It won’t carry on at all if we are not there to tell it as a story, just as philosophical narratives dont carry on without our producing those narratives. And I’m doubtful we can definitely tease apart science’s (or philosophy’s) stories about the world from its stories about itself. The one implies the other.
What Bacon envisioned amounted to a change in science’s philosophical presuppositions, paralleling the insights of Enlightenment thinkers like Descartes and Hobbes. Three centuries later another philosophical change took place in the sciences as Karl Popper introduced his Kantian-influenced falsificationism. Yet another was introduced by Thomas Kuhn, who was influenced by Wittgenstein, Quine and Dewey. Beyond these thinkers, every major historical shift in thinking in philosophy is reflected in the changing theories of science.
Is this because resolution is impossible? Or is it not desirable?
One difficulty I foresee here is that, while the idea that the knowledge of things is inexhaustible is so common in the history of thought as to likely fall under the umbrella of “perennial philosophy,” it is by no means universal. Hence, I fear a wholly negative framing of philosophy seems liable to consume itself. I think it can become self-refuting when set against certain challenges, as when someone challenges the very assumptions that must underpin a rejection of resolution. And this sort of challenge can come from the direction of those who claim that they can know things exhaustively and decisively, but also from those who say there is nothing to know.
The desire to “win” per se, as the object of our desire, would be something like philodoxia, the love of one’s own opinions, or of honors. From a psychological standpoint, this is the triumph of thymos (the “spirited part of the soul,” which focuses on “what is said to be good by others”) over logos (the rational part of the soul, which desires what is truly good).
But interestingly, when we speak of the desire to “be right,” we could easily be speaking to either the desire to “win” or the desire to have one’s intellect and will more in conformity with what is true and good. This isn’t a true equivocation, so much as an easy slippage. The desire to “win” is straightforwardly the desire to “be seen as right,” over “to be right.” Whereas it would make sense, I would think, to desire that we “lose” just in those cases when we are in error, and “win” (i.e., convince others of the truth or justice of our position) just in those cases when we are right, and to split the difference in mixed cases wisely. And here we might even say that we are truly winning when we “lose” and relinquish false/unjust opinions (even if it hurts our pride).
Plus, many disagreements seem to ultimately come down to understandings that are isomorphic at some level. For instance, if theories and models are primarily a means of understanding, as opposed to what is understood, we might have a good deal of difference and variety in what we accept, and still use this variety to attain our end. From a pedagogical perspective, it might also be that some understandings might be more useful in some cases than others.
But if a “doctrine” is just a teaching, then surely we should want for those teachings that are true, just, and wise prevail over those that are their opposite, no? Yet the “winner” when more people become wise and just is presumably not the teacher, or not the teacher alone, but everyone, and above all the person who has become wiser and more just. So, I agree that philosophy is “not that kind of game,” (or even a game at all). It’s, happily, one where the more anyone wins, the more everyone wins. Doctrines then should “demand agreement” simply in the same way that truth demands agreement over falsity when we see it clearly, or what is known as better over what is known as worse.
Yeah, that’s what I was trying to get at. There is a “maybe” at the end, but then: “resolution… is philosophical failure” suggested something more definite to me.
Let me put it this way:
“resolution… is philosophical failure”
“the correct view is always only partially correct.”
“nothing can be resolved.”
Wouldn’t these be resolutions themselves?
At the very least, they require something to stand on.
Whereas, if perhaps we can exhaust our object of enquiry (although I doubt it), and come to a resolution, then I’d assume we’d want to be convinced of this truth, and to embrace both it and this potential resolution.
But then I’m also supposing something with that, namely that truth is better than error. That’s the sort of basic presupposition I’m happy to make though, although it would be a resolution of sorts, as respects a particular principle.
Right, but the “winning” answer often turns to hounding any dissenters out of the field. Adam Becker’s What is Real? is a pretty good look at how this happened in quantum foundations until the late 1990s, with figures like Bohm and Everett hounded out of the mainstream. Opinion has since shifted dramatically. You can see something similar with EES.
And you can certainly see similar things in the history of philosophy (and people still complain about gatekeeping, etc. today).
Sure, which might answer questions about consensus or equilibrium. Does it answer questions about error? It seems to me that the same mechanisms used to force consensus on what is correct might also be used to enforce and calcify error. Historically, it seems clear that educated communities don’t always avoid not only accepting, but enforcing error as consensus in the short to medium term. Do you think they always tend towards removing error and building consensus toward truth in the long term?
Personally, I’m neither particularly pessimistic or optimistic about either outcome. Error can certainly become calcified, but then again I do have some faith that error will always reveal itself in the long run. Then again as Keynes said, “in the long run we’re all dead.”
You ask why philosophical questions, but not scientific or historical ones, ought to be held open. Well, if I can answer negatively: imagine that philosophical questions were not held open. Imagine tomorrow all the philosophers sign a letter announcing that the old question of free will has been decided: it turns out we do have it after all. What would that situation mean?
A more realistic, and more difficult, example. What if the question, as to whether a cognitivist-representationalist or an embodied-enactive conception of the mind is best, is settled in favour of the latter—and maybe that really could happen—what kind of situation would there be? Would this count as a resolution? Maybe not. Maybe it would be more like a paradigm shift, such that the original questions lose their grip. And the result is not that philosophers move on to something else entirely, but that a whole new set of questions and disagreements opens up within the new paradigm.
Maybe we want to hold a question open so long as it is productive of thinking to do so. When it isn’t, the question has stopped being philosophical. In other words, a philosophical question that can be resolved is one that has stopped being philosophy, i.e., it’s become science, history, logic, or just a dead issue.
If you now ask, why is it good to do something that’s productive of thinking, then you’re asking “what is the point of philosophy?” I don’t mind entering that debate, because it’s obviously the underlying question here, but I haven’t got it in me right now. (One answer is that philosophy is for making more philosophy)
And don’t take this too seriously, but I’d just like to register my instinctive suspicion of the assumption that we should be looking for what is “salutary and important.” To me, those words together have the flavour of wholesomeness and respectability, two things I do not look for in philosophy (because I’m so edgy).
Is this a philosophically significant instinct? I suspect it is. I suspect I don’t like the demand for philosophy’s credentials at the border gate of the kingdom of knowledge. Why does philosophy have to prove itself? Why does it have to be salutary? Salutary for whom?
OK, that was a bit rough.
I’m not sure where I was going with that. If I think of something I’ll get back to you.
This exchange between you two gives me the opportunity to foreground something I’ve noticed on this thread. There are (at least) two questions being discussed by participants. The first is whether we are striving for a certain kind of resolution within philosophy, namely an agreement that a question has been answered rightly, at least for now – call this the “science model.” The second is whether “resolution” merely describes a decision among interested parties to agree to a consensus about a question, again for now, and move on. The second view allows for the interested parties to declare the question unresolvable; the first does not, or at least not in the same way.
My OP issue is a little different, though both the above questions are also relevant. I’m asking, “If it is the case (as I believe it is) that neither type of resolution characterizes philosophical inquiry, why is that? In the first type, what is it that prevents philosophers from being able to agree on right answers, if they are available? In the second type, what is it that prevents philosophers from being able to agree that there is no right answer?” As Count T and others have noted, this too is a type of “right answer,” but can only be given from what I’ve been calling a “level-up” perspective; it’s an explanation of why, at the original level at which the question was posed, there is no adequate answer.
I suppose I should add that there is also the question about the moral desirability of reaching a resolution. Some of the most interesting responses, to me, center on this. But at least in the Anglophone philosophical community, what we see is a group of very intelligent people wishing to convince each other of the rightness of particular positions, without questioning whether this is morally objectionable, so I didn’t put it into question; I think I should have.
Yes, I’d call it a resolution, though as you say, it would resemble a paradigm shift in science.
Sure, and when I said that doing phil is good for you, this is the sort of thing I had in mind. I guess neither of us can demonstrate that philosophizing makes everyone a better person, but that is surely the goal.
A fair cop. I don’t channel my inner punk as often as I used to.
Ha, maybe I have been misunderstanding the whole time. I thought @Jamal was speaking to resolutions as something like “understanding” or “knowledge,” not consensus.
The question of communal consensus is, to my mind, secondary to understanding. Presumably, someone needs to grasp the truth (“resolve” an issue) before everyone can. Which presents two different (although related) sets of questions. The first is about the possibility of attaining understanding, the second is about communicating it. The former is surely not easy, but I can think of plenty of reasons why the latter might be even more fraught.
For instance:
Assuming we do have free will, would this count as a “resolution,” even if everyone agreed? I was assuming a resolution to a philosophical issue ends in knowledge. However, if our main interest lies in how consensus forms and is maintained (regardless of veracity or justice), that’s a slightly different question. There is “how is consensus formed?” and “does consensus tend towards true understanding, or if not, why not?” And then maybe there is domain specific variance so that science or history tends towards truth but philosophy doesn’t?
Anyhow, I think there are some examples of at least practical consensus in philosophy. I gave the example of philosophical pedagogy and praxis before. Perhaps it was a bit long-winded. The basic point though is that, AFAIK, not one university in the whole world employs anything like antique or medieval praxis (or that of other non-Enlightenment traditions). They do tend towards a particular type of pedagogy though. There are some big assumptions in anthropology and epistemology that have to be held, at least implicitly, for this to make sense. (For instance, as far as I can see, traditions like Platonism have to have been fundamentally deluded about their epistemology and anthropology for current pedagogy to make sense).
How did this broad practical consensus emerge in how philosophy ought to be taught? I haven’t found anything on this topic in particular, but it seems to be largely due to institutional inertia and broader cultural changes more than any real debate over pedagogy (funny enough). Maybe lack of debate and interest helps form consensus?
To be sure, I am sure plenty of individual philosophers might suggest changes in pedagogy, although I’ve never seen advocacy for any real changes outside of highly theoretical stuff that is far removed from implementation. But practically, there is consensus in terms of what is done and what is permissible. Is that really all that different from scientific or historical consensus though?
I don’t think so. The ‘tower of Babel’ is a fitting allegory. Culture and society are fragmented past the point of any real consensus. You might find like-minded people with similar goals but basically the search for truth is nowadays a pretty solitary quest.
One of Kant’s answers, which was echoed by the logical positivists, was that many of those problems have no solution, because they are ill-posed. So, some problems find equally compelling arguments in opposite directions (the antinomies), and others invite philosophers to make arguments that are irresistible but completely wrongheaded (the paralogisms).
What these problems have in common is the assumption that you can determine something about things that cannot be given in experience, i.e., things as they are outside the subjective conditions under which humans can experience anything at all. But the kicker is that reason inevitably leads us to try anyway.
And Kant is of course claiming to have solved these questions once and for all—by dissolving them. But did this itself reach the status of resolution? Not really. There are still those who argue that time had a beginning, and others who argue that it didn’t. There are still philosophers who argue that human beings have immortal souls, etc. It’s true that a number of significant philosophical traditions that developed in the 20th century acted as if those questions had indeed been dissolved, but they do not have the field to themselves.
So, we might be inclined to answer with Kant as to why certain metaphysical questions cannot be resolved, but is Kant of any use in working out why his own solutions have not prevailed entirely? Yes: transcendental illusion:
For here we are dealing with a natural and unavoidable illusion that itself rests on subjective principles and foists them on us as objective ones […]
Hence there is a natural and unavoidable dialectic of pure reason. This dialectic is not one in which a bungler might become entangled on his own through lack of knowledge, or one that some sophist has devised artificially in order to confuse reasonable people. It is, rather, a dialectic that attaches to human reason unpreventably and that, even after we have uncovered this deception, still will not stop hoodwinking and thrusting reason incessantly into momentary aberrations that always need to be removed.
— Critique of Pure Reason, A298/B354
Making it explicit: Kant’s own theory of error is not that his opponents are stupid or wicked, but that reason itself is structurally prone to an illusion that critique can expose but never entirely eradicate.
Very good. I’d forgotten that Kant anticipated the natural retort, “But what about your own theories? Are they exempted from the critique, and the tight spot you’re describing?”
So, what do you think of Kant’s response? Taking his language literally, he seems to be saying that the task of critical philosophy is to dispel illusion – much as Witt might have said. And that illusion happens when subjectivity mistakes its principles (or really, we should put scare-quotes around “principles”) for objective ones.
Do you think that analysis can be shown, in Kantian terms, to be “objective” and hence a viable theory of error? Or do we still have the same problem of being forced to describe those who don’t buy it as “subjectivists” or otherwise mistaken and deluded in their own analyses?
But positivism went too far with criticism. They basically wanted to reduce philosophy to science. They recognised the critical approach of Kant, but they rejected the synthetic a priori which was central to his philosophy, and much else besides. They regarded only what was empirically observable as valid knowledge.
Again the resonance with Madhyamaka philosophy of Buddhism - Nāgārjuna shows that philosophical positions invariably entail their own contradiction - but says he has no position of his own. Those who understand emptiness (śūnyatā) as one view among others are incorrigible:
‘To all theories (dṛṣṭi) Kāśyapa, śūnyatā (emptiness) is the antidote. Him I call the incurable who mistakes śūnyatā itself as a theory. It is as if a drug, administered to cure a patient, were to remove all his disorders, but were itself to foul the stomach by remaining therein. Would you, Kāśyapa, consider the patient cured?” ~ Kāśyapa-Parivarta, quoted in Murti, Central Philosophy of Buddhism, p164
Logical positivism states that a statement is meaningful IFF
It’s analytically true e.g. venom is toxin delivered through a bite or sting
It’s empirically verifiable e.g. John was bitten by a black mamba
As formulated above philosophers resisted the collapse of philosophy to science, but even science was under assault from logical positivism. I don’t recall the particulars though.
I was wondering if logical positivism could be saved? A significant amount of effort, for instance, is devoted to saving Buddhism (sunyata) from nihilism and generally ISMness. I can’t find a better example right now.
This framing was the target of Hegel’s famous “the fear of reason become fear of truth” line in the Preface of the Phenomenology. His basic drift was that the fear of error already presupposes much. (Of course, whether Hegel’s attempt at truly presuppositionless thought fares any better is another question).
But, when the critical/negative replaces the “positive” (for lack of a better term), rather than being preparatory for it, I can imagine a response from Socrates:
Socrates: So philosophy then is the art of dispelling illusions?
Wittgenstrophanes: Yes Socrates.
Socrates: By the Gods Wittgenstrophanes, that is a useful art! But tell me, which art is it then that discovers what is good and true, for this is the art I most desire to learn.
Kant has a clear answer here in more philosophy. Otherwise, I suppose the answer would have to be some other art (the empirical sciences perhaps?) or none at all. Both answers ironically come with heavy philosophical commitments though. Whereas, “I don’t know” would create the problem of having posited a reality versus appearance distinction, but with seemingly nothing but appearances in play.
Right, but then why is recognizing this worth pursuing? The criticism I’ve seen of Nagarjuna is that he is relying on an inherited substantive normative and soteriological tradition to carry weight here, since emptiness alone cannot justify the ordering of thought and praxis.
What’s interesting is that this is precisely the charge that is leveled at much later Western philosophies of “criticism all the way down,” i.e., that the critical or liberatory direction of the project must be smuggled in from outside the negative method itself (what Hegel would term abstract, as opposed to determinate negation).
Of course. He’s a Buddhist. Nāgārjuna is not trying to construct an autonomous philosophical system. His arguments are therapeutic and dialectical, operating within a common cultural framework, one that is largely absent from contemporary culture. Remove that framework and śūnyatā easily looks like nihilism. But one might equally argue that a culture without any soteriological horizon is itself the more actually nihilist position.