Contemporary “formal philosophers” have two ancestors: Carnap, who promoted the linguistic mode they practice (logify everything) and the English mathematical philosophers, Russell and Ramsey (probabilify everything). Much as I approve of Ramsey and Russell, I do not wholly approve of either legacy. Much of the work in formal philosophy is ill-motivated technicalia, much of it is ritualized (yet another soundness and completeness theorem for yet another system of modal logic, etc.), much of it (for example, the ever growing work on singular causation) is in Carnap’s faulty spirit: definitions without proofs or algorithms and neglect of the relevant work in computer science.--Clark Glymour [I have discussed Glymour's piece before here and yesterday].
This said, some qualifications are due. Let me explain them just for the case of mathematical philosophy again: [E]veryone who works as a mathematical philosopher [a] knows some papers in which the respective authors hide behind the symbols—where mathematical clothing is meant to conceal lack of philosophical content. Or [b] where mathematics does not do much other than complicate some states of affairs that could, and should, have been described in more elementary terms. Or [c] where a mathematical method is applied blindly without any awareness of its potential limitations. In other words: just like all other tools, mathematical methods can be abused. But clearly that should not stop us from putting them to good use in philosophy. (Leitgeb, "SCIENTIFIC PHILOSOPHY, MATHEMATICAL PHILOSOPHY, AND ALL THAT" 274-5) [a-c, added to facilitate discussion. I have discussed Leitgeb's piece before (here and here, and here)--ES].
It's to Glymour's and Leitgeb's credit that they are disarmingly frank about the problematic features of formal philosophies. Few manifesto-style writings call attention to real abuses of the method advocated. There is a further similarity: both focus exclusively on philosophical vices. I will do so here, too--so I will neglect non-philosophical consequences in this post (recall yesterday). Glymour calls attention to (i) "ill-motivated technicalia," (ii) ritualization, and (iii) insularity ("neglect..."). The third of these is not particular to formal philosophy--the most authoritative philosopher of our age, Williamson, loves to rail against all (non-formal) philosophical projects un-disciplined by other sources of knowledge (recall). While it is the nature of philosophical methods to flirt with (ii), the sorts of things Glymour has in mind are, just like the first vice, peculiar to formal philosophy. (This is not to deny one might find analogous vices in other approaches.) Glymour's (i-ii) are echoed in slightly different fashion in Leitgeb's [a&c]; Leitgeb's [b] is also a philosophical vice, and in a way a worse one: sometimes application of formal technologies reduces philosophical understanding or insight (or application, etc.).
What the 'forms' of these formal vices diagnosed by Glymour and Leitgeb have in common is a certain lack of 'philosophical substance.' I deliberately use a scholastic term not just as a respectful homage to my friend Catarina Dutilh-Novaes, but also because it is actually not so easy to say exactly what these vices have in common. In their descriptions of the vices, both Glymour and Leitgeb presuppose that the knowing reader will be familiar with the vices they point to without either naming particular instances of these vices nor by offering an exact way of diagnosing the presence of such vices. That is, Glymour and Leitgeb are piggy-backing on some shared sensibility of relevance or philosophical culture that generates good judgment about such matters. Given that some formal technologies presuppose considerable formal skill -- that is, they generate esoteric claims -- only select insiders will be able to share in such good judgment. So, paradoxically, the philosophical method that is (legitimately) most associated with transparency and clarity also has an inherent tendency toward concealing lack of substance. To be clear: other methods and stances also have this tendency (e.g. Derridaean deconstruction [recall]), but these tend not to be associated with clarity and openness.
There are two, further non-trivial commonalities between Leitgeb's and Glymour's stances; first, neither offers a means toward rectifying the vices. This is peculiar. Given that formal philosophy generates an esoteric realm of knowledge (even judged by philosophical standards) that has known abuses, there is some responsibility among its practitioners to reflect on ways to prevent the abuses either by way of (say) (A) pedagogy; (B) self-policing; (C) institutional regimes, (D) limitation proofs etc. (I'll write more about this some other time.)
Second, and far more important, neither Leitgeb nor Glymour reflects on what it is about formal philosophy that might generate these vices. So, it falls to good friends of formal philosophy to do so without, I repeat, emphasizing that vices are peculiar to formal methods. Here's one suggestion to help us think about this genre of vice. While it has become unfashionable, I think, to think of formal methods as 'topic neutral,' formal methods do have considerable generality. This makes sense nobody is interested in highly ad hoc formal techniques/languages in order to describe particular philosophical puzzles. Formal technologies offer efficient ways of learning and characterizing if they can be shared and transmitted in relatively straightforward fashion. But it is very difficult to combine generality with substance.* In fact, in so far as topic neutrality is a kind of regulative ideal inscribed in formal approaches, substantial philosophical commitments are to be eschewed. But given this regulative ideal, there are no intrinsic barriers within formal philosophy against the vices. In fact, in so far as the future of European, analytical philosophy is formal (as I think it is), then we know what to expect sometimes, or more often.
*It need not do so in particular instances, of course. Many of the most celebrated developments of formal languages have been a simultaneous increase in generality and expressive power with non-trivial increase in substantive commitments without becoming much more complicated (e.g. modal logics). This is not to deny that here, too, there may well be cases of 'hiding' behind formalism.
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