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NEW DIRECTIONS IN
PHILOSOPHY AND COGNITIVE SCIENCE
The
Embodied Philosopher
Living in Pursuit of Boundary Questions
Konrad Werner
New Directions in Philosophy and Cognitive
Science
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Konrad Werner
The Embodied
Philosopher
Living in Pursuit of Boundary
Questions
Konrad Werner
Faculty of Philosophy
University of Warsaw
Warszawa, Poland
New Directions in Philosophy and Cognitive Science

ISBN 978-3-030-79963-2 ISBN 978-3-030-79964-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79964-9
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Contents
1 Introduction: Philosophizing as a Peculiar Pursuit 1

1.1 What Is It Like to Philosophize? Toward a Bottom-Up
Meta-philosophy 1
1.2 Troubles with Philosophy: The Strategy of Escaping
Forward 2
1.3 Challenging the Institutional Approach to Philosophy 4
1.4 Chapter to-Go 6
References 11
2 Questioning the Comparability of (Philosophical) Beliefs 13

2.1 The Puzzle of Comparability 13
2.2 Comparability in Practice: Some Initial Concerns 15
2.3 Expertise Defense, Reflection Defense, and the Like 20
2.4 Different Embodiments of the Subject 21
2.5 Against the Philosophers vs. Non-philosophers Dichotomy 25
2.6 Beliefs and Questions 28
2.7 Different Embodiments of “Philosophical” Acts of
Believing 33
2.8 Two Kinds of Commitment 39
v
vi Contents
2.9 Against the Institutional Approach 42

2.10 Expertise Defense Revisited 45
2.11 Conclusion 50
References 51
3 Erotetic Intuition: Toward a Logic of Questions, and Beyond 55

3.1 Questioning Questions 55
3.2 On Posing Questions: Preliminary Remarks on Erotetics 56
3.3 Questions, Desiderata, and Knowledge 58
3.4 Nicholas Rescher’s Approach 61
3.5 Expanding Rescher’s Approach: Desiderata and Possible
Worlds 63
3.6 Desideratum–Saturata Pairs 64
3.7 The “Logic” Behind the Emergence of Questions 68
3.8 How Do We Know What We Want to Know? 71
3.9 Intuitions: Percepts or Beliefs? 77
3.10 The Erotetic Capacity Is Not Propositional Machinery:
The Assumptions Underlying the Main Argument 80
3.11 Arguments for Assumption 1 81
3.12 The Argument for Assumption 2 86
3.13 Erotetic Intuition in Response to Erotetic Skepticism 88
3.14 The Puzzle of Directness: Stepping Out of Our Heads 91
3.15 Conclusion: What’s Next 93
References 94
4 Philosophy as Recognition: Thinking from Inside the Cave 99

4.1 Assessing the Current State of the Investigation 99
4.2 Russell and Carnap on the Troubling Nature of
Philosophizing100
4.3 The Apparent Banality of Philosophical Questions (and
Beliefs)106
4.4 The Idea of a Radical Beginning 109
4.5 “The World Is My World” Beyond Wittgenstein: The
Recognition of One’s Epistemic Position 113
4.6 Philosophical Desiderata: Toward the De-banalization
of Philosophical Utterances 121
Contents vii
4.7 Thinking from Within 124

4.8 Floating Categories 126
4.9 Machery on the Method of Cases: The Problem of
Comparability Reconsidered 132
4.10 Philosophical Cases and Two Kinds of Desiderata 136
4.11 Conclusion: Erotetic Intuition Out of Our Heads 141
References143
5 The Embodied Philosopher147

5.1 From Erotetic Intuition to Embodied Action: An
Overview147
5.2 Mind and World: A Boundary-Conceptual Perspective 149
5.3 Being-in-the-World: Rejecting the Cartesian
Dichotomy151
5.4 The Need for Embodied Erotetics 156
5.5 Cognition as a Biological Phenomenon: The Life–Mind
Continuity Thesis 157
5.6 The Niche 159
5.7 The Cognitive Niche 162
5.8 Cognitive Niche: Troubles with the Base 164
5.9 The Cognitive Niche: Introducing the Sensorimotor
Base168
5.10 Cognitive Niche Construction: A Need for an
Ontology172
5.11 Cognitive Niche Construction: In Search of a Medium 175
5.12 From Cognitive Niches to Problem Spaces: An
Introduction to Embodied Erotetics 185
5.13 Philosophical Problematization 192
5.14 The Struggle for Marginal Transgressions:
Philosophy as Form and Training 197
References204
viii Contents
6 Epilogue: Spandrels and Philosophy211

6.1 What Was This Book About? Questions and Answers 211
6.2 Toward an Anti-reductionist Naturalism About
Philosophy213
References216
Index217
1
Introduction: Philosophizing
as a Peculiar Pursuit
1.1 hat Is It Like to Philosophize? Toward

W
a Bottom-Up Meta-philosophy
Competence in philosophy can be regarded as a desirable intellectual vir-
tue. Philosophers are skilled at asking questions that usually do not come
to mind and clarifying issues that may otherwise be blurred. For example,
Michael Dummett notes that while the optician “provides us with spec-
tacles that bring all that we see into sharper focus,” the philosopher “aims
to perform a similar service in respect of our thinking about reality”
(Dummett, 1991, p. 2). As for the “continental” side, Maurice Merleau-
Ponty believes that phenomenology (therefore, arguably, philosophy as a
whole, too) “slackens the intentional threads which attach us to the world
and thus brings them to our notice” (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. xiii).
In both cases, the purpose is to elicit the fundamental, yet unnoticed,
factors shaping our worldviews. This peculiar skill, the capacity to prob-
lematize, first in general and then specifically in philosophy, is the subject
matter of this book. I shall explore its nature and functioning. This will
lead me to a certain conception of why one group of animals, mostly
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 1

K. Werner, The Embodied Philosopher, New Directions in Philosophy and Cognitive
Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79964-9_1
2 K. Werner
engaged in dealing with the needs they share with other living creatures,
thus in maintaining their precarious autonomy, is also engaged in the
pursuit of problematizing, including philosophical reflection. I mean
humans—one might add “of course” (“Humans, of course!”), but actu-
ally there is no reason to do that. In principle, this could have been any
lineage.
Now, crucially, this appeal to evolution, this talk of “living creatures,”
is by no means mere decorum, a fancy way of getting the reader inter-
ested. I mean it technically. The aim of this book is to set forth an account
of what the pursuit of problematizing in general, and the pursuit of phi-
losophizing in particular is, qua undertaken by a living system coupled
with its surroundings (this task is fulfilled in Chap. 5, following various
preparatory investigations). Living creatures do various things, not only
to survive, but also to make sense of the world they live in, as Francisco
Varela puts it, and some of them do philosophize. Why? How do they
manage it? How is this specific and quite peculiar endeavor related to the
way in which the world is experienced by them? What is it like to phi-
losophize? These are our concerns.
The concerns are meta-philosophical, yet in this book they are
approached from a perspective that might be called bottom-up, which
means that we shall try to reconstruct first how philosophizing emerges
from and finds itself within the actual experiences of conscious, self-
reflective subjects; and second, how the actual processes of maintaining
one’s precarious autonomy and one’s environmental interactions have
given rise to the peculiar intellectual endeavor called philosophy.
1.2 roubles with Philosophy: The Strategy

T
of Escaping Forward
All that said, philosophizing can also be a risky endeavor due to the highly
peculiar nature of philosophical questions and claims. Alongside the
appreciation philosophy has been shown, some ingredients of philosophy
have also been seen as nonsense. We shall examine these claims, made by
Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Rudolf Carnap, among oth-
ers. The point is not to dismiss them, but to learn from them.
In addition to the arguments put forward by these three early analytic

thinkers, mostly referring to logic and the somewhat dubious logical status
of philosophical claims, more recently a number of empirical challenges
have also emerged thanks to researchers working in the experimental phi-
losophy paradigm. Arguably, the rise of experimental philosophy (hereafter
referred as Xphi) along with newly emerging strategies of defending a more
traditional way of philosophizing rounded up under the umbrella term
“expertise defense” creates a new context in which we should search for a
more thorough understanding of philosophical competence.
My working understanding of Xphi is that it aims at eliciting the
beliefs of ordinary folks as distinguished from those held by philosophers,
but somehow referring to philosophically relevant topics, such as the
nature of knowledge or intentional action. For example, Roberts et al.
(2017) believe that “if intuitions are relevant to philosophical theories
(…), there is reason to be concerned with what non-philosophers’ intu-
itions are” (Roberts et al., 2017, p. 3270).
To get a sense of how Xphi works, imagine that you are presented with
a scenario inspired by Edmund Gettier’s famous (1963) paper, in which
an “everyman” named John believes, for example, that the capital of the
United States is located along the Potomac River and one day even voices
this belief to a friend, but is not aware of the fact that the night before, the
capital was moved from Washington D.C. to Rosslyn, Virginia, just across
the river. John’s belief is true and he is justified in holding this belief, as he
has many times visited the riverside (which is just one of various possible
justifications). But can we really say that John knows that the capital of the
United States is located along the Potomac River in this particular situa-
tion, taking into account that while his statement actually is true, he nev-
ertheless has a wrong city in mind? Well, the best thing we can do is to ask
people and check out what their intuitions about this case are, a proponent
of Xphi would say. The idea, indeed, seems reasonable.
There is a large body of literature on intuitions and how a philosopher
can rely on them (see, e.g., Weinberg, 2007; Nichols & Ulatowski, 2007;
Swain et al., 2008; Kuntz & Kuntz, 2011; Nado, 2014). My topic, how-
ever, is different: here the question is not whether or not philosophers can
rely on their intuitions (if they need to at all; see Cappelen, 2012), but
rather what makes a specific cognitive or intellectual faculty, be it
4 K. Werner
intuition or anything else, the driving force behind philosophy. Given

that there are philosophical intuitions, beliefs, problems, the question is
this: what makes them philosophical? So, in my reading Xphi does not
only challenge the way in which philosophers use intuitions; it challenges
our understanding of what philosophy is (or should be).
Although approaching the pursuit of philosophizing from the natural-
istic perspective (thus taking it as something that some animals do as part
of their dealing with their environment) may seem somewhat progres-
sive, if I can use this word, the goal of the book is in fact—to stay within
the same “political” framework—conservative. For the empirical chal-
lenge posed by Xphi seems to me the most pressing issue to be tackled if
the intellectual virtue of philosophizing is to be preserved; if philosophiz-
ing is to stay what it has been for millennia.
It just happens to be the case that upholding this conservative stance
these days requires a strategy that is very aptly articulated in the German
phrase “die Flucht nach vorn antreten” sometimes translated into English
as “taking the bull by the horns,” although the latter fails to capture the
dynamic quality of the former. Literally the former means escaping, yet not
by taking a backward route, but by taking a forward route, and thereby con-
fronting the challenge full on; thus—escaping forward (which is also con-
veyed by the Polish idiom “ucieczka do przodu”). In our context, escaping
forward means avoiding the adverse consequences of some of the newer
ideas while maintaining more traditional views (thus escaping), but doing
so by engaging in the fabric of these newer ideas, in the fabric of modern
cognitive science more generally, and therefore adopting some of them
(hence forward) for the sake of preserving what we recognize to be most
precious about the traditional approach (therefore—escaping forward).
1.3 hallenging the Institutional Approach

C
to Philosophy
The intellectual virtue attributed to the pursuit of philosophizing, as well
as the nonsense seen to also qualify some of it, has become, in a sense,
institutionalized as part of the modern division of labor in academia. This
is not bad in itself, of course, but it is one thing to impose an institutional

framework on people’s activities for practical reasons—society needs cer-
tified specialists, including philosophers—and another to define these
activities solely in terms of their contemporary, in principle changeable,
institutional framework.
Relying too much on the current institutional regime may lead one to
say that all we have to do in order to distinguish philosophers from non-
philosophers is make sure that no philosophy student, graduate, not to
mention professor participates in the group we want to target (or that we
have professionals only if we want to target them specifically). This claim
articulates what I provisionally call the institutional approach to philo-
sophical competence. As in the institutional account of the work of art (the
classic posit by George Dickie, 1974 based, at least to some extent on
Arthur Danto, 1964), here ascribing philosophical competence to a per-
son s is not justified in light of any internal features of s, but by the posi-
tion of s within certain institutions. Hence, an entity counts as a work of
art as long as it is cast in this role or appreciated by an authorized person
in accordance with the division of work in a given society (according to
Dickie, 1974; Danto’s, 1964 view is more complex in this respect), and
along the same lines, the institutional approach to philosophical compe-
tence recognizes s as philosophically competent if and only if s has gone
through institutionalized philosophy curricula, examinations, and so on,
and was then certified by people authorized to issue such certificates.
It is reasonable to assume that taking philosophy as an intellectual
virtue has been the driving force behind the mentioned institutionaliza-
tion. Otherwise, if philosophizing is inherently nonsensical, why should
anyone care about its proper placement in academia? Yet, on the other
hand, if philosophers are unable to articulate plausible claims and prove
theses about reality, as the criticism invoked above aims to show, they can
only express their opinions or beliefs. Doing philosophy consists of care-
ful analyses of the philosopher’s own personal beliefs based on specific
intuitions. Now, if we take these two ideas together, we get the institu-
tional approach in its full-fledged guise: philosophers are institutionally
certified as specialists in articulating and analyzing beliefs regarding mat-
ters that cannot be assessed scientifically. They are certified believers, so to
speak, as peculiar as it may sound.
6 K. Werner
The two components of the approach flagged above are therefore as

follows: first, the institutional approach which tacitly and somewhat
unconsciously follows the pattern championed elsewhere by Danto; sec-
ond, what may provisionally be dubbed the doxastic approach to philo-
sophical competence, making the case that philosophy consists of beliefs
pertaining to certain abstract matters such as knowledge, truth, or justice.
Both of them shall be abandoned, yet in due course.
Chapter 2 provisionally assumes the doxastic approach and seeks to
demonstrate its insufficiencies, particularly the fact that it neglects ques-
tions that the said beliefs are answers to. Drawing on this recognition,
Chap. 3 focuses on questions first, and then on the capacity to ask ques-
tions—the capacity to problematize this or that part or aspect of a ques-
tioner’s surroundings. The fixation on beliefs is not so much
criticized—after all, what’s wrong with beliefs?—but rather abandoned
for the sake of a deeper insight into the origins and mechanisms of prob-
lematization as such (Chaps. 3 and 5) and philosophical problematiza-
tion in particular (Chaps. 4 and 5). As for the institutional component,
it is in the air, so to speak, in Chaps. 2, 3 and 4, since we need to have
some provisional, default way of referring to philosophers as distinct
from people of other occupations, yet it also fades over time so that in
Chap. 5 it becomes clear that while referring to the division of labor may
serve as a useful approximation or operationalization for empirical study
or even armchair speculation, it tells us nothing insightful about who
philosophers are and what they do.
1.4 Chapter to-Go

Aside from the Introduction and Epilogue, the book is composed of four
chapters which can be read in separation. Each of these chapters to some
degree belongs to a different tradition, a different theoretical context, and
makes use of (to a large extent) different literature references. The reader
may also agree with the conclusions of one chapter but reject the conclu-
sions of the others. The order of the chapters is determined by the logic
of my argumentation, the subsequent steps of the investigation as I
designed it, but in my subjective assessment it also reflects a certain
hierarchy of acceptability. So Chap. 2 features certain proposals that

could appeal to a wider group, especially to analytic philosophers, who
may not necessarily be eager to embrace the intuition talk of Chap. 3.
Moreover, Chap. 4 draws on a very obscure, rather old and abandoned
project called the philosophy of radical beginning, following Husserl and
Carnap (actually also Plato, Descartes, and many others), whose appeal
may even be smaller. Finally, Chap. 5 brings up the conceptual frame-
work being developed in most contemporary philosophy of biology and
philosophy of cognitive science—referred to as embodied cognition,
enactivism, among many other labels. Therefore, accepting the context in
which I lay out my final conclusions is in fact wholly independent of
what the reader’s reaction to Chaps. 2, 3, or 4 might have been.
This way of structuring the book is somewhat odd, perhaps, for it may
give the impression of a kind of chapter-to-go system in which, as with
coffee to-go, you don’t have to go inside, thus really engage in anything.
But that is not accidental. The book was designed this way. It enables the
reader to take a posit and develop it further in a direction of their choos-
ing without necessarily buying the whole story. I myself am not sure how
it will play out, but I also believe that it is worth giving it a chance espe-
cially in a time when different philosophical parties rarely refer to one
another. For example, the two most consequential reformist paradigms in
contemporary philosophy (in my assessment)—embodied cognition and
experimental philosophy—maintain no connection whatsoever.
In sum, the book elaborates on the following themes:
• Comparability of beliefs. In Chap. 2, I argue that in principle beliefs are

answers to specific questions. Sometimes this is apparent, when, for
example, someone says something like “I believe that 1505 was the
year Poland adopted the Nihil novi constitution, not the 3rd of May
Constitution.” However, the latter indicates not a particular question,
but a range of possible questions including “Was it the Nihil novi con-
stitution or the 3rd of May Constitution that was signed in 1505 by
the Polish parliament?” or “There was a pivotal law written in Poland
in 1505, was it the 3rd of May Constitution?” As we can see, even
beliefs that unveil some of the content of the queries they answer still
remain somewhat undetermined. And what of beliefs that don’t even
8 K. Werner
do as much? I argue in Chap. 2, based on various sources, that beliefs

should be taken together with the questions they reply to; the latter
being represented by sets of alternative replies called contrastive alter-
natives. Two beliefs are comparable if their contrastive alternatives
have common elements. Comparability is a matter of degree. As for
the philosophical beliefs expressed by a person acting in the capacity of
a philosopher (qua philosopher—expressions like these will also be
targeted in Chap. 2) and beliefs that may seem related to philosophy
on the surface but are articulated by another person acting in a differ-
ent capacity (who may be the same person in some cases), they can be
juxtaposed only if their comparability has been proven first.
• Erotetic intuition. Having established that beliefs should be considered
together with the questions they answer, more attention shall be given
to questions themselves and how they come about in the first place. In
Chap. 3, I examine various theories concerning questions. It turns out
that both questions and answers are to some degree semantically unde-
termined when approached separately, and should therefore be consid-
ered together as parts of larger structures composed of desiderata
(requests for information) and what I propose to refer to as saturata
(information that answers the request). I then argue in Chap. 3 that it
is impossible to account for all desideratum-saturata pairs in terms of
instructions and logical operations on propositions. If the whole struc-
ture of knowledge built on answers to specific requests for information
is supposed to refer to more than the realm of mental representations,
we need to postulate a direct erotetic link with our surroundings. In
this context I put forward the provisional idea of erotetic intuition: the
intuitive capacity to problematize, to invite certain things, metaphori-
cally speaking, to present themselves qua problems. Erotetic intuition,
however, is a black box—at this level we have no vocabulary to provide
a model of it and therefore intuition talk is supposed to cover our
ignorance while at the same time enabling us to at least articulate some
introductory insights and move on in the hope of finding a more apt
conceptual framework along the way.
• Competence in philosophy. Once we have a provisional way of talking
about the capacity to problematize—the erotetic intuition talk—we
can ask what is special about the acts of problematization pursued by
philosophers. I try to answer this question in Chap. 4, to the extent to

which it is possible at all given such limited space. Yet, crucially I don’t
start with a ready-made list of utterances that are usually assumed to
express a philosophical question of belief. Instead, I ask what actually
distinguishes a philosophical act of questioning or problematizing
from other such acts, independently of how this act is subsequently
articulated and of whether the act is pursued by a professional philoso-
pher. I argue in Chap. 4 that what makes philosophical problematiza-
tions special is what I call the recognition of one’s epistemic position.
From the first-person perspective, this means that I become aware that
the whole manifest image of the world, thus the world as I know it, as
I perceive it, is a certain presentation constrained by my cognitive
capacities and location. In other words, I discover the seemingly trivial
“fact” that not only am I in the world, as a rock or a glass of water are,
but also the world is a certain way for me—something that cannot be
said about the rock or water. Partial recognitions of this kind are likely
elements of everyday life and they are certainly familiar to cognitive
psychologists and other researchers studying mechanisms of percep-
tion, categorization, context dependence, and so on. What is special
about philosophy, however, is that it strives to take this recognition to
the extreme and draw conclusions from the awareness that basically all
that we encounter and do, including the most familiar things on the
one hand and the most sophisticated scientific models on the other, is
in one way or another adapted to our cognitive fit. If that is so, there
emerges the boundary question about the status of this overall
presentation qua presentation: what is its connection to a hypothetical
reality in itself and others. These are not, and cannot be, scientific
questions, but we must determine whether they are sensible in the first
place. Chapter 4 provides an account of their role, to be developed
further in Chap. 5.
• The embodied pursuit of problematization. Finally, given that we cannot
account for our general erotetic capacity to problematize, and to prob-
lematize philosophically in particular, using standard meta-philosophical
methods and standard methods of analyzing questions, I turn, in Chap.
5, in a somewhat less familiar direction. By “less familiar” I mean that
it is little familiar to those participating in the debate on the status of
10 K. Werner
philosophy, the relationship between armchair and experimental phi-

losophy, and so on. Outside of these circles, the conceptual framework
I lay out is currently becoming more and more popular and widely
recognized. I am referring to the cluster of theories rounded up by the
umbrella term embodied cognition or enactivism. In order to avoid sec-
tarian issues as to whether my posit fits this newly emerging paradigm
in the philosophy of cognitive science, and also because I adopt a num-
ber of ideas from the philosophy of biology (which maintains loose
links with embodied cognition), I have decided to use the label “bio-
logical externalism.” I build my theoretical construction on several pos-
its taken from the above-mentioned areas, most importantly: the
concept of autonomy and the autonomous system; the life–mind con-
tinuity thesis; niche construction theory; the concept of the cognitive
niche; finally—and crucially—the sensorimotor invariants model.
Chapter 5 provides a simple functional model of cognitive niche con-
struction and unpacks the pursuit of problematization in this context.
Problematization is taken as a strictly biological phenomenon: the
capacity to extract information from relatively stable and remotely pre-
dictable parts of the environment that initially—thus prior to prob-
lematization—do not convey any information. I argue that while the
cognizer, thought of as a living creature, has several strategies of dealing
with uncertainty in its environment—which is a widely held view in
studies of cognition—the cognizer also needs a cognitive capacity
designed to deal with too much certainty. This is the role of problemati-
zation. Within this context I also unpack philosophical problematiza-
tion which, as I see it, is the pursuit of problematization in pure form,
and—in a sense—a natural consequence (a kind of completion) of the
evolution of our problematizing skills.
***
Acknowledgments This book owes so much to so many people I have met

along my way that it would be a daunting task to produce a comprehensive list
of names. First of all, I would like to thank my family—my wife and daughter,
and my mom—for their patience, presence, and understanding. I am also grate-
ful to my friends who are always there, open to my concerns. Thank you.
Philosophy is something that you really have to learn from other people. Here
the first person I need to thank is Jerzy Perzanowski, whom I knew just for two
or three years before he passed away in 2009, but it was enough to reset my
entire thinking about philosophy. Perzanowski is one of the greatest thinkers of
our times in the area of formal ontology and applications of logic to philosophy
in the first place, but what I remember most is his incredibly broad approach,
capable of taking in the whole intellectual tradition in a single synthetizing act
of the intellect.
I would like to thank my colleagues, particularly but not exclusively those
from the University of Warsaw, where I teach now and at Jagiellonian University,
where I received my original training in philosophy. I am especially grateful to
Józef Bremer, Katarzyna Paprzycka-Hausman, Mieszko Tałasiewicz, and Janusz
Sytnik-Czetwertyński, who helped me at various stages of my career.
All the mixed and mingled topics touched upon in this book reflect all of my
explorations over the last few years in various areas of philosophy, sometimes
clearly related to one another and sometimes maintaining a more intricate con-
nection. To list just two that have been most consequential, when it comes to
ontology, my gratitude goes especially to Achille Varzi. As for my venture into
the area of philosophy of biology, I am especially indebted to Colin Allen.
This book would not be possible without the help of Dominika Gajewska,
whose hard work on correcting my English over the course of many years must
have been a difficult task, to say the least.
Last but certainly not least, I want to thank the anonymous reviewers of this
book and the editors from Palgrave Macmillan for their hard work and
encouragement.
The preparation and writing of this book was generously supported by two
grants from the Polish National Science Center (Narodowe Centrum Nauki):
grant no 2016/20/S/HS1/00046. (2016–2019) and grant no 2019/33/B/
HS1/01764 (2020–2023).
It should also be noted that parts of Chap. 4 have already been published in
Werner (2020).
References
Cappelen, H. (2012). Philosophy Without Intuitions. Oxford University Press.
Danto, A. (1964). The Artworld. Journal of Philosophy, LXI, 571–584.
Dickie, G. (1974). Art and the Aesthetic: An Institutional Analysis. Cornell
University Press.
12 K. Werner
Dummett, M. (1991). The Logical Basis of Metaphysics. Harvard University Press.

Gettier, E. (1963). Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? Analysis, 23, 121–123.
Kuntz, J. R., & Kuntz, J. R. C. (2011). Surveying Philosophers About
Philosophical Intuition. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 2, 643–665.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945/1962). Phénoménologie de la perception. Available in
English: Phenomenology of Perception (C. Smith, Trans.). Routledge &
Kegan Paul.
Nado, J. (2014). Philosophical expertise. Philosophy Compass, 9, 631–641.
Nichols, S., & Ulatowski, J. (2007). Intuitions and Individual Differences: The
Knobe Effect Revisited. Mind & Language, 22(4), 346–365.
Roberts, P., Andow, J., & Schmitdtke, K. A. (2017). Lay Intuitions about
Epistemic Normativity. Synthese, 195, 3267–3287. https://doi.org/10.1007/
s11229-017-1371-6
Swain, S., Alexander, J., & Weinberg, J. (2008). The Instability of Philosophical
Intuitions: Running Hot and Cold on Truetemp. Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, 76(1), 138–155.
Weinberg, J. (2007). How to Challenge Intuitions Empirically Without Risking
Skepticism. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 31, 318–343.
Werner, K. (2020). Philosophical Intuition Is the Capacity to Recognize one’s
Epistemic Position. An Old-Fashion Approach Based on Russell, Carnap,
Wittgenstein, and Husserl. Philosophia, 48, 1725–1751.
2
Questioning the Comparability
of (Philosophical) Beliefs
2.1 The Puzzle of Comparability

Traditional philosophical analyses based on thought experiments are a
rich resource for questionnaires. It is tempting to find out what people
really think about scenarios like those proposed by Gettier (1963), who
challenged the philosopher’s understanding of propositional knowledge,
or Putnam’s (1981) brain in the vat story. Experimental philosophy
(Xphi) seeks to satisfy this temptation (see Woolfolk, 2013; Andow,
2016; Baz, 2017 when it comes to Xphi’s methodology). It is fair to say
that in most cases Xphi tries to elucidate the intuitive beliefs of ordinary
folks (taking into account social, cultural, and other variations) as distin-
guished from those of philosophers, yet referring to philosophically rele-
vant concepts or issues, for example, knowledge (Beebe, 2012; Buckwalter,
2010, 2012; Starmans & Friedman, 2012; Buckwalter & Schaffer, 2015;
Machery et al., 2015; Roberts et al., 2017), skepticism (Nichols et al.,
2003), or intentional actions (Knobe, 2003).
For the sake of the argument, I will provisionally assume that folks
may have intuitive beliefs that somehow pertain to philosophically
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 13

K. Werner, The Embodied Philosopher, New Directions in Philosophy and Cognitive
Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79964-9_2
14 K. Werner
relevant issues. The chapter therefore speaks of the intuitive, philosophi-

cally relevant beliefs of laypeople—in short folk beliefs or ordinary beliefs.
It is by no means clear—and this issue is the subject proper of this
chapter—whether folk beliefs are in fact comparable to the beliefs of phi-
losophers. I do not mean the question of whether the latter are more
elaborate or thought through, nor whether the former are interesting to a
professional philosopher. I mean the puzzle of whether it is correct to
compare them.
What the comparison at stake, as well as its legitimacy, amounts to is
going to be unpacked in more technical terms later on in this chapter. For
now, let me illustrate the issue by an example from a non-philosophical
area. Suppose I say at a public meeting that I prefer Wagner to disco but
the audience does not hear the “to disco” part because the microphone
gets broken. Subsequently, someone from the audience lashes out against
me, expressing their disdain toward Wagner’s pompous style and in turn
praising Bach’s or Chopin’s taste and self-restraint. It seems that our
beliefs are in disagreement, while in fact they invoke completely different
frames of reference or different contrasts, as Jonathan Schaffer (2007)
would say. We therefore have Wagner vs. disco on the one hand, and
Wagner vs. Bach on the other. This renders our beliefs incomparable due
to accidental causes (the broken microphone) despite the fact that they
may otherwise seem comparable. Within a proper frame of reference, I
would be happy to affirm the superiority of Bach, and my “opponent”
could also concede that, after all, despite Wagner’s pompous style, it still
makes more sense to listen to Wagner than to disco.
Someone might say that what the above scenario illustrates is simply a
conversational misunderstanding, but, in my view, it goes much deeper
than that, although admittedly the example is quite imperfect. I argue
that the dissonance described above pertains to the structure of beliefs
which should not be taken as isolated utterances, but as parts of larger
compounds such as “I believe that it is good to listen to Wagner qua an
answer to the question of whether people should listen to Wagner or
disco” and “the man from the audience believes that it is good to listen to
Bach qua an answer to the question of whether people should listen to
Wagner or Bach.” The two beliefs are not incongruous, but rather
incomparable due to the fact that they stand as constituents of two entirely
different alternatives.
I shall base my argumentation on the following two theoretical posits
drawn from two entirely different contexts: firstly, on Kit Fine’s (1982)
theory of embodiment which makes deliberative use of “qua,” a tradi-
tional logical operator responsible for introducing or unveiling contexts,
contrasts, or aspects; and secondly, on the notion of contrastive knowl-
edge developed by Schaffer (2007), who makes the case that our knowl-
edge is populated by propositions (here beliefs) relative to fixed questions,
rather than isolated propositions on their own.
Therefore, the lesson we need to take away from these introductory
considerations is that when seeking to elucidate the status of philosophi-
cal competence, we need to begin by refocusing our attention—from
beliefs per se to the questions they answer. But are there any specifically
philosophical questions? From a different angle: are any philosophical
questions possible? The latter is the core puzzle which we shall arrive at in
Chaps. 4 and 5.
2.2 omparability in Practice: Some

C
Initial Concerns
The question of comparability should be distinguished from the question
of whether laypeople are competent enough to take a position on philo-
sophical issues, as well as whether philosophers are skilled enough to
avoid the usual cognitive biases such as the ordering effect (Schwitzgebel
& Cushman, 2012) and framing effects (Tobia et al., 2013).
The issue of comparability should also be distinguished from the ques-
tion of whether or not folks ascribe the same meanings to the terms used
by philosophers, such as “knowledge” and “intentionality” (I shall address
this topic briefly).
One may assume either that the two groups, that is, ordinary people
and philosophers, have comparable beliefs or that they have incompara-
ble beliefs. I shall refer to the first claim as the comparability thesis, and
to the second as the incomparability thesis. The comparability thesis is
16 K. Werner
virtually never formulated explicitly as a posit that would necessitate sep-

arate debate. Rather, it is assumed in experimental settings, hypotheses as
well as discussions of Xphi. For example, Kuntz and Kuntz state that
“intuitions of the folk are inconsistent with the published intuition-data
of professional philosophers” (Kuntz & Kuntz, 2011, p. 644). However,
it is not clear what the alleged inconsistency means. Recall the claims
about Wagner, Bach, and disco invoked earlier—they seem inconsistent,
but in fact they are not: they are incomparable, which means that they
cannot be inconsistent. So, by affirming inconsistency, Kuntz and Kuntz
(2011) implicitly affirm comparability. In the same spirit, Starmans and
Friedman (2012) point out that while we still know very little about the
epistemic attitudes of the folk, philosophers are, so far, the best-studied
species when it comes to people’s attitudes to knowledge. They write that
“we do know quite a bit about how one group of people think about
knowledge” (Starmans & Friedman, 2012, p. 273), by which they mean
philosophers, who “have inquired into the nature of knowledge for mil-
lennia” (ibid.). The assumption seems to be that what philosophers “think
about knowledge” can be confronted with what others “think about
knowledge,” and thus that this juxtaposition is itself correct. But what
does it mean to think about knowledge? Does it mean the same thing for
both groups? When it comes to philosophers, we know what this or that
philosopher claims with respect to knowledge in abstracto, thus as part of
a theory. However, aside from the specific issue of knowledge, thus more
broadly, is there any reason to believe that this kind of “thinking,” that is,
these theoretical claims, have anything to do with what non-philosophers
think, state, and do?
Let us deal with one example in greater detail, namely the experiment
ran by Nichols et al. (2003) which became a classic in the field of Xphi.
The participants were presented with the story, based roughly on Putnam
(1981), about George and Omar, who are roommates and enjoy having
philosophical discussions. One night Omar argues:
At some point in time, by, like, the year 2300, the medical and computer
sciences will be able to simulate the real world very convincingly (…) so
that the brain has experiences exactly as if it were a real person walking
around in a real world, talking to other people, and so on. And so the brain
would believe it was a real person walking around in a real world, etc.,
except that it would be wrong (…). And here’s the thing: how could you
ever tell that it isn’t really the year 2300 now, and that you’re not really a
virtual-reality brain? If you were a virtual-reality brain, after all, everything
would look and feel exactly the same to you as it does now! (Nichols et al.,
2003/2011, p. 240)
After reading the vignette, the participants were asked to give their
assessment of George’s epistemic position and to decide whether he
REALLY KNOWS or ONLY BELIEVES that he is a real person. It
turned out that the “low philosophy” group, that is, participants lacking
philosophical competence (measured as the function of how many phi-
losophy courses they had taken), were more likely to choose REALLY
KNOWS (about 50 percent picked this option) than the group dubbed
“high philosophy” (only about 20 percent, while about 80 percent picked
ONLY BELIEVES).
Clearly, the answers provided by the “low philosophers” were targeted
along the very same lines as those given by the “high philosophers,”
meaning that the two groups of answers are such that, according to
Nichols et al. (2003), it makes sense to confront them and say something
like “look, the ‘high philosophers’ claim this, whereas the ‘low philoso-
phers’ claim that.”
Someone might argue that the confrontation in question makes sense
only if the two groups ascribe the same meanings to “REALLY KNOWS”
and “ONLY BELIEVES,” which is doubtful, taking into account pre-
cisely the differences in rates of philosophical study: what philosophers
mean by “REALLY KNOWS” and “ONLY BELIEVES” is loaded with
content that is not familiar to folk, and this fact amounts not only to a
difference in the degree of both groups’ familiarity with the said phrases,
but to the assignment of two genuinely different meanings to the phrases
in question.
Yet, as noted earlier, questioning comparability differs from the argu-
ment pertaining to alleged differences in meaning. Note that two (or
more) philosophers may also really differ when it comes to the meaning
they ascribe to “REALLY KNOWS” and “ONLY BELIEVES,” if, for
example, they subscribe to different philosophical traditions (e.g., one of
18 K. Werner
them considers themselves a follower of Russell, while the other adheres

to the legacy of Hegel and Bradley). But does it mean that they ascribe
two (or more) different meanings to the said phrases? If they did, it would
make philosophical debates virtually impossible.
Consider the following elaboration of the original case. A simplified
map of beliefs or attitudes can look as follows: Strong account of knowl-
edge (S) answers “ONLY BELIEVES” to the Putnamian story of George
and Omar, which means that there are certain demanding standards that
have to be satisfied by any belief if it is to be deemed knowledge, and our
ordinary beliefs frequently do not stand up to them (this is the Cartesian
tradition, broadly construed). Weak account of knowledge (W) denies S
and says “REALLY KNOWS,” meaning, perhaps, that knowledge is a
more practical concern, and therefore, a huge group of everyday beliefs
count as knowledge. People who are philosophically competent are there-
fore, according to Nichols et al. (2003), more likely to choose S than W,
while folks prefer W.
Now, imagine a person, let us call her Jane, who starts from W. She is
naive, meaning that she lacks philosophical competence. Let’s then mark
her naivety by means of the label “Wn” which is supposed to convey the
message that Jane is not committed to any stronger standards of knowl-
edge simply because she has never reflected on the topic. But suppose
that as result of studying Descartes and other thinkers she transfers to S
which may likely be said to be opposed to Wn. Let us also make clear that
S is a philosophical position by marking it “Sp”. Now, Jane can take a step
forward in her philosophical education and become aware of a variety of
problems that arise in connection with such a strong epistemic attitude,
and finally, after some lectures she may (yet does not have to, of course)
end up being influenced, say, by James, Wittgenstein, Merleau-Ponty or
Putnam to the effect that she comes back to W. But this time she has a
sophisticated explanation for this shift. Namely, she concludes, for exam-
ple, that we must not purport to adopt a God’s Eye perspective, as Putnam
(1987) called it; that is, we must not cast ourselves in the role of external
viewers of worldly goings-on, since such a vantage point is not accessible
to us. Therefore, the only thing we can do is sympathize with the charac-
ters from the scenario presented by Nichols et al. (2003), and take their
perspective. Hence—Jane continues—since all the characters populating
such stories are fated to have only limited access to information, we must
stick to W if anyone is supposed to know anything. Otherwise—Jane’s
argument concludes—“REALLY KNOWS” refers to some extramun-
dane ideal, useless in real-life situations and even in science which is also
unable to reach this extramundane perspective (noteworthily, we shall go
back to the issue raised by our fictional Jane in Chap. 4). So, Jane ends up
holding W, but a philosophically refined version of it, so to speak; hence
she ends up with Wp, to use the same convention.
What happens between Wn and Sp, and then between Sp and Wp?
Finally, what is the difference between Wn and Wp? It seems that there
must be a difference between the weak epistemic expectations of some-
one who has never reflected on knowledge (Wn), and the weak epistemic
expectations of someone who has gone through the whole history of phi-
losophy and decides to revert to the everyday naive perspective (e.g., in
step with Merleau-Ponty’s, 1962 postulate). Yet, Wn and Wp come up in
the guise of identical answers when we look through the standard tests
used by Nichols et al. (2003).
If the difference between Wn and Wp boils down to a difference of the
meanings attributed to “REALLY KNOWS” and “ONLY BELIEVES,”
then why are we not equally prone to say that Sp and Wp also differ with
respect to the meanings of the two phrases? After all, if the former employs
the God’s Eye perspective and the latter rejects it, there appears to be a
major difference between the meanings Sp and Wp attribute to “KNOWS”
and “BELIEVES.”
In my view, as I shall demonstrate below, drawing on Schaffer’s (2007)
account of contrastive knowledge, Sp and Wp place both answers “REALLY
KNOWS” and “ONLY BELIEVES” in, ceteris paribus, the same con-
trasts, which makes them comparable, and which may not be the case
when it comes to Wn. The contrast at stake can be represented as a set of
alternative answers to a given question. Hence, in short, Sp and Wp differ
as providers of answers to the same set of questions, but they do not differ
when it comes to the questions as such. Meanwhile, arguably, Wn—as
understood by a non-philosopher—may in fact be answering a different
question.
I shall develop the above comparability/incomparability issue in greater
detail in the next two sections and in Chap. 3.
20 K. Werner
2.3 xpertise Defense, Reflection Defense,

E
and the Like
The experiment sketched out above is one of several studies dedicated to
making the case that laypeople may have very different intuitive beliefs
with regard to philosophically relevant issues; that the beliefs may vary
across cultures, socioeconomic status, education, or gender (see Machery,
2017 for a useful summary of the state of the art). Therefore, they argue,
it is doubtful whether professional philosophers can rise above all of these
individual constraints and develop a better grasp of the issues in question.
Roughly, this is the position referred to in the literature as the negative
program of Xphi, which argues against attributing any kind of special
status to traditional “armchair” elaborations of philosophical intuitions.
Now, a specific denial of the comparability thesis has been formulated
in reaction to the negative program. It has come to the fore in the guise
of the so-called expertise defense (see Williamson, 2007, 2011; Ludwig,
2007). Different versions of it “contrast the intuitions at play in philo-
sophical discourse with the quick, spontaneous responses provided by
non-philosophers to experimental surveys” (Egler & Ross, 2018, p. 3,
preprint). However, speaking of “contrast” suggests that the two groups
of intuitive beliefs are somehow of the same kind, and thus that the dif-
ference between them boils down to the fact that the beliefs of philoso-
phers are based, for example, on better “reflective practices” (Kauppinen,
2007). Here expertise defense falls in line with the comparability thesis
laid down in Xphi (for more on the expertise defense see, e.g., Rini, 2015).
However, expertise defense can also be seen in the following way:
The surveys conducted by experimental philosophers have (…) employed

non-philosophers as subjects, but, it is claimed, the intuitions of such per-
sons are irrelevant to philosophical theorizing. (Nado, 2014, p. 632)
Actually, there are some internal differences within the broader tent of
expertise defenders, aptly elaborated on by Machery, 2017, but let us
work with a somewhat simplified story here. This way or another, the
defenders cited by Nado (2014) try to make the case that the answers
given by folks are irrelevant to the philosophical endeavor proper; in

other words, that either the comparison at stake is merely uninteresting
(weak reading), yet correct, or that the comparison can never be the case
(strong reading). So, while proponents of Xphi, especially practitioners of
the negative program, assume that the comparability thesis applies uni-
versally, expertise defenders, at least in the more interesting strong ver-
sion, lean in the exact opposite direction, claiming that comparability is
never the case, thus that it should be universally denied.
However, Xphi as well as its critics seems to forgo more detailed scru-
tiny of what the said comparison as such could be, that is, what condi-
tions would have to be satisfied to make such a comparison possible.
Thus, I draw on the diagnosis that both Xphi and the expertise defense
lack a more scrupulous conceptual analysis of the issue of comparability.
I wish to fill this gap at least in part, which shall serve as a stepping stone
for further discussion of the issue of questions and the capacity to
problematize.
2.4 Different Embodiments of the Subject

As I already mentioned, I shall employ two theoretical posits. The first
one is Fine’s (1982) theory of embodiment; the second is Schaffer’s
(2007) theory of contrastive knowledge. I will start with Fine’s proposal.
Here is its central idea:
Given any object x and description (property) φ possessed by x, we shall

suppose there is a new object x qua φ or x under the description φ. Thus if x
is Socrates and φ the property of being a philosopher, then the new object
is Socrates qua philosopher (…).
Given an object x qua φ, we shall call x the basis and φ the gloss. The
resulting object itself will be called a qua object, and the operation by which
it is formed glossing.
One should not identify a qua object with its basis—Socrates qua phi-
losopher with Socrates (…). Rather, the qua object should be regarded as
some sort of amalgam of the given object and the property, like the given
object but wearing the property on its face. (Fine, 1982, p. 100)
22 K. Werner
The philosophical challenge that the notion of qua object is originally

designed to take on has to do, firstly, with the issue of matter and form,
thus with whether an object can be identified with its matter; and, sec-
ondly, with the fact that we can attribute different, sometimes contradic-
tory properties or descriptions to seemingly one and the same thing or
person (for more on “qua” see Bäck, 1996; Poli, 1999; Werner, 2020). To
illustrate the latter claim, take Donald Trump the businessman who can
invest in Russia and Donald Trump the president who can’t. When we
approach the topic in terms of Fine’s qua objects we have Trump qua
president of the United States and Trump qua businessman, and while it is
perfectly fine for the latter to launch a construction project in Moscow, it
is definitely not an option for the former. So, we have two different
embodiments of one man and his actions. And these two “persons” can
be in a real conflict of interest although they are based in the same living
individual.
Several principles govern qua objects according to Fine, determining
their identity and the inheritance of properties by qua objects from their
bases, but not vice versa.1 Fine needs the qua object to unpack and solve
the ontological puzzle of identity, whereas I am more interested in how
different properties/descriptions or capacities can be attributed to what
seems to be one and the same thing via a plurality of qua objects it serves
as the basis for. The issue I wish to explore, however, does not pertain to
cases in which the basis is ascribed opposite or contradictory properties
under different aspects, for example, John qua economist is rational but
John qua politician is irrational. Instead, I shall draw attention to the fact
that different qua objects can place their common basis in different
“spaces,” as it were, as already alluded to in the Trump example, to the
effect that the ascribed properties/descriptions do not merely “get along”
badly (e.g., “rational” and “irrational”), but rather are of different types.
For example, when I say that “Donald Trump qua homo sapiens belongs
to the class of mammals” and “Donald Trump qua president is the head
of the executive branch of the US government” I place Mr. Trump inside
two in principle different frames of reference, or within two entirely dif-
ferent conceptual frameworks: one is the natural-kind classification of
species and classes of animals; the other is the logical space established by
the American constitution. Now, if someone would hold that Trump qua
president is a mammal, this would be, I argue, incorrect despite the fact
that Trump is president, he is a mammal, and moreover, to my knowl-
edge, all presidents have been mammals so far. Admittedly, someone
might argue that the proposition is true, period: if Trump belongs to the
group of presidents (true), and the latter group is a subset of a larger
group of mammals (true), then “Trump qua president is a mammal” is
true. However, it may also be considered (which is the reading I support)
neither true nor false, but a nonsensical utterance. I propose that the
nonsense is due to the placement of Donald Trump inside two in princi-
ple different segments of the space of reasons, so to speak.
Now, once the conceptual scaffolding taken from Fine’s theory of
embodiment has been provisionally set up, we can make our first attempt
to characterize comparability in the relevant terms. Namely:
(1) Two beliefs p1 and p2 held by the subject s are comparable if there is
such φ that s qua φ believes that p1 and s qua φ believes that p2.
This means that two beliefs are comparable if they can be attributed to
a subject taken in the same capacity, thus to a single qua object based on
the subject. This basic intuition could be further developed so that we
have different subjects and—ceteris paribus—identical or analogous
glosses, which would make their views comparable.
That said, one way of arguing against the comparability thesis referring
to the philosophers vs. non-philosophers controversy in terms of qua objects
could be to say that there is a fundamental logical difference between
attributing beliefs to the subject in her capacity of being a philosopher
and attributing beliefs to the subject (even the same subject) in her capac-
ity of being a non-philosopher. Going back to the example rolled out
above, we can have:
(2) Jane qua non-philosopher holds W (which is referred to as Wn in

this case)
(3) Jane qua philosopher holds S (which is referred to as Sp)
(4) Jane qua philosopher holds W (which is referred to as Wp in this case)
24 K. Werner
In this account, the difference between Wn and Wp boils down to the

difference between the two qua objects standing in the role of the believer
in (2) and (4).
Now, I propose that, first, the comparability thesis reformulated in this
context is the claim that the very same truth conditions apply to (2) and
(4) except for the fact that in (4) Jane must be a philosopher, and in (2)
she must be a non-philosopher. In other words, according to the compa-
rability thesis so rendered, the truth conditions do not change fundamen-
tally. Suppose that c1, c2,…, cn are the truth conditions of (4) and c1 =
“Jane is a philosopher.” The comparability thesis here holds that if we
substitute “qua philosopher” with “qua non-philosopher,” c1 shall be
replaced with ~c1 = “Jane is not a philosopher” while the conditions c2, …,
cn stay exactly the same.
The strong incomparability denies the latter point. A suggestion of this
kind has been explicitly flagged by Regina Rini:
It is problematic to compare philosophers and non-philosophers directly

on these tasks, because the two groups do not engage with the stimuli in
the same way. For non-philosopher subjects, the cases and principles
employed are likely to be quite unfamiliar; intuitive judgments and reason-
ing about them are likely to be experienced as relatively novel cognitive
projects. But for philosophers, this is quite unlikely to be true. The case-
types and principles employed as stimuli are well-known to philosophers.
Philosophers will have memories of previously encountering the stimuli,
and how they have responded in the past. So when philosophers react to
these stimuli, they are doing something different from non-philosopher
subjects, a different sort of cognitive task. (Rini, 2015, p. 44)
Therefore, the strong incomparability thesis would insist that the “qua
philosopher” gloss signifies a different attitude toward judgments, beliefs,
or “cognitive projects,” as Rini (2015) puts it. The “qua philosopher”
gloss, therefore, implies that “x qua philosopher believes that p” has spe-
cific truth conditions that are fundamentally different from the truth
conditions attributable to “x qua non-philosopher believes that p.”
I will argue in the next section that there is a plausible idea laid down
in the expertise defense so unrolled, but unfortunately it is hardly
acceptable in its present form. This is because both the comparability

thesis endorsed by Xphi and the incomparability thesis spelled out above
share the same two flaws:
• They take the philosopher vs. non-philosopher distinction as mutually

exclusive, which may not be the case.
• Both sides of the debate, each one in its own manner, do not suffi-
ciently appreciate the possible differences between grades or levels of
scrutiny on the side of non-philosophers: while the expertise defense
considers all the beliefs related to philosophically relevant issues held
by non-philosophers as not profound enough, Xphi in some sense fol-
lows the same pattern and gathers all of these beliefs under the single
umbrella term “folk.”
2.5 Against the Philosophers vs.

Non-philosophers Dichotomy
To begin with, even if we assume that it is perfectly clear who a philoso-
pher is, nothing follows from that about who a non-philosopher could
be, aside from the conclusion that it must be somebody else: a mathema-
tician, a policeman, an artist, or a miner, just to list some professions.
However, note one subtle issue: there is nothing logically wrong with
being a philosopher and a miner, while it seems, at least at face value, that
one can no longer be a non-philosopher once one starts to be a philoso-
pher (unless some additional conditions apply). This dichotomous
account raises questions like why are philosophers frequently equally
biased in their spontaneous accounts of philosophically relevant situa-
tions as non-philosophers, which is taken as a plausible problem and has
recently been empirically investigated, for example, by Schwitzgebel and
Cushman (2015). In the same spirit, Schwitzgebel (2009) and
Schwitzgebel and Rust (2016) found “ethicists neither more nor less
likely than other professors to act in accord with their expressed moral
attitudes” (Schwitzgebel & Rust, 2016, p. 225). This statement suggests
26 K. Werner
that once one counts as a philosopher/ethicist, one does not count as an

ordinary agent any more, which is not at all obvious.
Hence, answering the questionnaire in the capacity of a philosopher
implies, according to the reading implicitly employed by many Xphi
researchers as well as some critics of Xphi, that one does not answer the
questionnaire in the capacity of a non-philosopher, and vice versa.
Meanwhile, I would hypothesize that if we took a miner who later became
a philosopher, and asked him whether he knows that it is safe to go under-
ground in such and such conditions, he would still answer this question
qua miner. It is clear that these two glosses, namely “qua miner” and “qua
philosopher,” place the mentioned individual in two completely different
situations or environments. And precisely because they do so, it makes
little sense to set them in opposition. They can be at play simultaneously,
depending on the context.
Going back to Jane’s story, I propose that a better way of unpacking it
distinguishes between her capacity as a philosopher, acquired by means of
plunging into the works of Plato or Wittgenstein, and her capacity as a
person or, perhaps even better, as an agent, acquired in the course of onto-
genesis, upbringing, and social interactions. And here, too, as in the
miner case, we have two different locations of Jane which she can main-
tain simultaneously: qua agent she is placed in her life-world, full of per-
ceived things, practical goals, and so on. Meanwhile, qua philosopher, she
is placed in the logical space of concepts, problems, arguments, and theo-
ries developed over the centuries by the group conventionally labeled
“philosophers.” This distinction also seems natural in light of some exper-
imental results:
While there have been relatively few studies conducted on professional

philosophers, there is some empirical precedence supporting another kind
of gap between philosophers’ conceptions and their actual practices.
(Buckwalter, 2012, p. 519)
Buckwalter is referring to the already mentioned studies by Schwitzgebel

and collaborators, yet I would argue that there is no reason to target the
gap between what philosophers think and what they do necessarily as a
particular flaw they have (again, it depends on context—it may be seen
as a flaw in particular circumstances). Rather, it is an indication of the

fact that one and the same person can function—by means of different
glosses, thus as the base of many qua objects—in various frames of refer-
ence or in many different capacities. Being a philosopher does not mean
that one cannot answer a question in a different capacity, not to mention
acting in a different capacity.
Crucially, even if a person, for example, Jane in the above story, can
only answer a particular question at a given moment in just one capacity,
it seems to still be possible for her to “wear” the two glosses, that is, “qua
philosopher” and “qua person/agent” on her face interchangeably to the
effect that Jane qua philosopher holds Sp (as she did for a moment in the
story) and Jane qua agent at the same time still holds Wn. In such a case,
the gap mentioned by Buckwalter would not boil down to failed implica-
tion from philosophical expertise to everyday practice, but—as a gap,
indeed—it would mean that there may be no link whatsoever between
these two areas.
Therefore, it seems that the gloss “qua non-philosopher” is a somewhat
loose umbrella term, and instead of being opposed to this umbrella term,
the gloss “qua philosopher” should be seen against the background of a
variety of glosses such as “qua agent,” “qua person,” “qua organism,” or
“qua miner,” “qua mathematician,” and so on. Some of these can apply to
the subject at the same time as the gloss “qua philosopher.”
Now, the expertise defense tries to make the case that philosophers are
somehow specially trained in detailed, thorough examination of intu-
itions referring to such notions as knowledge and intentional action,
which is in turn supposed to make them more careful when employing
these terms in real-life situations. Williamson (2007) speaks of “careful
attention” to subtleties of conceptual analysis, while Kauppinen (2007)
appeals to the “reflective practices” of philosophers. Generally, “defenders
of expertise suggest that philosophers possess special skill, which enables
them to apply concepts to particular cases more carefully and precisely
than the folk” (Nado, 2014, p. 632). However, the notion of careful
attention as well as the qualifiers “carefully,” “precisely,” and so on is left
rather vague in these contexts. What counts as careful employment of, for
example, the notion of knowledge? If we recall the miner again, and his
potential knowledge that, for example, the concentration of methane
28 K. Werner
(which is monitored by several devices) at a given moment makes it safe

to go underground, I wouldn’t dare say that he is not sufficiently thor-
ough in his examination of the situation. Analogously, think of a pilot
going through a checklist before every take-off and landing. Or think of
seventeenth-century Dutch painters and how they studied visual percep-
tion, thereby questioning the very line that we, folks (meaning non-
painters), draw between what things (allegedly) “really” look like and
what they seem or appear to look like. All these people should by no
means be deemed careless in their assessments of what they know or see.
They are all exceptionally careful and precise; philosophers have no
monopoly on precision and preciseness in epistemically relevant contexts.
Someone might reply that the latter remark about thoroughness and
carefulness is in principle misguided and even unfair because it should be
obvious upfront that what the expertise defense means by these categories
applies solely to philosophically relevant beliefs and is not meant to deny
anybody’s intellectual virtue as applied to other fields.
Fair enough, but, firstly, I have presented real-life cases with a signifi-
cant philosophical component such as knowledge (the miner and pilot)
or perception (the painter), just like the cases usually provided to partici-
pants in Xphi studies. So, where do we draw the line between the specifi-
cally philosophical intellectual skill with respect to knowledge and the
skill possessed by other agents who may also have an interest in being
extremely careful in assessing what they know? We shall discuss this line
in Chaps. 4 and 5. Meanwhile, let us clarify what all this means for the
issue of comparability.
2.6 Beliefs and Questions

The condition of comparability given in (1) can still have some appeal,
for it does not determine upfront that different embodiments of the same
subject fit the dichotomous logic of the philosopher vs. non-philosopher
distinction. We can still demand that for two beliefs to be comparable,
they must be produced and articulated by one or two subjects acting in
the same capacity or playing the same role. However, we need to elabo-
rate in more detail on what it means to be acting in a given capacity. It
turns out that the very capacity or role in which the subject acts can also
be unpacked in terms of qua objects based this time not on the subject,
but on her acts themselves.
To begin this part, I would like to bring up the second theoretical posit
that my argument is built upon, namely Schaffer’s (2007) idea of contras-
tive knowledge. At first glance it has nothing to do with the issue being
debated here, but I shall try to draw a clear connection shortly.
Schaffer starts by characterizing what he calls knowledge-wh, which
refers to cases such as my knowledge of who wrote “The Brothers
Karamazov,” whether Dostoyevsky or Gogol wrote “The Brothers
Karamazov,” what happened on September 1, 1939 in Europe, when the
Second World War started, where I parked my car, why the crisis of 2008
happened, and finally also (although it does not fit the wh template so well)
how the brain manages to combine data from two eyes. What is specific in
all of these examples is that the interrogative component, or, simply speak-
ing, the question that each of these knowledge ascriptions answers, is built
into the structure of the ascription. For example, when I say I know when
the Second World War started, the question was “When did WWII start?”
Now, the traditional distinction between knowledge-how and
knowledge-that, which we owe to Ryle (1949), appears much more
coarse-grained, and it is crucial to Schaffer not to reduce the variety of
knowledge-wh ascriptions to propositional knowledge-that. The reason
for the irreducibility of the former is precisely that they have the built-in
questions, whereas in knowledge-that the question “goes missing,” as
Schaffer (2007, p. 384) puts it. In other words, when we have the struc-
ture Ksp: “s knows that p,” there is no place for a reference to what ques-
tion p answers. Meanwhile, there could be situations in which the reference
helps us figure out what p actually says, thus what s actually knows.
To demonstrate his point, Schaffer proposes to consider the example
of p1 = “There is a goldfinch in the garden,” and therefore Ksp1 = “s knows
that there is a goldfinch in the garden.” Now, Ksp1 can be the answer to
more than one question. Just consider these:
Q1: Is there a goldfinch in the garden, or a raven?

Q2: Is there a goldfinch in the garden, or a canary? (Schaffer,
2007, p. 388)
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Now, Schaffer points out that the two knowledge ascriptions built
upon Q1 and Q2 are nonequivalent:
Knowing whether there is a goldfinch in the garden or a raven is a relatively

easy task of bird-identification. Virtually anyone (with decent vision and
minimal expertise) can know whether there is a goldfinch in the garden or
a raven. In contrast, knowing whether there is a goldfinch in the garden or
a canary is a harder task of bird-identification. Perhaps only an expert
birder will be able to tell the difference. (…) So one might well know
whether there is a goldfinch in the garden or a raven, but fail to know
whether there is a goldfinch in the garden or a canary. (ibid.)
The point is, therefore, that the Ksp scheme works well only in situa-
tions when people already know the appropriate interrogative context,
thus when the appropriate question is in the air, so to speak. But Ksp does
not make what is in the air explicit. Meanwhile, in order to articulate the
question as part of knowledge ascriptions Schaffer proposes his idea of
contrastive knowledge-wh:
Here the knowledge relation is relativized to the question: KspQ rather

than Ksp. KspQ may be read as: s knows that p, as the true answer to Q. It
is not enough to know that p—one must know p as the true answer. In
other words, it is not enough to know the proposition that just so happens
to be the answer—one must know the answer as such. (ibid., p. 392)
An alternative way of articulating KspQ makes use of the fact that Q

can also be spelled out in the form of disjunction of alternatives, to the
effect that, for example, knowing that Boleslaw Prus wrote “The Doll” as
the true answer to the question of whether Boleslaw Prus or Henryk
Sienkiewicz wrote “The Doll” is equivalent to knowing that Prus rather
than Sienkiewicz wrote “The Doll.” That is why the knowledge in ques-
tion is referred to as contrastive—each knowledge ascription is contrasted
with possible alternatives. Noteworthy, Schaffer’s proposal harks back to
Charlers L. Hamblin (1958), one of the founding fathers of erotetics (the

logic of questions), who postulates, among other things, that possible
answers to a question are an exhaustive set of mutually exclusive possibili-
ties (more in Chap. 3).
Now, my idea is, first, to employ Schaffer’s concept to beliefs. Thus p
may be deemed a belief and the structure “s knows that p as the true
answer to Q” is naturally transformed into “s believes that p as an answer
to Q.” The reference to truth is dropped for obvious reasons—knowledge
must be true, at least according to the classic definition, but beliefs can
obviously be false. Nonetheless, the point is that beliefs, whether true or
false, are also bonded closely with relevant questions. Now, I do not claim
that all beliefs are answers to questions. Perhaps my belief that rain makes
me wet simply stems from experience and I have never asked myself
whether or not rain makes me wet. However, our attention here is limited
to beliefs that do answer questions.
We can therefore try to characterize comparability in terms of contras-
tive alternatives. Let me begin with an example. Suppose it is November
2020 and John believes that Donald Trump will win the presidential elec-
tion, while his friend Max believes that Donald Trump has lost the trust
of voters in Pennsylvania. Based on the latter, Max believes that Donald
Trump will not win the 2020 election. It is clear that the two inconsistent
beliefs pertaining explicitly to the 2020 election are comparable since they
are answers to the same question. They can be unpacked as “John believes
that Donald Trump will win the 2020 election qua an answer to the ques-
tion of whether Trump or someone else is going to win in 2020” and
“Max believes that Donald Trump will not win the 2020 election qua an
answer to the question of whether Trump or someone else is going to win
in 2020.” Let us, however, consider the belief pertaining to Trump losing
Pennsylvania, expressed by Max. Is the latter comparable to John’s belief
in Trump’s victory? Suppose that it can be rolled out as “Max believes that
Donald Trump has lost the trust of voters in Pennsylvania qua an answer
to the question of whether Trump has lost the trust of voters in a key
state, whose support is necessary for Trump to be reelected.” Although at
face value these two beliefs are about different things—one is explicitly
about the 2020 election and the other is about Trump’s polls in
Pennsylvania—they can be deemed comparable and inconsistent as long
32 K. Werner
as we concede that the following statements are assumed to be true by

both John and Max: firstly, “for any candidate, if the candidate loses the
trust of voters in any state, she or he cannot win the state;” secondly, “for
any candidate, if the candidate loses in California, she or he must win all
the key states in the Midwest;” and finally, “Trump will lose in California.”
Based on that, the belief that Trump will lose in Pennsylvania is a conse-
quence of the belief that Trump has lost the trust of the Pennsylvania
voters. All this implies the belief that Trump will not win in 2020. Thus
the exact negation of John’s belief is a consequence of Max’s belief per-
taining to Trump’s failure to deliver Pennsylvania coupled with his earlier
failure to deliver California. This makes the beliefs “Trump will win the
2020 election” and “Trump lost the trust of voters in Pennsylvania” com-
parable despite the fact that they seem to be referring to different issues.
Hence, the situation with John’s and Max’s beliefs is such that their
contrasts taken together with their consequences are parts of a broader com-
plex of beliefs, and, as such, these two contrasts have common elements.
Based on this, we can conclude provisionally that:
(5) Two beliefs p1 and p2 are comparable if the set of contrast beliefs
attributable to p1, taken together with all its consequences (formally
speaking, closed under logical consequence) has a common element
with the set of contrast beliefs attributable to p2, also taken together
with all its consequences.
Crucially, comparability so conceived should be considered a matter of

degree. One of its extremes is when the two sets of contrasts are identical.
In such a case, the two beliefs are perfectly comparable. If I believe that
Prus rather than Sienkiewicz wrote “The Doll,” and my friend claims that
Sienkiewicz rather than Prus wrote “The Doll” (the set of alternatives has
just two elements), our claims can be juxtaposed perfectly. The other
extreme is when the two sets of contrasts, potentially quite large, have no
common elements whatsoever. In the latter case the beliefs are absolutely
incomparable.
2.7 Different Embodiments

of “Philosophical” Acts of Believing
Shaffer himself takes advantage of the little word “as” in his characteriza-
tion of knowledge-wh, thereby inviting a more elaborate usage of it, thus
Fine’s theory of embodiment built upon the Latin cousin of “as,” that
is, “qua.”
Fine (1982) makes it clear that the notion of qua object applies not
only to material things, but also to acts, and has recently developed a
theory of the embodiment of acts (Fine, 2018). The issue that Fine tack-
les once again has to do with the question of identity. Imagine John who
shoots his gun, the bullet reaches his boss’ chest and the boss dies a min-
ute later. Was the act of killing the boss identical to the act of shooting the
gun? Someone might argue that they were the same thing, yet John could
have no intention to kill, and more importantly, the boss died a minute
later, thus how could it be that the two temporally distanced and discrete
events constitute one act? Fine proposes to consider certain acts as bases
for qua objects, for example the concrete act of John’s pulling the trigger
taken as a physical event, a bodily movement, can be deemed the basis of
the qua object John’s pulling the trigger qua killing the boss.
Note again, aside from the metaphysical notion of identity which Fine
originally focuses on, that different glosses can situate the base act within
very different frames of reference. While the act of pulling the trigger qua
killing the boss qualifies the act morally and legally, the act of pulling the
trigger qua ultimate cause of the boss’ high-velocity bullet wound qualifies
the act within the framework of medical description without defining its
normative status.
Yet, if we are to apply Fine’s theory of embodiment to beliefs, we need
to make a certain terminological move which is going to prove beneficial
later for other reasons, too. Namely, I propose to speak of acts of believing
that p in addition to the static state of possessing a belief p.2 The act of
believing is taken as primitive. Beliefs are products of acts of believing (fol-
lowing the classic terminology proposed by Kazimierz Twardowski,
1911/1999). As such, acts of believing can be bases of qua objects: we can
34 K. Werner
speak of the act of believing that p qua answering the question of whether
p or q, for example.
Putting Fine’s and Schaffer’s proposal together, we can unpack beliefs-
wh in terms of qua objects. For example: s’s act of believing that Prus
wrote “The Doll” qua answering the question of whether Prus or
Sienkiewicz wrote “The Doll,” differs from s’s act of believing that Prus
wrote “The Doll” qua answering the question of whether Prus or Joseph
Conrad wrote “The Doll.” Note that, just as it was the case in Schaffer’s
example of whether it was a goldfinch or a raven that was in the garden,
the first belief (act of believing) referring to Prus poses a relatively harder
task than the second if one is not that familiar with nineteenth-century
Polish literature. Note in this context that the contrastive approach makes
ample room for an account of expertise, as pointed out by Schaffer him-
self. He stressed that “who has evidence, expertise, and answers is a func-
tion of the question.” For example, if the question refers to a goldfinch or
a raven, “then the person with the evidence, expertise, and answer is the
person who can tell a goldfinch from a raven.” If the question is easier and
involves a raven versus a canary, “then the person with the evidence,
expertise, and answer is the person who can tell a goldfinch from a canary”
(ibid., p. 394).
So, based on Fine and Schaffer, we obtain something along the follow-
ing lines:
(6) If s1 believes that p1 qua answering the question of whether p1 is the

case, or p2 is the case,…, or pn is the case, and s2 believes that q1 qua
answering the question of whether q1 is the case or q2 is the case,…, or
qn is the case, then the two acts of believing are comparable if (i) there
are pi and qj such that pi = qj; or (ii) the latter condition is satisfied by
some logical consequences of both sets of contrast beliefs.
Note that if s1 = s2, we can speak of one and the same person having
beliefs that are embodied differently, thus are attributable to different
contrasts. This proves useful as we come back to the issue of the compa-
rability of philosophical and folk beliefs.
Noteworthily, Schaffer’s focus on questions harks back to the idea set
forth by Henryk Hiż, who was one of the thinkers who laid the
groundwork for logical investigations into the nature of questions (for

more on the logic of questions see Wiśniewski 1995, Harrah 2002
and Chap. 3). In the opening statement of his (1962) paper we read:
Knowledge can be classified according to what questions it answers. (…)

That scientific knowledge is systematic may be viewed as a result of system-
atically arranged answers to systematically arranged questions. (Hiż,
1962, p. 253)
In this context, my main posit is that it is possible (and potentially

plausible) to apply the question-based approach to philosophical claims.
So, what goes for ordinary beliefs as well as the beliefs proven true (or
false) by scientists also goes for beliefs or acts of believing in philosophi-
cally relevant cases. In effect, philosophical beliefs must be targeted as
answers to specific questions and cannot be detached from those questions.
In other words, certain acts of believing count as philosophical once they
are properly embodied in the sense sketched out above. These questions
do not have to be made explicit each time a philosophical belief is articu-
lated, however they must always be available, so to speak, meaning that
they can be extracted and put into words.
Here is a nice illustration of why the latter posit is not trivial. John
Searle starts his (1998) book by listing what he calls “default positions” or
the Background, that is, beliefs accepted (by everybody, he claims) prere-
flectively; for example, that there is a real world existing independently of
our perception or thinking, that we have direct perceptual access to this
world, and so on. Searle emphasizes—quite rightly—that these are not
views proper, thus not beliefs proper, since they are so taken for granted
that nobody, with the exception of philosophers, questions them.
However, even if the Background exists (which, by the way, should be
tested empirically by Xphi), why should we assume that all of its belief-
like constituents are philosophical?
Contrary to what Searle suggests, we can distinguish between different
embodiments of seemingly identical beliefs (acts of believing) referring to
familiar objects’ being real. Yet only some of these embodiments bring
philosophical problems to the table, while, most likely, all of them belong
to the Background as understood by Searle. Consider this example:
36 K. Werner
(7) John believes that the chair in his office is real qua answering the
question of whether the chair is real or the product of
hallucination.
question of whether the chair is real or a fake imitation made of paper.
question of whether the chair is real or made up of sense-data.
question of whether only physical particles are real or whether ordi-
nary things such as chairs are real, too.
Clearly, only (9) and (10) bring in philosophically relevant contrasts

(as for 7, hallucination can be thought through by philosophers, exploited
in arguments, but there is nothing particularly philosophical about hal-
lucination itself). This example is thus supposed to suggest that philo-
sophical beliefs are not just there, lying on the street or flying in the air,
waiting for philosophers to articulate and question them; instead, they
must be brought forth by a specific intellectual pursuit.
It may also be helpful to take a look at the analogy provided by Peter
Strawson, who says that “just as the grammarian (…) labours to produce
a systematic account of the structure of rules which we effortlessly observe
in speaking grammatically, so the philosopher labours to produce a sys-
tematic account of the general conceptual structure of which our daily
practice shows us to have a tacit and unconscious mastery” (Strawson,
1992, p. 7). We used to think of language as a structure whose grammati-
cal rules are embedded in it, and of the said rules as already being there,
in the language, and perhaps there is some appeal to this claim just as
there may be some appeal to the view that there are philosophical prob-
lems embedded in real-life cases and scientific puzzles. Yet grammar itself,
as an abstract scaffolding of language, can become a target of investiga-
tion once it is distilled, as it were, by some intellectual pursuit. Otherwise
there cannot be a properly grammatical problem. A particular puzzle func-
tions as a properly grammatical problem or question only when it is rec-
ognized as part of this distilled abstract scaffolding. In other words, only
when it has the right sort of contrast or embodiment set by other
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nevertheless, the fortitude and dignity which come to the really great
under misfortune are among the grandest sights in this universe. I
have said that Cortés might have ridden to Mexico over palm
branches, midst hosannas, had he but known it; but had he done so,
there would have been no greatness attending the act. The door of
peaceable exit from the city of Mexico had long been open to him;
but to have accepted Montezuma’s invitation hence would not have
raised Cortés in the estimation either of himself or of his soldiers.
After all the terrible disasters of the Noche Triste the Spaniards
were not wholly forsaken by fortune, though they called it the
irrepressible Santiago on his milk-white steed who caused the
Mexicans to neglect their opportunity of vigorously pursuing the
fugitives beyond the last channel, and in their helpless state to
exterminate them. Yet we cannot help asking why Santiago did not
come to their assistance sooner, and save them untold woe. The
Spaniards, however, were not captious in their criticisms of
benefactors, and so a small stone was erected on the Tacuba road in
honor of the mounted saint.[845] If we would have the real cause why
the Mexicans did not follow up the Spaniards, we may find it in their
greed for spoils, as Sahagun observes, which detained the warriors,
especially round the channels. A thorough search was soon
instituted by them; the canals were dragged, and quantities of arms,
baggage, and personal effects were secured, beside the gold and
jewels which had been taken by the Spaniards. Their own dead they
decently buried, while those of the Spaniards and their allies were
more summarily disposed of, and the whole road cleared of
obstructions and whatever might infect the atmosphere.[846]
According to Gomara the discovery of the bodies of
Montezuma’s son and heir and other princes created such sorrow
that pursuit was on this account suspended. It seems not
unreasonable that the natives should have charged their death
wounds to the Spaniards, who, rather than see men like King
Cacama free to create mischief, should have preferred to dispatch
them, offering, Medea-like, a bribe to reverence and love with a view
to retard the Colchian pursuers.[847] Although this accusation could
not be proven, their death was nevertheless to be avenged. At least
forty Spaniards and a number of allies had been captured during the
night, and at the obsequies, which were of the most imposing order,
they added solemnity to the occasion by yielding their hearts’ blood;
while those who, according to native tradition, turned back to hold
the fort for three days before they swelled the throng of victims, were
reserved for the coronation soon to follow.
The respite from close pursuit had enabled the fugitive army to
join, in detached groups, the nucleus already gathered under
Jamarillo in one of the squares of Tlacopan,[848] the capital of the
smallest tripartite state, half a league from Mexico. A sorry spectacle
was this remainder of the brilliant army which had so lately entered
Mexico as conquerors. A haggard, bleeding, ragged crowd, dreggy
with mire and smeared with gore, many without weapons, and
without a vestige of their baggage and war stores. When Cortés
arrived with the last remnant the sun was rising, and fearing the
danger of an attack in the narrow streets, such as had made the
sallies in Mexico so disastrous, he hastened to conduct his men into
the open field. The movement was made none too soon, for
immediately after the scouts gave warning of approaching hosts,
magnified to a hundred thousand or more, speedily the war shrieks
again broke on the ears of the startled troops. The Mexicans had
sent word to Tlacopan and the neighboring towns to intercept the
fugitives, and assistance coming with the dawn they joined in the
attack.[849]
A Tlascaltec chief had recommended a northward course, round
the lakes, as the least exposed to pursuit, and offered himself as
guide.[850] The march was accordingly directed north-westward
through some maizefields, with Cortés leading. The enemy were
upon them before the rear left the city, and several soldiers fell in the
onslaught. A short distance before them rose the hill of Totoltepec,
Bird Mountain,[851] surmounted by a temple with several strong
buildings,[852] and a small village. This appeared an eligible spot for
the rest which they so much needed. Crossing the Tepzolac Creek,
at its foot, Cortés ordered the advance guard, under Ordaz, to
capture it, while he faced the pursuers. Little resistance was offered
at the temple, but the general was hotly pressed, as the enemy
perceived that their prey was about to escape. At this juncture it was
said that the Vírgen de los Remedios appeared, and by casting dust
into the eyes of the foe enabled the Spaniards to effect their escape
with little loss into the temple. “By this time,” writes Cortés, “we had
not a horse that could run, or a horseman who could lift an arm, or a
foot-soldier who could move.”[853]
A few additional intrenchments were thrown up, and the
necessary guards posted to watch the baffled enemy, who
perceiving the strength of the place contented themselves with
flinging their missiles and filling the air with shouts. Feeling
comparatively secure, the troops abandoned themselves to rest
round blazing fires. The food found in the place, although insufficient
for the demands of the half-starved men, afforded some comfort,
which was increased by grateful sleep.[854]
Thus were refreshed the wounded and disheartened. And with
grateful hearts the remnant of the brave army returned thanks to
God for deliverance. Some, however, attributed their escape to the
presence among them of the image of the Vírgen de los Remedios,
which Rodriguez de Villafuerte is said to have afterward placed in
the great temple of Mexico. It had been brought here by the owner,
although some supposed it might have come over of its own accord,
as it is said to have miraculously done in later times when detained
in Mexico against its will.[855] Some years after the Noche Triste it
was found on this hill under a bush, by a converted cacique named
Juan de Tobar, who kept it for a long time, and then by divine
direction built a hermitage for it on the hill, where it had been found.
The many miracles reported of the shrine induced the City of Mexico
in 1574 to adopt it as a patron, and by the following year the simple
chapel was replaced by a fine temple worthy of the sanctity of the
image which has absorbed so large a share of holy pilgrimage.[856]
The review held on Remedios Hill revealed the full extent of the
blow suffered, “one which Spaniards alone could have endured,”
says Peter Martyr. At the beginning of the siege the army mustered
twelve hundred and fifty Spaniards and six thousand allies, with
arms and ammunition in abundance, and now little more than five
hundred soldiers and less than two thousand allies remained.[857]
The baggage, artillery and ammunition, intrusted to the trains of
carriers, had all been lost, and a great portion of the arms carried by
the men, so that only twelve battered cross-bows and seven firelocks
could be counted. What better commentary could we have on the
night’s disaster! The side arms were fortunately better preserved,
and there were twenty-four horses left, now the only formidable
element of the army.[858] Of the treasure none could tell what had
been saved, the holders keeping the fact secret. It was whispered,
however, that Cortés had taken good care of the portion
appropriated by him, Bernal Diaz, among others, insisting that with
the first party conducted by the general to Tlacopan went a number
of carriers with gold bars and jewels. Among these is said to have
been some of the royal treasure, but the officers declared that it had
all been lost, including the mare with the fifth proper, and the account
books and records. The loss of the papers, however unfortunate for
history, must have been rather convenient to Cortés, at least, who
had a fancy for adjusting facts and figures to suit his schemes.[859]
Deeply stricken was Cortés, and bitterly did he repent of the
mistakes which had contributed to this sad result: of having left
Alvarado in charge to follow his rash bent; of having treated
Montezuma and his chiefs so inconsiderately on his arrival; and,
above all, the faulty arrangements for the flight by night.[860] His had
been the greatest conquest yet undertaken in the New World, and
his the greatest disaster. The men of Narvaez had suffered most,
partly, it is said, because they were most eager to burden
themselves with gold, but rather because they were inexperienced,
and assigned chiefly to the rear. It was the gaps in the ranks of his
veterans that touched Cortés most. Gone was the dear dandy
Francisco de Salcedo, whom slovenly comrades should no more
trouble! The cavalry, so sadly depleted, missed among its number
the dashing Láres[861] and the brave Morla. Neither could Botello be
injured by the curses freely given him for his false reading of the
stars.[862] The death which most deeply moved Cortés, however,
was that of the true-hearted and brave Velazquez, whose standing
and influence, as a relative of the Cuban governor and as a man of
high birth, had so greatly assisted the general in carrying out his
schemes. Cortés had in return conferred on him some of the most
important commissions, ever regarding him as among the truest of
his friends. With him had died his native wife, Elvira, the daughter of
the Tlascaltec lord Maxixcatzin, and nearly every prisoner.[863]
With so many losses to deplore, it proved a solace for Cortés to
find present his favorite captains, Sandoval, Alvarado, and Olid. His
interpreters were also here, and foremost the loving Marina, whose
life, together with that of Luisa, Xicotencatl’s daughter, was due to
the zealous care of the latter’s brothers. Martin Lopez, the ship-
builder, also survived, and the sight of him assisted to give the
thoughts of the general a hopeful bent, rousing in his enterprising
spirit projects for vengeance and recuperation. Remnants though
they were, his forces were still larger than those with which he had
overcome Narvaez, and which he had till then regarded as sufficient
for the conquest of the empire. The experience gained and a
knowledge of the country were in themselves an army; and, thank
fortune, he had some gold, and better still, allies. Tlascala was now
his hope. Everything, indeed, depended on the little republic, and
whether it would afford him shelter and aid. He knew that the loss of
so many of its warriors under his banner had brought wide-spread
affliction, which might turn to hatred toward him as the cause.
Thereupon he talked to the Tlascaltec chiefs who were yet alive, and
endeavored to stir in them the thirst for revenge, and excite their
desires for rich spoils and increased domain.[864]
Besiegers and besieged sat watching each other the whole day,
but the latter made no signs of stirring. Thinking that they would not
venture forth for some time, many of the former began to file off
homeward, leaving, nevertheless, a strong force round the hill.
Cortés feared that the morrow would bring them back with
reinforcements and make escape difficult. Trusting again therefore to
the darkness, now joined to the more advantageous circumstance of
an open field, he set forth, leaving the fires blazing to lull the
watchfulness of the foe. Eight captains were appointed for the
different sections to maintain the arranged order of march,[865]
Cortés with a portion of the cavalry taking the rear, as the post of
danger. The rest of the horsemen led the van, while the sound
infantry formed a cordon for the centre, wherein the wounded were
carried in hammocks, or hobbled along on hastily prepared crutches,
a few being taken up behind the horsemen. The rear had hardly left
the temple before the enemy were upon them with swords and
lances, many of the captured and recovered weapons of the
Spaniards being now used against themselves. But the attack was
not severe, partly because the pursuers had been reduced to
irregular bands from the mainland settlements, whose chief object
was plunder. At dawn the town of Calacoayan was sighted, and on
approaching it the mounted scouts came in a ravine upon an
ambuscade formed by its warriors. Believing them to be numerous
the horsemen galloped back, and joined by others returned to
charge. It is related that the leader halting for a moment to arrange
for the attack, a soldier became impatient, and hoisting an
improvised flag on his lance he called out, “Santiago! follow me who
dare!” The rest responded, and the enemy was routed with
slaughter.[866] The town was ransacked for food and fired as a
warning to the assailants. The march was resumed, and the plain of
Tizaapan reached, but owing to the fight at the town and the
constant skirmishing only three leagues were made that day. Toward
sunset they reached the hamlet of Teuculhuacan, and took
peaceable possession of the temple for the night.[867]
At noon on the 3d the march was resumed, with quickened steps

and with less interruption. Though persistent in harassing, the
pursuers fled whenever the cavalry charged, and took refuge on the
hill-slopes, flinging with their missiles jeers and insults. “Women!”
they cried; “cowards, who fight only when mounted! You are going
whence none of you shall escape!” The latter threat was frequently
heard, but its meaning failed as yet to be understood. There was a
worse enemy than the Mexicans, however, and that was hunger,
which made itself severely felt, “although Spaniards can endure its
pangs better than any other nation,” vaunts Gomara, “and this band
of Cortés’ better than all.” Eagerly they scanned the road side for
fruit or roots, and many ate grass, while the Tlascaltecs threw
themselves upon the ground and begged their gods to take pity upon
them.[868] One soldier opened a dead body and ate the liver, and
when Cortés heard of it he ordered the man hanged, but the
sentence was not executed. The route, at first craggy, passed
through the towns of Quauhtitlan and Tepotzotlan, along the lake of
Zumpango, to Citlaltepec, where camp was formed. The inhabitants
had fled, but food was there to eat, and even to carry on their
journey, and there they remained all the next day.[869]
On the morning of the 5th of July they skirted the lake and turned
westward to Tlascala, pursued by increasing forces;[870] owing to
which, or to the roughness of the road, or to the guide, less progress
was made than on the previous day, and camp was pitched at the
deserted hamlet of Xoloc. The following day they proceeded toward
the Azaquemecan Mountains, and halted at the town Zacamolco.
[871]Observing a mysterious movement among the Indians on the
slope, Cortés set out with five horsemen and a dozen foot-soldiers to
reconnoitre. After skirting the mountain he came in sight of a large
army,[872] with a portion of which he came to close quarters, the fleet
natives having gained on the foot-soldiers in making the turn of the
hill. In the mêlée Cortés was badly wounded in the head.[873] He
retreated to camp and had the wound bandaged, and the forces
were hurried away from the town, which appeared too exposed for
an attack. The Indians pursued them so closely that two men were
killed and a number wounded, beside four or five horses. One of the
animals died, and although the troops deplored its loss, the meat
proved acceptable, for roasted maize with a little fruit had been their
only food for several days.[874] Camp appears to have been formed
for the night in a hamlet among the hills, the enemy being left on the
opposite western slope of the range.
A serious encounter being apprehended the next day, additional
crutches and hammocks were prepared for those of the wounded
who had hitherto been carried on horseback, so as to leave the
cavalry free in its movements.[875] Before dawn on July 7th[876] the
march was resumed, in the hope of eluding the forces in the rear,
little suspecting that this was but a wing of the main body now
preparing to surround them. They had proceeded about a league,
and were on the point of entering the large plain of Otumba,[877]
when the scouts came galloping back with the information that the
whole field was filled with warriors in battle array. The hearts of the
Spaniards sank within them. They were hoping to escape an enemy
such as this.[878] Cortés ordered a halt, and with his captains talked
over the situation. Retreat was out of the question, and to turn aside
would be useless. “We must charge upon this host,” said Cortés; “we
must make our path through its very centre. Remember your dead
comrades; remember your God; comport yourselves like Christian
soldiers, and this idolatrous horde will melt before you like the
morning mist.” He thereupon issued the necessary instructions for
charging and resisting, and for protecting the disabled. The
horsemen were to ride with loose rein, lancing at the faces, so as to
break the enemy’s lines, and open a path for the infantry, who were
to follow and thrust their sidearms at the bowels of their assailants.
[879]
Commending themselves to the virgin, and invoking the aid of

Santiago, the troops advanced and entered the plain, skirted on the
east by the lower ranges of the Tlaloc, which inclosed in the distance
the town of Otumba. The sight was as grand as it was terrifying. In
every direction were seemingly endless columns, with flowing
plumage, brilliant shields of varied designs, and above and beyond
these a forest of glittering iztli points. “It was the finest army
Spaniards ever encountered in the Indies,” exclaims Bernal Diaz.
Their number was legion, and the richness of their attire signified the
presence of the strength and nobility of the empire. The original
estimate was doubled, and that was increased fourfold, until, like
Don Quixote’s sheep, two hundred thousand seemed small. Aware
of the route taken and the destination of the Spaniards, Cuitlahuatzin
had sent orders to the caciques of Otumba, Teotihuacan,
Calpulalpan, and adjoining region, to mass their forces here and
exterminate the intruders. This order came most opportune, for at
the time a fair was held at Otumba, which attracted a large
concourse, from which volunteers were readily obtained for so
laudable an object, represented not only as easy of achievement, but
as profitable from the spoils that were to follow. A strong force from
the lake region had come to form the nucleus of the army, the
command of which was assumed by Cihuacatzin, lord of
Teotihuacan.[880]
The sight of the sorry remnant of the Spanish army was greeted
by the native host with triumphant shouts, trumpet blasts, and the
clashing of weapons. Nothing should now prevent their escape; they
were doomed! Cautiously the Indians advanced to surround them;
for though the wounded and bedraggled band was small, it still
looked viperish. Like the French in Egypt the Mexicans might have
said that the centuries were looking down on them from the mystic
towers of Teotihuacan, consecrated to the sacred past. It was natural
enough for them to feel glad and proud; surely the invaders had
brought them misery enough to justify any return. But let them not
forget that there are still strong men, now nerved to desperation. And
just beyond the mountain fringe, toward which pointed their holy
banner of the cross, was a promised land, ‘the land of bread,’ and,
as they hoped, of trusty friends.
Cortés did not wait for them to advance too near before he made
a charge. With head and arm bandaged he led the cavalry, which in
parties of five rushed at the enemy, lancing straight at the face, and
opening a way for the infantry, which followed at a quick pace,
thrusting sword and pike as they had been directed.[881] This tactic
disconcerted the natives somewhat, and discarding their projectile
weapons the front ranks seized on lances, two-handed swords, and
heavy clubs, encouraging one another by shouting the names of
their towns and districts. After breaking the lines the horsemen
turned to open another path in the direction of the infantry, throwing
the Indians in a disorderly pressure one against the other, and
keeping them in a state of apprehension as to where the mounted
avalanche would next roll over them. Again the horsemen turned,
dashing close along the flanks of the troops, scattering the
intermediate assailants in confusion, and rendering them an easy
prey to the foot-soldiers. Swift as the wind the gallant Sandoval flew
past, crying to his comrades: “We win to-day, señores! We win to-
day, God helping us!” María de Estrada was likewise there, cheering
onward the men, and sharing danger with the foremost of the brave.
It would indeed seem to persons of less confidence than the
Spaniards that some supernatural power had been necessary on this
day to deliver them. Nor did the Tlascaltecs belie their fame as
warriors, for they fought like lions, as the soldier-chronicler declares,
the chief Calmecahua being particularly conspicuous for his bravery.
[882]
For a while the horsemen had it all their own way, chiefly, as
Cortés observes, because the enemy consisted of such disorganized
masses as to prevent one another either from fighting or fleeing; but
as they became more used to the Spanish tactics they offered firmer
resistance. The horse of the general being so severely struck in the
mouth as to become unmanageable, Cortés dismounted and turned
it loose to seek another. The injured animal, seemingly imbued with
its master’s spirit, dashed at the enemy in mad career, creating quite
a panic in its course. The cavalry took advantage of the confusion to
follow, partly with a view to secure the animal; after regaining the
main body they indulged in a brief rest. The heat no less than the
fighting had tired out both men and horses; but there was for them
little respite, for no sooner had the foes observed their inaction than
they closed in round them with renewed courage. “Thrust well and
deep,” came the order to the soldiers, “for they are all chiefs!” And so
they seemed, from their rich dress, their elaborate devices, and their
glittering ornaments. Cortés now mounted a horse whose
viciousness had hitherto consigned him to the baggage department,
[883]and again the cavalry formed, this time in more compact order.
But the enemy, ever relieved by fresh men, maintained the firmness
with which they had begun the charge, and both horsemen and foot-
soldiers found the pressure becoming greater and the fight hotter.
Thus the battle continued during the greater part of the forenoon,
[884] the natives evidently as fresh as ever, and the Spaniards visibly
failing. “We thought surely that this was to be our last day,” writes
Cortés, “in view of the great strength of the Indians and the little
resistance they could find in us, tired as we were, and nearly all
wounded, and faint with hunger.”
A feeling of suffocation and deathly despair comes over the
Spaniards as the dusky host fold them in closer and yet fiercer
embrace. Hot falls the blood-reeking breath upon their faces, as,
flushed with success and sure of their victims, the foe lay hold of the
Spaniards to drag them away to the sacrifice. Rare offerings to the
gods, indeed, are these magnificent men! And such they will surely
become if Mary, Santiago, or the ready genius of Cortés appears not
quickly to the rescue! But how shall there be rescue? What rescue is
there to the sinking ship alone in mid-ocean? Can this Cortés for the
release of his comrades baffle death like Hercules for the release of
Alcestis?
So it would seem. Behold yonder grand personage, borne aloft
in open litter, high over the others, with plumed head-dress, and
above it the gold-net standard, the tlahuizmatlaxopilli, set with
precious feathers, and secured to his back by a staff, according to
custom.[885] This is the generalissimo of all the native forces there
gathered, and around him are the flower of the army in feathered
armor of rich designs, guarding with zealous care the banner, and
encouraging the rest to renewed efforts and brave deeds. Cortés
sees him, and his purpose for weal or woe is fixed almost before his
comrades are aware of the chieftain’s approach; for he comes as
captain of the hounds to be in at the death of these Spanish foxes.
Cortés is well aware of the importance attached by natives to the
person of the general, and to the safe-keeping of the standard. In
these centre all the hope of their armies: success is theirs so long as
they remain; but once brought low, and the Indian regards all as lost.
Even at this juncture Cortés does not fail to observe the increased
firmness and spirit among the warriors as the banner approaches.
Here, then, is the one chance more, which is all the brave man asks.
With a quick motion to his mounted followers, pointing to the sacred
insignia, and as if he would throw the whole might of Spain into his
brief words, Cortés cries out: “Señores, let us break with them! In the
name of God and St Peter, señores, let us close with them!” Not a
man there but knew that the next moment would determine all, would
determine the fate of every Spaniard in New Spain.
Throwing themselves with the compact force of one of their own
cannon-balls against the heaving mass, they mow an instant path to
the charmed centre. The wave of disorder strikes the sacred guard,
while the unruly horse of Cortés, bearing him unresistingly onward,
overturns the litter of the generalissimo, and hurls the bearers to the
ground. “Victory!” shouts Cortés, when he recovers his breath; and
“victory! victory!” echo his people, while Juan de Salamanca plunges
his lance into the body of the prostrate chief, and seizing the sacred
banner, presents it to the general as his rightful trophy.[886]
The welcome cry of Cortés electrified the whole Spanish line,
while the warriors lately so triumphant stood stupefied with dismay.
With the disappearance of the palladium their courage had fallen,
while the Spanish soldiers, with the confidence and strength of joy,
rushed from wing to wing upon them. The warriors wavered; then,
with one more searching glance in the direction of the guiding
emblem, they became convinced that their leader had indeed fallen.
Consternation followed; the panic from the centre overtook the more
distant, and valiantly as they had fought before, as cravenly did they
now flee.[887]
Forgetful of wounds and hunger, and regardless of the imminent
danger attending such a course, the Spaniards pursued the foolish
fugitives, thrusting and slashing at them until they had killed twenty
thousand—a round figure, truly, and one which accords well with the
estimates of the entire force. But after all, what the natives had
hitherto suffered must have been little compared with the present
slaughter, for their dead lay very thick along the line of retreat. Hardly
one among the Spaniards had come off scathless, while few of the
poor Tlascaltecs were left to share in the rich spoils.[888]
After recalling the troops from their bloody pursuit, the first care
of Cortés was to see that the wounded soldiers had rest and
refreshment. Then a solemn thanksgiving service was held, and right
earnestly did they all join in its offering. Cortés ascribed the victory to
St Peter, as with his name on his lips he had made the miraculous
charge. But Santiago was the soldiers’ favorite, as they declared he
was present and fought with them; and near the village of
Tenexcalco a chapel was afterward erected to commemorate his
appearance.[889]
Obviously this battle was the most important so far in the New
World; and it must ever be regarded as one of the most remarkable
in history. The natives were probably much less numerous than the
estimates of the boastful victors; still they were immensely superior
in number and condition to the Spaniards, enfeebled by recent
defeat, by wounds, and want. Further, the latter had no fire-arms
wherewith to terrify the natives, only swords and pikes. Their main
advantage lay in their horses, their discipline, and the genius of their
leader;[890] all strengthened by the enthusiasm born of a national
pride, and a certain knowledge that failure meant utter destruction.
Fatigued as all were, and weakened from battle, Cortés resolved
nevertheless to push on toward Tlascala the same day, fearing that
the enemy might be shamed into a rally, or receive such
reinforcements to their already immense numbers as to encourage
them to return. In this he was not mistaken, for Cuitlahuatzin had
ordered Tezcuco, Chalco, and neighboring districts to send larger
forces, and so insure an assumed victory for the Otumban army. The
reinforcements appear to have been already in motion when news
came of the defeat, accompanied by the rumor that a Tlascaltec
army was on the way to aid the Spaniards. The hasty march
eastward of the fugitives offered in itself sufficient encouragement for
straggling marauders from the surrounding villages to follow in their
wake and harass them with occasional missiles.[891]
By night the town of Temalacayocan[892] was reached, and here

the army obtained some food and camped in and around the temple.
Badly wounded as he was, Cortés took charge of the watch, for
sleep had no power over his mind at that moment. Before him rose
invitingly the ranges of the Tlascaltec border, where he hoped to find
a haven. It was only hope, however; for Cortés came not as before,
heralded as the invincible conqueror, to whose bravery and deeds
the warlike republic was delighted to offer homage; nor with the
vision of the mighty Montezuma bending before him; nor with the
prospect of entering to assume control of a great empire. All this was
changed. He had lost his former prestige, and could present himself
only as a fugitive to seek protection for a remnant of his army. And
this at the hands of those who might yet smart under the stigma of
defeat by a handful, and who might now find it prudent and
convenient to accept the friendship and wealth of the victorious
Aztecs. What if the people of Tlascala should reject him? “We were
not very confident in finding the natives of the said province faithful
and friends of ours,” writes Cortés; “for we feared that they, on
seeing us so dismembered, might seek our lives, in order to recover
the liberty which they formerly enjoyed. This thought and fear kept us
in as great an affliction as when we marched along harassed by
those of Culúa.”[893] Nevertheless he sought to cheer his men with
hopes for the best, and to remind them how necessary it was, now
above all, to guard their conduct so as to give rise to no jealousies or
unpleasantness, since even a petty quarrel might raise a whirlwind to
overwhelm them. Should God, however, not permit them to rest in
Tlascala, they must recall their many glorious victories over greater
forces than could henceforth be brought against them, and be
prepared with stout hearts and vigorous arms to meet the issue.
The march was resumed in the morning with the usual
precautions, although the pursuers fell off as the border was
approached. Soon the Spaniards reached a fountain on the slope of
a hill, close to an ancient fortress, which marked the boundary of the
republic.[894] Resting there for a while, they drank of the water and
were refreshed. Then they passed on to Hueyotlipan, a town of three
or four thousand families, about four leagues from the capital.[895]
Here food was obtained in sufficient abundance, yet not without the
stimulus of presents. The women, however, were most sympathetic
in their offers to tend the wounded, although only too many were
deep in mourning and clamoring for vengeance for brothers, sons, or
husbands, who had fallen during the retreat. The captains did their
best to console them with the prospect of speedy victories, with bitter
retaliation on the hated Aztecs. Whatever doubt yet remained of
Tlascaltec disposition was dispelled in the afternoon by the arrival of
the lords, including the ruler of Huexotzinco, with a large suite,
bearing provisions and other presents, and cheering the hearts of
the discomfited with the most cordial greeting. They still showed
admiration for the white heroes, and extended a sympathy for their
sufferings which displayed itself even to tears. This feeling was
particularly strong in Maxixcatzin, the most powerful of the four
chiefs, who gently upbraided Cortés and his captains for not having
listened to his warnings. Remonstrances were now out of place,
however, and he and his could only bid them welcome, and tender
their estates and services. They were to regard themselves as in
their own house. Their escape from the plots and overwhelming
forces of the Mexicans had raised them and their prowess in the
estimation of the Tlascaltecs, and they were prepared, as friends
and as vassals of the Spanish king, to shed their last drop of blood in
the task of avenging the common injury suffered at the hands of their
ancient enemies. How inexpressibly dear is the prospect of revenge!
The hatred of the Tlascaltecs for the Mexicans was too deep to be
smothered by one reverse, and the desire to avenge their fallen
brethren intensified it. When the news came of the hostile gathering
at Otumba they had endeavored to procure reinforcements for their
allies, but had not been able to collect a sufficient number in time.
[896]
Cortés was deeply moved by the kind expressions and offers

accorded him, and sought in every way to strengthen this so vital
friendship. He exhibited profound grief over the death of so many
Tlascaltec allies, and sympathized in particular with Maxixcatzin over
the loss of his daughter Elvira, who had fallen with her husband
Velazquez. He also distributed presents, chiefly such as had been
obtained from the Otumba battle-field, and induced his men to follow
the example. Maxixcatzin’s heart was completely won by the gift of
the banner taken from the Mexican generalissimo,[897] and other
chiefs were gladdened with different trophies. The troops remained
at Hueyotlipan for three days,[898] in order to recruit somewhat, and
then, assisted by a number of carriers, they passed on to the capital.
Here the whole population came forth, headed by the lords, to
welcome them, with music, and flowers, and acclamations.[899]
Cortés was taken in charge by Maxixcatzin and lodged in his palace;
Alvarado became the guest of old Xicotencatl, and the others
received every attention. The reception concluded with a series of
festivities.[900]
FOOTNOTES
[845] ‘Esto despues lo declararon los mismos Indios.’ Vetancvrt, Teatro Mex., pt.
iii. 143. Nor do they omit the ever recurring story of the virgin image casting dust
into the eyes of the pursuers.
[846] The Tlascaltec and Cempoalan bodies were thrown among the reeds, and
the Spanish into deeper water. Sahagun, Hist. Conq. (ed. 1840), 126-7.
[847] Duran and Ixtlilxochitl make the murders take place in the Spanish quarters,
as we have seen. Sahagun permits two of Montezuma’s sons to fall between the
last channel and Popotla, while guiding the fugitives. Hist. Conq., 33 (ed. 1840),
122. Gomara assumes also that the pursuers may have been content with the
injury inflicted, or cared not to renew the fight on more open ground. Hist. Mex.,
161. Solis attributes the respite wholly to the discovery of the bodies. Hist. Mex., ii.
185-6.
[848] ‘Llegado á la dicha ciudad de Tacuba, hallé toda la gente remolinada en una
plaza, que no sabían dónde ir.’ Cortés, Cartas, 136. ‘Hasta cerca de Tlacupan
hasta un lugar que se llama Tilihucan.’ Sahagun, Hist. Conq., 33. ‘Tacuba ... is at
the present day chiefly noted for the large and noble church which was erected
there by Cortez.’ Latrobe’s Rambler, 128.
[849] Gomara assumes that the Tlacopan people were not aware of the broken
condition of the troops. Now they joined the 40,000 Mexicans who had set forth
prepared for pursuit. Hist. Mex., 161. ‘Yà auian venido de Mexico.... dar mandado
a Tacuba, y a Escapuçalco, y a Tenayuca, para que nos saliessen al encuentro.’
Bernal Diaz, Hist. Verdad., 106. The Mexicans were disgusted with those of
Tlacopan for their neglect. Herrera, dec. ii. lib. x. cap. xii.
[850] ‘Un Angel de Guarda, ó San Pedro, como otros quieren, ó Santiago Apostol,’
observes the enthusiastic Lorenzana. Cortés, Hist. N. España, 145.
[851] ‘Totolpec.’ Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., 302; Toltotepec is Vetancurt’s misspelling.

‘Cerro llamado de Muteczuma.’ Lorenzana, ubi sup.
[852] ‘Una torre y aposento fuerte.’ Cortés, Cartas, 136. ‘Vnas caserias q̄ en vn
cerro estauan, y alli jũto a vn Cu, e adoratorio, y como fortaleza.’ Bernal Diaz,
Hist. Verdad., 107. ‘A este templo llamaron de la Vitoria, y despues nuestra
Señora de los remedios.’ Herrera, dec. ii. lib. x. cap. xii. Sahagun calls the rise
Acueco, and places upon it the Otomí village of Otoncapulco. Hist. Conq. (ed.
1840), 122. Vetancurt follows, Teatro Mex., pt. iii. 143, while Camargo calls it
Tzacuyocan. The variations in Sahagun’s editions lead Torquemada to say that
the Spaniards moved the same day from Otoncalpulco pueblo to Acueco, an
Otomí village, i. 504-5. This, Brasseur de Bourbourg follows. The Spaniards may
have passed through it on departing, but would hardly move from a stronghold to a
probably open village while surrounded by enemies. If food was the object, the
able-bodied soldiers would have made a sally for it. It appears that the army
camped for the night on the hill now occupied by the Remedios shrine, and in the
fortress-like temple, to which a small village was attached. Alzate, however, who
took pains to inquire into the subject, found that the natives applied the name
Otoncapulco, not to the Remedios hill, but to the mountain, three fourths of a
league off. On this mountain he found the ruins of a strong building, and none on
the hill, whence he assumes that the camp was not made on the site of the shrine,
but on the mountain. Gacetas de Lit., ii. 457-9. Bustamante accepts this view, but
Archbishop Lorenzana, whose testimony in the matter must be reliable, says: ‘Se
conservan aun algunos vestigios de la antigua Fortaleza, y esta se ha convertido
dichosamente en el célebre Santuario de N. Sra. de los Remedios.’ Cortés, Hist.
N. España, p. xiii. He also intimates that the Otoncapulco name is misapplied.
Hence it may be assumed that the common application of Otoncapulco to this hill
is due to a misinterpretation of Sahagun’s versions, which have been greatly
tampered with, for that matter, and that the ruins mentioned by Lorenzana had
disappeared by the time Alzate examined the place.
[853] Cartas, 136; Cabrera, Escudo Armas, 110. ‘Aqui se señalò mucho Gonçalo
Dominguez, hombre diestro y valiente.’ Herrera, dec. ii. lib. x. cap. xii. Prescott
makes several blunders and omissions in connection with this day.
[854] A few stragglers managed to reach the camp, and among them one
Sopuerta, who had escaped death by feigning it. Herrera, ubi sup. Sahagun states
that Otomís from Teucalhuican, and from the immediate neighborhood, no doubt,
brought food, and invited the Spaniards to the former town, a few leagues from
there. Hist. Conq., 33. Torquemada follows him, but the story is probably an
exaggeration.
[855] It has been shown previously, by testimony not accessible till later years, that
the image placed in the great temple was a picture on a tablet, while that of
Remedios is a doll. But, of course, the image that could move through the air
could also transform its shape. Bernal Diaz assumes, as we have seen, that
Montezuma had ordered the image to be cared for; yet many believe that
Rodriguez secured it before or after the massacre, while the more pious prefer to
suppose that he could not find it, for want of time, perhaps, and that it moved
miraculously to the camp. Acosta, Hist. Ind., 524; Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., 302.
After the departure of the troops the image hid itself on the spot, or Rodriguez,
tired of the burden which had saved his life, ungratefully left it there. It is also
supposed to have been carried to Tlascala ere it reappeared on its later site.
Cabrera, Escudo Armas, 106 et seq.; Alaman, Disert., i. 122. Lorenzana accepts it
as the image from Mexico’s temple. Cortés, Hist. N. España, 138.
[856] It has frequently been brought to Mexico, and is still brought to avert
epidemics and other ills, to bring rain or other blessings. When detained it would
travel back of its own accord to the shrine, a proof of which was afforded by the
travel stains on the dress. One rainy night it arrived covered with mud. Latrobe’s
Rambler, 133. Thompson describes it as ‘a little alabaster doll, with the nose
broken, and the eye out ... about eight inches high.’ Her wardrobe and jewels are
valued at over $1,000,000. Recollections, 103-9. He gives an account of the
veneration for the image and its miraculous power. The history of its origin and
worship is to be found in a multitude of books, among which may be mentioned,
Medina, Chrón. S. Diego Mex., 30 et seq.; Cabrera, Escudo Armas, 106 et seq.;
Bustamante, Mem. Piedad Mex., 1-52.
[857] Cortés prudently limits, and we must add untruthfully, the loss to 150 soldiers
and some 2000 allies. It is with a view to this estimate that he reduced the force
brought into Mexico to 570 men, to which must be added the 140 composing the
garrison. Deducting the 150 lost, 560 remain, and since he would hardly
overestimate the number, for obvious reasons, this figure is probably near the
truth. Bernal Diaz musters 1300 at Tlascala, and has 80 at Mexico. Deducting

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New Directions in Philosophy and Cognitive Science

Cover illustration: agefotostock / Alamy Stock Photo

1 Introduction: Philosophizing as a Peculiar Pursuit 1

2 Questioning the Comparability of (Philosophical) Beliefs 13

2.9 Against the Institutional Approach 42

3 Erotetic Intuition: Toward a Logic of Questions, and Beyond 55

4 Philosophy as Recognition: Thinking from Inside the Cave 99

4.7 Thinking from Within 124

5 The Embodied Philosopher147

6 Epilogue: Spandrels and Philosophy211

1.1  hat Is It Like to Philosophize? Toward

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 1

1.2  roubles with Philosophy: The Strategy

In addition to the arguments put forward by these three early analytic

intuition or anything else, the driving force behind philosophy. Given

1.3  hallenging the Institutional Approach

is not bad in itself, of course, but it is one thing to impose an institutional

The two components of the approach flagged above are therefore as

1.4 Chapter to-Go

hierarchy of acceptability. So Chap. 2 features certain proposals that

• Comparability of beliefs. In Chap. 2, I argue that in principle beliefs are

do as much? I argue in Chap. 2, based on various sources, that beliefs

philosophers. I try to answer this question in Chap. 4, to the extent to

philosophy, the relationship between armchair and experimental phi-

Acknowledgments This book owes so much to so many people I have met

Dummett, M. (1991). The Logical Basis of Metaphysics. Harvard University Press.

2.1 The Puzzle of Comparability

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 13

relevant issues. The chapter therefore speaks of the intuitive, philosophi-

2.2  omparability in Practice: Some

virtually never formulated explicitly as a posit that would necessitate sep-

them considers themselves a follower of Russell, while the other adheres

2.3  xpertise Defense, Reflection Defense,

The surveys conducted by experimental philosophers have (…) employed

given by folks are irrelevant to the philosophical endeavor proper; in

2.4 Different Embodiments of the Subject

Given any object x and description (property) φ possessed by x, we shall

The philosophical challenge that the notion of qua object is originally

(2) Jane qua non-philosopher holds W (which is referred to as Wn in

In this account, the difference between Wn and Wp boils down to the

It is problematic to compare philosophers and non-philosophers directly

acceptable in its present form. This is because both the comparability

• They take the philosopher vs. non-philosopher distinction as mutually

2.5 Against the Philosophers vs.

that once one counts as a philosopher/ethicist, one does not count as an

While there have been relatively few studies conducted on professional

Buckwalter is referring to the already mentioned studies by Schwitzgebel

as a flaw in particular circumstances). Rather, it is an indication of the

(which is monitored by several devices) at a given moment makes it safe

2.6 Beliefs and Questions

Q1: Is there a goldfinch in the garden, or a raven?

Knowing whether there is a goldfinch in the garden or a raven is a relatively

Here the knowledge relation is relativized to the question: KspQ rather

An alternative way of articulating KspQ makes use of the fact that Q

Charlers L. Hamblin (1958), one of the founding fathers of erotetics (the

as we concede that the following statements are assumed to be true by

1 Introduction: Philosophizing as a Peculiar Pursuit 1

2 Questioning the Comparability of (Philosophical) Beliefs 13

2.9 Against the Institutional Approach 42

3 Erotetic Intuition: Toward a Logic of Questions, and Beyond 55

4 Philosophy as Recognition: Thinking from Inside the Cave 99

4.7 Thinking from Within 124

5 The Embodied Philosopher147

6 Epilogue: Spandrels and Philosophy211

1.1 hat Is It Like to Philosophize? Toward

1.2 roubles with Philosophy: The Strategy

1.3 hallenging the Institutional Approach

1.4 Chapter to-Go

2.1 The Puzzle of Comparability

2.2 omparability in Practice: Some

2.3 xpertise Defense, Reflection Defense,

2.4 Different Embodiments of the Subject

2.5 Against the Philosophers vs.

2.6 Beliefs and Questions

2.7 Different Embodiments