Ten Philosophical Mistakes

Adler breaks modern philosophy into ten "subjects", about which errors have been made by the "moderns" since Hobbes and Descartes. He corrects them all by adverting to Aristotle and his apologist, Aquinas, without a trace of the trifecta of irony he forges in doing so.

This book fails to accurately summarize the work of the men it derides, and then refutes them without evidence. For example he concludes his excoriations against Locke, who he mistakes as a kind of successor to Hobbes, and against Hume and Berkely, "There is no empirical evidence whatsoever that concepts, thus precisely defined, are present in animal behavior. Their intelligence is entirely sensory." [52] While none of the "moderns" he derides are actually "modern" -- they show more last spoke in a pre-Victorian age--it is doubly unfair to quote Darwin's work a century after their lives, and then find an inarticulate fault with Darwin's clinical evidence [50].

Darwin's work has repeatedly been replicated. The Bonobo Apes' cortical emotional and abstract intelligence, has been demonstrated clinically, and behaviorally. Similar work with cetaceae and pigs. Adler insists on a qualitative difference between humans and all other life forms without citing evidence, although he does cite his own book "The Angels and Us" [52]. To my knowledge he offers no clinical or empirical evidence in support of his Angels.

Adler begins with the "crucial" mistake about Consciousness, which "lies at the very foundation of modern thought". The second mistake is the failure to distinguish between perceptual and conceptual thought. Adler ignores the phenomenologists who are all about this distinction. His third set of mistakes apparently consist of the way the meaning of words has been explained. Adler accuses un-named "contemporary linguistic philosophers" [81] of believing that "Language controls thought". He amazingly claims this is an error trace-able in some unknown way to Locke and then Hobbes!

The fourth mistake, he imagines, is there is some line drawn between knowledge and opinion, in some way, that makes philosophical "truths" less important or legitimate than what we learn from science, math, and real history.[xvii]. Well. Here it least he uncovers a modern philosopher, Karl Popper, not content with rehashing Lock and Hume again and misstating Kant's critique. Adler correctly notes that Popper drew the demarcation between knowledge and speculation by the criterion of "falsifiability by empirical evidence". [101] Adler insists on adding other criteria--experience, argument, or a combination.[105]

The fifth mistake is in drawing a line which puts all moral values into the category of "mere opinion", with no absolute right or wrong. He thinks this undermines natural rights and supports a dogma of "might makes right". [xviii]

The sixth mistake consists in the identification of happiness with "getting what we want" while leaving out the "other meaning" which includes the moral quality of a whole well lived.

The seventh mistake lies with the determinists who deny a "man's freedom of choice".

The eighth mistake is the denial of "human nature".

The ninth mistake concerns the origins of human associations-- he suggests that both the primitive state and the social contract are myths.

The tenth mistake is the "metaphysical" [a word modern phllosophers avoid like the plague] one he calls the fallacy of reductionism-- assigning a greater reality to the parts of an organized whole than to the whole itself. [xix]

In his Epilogue, Adler claims to explain some of his madness. He does not. He declares that "Modern philosophy" got off to a bad start with Hobbes, Locke, Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. He claims these thinkers acted as if he had no predecessors worth consulting. He does not find the "slightest trace" of a willingness to take the council of predecessors. [198] In fact, however, the contrary is true. Each of them was exceptionally well-read, hungry for learning, and repeatedly credited predecessors. The Summa Theologica broadly published the ideas of Aristotle in particular. It was written in 1265–1274, it addressed many of these issues, was one of the most influential works, and many references were made its Aristotelian derivations. show less

Required reading for anyone interested in philosophy. I docked it one star because Adler's style is a bit hard to bear at times. Before he explains something he tells you exactly why and how he's going to explain it and then says that before he does that he must explain something else; and then he proceeds to tell you why and how he's going to explain something else before he explains something. Also, I think the book is a bit skimpy on the *defense* of the proper philosophical ideas. Adler seems to sometimes just declare what the proper philosophical position is. NEVERTHELESS, this is a great book which is invaluable to any honest reader of philosophy who is searching for truth.

Where did philosophy go wrong? Why is David Hume's epistemology a wrong turn and why Aristotle is not passe?

The author is the chairman of the editorial board of Encyclopaedia Britannica, director of the Institute of Philosophical Research in Chicago, and a senior associate of the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, of which he was one of the founders. He has written several bestselling books in the areas of philosophy and religion. From the dust jacket: "The philosophical mistakes Dr. Adler discusses include: The mistake of identifying happiness with having a good time (e.g., hedonism) rather than with possessing that which is good for us and fulfills our natural needs.

"The failure to understand the affirmation of free will or free choice, and the denial of it by determinists, who make the error of identifying free choice with something show more that happens entirely by chance. This leads to a rejection of moral responsibility." Even though the author quotes from such legendary philosophers as Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, his message is very readable. show less

errors of modern thought

Reviewed in my blog at http://www.sea-of-flowers.ca/weblog/sea/archives/2005/03/05/ten-philosophic.php