> In discussions such as this I like to use the analogy of Newton's Laws of Motion which after hundreds of years still work well for 'everyday' use but they're all but useless in other endeavors such as our phones' GPS - to get there we had to progress through Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics to Relativity over several hundred years. The same applies to philosophy and philosophical argument and it's why I find it so interesting.
This is where I don't agree. Philosophy and physics are very different.
In physics, at some point certain major theories become established and universally accepted. Pretty much all physicists accept Einstein's theories of relativity as correct–up to the limits of our current ability to test them.
By contrast, in philosophy, professional consensus is vastly more elusive than in physics. The same debates rage from generation and generation, without ever coming to any clear resolution. This is especially true when it comes to highly controversial areas such as ethics:
Are moral statements cognitive or non-cognitive? If cognitive, is their truth objective or subjective? If objective, is the ground of their objectivity natural, non-natural, or supernatural? And, if their truth is objective, which proposed normative ethical theory best approximates that truth: Utilitarianism? (Act, rule or preference?) Deontology? Virtue ethics? Natural law theory? Some combination of two or more of them? Something else entirely?
Philosophy, as a field, is nowhere near reaching consensus on those questions, and consensus seems just as far away now as it did a century ago, and will probably seem just as distant a century from now.
That's not to say no issues ever get resolved. The IEP reports [0] that "...philosophers seem to have reached a consensus... that indirect doxastic voluntarism is true" – and I have no reason to doubt its report. But indirect doxastic voluntarism (that we have some measure of indirect voluntary control over what we believe) is not an especially interesting doctrine. The far more interesting question of direct doxastic voluntarism (whether, at least in some cases, we have the ability to make a direct voluntary choice of what to believe) – is as disputed as it ever was.
Another example of a resolved issue – during the 1950s and early 1960s, logical positivism was enormously popular in (Anglophone) academic philosophy. However, consensus was soon reached that, at least in its classical "meaningfulness is verifiability" formulation, it is a self-refuting position – by the 1970s, essentially everyone had moved on from it, and that consensus has endured from then until now. So, at least occasionally, professional consensus can emerge either that (a) some minor theory is true, or (b) some major theory is false. But consensus on the truth of major theories seems to perennially escape us – quite unlike the case of physics.
> rather it's the milieu in which they're now operating which is seemingly putting strictures on what they do. Like fashion, a set of cultural boundary conditions is determining what they actually do in practice. (BTW, I accept with Academia in the horrible state it's currently in at present that challenge is more than unusually difficult.)
One philosopher might be a moral anti-realist, who believes that morality is simply a subjective expression of emotional attitudes. Another may be a moral realist, yet be convinced that morality can be objectively defined in terms of some theory of the natural sciences (such as evolutionary psychology). A third may be a divine command theorist, convinced that morality can be objectively defined as obeying God's will (as revealed in the Bible or Quran or whatever). All three have reasons to reject Moore's positions, but those reasons are rather different in each case. So the fact that Moore's position is widely disputed, is not a sign of "groupthink". (For what it's worth, I personally think Moore is mostly right–but I know there are many philosophers who disagree.)
> There's more than a hint of postmodernism in your response.
I don't agree. I don't have much sympathy for postmodernism – which is itself somewhat of a vague term, but it is generally associated either with doubt about the existence of objective truth, or else the claim that we are fundamentally unable to know what it is even if it does exist. Whereas, contra postmodernism, I am quite convinced that objective truth exists, and that we do not have any fundamental disability in knowing it – even in philosophy.
My motivation was simply that, if someone says "discipline X says Y", that can be reasonably taken as saying "discipline X has a professional consensus that Y"–which I know in this case to be false. If you had couched your point, not in terms of unqualified "philosophy", but simply as being one philosophical theory, or philosophical school, or individual philosopher (Moore) – I probably would not have replied.
Thank you for your reply. I realized that to respond to your comment in a way which would ensure I wasn't misunderstood meant that my usual HN style would be inappropriate, and for that I'd have to adopt the discipline's more formal nomenclature. As that needed a carefully-worded reply I put it aside for consideration, regrettably however I forgot about it until this moment. I've also just now realized that I'm close to the timeout limit for comments to this story and I reckon I at least owe you the courtesy of an acknowledgment, hence this rushed comment.
In philosophy (at least in my experience) documenting one's words so they aren't misinterpreted can take an inordinate amount of time, therefore this isn't the detailed reply that I'd have liked to have written. It, however, will have to do. Anyway, HN isn't the right place for ongoing philosophical discussions because of its timeouts. That also brings me to one of my pet subjects about all online forums that I'm familiar with and that's that they become long and unwieldy in very short order, thus late entries, irrespective of merit, are often depreciated or ignored. It's an ongoing grouping problem [Gestalt laws, etc.] of significant proportions which remains to be solved.
You're right, getting a consensus in philosophy is more difficult than in science. However, I'd also argue that in science a consensus is often difficult to achieve—that is, until there's a good understanding of the physics involved and sometimes that takes centuries to achieve. Nowadays, the leading edge of physics is pretty much a 'bleeding' edge, as it can hardly be said that there's any widespread consensus about how to progress forward and make truly significant advances. Especially given that not much progress has been made since the general agreement about the Standard Model of some 40-plus years ago and that recent LHC experiments haven't much changed the situation.
We don't know each other nor do we have knowledge of each other's background and experience, thus pitching comments at each other until that info is synced makes communication somewhat hit-and-miss. Moreover, it's made considerably worse due to philosophy's many and diverse fields. As you've likely gathered, whilst I've studied the subject it's not my daily bread and butter. Mostly it's been science/technology that's kept me off the street, thus it would be fair comment to say that I'm unlikely to be up to speed in many of philosophy's specialist branches.
However, I've found that all the branches of philosophy I've studied—analytic, political, ethics/moral philosophy, formal logic, etc. and even existentialism—have benefited me greatly, especially so in that they've prevented me from forming strictured or dogmatic ideas about any one aspect of the discipline. It seems to me that in philosophy it's necessary, in fact almost essential, to be open and flexible to new and changing ideas, however that doesn't mean that one has to dispense with or change one's understanding of its fundamental foundations.
That said, given my background and introduction to the subject, my roots are principally in the analytic tradition. I'm old enough to have watched Bertrand Russell on television on many occasions as a youngster and I was impressed with the clarity, precision and succinctness of what he said. In hindsight, it's clear to me that Russell's influence on me at that young age was very significant and lasting, and thus it's why I studied philosophy.
Those roots and that analytic background is why I'd differ from your comment that 'philosophy and physics are very different', some aspects of philosophy are different to physics and others not so much so. Here, it is essential to be very specific in one's definitions and to carefully detail the scope of one's argument/comparison. I contend that [some] scientists and philosophers devalue aspects of each other's profession specifically because their concepts and notions are ill-defined and not sufficiently bounded. I've often heard physicists say that philosophy has nothing to say to them and yet moments later they're using metaphysical terms and concepts to describe some aspect of physics.
Philosophy deals heavily in metaphysical concepts, by that I mean above and beyond physics (which is the definition that was drummed into me), but many theories in physics have metaphysical aspects to them. Many theories from Quantum Physics that attempt to explain its weird behaviour have metaphysical aspects to them, that is, they're just theories without having an exact understanding of the underlying physics. Nevertheless, even without physical/experimental evidence, they are the subject of constant discussion and argument in mainstream physics. Take the Many Worlds theory of Quantum Mechanics for example, it's constantly under vigorous discussion by physicists simply because its notions are seemingly so outrageous and weird.
One of principal protagonists of the theory is theoretical physicist Sean Carroll who believes there's no other reasonable explanation for the Many Worlds theory however he's the first to admit that there's no physical proof or experimental evidence whatsoever in support of the theory. Until proven, it and other important physics theories such as the Inflationary theory of the early universe are essentially metaphysical notions because they are only constructs of the human mind and not of demonstrable physical reality—even if they are highly plausible.
Yes, I'm very mindful that some of the wording I've used could be deemed to be skating on thin ice as there are a few thorny issues that again come back to definitions, linguistics, epistemology/theory of knowledge, etc. For instance, physicists will often claim that they cannot explain some aspect of physics or provide a reasonable analogy that lay people can understand is because the only way it can be explained is in terms of mathematics. That is, the formulae contain the evidence however it doesn't bear any resemblance to anything that humans would normally consider or understand to be 'reality'.
The same goes goes for logic's acceptance into philosophy, Russell argued that that logic was actually an aspect of mathematics and that basically it didn't belong in philosophy (that is, it's not intrinsically part of it, but again we're playing with semantics here). However, can you imagine what would happen if formal logic was removed from philosophy altogether? The discipline would descend into bedlam, linguistics, semantics, formalism, etc. would either vanish out the window or essentially become irrelevant.
Moreover, it seems to me that it'd be hard if not impossible to make sense of moral statements without it. Whether they're cognitive or non-cognitive statements (as you've mentioned), or the issue of deontology, etc. Without an understanding of the underlying logic of statements and arguments, such concepts would make little if any sense. If we couldn't determine the subject or predicate of a statement or follow the logic through a formal argument then the philosophy of morals and ethics may as well also fly out the window.
Can you imagine what our understanding would be like if we had no way of analyzing the logic that underlies the debate/argument between Socrates and Thrasymachus about the 'Meaning of Justice' in Book I of the Republic? Likely it'd just be another fairy story lost in the mists of time. However, when we introduce the concept of formal/logical argument then the dialog becomes as prescient, fresh and relevant as it ever was, and this is especially important in an era when in the minds of many the definition of 'truth' has become to mean a 'notion or belief held about a matter without evidence or rational logic'. As we're aware, in many circles it's now widely accepted that 'truth' is whatever a person wishes to believe, evidence and questioning its accuracy is no longer a prerequisite. When the meaning of key and important words seemingly metamorphose at will and that real and often negative actions results therefrom, then it's little wonder the world is big trouble and that we need to take action.
One of the main thrusts of my earlier post was that philosophers should be much more proactive in combating much of this nonsense and I strongly maintain that. I'd suggest that this has essentially nothing to do with your comments in paragraph four re cognition etc. These are both erudite and important arguments that philosophers have and definitely should continue to have. However they're essentially meaningless out on the street where 'truth' is under attack.
That's where I come back to Russell; if he suffered from any cognitive dissonance that may have arisen out of possible disparities between his work as outlined in Principia Mathematica and his moral and political philosophy then he showed no signs of it whatsoever. He was a fearless and very effective political campaigner on moral and ethical issues—moreover, he was very much in the public eye, his name was a household word! There's little doubt that he was one of the best advocates for both philosophy and many important moral and social causes that we've had over the last century. We need more philosophers who have a similar charisma and popular presence to cut through this present-day dross and noise.
After reading your reply, it's clear to me that we have somewhat different philosophical outlooks, also we place different emphases on various aspects of the discipline, nevertheless I'd reckon we'd be in much agreement on many issues. If perchance we ever managed to spend an afternoon together discussing philosophy then I'd reckon we'd get along just fine.
> Take the Many Worlds theory of Quantum Mechanics
Some will say that, to be strictly correct about terminology, QM is a theory, but many worlds is an interpretation of it. The theory belongs to physics proper; the interpretation belongs, not to physics, but rather to its allied discipline, the philosophy of physics. (Many extra-philosophical disciplines have allied subfields of philosophy – philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of science, philosophy of biology, philosophy of law, philosophy of politics, philosophy of medicine, philosophy of psychiatry, philosophy of education, etc, etc, etc.)
These interpretaions belong in "philosophy of physics" rather than "physics proper", because (1) they are (at least for now) untestable in practice; (2) the mathematics is (largely) the same. Something like string theory is more "physics proper" than "philosophy of physics", because even though (1) is also true for it, (2) is false.
But, not everyone is so careful about the boundary between "physics" and "philosophy of physics". Your example of physicists who say "philosophy has nothing to say to them" and then embrace many worlds is an example.
> The same goes goes for logic's acceptance into philosophy, Russell argued that that logic was actually an aspect of mathematics and that basically it didn't belong in philosophy
We can study logics as formal mathematical systems, and to that extent logic indeed forms part of mathematics (mathematical logic). However, while the mathematical study of logics is a vast topic – if we ask the question "does this mathematical logic accurately model how (some aspect of) human thought actually functions, or ought to function"? – that question is beyond the proper bounds of mathematics – and that's where the boundary lies between philosophical logical and mathematical logic.
> After reading your reply, it's clear to me that we have somewhat different philosophical outlooks
I get somewhat pedantic about precise conceptual distinctions (including trying to correctly deploy "the discipline's more formal nomenclature", as you put it), but I feel like you treat these distinctions in a more impressionistic way than I do. I think that's one difference between our approaches.
> If perchance we ever managed to spend an afternoon together discussing philosophy then I'd reckon we'd get along just fine.
This is where I don't agree. Philosophy and physics are very different.
In physics, at some point certain major theories become established and universally accepted. Pretty much all physicists accept Einstein's theories of relativity as correct–up to the limits of our current ability to test them.
By contrast, in philosophy, professional consensus is vastly more elusive than in physics. The same debates rage from generation and generation, without ever coming to any clear resolution. This is especially true when it comes to highly controversial areas such as ethics:
Are moral statements cognitive or non-cognitive? If cognitive, is their truth objective or subjective? If objective, is the ground of their objectivity natural, non-natural, or supernatural? And, if their truth is objective, which proposed normative ethical theory best approximates that truth: Utilitarianism? (Act, rule or preference?) Deontology? Virtue ethics? Natural law theory? Some combination of two or more of them? Something else entirely?
Philosophy, as a field, is nowhere near reaching consensus on those questions, and consensus seems just as far away now as it did a century ago, and will probably seem just as distant a century from now.
That's not to say no issues ever get resolved. The IEP reports [0] that "...philosophers seem to have reached a consensus... that indirect doxastic voluntarism is true" – and I have no reason to doubt its report. But indirect doxastic voluntarism (that we have some measure of indirect voluntary control over what we believe) is not an especially interesting doctrine. The far more interesting question of direct doxastic voluntarism (whether, at least in some cases, we have the ability to make a direct voluntary choice of what to believe) – is as disputed as it ever was.
Another example of a resolved issue – during the 1950s and early 1960s, logical positivism was enormously popular in (Anglophone) academic philosophy. However, consensus was soon reached that, at least in its classical "meaningfulness is verifiability" formulation, it is a self-refuting position – by the 1970s, essentially everyone had moved on from it, and that consensus has endured from then until now. So, at least occasionally, professional consensus can emerge either that (a) some minor theory is true, or (b) some major theory is false. But consensus on the truth of major theories seems to perennially escape us – quite unlike the case of physics.
> rather it's the milieu in which they're now operating which is seemingly putting strictures on what they do. Like fashion, a set of cultural boundary conditions is determining what they actually do in practice. (BTW, I accept with Academia in the horrible state it's currently in at present that challenge is more than unusually difficult.)
One philosopher might be a moral anti-realist, who believes that morality is simply a subjective expression of emotional attitudes. Another may be a moral realist, yet be convinced that morality can be objectively defined in terms of some theory of the natural sciences (such as evolutionary psychology). A third may be a divine command theorist, convinced that morality can be objectively defined as obeying God's will (as revealed in the Bible or Quran or whatever). All three have reasons to reject Moore's positions, but those reasons are rather different in each case. So the fact that Moore's position is widely disputed, is not a sign of "groupthink". (For what it's worth, I personally think Moore is mostly right–but I know there are many philosophers who disagree.)
> There's more than a hint of postmodernism in your response.
I don't agree. I don't have much sympathy for postmodernism – which is itself somewhat of a vague term, but it is generally associated either with doubt about the existence of objective truth, or else the claim that we are fundamentally unable to know what it is even if it does exist. Whereas, contra postmodernism, I am quite convinced that objective truth exists, and that we do not have any fundamental disability in knowing it – even in philosophy.
My motivation was simply that, if someone says "discipline X says Y", that can be reasonably taken as saying "discipline X has a professional consensus that Y"–which I know in this case to be false. If you had couched your point, not in terms of unqualified "philosophy", but simply as being one philosophical theory, or philosophical school, or individual philosopher (Moore) – I probably would not have replied.
[0] https://iep.utm.edu/doxastic-voluntarism/