The Philosophy of the Cool: Against the Subjectivist/Relativist Approach

Let's face it: Some things are cool, and others are not. And when I say that, I'm not talking about being cool to the touch. Rather, I'm using the word 'cool' in the way someone might if they said 'That movie was cool' or 'Rock 'n rool is cool'. Here I want to argue against a particular approach to ascriptions of coolness.

Many are likely to say that ascriptions of coolness are, in some sense "subjective" or "relative to taste". They might express their view by saying things like: 'What's cool for some people isn't cool for others' or 'One person might think that something is cool and another person might think that it isn't cool and both of them might be right'.

I think this view is probably false, just as I think that similar views concerning ethics and aesthetics are false. I want to explain why I reject this view by explaining why I reject particular ways of making it more precise. Unfortunately, I can't address every version of the view. But hopefully by addressing a few versions of the view and showing why they should be rejected, I can make it plausible that every version of the view should be rejected.

One version of the subjectivist/relativist view holds that whenever anyone uses the predicate 'is cool' to apply to something, that person is simply expressing some sort of approval of that thing. So, for instance, if I utter the sentence 'That movie is cool', referring to "Shaun of the Dead", it is just as though I had said 'Yay, "Shaun of the Dead"!'.

This version of the subjectivist/relativist view is analogous to expressivist views in ethics, and should be rejected for the same reasons. The main reason that such views should be rejected is that they conflict with obvious claims concerning disagreement. So, for instance, if I say 'That movie is cool' and you say 'That movie isn't cool' and we are both referring to "Shaun of the Dead", then we disagree. However, one cannot disagree with "Yay, "Shaun of the Dead"!", since one who says 'Yay, "Shaun of the Dead"!' is not making a claim and so you one cannot disagree with the claim made. Thus, since the view we are considering is one according to which it is just as though I had said 'Yay, "Shaun of the Dead"!' when I say 'That movie is cool', you do not disagree with me when you say 'That movie isn't cool'. Since you do disagree with me, this version of the subjectivist/relativist view is false.

A different version of the subjectivist/relativist view holds that 'is cool' functions a lot like words like 'I', which are commonly called 'indexicals'. When I say "I am hungry" and you say "I am hungry", what I say may be true while what you say is false (because I might be hungry even though you aren't). Similarly, according to this view, when I say 'That movie is cool' and you say 'That movie was cool' and we are both referring to "Shaun of the Dead", what I say may be true while what you say is false. And just as you would say something true in the example involving 'I' if you said 'I am not hungry', so too you would say something true in the example involving 'is cool' if you said 'That movie isn't cool'.

There are two makor problems with this version of the subjectivist/relativist view. One problem is that, again, it seems to conflict with obvious claims concerning disagreement. Just as you do not disagree with me when I say 'I am hungry' and you say 'I am not hungry', so too on this view when I say 'That movie is cool' and you say 'That movie isn't cool', you do not disagree with me. So, the view in question is false.

Another problem with the view has to do with reporting what others say. For instance, if you say 'I am hungry', I cannot correctly report what you say by saying 'You said that I am hungry' because you didn't say that I am hungry, you said that you are hungry. Instead, I have to say 'You said that you are hungry' to correctly report what you said. So, if 'is cool' functions like 'I', then if you say 'That movie is cool', I cannot correctly report what you said by saying 'You said that that movie is cool'. But I can. So, the second version of the subjectivist/relativist view is false.

Let me sum up what I have done in this post. I have introduced and argued against two versions of the subjectivist/relativist approach to ascriptions of coolness. I conclude that these versions fail. More tentatively, I conclude that no version of the subjectivist/relativist approach is correct. Given that this is so, what approach should we take to ascriptions of coolness? I think that the obvious alternative is an objectivist approach according to which there are objective facts of coolness that are not "subjective" or "relative to taste". On this view, whenever one person describes something using the words 'is cool' and another describes the same thing using the words 'is not cool', one and only one of them is right. The other is simply wrong.

You write like a girl!

Some folks who read this might be interesting in checking out the following website:

http://www.bookblog.net/gender/genie.php

If you input text and specify what sort of work the text is from (fiction, nonfiction, or blog entry), it will attempt to determine the gender of the author of the text. (It uses some algorithm based on works by authors with a known gender.)

Be warned, though, that it apparently has some strange results in some cases, as noted in the comments section of this blog post: http://tar.weatherson.org/2007/04/11/women-in-philosophy/#comments

Pro-Attitude Theology Redux

In my last post I introduced pro-attitude theology as an alternative to perfect being theology. As developed there, pro-attitude theology rests on the following claims:
(A) For every pro-attitude A, there is at least one property P such that something that has P deserves having someone bear A towards it.
(B) Every pro-attitude comes in degrees.
(C) For every pro-attitude A, there is a highest degree of A.
(D) For every pro-attitude A and every property P, if something that has P deserves having someone bear A towards it, then there is some degree of P such that something that has P to at that degree deserves having someone bear A towards it to the highest degree.

(A) and (B) are, I think, relatively uncontroversial. At the very least, they seem plausible. On the other hand, (C) and (D) seem less plausible. Perhaps some pro-attitudes are such that there is no highest degree of them. And perhaps there are properties such that something that has them deserves having someone bear some pro-attitude towards it but are also such that there is no degree of those properties such that something that has one of those properties to that degree deserves having someone bear the corresponding pro-attitude towards it to the highest degree.

Here I would like to suggest a way of modifying pro-attitude theology that holds onto (A)-(C) but does not suppose (D). According to this modification of pro-attitude theology, something is divine just in case for every pro-attitude A, that thing has some property P to some degree D such that something that has P to degree D deserves having someone bear A towards it to the highest degree. According to this modification of pro-attitude theology, then, a divine being is simply something that deserves having every pro-attitude borne to it to the highest degree.

The interesting thing about this modified sort of pro-attitude theology is that it allows for different "ways of being divine", as it were. What mean by this is that whereas the form of pro-attitude theology discussed in the previous post required that a divine being have every pro-attitude worthy property and that it have that property to whatever degree is necessary to make it deserve to have someone bear the corresponding pro-attitude towards it to the highest degree, the modified sort of pro-attitude theology I am currently discussing does not require that a divine being have every pro-attitude worthy property. Rather it simply requires that it have some of those properties to such a degree that it deserves having every pro-attitude borne towards it to the highest degree. What this means is that there might be two divine beings that have different pro-attitude worthy properties. All that is required, in the end, is that they deserve to have every pro-attitude borne towards them in the highest degree. And it may be in virtue of having different properties that they deserve this.

Perfect Being Theology and Pro-Attitude Theology

Western philosophical theology has been dominated by so-called "perfect being theology". According to many, perfect being theology traces back to St. Anselm of Canterbury and his conception of God as "that than which nothing greater can be conceived". However, I do not wish to join the debate over the historical origins of perfect being theology here. Rather, I will present a (probably overly simplistic) version of perfect being theology to serve as a foil for what I will call "pro-attitude theology".

The central concept of perfect being theology is that of a great-making property, where a great-making property is a property such that all things being equal, something is greater if it has that property than if it lacks it. (Great-making properties can be thought of by analogy to intrinsically good-making properties. However, I do not give the details of the analogy here.) Give the concept of a great-making property, a proponent of perfect being theology then defines divinity as follows: Something is divine just in case it has every great-making property to the highest degree. (Notice that this is consistent with the claim that some great-making properties do not come in degrees. In those cases, a divine being must simply have those properties.) Finally, a perfect being theologian asserts the existence of a divine being: There is something that is divine.

Perfect being theologians are divided on the question of exactly what properties a being must have in order to be divine. They commonly think that the property of having power is a great-making property, so that all things being equal, something is greater if it has power than if it lacks power. So, they claim that one property a divine being must have is omnipotence, the property of having power to the highest degree. Similarly, it is thought that the properties of having knowledge and being morally good are great-making properties, so that in order to be divine a being must be omniscient (that is, it must have the property of being knowledgeable to the highest degree) and omnibenevolent (that is, it must have the property of being morally good to the highest degree). Other properties that perfect being theologians often claim a being must have to be divine include necessary existence and incorporeality.

Hopefully the basic idea behind perfect being theology is relatively clear at this point. I now want to introduce at this point a different approach to theology, which I call "pro-attitude theology". The central concept of pro-attitude theology is not that of a great-making property. Rather, it is that of a pro-attitude worthy property. Before explaining what a pro-attitude worthy property is, however, let me first explain what a pro-attitude is. It is clear that among the attitudes we can take towards something, some are positive in some sense (desiring, loving, admiring, being in awe of, and so forth) whereas others are negative (despising, hating, feeling disgust towards, and so forth). The pro-attitudes are all and only those attitudes that are positive in some sense.

Now the central concept of pro-attitude theology is that of a pro-attitude worthy property. A pro-attitude worthy property is a property such that there is some pro-attitude such that all things being equal, something is more deserving of having someone bear that pro-attitude towards it if it has that property than if it lacks that property. (One could think of pro-attitude worthy properties in terms of reasons; that is, having a pro-attitude worthy property is a reason to have a pro-attitude towards that thing.) Given the concept of a pro-attitude worthy property, a pro-attitude theologian can now offer a competing definition of divinity, as follows: Something is divine just in case it has every pro-attitude worthy property such a degree that it deserves having someone bear each pro-attitude towards it to the highest degree. In other words, according to pro-attitude theology, something is divine just in case it is deserving of having everyone bear each and every pro-attitude to it to the highest degree. (Note that it is clear that many pro-attitudes come in degrees. For instance, we can desire one thing more than another, admire one thing more than another, etc. One important assumption made by pro-attitude theology is that each and every pro-attitude is such that there is a highest degree to which it can be had towards something. Whether or not this is true will partially determine to what extent pro-attitude theology is a plausible alternative to perfect being theology.) And, of course, a pro-attitude theologian affirms the existence of a divine being: There is something that is divine.

We can now consider what properties something must have in order to be divine, given pro-attitude theology. First consider being powerful. Presumably, this is a pro-attitude worthy property; that is, there is some pro-attitude such that having the property of being powerful makes something more worthy of having someone bear that pro-attitude towards it if it powerful than if it isn't. However, to what degree must a divine being have the property of being powerful? Only to whatever degree is necessary to make it worthy of having someone bear that pro-attitude towards it to the highest degree. Perhaps this will require omnipotence, perhaps not. Similarly for omniscience and omnibenevolence.

Are there any properties that a divine being must have given pro-attitude theology that most perfect being theologians would deny it must have? It seems so. Consider the property of being large. This property seems to be a pro-attitude worthy property, since it seems that all things being equal, something is more worthy of being in awe of if it is large than if it is not. So, in order to be divine, something must have the property being large to whatever degree is necessary to be deserving of having something be in awe of it to the highest degree. These sorts of considerations, I think would lead the perfect being theologian at least towards thinking that a divine being must be omnipresent, if not towards thinking that pantheism is true.

Pro-attitude theology might also lead its proponents to endorse a version of the doctrine of the incarnation. After all, it seems that the property of being courageous in the face of danger is a pro-attitude worthy property. So, a divine being must have that property to whatever degree is required to be worthy of someone bearing the corresponding pro-attitude towards it to the highest degree. But to have that property something must actually face danger. So perhaps this suggests that a divine being would, on pro-attitude theology, temporarily renounce its power so that it could be in danger like a mere mortal.

Other properties that a divine being would likely be required to have to some degree or other on pro-attitude theology include being loving, being forgiving, being beautiful, being complex, and so forth.

I would now like to conclude my discussion by noting some points of intersection between this blog post and my last post. In the last post I argued that there are a wide range of questions with which the philosopher of religion should be concerned. To that list, I add two others:
Is there a divine being, in the perfect being theologian's sense?
Is there a divine being, in the pro-attitude theologian's sense?
Notice that the answers to these two questions might differ from one another and from the answers to the questions I mentioned in that other post.

Philosophy of Religion

Philosophers of religion often speak as though they are concerned with determining whether God exists. But I think this is a misleading way for them to speak. Why? Well, consider the following scenario:

One day, when on a mountain, Moses heard a voice. This voice told him certain things, and Moses was convinced that it was the voice of an all-powerful creator. But it turns out that Moses was wrong about who was talking to him. It was not an all-powerful creator, but a local teenager playing a practical joke. Still, Moses introduced a name to refer to the being who was speaking to him.

Suppose that we found out (through historical research and other means) that this scenario actually occurred. And suppose also that we found out that our use of "God" traces back to Moses' use of the name he introduced to refer to the being who was speaking to him. It seems to me that if we found this out, we would have found out that when we use the word "God", we are referring to that teenager who played a practical joke on Moses. And so we would have found out that God exists, since that teenager surely exists (or, at least existed). However, it seems to me that even if we found this out, the question that philosophers of religion characterized as the question of whether God exists would not be answered. So, the question that philosophers of religion have characterized in that way is not the question of whether God exists, since we would surely have answered that question if we found out that the scenario presented above actually occurred.

What, then, is the question that philosophers of religion are asking, the question that they have mischaracterized as the question of whether God exists? I take it that the question that they are asking concerns whether there is a being of a particular sort. For instance, perhaps it is the question of whether there is an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent being. Thus, what philosophers of religion are doing is asking a purely descriptive ontological question.

It is important to note that the characterization of what I take to be the central question of the philosophy of religion has interesting consequences. For instance, it suggests that even if we answer the question of whether there is an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent being in the negative (perhaps because of worries involving the problem of evil), there are still many questions for a philosopher of religion to address. For instance, the philosopher of religion may still wonder about the following questions:
Is there a very powerful (but not omnipotent), very knowledgeable (but not omniscient), and very good (but not omnibenevolent) being?
Is there some necessarily existent concrete being on which the contingent things depend?
Is there a being who desired there to be life, who knew that there could be no life unless the physical constants were within a certain range, and who had the ability to make the physical constants be in the range that allowed for life?
And so forth. The point being that even if a philosopher of religion grants that there is no omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent being, there is still work for him or her to do, still other questions for him or her to evaluate the evidence concerning. It may be, at the end, that the evidence will support (to some degree or other) an affirmative answer to some of these questions. And for others of these questions, it may be that the evidence supports neither an affirmative answer nor a negative answer, so that we ought, rationally, to be agnostic. And then, after having considering all of these questions and asking answers to them our evidence supports, it will be up to the philosopher of religion to investigate the religious significance of the answers he or she has provided.