the fragmentation of philosophy, the road to reintegration (presentation)
TRANSCRIPT
THE FRAGMENTATION OF PHILOSOPHY,
THE ROAD TO REINTEGRATION
“Every fact leads to every other … . Only men do not yet see how, always. And your business is to make plainer the way from
one thing to the whole of things; to show the rational connection between your fact and
the frame of the universe. … [T]o be master of any branch of knowledge, you must master those that lie next to it.”—Oliver
Wendell Holmes (1886)
“British and American philosophy has recently become
extraordinarily scholastic, obsessed with questions about
how many philosophers can sit on a niggle.”---Jenny Teichman (1989)
let me begin by telling you
about two occasions where people looked at me as if I’d come from Mars, … and how this prompted
these ideas
1. The Fragmentation of Philosophy
when I teach Introduction to Philosophy I use Plato’s Republic—for its breadth & integration
&, while only Plato is Plato
• many of the key figures in the history of philosophy, from Aristotle to Aquinas to Bacon, from Descartes to Leibniz to Kant, from Locke and Hume to Reid and J.S. Mill
• contributed to many areas of philosophy, and to other fields
we find the same breadth in more recent philosophers
• Santayana, Russell, Whitehead, etc.
• & in the classical pragmatist tradition, in Peirce, James, and Dewey
• from whom I have learned so much
Peirce
was trained in chemistry, did important
scientific work, was a pioneer of modern logic and of semeiotics, and
contributed to many areas of philosophy
James
was trained in medicine, made
important contributions to psychology and, again, to many
areas of philosophy
& Dewey
who was trained in philosophy, rivals Plato’s breadth and his interconnectedness; and was “America’s
philosopher,” read by a wide public
Dewey died, at 93, in 1952
• & we haven’t seen his like (or Peirce’s, or James’s) since
• on the contrary, over my working life philosophy has become more and more splintered, hermetic, and detached from its own history
some examples
• epistemology (now a field of cliques)
• where I can’t attend a conference without feeling like a Martian
• coded phrases, chummy use of first names, indifference to neighboring fields, no reference to even quite recent history
&
• philosophy of science
• now split into philosophy of physics, of biology, of social science, etc.
• with numerous sub-specialties, e.g., causation
& metaphysics
• let me tell you another anecdote, this time about “tropes”
• no, nothing to do with metaphor, simile, etc., but …
• & about Mulligan, etc’.s complaints about the “horror mundi” of recent metaphysics
some may ask
• wasn’t Rorty an exception (for breadth and history)?
• isn’t “experimental philosophy” an exception (for interdisciplinarity)?
• isn’t history of philosophy flourishing?
I’d have to reply
• yes, sort of; but not in the way that matters
• Rorty dropped a lot of names, and was dismissive of a lot of philosophical topics
• “experimental philosophy” is another fad
• history of philosophy tends too often to be about other recent historians
still, there ARE exceptions
• i.e., philosophers wiling to follow ideas where they lead, even outside their area or outside philosophy
• & willing and able to learn from philosophers of the past
• but this philosophical “resistance” is a distinct (and somewhat beleaguered) minority
2. The Intellectual Costs of Fragmentation
• I believe this is an intellectual disaster
• blinds us to the intimate inter-connectedness of philosophy & to the consilience of knowledge generally
• condemns us to repeat past mistakes, prevents us learning from past advances
“Some Men of Study and Thought, that reason
right, do make no great advances in their
Discoveries of it … [because] they converse with but one sort of Men, they read but one sort of Books, they will not come in the hearing but of one
sort of Notions …”Locke, Conduct of the
Understanding
“… They have a pretty Traffick with known Correspondents in some little Creek, ... but will not venture out onto the great Ocean of Knowledge, to survey the
Riches that Nature hath stored other parts with, no less genuine, no less solid, no less useful, than what has fallen to their lot in the admired Plenty and Sufficiency
of their own little Spot, which to them contains whatever is good in the
Universe”
but (you may ask)
• how is this relevant today?
• answering this is a philosophical task
• remember Sellars: it’s the task of philosophy to determine “how things in the broadest sense of the word fit together in the broadest sense of the word”
e.g.
• how ethical, epistemic, aesthetic appraisals relate to each other
• whether/how results from the human sciences bear on epistemological questions
• whether theological explanations really explain, … &, etc.
a central concept will be
• consilience (the word is Whewell’s)
• e.g., of the post-Darwinian synthesis with Mendelian genetics, estimates of the age of the earth, molecular biology
• (explanation of how humans have one chromosome fewer than other primates)
the same kind of interlocking is needed within philosophy
• e.g., of epistemology with philosophy of mind (belief, perception, introspection)
• with metaphysics (how we, and the world, must be if we are to have knowledge of it)
• with ethics (relation of epistemic to moral virtues)
“interlocking”?
• consistency is necessary but not sufficient
• philosophy grows by both fission (Peirce) and fusion (SH)
I believe Peirce has biological fission in mind
philosophical examples
• in CSP: valency logic of relatives critique of Kant on analyticityanalysis of categories by adicity
• continuitysynechismmatter as “effete mind”immortality
• evolution (from Darwin)3 types of evolutionagapismtychism
examples continued …
• in Searle: speech acts (from Austin) intentionalityintensionalitysocial intensionality
• in SH: crosswords (prompted by jigswaw puzzle in Polanyi)foundherentismrole of metaphorscientific methodweight of combined evidence
what about fusion?
I have in mind, e.g., how an account of belief can fuse with an understanding of
the role of experience in belief-
formation, of an infant’s becoming
“minded,” …
& of course
• consilience interlocks with other key ideas
• when various pieces of evidence point in the same direction, their combination can warrant a claim to a higher degree than any component
• & fusion can increase the depth of our concepts
however
everything I said so far also
applies to the sciences, where
specialization can be very
productive
the difference?
• (it’s a continuum, but) by now the natural sciences deserve to be called “mature”
• & well-warranted theories in physics, chemistry, evolutionary biology, etc.
• pave the way for productive specialization
e.g.
once it was known that DNA is the genetic material, is a
double-helical, etc., molecule, the problem was:
how does it code for proteins? In 1976 Nirenberg solved the first “word” of the genetic code, … paving the way for others to solve other
“words”
Peirce once described metaphysics
as a “puny, rickety, and scrofulous science”
& today, sadly
• philosophy is hardly in dramatically better shape
• but still a field of competing schools, approaches, fads, and fashions
• & for a field in this condition, hyper-specialization impedes progress
I think in this context of
“The Davidson Program”
there’s a kind of vicious spiral
• when specialization is premature, it wastes time and energy
• the prospects for achieving something solid to build on seem to recede indefinitely
• so people argue the same points over and over until they get bored
…& then all go after a new fad
“a series of puzzles have been mooted, flared up as trends, attracted a significant portion of
graduate students, and then died down with no obvious solution having established itself and the
world not much the wiser. These problems include: paradigms, family resemblance,
“gavagai,” Gettier, rigid designation, natural kinds, functionalism, eliminativism, truth-
minimalism, narrow versus broad context, possible worlds, vagueness, four-
dimensionalism, and, just now, presentism”--- Mulligan et al., 2006
today’s list would be different
but the problems crossed off weren’t solved, only set aside when people got bored with them!
& now I see how
• fragmentation encourages hermeticism, by closing our eyes to other disciplines
• & encourages ahistoricism, by closing our eyes to the possibility that insights might be found outside the clique
• so that, …
as George Santayana famously said
“those who cannot
remember the past are
condemned to repeat it”
an example from my own work
it took me far too long to figure out what Russell had already seen in 1948!
to be clear
• the difference between the state of the sciences and of philosophy is a matter of degree
• still, though scientific progress is ragged and unpredictable, there is progress
• while in philosophy …!
3. The Causes of Fragmentation
• if fragmentation is as disastrous as I say
• the reasons for it can’t be intellectual opportunity
• but must be academic opportunism
the shift from “intellectual to “academic”
• tells me we should start with the professionalization of philosophy
• NB: despite the contrast of “amateur” and “professional”
• professionalization advances a field only if the credentials, etc., are of the right kind
an amateur
• pursues his projects for the love of them
• a professional, because he’s paid to
• all is well IF professional success tracks real achievement in the field
but in philosophy today
the correlation between real
achievement and success is very,
very weak
why?
• philosophers (like others) tend to pursue their interests, in the vulgar sense
• & as presently organized our profession creates powerful perverse incentives
• not to mention …
but I must
• circling of the philosophical wagons after literature professors started flexing their philosophical muscles
• & the publish-or-perish ethos
• leading many to think the only way to survive was to join a publication cartel
no wonder the “little Creeks” got smaller and shallower, & self-appointed cliques the judges of
what work is worthwhile
I shouldn’t have been shocked
when the young woman I mentioned at the beginning told
me that her supervisor had advised her to
publish “as much as possible as fast as
possible” but I was!
4. A Road to Reintegration
• am I suggesting that everyone produce a comprehensive world-view, or that no one should specialize?---NO!
• I can only suggest some ideas about how best to conceive and go about our work that might improve things long term
(i) heed Locke’s advice
• read widely: newspapers, novels, biography, history, philosophers long dead
• talk, and listen, to people outside your area, your field, the academy
• venture into that Great Ocean of Knowledge
(iii) cultivate your peripheral vision
as you work on one problem, stay alert for others bordering on it to which you
might also contribute
(iv) be constructive
follow Francis Bacon’s advice, that the philosopher should be, not like an ant or a spider, but like a bee!
(v) be leery of celebrity, and of celebrities
follow Roger Bacon’s advice, that the chief obstacles to grasping
truth are “submission to faulty and unworthy
authority, influence of custom, popular prejudice, and
concealment of our own ignorance …”
I should be candid: it won’t be
… a bed of roses; the work is hard and can be frustrating, and there are adventitious risks …
I don’t have a synoptic vision to offer
just a partially-completed crossword
of ideas that seem to be holding up & interlocking as they should
• the pluralistic universe of Innocent Realism
• a Laconicist (Ramsey-like) conception of truth
• an account of inquiry as involving seeking out and assessing the worth of evidence
• & of epistemic virtues such as intellectual integrity as evidence-related
&
• the Foundherentist account of the structure of evidence and the determinants of its quality
• viz., supportiveness; independent security; comprehensiveness
• the Critical Common-sensist account of scientific inquiry
• as like everyday empirical inquiry, but
• with the aid of an array of “helps”
continued
• & of social-scientific inquiry as essentially similar, but using (mostly) different “helps,” and
• as about institutions, etc. that are socially constructed as well as real
• that, like all empirical inquiry, scientific inquiry requires
• that there be real kinds & laws in the world, and we be able to perceive things and make generalized conjectures
continued
• that our senses are part of our biological inheritance, but
• our cognitive capacities develop by means of our (linguistic/semeiotic) interactions with others
• natural languages are constantly evolving, meaning growing
• this explains the failure of formal-logical models both of scientific and of legal reasoning
continued
• that legal truths are a sub-class of soc-sci truths
• made true by things people do, but
• true in just the same, Laconicist sense
• legal degrees & standards of proof are degrees of warrant
• not probabilities (which have a quite different logical profile)
& this reveals, for example
• that evidence of more than doubled risk among those exposed is neither necessary nor sufficient to prove causation “by a preponderance”
• & when and why combined evidence may warrant a conclusion more than any component alone would do
& from these examples
… I learned, not only how philosophy may be helpful to law, but
that it’s a two-way process; applying a philosophical theory obliges you to refine
and amplify its articulation
für Ihre freundliche Aufmerksamkeit …
… Vielen Dank!