Nice.
I’d only ask how hidden these structures were, and suggest that the place of philosophy might in part be to make the obvious explicit.
You must have come across the newbie hereabouts who asserts that we can know things that are not true.
I appreciate your interaction with the list. It fits Frances’ theses that there are 119 items in which you think are facts that are not widely known.
It might be interesting to see if we can work out the meaning of the facts that you find unclear.
The push back to other topics is also interesting - many, most, of the items in the list apply outside of philosophy; they are just good thinking hygiene. But that might be a part of the role of philosophy - to make such things explicit.
Welcome.
Thank you.
It fits Frances’ theses that there are 119 items in which you think are facts that are not widely known.
I wouldn’t exactly read it like that. More like, there are at most 119 items I am tempted to consider as philosophical facts and I wouldn’t be surprised if we find out people do not agree with them (including a bunch of items I was too lazy to think too deeply about). Not that I actually think the fact are not widely known.
It might be interesting to see if we can work out the meaning of the facts that you find unclear.
If you are talking about the two facts I called ‘weird’, I wouldn’t say I find them unclear per se.
The first (104) one is simply a popular piece of advice regarding expertise. I would even agree it is great advice in certain contexts, but I find the fact lacks nuance here, especially compared to the others. I also don’t consider it a philosophical fact; the claim that ‘true experts’ correlate with ‘people with credentials’ is essentially an empirical statement that may or may not be true. The subsequent bullet points regarding academia suggest the text is using a specific notion of ‘expert’, but it isn’t obvious beforehand that the word should be interpreted so narrowly. There can be experts in bread making or shoe manufacturing, but I don’t think you’ll find them with PhDs and writing papers. Obviously, you could adopt a broader notion of ‘credentials’ and ignore the bullet points, but this is exactly what I mean by a lack of nuance.
The second (170) about intelligence is not very meaningful to me. Except ‘raw power’ which is only excluded because it is vague, one could argue that every other aspect is not an obvious part of intelligence depending on how you interpret them. On a charitable view, it reads like a bundle of things people sometimes associate with the word intelligence but then it just seems like an empirical observation about how people use the word without much analysis.
The push back to other topics is also interesting - many, most, of the items in the list apply outside of philosophy; they are just good thinking hygiene. But that might be a part of the role of philosophy - to make such things explicit.
Perhaps, but I do think the paper lacks a solid working definition of what constitutes a “fact from philosophy.” We may not want to be so broad as to count self-improvement books as philosophy simply because they contain good thinking hygiene. Then again, maybe I am not open minded enough, I guess it could be argued to be part of philosophy.
If you like. It’s clear that Frances wished the mooted facts to be interpreted charitably, and wasn’t intending to present a tight or profound argument, and that the list is imperfect—he’s just pointing to some stuff in which there might be a general widespread agreement amongst philosophers that’s not so apparent in the wider population. That alone is enough to push back on the too-easy quip that philosophy never settles anything. And he might have a point, despite the somewhat zealous rejection the paper has met here.
Perhaps the way to proceed might simply be to look for points of agreement amongst philosophers despite the interminable, internecine disagreement. Does the disagreement here of itself show Frances’ task to be impossible? Or is the fact of our disagreement evidence of a shared framework in which we are able to disagree?
Not really. It’s there in the first claim: “(i) there is tremendous agreement amongst philosophers on the truth-values of many substantive philosophical claims”
The re-framing is by omission.
But you’ve clearly no interest in discussing the text. I’ve quoted the actual paper 19 times in three replies now and you haven’t engaged with any of them, so we’ll leave it there.
If you wanted to discuss that philosophers agree on a lot, then perhaps just start a thread on that, rather than on a paper whose main central thesis extends much, much further than that, and then dismiss all the comments actually engaging with the paper proper.
Exactly. Now, using Frances’ own definition of the distinction between fact and opinion how did Frances (or you) go about discovering whether or not these facts are ‘apparent in the wider population’?
What study was undertaken? None. Which experts were consulted? None.
Frances had a ‘bit of a look’ at some people he’d met then drew a sweeping conclusion about their state of knowledge.
It’s exactly that sort of trespass into empirical fact that philosophy gets such a bad press for.
Yet, both his, and your, theses rely entirely on thus fact being true. It’s what changes the claim ‘philosophers agree on many facts’ (which no one is disputing), into ‘philosophers agree on many facts which they have discovered, or ‘highlighted’, or ‘elucidated’, or whatever’ - the claim both you and Frances are making here.
Seems to me you’re overanalysing. You don’t need me. Have fun.
Come on! Citing passages from the text to discern what the paper is setting out to achieve is not ‘overanalysing’ by anyone’s books. Never has been. It’s standard fare.
The fact is that the claim made for philosophy relies on the state of knowledge of non-philosophers. Unless you’re claiming it’s logically impossible for people to have derived (or ‘elucidated’) these facts outside of academic philosophy, then whether they have or not is an empirical fact about the world (the state of knowledge of non-philosophers).
Neither you, nor Frances have actually cited anyone, or anything, in support of such a claim, beyond your own ad hoc guesses, and that’s a flaw in your thesis. It’s that simple.
It doesn’t render the thesis false. It renders it unproven, and that wouldn’t normally be a problem if it wasn’t for the fact that the paper itself is waxing lyrical about how very good at handling evidence philosophers are. That’s the source of the ‘zealousness’ you detect. We all prickle at hypocrisy.
I might be getting confused with all the claims being made, I’ll try to separate some of them explicitly. I use ‘a lot’ but it’s not to be taken too literally. We may understand it as ‘a significant/good amount’. Here are the claims:
- Philosophers know stuff that regular people don’t know.
This is the simplest of the claims but irrelevant (I am not saying anyone is making this claim). It includes stuff outside of philosophy that philosophers know better than regular people (e.g. general academia stuff).
- Philosophers know philosophy-related stuff that regular people don’t know.
This is what I claim the current list would show. But what the author wants to show is the next claim (2).
- Philosophers know philosophical facts that regular people don’t know.
This is one of the claims he argues for, on the basis of the list and some of the theses. I do think it’s probably true provided a better list is used.
- Philosophers disagree a lot
This is a popular view that pretty much everyone agrees on. This could be the weak version of the critique.
- Philosophers agree a lot on basic philosophical facts
This is the KNOWLEDGE thesis. If we only require near-unanimity, I would agree with this. Is the critique actually incompatible with this? I am not sure.
- Philosophers frequently resolve disagreements (=converge on the truth) of basic philosophical topics.
This is linked to the idea of philosophical progress and is likely what proponents of the ‘philosophy never settles anything’ view deny. The author thinks this is true because of the basic list of facts. But the list doesn’t convince me. I am not sure many items of the list can be said to be the result of philosophers resolving disagreements. And even if it were the case, I am not convinced by the list that this happens frequently.
- Philosophers do not frequently resolve disagreements of “big” philosophical topics.
The author considers this view compatible with what he wants to show in the paper. I would indeed agree with the claim and we might consider this the steel-man version of the popular critique. From the paper:
However, most authors are careful to say that there is little to no significant progress on the “big” or “fundamental” or “central” questions of philosophy (e.g., Chalmers 2015, Kornblith 2013, Hannon & Nguyen forthcoming). Charitably interpreted, this allows for plenty of progress on non-big questions, which is my claim.
- Knowing the basic facts is useful
This is the idea behind the theses like EPISTEMIC or PRACTICAL. This is basically to counter the objection that even if we accept (2), those facts are trivial and therefore not very important. I am sympathetic to this view although I would like to see empirical evidence of the improvement he is talking about.
So if I understand the paper correctly, the list and some of the theses allow him to claim (2), (4) and (5), essentially, the existence of basic philosophical knowledge. He argues this knowledge is already a big achievement (7).
Does the disagreement here of itself show Frances’ task to be impossible? Or is the fact of our disagreement evidence of a shared framework in which we are able to disagree?
Overall, I don’t think his task is impossible. I don’t think our disagreement is evidence of a shared framework of philosophical facts. As I said at the beginning, I find the enterprise interesting and I would definitely like a book around stating basic philosophical facts (without the padding). But the basic critique isn’t knocked down and the more defensible critique (6) remains intact.
That’s an astute summation. Nice.
Your (5) is perhaps the thought that I found most intriguing - that there may be a convergence on basic truths amongst those of a philosophical inclination. So for instance while they may disagree as to which arguments are convincing, that very disagreement presumes agreement as to being convinced by argument; that such discourse is a worthwhile activity. So in this thread, that you and others have responded indicates some sort of belief on your part in at least the utility of giving a response by making a comment. Deciding to reply is different to leaving the thread without comment - which is perhaps what others, even most, have done.
In part this comes back to Davidson’s notion of Charity - that we agree about more stuff than we disagree on; and also to Wittgenstein’s point that our doubt requires a background of certainty.
If we look for what stuff adherents of pre-Enlightenment philosophy, Humean Realists, Hegelian dialecticians and post-modernist Nietzscheans agree on, I don’t think it will amount to anything like Frances’s 200 facts. It certainly won’t impress the science-worshippers, and I think it would impress philosophers even less. It would consist of precisely those assumptions that philosophy is least needed to provide.
So what, if anything, might they agree on?
They would agree on everything that directly involves them in shared activities, like driving on the highway, trading stocks, running a business, playing football together or playing in a quartet, or having a casual
social conversation. But the shared knowledge to be extracted in each case belongs to those particular language games. These don’t constitute philosophical facts, but investment, musical, sports, causal social and transportation facts. Given that there would be vast differences among them concerning what philosophy is and does, philosophy itself would not be among the language games they can play together, unless you count faculty politics.
Two counterarguments.
First, such a view might only work if you could cleanly slice their philosophical views from their other views. But one’s philosophical views are not discontinuous from one’s other and general views. Hence there must be some agreement.
Second, these philosophers have at least some understanding of each other. They comment on each other’s work, even as we do here, entering into critique. There is then some grounding agreement that permits such discussion.
Second, these philosophers have at least some understanding of each other. They comment on each other’s work, even as we do here, entering into critique. There is then some grounding agreement that permits such discussion.
This is true but this doesn’t specify what kind of knowledge can be extracted from this. For example, I might disagree with the author characterization of intelligence and it seems to me this means that we agree, for example, on the existence of the word ‘intelligence’ but this wouldn’t be philosophical knowledge. Our disagreement could also show we agree that people use the word ‘intelligence’, but this isn’t philosophical knowledge neither etc.
So the fact that we are able to disagree and discuss the disagreement definitely means we share some knowledge but you haven’t shown this means we share philosophical knowledge.
Then the question becomes what is to count as being philosophical.
I’d point out that at least most of the items in the list of facts are philosophical in tha they deal with conceptual relations.
Blockquote
It can be difficult for a philosopher to vividly imagine, but there are loads of reasonable, moderately-educated adults (e.g., with associate or bachelor degrees) who often if inconsistently confuse true belief and highly confident belief, for instance. The same holds for being mostly blind to the distinction between true belief and belief based on strong overall evidence, or even just strong evidence. It’s not at all difficult to find educated or high-IQ people saying things like “A fact is information minus emotion”, “An opinion is information plus experience”, “Ignorance is an opinion lacking information”, and “Stupidity is an opinion that ignores fact” (each of which I’ve encountered in intelligent discourse recently).
Blockquote
These are concrete statements defining terms at the level of literacy.
The work of performing philosophy inquiry may be two-fold in my opinion. Using the concrete terms on actual substance, utterances, political claims, historical accounts. And secondly the critique of the use of such terms themselves as terminating in a value judgement. Then using such terms may themselves have wider ramifications for the mental, social, and progressive political realms. One could demand that there is more philosophical work to be done and the user of such terms must direct themselves to either aporia or something of an opening for caveats than reliance on the materials confirming to categorisation by those terms effecting termination of consideration.
Then the question becomes what is to count as being philosophical.
I agree.
I’d point out that at least most of the items in the list of facts are philosophical in tha they deal with conceptual relations.
I wouldn’t disagree but, for example, mathematical knowledge also deal with conceptual relations, as least if I understand correctly what you mean by that.
Thanks, this is interesting. Particularly given the popular view that philosophy is mostly about the unanswerable and the recondite. As a non-philosopher I don’t really know what to make of the 200 items in this list. Not sure it’s of much use to me but it’s interesting to see what comes up. Would you call them all philosophy?
What ultimately is the purpose of this list? I skimmed the article, but it takes a lot for me to read more than 500 words these days.
We see a great deal of conceptual framing by amateur philosophers that might benefit from some tidying up. I suppose this (and Midgley’s plumbing approach) suggests one way forward. But this is almost the opposite of many people’s ideas about philosophy, which seem to focus on unfolding confusions, perhaps even a search for ambiguities rather than developing coherences. This seems to be salient:
With the 200 facts, plus the instructions on how to greatly expand the list, we see that they’re wrong. Plenty of authors
have argued that since there is so much long-standing disagreement, there is little to no convergence of opinion in
philosophy. If they were right, KNOWLEDGE would be false, since their antecedent about long-standing
disagreement is true.
Well then, mathematics is a sub branch of philosophy; as is logic.