Some notes on Augustine's Contra Academicos

This is considered the earliest of Augustine's writings (composed circa 386 CE in Cassiciacum). It is of great historical interest in relationship to the study of the Platonic Academy, Stoicism, Cicero and Ancient Skepticism in general as well as offering some hints regarding Pythagoreanism and Augustine's relationship to Plato and Plotinus (mentioned explicitly as being almost an reincarnation of Plato), not to mention the strange oblique references to Christianity (described in the language of the mysteries - Augustine was supposedly undergoing the preparations for the "initiation" of baptism which he was to receive a year later).  The Christian references may be later interpolations just as the historical-biographical setting of the dialogue could well be a purely rhetorical and literary device (serving a political goal).

In Book III Augustine articulates what can be described as a theory of analyticity.  Concrete instantiations of logical propositions are held up as certain and evident truths.  And these "logical" propositions are equated to truths of "dialectics" and they appear to be Stoic in form (conditionals and disjunctives). In the same book he likewise articulates the theory of self-certifying evidences in the context of  phenomenological epokhê. The perceptive experiences of consciousness - provided they are considered merely as such by suspension or exclusion of further judgment (assent) - are indubitable certain. Augustine thus genuinely effected the transcendental reduction whereby the primordial certainty and truth of the world is that of a system of phenomena (for a given subject) indistinguishable in this respect from dreams. In III.11.25 we read quidquid tale mihi videtur, mundum appello. We could also compare Clitomachus' distinction between assent and approval (cf. Ac.2.104) with key aspects of later phenomenology. The dialogue has a close connection to Cicero's (fragmentary) work Academica and the sections on the ultimate aims and nature of  the later Academy's skeptical stance are of supreme interest and importance. Note that Augustine had access to the full versions of this work.  It suggests that the function of the dialectics of Arcesilaus and Carneades was as a "skillful means" directed at a materialist versions of Stoicism having as ultimate aim the preparation for receiving the Platonic philosophy -  and this is in  perfect agreement with the function of Nagârjuna's Madhyamaka or its later Vedantic version. There is however not a hint of this interpretation in Charles Brittain's introduction to his translation of the Academica (2006). Brittain expounds a humdrum interpretation of Philo and Antiochus in terms of fallibilism and defeasibility. However it seems plausible that it is in the so-called Megarian school (alongside Sextus) that the purest form of Western Madhyamaka (i.e. the highest articulation of dialectics) is to be sought (cf. the description of Arcesilaus in Diogenes Laertius: Plato in front, Pyrrho behind and Diodorus in the middle). We can find much phenomenological psychology in the later Academy and Stoics. 

The major questions which we should answer are the following. What are the historical sources for Augustine's anti-skeptical argument involving the appeal to the certainty of validities of Stoic propositional logic? While such an argument permeates the Platonic dialogues it is to us unthinkable that the great logician Chrysippus would not have used such arguments in his innumerable debates with the later Academy.  The "phenomenological" argument can be traced back to the Pyrrhonist epokhê,  Epicurus' pasa aisthesis estin alethes, and to a certain extent to Protagoras -  but differs significantly from the Stoic theory of kataleptike phantasia. Note that we have argued that this kind of experiential epokhê is found clearly attested in the Pali Nikayas (and the sophisticated development in the Yogãcãra school). A curious fact about the Contra Academicos is that Augustine's famous argument si fallor, sum (Civ. Dei XI. 26, De Trin. X.10.14 ) is entirely absent despite there being ample opportunity to introduce it. While it is highly plausible that Augustine drew this argument from Cicero's Hortensius or other material (cf. Plotinus' treatment of second-order awareness or parakolouthēsis) ,  we note that this argument also appears in Shankara's commentary on the Brahma Sutras as well as several other earlier and later texts in Indian philosophical schools.

On p.xliii of the Introduction Brittain remarks that Cicero plausibly deliberately mistranslated the original Greek technical terms so as to conflate katalêptikê and katalêptos, the phenomenon as such and its intentional objective correlate. This gave rise to a misunderstanding which would lead naturally to Augustine's reaction in the Contra Academicos.  

The heart of madhyamaka - kicking away the ladder

Philosophical discourse may be logically, linguistically, psychologically, sociologically and ideologically analyzed. One can question whether philosophical discourse has any claim to veracity or value. One can be amazed by the hubris and confidence of philosophers and question the epistemic or intrinsic public value of the discourse they produce.  One can inquire whether philosophers fail to question the assumptions they tacitly assume, or whether some positions be never stately clearly but only insinuated (cf. Ernst Gellner's Words and Things). One can question whether self-proclaimed "rigorous" philosophy is actually as "rigorous" as it claims to be and question whether such a "rigor" be not entirely illusory and only based on stylistic mimicry and convoluted jargon masking the lack of any possibility of formalization in an axiomatic-deductive system. One can question whether philosophical discourse be not a mere language game (like the crossword) based on vagueness, ambiguity and unconscious association, tolerated due to the loftiness of the object of discourse, the stylistically "scientific" semblance of the discourse itself, specially when focused on technical topics in logic and language. Surely we must reject a game based on the dynamics and structure of human consciousness which yet denies outright the underlying role of human consciousness in the spirit of: pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! Philosophy can well seem scientific yet be not so and produce arguments that on the surface seem to be like a logical mathematical proof but fall utterly short of it. And, most importantly, be completely lacking criteria for veracity and value. And what are we to make of philosophers who downplay  or trivialize introspective psychology, mathematical linguistics and mathematical linguistic analysis (the only way to go beyond circularity in linguistics) or the universal ethical principles of human and animal rights? All human activities with value have  public, objective criteria. Philosophy does not have such criteria. Contrary to most academic critiques of academic philosophy the central flaw is not ignoring fundamental domains of human experience and the human condition (which is a valid enough point) but the claim to be analytical and rigorous while being not so and lacking any objective public criteria of veracity or value. A mathematical proof can be formalized and checked in a proof assistant such as Agda. Introspective psychological descriptions can be confirmed, verified or corrected by comparison and discussion among researchers.  A theory in natural science can be confronted with experimental data and evidence. A medication or medical procedure has the objective criterion of the data of clinical trials.  A work of art is received by the public.. But philosophy has no criteria beyond "deemed acceptable to be published in journal X by the editor and reviewers A,B,C,...". A tacit assumption and error is that the mathematical formalization of (a relevant fragment of) natural language is neither possible nor desirable for philosophy. Another one is (often tied to physicalist dogmatism): introspective psychology (as in Hume, William James and Brentano)  is of little value and not a source of philosophical insight and progress. And if  to this we add to this the rejection of the marvelous metaphoric, poetic and analogical capabilities of natural language, we come to the conclusion that such philosophy is mere verbiage, a linguistic production without veracity or value which merits careful linguistic, psychological and cultural diagnosis and analysis.

A note on the formalization of natural language. When two people sit down to play a game they have reached an agreement. The pieces on the board and the rules will represent the game but are not themselves the game.  The agreement is that the board, pieces and rules will stand for the game. A formalization of a fragment of natural language will take the form of a formal system incorporating a series of formal definitions which a group of people will agree represents a certain fragment of natural language. This group will agree (based on a perceived contextual adequacy) to abide by the rules of the game of such a formal system for the purposes of certain arguments or debates - they agree that the formal system and its moves stand  for the linguistic activity of the debate. The formalization of natural language is in a way a return to the original essence of natural language. Indeed as mentioned in the conclusion of our Analyticity, Computability and the A Priori, it is through the reliving and showing forth of the process of our psycho-cognitive development that we may hope to ultimately see the light regarding the problems of philosophy - without naively confusing the developmental path of a cognitive structure with its intrinsic constitution(*). Just as Kant distinguished between a legitimate and illegitimate use of reason (the transcendental illusion once the basic foothold of logic and introspective intuition are abandoned) so too we must distinguish between a perfectly legitimate use and application of language (in which the adequacy of language is unquestionable, independently of any formalization) and an illegitimate use and domain as exemplified by the naive linguistic productions of philosophy.  The formalization of natural language is a necessary critique, a judgment, a challenge and a sifting.

(*) A complementary method will involve what we described as a "linguistic phenomenology". We are given an object and a restricted vocabulary (which may be or not be a set of proposed semantic primes) and the task is to define, describe or tell a story about that object using only such a vocabulary.