‘Apories’ and Philosophical Thinking

 According to the philosopher, Nicholas Rescher, philosophical apories are ‘collections of individually plausible but collectively incompatible theses’ (Rescher, 2006, p.17). The recognition of an apory* often leads to doubt and puzzlement. Philosophising is required to achieve greater consistency and  coherence; it is an attempt to systematise one’s ideas in order to achieve a more cogent perspective on reality – to re-draft our ongoing personal guidebook to life. Philosophising in the face of apories can involve some of the following important moves:

1. Retain some theses and abandon others. 

This calls for weighing the costs of abandonments against the benefits of retentions. Here’s an example:

1. Philosophy makes progress in matters that really count
2. Philosophy does not progress in points of communal consensus
3. The achievement of consensus is a key goal of philosophy

For Rescher, three resolutions are available:

Abandon (1): Deny that philosophy makes progress (thereby effectively negating its claim as a valid cognitive discipline)

Abandon (2): Adopt a ‘true believer approach’, insisting that there is indeed a growing consensus but only within the community of real philosophers, thus, in effect, excommunicating most of the community (namely those who don’t see things our way).

Abandon (3): Reject communal consensus as the pivotal desideratum of philosophy.

Rescher favours resolution (3).

2. Make distinctions in order to adjust our common-sense commitments so that they are compatible but also fit with our experience. 

Here is my everyday example just to illustrate the process. Take the following proverbs on the theme of co-operation:

1. ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth’
2. ‘Many hands make light work.’

From our experience of co-operating we can recognise both situations. But if we want to develop our own cogent general guidance about the value of co-operation, we make a distinction between would-be co-operators who agree about goals and those do not. We might say: ‘When people agree about the goals of a task many hands can made light work but when they are at odds about the goals, too many cooks can spoil the broth.’ We are beginning to amend our personal guidebook and making common sense into good sense.

So what? Rescher says that a significant part of philosophy over time has involved the making of distinctions but that new apories are regularly discovered. New distinctions then become even more acute and so it goes on. Philosophy in the professional field is therefore necessarily complex. However, philosophical distinction-making is an activity that all (including children) can do and find useful. So an important element of philosophising with children is identifying apories and exploring ways to move forward – either by abandonment of theses for good reasons or by making distinctions to retain all theses. When talking to pupils I may not use the word ‘apory’ but I help them to recognise the problems of consistency that the term describes.

Here is a further example of an apory by Nicholas Rescher’s. I’ll leave it to you to think about it.

1. All events are caused
2. If an action issues from a free choice, then it is causally unconstrained.
3. Free will exists – people can and do make and act upon free choices.

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* Apory or Aporia is an word from Ancient Greek: ἀπορία: ‘impasse, difficulty of passing, lack of resources, puzzlement’. It is used in a more particular sense here. I am unable to think of a one-word or simple-phrase translation of this sense into modern English. Perhaps the phrase ‘problem of consistency’ would do the job, although that misses out the something important – that the individual theses are plausible.

Rescher, N. (2006) Philosophical Dialectics: An Essay on Metaphilosophy, State University of New York Press.