One of the most annoying things about being a professional philosopher is the fact that I so often am called upon to defend the value of my profession and my discipline. One thing that makes it especially annoying is that so many philosophers have written so much about the value of philosophy (including, of course, Russell’s work on the subject). One would think that the value of philosophy would be a settled matter by now. However, this is not the case.
Like almost all professors, I have to deal with the occasional student who questions the value of my discipline in general or my class in particular. I have, naturally enough, worked out a well developed reply to such questions. In addition to the challenges put forth by students, philosophers also face a challenge put forth by fellow academics. For example, The Philosophers’ Magazine (third quarter 2008, pages 120-126) features an article by Julian Baggini in which Lewis Wolpert’s view of philosophy is discussed. Wolpert puts forth the usual charge against philosophy: “…philosophy is not successful. It has achieved nothing.” (page 121). He does concede that Aristotle did make a difference and does allow a place for political and moral philosophy. Other than that, he regards philosophy as not making “the slightest difference” in regards to what we know.
Naturally enough, these criticisms have some plausibility. Philosophy has long been attacked because it bakes no bread, builds no weapons, and seems to do nothing. In short, philosophy seems to be useless. If this is the case, then philosophy professors like me have worked out quite a scheme: we get paid to achieve nothing. However, I think that Wolpert and the other critics are fundamentally mistaken about the value of philosophy.
One stock argument is to present the accomplishment of philosophers such as Thales, Descartes, Leibniz, Newton and others. Since these people accomplished so much in terms of science, mathematics, and geometry it would seem mistaken to regard philosophy as lacking in achievements.
Of course, there is an obvious reply to this. While Thales, Descartes, Leibniz, and Newton were all philosophers, it could be argued that their achievements were within other disciplines. For example, Descartes’ work in mathematics and geometry were great achievements-of mathematics and geometry. To use analogy, while I am a philosopher and I have won 5Ks and 10Ks, it would be incorrect to say that philosophy has achieved victories in running. Rather, I just happen to be a philosopher who is also a runner. It is as a runner that I accomplish such achievements. Likewise, it is as a scientist that Newton accomplished his great achievements. Thus, the mere fact that philosophers have had great achievements does not entail that philosophy has achieved anything.
Another stock argument is to present achievements that seem to clearly be within the discipline of philosophy. The modern sciences, it is often argued, arose from philosophy (mainly what was known as “natural philosophy”). Further, logic, critical thinking and reasoning are all within the domain of philosophy. Wolpert himself notes the importance of avoiding logical contradictions (page 125) when using the scientific method. Thus, it would seem that philosophy has achieved something after all.
Not surprisingly, there are ways to reply to this defense of philosophy.
In regards to the sciences, it can be argued that while philosophers did contribute to the rise of the sciences, they did so as scientists (or pre-scientists). This is a variation on the argument given above. It could be conceded that (as Wolpert does for Aristotle) that philosophy did give rise to the sciences. However, it could be argued that this is analogous to parents having children who accomplish great things. While the child would not exist without the parents, the children’s accomplishments are their own and hence do not count as achievements for the parents. Philosophy can, of course, take pride in bringing such children into the world. But that is all the credit she deserves.
The matter of logic (broadly taken) does present a tougher dragon to slay. On the face of it, there seem to be two important points here. First, logic belongs to philosophy. Second, logic is extremely useful and seems to be quite a feather in philosophy’s cap. Not to brag, but logic is critical to the information age. Without such logic, there would be no PCs, no internet, no Nintendo Wiis, no Xboxes (360 or otherwise), and no iPods. This alone should refute the charge that philosophy has achieved nothing. Of course, logic and its various domains (such as critical thinking) are also useful in many other ways. Imagine a world without logic and critical thinking and their value seems evident.
This would seem to provide philosophy with an iron clad claim to achievements. However, perhaps philosophy can still be robbed of her prize.
One way to rob philosophy in this matter is to argue that logic belongs to another discipline or that specific types of logic belong to specific disciplines. For example, symbolic logic could be seen as belonging to the discipline of mathematics. The logic used in computers could be seen as belonging to computer science. Scientific and professional reasoning (law, economics, business, etc.) could be seen as belonging to those disciplines. This approach, obviously enough, mimics that used by Socrates against Ion. Socrates argued that the specific content of a poem belonged not to poetry but rather to some other field. For example, while chariot racing is described in the Iliad, the art of racing does not belong to poetry and poets cannot claim the accomplishments of the chariot racers as their own. Likewise, while philosophers talk about logic, logic does not belong to philosophy. Hence, philosophy deserves no credit for the value of logic. Rather, proper credit belongs to all the various disciplines that own a piece of logic.
In defense of philosophy, it can be argued that while other disciplines have employed and developed logic, philosophy deserves the credit for creating logic. To use an analogy, to deny philosophy credit for logic would be like denying Thomas Edison credit for his inventions because other people have developed them in so many new and useful ways over the years.
While this seems like a reasonable argument, there is a way to counter it. When I was in graduate school, I first encountered what turned out to be a standard means of arguing that philosophy accomplishes nothing. Put bluntly, the tactic is to argue that every accomplishment attributed to philosophy belongs to another discipline. This is often done by defining “philosophy” in such a way that achieving results means that one is no longer practicing philosophy but doing something else. For example, once a philosopher begins to develop logic, then he is no longer doing philosophy. Hence, philosophy did not even give the world the beginnings of logic.
This approach does, in a way, work. If the discipline of philosophy is defined in a way that precludes achievement, then philosophy can (by definition) never achieve anything. The same sort of method can be used to “prove” that a liberal can never accomplish anything. Just define “liberal” such that if someone achieves something, then she is not a liberal.
There seems to be no compelling reason why philosophers should accept this view of philosophy. Naturally enough, those who claim philosophy accomplishes nothing would need to provide an adequate defense of such a definition. Philosophers are, of course, obligated to provide an alternative definition.
Wolpert’s Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast has a glaring error of logic in the section where he is trying to explain argument forms - he puts forward an illustration of a valid argument (using fried foods and cholesterol as the example) which boils down to this:
All A are not B
Some A are C
—-
All C are not B
It’s particularly unfortunate as the whole book is one of those “triumph of science” elevations of human logical rationality as the highest expression of God’s creation. Sorry, did I say “God’s creation”? Oops. Although he does bang on tediously about how animals don’t have souls. Sorry, animals don’t have the capacity for rational thought. It’s a little difficult sometimes to tell the difference between Wolpert and a scholastic Catholic philosopher, although the scholastics tended to have a better grasp of logic.
W.H. Auden:
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its own making where executives
Would never want to tamper.
And if the same were true about philosophy, so what? I never wanted to be a CEO.
Philosophers are by far the best philosophy bashers. There seems to be at the moment a mini-movement against armchair philosophy which is code for what is considered to be an aprioristic unwillingness to attend to empirical data. I imagine they have little patience with the counter - that all depends on what you mean by a priori, empirical and data.
“Truth is based on being. Hence, as it is self-evident that being exists in general, so it is also self-evident that truth exists”. (Aquinas on The Mind) Could any empirical finding establish this? Does not all law tend to be overthrown as this years breakthrough becomes the future benighted error?
Has no one ever heard of an intellectual ecology? Sheesh.
Philosophy is what keeps our intellectual gardens from being overrun by weeds.
Is there perhaps an assumed consensus about what “philosophy” means or refers to here. It seems it is being regarded as a distinct “second-order” discipline over and above “science”.
TIme was, philosophy would be the whole of knowledge, with a regard to it *as a whole*. I note in your other section today you refer to Michael Walzer’s idea of a social critic as knowledgeable about the society he lives in. What is more like the old idea of philosophy. It is under the old idea that the discipline flourished.
I’d say natural philosophy was a kind of philosophy and that it became the natural sciences as it got refined - in that sense, philosophers created the natural sciences. In fact, there are few, if any, academic disciplines that would be what they are today if not for philosophy - consider psychology, history or political science, to name a few. I don’t see any reason why philosophers wouldn’t be able to keep doing this.
Not to mention the effect philosophy has had on a more personal level.
Ugh, please disregard the clumsy phrasing in the above post including any typos
There was a lecture series in London last year called ‘Conceptions of Philosophy’. More than one speaker argued that philosophy just wasn’t in the business of piling up truths — hence its apparent failure.
Instead, it’s in the understanding biz. Philosophy, it was claimed, is an attempt on the part of an individual to bring lots of truths from elsewhere (including not just the sciences and the arts, but one’s life) into a kind of harmony. He went on to say that an argument never talked anyone into anything. They’re not for that. They’re for thinking things through, connecting up what you already believe.
Unsurprisingly, he didn’t manage to talk anyone into his view in the Q & A which followed.
The values of all that is nonsense are hidden in Reason. -Aiya-Oba
I like the idea that philosophy is joined-up thinking. That would be why it sometimes seems like a pile of what’s left over from all the other subjects, sometimes an aimless production of insane worldviews, and sometimes an endlessly regressive questioning of questions, and yet why it attracts deep thinkers nonetheless, much as profound poetry does, and also why philosphers argue over what philosophy is… Perhaps there should be no need for philosophy. Perhaps scientists should understand their own subjects, for example, and how they fit into the rest of the world. But perhaps that is an unrealistic ideal. We would probably notice the need for philosophy more if we did not have it, as a stand-alone discipline.
All interdisciplinary humanities topics (history, literature, philosophy) are susceptible to the notion that they can grow out of, or be the product of, other disciplines (i.e. history and literature are about the topics we know and see in life, past and present). That’s the nature of being interdisciplinary, but it doesn’t mean that they lack an essential quality, an identity. Having “interdisciplinariness” or adaptability does not mean that the subject has no distinct being. - TL
No one in hypotenuse stance, denies the glaring truth that; the only possession of humans worthy of worship, is the mind. -Aiya-Oba.
Wolpert has always struck me as something of an idiot, but that ad hominem aside…
One of my intellectual heroes, Richard Feynman, expressed great dismay that his son expressed interest in going in to philosophy–he said he would have been much happier had he wanted to be a garbage man. The question is real: how can (in Feynman’s case at least) very intelligent and knowledgeable people so badly misunderstand the very nature of the discipline? Very curious, to say the least.
I recently read Robert Nozick’s book, Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World, and the book renewed my faith in philosophy (and I’m a philosopher!). First, the intro should be tattooed on every philosopher’s ass backwards, so we can reread it in the mirror backwards every morning. But the book so illustrates what philosophers can do that, frankly, many other smart people just can’t. Who knows if Nozick is right, for God’s sake–I certainly often hope he’s not– but his distinctions on the range of topics the book covers are so scapel-like, so precise, it’s just breathtaking. All good philosophers, and certainly all great ones, do this. Compare Crick’s (wonderful) fumblings in The Astonishing Hypothesis to the crispness of almost any philosopher of mind; compare E.O Wilson’s confusions in Conscilience (sp?) to almost anything written by, say, Van Frassen or Kitcher (either one).
Not exactly a defense, I know, but maybe the program for one.
Brad
James,
It’s interesting that the person or persons concerned were deemed unpersuasive by the audience. You say “unsurprisingly” so, but is that a judgment on the audience, the speakers’ persuasive powers or the content of their views? It’s hard to tell at this distance!
I think the contrast (roughly the same contrast, at any rate) in conceptions of philosophy was also palpable in London University when A J Ayer succeeded John Macmurray in the late 1940s and didn’t cite him in his inaugural lecture (see Costello’s biography of Macmurray).
That’s enough of my usual hobby horse!
I was reading the initial article here and it struck me that many of you may have missed some quite obvious defenses of philosophy.
Firstly, the analogy that you are both a philosopher and a runner, I think, is different to the fact that you may be a philosopher and a scientist. Philosophy and science are two styles of thinking, one aids the other by being within the same realm of physical activity. The analogy, therefore, doesn’t extend to running because it is a completely different discipline. It would be more appropriate to make the analogy between exercising and running.
Secondly, the analogy you make between the mother and child is correct; the mother cannot be credited for the achievements of the child. However, you cannot completely refute the value of the mother. The mother is necessary, whether or not the child becomes a high achiever or a dropout. The fact is that there needs to be an initial starting premise from which all other ideas flourish. Philosophy provides this and therein lies its value.
Wolpert is a very distinguished developmental biologist and certainly no idiot in that arena. However, his forays into other subjects bear out Mary Midgley’s central point in Evolution as a Religion - scientists often stray outside the boundaries of science, and don’t realise that not only are they doing philosophy, but they are doing it extremely badly and making naive mistakes. (Unfortunately Midgley has occasionally failed to listen to herself, and has made equally misguided and naive forays into science).
In what way is the example of logic, which certainly started out as part of philosophy, any defence of, say, the analytic tradition in philosophy? Or continental philosophy? I like a bit of philosophy but I’d be pretty hard pressed to defend it as anything other than a fun intellectual exercise, like literary criticism or any other branch of the arts. Sure, it can help firm up ideas or provide a framework for thinking about things - but I’m not sure how much of “what we know” can be attributed to philosophy. I’m also unimpressed by the claim of critical thinking and reasoning being domains of philosophy - I think you’re casting your definition a little too wide, philosophers use and talk about language too, you want to claim that as well?
“I’m not sure how much of “what we know” can be attributed to philosophy”
- Well that depends. Indirectly, philosophy has had a hand in the creation and development of pretty much all the academic disciplines.
And I guess that’s what philosophers are good at - finding questions, finding out about questions and answers and how they work - how we can look at reality constructively.
So, for example, philosophy of science is about finding out what science is, how it works and how it should work - while a scientist just does science.
Just thinking aloud :l
But it isn’t an argument in favour of doing philosophy that back in the day before science philosophy and proto-science overlapped. That’s an argument for doing science.
I think the father example says things quite well. The objection seems to go, If the father didn’t do it, he shouldn’t get credit, even if he did create that which did. Therefore, what? Eliminate the father? Without that which creates there will be no results in the first place. Philosophy has been involved in the genesis of many new fields. To say that we should just scrap it now, since it won’t take us any further, seems rather ridiculous to me.
It seems that those who claim philosophy has no results are looking for a list of things which philosophy has done. I would say that this is pointless and already missing the point of what philosophy is. It is (in its most general sense) not about the specific points of knowledge; those fall under their respective subjects of biology, psychology, physics, etc. But those facts and the rules directly involved with them are both seen in the sense of quantities, as things that are directly linked and understood, and philosophy is more involved in the structure around and behind those things, how they come together and what they mean. Sure, we can have the facts, but to do anything with them requires a way of organizing things which will, if not fully, then partially involve itself in philosophy. The study of philosophy in particular seems to me something like the analysis of those organizing principles (once again, generally speaking). It’s not directly quantifiable, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t mean anything at all. To employ a painfully stereotypical formulation, “It is everywhere and nowhere.”
“Philosophy has been involved in the genesis of many new fields. To say that we should just scrap it now, since it won’t take us any further, seems rather ridiculous to me.”
On the other hand, that philosophy has been involved in the genesis of many new fields (in the relatively distant past) doesn’t seem like a great argument against the ‘just scrap it’ argument.
To take your father analogy, the father doesn’t get credit for the offspring’s achievements, and obviously you don’t want to go back and eliminate him, thus preventing the offspring’s achievements, but, you’re gonna have to come up with some justification of the father now. In this thread it seems philosophy is rather resting on its laurels, or it has to subscribe to the rather more convincing argument that the practice and production of philosophy is rewarding for its own sake, much like art, and doesn’t need justification like, say, medical research, which is why it receives a fraction of the funding.
Two responses to your interesting post:
1. The argument that Isaac Newton achieved results in (say) mathematics and physics, but not in philosophy would have been dismissed in an instant by the man himself. As far as he was concerned ALL his intellectual work, including what we now call mathematics and physics and his experiments in alchemy, was theology — attempting to discern God’s laws for the operation of the universe. All of his life was of a piece, and Newton saw his mathematics and physics as contributions primarily to his own theological understanding.
This historical fact seems to distress a lot of scientists IME, so strong is the mythology among scientists about Newton as the “first modern scientist”.
2. Here’s a practical application of pure philosophy, which has yet to become widely known: Speech act theory (due, in its modern form, to the philosophers of language John Austin and John Searle) has been very influential in the design of artificial languages for computer-to-computer communications, such as IEEE FIPA’s Agent Communications Language, FIPA ACL:
http://www.fipa.org/index.html
[...] a previous post, I addressed the question of the value of philosophy. As one comment pointed out, even if it is granted that philosophy did many wonderful things in the [...]
Two responses to your interesting post:
1. The argument that Isaac Newton achieved results in (say) mathematics and physics, but not in philosophy would have been dismissed in an instant by the man himself. As far as he was concerned ALL his intellectual work, including what we now call mathematics and physics and his experiments in
alchemy, was theology — attempting to discern God’s laws for the operation of the universe. All of his life was of a piece, and Newton saw his mathematics and physics as contributions primarily to his own theological understanding.
This historical fact seems to distress a lot of scientists IME, so strong is the myth among scientists about Newton being the “first modern scientist”.
2. Here’s a practical application of pure philosophy, which could do with being more widely known: Speech act theory (due, in its modern form, to the philosophers of language John Austin and John Searle) has been very influential in the design of artificial languages for computer-to-computer communications, such as IEEE FIPA’s Agent Communications Language, FIPA ACL.
(The blog seems not to accept comments containing URLs, but a search on “FIPA ACL” should turn up the IEEE FIPA pages.)
There was nothing unique about Newton in that regard - natural philosophy was all about “reading” nature as a holy book on par with the Bible.
Surely philosopy can only follow that that has been discovered or invented.
Philosophy is the egg that follows the chicken.Once something is there what do we do with it ,how do we use it,what rules do we apply to it?That is why there are inventors and philosophers.If God created the universe,what does that mea?.If he didn’t,what does that mean.?!