I previously posted something about whether philosophy is “subjective” (Philosophy is Subjective, Science Objective?). I concluded that it’s not a difference between philosophy and science that philosophy is subjective while science is objective. I concluded this on the basis of the following two claims:
(1) Philosophy, like science, is a truth-seeking discipline.
(2) Both philosophy and science advance us toward the truth (i.e. yield knowledge).
(Note: By “philosophy” I mean the academic discipline practiced by those housed in what are called “philosophy departments” in most of the English-speaking world.)
I noted that some might still say: “Sure, but the point of the claim that philosophy is subjective is that philosophy doesn’t yield much substantial knowledge like science does.” The idea here seems to be that, still, there is so much more disagreement and so on in philosophy. However, if that is the point, then one should not try to express it by saying that philosophy is “subjective.” But this does leave unaddressed what the big difference between philosophy and science is (at least when people try to differentiate them by saying “philosophy is subjective”) and whether the difference is that philosophy fails to yield much substantial knowledge compared to science. I didn’t address this issue before, but I want to address it now.
Preliminaries
So what is the difference between philosophy and science? Let me be clear from the outset. Of course philosophy and science are different. But my concern is that many incorrectly believe in the following claim:
Claim to Be Rebutted (CBR): Philosophy (unlike science) doesn’t yield much substantial knowledge.
I want to provide some reasons against that view. My conjecture here is that the supposed evidence for this claim can be undermined, leaving the position unsubstantiated.
Public Relations
I think the problem lies primarily in the nature of the two disciplines. Science deals with the empirical and largely observable parts of the world. Philosophy, though, deals with the more abstract, non-empirical, conceptual parts of the world. This results in the following situation.
Scientists can much more easily reveal to a lay person that they’re making progress or that they’re scientific claims are known, justified, reasonable to believe, etc. Like philosophers, scientists can’t really easily reveal to a lay person the actual evidence for a scientific claim; that would require learning a great deal of science. But they can at least reveal to the lay person in an easier way that they are justified. They can do this by showing the observable consequences of their views. For example, science yields improved medicines for people. So the lay person can take the medicine and feel better as a consequence in a reliable way. This is evidence to the lay person that the scientists are making progress or gaining knowledge or that the scientists’ claim about the medicine or whatever is well-grounded. And what the lay person learns here is largely acquired without doing a lot of thinking, at least not scientific thinking. The lay person just has to feel the effects in a reliable way (or, in other examples, it would be seeing the effects in a reliable way). In other words, the lay person can learn about the progress of science in a direct way without doing any science (that is, without becoming a scientist).
But, given the subject matter of the discipline of philosophy, philosophers aren’t in this wonderful position. Even though there is progress in philosophy (even though philosophical investigation does yield knowledge), philosophers can’t reveal to the lay person that they have acquired knowledge without the lay person doing a lot of thinking about and understanding of philosophy. Lay people, for example, can’t take a pill that makes them learn about all the great arguments against, say, divine command theory. In other words, lay people can’t understand the progress of philosophy without doing some philosophy; to understand the progress, they have to no longer be lay people.
A Different Approach to PR?
The statements made so far about the dimness of philosophy’s situation are a bit too strong. I think the situation needn’t be so dire. Part of the problem here is caused by philosophers themselves. I think there is one way philosophers can make lay people believe they’ve made progress: testimony. The primary way lay people are going to believe that there is progress in philosophy is by the practitioners of the discipline telling them so. But philosophers predominantly teach their classes in a way that doesn’t highlight progress in the discipline. Our introductory text books are largely purely collections of readings from philosophers who are writing to other philosophers, and these readings are often primarily historical (readings by Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Locke, Descartes, Kant, Mill, etc.). Students come away thinking that philosophy is largely a historical discipline tracing smart people’s thinking about questions that will never be answered. This only contributes to the problem.
To improve philosophy’s image, and to communicate to the masses the fact that philosophy does make progress, I propose that we at least slightly revise the way we teach our classes. And while this might sound like heresy, I think we should look to science classes for insight here. Now I’m not proposing that philosophers teach their classes exactly like scientists do. I’m simply suggesting that they do things such as the following:
(a) Highlight progress in the material that’s being taught (e.g. say what most philosophers do think about issue X nowadays).
(b) Mention what most philosophers believe nowadays about issue X, but feel free to mention that you think they’re all wrong if you’re the exception.
(c) Respect the historically important philosophers, but focus more on the work of current, living philosophers; leave the exposition of the intricacies of the views of the historical philosophers to the History of Philosophy courses.
(d) Avoid saying things in the syllabus like “In this class, we’re going to think about the big questions that have puzzled philosophers for thousands of years, and you’re going to form your own opinion about these perennial problems….”
I know this challenges the paradigm that most philosophers follow. But, at the same time, most philosophers despise the image of their discipline, especially the image that philosophy is just all about sayin’ what ya feel about problems that will never be solved. Well, the only way to fix that is by presenting the discipline in a better light to the public we interact with most: students, especially the non-philosophy majors that pass through the lower division courses in order to satisfy general education requirements.
Of course, I don’t think all of the image of philosophy is the fault of philosophers themselves. But that’s for another blog rant.
10/06/2009 at 12:39 am Permalink
I’d been thinking more about this too since the conversation at the barbeque — which I enjoyed, by the way, even if we may disagree.
I’d like to make some sort of concession, if I could, and call the whole subject matter which philosophy currently investigates ‘science’ — or potentially science — in that philosophy asks questions which are systematically related and whose answers would constitute an organized body of knowledge. (I happen to think that this would be an a priori science like logic or mathematics, but that is neither here nor there.)
Nonetheless, that leaves something out — at least two things. First, there’s skill at living, and second, there’s skill at learning — or at asking questions. And I think that there’s progress to be made in these areas as well. And if you think of philosophy as a skill or a practice over and above answering the questions that philosophers ask, then you can see why someone might say that a textbook that contained the answers to all of these questions would be irrelevant to the philosopher: even after the questions get answered, life goes on, and it must be lived well.
I think this distinction is present all the way back in Plato. There are the questions that Plato has Socrates ask — and a good deal of the later history of philosophy is devoted to interpreting and answering these questions — but there’s also Socrates himself as a questioner and as a moral exemplum. And to be philosophical is both to ask the kind of questions that Socrates asks and to be or become the kind of person who asks them. So if you consider progress in philosophy to consist in answering those questions, you’re thinking of quite a different progress than that progress which consists in becoming like Socrates, or coming to know that (not what!) one does not know.
(The philosopher is the kind of person — and perhaps this is in its turn an un-Socratic sentiment — who can talk to anybody about anything and learn from him and teach him — cutting through all the posturing and bull-shit that clusters around knowledge or its pretence.)
(The relation between these two projects — answering the questions and asking them — is quite interesting. Plato certainly supposed that one could make progress as a philosopher by making progress in philosophy, and I imagine so did Socrates.)
10/06/2009 at 3:44 pm Permalink
Hi, Alex. Thanks for the comment. I enjoyed the debate at the BBQ too. I think we totally agree, then! I never meant to deny that a key part of philosophy has to do with developing certain skills. I don’t think that is (or should be) all of it, though. So I think we can “present the facts” as it were and present the discipline as making progress but also try to make students of philosophy think critically and develop the relevant sorts of skills. My beef is always with just not acting like there’s progress in the non-skill realm.