations, perception(seeing a mountain) and mental images. Now whilst there is an interesting relation between sensibility and understanding and sensibility and the will, it may be important in our theorising about these relations to emphasise the differences between these faculties of the human mind. The Neo-Cartesian “picture” of the mind was the consequence of what remained when both Descartes and Hobbes dismantled the metaphysical structures of Aristotle in preparation for the advance of the Juggernaut of Science and Economics that would flatten the Philosophical landscape. The Greeks would probably have referred to the prophecy of their oracles to describe what happened in the name of “Modern Philosophy” and in doing so would undoubtedly have taken up the differences between techné and epistemé, between Thanatos and Eros, between diké and Ananke.

The English term “Consciousness” with its emphasis upon sensible forms replaced the concern with intellectual forms and intellectual objects. We argued in previous volumes that Kant attempted to stop the Juggernaut in its tracks only to be subsequently marginalised by Hegelian and Marxist Philosophy on the one hand, and materialism, pragmatism, and existentialism/phenomenology, on the other. One of the consequences of of Neo-Cartesianism and its conflation of the sensible and the intellectual was the claim that one can look into ones own mind in the spirit of an explorer and discover its contents. Some called this process introspection. This concept was the direct result: not appreciating the differences between perceptual and intellectual forms, between experiences and the principles that constitute and regulate experience. Introspection was then tied to the issue of Self Knowledge and Hacker makes the salient point that it was not the intention of the Ancient Greek Philosophers to use any inner monitoring process to grasp the meaning or objects embedded in the stream of conscious states and events. Understanding and Reason(Categories and Principles) are obviously involved in all intellectual work. It is also important to remember that this intellectual work takes two forms that are manifested in two different realms of metaphysics: the metaphysics of nature and the metaphysics of morals. Sensibility obviously plays some limited role in both these domains. In the work of coming to know oneself(self-knowledge), the conceptualisation of sensible intuitions will be important, as will the categorisation of these intuitions. The process will also involve principles that constitute and regulate these concepts and categories. Intellectual work of the above kind is undertaken methodically in the activities of elenchus, dialectical reasoning, and transcendental and metaphysical reasoning of the kinds we encounter in the works of Aristotle and Kant. Hacker criticises introspection from a grammatical perspective:

“There is no such thing as my seeing that I see something or perceiving that I hear, smell, taste or fell. I can no more look into my own mind than I can look into another’s, and we often have more insight into the mind of another than into my own. The perceptual metaphor bound up with “introspection” is misleading….We confuse the ability to say how things are with us with the ability to see how things are with us.”(P.246)

Saying is not seeing but is rather a case of acting, giving expression to something that needs to be said. In saying how I feel or think about things I manifest or show my feelings or thoughts in relation to others. Such utterances are then grounds or conditions for any conceptualisation or judgement made about the expression. For Hacker the concept of introspection was a consequence of Cartesianism and its rejection of Aristotle’s more coherent Philosophy of mind:-