Topics Philosophy

Question Someone asked here recently whether "philosophy is mostly specious rationalized intellectual imagination and raw speculation dressed in the guise of logical argument". My problem with philosophy is something like the opposite of this. I think philosophical questions, or at least most of those I've heard of, are in fact real and important questions. What I can't understand is why aren't many of them solved! Please don't say it's because philosophical questions are "very difficult": this sounds rather pretentious and seems to forget that many very difficult questions were solved in mathematics and in science. Take, for instance, the question whether morality is objective (or whether there are moral facts). I'm sure one needs to define carefully what "objective" or "facts" means, and even what one means by "morality", but when that is done, why on Earth can't you get to some consensus about this?!

Accepted:
June 7, 2012

Comments

I really appreciate your recognition of the significance of philosophical questions! As I was the panelist that responded to the earlier posting, I thought I might take a shot at replying to your question and observations.

There are a few issues in play: there is first the question of what it means to solve or successfully answer a philosophical question; then there is a question about consensus. On the first point, I think that if we take your question, 'Is morality objective?' many philosophers, but not all, would say yes, and appeal to many considerations to bolster their response (they may, like me, appeal to experience, as in a phenomenological approach to ethics, or they may argue that those who deny the objectivity of morality are, if consistent, must deny the objective normativity of reason, and are thus in danger of undermining the authority of reason itself, etc). I am inclined to think that success does not require the consensus of all reasonable people. So, while I fully grant that Simon Blackburn is reasonable (and much smarter than me in so many ways), I do not think his failing to agree means that there has not been a successful defense of the question you pose. This can seem frustrating to an on-looker, but in assessing the success of a position, I believe a person has to enter into the arguments and counter-arguments at hand. So, I think Max Scheler does a great job in defending objectivity in ethics in his classic Formalism in Ethics and the Non-Formal Ethics of Values (1913-1916), and for various reasons I am not convinced by the arguments in Simon Blackburn's book Ruling Passions (1999) even though I think it is an excellent book. Some philosophers like John Stuart Mill actually proposed that it is good that there are a variety of different, conflicting philosophical positions; I believe he thought that this increased the probability that at least one of them is true.

One other point worth noting: philosophical positions are profoundly interwoven. Cases can arise when two philosophers disagree on a topic because they have different epistemologies or different views of the structure of reality itself (imagine a disagreement between persons on ethics that arises because the philosophers disagree about naturalism, theism, Platonism etc....). So, it is possible that someone like Blackburn might admire Scheler and think that he has a reasonable position, but he thinks it mistaken (in the end) because Blackburn is (currently, I believe) an atheist, whereas when Scheler wrote his classic book he was a theist.

Actually, there may be one more observation to make: in my experience, there are a host of factors involved as to why a philosopher takes the position she does, some quite noble (she is following the evidence as best she can) some neutral (William James thought that one's psychological temperament can play a role as to whether you think, for example, determinism is true) and some odd (maybe a philosopher adopts a radical form of skepticism because no one is a skeptic in his department and he thinks it important to insure that skepticism be represented.) I personally think that there would be more consensus in philosophy than we find today if everyone had greater patience with examining arguments and counter-arguments, and (I know this will sound strange) if we lived longer! Scheler only lived to 54 years old. I bet if the average philosopher had triple the time and lots of opportunities for free (unfettered) inquiry, there would be greater consensus. But as noted earlier, I suggest that consensus is not essential for a philosophical question to be effectively and successfully answered.