Magnanimous David Lewis, Exemplar

As to the market: The reader thinks that the likely readership is limited to those who have the expertise and fancy true contradictions, plus a few who find the formal development interesting in its own right. I think this is quite wrong. And not just because there are many who do not now fancy true contradictions but might readily be persuaded to. I think that there are many reasons for an implacable opponent of true contradictions—such as myself—to take great interest in what Priest and his allies are doing.4

If the book is a commercial success, as I think it might be, here is the form I think its success might take. The immediate, ready made market does indeed consist of the sympathizers, and is indeed small. After that, the book makes its own market. Some outraged defender of classical virtue (I have in mind here the very man for the part, but let me not name him) hears of this new heresy and decides to squash it once and for all—and it is apparent to all that his attempt is question-begging and worthless. Others set out to do the job properly: of course we all know that Priest is wrong, but you have to refute him this way. No, that won’t work, it has to be this way . . . Then the difference splitters: you have to grant Priest this much but then you can hold the line here . . . In short: a snowballing, complicated debate among opponents about how the paraconsistent position might best be resisted—and of course the paraconsistent manifesto is required reading for participants in the debate. The increasingly obvious disarray of the opponents helps Priest to gather converts who themselves pitch in. . .

I premise this scenario on two beliefs. (1) Many people will think that it is an easy thing to refute Priest’s position, decisively and in accordance with customary rules of debate. It is not an easy thing. I myself think that it is an impossible thing: so much is called into question that debate will bog down into question-begging and deadlock. (On this point, Priest disagrees with me: he thinks that shared principles of methodology might provide enough common ground.) I think this calls in question the very idea that philosophy always can and should proceed by debate—itself a heretical view, likely to be vigorously opposed.5 (2) Many philosophers hold an unprincipled and unstable position: they have been persuaded by Quine and Putnam that logic is in principle open to revision, they are prepared to contemplate revisions of logic that seem to them to require only small and esoteric changes, yet they still think it absurd to countenance true contradictions. Give these folks a good shaking, and I suppose we’ll see a lot of conversions—some souls saved for staunch classicism, some lost to Priest, and doubtless some novel positions as well.--David Lewis quoted by Graham Priest In Contradiction (Preface to the Second Edition, xix),

Franz Berto called my attention to the Preface to the Second Edition of Priest's book. I had heard the story about Lewis's noble intervention in getting a book -- with which he disagreed on a fundamental level --, that was being rejected by lots of publishers, published. Disciplinary gate-keepers repeatedly prevented the publication of a book whose technical skill they could admire, but whose position they abhorred. It turns out that not so long ago it's easier to publish defenses of infanticide than defenses of true contradiction.

But I don't want to use Lewis's extraordinary letter to rail at the way too many professional philosophers have internalized the worst feature of Kuhn's philosophy: that one can legitimately ignore alternatives to one's own. In the letter Lewis shows that he believes that this is serious mistake intellectually. And as Priest notes in a footnote, this did led the magnanimous Lewis to reflect in print on how hiring practices in times of scarcity should be organized (and are organized) by a tacit treaty.* Rather, Lewis's remarks reveal somebody who is a true master of what one might call philosophical politics.+

First, as Priest notes in his footnote comment on the quoted passage,  there is Lewis's remarkable prescience. It turns out that Lewis truly understands the "market" of philosophical ideas. He has a firm grasp of the sociology of the profession in his own time as revealed by his successful (qualitative) prediction of the manner of the uptake of Priest's work.

Second, he carefully distinguishes between those philosophers that react to genuine novelty from understanding and those ("the many") that react from prejudice. The latter are those that think it will be easy to refute Priest. Their response also reveals their lack of understanding of the limitations of existing methods. It is not that Lewis expects agreement among those that understand--he notes that Priest and he disagree over the extent and potential fruitfulness of existing methodology. In light of the fact that meta-philosophy and debates over methodology have become so common in the 'core,' we can say that Lewis was more in the right on the strength of then existing philosophical methods.

Third, Lewis reveals himself as capable of functioning with great success in the profession while himself holding "heretical views." The heresy itself is, of course, extremely interesting. Philosophical progress is not achieved solely by argument and debate (and presumably score-keeping on a balance-sheet) alone.  Readers who ignore this aspect of Lewis miss his other philosophical skills (which they may even not understand as philosophical).

Fourth, Lewis also sees the strategic utility of promoting Priest's position. I mean strategic in two senses. For (i) the responses to Priest will decisively exhibit the instability at the core of the Quine-Putnam edifice. Even if Lewis does not agree with Priest, this is a welcome result to him. (As an aside, this is one way in which his philosophical skill is revealed; he recognizes that his own tools can not undercut the Quine-Putnam edifice as decisive as the debate over Priest will do.) Lewis can play philosophical chess on multiple boards at once (while also famously seeing very deeply into particular positions).  Moreover, (ii) he thinks it's a good thing to open up certain philosophical "conversations." He appears to think this is healthy for the discipline and, more likely, he thinks these conversations will take us closer to philosophical truth.  He clearly thinks that some existing consensus can be "unprincipled;" conversations (over controversies) reveal the tacit, shaky commitments that hold the existing consensus together. 

 

 

*In "Academic appointments: Why ignore the advantage of being right?," Lewis explicitly reflects back on the case of Priest. (It also shows he rejects the idea that in philosophy a Kuhnian consensus exists.)

+ If you object to 'politics' because it being somehow 'unphilosophical,' I note that it is Lewis who talks of "Priest and his allies" (see also the language of conversion and heresy).

Comments

[V. Alan White]

Might all this support a view of Lewis as holding some sort of pragmatism about methodology if not the ultimate truth of philosophical enterprises? At some juncture descriptive points about the flexibility of method just concede skepticism about final, objective truth--did Lewis cross that point here? If he did, then short of Feyerabend, van Fraassen is the next stop.