A Solution Exists! (maybe)

One of the biggest critiques of philosophy is that philosophers rarely, if ever, agree on a solution to a philosophical problem.  Some have thought that this leads to a kind of skepticism about philosophy.  I suspect there is a method to provide philosophical solutions.  If this method works, perhaps philosophy will gain some newfound respect.

To understand how to find the philosophical solution, one wonders what a solution to a philosophical problem will look like.  To answer that, I start with what a competing solution looks like.  A competing solution to a philosophical problem must be contrary to all other competing solutions.  Two philosophical solutions are contrary just in case they both cannot be true together.  Alternately, if one is true, then the other is false.  This does not preclude the possibility that both are false, and should one be discovered to be false does not imply that the other is true.  I am sure there are further criteria, e.g., internal coherence, explicability, or plausibility, but for I only want to focus on the truth relations.  I claim that a competing solution must be contrary to all other competing solutions for, if two solutions can be true together, there is no basis for a disagreement or philosophical problem with respect to them.

So, all competing solutions must be contrary to one another.  To clarify, this does not mean that there is a group of solutions, say, P, Q, and R, and that at least one of these must be false.  Rather, for the group of solutions, between P and Q, one must be false; between P and R, one must be false; and between Q and R, one must be false.  The first sense is weak contrareity; the second sense is strong contrareity. For the purposes of this post, let us simply us “contrary” for “strongly contrary”.  All competing solutions must be contrary to each other—including the solution.

Since the competing solutions are contrary to one another, it follows that should one be true, the rest are false.  So, we know that there is one and only one solution.  One might wonder what other properties the solution will have.  I suggest that the solution will be in some sense necessarily true.  While there are some who are relativists about morality (which is itself a competing theory), speak this way about ethical theories as being true regardless of the circumstances.  We might contend that the moral evaluation of a particular act is very muddy and does depend on the circumstances.  However, the theory used to evaluate the act does not change depending on the situation (I am sure there are ethicists who contend that theories vary on circumstances, but let us keep with this example for the sake of illustration).  Some might contend that according to mathematical logic, the only necessarily true propositions are true regardless of the truth value of the atomic propositions.  While this is the case at first glance, we must not forget that we assign the truth value of a variety of propositions.  To use Plantinga’s example, necessarily, if a flower is red, then that flower is colored.  This does not always come up true on a truth table, but we think it necessarily true regardless.  To pursue this sense of necessarily true is, I think, to bark up the wrong tree.

One rightly challenges my view by demanding the sense of necessarily true.  I think to find the right sense of necessarily true, then we merely need to look again at truth relations.  When compared to each individual competing solution, since the solution must be true, it follows that the pair of solutions is sub-contrary to each other.  Look what happens though between the truth relations.  If the solution is sub-contrary to every other solution, then it must be true.  To see why consider P, Q, and R once again.   Let us say that P is the solution. One wonders whether P and Q can both be true together.  They cannot for they are contrary to one another since they are competing solutions.  One wonders whether P can be false.  The answer again is no since P is sub-contrary to the other competing solutions.  Should P be false, then Q and R are true.  But Q and R cannot be both be true since they are contrary to one another.  So, either P is true or P is false.  If P is true, then all other solutions must be false.  If P is false, then contradictions ensue.  So, P must be true.  One might wonder whether two or more competing solutions can be sub-contrary to all others.  Suppose that P and Q are sub-contrary to R.  Should P be true, then R is false.  Also, should P be true, Q is false.  However, since Q is sub-contrary to R, if Q is false, then R is true.  This yields a contradiction.  This follows for however large a set of competing solutions you are dealing with.

What does this tell us about the solution?

1. The solution is a competing solution.  So, the solution is contrary to all other competing solutions.
2. The solution must be true.  So, the solution is sub-contrary to all other competing solutions, and only the solution is sub-contrary to all other competing solutions.

One wonders why these two things can help us discover the true solution.  I suggest the following approach.

1. Determine whether all the solutions available are competing.  To do so, assume, for any pair of solutions, both are true and determine whether there is a contradiction.  If there is a contradiction, then they both cannot be true—they are contrary.
2. Determine whether a competing solution is sub-contrary to another.  To do so, assume both are false and determine whether there is a contradiction.  If there is a contradiction, then they both cannot be false—they are sub-contrary.
3. Determine which of the two is sub-contrary to at least one other competing solution.  If one or the other is sub-contrary to another competing solution, then that solution is the solution to the philosophical problem.

I call this the Truth Relations Method.  I suspect most times we will find that we cannot get past step 2.  This is good news, for it tells us that we have yet to find the right solution and we can keep looking.  If we are able to get to step 3, this is even better news for we have the solution to the philosophical problem.