Abstract
Modest pessimism about philosophical progress is the view that while philosophy may sometimes make some progress, philosophy has made, and can be expected to make, only very little progress (where the extent of philosophical progress is typically judged against progress in the hard sciences). The paper argues against recent attempts to defend this view on the basis of the pervasiveness of disagreement within philosophy. The argument from disagreement for modest pessimism assumes a teleological conception of progress, according to which the attainment of true answers to the big philosophical questions, or knowledge of them, is the primary goal of philosophy. The paper argues that this assumption involves a misconception of the goal of philosophy: if philosophy has a primary goal, its goal is the understanding of philosophical problems rather than knowledge of answers to philosophical questions. Moreover, it is argued that if the primary goal of philosophy is such understanding, then widespread disagreement within philosophy does not indicate that philosophy makes little progress.
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Notes
See, e.g., Moore (1903), p vii.
Chalmers claims that modest pessimism will “ring true” to “almost anyone deeply involved [in] philosophy” (2015, p 4), and Stoljar claims that among non-philosophers extreme pessimism “seems a truism” (2017, p vii). While I know of no empirical data that allows us to evaluate Stoljar’s claim, a recent survey of philosophers’ beliefs does not support Chalmers’ claim: while modest pessimism was the most commonly endorsed view among surveyed philosophers, it was affirmed by only 46.6% of the respondents and nearly as many (41.7%) averred that there is a lot of philosophical progress (Bourget & Chalmers, unpublished manuscript).
For a similar argument, see, e.g., Lougheed (2019).
Kitcher (2015) argues for a non-goal-directed account of progress. However, as the pessimists’ argument from disagreement depends on some goal-directed conception of progress, I do not address Kitcher’s account here.
Recently, Shan (2022) has suggested that questions about philosophical progress and the goal of philosophy may often be discussed separately. However, Shan does not deny the relationship of philosophical progress and the goal (or aim) of philosophy. Rather, Shan’s point is that an ‘account of the aim of philosophy [implies an] account of philosophical progress, but not vice versa’ (p 177). Accordingly, one might argue for a criterion of philosophical progress while leaving the goal of philosophy moot. My argument in this paper is fully compatible with Shan’s claims. Indeed, as discussed above (§ 2), the modest-pessimist argument, which takes convergence as a criterion for philosophical progress, may rest on different conceptions of the goal of philosophy.
In recent literature on philosophical and scientific progress, different teleological terms—‘aim’, ‘goal’, ‘purpose’—are used, often interchangeably, to evaluate the achievements, coherence, and progress of science or philosophy. As the subtle differences among these terms are immaterial to our discussion, for simplicity’s sake I use ‘goal’ as the primary teleological term (and ‘aim’ as a verb). Importantly, however, as Chang (2014) notes, intellectual activities are shaped by various structured sets of aims and goals, and in different evaluative contexts, may be assessed in terms of different kinds of aims. Ultimately, our evaluation of a system of activities depends on how different activities, inherent purposes, and external functions are coordinated to achieve its overall aim or goal. Accordingly, ‘goal’ should be understood as referring to the overall (Chang, 2014) or primary (Chalmers, 2015) aim or goal of the intellectual activity discussed.
Note that this GOAL premise encapsulates two distinct claims: (A) philosophy has a primary goal, and (B) the primary goal of philosophy is one of G1–G4. For endorsement of (A), see, e.g., Chalmers (2015, p 14) and Brock (2017, p 127). For the sake of the argument, I concede (A) to the pessimist. I argue that even if we accept (A), we must reject (B).
This is particularly true of recent arguments from disagreement for and against modest pessimism about philosophical progress (see, e.g., Chalmers 2015, p 4). However, the analogy with science has dominated the debate about the extent of philosophical progress more generally (Dellsén et al., 2021; see p 21 for references to recent discussions involving such a comparison).
My argument does not address alternative modest-pessimist claims that appeal to other possible benchmarks—e.g., some degree of convergence to be expected of philosophy. However, my argument may be relevant to them inasmuch as they draw support from observations on the relative lack of convergence in philosophy.
Thus, Stoljar claims that widespread disagreement among contemporary philosophers does not indicate that convergence in philosophy is rare, because the (big) questions on which contemporary philosophers disagree are usually different from those on which past philosophers disagreed, and there is in fact ‘considerable convergence on how to answer the earlier big questions’ (2017, p 126).
Note that the claim is not that pessimist philosophers who accept G1–G4 should abandon their pursuit for the sake of an alternative intellectual pursuit with alternative goals; rather, the claim is that they are mistaken about the goals of the intellectual pursuit in which they are involved.
Talk of the goal of philosophy being the attainment of truth may be understood in more than one way. G1 is intended to capture a weak interpretation, viewing the goal as merely that of holding true beliefs. However, “attaining truth” may also be understood more strongly, as involving not mere true belief but rather knowledge. This is the sense captured by G3; it also seems to be the sense in which Chalmers (2015, p 14) uses the expression.
The idea that the primary goal of philosophy s understanding is not new (Brandom, 2001; Hacker, 2009; Nozick, 1981; Sellars, 1963). Moreover, a recent survey suggests that a majority of philosophers either accepts or leans toward it (Bourget & Chalmers, unpublished manuscript). However, while endorsed by several philosophers, few have defended it (Hannon & Nguyen, 2022). Therefore, the objective of this paper is to supply such a defense and show what follows from it for the disagreement-based argument for modest pessimism.
Hacker (2009) is one notable exception who does argue explicitly for GU. His argument, however, is based on controversial claims about the nature of philosophy, which most contemporary philosophers would probably reject (e.g., that philosophy ‘adds nothing to human knowledge save for the realization of how elements in our conceptual fields hang together.’ [p 151]). My argument, in contrast, is compatible with the claim that philosophy can be a source of knowledge and, particularly, metaphysical knowledge. [For criticisms of some of Hacker’s claims, see Stoljar (2017)]
Hannon and Nguyen (2022)—with whom I am quite sympathetic—also argue for GU. Their argument and that presented here complement and support one another. Both contend that various features of philosophy are best explained by the claim that understanding is the primary goal of philosophy. However, while I focus on disagreement and progress, their focus is much broader and concerns a wide range of “puzzles” about philosophy—about philosophical testimony (Ranalli, 2020), practices of philosophy departments’ hiring committees, and more. Jäger (2016), while not explicitly defending GU, may also be interpreted as indirectly arguing for it by defending an account of intellectual authority (“Socratic authority”) that seeks foremost to promote understanding.
On Chalmers’ view, we may find some consolation in the progress made by philosophy toward the attainment of secondary goals such as understanding. We should admit, however, that finding consolation in this fact involves “a lowering of our sights for philosophy’ (2015, p 14).
Chalmers is somewhat ambiguous on this point. He writes that ‘[a] case can be made that attaining the truth is the primary aim at least of many parts of philosophy, such as analytic philosophy’ (2015, p 14). However, he goes on to explain why convergence toward truth is important and explains this in terms of the value of collective knowledge (2015, p 15)—suggesting that he takes collective knowledge, rather than truth, to be of ultimate value.
See also Dellsén et al. (2021).
For a helpful review of the contemporary debate, see Hannon (2021).
Sliwa (2015) seems to be an exception, as she argues not only that instances of understanding are reducible to corresponding instances of knowledge, but also that the corresponding instances of knowledge are both necessary and sufficient for understanding. Sliwa’s argument focuses on cases of understanding and knowing why p, and she claims that similar arguments would apply to understanding what and understanding that. However, even if this claim is true, it is unclear whether the argument can apply to objectual understanding in general and of philosophical problems in particular.
For an application of these general claims to philosophical knowledge and understanding see, e.g., Hills (2016).
Consider, for instance, Kelp’s (2017) proposal that maximal objectual understanding of phenomenon p is to be analyzed in terms of fully comprehensive and well-connected knowledge of p. Such a knowledge-based analysis of maximal understanding is compatible with the claim that one can know answers to central questions about p without having understanding of p—either because one knows too little about p to be attributed with outright understanding of p, or because one’s knowledge regarding p is too unconnected.
Matters may seem more complicated when it comes to my argument for GU–C. I address this issue below (footnote 23 and, especially, § 6).
The question discussed in § 3–whether moral realism is true–is one of thirty central philosophical questions in Bourget and Chalmers’ (2015) survey of philosophers’ beliefs, which Chalmers (2015) takes as evidence of the extent of disagreements on central philosophical questions among philosophers. This question, like all others in the survey, is phrased as one about which of two or more philosophical theses is true. Knowing its answer is thus an instance of knowledge-whether or knowledge-that—knowledge of the kind that, it is widely assumed, can be obtained without gaining understanding into why it is true.
This conception of central philosophical questions may be considered too restrictive—appropriate for some central philosophical questions (Is moral realism true? Do we have free will?) while excluding others that do not admit to true-or-false answers (What is knowledge? What are the correct arguments for moral realism?). However, this is not so: Once possible answers are suggested to a philosophical question of the latter kind (Q1), it can be reformulated without loss in terms of a true-or-false question of the former kind: Is answer A or B or C to Q1 true? Accordingly, Chalmers’ (2015) conception of philosophical questions, adopted here, should not be seen as too restrictive.
Granting the assumption that philosophy has a primary goal (see note 6), I ignore here another way of mischaracterizing the goals of a pursuit: by ascribing a primary goal to a pursuit that does not have one.
In other words, even if reductionism is true, this would not undermine my argument for either GU or GU–C but merely allow us to reformulate both in terms of knowledge. For instance, if Kelp’s (2017) reductive account of understanding in terms of comprehensive and maximally well-connected knowledge is true, then, without loss of truth, we may reformulate GU and GU–C by replacing reference to “understanding central philosophical problems” with “maximally well-connected knowledge relating to central philosophical problems”.
See Lougheed (2019) for similar arguments based on considerations relating to philosophers’ typical practices and motivation.
The example is inspired by Enoch (2014). In Enoch’s example, however, the correlation goes the other way: whenever one does something morally wrong, bodily response X occurs. In contrast, in the above example, whenever brain activity X occurs, one entertains a true philosophical proposition. Only the latter kind of correlation allows us to reliably infer the wrongness of the action/the truth of the proposition from the occurrence of X. For somewhat similar examples within a discussion of the aims of science, see de Regt and Dieks (2005) and de Regt (2017).
On the interpretation of “attaining the truth” in this quote, see note 11.
For a similar argument, see Lougheed (2019).
Chalmers (2015, p 21) ascribes such a view to Burton Dreben.
For a discussion of what distinguishes mathematical proofs that provide explanation and understanding from those that do not, see Lange (2016).
An ‘ideal agnostic with respect to p’ is a thinker who has no initial opinion about whether p is true but would like to know whether p (Van Inwagen 2006, pp. 44–45).
Note that for the argument above to go through, a more modest claim would suffice: that many sciences, including well-supported scientific theories, make philosophical presuppositions (as Rinard shows is the case with the special relativity). However, as argued by Rinard (2013), the more general claim made above is hard to deny: it is doubtful if any science can proceed without drawing on some minimal epistemological assumptions which underlie the evaluation of support given by observational evidence to alternative theories.
I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pressing me on this point.
Einstein’s account of his arrival at the formulation of the theory of special relativity is a good example. See Slavov (2018).
Alternative explanations, appealing, e.g., to psychological and sociological differences between philosophers and scientists, are possible, of course. However, they merely push the explanation one step back: why is there such a psychological or sociological difference between philosophers and scientists? An explanation that appeals to differences in the goals of these pursuits would obviously be more satisfying.
As Russell (2009, p 20) famously suggested.
Mill (1859/2012, pp. 66, 79–80) emphasized the value of engaging with opponents who actually contest plausible and widely accepted views for our understanding of the rational grounds supporting these views.
For a helpful discussion of various types of understanding across different domains, see Hannon (2021).
On a factive conception of understanding, ‘all or most of the propositional commitments that comprise genuine understanding are true’ (Elgin, 2017, p 37).
I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this argument.
I say ‘plausibly’ because, without specifying the reductive accounts, we cannot tell what kind of knowledge understanding consists of.
Thus Chalmers explicitly notes that he does not deny that ‘[t]here has been large collective convergence to the truth on (non-big) questions of philosophy’ (2015, p 13).
This claim follows from Kelp’s (2017) reductive account of understanding and, in particular, from the ‘Better Understanding (Bet–U)’ principle, if we accept the plausible assumption that fully comprehensive and maximally well-connected knowledge relating to central philosophical questions includes knowledge of answers to relevant non-central philosophical questions.
It might be asked how knowledge of answers to non-central philosophical questions can promote understanding, but not knowledge, of central philosophical questions. However, insofar as this question interprets the aforementioned claim as one concerning the causal effects of knowing answers to non-central philosophical questions on knowledge and understanding, it misinterprets this claim. The claim is not causal but rather conceptual: ceteris paribus, it suffices to obtain knowledge of answers to non-central philosophical questions, and thus, of part of what needs to be known to obtain full understanding of a central philosophical problem, for a better understanding of that problem. By contrast, obtaining knowledge of answers to non-central philosophical questions does not suffice for more or better knowledge of central philosophical questions.
Such as whether common beliefs, attitudes, and practices concerning free will, moral responsibility, and desert can change (Strawson, 2003).
One may wonder how we can improve our understanding by accepting a false philosophical theory that leads us away from believing the truth. However, we should be reminded of Elgin’s important point, that a false theory, such as the Copernican theory, may actually move us closer to, rather than away from, the truth.
See, however, note 8.
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Acknowledgements
Research on this paper was generously funded by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant No. 650/18). Versions of this paper were presented at the 7th TiLPS Descartes Lectures Online Conference at Tilburg University, at the Israel Association of Philosophy annual conference, and at the University of Haifa. For helpful comments, I am grateful to audiences in these fora, to anonymous reviewers of this journal, and to Arnon Levy, Assaf Weskler, David Fire, Gil Sagi, Iddo Landau, Henk de Regt, Philip Kitcher, Ruth Weintraub, Saul Smilansky, and Tamar Parush.
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Keren, A. Disagreement, progress, and the goal of philosophy. Synthese 201, 45 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-04030-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-04030-0