Articulating Synthetic Philosophy

But what kind of category is synthetic philosophy? Given that we are still in the grip of a highly problematic divide between analytic and continental philosophy, baptising emerging trends is not an innocent matter. Such baptising or coinage is involved in canonising. So what are the boundaries of synthetic philosophy? Is it a trend within or going beyond the divide? In view of Millikan, Dennett and others that people have named in discussion, this trend seems to emerge from naturalism in its Darwinian branches. “Naturalism” is said in many ways, but if unification and being informed by the special sciences are its main traits then we should perhaps be hopeful that it surpasses some of the old divisions. That said, I have at least two worries about Eric Schliesser’s coinage:

1. Which of the special sciences does Eric Schliesser have in mind? Are the humanities included?** Aiming at unified explanations, many branches of naturalism would probably tend to exclude them. The term “special sciences” is of course itself problematic in that it lends itself to restrictions or even reductionism. But if there are restrictions in place, they should be there for a reason. As it stands, it is unclear whether synthetic philosophy is supposed to be merely a certain way of doingphilosophy (building explanatory systems and being informed by special sciences) or the systematic development of a programme (unifying certain branches of naturalism).
2. If we want to think about categorising emerging branches of philosophy, it might be problematic to tie these branches too closely to names of individual philosophers.*** In addition to the danger of feeding into the genius cult, there are good reasons to resist seeing philosophical or intellectual developments more generally as the achievements of a single person. One reason is that doing philosophy is essentially dialogical, happening between and not inside people. But if we accept this point, then what is it that distinguishes synthetic philosophy from the piecemeal fashion alluded to in the beginning?

Now if we accept that philosophy is not the work of geniuses, then what is it that creates the synthesis in synthetic philosophy? If it is not the person, is it perhaps a programme after all? Or the union of philosophy and other disciplines? But which ones? Why is synthetic philosophy not just philosophy? – One way of tackling these worries would be perhaps to drop the label “synthetic philosophy” and just continue to speak of (Darwinian) naturalism. Another way would be to see this trend indeed as a “way of doing” philosophy. But then there can’t be a principled reason to exclude any field of study. In this case philosophical conversations invoking arguments from history or literature would be in the same business as those invoking biological or physical theories: synthetic philosophy.--Martin Lenz "What is synthetic philosophy? A response to Eric Schliesser"@Handling Ideas

In response to my sharing a pre-print of a review article, "Synthetic Philosophy," but written in response to this post on Dennett (and this post on Rachel Carson and Peter Godfrey-Smith), Martin Lenz raises important questions and challenges.* Here I answer some of them in turn (although I assume some knowledge of my original blog posts or my pre-print). 

In the pre-print I make clear that analytic philosophy and synthetic philosophy are, in principle, sometimes compatible with each other in so far as synthetic philosophy can be taken to provide empirical support for or undermine the premises and/or the (purportedly) unpalatable conclusion of arguments that are explored within analytic philosophy. Many synthetic philosophers I discuss are trained analytic philosophers and, within limits, publish in venues that are perceived to be analytic. (In the pre-print I mention some of the sociological issues surrounding this.)

Synthetic philosophy is also compatible with certain versions of continental philosophy. Much continental philosophy generates concepts and frameworks that inform special sciences. I often jokingly call some of my direct colleagues (recall, in my political science department) in security studies, international relations, and political economy, who draw quite a bit on, say, Foucault or Deleuze, applied continental philosophers,The nature of, say, biopolitical governance can be explored in history and social science departments. So, continental philosophy can be a species of synthetic philosophy and be further developed in the special sciences. 

A more subtle worry is that synthetic philosophy seems tied to naturalism. That's understandable given the role of Darwinism plays in my narrative. But as I point in my paper, that is a contingent fact, not necessary: synthetic philosophy requires a general theory such as we also find in game theory or information theory (and perhaps Bayes’ theorem) that is thin and flexible enough to be applied in different special sciences, but rich enough that, when applied, it allows for connections to be developed among them. There is nothing about synthetic philosophy as such that prevents a theory from being non-naturalistic. Having said that, given that naturalism is a kind of regulative requirement in the sciences, I doubt there will be many non-naturalistic synthetic philosophies.

My response in the previous paragraph also presupposes that synthetic philosophy is a theory driven program interacting among the sciences and philosophy. And this is distinct from being the (piecemeal) argument driven practice of analytic philosophy or being a cult of genius centered on leading figures. While it's true that synthetic philosophy borrows from systematic philosophy a sense of unification and open-ended scope, no theories that synthetic philosophy draws upon (thus far) can hope to play the kind of foundational role that old-style systematic philosophy had. The theories of synthetic philosophy often lack foundations; but they borrow the epistemically stress-tested concepts and inferential tools of the sciences.

 

 

 

 

*Some of them, as I note in the post, are handled in my paper. This paper also built on joint work with Rogier de Langhe (published here).