A. C. Grayling

A. C. Grayling.

Anthony Clifford Grayling, FRSA, FRSL (born 3 April 1949) is a British philosopher and author. He is Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London and a supernumerary fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He has an MA and a DPhil from Oxford, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Arts.

Background

Grayling was born in Luanshya, Zambia and spent his formative years in the British expatriate community of East Africa. His first exposure to philosophical writing was at the age of twelve when he read an English translation of Plato's Charmides dialogue. At fourteen he read G. H. Lewes's Biographical History of Philosophy. This work was instrumental in confirming his ambition to study philosophy. Grayling later remarked on the text, "It superinduced order on the random reading that had preceded it, and settled my vocation."

Grayling is interested in atheism and s*x.

After moving to England in his teens Grayling studied at Sussex University (while there he simultaneously studied for an undergraduate degree of the University of London as an external student), and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he obtained his doctorate in 1981. The subject of his thesis was "Scepticism and Transcendental Arguments." This was supervised by the philosophers P. F. Strawson and A. J. Ayer. Grayling lectured in philosophy at St Anne’s College, Oxford, before taking up a post at Birkbeck, University of London in 1991, where he subsequently became Reader in Philosophy (1998), and then Professor of Philosophy (2005). Grayling is also a director of and regular contributor to Prospect Magazine. He married Gabrielle Yvonne in 1970 and his partner is now Katie Hickman.

Philosophical work

Grayling’s main areas of interest in technical philosophy lie at the intersection of theory of knowledge, metaphysics, and philosophical logic. He brings these subjects together in an attempt to define the relationship between mind and world, and in so doing he is among other things challenging philosophical scepticism. His arguments are elucidated in a number of publications, including The Refutation of Scepticism (1985), Berkeley: The Central Arguments (1986), Wittgenstein (1988), Russell (1996), Truth Meaning and Realism (2007), Scepticism and the Possibility of Knowledge (2008). Grayling uses philosophical logic to counter the arguments of the sceptic, thereby shedding light on the traditional ideas of the realism debate and developing associated views on truth and meaning. His ideas are described in the later chapters of An Introduction to Philosophical Logic (1982, 3rd Ed 1998), and advanced in a series of papers including Epistemology and Realism (1991-2), and Independence and Transcendence: The Independence Thesis and Realism (1998). In these publications he puts forward the idea that we should consider realism as a primarily epistemological – rather than a metaphysical or a semantic – conception of the relations between mind and world. Grayling sees these questions about the relation of thought to its objects as among the deepest and most important in technical philosophy. He argues that different aspects of this relation figure in philosophical debate in different ways: as the relation of experience to its objects, as the relation of language to the world, and as the relation in general of mental states and acts to their objective targets (to what they 'intend'). Although these are by no means merely variant expressions for the same problematic nexus, he says, they denote closely related sides of it.

On the one hand there is the subject of experience – a discourser, where 'discourse' comprehends thought and talk – and on the other hand the world or domain over which discourse ranges. What is the relation between them, and how are the relata themselves to be understood? One sees, says Grayling, that much of the history of philosophy has consisted of attempts to answer this question and its variants. Metaphysics and the theories of knowledge and intentionality, reference and truth revolve upon it.

For this reason, Grayling argues, the importance of understanding the relations in question is great, for it determines the consequences for understanding some of the concepts most central to our thought, not least those of truth, objectivity and possibility. Consider the basic case, that of the relation of discourse to the physical world. If this is an external and contingent relation, then it is compelling to think in familiar terms about truth as correspondence of some kind between thoughts and independently existing facts, of the acquisition of knowledge as the (typically partial) discovery of the same kind of independently existing facts, and of objectivity as a strong notion qualifying whatever belongs to what exists independently of mind. But what if there were a case for saying that the crucial relation is not external in the way required for these familiar views? Manifestly, in Grayling's view, to get alternative understandings of them right if such are needed, it is even more important to be clear about the relation of discoursers and given discourses to the domains over which the latter range. This task requires the joint exploration and development of insights in epistemology, metaphysics and logic.

One of the pressure points in thought about the discursive relation is epistemological scepticism, which has been a continuing focus of Grayling's thought and writing in technical philosophy since undertaking doctoral research at Oxford on the subject under Strawson and Ayer. The problem of scepticism focuses special attention on the relation, and shows what is required for a richer understanding of both sides of the relation. In two books and a series of papers he argues that the problem of scepticism about perceptual knowledge can be addressed by uncovering the structure of the conceptual scheme which supports perceptual judgments, a structure that can be described as an inferential scaffolding in which conceptual commitments representable as propositions of increasingly greater generality serve as the premises (the more general ones standardly enthymematically suppressed), such that in tandem with descriptions of current data and certain ceteris paribus clauses they license deduction of particular propositions. The idea can be generalised from the perceptual case to all forms of ratiocination about domains, including the value and abstract entity domains: indeed in such cases the inferential structure of the scheme is more readily discernible. But in the central cases of science, mathematics and ethics, discussion of the inferential structure has to be couched in a concomitant understanding of the applied notions of reference and truth and of the ontology of which they and the knowledge-seeking endeavour are part. This is why epistemology, in Grayling's view, cannot be complete without metaphysics and philosophical logic.

Grayling has also been a significant contributor to philosophical pedagogy and scholarship through writing and editing, in the latter case most notably in connection with the two major volumes "Philosophy: A Guide Through the Subject" and "Philosophy: Further Through the Subject" published by Oxford University Press, widely used as text books, and as chief editor of the four-volume "Encyclopaedia of British Philosophy" (Continuum).

Public advocacy, humanism, human rights and civil liberties

For Grayling, work on technical problems of the foregoing kind is only one aspect of philosophy. Another aspect, one which has been at the centre of philosophy's place in history, has more immediate application to daily life: the questions of ethics, which revolve upon what Grayling calls the great Socratic question, 'How should one live?'. In pursuit of what he describes as 'contributing to the conversation society has with itself about possibilities for good lives in good societies' Grayling writes widely on contemporary issues, including war crimes, the legalisation of drugs, euthanasia, secularism, and human rights. He has articulated positions on humanist ethics and on the history and nature of concepts of liberty as applied in civic life. In support of his belief that the philosopher should engage in public debate, he brings these philosophical perspectives to issues of the day in his work as a writer and as a commentator on radio and television.

Among his contributions to the discussion about religion in contemporary society he argues that there are three separable though naturally connected debates:

(a) a metaphysical debate about what the universe contains; denying that it contains supernatural agencies of any kind makes him an atheist;

(b) a debate about the basis of ethics; taking the world to be a natural realm of natural law requires that humanity thinks for itself about the right and the good, based on our best understanding of human nature and the human condition; this makes him a humanist;

(c) a debate about the place of religious movements and organisations in the public domain; as a secularist Grayling argues that these should see themselves as civil society organisations on a par with trades unions and other NGOs, with every right to exist and to have their say, but no greater right than any other self-constituted, self-selected interest group

On this latter point, Grayling's view is that for historical reasons religions have a grossly inflated place in the public domain out of all proportion to the numbers of their adherents or their intrinsic merits, so that their voice and influence is amplified disproportionately: with the result that they can distort such matters as public policy (e.g. on abortion) and science research and education (e.g. stem cells, teaching of evolution). He argues that winning the metaphysical and ethical debates is already abating the problems associated with (c) in more advanced Western societies, even the US. He sees his own major contribution as being the promotion of understanding of humanist ethics deriving from the philosophical tradition.

Between 1999 and 2002 Grayling wrote a weekly column in The Guardian called "The Last Word", in which he turned his attention to a different topic every week. In these columns, which also formed the basis of a series of books for a general readership (commencing with The Meaning of Things in 2001), Grayling made the basics of philosophy available to the layman. He is a regular contributor to Guardian Unlimited's Comment is free group blog, and writes columns for Prospect magazine, The Dubliner magazine, the New Scientist, and the Barnes and Noble book review. He is accredited to the UN Council on Human Rights in Geneva by the International Humanist and Ethical Union, is a patron of the British Humanist Association, an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society, and is Patron of the British Armed Forces Humanist Association. He is involved with several educational and literacy charities. He is a Trustee of the London Library, has been a board member of the Society of Authors, and in 2003 was a Booker Prize judge.

Grayling's book on the allied strategic air offensive in World War II Among the Dead Cities: Was the Allied Bombing of Civilians in WWII a Necessity or a Crime? (2006) was well-received as a contribution to the debate on the ethics of war. According to John Charmley in the Guardian it was "A provocative and readable study...that is the purpose of his book, to provoke our leaders, and those on whose behalf they purport to act, to ask how to wage war by methods short of barbarism". His books on civil liberties and Enlightenment values have been politically influential, being read in (among other places) 10 Downing Street.

A. C. Grayling was one of the contributors for writing the book, We Are One: A Celebration of Tribal Peoples, released in October 2009. The book explores the culture of peoples around the world, portraying both its diversity and the threats it faces. Among other contributors, we can find several western writers, such as Laurens van der Post, Noam Chomsky, Claude Lévi-Strauss; and also indigenous people, such as Davi Kopenawa Yanomami and Roy Sesana. The royalties from the sale of this book go to the indigenous rights organization, Survival International.

Positions held

• Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts
• Fellow of the World Economic Forum(2000-2004)
• Member of the editorial boards of Reason in Practice and Prospect
• British Academy visitor to the Institute of Philosophy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (1986)
• Director of the Sino-British Summer School in Philosophy in Beijing (1988, 1993)
• Jan Hus Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (1994 and 1996)
• Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship (1998)
• Honorary Secretary of the Aristotelian Society (1993-2001)
• Gifford Lecturer at the University of Glasgow (2005)
• Past chairman of June Fourth, a human rights group concerned with China
• Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society
• Patron of the British Armed Forces Humanist Association

Publications

• An Introduction to Philosophical Logic. (1982), ISBN 0-389-20299-1
  • 2nd ed. (1990), ISBN 0-7156-2353-2
  • 3rd ed. (1997), ISBN 0-631-20655-8
• The Refutation of Scepticism (1985), ISBN 0-7156-1922-5
• Berkeley: The Central Arguments (1986), ISBN 0-7156-2065-7
• Wittgenstein (1988), ISBN 0-19-287676-7
• China: A Literary Companion (1994), ISBN 0-7195-5353-9, with Susan Whitfield
• Philosophy: A Guide Through the Subject (1995), ISBN 0-19-875156-7, ed.
• Russell (1996), ISBN 0-19-287683-X
• The Future of Moral Values (1997), ISBN 0-297-81973-9
• Philosophy 2: Further Through the Subject (1998), ISBN 0-19-875179-6, ed.
• The Quarrel of the Age: The Life and Times of William Hazlitt (2000), ISBN 0-297-64322-3
• The Meaning of Things: Applying Philosophy to Life (2001), ISBN 0-297-60758-8
  • published in the U.S. as Meditations for the Humanist: Ethics for a Secular Age
• The Reason of Things: Living with Philosophy (2002), ISBN 0-297-82935-1
  • published in the U.S. as Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God
• What Is Good?: The Search for the Best Way to Live (2003), ISBN 0-297-84132-7
• The Mystery of Things (2004), ISBN 0-297-64559-5
• The Art of Always Being Right: Thirty Eight Ways to Win When You Are Defeated (2004), ISBN 1903933617 [Edited T. Bailey Saunders' translation of Schopenhauer's essay The Art of Being Right]
• Descartes: The Life of René Descartes and Its Place in His Times (2005), ISBN 0-7432-3147-3
• The Heart of Things: Applying Philosophy to the 21st Century (2005), ISBN 0-297-84819-4
• The Form of Things: Essays on Life, Ideas and Liberty in the 21st Century (2006), ISBN 0-297-85167-5
• The Continuum Encyclopedia of British Philosophy (2006), ISBN 1-84371-141-9, ed. with Andrew Pyle and Naomi Goulder
• Among the Dead Cities: Was the Allied Bombing of Civilians in WWII a Necessity or a Crime? (2006), ISBN 0-7475-7671-8
  • Paperback: (2007) ISBN 0-8027-1565-6
• On Religion (November 2007) (play) with Mick Gordon
• Against All Gods: Six Polemics on Religion and an Essay on Kindness (2007), ISBN 978-1-84002-728-0
• Truth, Meaning and Realism: Essays in the Philosophy of Thought (June 2007), ISBN 978-0-8264-9748-2
• Towards The Light (September 2007) ISBN 978-0-8027-1636-1
  • published in the US as Towards the Light of Liberty
• The Choice of Hercules (November 2007)
• Scepticism and the Possibility of Knowledge (April 2008)
• Ideas That Matter: A Personal Guide for the 21st Century (April 2009), ISBN 978-0-297-85676-4
• Liberty in the Age of Terror : A Defence of Civil Society and Enlightenment Values (June 2009)
• To Set Prometheus Free: Essays on Religion, Reason and Humanity (December 2009), ISBN 978-1-84002-962-8

Reviews of Grayling's work

• Schwarz, Benjamin. Fire From the Sky: What not to read this month, The Atlantic Monthly, 30 May 2006. An American Review of Among the Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the WWII Bombing of Civilians in Germany and Japan
• Smoler, Fredric. "Was the American Bombing Campaign in World War II a War Crime?" Review of Among the Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the WWII Bombing of Civilians in Germany and Japan by A. C. Grayling. American Heritage, 6 April 2006.
• Gambotto-Burke, Antonella "The Compulsive Votary" Review of The Form of Things: Essays on Life, Ideas and Liberty in the Twenty-First Century by A. C. Grayling
• Gray, John. Philosophy for the All-Too-Common Man "http://www.nationalinterest.org" Review of A. C. Grayling, Ideas that Matter: The Concepts that Shape the 21st Century (New York: Basic Books, 2010), 448 pp. /Article.aspx?id=23222

External links

• Five Minutes with AC Grayling The BBC's Matt Stadlen interviews Grayling on free will, Kant, and the philosophy of philosophy
• A.C. Grayling at Perth Writers' Festival 2010 ABC Big Ideas
• The Good Life The Science Network interview with Anthony Grayling
• A. C. Grayling website
• [1] transcript of interview with Ramona Koval for The Book Show, ABC Radio National, 20 February 2008
• Blog in the Guardian
• TDF Interview about Grace as co-dramatist
• Mindfields by A. C. Grayling - New Scientist
• Columnist - The Thinking Read, Barnes & Noble
• Intelligence Squared Debate - Atheism is the new fundamentalism
• Audio: A. C. Grayling in conversation on the BBC World Service discussion programme The Forum