PROCEEDINGS OF THE ARISTOTELIAN SOCIETY CHAIRED BY TIM CRANE EDITED BY GUY LONGWORTH
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Persistent Philosophical Disagreement C HR I S TOPH E R DA LY U NIVE R S I T Y OF MA N C H E S T E R
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proceedings of the aristotelian society 138th session
issue no. 1 volume cxvii 2016 - 2017
persistent philosophical disagreement
christopher daly university of manchester
m o n d a y, 1 7 o c t o b e r 2 0 1 6 17.30 - 19.15
the woburn suite senate house university of london malet street london wc1e 7hu united kingdom
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biography Christopher Daly is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Manchester. He has published in metaphysics, methodology and philosophy of language. He is a co-editor of the journal Analysis. editorial note The following paper is a draft version that can only be cited or quoted with the author’s permission. The final paper will be published in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Issue No. 1, Volume CXVII (2017). Please visit the Society’s website for subscription information: aristoteliansociety.org.uk.
persistent philosophical disagreement c h r i s to p h e r da ly
1. introduction HERE ARE TWO AWKWARD FACTS about philosophy: no philosophical problems have been solved and philosophers can’t agree about anything beyond that. The contrast with the natural sciences is evident: many scientific problems have been solved and there is appreciable agreement between scientists in scientific matters. What is wrong with philosophy and what is wrong with philosophers? There are various closely related questions here that do not quite come to the same thing. There’s the question of why no philosophical problems have been solved. There’s also the question of why there’s been no appreciable progress in philosophy. Those two questions differ. If there’s been no appreciable progress in philosophy, no problems have been solved, but the converse does not hold. There might be progress in philosophy but it might also be asymptotic: always approaching solutions but never reaching them. Then there’s the question of why philosophers persistently disagree. That is a further question. It might be that there is progress in philosophy and even that some of its problems have been solved. Disagreement would remain if there were philosophers with entrenched opinions who, for whatever reason, refused to fall in line. Consider the history of mathematics: Cantor achieved a tremendous advance in our understanding of infinity despite the likes of benighted holdouts such as Kronecker. Still, despite the differences between these questions, it will serve our purposes here to consider all of them. There is persistent philosophical disagreement. Why is this? Without a suitable explanation, it seems very implausible to suppose that, despite this, some philosophical problems have been solved or are approaching solution. Again, in the absence of a suitable alternative explanation, the fact that there is persistent philosophical disagreement seems to be evidence against the claim that there is substantive progress in philosophy (cf. Brennan 2010 and Chalmers 2015 §2. But see also Ballantyne 2014 and Hanna forthcoming.) Two staunch proponents of these pessimistic conclusions are Peter van Inwagen and William Lycan: In metaphysics there is no information and there are no established facts to be learned. More exactly, there is no information and there are no facts to be learned besides information and facts about what certain people
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think, or once thought, concerning various metaphysical questions (van Inwagen 2008 p.10. van Inwagen goes on to claim that the situation in philosophy more widely is no different from the situation in metaphysics.) But are there any successful philosophical arguments [where a successful argument that p is one that would convince any perfectly rational, intelligent and neutral party that p]? I know of none. (That is, I know of none for any substantive philosophical thesis.) . . . If any reasonably well-known philosophical argument for a substantive conclusion had the power to convert an unbiased ideal audience to its conclusion (given that it was presented to the audience under ideal conditions), then, to a high probability, assent to the conclusion of that argument would be more widespread among philosophers than assent to any substantive philosophical thesis actually is (van Inwagen 2006 pp.52-3.) Philosophical consensus is far more the result of Zeitgeist, fad, fashion, and careerism than of accumulation of probative argument (Lycan 2013 pp.116-117.) So, is there distinctively philosophical knowledge? Yes, I am forced to agree, but only dribs and drabs, here and there. Far less than Gutting has maintained, and nothing to write a song about (Lycan 2013 p.120.)
Lycan is somewhat more concessive than van Inwagen. According to van Inwagen, the only knowledge to be had from philosophy is historical knowledge: knowledge of which philosopher said what and why. Lycan admits that, besides such historical knowledge, we have knowledge of various positions that might be taken on a given issue and we have also learnt, of some of these positions, which ones are viable (i.e. not obviously false) and which ones are not (Lycan 2013 pp.117-120.) Beyond this, however, he denies that we have knowledge of philosophical facts. Van Inwagen remarks that ‘it would not be the whole truth to say that by definition there is no body of philosophical fact because it is a defining characteristic of philosophy that it has no information to offer’ (van Inwagen 2008 p.11.) Suppose this is at least part of the truth. All the same, we might still sensibly ask why this is a defining characteristic of philosophy. For consider: it is a defining characteristic of war that it is terrible, but there are informative things we can say about why war is terrible. Similarly, there might be other features of philosophy that explain why it has no information to offer (if in fact it does not.) So it need not be misguided to try to find such an explanation. In this paper I do not want to pursue the issue of the extent of our
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knowledge in philosophy or to investigate whether there are any established facts in philosophy to be learnt.1 For the purposes of the paper I will take Lycan’s mildly concessive view as read. There has been progress and corresponding agreement in recognizing many and various views as viable. (Two views might each be viable but also mutually inconsistent. So agreeing that a view is viable isn’t to agree that it is correct.) Nevertheless, there remains persistent disagreement about many key issues, notably about what the solution of any philosophical problem is, and there is markedly more disagreement in philosophy about key issues than there is in the natural sciences. This paper addresses the questions: What is the significance of these facts? How should they be explained? ii. epistemic peers and superiors Epistemic peers with respect to some topic are people who match with respect to their training, reasoning power, memory, level of attention, and the evidence available to them. It is an idealization to take there to be any epistemic peers. More realistically, what we have, with regard to any topic, are near epistemic peers – people who do not markedly differ in the above cognitive and evidential respects. For any philosophical topic, there are near epistemic peers who disagree. Even more strikingly, for many, if not all, philosophical topics on which you have a view, there are epistemic superiors who disagree with you. An epistemic superior in philosophy is someone who is a smarter philosopher than you. (Here smartness is a measure of philosophical ability.2) Van Inwagen made this issue vivid in the following way (van Inwagen 1996a.) Suppose you reject compatibilism in the free will debate because you are convinced by the consequence argument: the argument that says that if your actions are due to laws of nature acting on events which happened centuries ago, and since you are not responsible for those laws or events obtaining, then as a consequence your actions are not free. Now, David Lewis is a much smarter philosopher than you and he understands the consequence argument at least as well as you. There is no reasoning in the argument that you follow which Lewis fails to follow and there are no distinctions drawn in the argument that Lewis fails to observe. Yet for all that he rejects the argument. How should you respond? Should you remain as confident as before about the argument, or should your degree of confidence in it decrease somewhat, or should you follow Lewis and reject the argument altogether? It would seem partial to retain your original degree of confidence in the argument. The fact that Lewis rejects it is evidence that the argument is unsound. By the same reckoning, it would seem partial to suppose that you have a privileged philosophical insight into the argument. (This was a claim that van Inwagen once made: see his 1996 pp.30, 34, and 40–43. By ‘insight’ van
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Inwagen means evidence that he possesses that is hard to communicate, his past experiences, and his intuitions). The fact that Lewis rejects the argument is evidence that you lack such insight (or evidence that if you have insight, your insight is mistaken). Of course Lewis might be smart without being right, and you might not be as smart as him but still be right. But why suppose that it is you rather than him who possesses insight other than the fact that you believe the consequence argument and he doesn’t? If insight tracks smartness, the odds are that Lewis has insight. If insight does not track smartness, who knows what it might track? It’s then merely even odds that you have it. We should distinguish epistemic from motivational issues. The issue being highlighted here is epistemic: whether you are entitled to remain as confident as you are in your philosophical opinions given that you have an epistemic superior who disagrees with you. This differs from the motivational issue of whether you should persist in doing philosophy given that you have an epistemic superior who disagrees with you. Perhaps in that case you are like a sparring partner for a world boxing champion: although you know you’re going to lose every contest, you also know that you’re performing a useful service by keeping the champion and yourself in good shape. Or perhaps you have other forms of motivation – incessant curiosity, a need for intellectual stimulation, and the like. No matter. It can be reasonable that your motivation for doing philosophy remains undiminished despite the fact that you know you have epistemic superiors who disagree with you. (Notice too that, so far as the motivational issue goes, your epistemic superior need not disagree with you about this issue). The epistemic issue, however, persists. Even if you have undiminished reason to do philosophy despite the fact that an epistemic superior disagrees with you, what should the degree of confidence of your philosophical opinions be given that you have an epistemic superior who disagrees with those opinions? Very well, so should you follow Lewis and reject the consequence argument? Here are some considerations against this. Lewis thinks the consequence argument is flawed and he even wrote a paper to show this (Lewis 1981.) If Lewis were both smart and right, he would be able to show less smart philosophers such as you and I what is wrong with the consequence argument. He would be able to construct a sound counter-argument, explaining each step of it in such careful and accessible detail that even much more limited philosophers such as ourselves would be able to follow it and become convinced. But this is not what we find: when we read what he has to say, we understand it but we come away unconvinced. So Lewis is not both smart and right. Now, he is assuredly smart. Therefore, there is some reason to think that he is not right in rejecting the consequence argument.
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Moreover, even if Lewis were the smartest philosopher around, many other leading philosophers disagree with his assessment of the consequence argument (such as van Inwagen, Ginet, and Wiggins). I suggest that these philosophers are collectively as smart as Lewis at least with respect to this issue. So what should you think about the consequence argument in the light of this? You are caught between conflicting sources of testimony, conflicting epistemic superiors. And it is likely that you will find yourself in this predicament for every philosophical view you hold. What should you do? You could become an agnostic about every philosophical issue (or deny that these are genuine issues of disagreement) and become an agnostic about almost every philosophical argument. But that does not help. You would still be disagreeing with your epistemic superiors since they think that you should not be agnostic but should be agreeing with them. Second, that option seems to assign too much weight to the views of others in philosophy, even if they are your epistemic superiors. It seems to overlook the evidence and the arguments that you possess and the justification that they confer on your view, despite the fact that you know that some other philosophers disagree. They may disagree with you and they may be your epistemic superiors but that does not license your abandoning your position anymore than the ancient Greeks would have been licensed in disbelieving what their eyes told them about motion because Zeno was their epistemic superior in philosophy. Philosophical testimony has some weight, but it can be outweighed by what you perceive or by what you argue. Van Inwagen raises a different issue in his paper ‘Freedom to Break the Laws.’ Here the issue is about the contingency with which each of us forms our philosophical beliefs – something that applies to epistemic peers and superiors alike. Van Inwagen supposes that he has perhaps reached equilibrium between his philosophical theories and his data, but it strikes him that his data could so easily have been different: The point of the philosophical equilibrium I occupy depends (perhaps) on predispositions to belief inherent in my genes, (very likely) on what my parents taught me about morals and politics and religion when I was a child, and (certainly) on what university I selected for graduate study in philosophy, who my departmental colleagues have been, the books and essays I have read and haven’t read, the conversations I have had at APA divisional meetings as a result of turning right rather than left when I was wandering aimlessly about at a reception. . . . Other philosophers have reached different points of philosophical equilibrium simply because these factors have operated differently in the course of the formation of their opinions. These reflections suggest — and the suggestion is very strong indeed — that I ought to withdraw from the point of philosophical equilibrium I occupy and become a sceptic about the answers to all or
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almost all philosophical questions (van Inwagen 2004 p.342.)
I agree with van Inwagen’s reflections but disagree with the conclusion that he draws. First, the phrase ‘what my parents taught me about morals and politics and religion’ in the quoted passage should alert us that the reflections he entertains do not apply only to philosophical views: they apply to pretty much of all our views. (Perhaps some of our beliefs are innate and so are not products of our current environment and education.) They are reflections on the contingent circumstances in which we form most of our beliefs. If you had been born in North Korea or in an Amish community or in Saudi Arabia, you would have grown up with very different views about politics, culture, science, religion and history than the ones that you do have. It’s a sobering thought about what might have been and about the dependence of which beliefs we have on how our lives have happened to turn out, but it doesn’t single out our philosophical beliefs for special consideration. Second, let’s turn specifically to the case of philosophy. On the basis of the evidence available to me, and assuming that I’m at least moderately rational, I have formed certain philosophical views. I realize that many other philosophers have different views and I realize that they have formed them on the basis of different evidence.3 I do not know what their different evidence is: I have not been privy to their experiences, chance meetings and reflections. And if I did have the evidence they have, perhaps I would not have formed the beliefs that I did or perhaps I would not have formed those beliefs with the degree of belief that I did. What am I do to? The rational thing to do is to form my beliefs on the evidence I have and to be prepared to update my beliefs when I fall into conversation with these other philosophers and learn about their reasons for the different beliefs that they hold. But, ex hypothesi, I have already formed my philosophical beliefs on the basis of the evidence, however partial, available to me (where this evidence includes the evidence that others have evidence for different beliefs to mine.) And, similarly, since I am moderately rational, I will seek out further evidence and be prepared to update my beliefs when new evidence comes in. With all that in place, there is nothing else for the rational person to do and there seems to be no special problem concerning my philosophical beliefs.4 What is at issue here is the nature and distribution of epistemic luck. There is an extensive literature on this topic. (Pritchard 2005 provides an overview). For our purposes in disussing van Inwagen’s view, the key point is the following. Certain kinds of epistemic luck undermine our putative knowledge and thereby undermine our beliefs but (it is widely agreed) other kinds do not. For example, the luck of existing or of being suitably
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equipped to form the relevant beliefs does not undermine your knowledge that you exist or that there is a barn in front of you. The puzzle about van Inwagen’s argument is that it is undiscriminating between these two kinds of case. Never mind where we think philosophical beliefs fall – whether they fall on the undermined side of the distinction or not. The considerations van Inwagen offers apply to all of our beliefs indiscriminately: as we have seen, if his argument against philosophical beliefs is successful, it ramifies and all beliefs alike are undermined. That proves too much. And for all that van Inwagen has said, it is an open question which side of the undermined/non-undermined distinction philosophical beliefs would fall on even if we were to introduce into the discussion facts that discriminate between beliefs falling on different sides of the distinction. In particular, so far as van Inwagen’s argument goes, it is an open question whether, in such circumstances, they would without exception fall on the undermined side of the distinction. For instance, it is plausible that if we cannot provide a reasonable epistemology for claims about some field, X, then any beliefs that we have about that field are undermined. Accordingly, if a reasonable epistemology of our philosophical beliefs was impossible – if there could be no reasonable account of how our philosophical beliefs are reliable – then those beliefs would be undermined. But such a contention goes beyond the datum given to us in the discussion, the datum that it is highly contingent which philosophical beliefs each of us has.5 Finally, there does seem something to the idea that it is not reasonable to maintain a given belief once you think that there is no reason to suppose that whatever evidence you have supports that belief (cf. Feldman 2006). But, as I see it, that is not the case van Inwagen presented. He outlined counterfactual situations in which you would have had different philosophical beliefs than the ones you actually do because of the different training, information and the like that you would have had in those circumstances. The fact that, in different circumstances you would have had different evidence, and so formed different beliefs does not seem to indicate that you lack reason to believe that the evidence you actually have supports the beliefs you actually have. iii. three accounts of why there isn’t appreciable progress in philosophy I will now assess three accounts of why there isn’t appreciable progress in philosophy. We start with Russell. Russell closed his 1918 lectures on logical atomism with the following declaration: . . . I believe that the only difference between science and philosophy is, that science is what you more or less know and philosophy is what you do not know. Philosophy is that part of science which at present people
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choose to have opinions about, but which they have no knowledge about (Russell 1956 p.281. For similar views, see James 1911 pp.9-10, Lycan 2013 p.117 and Chalmers 2015 p.25.)
Here Russell is pithy but cursory. First, there are scientific issues about which scientists have opinions but lack knowledge. Informed speculation is not the prerogative of philosophers. In Russell’s day scientists speculated about the nature of matter; in our own day they speculate about dark matter and dark energy. Second, Russell presents philosophy as having a stock of problems that, over time, are taken off its hands and solved by science: ‘every advance in knowledge robs philosophy of some of the problems which formerly it had [and] a number of problems which had belonged to philosophy will cease to belong to philosophy and will belong to science’ (Russell 1956 p.281.) Far from explaining the lack of progress in philosophy, this entails that there is progress, where philosophical progress is measured by the number of philosophical problems that have been solved. What remains on Russell’s view, however, is a lack of progress by philosophers in solving problems. Nothing he says explains why there is such a lack of progress. Equivalently, despite however many problems that have swopped over from philosophy to science, there are many that have not and which remain resolutely philosophical. Those problems remain unsolved and Russell has no explanation of why that is so (cf. van Inwagen 2008 pp.11-12.) The next account I will consider is taken from Fraser MacBride. He offers the following account of why there isn’t appreciable progress in philosophy: What makes these problems so resilient is the fact that they are general and pluriform. We cannot expect them to receive a definitive resolution until the Epistemic End of Days. . . [To solve a philosophical problem requires understanding many things.] But we cannot acquire such pervasive understanding without relying upon our grasp of other concepts that may also turn out to be problematic and drawing upon the results of other disciplines. And we don’t know in advance what other questions will be thrown up by future developments within these disciplines or by the efforts of philosophers to integrate them into a unified scheme. But this isn’t a scandal to philosophy. It’s a consequence of the encompassing and compounding character of the problems with which philosophy deals that their resolution requires of us a synoptic understanding (MacBride 2014 p.231.)
I have two comments on MacBride’s view. First, he emphasizes the need for philosophical inquiries to achieve overall coherence. But, as Duhem helped show (1906 part II, chapter VI, section 2), this is a general feature of inquiry and not a special characteristic of philosophy. In advancing a
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hypothesis an inquirer relies upon a background of accepted hypotheses and so upon her grasp of the concepts figuring in these hypotheses, ‘concepts that may also turn out to be problematic and [that draw] upon the results of other disciplines.’ For example, in framing a hypothesis about the observational consequences of certain astronomical facts, a scientist relies upon accepted hypotheses about instrument design, the margins for experimental error, optics, the workings of our perceptual system, and so on. The concepts figuring in these hypotheses may be problematic for philosophical or scientific reasons, and they draw upon the results of other disciplines, such as engineering, statistics, optics and physiology. Since we cannot predict future developments in an inquiry nor how its results are best integrated in a simple and comprehensive fashion, we should not expect a definitive resolution of any line of inquiry until ‘the Epistemic End of Days’. Since any well-conducted inquiry involves due attention to its overall coherence, MacBride has not identified a special feature of philosophy, and a fortiori has not identified a feature which explains the lack of appreciable progress in philosophy in contrast to science. Second, there can be a lack of appreciable progress in philosophy even in cases where this feature is not markedly present. Consider the debate, for instance, concerning William Rowe’s evidential argument from evil against the existence of God. My sense of this debate is that the different parties markedly disagree but the locus of the debate is relatively confined. It is about whether the presence of evil is good evidence against the existence of God; whether we are really in a position to make an informed judgment about this; and, if we are, whether there are defeaters or underminers for that evidential link. (For a very small selection of such contributions over the last three decades, see Wykstra 1984, Alston 1991, and Howard-Snyder 2000.) The parties to the debate use such notions as that of gratuitous evil, morality, reason, evidence, truth, and probability. These are problematic notions each of which raises a host of issues. Yet the parties to the debate about Rowe’s argument seem very largely to agree in their understanding of these notions – or at any rate notable differences in their understanding of these notions do not surface – and so their disagreement does not extend to a disagreement about the proper understanding of these and allied notions. In this sense, the locus of the debate is relatively confined but it has still been sufficient to keep the debate raging since 1979, the publication date of Rowe’s first paper on the topic. The key point is that the persistence of philosophical disagreement need not trace back to the MacBride’s claim that to get a solution for any one philosophical problem we need something like a simultaneous solution for a raft of philosophical problems. The third account I will look at appeals to the notion of cognitive closure. A type of mind is defined as cognitively closed with respect to a property F iff the concept-forming ca-
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pacity of a mind of this type cannot extend to an understanding of F. This third account thinks that there will be no end to philosophical disagreement and the reason it gives is that our minds are cognitively closed to the solution of philosophical problems. That is, we lack the cognitive capacity to solve philosophical problems and to establish true and illuminating philosophical theories (McGinn 1993 chapter 1 and 9 and van Inwagen 1996 pp.255-6): . . . our minds are not cognitively tuned to these problems [i.e. the problems of philosophy]. This is, as it were, just a piece of bad luck on our part, analogous to the lack of a language module in the brain of a dog (McGinn 1993 p.13.) Our cognitive capacities, although they are very well fitted to the task of figuring out how cell division and rainbows work, are not at all fitted to the task of figuring out how consciousness and freewill work. “Scientific questions” are just those general, theoretical questions that we are cognitively properly fitted out to answer, and “philosophical questions” are just those that we are not (van Inwagen 1996 p.254.)
As with Russell’s account, this account needs to explain why we are good at answering scientific questions but not philosophical ones. McGinn’s explanation is that we are good at using concepts which involve spatial thinking – and these are the concepts used in science – whereas we are not good at using concepts which don’t involve spatial thinking – and these are the concepts used in philosophy. Yet what about mathematics? We are good at doing mathematics – or at least as good as we are at doing science – but mathematical concepts do not involve spatial thinking. McGinn acknowledges the point and says that mathematical thinking involves thinking about ‘quasi-spatial’ dimensions (McGinn 1993 p.20.) That is to say, such thinking can be formally represented as being about a space. But by the same reckoning, we could say that philosophy involves quasi-spatial thinking. For we can say that the entailment and probability relations between propositions impose an ordering on them and this can be represented as a quasi-spatial lattice. Here is what McGinn says about modes of thought that, he thinks, we do excel at. Such a mode concerns: an array of primitive elements [which] is subject to specified principles of combination which generate determinate relations between complexes of those elements (McGinn 1993 p.18.)
But this characterization is satisfied by propositions. They are subject to specified principles of combination – for example, there are the principles governing the logical constants and then there are the principles specified by Kripke in his model theory for modal discourse – that determine relations between complexes formed from propositions, including relations of
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entailment and of logical independence. For these reasons, then, the supposed contrast between mathematics and philosophy collapses. Nor do appeals to evolution provide the explanation that the proponent of cognitive closure needs. Suppose it is claimed that humans are (comparatively) poor at philosophy because evolution did not equip us with minds that were up to the task: ‘Perhaps human metaphysicians . . . work by taking human intellectual capacities designed for purposes quite unrelated to questions about ultimate reality and pushing these capacities to their limits’ (van Inwagen 2008 p.14. See also McGinn 1993 p.5 and Ladyman and Ross 2001 sections 1.1 and 1.2.) But then it would be puzzling why our species struggles with metaphysics but excels in mathematics. And if it is claimed that our mathematical ability is a fortuitous offshoot of how the human brain evolved under environmental pressures, an explanation would be needed of why this does not carry over to the case of philosophy.6 McGinn himself finds the suggestion that our philosophical ability is a by-product of evolution ‘much too sanguine’:
First, we should be a good deal more surprised by the by-product story than we tend to be, regarding it as far more puzzling than is customary. It really is quite astonishing, and not at all predictable, that a faculty with the biological function of reason should be capable of the feats of which it is capable (McGinn 1993 p.134.)
But what is surprising and puzzling is not specifically the idea that our ability to do philosophy is an evolutionary by-product. What is surprising and puzzling is the by-product story itself, the view that our higher cognitive abilities and our culture are a spin-off from the cognitive powers that we evolved solely as a matter of natural selection. Either the by-product story is credible or it is not. If it is credible, and it can account for (say) our mathematical ability, then, on the face of it, it can equally account for our philosophical ability. If, however, the by-product story is not credible, then not only is there a question of why it is that human beings should have philosophical ability, despite the fact that it is not selected for, there is the broader question of why it is that human beings should have higher cognitive powers – powers to theorize about a wealth of topics not directly concerned with survival. Either way, then, there seems to be no special puzzle about how it is that human beings can do philosophy despite their evolutionary heritage. McGinn’s second response is that: . . . if we take the by-product idea seriously we should be prepared to encounter limitations that derive from the primary purpose of the organ
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[i.e. the so-called organ of reason] – as we would be for any other biological organ. The inner nature of reason, as determined by its basic function, must to some degree constrain the kinds of side-effects it can have (McGinn 1993 p134.)
Again I concede McGinn’s premise: our reasoning powers have biologically imposed limits. But this is only half of the by-product story. The story says that we cannot tell from the primary function of the organ of reason – namely, aiding our species’ survival – what other cognitive work we can put that organ to. The above passage leaves this an entirely open matter. So the passage does not raise a specific challenge for our capacity to do philosophy as against our presumed capacities to engage in other demanding cognitive tasks.7
No species can be good at everything: each species has a relatively fixed biological nature which confers on it certain skills although that same nature precludes it from having certain other skills. The structure of the cat’s eye enables the cat to see well in the dark but makes it see poorly things that are close up. The case for humans being cognitively closed with respect to certain matters is sometimes made by analogy: ‘What is closed to the mind of a rat may be open to the mind of a monkey, and what is open to us may be closed to the monkey’ (McGinn 1989 p.350.) Since human beings form a species alongside the rat and the monkey, our minds too should be expected to have cognitive limits. Now, no doubt they do but where do these limits lie? Not only do the rat and the monkey have cognitive limits but one of their limitations is that they remain unaware of the fact that they have such limitations. The rat and the monkey cannot learn a language but they also cannot recognize that they cannot. If humans cannot solve philosophical problems, how is it that they can recognize this? But perhaps this is pressing the wrong analogy. Perhaps a better analogy is between children and adults. A nine year old child cannot understand things which the adult can but the former can also recognize that fact. By symmetry, there might be things that the adult can’t understand but can recognize that he or she can’t understand. Perhaps so, but are the solutions to philosophical problems among them? Thomas Nagel remarks that ‘people with a permanent age of nine cannot come to understand Maxwell’s equations or the general theory of relativity or Gödel’s theorem’ (Nagel 1986 p.95.) True enough, but then such people don’t understand any of the theories in these fields that have received serious consideration, including false ones such as Cartesian mechanics, Newtonian mechanics and Hilbert’s programme. By contrast, as a species human beings are adept at understanding and criticizing a wealth of philosophical theories.
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McGinn says that ‘cognitive deficits are apt to be the inevitable outcome of cognitive strengths along other dimensions: we are bad at philosophy because we are good at something else – rather as we are bad at breathing under water because we are good at breathing in the open air’ (McGinn 1993 p.24, note 8.) We have seen what McGinn takes this something else to be – that elements in our thinking can be combined by laws to form more complex elements – but found it inadequate at explaining our alleged inability to do philosophy well. Moreover, his analogy is unconvincing. No human can breath at all under water yet some people can do philosophy better than others. Maybe every human falls far short of being able to solve any philosophical problem, but the thesis of cognitive closure altogether fails to explain the comparative fact that some people are better at doing philosophy than others. As we saw in §2, the problem of epistemic superiors arises precisely on the assumption that David Lewis is a smarter philosopher than you or I. The puzzle facing those who appeal to cognitive closure is then to explain why we are unable to solve philosophical problems despite the fact that as a species we are inveterate philosophers. Of course that might just be an unfortunate fact about where the gap between our aspirations and our cognitive abilities lies. But the appeal to cognitive closure was supposed to be more than a provocative speculation but an explanatory empirical hypothesis (McGinn 1993 p.151), and unless it can explain the above consequence – a purported fact about just where our minds become closed – it fails its own standard.8
Here is a further fact that needs explaining. Take those many philosophical theories that it is granted we do understand. Then the question is: although we understand them, why is there persistent disagreement between us about their truth-values? According to the proponents of cognitive closure, none of these theories provides the solution to a philosophical problem since our minds are closed to such solutions, and so any theory that we devise will be inadequate to the task. Well, that tells us that none of those theories provides a solution, but it doesn’t tell us why we can’t agree about the theories. For that matter, why is there disagreement about the truth-value of the hypothesis that our minds are cognitively closed with respect to the solutions of philosophical problems? This is a hypothesis that we understand – otherwise we could not be debating it – yet opinions remain stubbornly divided about it. So even if the cognitive closure hypothesis explains why we have not solved any philosophical problems – something that I’ve anyhow questioned – it does not explain why there is persistent disagreement.
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iv. what’s gone wrong? What we have is a bona fide philosophical problem. It is something that can be stated in rough form easily enough. Yet it is not a straightforwardly empirical matter and it repeatedly resists solution. With that on the table, let me offer a different diagnosis of why there is persistent philosophical disagreement. I think the fault doesn’t lie with the questions we ask – that they are somehow defective – or with our minds – that they are ill suited or too limited – but with the methods and ambitions involved in our inquiry. Let’s begin with our methods. The methods we use in philosophy are both too weak and too strong. They are too weak because, unlike mathematics, philosophy does not, for the most part, provide formal deductions of truths. This is partly because there is a widespread use in philosophy of non-deductive methods. But it is also because, even where deductive arguments are used, issues arise about the clarity or the justification of the premises used in the arguments. No deductive argument will settle any of these issues: it simply pushes the problem back by introducing new premises subject to the same issues. The methods used in philosophy are also too strong: the same methods used to reach a conclusion from a premise set can be turned back and applied to those premises and to the inferential steps used in drawing the conclusion. Debate about the conclusion is then parlayed into debate about a premise or an inferential step. To debate means to argue and any argument provided will be open to the same scrutiny. Does the answer lie in the devising of some ‘brave new method’ that will replace or supplement our existing methods? The possibility of methodological innovation should not be ruled out, but, even so, we should not hold out for the prospect of it making a breakthrough in our philosophical fortunes. The considerations noted above that apply to our current methods would carry over. Issues about the new method’s justification, its reliability, and its standing relative to our other methods would need to be debated and resolved, and, on the face of it, there is no reason to think that these issues would be any more tractable in the case of any new method than they have been in the case of any of the methods that we have already got. Some philosophers think that this emphasis on argument is misplaced but I think it is paramount. David Chalmers reports that: Burton Dreben once memorably said to me . . . ‘Great philosophers don’t argue.’ . . . A part of Dreben’s thought, as I understood it, was that since arguments are so easily rebutted, giving arguments is a sign of weakness. It’s better to simply assert and develop a thesis. Then one’s readers have
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to engage with the thesis itself, without the cheap distraction of rebutting arguments for the thesis (Chalmers 2015 p.21.)
As a piece of advice that rather sounds like saying: ‘Since our attention is so easily distracted, paying attention to traffic is a sign of weakness. It’s better simply to step out into traffic and cross the road. Then one can engage with the business of getting across the road, without the cheap distraction of looking at which way the cars are coming from.’ Instead I say: since theses are so easily rejected, it’s better to present arguments for your theses. Galen Strawson shares something of Dreben’s attitude: It’s often said that argument is the heart of philosophy, and especially of analytic philosophy, but I’m sure that’s not true, if argument is thought of as primarily a matter of formally arrayed premisses and conclusions. . . All arguments have premisses, after all, and not all premisses can be argued for on pain of never getting started (Strawson 2008 p.3.)
Strawson’s argument fails. For consider: definition is the heart of dictionary compiling. Nonetheless, all definitions involve words and not all words can be defined on pain of never getting started. Still, even if argument is paramount in philosophy, why doesn’t the arguing ever come to an end? In philosophy, our claims outrun our evidence in two respects. First, even where we agree about the evidence, it is not apparent which claim the evidence provides the most support for. Where the evidence is rich in philosophy, it tends to be disparate and conflicting and thereby hard to assess. And where the evidence is meagre, it provides little support for one philosophical claim over another. Second, in philosophy we often do not agree about the evidence. New evidence is always coming in just because new arguments are always being thought up. In debating about the new arguments we are debating whether they do provide evidence. And in the case of data besides argument, there is disagreement about whether such data as intuitions or phenomenology or parsimony principles are evidence or whether they are fundamental or whether they provide much support (cf. van Inwagen 2004 p.335, note 4.) Like a fractal, with every inferential step and with every appeal to evidence in philosophy, debate and argument can arise. Still, why doesn’t this situation occur in other disciplines since they too use inference and evidence? Here we turn to the ambitions of philosophical inquiry. For a large part of the answer to the question lies in philosophy’s ambitions: it seeks to identify the most fundamental level of epistemic justification for claims and it aspires to an especially high degree of clarity and understanding.
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Disciplines that lack philosophy’s ambitions make life easier for themselves and consequently can be more successful. They can more readily achieve consensus about the evidential status of certain classes of claims, their relative weighting vis-à-vis each other, and the specification of their content. Moreover, they select from only a small menu of theoretical options and disregard the wider issue of the underdetermination of theory by data. Of course, these researchers may have criteria for selecting certain theories from an infinite set of options that are consistent with the data, but then these researchers simply acquiesce in the appropriateness of these criteria. Much less of this framework of consensus obtains in philosophy. Where proponents of one particular view agree on a body of data and theory, we will find proponents of a rival view that rejects at least some of that data or theory. Since so much is up for debate in philosophy, even within a given field, we find that philosophy has made a rod for its own back: its aspirations outrun what its methods can deliver. Lastly, it might be wondered whether this conception of philosophy harks back to a tradition that is at odds with contemporary naturalism. That depends, however, on what one takes ‘naturalism’ to mean and its sense shifts between different philosophers’ usage. To fix ideas, take the following passage from Quine to pick out one important strand of naturalism: [The naturalistic philosopher] begins his reasoning within the inherited world theory as a going concern. He tentatively believes all of it, but believe also that some unidentified portions are wrong. He tries to improve, clarify, and understand the system from within. He is the busy sailor adrift on Neurath’s boat (Quine 1975 p.72).
But if this is what naturalism amounts to – believing the total theory of the world that previous inquiry, both scientific and philosophical, has bequeathed to us and updating it as new information comes in – then there seems to be no inconsistency between naturalism and the conception of philosophy outlined here. That conception places no restrictions on what philosophical claims can be revised or on what basis. In fact, given that it takes philosophy to be ‘argument without end’, that is precisely one of the consequences of the conception.
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references Alston, William P. (1991) ‘The Inductive Argument From Evil and the Human Cognitive Condition’ Philosophical Perspectives, Volume 5, Philosophy of Religion (1991): 29-67. Ballantyne, Nathan (2014) ‘Knockdown Arguments’ Erkenntnis 79: 525– 543. Brennan, Jason (2010) ‘Scepticism about Philosophy’ Ratio 23: 1-16. Brueckner, Anthony L. and E. Alex Beroukhim (2006) ‘McGinn on Consciousness and the Mind-Body Problem’ in Quentin Smith and Aleksandar Jokic (eds.) Consciousness: New Philosophical Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 396-406. Chalmers, David J. (2015) ‘Why Isn’t There More Progress in Philosophy?’ Philosophy 90: 3-31.
Christensen, David and Jennifer Lackey (eds.) The Epistemology of Disagreement: New Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Duhem, Pierre (1906) The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).
Feldman, Richard (2006) ‘Epistemological puzzles about disagreement’ in Stephen Hetherington (ed.) Epistemology Futures (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 216-236. Fischer, John Martin and Neal A. Tognazzini (2007) ‘Exploring Evil and Philosophical Failure: A Critical Notice of Peter van Inwagen’s The Problem of Evil’ Faith and Philosophy 24: 458-474.
Fumerton, Robert (2010) ‘You Can’t Trust a Philosopher’ in Richard Feldman and Ted A. Warfield (eds.) Disagreement (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 91-110. Hanna, Nathan (forthcoming) ‘Philosophical Success’ Philosophical Studies.
Howard-Snyder, Daniel (2000) ‘Rowe’s Argument from Particular Horrors’ in Kelly James Clark (ed.) Readings in the Philosophy of Religion (Ontario: Broadview Press, 1st edition): 238-249.
James, William (1911) Some Problems of Philosophy: A Beginning of an Introduction to Philosophy (Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1996). Ladyman, James and Donald Ross (2007) Every Thing Must Go: Naturalized Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University Press). 20
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Ladyman, James (2007) ‘Does Physics Answer Metaphysical Questions?’ Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 61: 179-201.
Lewis, David (1981) ‘Are We Free to Break the Laws?’ Theoria 47: 113121. Lycan, William G. (2013) ‘On Two Main Themes in Gutting’s What Philosophers Know’ The Southern Journal of Philosophy 51: 112120. MacBride, Fraser (2014) ‘Analytic Philosophy and its Synoptic Commission: Towards the Epistemic End of Days’ Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 74: 221-236. McGinn, Colin (1989) ‘Can We Solve The Mind-Body Problem?’ Mind 98: 349-366. McGinn, Colin (1993) Problems in Philosophy: The Limits of Inquiry: (Oxford: Blackwell-Wiley.) Nagel, Thomas (1986) The View From Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press.) Prawitz, Dag (1997) ‘Progress in Philosophy’ in Arnold Burgen, Peter McLaughlin, and Jiirgen Mittelstrass (eds.) The Idea of Progress (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter): 139-153. Pritchard, Duncan (2007) Epistemic Luck (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Quine, W.V.O. (1975) ‘Five Milestones of Empiricism’ reprinted in his Theories and Things (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press): 67-72. Rowe, William L. (1979) ‘The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism’ American Philosophical Quarterly 16: 335–341. Russell, Bertrand (1956) ‘The Philosophy of Logical Atomism’ in his Logic and Knowledge: Essays 1901-1950, edited by Robert C. Marsh (London: George Allen & Unwin): 177-281. Strawson, Galen (2008) Real Materialism and Other Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press.) van Inwagen, Peter (1996a) ‘Is it Wrong Everywhere, Always, and for Anyone to Believe Anything on Insufficient Evidence?’ in Jeff Jordan and Daniel Howard-Snyder (eds.) Faith, Freedom and Rationality (Savage, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield): 137-154.
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van Inwagen, Peter (1996b) ‘Review of Colin McGinn, Problems in Philosophy: The Limits of Inquiry’ The Philosophical Review 105: 253-256. van Inwagen, Peter (2004) ‘Freedom to Break the Laws’ Midwest Studies in Philosophy 28, 2004: 334-350. van Inwagen, Peter (2006) The Problem of Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press.) van Inwagen, Peter (2008) Metaphysics (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 3rd edition.) Wolterstorff, Nicholas (2014) ‘The Significance of Inexplicable Disagreement’ in Laura Frances Callaghan and Timothy O’Connor (eds.) Religious Faith and Intellectual Virtue (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 317-30. Wykstra, Stephen J. (1984) ‘The Humean Obstacle to Evidential Arguments from Suffering: On Avoiding the Evils of ‘Appearance’’ International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 16: 73-93.
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endnotes 1 Some natural responses to van Inwagen and Lycan would fail to engage with their view. For instance, Prawitz 1997 takes the great leap forward from Aristotelian logic that Boole and Frege made to be an exemplary case of philosophical progress. Van Inwagen and Lycan, however, explicitly distinguish logic from philosophy and emphasize that their skeptical thesis concerns philosophy alone. In discussing van Inwagen’s 2006 book, Fischer and Tognazinni suggest that there are ways in which philosophical arguments can be successful other than by providing knowledge or established information: For example, perhaps some philosophical arguments are “successful” in virtue of making us (or many of us – or some of us) see a certain debate in a different way – as structured in a different way, or as requiring different presuppositions from what we had antecedently believed. Or maybe an argument can be successful by helping us to tease out certain distinctions, or clarify certain concepts, or encouraging us to think in new directions about an old problem (Fischer and Tognazzini 2007 §II.) It is not clear, however, why any of these features should count as a success unless it contributes to the provision of knowledge or the establishing of some information – and then we are back to facing van Inwagen and Lycan’s challenge. Otherwise adopting a new perspective or acquiring a new concept or drawing a new distinction constitutes only a change in someone’s psychology, namely by introducing added complexity to the stock of concepts or distinctions or views that they recognize. Lastly, Wolterstorff claims that the key notion of epistemic appraisal in philosophical disagreements is that of entitlement, where ‘what makes a person not entitled to some belief is that there is some practice of inquiry that he failed to employ but ought to have employed with a seriousness and competence such that, had he done so, he would not have that belief’ (Wolterstorff 2014 p.329). Now, a leading thesis of his paper is that ‘the sources of philosophical conviction and disagreement are in good measure hidden from us’ (Wolterstorff 2014 p.323). It follows from this thesis that it is good measure hidden from us whether, in forming her philosophical beliefs, each philosopher has failed to employed some practice of inquiry that she ought to have employed such that, had she done so, she would not have that belief. It further follows that it is good measure hidden from us whether any philosopher is entitled to her philosophical beliefs, in Wolterstorff’s sense of entitlement. I do not know whether Wolterstorff would accept these consequences of his paper, consequences that seem germane to Lycan and van Inwagen’s scepticism. 2 What does this ability consist in? It cannot consist in philosophical knowledge since we are assuming that there is no such knowledge. What we can say is that David Lewis has more philosophical ability than you if he has more understanding – for every distinction, theory and argument you understand, he understands them and more – and he has more creativity – he formulates more (and more illuminating) distinctions and theories than you. None of this is to say that anyone knows that any of these distinctions are genuine ones, that the theories are true or that those arguments are sound. So the smarter philosopher need not be one who knows more. 3 Or perhaps they have the same evidence as I do but have made a different assessment of the evidence. I will take this option as read in what follows. 4 Due to considerations of space I have had to defer the considerations about philosophi-
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cal disagreement and epistemic superiors raised by Fumerton (2010) and in the papers collected in part II of Christensen and Lackey (2013). 5 Incidentally, I wonder how the challenge raised by the contention could be met. Any reasonable epistemology of X will require a philosophical theory about X – a theory about the nature of truths concerning X. But belief in any such theory will automatically be subject to the same challenge. How could the challenge be met without begging the question against it? 6 Ladyman elsewhere addresses essentially this point when he compares natural science rather than mathematics with metaphysics: In response though note that even if it is granted that natural selection cannot explain how natural scientific knowledge is possible, we have plenty of good reasons for thinking that we do have such knowledge. On the other hand, we have no good reasons for thinking that metaphysical knowledge is possible (Ladyman (2007) p.183). Ladyman’s response strikes me as involving a concession and a retreat. The original challenge was that since there is no evolutionary explanation of (purported) philosophical knowledge, there is reason to think there is no philosophical knowledge. The point was then made that there is equally no evolutionary explanation of (purported) scientific knowledge. In the above passage Ladyman apparently concedes this point. He then responds that ‘we have no good reasons for thinking that metaphysical knowledge is possible’. Perhaps that claim is correct, but Ladyman makes it on the basis of considerations that are independent of evolutionary theory. The original challenge has then gone by the board. 7 The most developed case McGinn makes that we are cognitively closed with respect to some subject matter concerns consciousness. Brueckner and Beroukhim (2003) provide effective criticism of McGinn’s case. 8 McGinn further says that sometimes philosophical theories can be assented to given the reasons which support them, but that ‘often they can expect only to be taken seriously. . . [Often] enough the best we can do is to get ourselves into a position to regard the proposition with respect’ (McGinn 1993 p.1.) In particular, he claims that the cognitive closure theory ‘may be true, and that much would make sense if it were’ (McGinn 1993 p.2.) McGinn’s epistemic caution does not substantially affect the above assessment of his theory. If a theory fails to explain facts that we would reasonably expect it to explain, we should take the theory less likely to be true and – in that sense – we should take the theory less seriously.
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