Here's a simple way we can Improve Analytical Philosophy: Help Others Improve Their Arguments

I think there are a number of improvements to widespread practice (no I won't be linking to examples -- feel free to just disbelieve or disagree with me if you want!) that would be relatively easy to achieve. I mean to advocate that we all in our own work implement these changes, and aid others in doing so...there are a great many places where it seems to me that people ought weaken their conclusions given the kind of evidence they are able to bring to bear...It would be nice for more writing to make it apparent what are unsupported premises, and what the epistemic relations among various claims made in the paper are, for instance....

I feel about the rigor of analytic philosophy just as Gandhi reportedly felt about Western Civilisation: I think it would be a good idea.--Liam Kofi Bright "Upholding Standards."

Liam's post has been making the rounds (see here on Daily Nous). As he recognizes, his proposal -- that "we ought hold ourselves to stricter argumentative standards than we often do, in our philosophical research manuscripts or public-forum presentations" -- ought not be controversial because it appeals to already existing standards. (Liam helpfully posted a picture of Timothy Williamson.) Unsurprisingly, then, Liam invokes our shared commitment to "clarity."

Now it is a bit of a shame that Liam did not pause to comment on the fact that despite the widespread embrace of quality (I have commented on the way this rhetoric can become self-serving), what we mean by quality often differs.+ Let me offer two high church examples: first, recall that with 'clarity,' Carnap meant to call attention to a property or by-product of formal systems, of constructed languages. It means to capture a kind of demand for transparency in one's inferential practices, one's commitments, and the use of terms. (It's also a second-order property of an otherwise esoteric, expert practice.) Second, by contrast, early Quine thought that clarity just involved intelligibility. But, in later years, Quine thought that his program of regimentation of scientific language was a way to reveal clarity about the 'ontology' of the sciences  and he came to think of clarity as a more general theoretical virtue of a system. (Despite the fact that the previous paragraph draws merely on a blog post I have high degree of confidence that I am right about this, although I am also confident that my presentation lacks sufficient hedging and precision.)

Liam's own use is of a third kind (although undoubtedly has Carnapian sensibilities). We may call, Liam's approach to clarity,  a mixture of adhering to argumentative standards and truth in advertising. As he writes, (i) "stating one's position and argumentative moves; where possible ensuring one's premises validly entail one's conclusion, and where that is not possible some clear (and clearly presented)* reason to think that the truth of one's premises raises the probability of the truth of one's conclusion" and (ii) "where one cannot provide a good argument for stronger claims about how the world actually is this should be clearly marked, and the claim should be defended and understood as consequently of weaker logical force." Rather than farming this out to referees -- Liam is rightfully suspicious of imposing norms on others -- he calls for "widespread voluntary self-change."

Unfortunately, self-policing is, in this instance, not a promising strategy because (a) on the margin, the incentives of our academic credit economy push in the other direction--caution and modesty are not rewarded. Even Williamson does not live up to Liam's proposed standards: in his modal metaphysics he relies crucially on abduction, which always involves an immodest step toward a conclusion beyond what the evidence strictly supports. Williamson knows this and he hopes that in the "long run" any misstep become (ahh) clear to a community. In addition, Williamson exhibits an unwillingness to adopt logically thinner alternatives (say neutral quantification). (b) On the margin, people are often self-deceived about what they have achieved. (Despite the fact that I know it's possible I am self-deceived, I have 100% confidence in the truth of the previous sentence!) In addition, cautiously argued modesty does not fit the rationale behind (c) our existing philosophical practices [intuition mongering, working through outlandish counter-examples, uncharitable nit-picking, X-PHI, argumentation, etc]; they are much better understood if we understand that on a community level we are really trying to stress-test concepts and positions (and maybe argument-forms). Finally, it is peculiar that Liam offers no evidence that binding ourselves to his approach will lead us to better philosophical territory. After all, if being rigorous is like waiting for civilization, then we're all participants in a Beckett play.**

Be that as it may, there is nothing wrong with aspiring to clarity in any of the three senses mentioned above even if we need to remind ourselves that it often is a pernicious trope by which we attack 'unclear' others. By contrast, I think philosophers should spend a lot more time and effort trying to seek out and develop what's promising and right in other people's views. This is something Liam mentions -- "aid others in doing so" --, but does not really develop. Rather than looking for the knock-down argument against  X, let's focus on what may be promising in X and to supply the missing premise or distinction. If this were a norm it would overcomes our tendency toward self-aggrandizing self-deception and it could fit an academic credit economy, if our contributions to each others work would be factored into our mutual and professional evaluation.*** For all I know, incentivizing helping each other may also make us nicer to work with. (I have modest confidence in the suggestions of this paragraph.)

And in that spirit, I want to close with an observation. At one point Liam writes,

As yet unexplored potential for generating novelty. As noted, I think these standards are not often actually upheld. This means, I think, there is plenty of potential for generating a previously unseen way of looking at things just by formulating things more precisely and carefully drawing out the consequences, or seeing what possibilities are actually left open and compatible with our more firmly held or evidenced beliefs once one systematically avoids over-statement...One way that stricter adherence to standards would actually open up the possibility for more creativity is that it would make it more readily apparent that much more is left open than presently seems, that a lot more strange and wonderful possibilities may yet turn out to be true for all we know.

I like the underlying spirit as well as the insight. Clarity can indeed facilitate creativity and open up new approaches if such approaches would be known and welcomed. But there is nothing in Liam's articulation of clarity that makes either  "the possibility for more creativity" more likely or "make it more readily apparent that much more is left open." After all, when one is working within a paradigm one is taught if not disciplined to ignore alternative avenues. So, for the epistemic pay-offs that Liam wishes for to materialize we need an additional norm (beyond clarity and aiding others): one needs not just to call attention to the strength of evidence or limitations of one's own argument, one needs also to call attention to some of the (subjectively) lower probability approaches that may be alternatives to one's own. Because I suspect most enduring contributions in philosophy have arisen from dogmatic, overconfident folk, I have little confidence in my own suggestion here. But it would be nice if it could be made to work.

+UPDATE: Liam does call attention to the issue, including an important useful link to here. Mea Culpa for suggesting otherwise.

*Let's ignore the potential circularity here. A bit of rewording can solve it.

**That should not be interpreted as a call for sloppiness.

***It's not like this never happens; there are workshops and department colloquia where something like this seems to be the norm. But it's rarely the case in publications.

Comments

[Greg F-A]

This is just a side-note on your in-passing remark about clarity in Quine (all philosophy blogging consists of a series of footnotes to Schliesser ;) ). I think I might disagree with you: I think post-nominalist Quine really downgrades the importance of clarity (perhaps reducing it to zero) -- and it sounded in the OP like you might not agree?

I finally finished(?) a paper I was writing on clarity in Quine. I can send the whole ridiculous thing to you if you are interested, but I have cut-and-pasted below the final paragraph summarizing what I had argued for. I think I might disagree with you: I think post-nominalist Quine really downgrades the importance of clarity (perhaps reducing it to zero), and it sounds like you might not agree?

"In sum, I hope I have made plausible the claim that Quine’s post-nominalist attitude towards clarity as a general theoretical virtue is complicated. It often does not appear on his lists of theoretical virtues, even if we count ‘naturalness’ as close enough to ‘clarity’ (as I believe we should)— but sometimes it does appear on those lists. When Quine explicitly appeals to clarity or naturalness, it is possible that at least sometimes he is doing so merely to be dialectically fair to his opponent. That is, the nominalist (specifically, Quine himself circa 1947) complains that type restrictions are unnatural, so latter-day Platonist Quine feels the need to at least voice that complaint, without endorsing naturalness as a genuine theoretical virtue, so that a full list of purported pros and cons of each position is on the table. Alternatively, it is possible that Quine thinks clarity or naturalness is a genuine theoretical virtue, but does not weight it very much (if he weighted it heavily, then nominalism or Pythagoreanism could have ‘won’ against their competitors). Both these hypotheses are speculative. But in any case, it appears the post-nominalist Quine does not attribute the same importance to naturalness, clarity, intelligibility, or whatever one calls it, as he does to the other theoretical virtues of empirical adequacy, simplicity, and efficiency."

[Eric Schliesser]

Hi Greg,
Sure, feel free to send the thing. At one point I was thinking of writing up the earlier blog post on clarity and relate it to the debate over analyticity.
I think we are not far apart: we agree that Quine had a different attitude toward clarity than Carnap; that early Quine was more inclined to take clarity seriously than later Quine. You may well be right that of the theoretical virtues clarity/naturalness does not play a large role for later Quine. Where we may differ (and you know the material surely better than I do), is that I think there are one or two passages (in Word and Object, paragraph 34) where he treats clarity as a benefit that arises from regimentation. I tend to think Quine thinks that's very important.