Digressions&Impressions

Genius and the Herd in Analytical Philosophy

In saying that analytic philosophy now has only a stylistic and sociological unity I, am not suggesting that analytic philosophy is a bad thing or that it is in bad shape. The analytic style is, I think, a good style, and the espirit de corps among analytic philosophers is healthy and useful. All I am saying is that analytic philosophy has become, whether it likes it or not, the same sort of discipline that we find in the other humanities departments--departments where pretensions to rigor and to scientific status are less evident. The normal form of life in the humanities is the same as that in the arts  and in belles lettres: a genius does something new and interesting and persuasive, and his or her admirers begin to form a school or movement....
Rather, we should relax and say, with our colleagues in history and literature, that we in the humanities differ from scientists precisely in not knowing in advance what our problems are, and in not needing to provide criteria of  identity that will tell us whether our problems are the same as those of our predecessors. To adopt this relaxed attitude is to let the institutional tail wag the pseudoscientific dog. It is to admit that our geniuses invent problems and programs de novo, rather than being presented with them by the subject matter itself or by the current state of research.--Richard Rorty (1982) "Philosophy in America Today" The American Scholar, 189.

Rorty assumes that the opposition between (a) a given-problem-solving discipline with extensive division of labor and (b) a herd-like-Genius-following discipline (with constantly invented new problems) is exhaustive (in Rorty Kripke is the exemplar of (b)). The analytic herd is, on this account, defined by an "argumentative" style, that turns us into "quasi-lawyers rather than quasi-scientists." (198)  On Rorty's approach this style is what distinguishes us from other folk that call themselves 'philosophers' and from other disciplines. While Rorty's own trajectory moved him away from this style, it seems he was happy to recommend it to others.

Rorty, then, sugests that philosophers should reconcile themselves (in the Kuhnian terms which he also uses) to permanent crisis or to being in a pre-paradigmatic stage with an "increasingly short half-lives of philosophical problems and programms." (198) As MacIntyre noted in his response to Rorty (recall yesterday's post), Rorty's position relies on a pseudo-history in which the Positivists turn out to be philosophy's last chance (to turn itself into a scientific paradigm).

As Williamson (2014) notes, Rorty ignores David Lewis, who was "Rorty’s colleague at Princeton since 1970;" thereby "Rorty’s radar had missed a serious threat, the central figure in analytic philosophy for the coming decades. Rorty was out of sympathy with most new wave philosophy of language, and the metaphysics that increasingly accompanied it," (33; in context, Williamson is discussing Philosophy and The Mirror of Nature. Recall my posts on Williamson's piece here , here, and here).

As an aside, Wiliamson's treatment of Lewis is respectful on Lewis's professional achievement, but also includes this odd sketch:

The central, most influential figure in the development of analytic metaphysics over the final quarter of the twentieth century, and the contemporary philosopher most cited within recent analytic philosophy, is undoubtedly David Lewis, also known as ‘the machine in the ghost’ for his eerie computational power, mechanical diction, faint air of detachment from ordinary life, and beard from another era (by contrast with ‘the ghost in the machine’, Gilbert Ryle’s summary description of the immaterial Cartesian ego in the clockwork Cartesian body).

Perhaps that passes as funny in Oxford?

 

Be that as it may David Lewis’s system with its peculiar and original mixture of modularity and systematicity generated, as the Healy data showed, a kind of cohesion for a considerable chunk of analytical philosophy. The cohesion is not complete (recall this post, and also this one), and as Rorty already recognizes, for example, A Theory of Justice does not fit this larger cohesion; in fact, it (TJ) "is not a triumph of analytic philosophizing. It is simply the best update of liberal social thought that we have." (188; Rorty ignores the fact that Nozick's Anarchy is more clearly a work of analytical philosophy.)

 

However, it is now likely that analytical ideology studies (recall) and analytical existentialism will in this Lewisian-era, link (to quote Rorty!) "the so-called central areas of philosophy"  to "moral and social philosophy." (188)  And I expect that before long that developments in analytic ideology studies and existentialism will drive technical results in formerly 'core' areas.

David Lewis’s system with its peculiar and original mixture of modularity and systematicity generated, as the Healy data showed, a new kind of cohesion for a considerable chunk of analytical philosophy. The cohesion is not complete (recall this post, and also this one). - See more at: http://digressionsnimpressions.typepad.com/digressionsimpressions/#sthash.9cfulkk6.dpuf

 

Our Lewisian-era also offers us an alternative option to the ones on offer by Rorty [recall: (a) a given-problem-solving discipline with extensive division of labor and (b) a herd-like-Genius-following discipline]. In his writings, Lewis, who did not pretend to excessive modesty, himself eschewed the great-man approach, and (in Australia) he found interlocutors (e.g. Armstrong) that facilitated the presentation, if not development, of his own views. In doing so, he did not put himself above criticism, and he developed his own views along the way.

 

In Rawls and Lewis, then, analytical philosophy of the 1970s (and the decades thereafter) spawned two wildly successful schools in which the founder is open to criticism (and is not conceived as a Genius-legislator; by contrast, Cavell flirts much closer to such a magisterial approach). But the difference between the two schools is also notable: the Rawlsian school has considerable cohesion on doctrinal matters (and its conception of the history of philosophy), whereas in the Lewisian school, respecting the modularity of the 'system,' Lewis's individual papers (and books) are key reference points for discussions, but few people working in it treat any of it as dogma. (If there is consensus it is not over doctrinal matters.) The lack of such dogmas allows new ideas and even new methods to be assimilated along the way (this sponge-like ability has always been characteristic of the best of analytic philosophy).

 

In conclusion, the Lewisian school should also be contrasted with the original mold of scientific philosophy with an intellectual division of labor that makes progress on technical questions from a settled core [Rorty's (a)]. While undoubtedly some Lewisian elements can be found in and assimilated by some such programs (e.g., Williamson's modal logic as metaphysics), it is, in practice, distinct from these.  That is to say, in addition to genius/herd & the we-are-all-workerbees models,* non-reverential schools (that do not exhaust the possibility space) are also possible within analytical philosophy. There is, in fact, nothing to prevent the existence of such schools alongside each other. while I doubt I could self-identify with a school, I think such a possibility is a good thing.

On (a) Kuhnian Crisis in Analytic Philosophy

The essay to which I shall be particularly addressing myself is 'Philosophy in America Today' (Rorty 1981), a central thesis of which is that the present state of analytical philosophy is  to be explained by the disintegration of the neopositivist program of the Vienna Circle and its allies. The consequence of this disintegration, a result of the way in which "all the positivist doctrines were deconstructed by Wittgenstein, Quine, Sellars and Kuhn", (Rorty 1981, 4) has been that analytical philosophy has lost any serious intellectual unity. It is no longer can identify itself by references to "a finite number of distinct, specifiable philosophical problems to be resolved -- problems which any serious analytic philosopher to be the outstanding problems." (7).--A MacIntyre (1982) “Philosophy and Its History,” Analyse & Kritik, 102-3.

We might summarize MacIntyre’s analysis of Rorty’s diagnosis of the state of analytical philosophy ca 1980 that analytic philosophy has entered the critical crisis phase in which a paradigm is fracturing and in which revolutionary new paradigms can be forged. The summary of the previous sentence does not do full justice to Rorty’s aims nor, as will be clear soon, to MacIntyre’s full analysis of Rorty (nor, to be sure, all of MacIntyre’s larger aims in his paper, “Philosophy and Its History,” which include the unmasking of the Millenarian tendency in (early) analytic philosophy.)

When I entered graduate school, more than a decade after this exchange, I would hear my professors mutter things like ‘there is no dominant program,’ or ‘I would like to say we’re all Quine-ean naturalists now, except well, you know, all that metaphysics emanating from Princeton;’ or ‘I don’t try to keep up with all the changing fashions.’ Given the way(s) computers and the internet have sped up professional activity and generated more energetic echo chambers, we can confidently say that since the early 1980s contemporary philosophy is no less fashion-driven. In fact, that it is so, is now a tired trope among the folk that are first-mover, trend-setting fashionistas (recall, and, especially, here).

MacIntyre argues, contra Rorty, that the crisis phase is a permanent feature of analytic philosophy: "from the outset it exhibited just that variety, heterogeneity and instability which Rorty sees as a characteristic only of its present post-positivist state...What Rorty takes to be a cause was in fact an effect." (109-110; in Kuhnian terms: it is forever stuck in a pre-paradigmatic phase.) And, to simplify MacIntyre’s analysis, this permanent crisis is to be expected given the ways in which (a) ‘philosophy’ as a profession came to be separated from other intellectual activities that nourish it and in which it plays an indispensable role; (b) ‘philosophy’ has found a home as a profession among others within a modern research university. I quote a passage that gives a sense of MacIntyre’s diagnosis:  

The bureaucratic organisation of academic work which the modern university requires and the 'philosophy' is not treated as the name one discipline among others. Professionalisation with all its drawing of boundary lines and its invocation of sanctions against those who cross them, its conceptions of what is central to 'the' discipline and what is marginal, is the inevitable accompaniment of bureaucratisation. Hence there is at least a tension between the professionalisation of philosophy and its flourishing, except of course as technique and idiom. For professionalisation is always favorable to the flourishing of technique and to making narrowly technical proficiencies the badge of the fully licensed professional; and it is equally favorable to the development of idiosyncratic idiom, an idiom by which professionals recognize one another for the lack of which they stigmatise outsiders. It is not difficult to find examples of these phenomena in recent and contemporary American philosophy...

It is instead from an examination of the nature and influence of the separation of philosophy from the other disciplines that we are likely to draw an understanding of contemporary philosophy. (106)

Even if one recoils from the thought that the institutional context leads to a permanent deformation of philosophy, MacIntyre's diagnosis is as apt then as it was today despite the fact that he (and Rorty) underestimates the extent to which David Lewis’s system with its peculiar and original mixture of modularity and systematicity generated, as the Healy data showed, a new kind of cohesion for a considerable chunk of analytical philosophy. The cohesion is not complete (recall this post, and also this one). (This reminds us that it is, after all, very hard to judge how the work of one's peers will shape the immediate future.) The philosophical and sociological success of Lewis also generates an unexpected, historical irony; through early Lewis quite a bit of Carnap got passed on to future generations that were told that the logical positivists were not worth reading (so much so that we now regularly encounter that elegant hybrid zombie, the Carnapian metaphysician). It follows also, then, that a suitably enlarged, systematic and modular -- perhaps so modular that it will seem unsystematic -- philosophy can provide the paradigmatic unity that eludes us today. It is an open question if such a philosophy can avoid the deformation that (recall, and, say, here) haunts our practices.

 

Garber vs Della Rocca, reviewed (I)

The present issue of the Journal for the History of Philosophy (JHP) has a two-tiered debate between Daniel Garber (Princeton) and Michael Della Rocca (Yale) over (i) the status of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) in Spinoza and (ii) the methodology of the history of philosophy. Both (i-ii) are connected to (iii) a more inchoate debate over what philosophy is. That Spinoza and the PSR would be the occasion of such a debate is no surprise; ever since Russell embraced brute facts (and rejected the PSR) and treated Spinoza as an exemplar of non-philosophy (recall), the place of Spinoza within analytical philosophy is not merely a historical question, but also a means at discerning the contested limits of philosophy and an open path toward renewing philosophy. The previous sentence is to side a bit with Della Rocca, who is very clear that "Spinoza’s philosophy can help us to learn or re-learn how to do philosophy in a more productive vein" (533ff) than the analytical status quo. (It is no surprise that much of the most influential Anglo scholarship on Spinoza (from Curley, Bennett, etc.) has been akin to rehabilitation projects in part by reinterpreting Spinoza into fashionable categories and problematics (and to downplay the mystical and therapeutic elements discerned by Russell)).

As an aside, the very same issue of JHP in which the Garber/Della Rocca exchange appears, also has two papers on Kant, one on Aristotle, one on Descartes--all on topics that reflect ongoing debates in scholarship (with undoubtedly fresh and important angles--I know several of the authors and they are all terrific). By contrast, the book-review section includes topics that are a bit more off-the-beaten-track. Obviously the sample size is small (N=1), and Jasper Reid's piece does not fit my claim, but (a quick glance at the other two issues of the present volume also confirm that) the pages of JHP represent a very conservative orientation toward the relevant subject matters of the history of philosophy. This orientation is a key feature of the PGR ecology in the field (recall this post). 

The core interpretive issue between Garber and Della Rocca is, at the surface, the status and content of the PSR in Spinoza. (I say "surface" because below it, they agree that rationalism vs empiricism has to be discarded as an organizing principle in the history of philosophy--about that deepy some other time more.) In Della Rocca's hands the PSR is both (i) the master-principle (hereafter MP) and (ii) has a very broad metaphysical scope--Garber denies both that there are any such MPs to be found in the text of Spinoza (and, thus ruling out the PSR's role as a MP) and that in so far as Spinoza embraces commitments akin to the PSR his texts support readings that are thinner in scope than Della Rocca allows. It is worth noting three features of their exchange: (A) that even if Della Rocca's view on (i) are wrong -- say because there is an alternative, perhaps even more fundamental MP, in Spinoza [say, that truth = existence (recall), or truth = being] from which the PSR follows, his reading of (ii) could still be defended. (B) That upon closer inspection, the debate between Garber and Della Rocca over (ii) really turns into a debate over the explanatory resources available to Spinoza in being able to account for the relationship between what follows from the essence/nature of Substance/God and particular infinite series of modes (and the concomitant metaphysical ruling out of some alternative series). (C) That both offer their readings in terms of fairly traditional textual hermeneutics (despite some of their self-presentation).*

On (B) in Garber's hands the problem is that the way God's nature is (and, thus, the way things follow from it) becomes a "brute fact" that violates the PSR. Della Rocca is right, I think, that there is a response to this complaint from within Spinoza's philosophy to be found in E1p33d (and also 1p16, which goes unmentioned by our protagonists, even though Garber (p. 515) quotes a passage in which Spinoza flags its significance for the debate). Della Rocca admits in a footnote that Spinoza's response is not very satisfying philosophically, but does not elaborate. As textual exegesis I am inclined to agree with Della Rocca, but see the next paragraph. (It is to my supervisor's credit that his students do not form a doctrinal or magisterial school.)

The judgment of the previous paragraph is the consequence of my study of Samuel Clarke's (1705) response to Spinoza (in his Demonstration); Clarke's philosophical views on the relationship between God's nature and God's existence puts him very close to Spinoza's position in E1p33 (about which another time more [recall]), but Clarke also noted that E1p33 generates  two important tensions with other features of the Ethics. First, Clarke discerned that Spinoza stipulates that the ratio of motion to rest in the universe remains the same, where the universe is taken as an infinite individual that keeps its nature or form (see E2p13L4 and E2p13L7). Keeping this ratio fixed is entirely compatible with variation in the actual motion of the universe. All the same, given that we are dealing with a ratio here, Clarke is right that at any given time there is an intelligible sense in which “there might possibly have been originally more or less motion in the universe than there actually was.” That is, if God's fixed nature is expressed in a fixed ratio, then very same substantial nature is compatible with different motions and this variation violates the PSR. So, Garber has discerned a genuine problem, but misplaces the location.

Second, Clarke (and all the Newtonians) can note that the PSR is too granular (and, again, this echoes the spirit of Garber's objection and, perhaps, explains why Della Rocca has to concede that Spinoza's position isn't so impressive); Spinoza is committed to there being sufficient reason for infinite variety in the modes (E1p16 and E1p28). But Spinoza's metaphysics lacks resources to explain the particular (confused though it may be) characteristics of the variety we observe--here Spinoza inherits some of the problems of Cartesian physics (despite his severe criticisms of Descartes) [for more careful account]; Newtonian physics can help explain observed accelerations and the evolution of (relatively) closed systems of bodies (in terms of abstract quantities) over time. Even if Spinoza is right to express caution about overconfidence here, Newtonian physics did put us on the road to a truer philosophy. 

Clearly, Clarke is a hostile critic, and he is reading Spinoza through his engagement with Toland. I would not claim that Clarke gets us (to quote Garber) "the historical Spinoza who lived and worked in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic." (As a historical aside, Spinoza also lived and worked in a the seventeenth-century Dutch Stadhouderschap!) But the proto-reading I have offered here is in some sense more historically grounded than either the one on offer from Della Rocca or, ironically, Garber! For, Della Rocca notes that his interpretation revives a historically important interpretation (associated with Jacobi and British Idealism). As it happens, I have considerable sympathy with that interpretation as a means toward articulating an important, enduring philosophical position (in the way that Garber allows (521)), but the jury is out if it is compatible with seventeenth century views available to Spinoza. (My quick and dirty judgment: no; Spinoza is closer to Averroes and a variety of neo-Platonism!)

One might think that I am being unfair to Garber here because he is very concerned with avoiding terms that are not actor's categories (511ff). But as Dan Schneider has pointed out, when one deploys terms from the past in describing the past, then one is often unwillingly (or unwittingly) siding with one side or another in a past debate. Schneider's observation is important because in philosophy often the key concepts are especially -- if not essentially -- contested. (Recall; see also here.) So, even if we are only trying to understand the past in terms of the actor's intentions (certainly not my program), we have every right, and sometimes a duty if we wish to understand the past, to introduce vocabulary unavailable to the historical actors. As Della Rocca notes, if we wish just to avoid (being a Borges's Pierre Menard and) merely replicate the past in the same words as itself, the business of historians of philosophy starts with going beyond the surface text in some way or another.

While we have made some progress on (i-iii), I have also made some promissory notes (about (A) among other things). So, to be continued...

On Rawls and Esotericism

A more far-reaching example concerns John Rawls…A new study of his thought has shown when his A Theory of Justice (1971) is read in conjunction with his later Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy (2000), as well as an unpublished manuscript containing notes for eighteen lectures on Kant and Hegel, it becomes clear that important elements of his theory derive from an elaborate and profound engagement with the thought of Hegel. But while Rawls’s enormous debts to Kant are well-known because amply elaborated in A Theory of Justice, his similar debts to Hegel – was something of a pariah in most analytic philosophy departments of that time – are virtually unknown because completely suppressed. In the six-hundred odd pages of the original edition of A Theory of Justice, there are only two fleeting mentions of his name. It would seem that, fearing the disapproval or at least the noncomprehension of his primary audience, Rawls remained silent about an intellectual relationship that is ultimately crucial for the full understanding of his thought. Needless to say, this limited act of concealment does not rise to the level of full-blown esotericism. The point, however, is that this forceful and high-minded moral philosopher, who was already safely ensconced at  Harvard, was nevertheless moved to take a real step in the direction of esotericism by conditions of “adversity” that fell very far short of genuine censorship or persecution. Once you open your eyes to it, in short, you discover that defensive esotericism is so natural a phenomenon that even in the extremely open and tolerant environments of modern liberal democracies you still come across traces of it with surprising frequency.-- Arthur M. Melzer, Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing, 135. [HT Norma Thompson]

While I was preparing a post on Transformative Experience and Rawls, Scholar.google alerted me to the citation of my first adult publication on Hume's and Smith's friendship in Arnhart's perceptive, critical review of Melzer's book; Arnhart is also critical of Straussianism more generally. (I have never met Arnhart, and I was very pleased by his use of my work in criticism of Straussianism (recall).) Alerted by Thompson's review, I checked Melzer's book online for the treatment of Rawls, which I copied out above. In his footnote to the quoted passage, Melzer cites a Columbia dissertation by Margaret Meek Lange and a German book by Schaub; I was unable  to locate either (but will keep looking).+

What to make of Melzer's interpretation of Rawls?

First, liberal democracies can also generate circumstances of persecution; Rawls lived through wartime censorship during the Second World War and the McCarthy era. George Reisch's scholarship has revealed that the Cold War inhibited public engagement by analytic philosophers (in fact, he credits Rawls with re-starting analytical philosophy's renewed engagement). A Theory of Justice was written during the polarization of the Vietnam war which generated its own censorship practices and fault-lines even at Harvard (recall this post on Railton). Moreover, as Melzer correctly notes, analytical philosophy was (and is) not hospitable to some intellectual enterprises (although the targets can shift--recall this post on Priest). It is, therefore, not silly to explore to what degree such facts shaped Rawls's presentation.++ Having said that, Melzer, who writes in an age of Snowden and Wikileaks, seems a bit too eager to flatter ("extremely open and tolerant environments of modern liberal democracies") some of his intended readers.

Second, one important legacy of Rawls on analytical philosophy -- one pointed out to me by Charles Larmore -- is his citation practices (obviously Larmore shouldn't be held responsible for my other ways of approaching Rawls). Whereas Oxbridge (recall) had taught analytical philosophers to do away with most footnotes (if you didn't know whose positions were being discussed obliquely you didn't belong in the game anyway), Rawls created a sense of community by including sources and critics alike into the conversation from the generous Preface onward (with self-critical footnotes on omitted references). It does not follow, of course, from this fact that Rawls would cite everybody and everything that matters to his development or that he would not practice some forms of "suppression," but it is odd to overlook this feature of Rawls (I return to this below).

Third, as a general rule one should be cautious in reading Rawls's later Lectures back into A Theory of Justice; it should especially be avoided as a means toward discovering his "debts" to earlier sources. These Lectures have many aims (including one that Rawls does not mention: the formation of a remarkably cohesive and institutionally successful school), but the least of these is to help the student and scholars retrace Rawls's sources for A Theory of Justice. (Here's one bit of evidence: Rawls effaces his knowledge of the economists--Knight is deleted from the story, and economics is treated as an enterprise distinct from philosophy (recall).)

Fourth, on p. 314 note 16, of A Theory of Justice, Rawls tells the attentive reader (while discussing Arrow and Knight) to "see the footnotes" in Arrow and Knight on particular pages. So, Rawls's note is modest evidence that Rawls is not stating explicitly all that he thinks is relevant in the pages of A Theory of Justice. These notes do, in fact, call attention to further historical sources for Arrow and Knight, and, perhaps, too, Rawls, and help explain the way the intellectual landscape is understood. (Some other time I'll say something about Knight's notes.) In particular, in his notes, Arrow mentions Rousseau and Milton in the context of discussing the 'Idealist' tradition (which in Arrow's presentation also includes Kant and T.H. Green.)** (I return to this footnote in the sixth and final point below.)

Fifth, Hegel clearly matters to Rawls of the Lectures, and I have no doubt he wants his student-audience to understand A Theory of Justice alongside Hegel. We know that Rawls owned and read Hegel's Philosophy of Right in German in a 1955 edition.*** So it is not impossible that Hegel was a very important source to Rawls in the sixties (after all, he cites him in English translation in A Theory of Justice). Rawls is confident enough to insist in a footnote that Hegel, in turn, is indebted to Smith's Wealth of Nations. But A Theory of Justice also calls attention to sources heavily influenced by and engaging with Hegel: in addition to Knight, Marx and Bradley deserve mention. Moreover, we know that Rawls had carefully read Bosanquet, Kelsen, and Schumpeter, and he owned the great Christian Liberal Idealist, Green (with whom Rawls has considerable affinity).

Finally, already in the original preface to A Theory of Justice, Rawls had made it clear that he understood that not all readers could grapple with his "long book" in the same way. He provides several road-maps (which allow one to taste the "essentials of the theory" and the "basic parts of the book" (xviii-xix). Rawls distinguishes among his readers in virtue of them having different conceptions of freedom to follow their "preferences and to look at the problems which most concern" them (xix). This hint shows that Rawls thought himself capable of writing for a heterogeneous audience. In fact, and surprisingly enough, the hint entails that Rawls thought his most careful or patient reader(s) were those most willing and capable to suspend acting on their preferences (self-command). We learn from the part of the book that Rawls tells his reader is safe to skip that "the morality of self-command... becomes truly supererogatory when the individual displays its characteristic virtues of courage, magnanimity, and self-control in actions presupposing great discipline and training" in the service of "superior ends in a manner consistent with justice." (419)

 

 

Why the Canon Fight is Different in Analytical Philosophy; on Heroworship

For a brief spell in the 80’s and 90’s, higher education was consumed by the canon wars. For those too young to remember, the canon wars were some earnest and intense battles among people who couldn’t agree on which authors needed to be taught for students to be considered properly educated.--Inside Higher Education (2013).

A year ago Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman succesfully managed to ignite discussion within professional philosophy about the status of the canon (recall my response).* Other humanists might think -- paraphrasing a quip falsely attributed to Heinrich Heine (which doesn't stop the Wall Street Journal from recycling it) -- that philosophy is the Netherlands of higher education, everything happens there three decades later. (Genuine humanists know that debates over the canon are as old as the canon itself.) While there are solid sociological-demographic reasons that help explain why philosophy remained aloof from the canon wars (the short version: professional anglophone philosophy is overwhelmingly white, male, change-averse and unreceptive toward unmasking narratives), there is also a key intellectual reason: within analytical philosophy the (Western) canon is largely irrelevant to disciplinary conversations.+ No command over the details of the text is ever presupposed. This is no surprise because analytical philosophy was founded -- self-consciously mimicking Descartes's dismissiveness toward book-knowledge -- as a revolt against historical approaches to philosophy.

While the days may be gone in which one could count on all literature professors to recite Shakespeare, Milton, Homer, Virgil, Goethe, Dante, and the other mighty dead, especially Middlemarch, from memory, to this day working knowledge of some such books provides a shared, contested frame of reference in literary and cultural studies even if nobody thinks that command of such books is a mark of civilization or even a signal of one's cultural capital. And while close reading persists in college courses, the idea that literature can replace Scripture has long been deconstructed, and De Man unmasked; I would not be surprised if it has had its brief, ironic revival prompted by a Simpsons episode.

By contrast even when I present on David Hume's Treatise to professional historians of philosophy, let alone generalist philosophical audiences, I make sure to prepare detailed excerpts of key passages. Hume is the fourth most admired philosopher in history (according to a recent poll); he is the highest ranked English language philosopher--his Treatise the acknowledged masterpiece.** Even the anti-historical logical empiricists would say nice things about Hume. My excerpts are not merely aids to memory; I know that the passages I am calling attention to are simply unknown. Professional philosophy is not a discipline in which texts from the past are internalized. (Yes, there are a few Hume scholars that have working knowledge of some texts, but even among that lovely crowd -- dominated by professional philosophers -- there are very few people that know Hume's major works really by heart.)

Even when working positions come to be known as Humean or Carnapian (etc.), odds are we are dealing with Hume* or Carnap*. It doesn't matter, really, if Hume is not a Humean. (The relationship between, say, Carnap and contemporary Carnapians is very interesting and illuminating.) While there are a few magisterial clubs within professional philosophy -- Kantians often really try to get Kant right (even at the price of introducing anachronism), Wittgensteinians even have a second-order debate whether it makes sense to get Wittgenstein right, etc. --, philosophical puzzles and controversies do not get settled by authoritative interpretation of major texts. Of course, interest in such puzzles can be started by way of some such interpretation. 

The above is not to deny that there is an image of philosophy prevalent within professional philosophy in which a limited number of historical, canonical figures are very prominent: starting with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle through Descartes, Leibniz, Hume, and Kant (etc). These folk are often, indeed, implicated in subtle and not-so-subtle forms of ideological domination (or worse). It is worth serious reflection why Gorgias's Helen is unread; why even specialist scholars are unaware of the male feminism of Toland, Mandeville, and John Millar--all eighteenth century figures that were once extremely famous. (Even world class Nietzsche scholars tend to be ignorant on the genealogy of genealogy.) It is shocking that (the first) professional interest in early modern female philosophers only commenced less than a generation ago.  

If we abolish the canon in professional (analytic) philosophy, we just give folk another excuse not to read books. This trend may be unstoppable anyway: the textbook is beloved by university technocrats who hire cheap labor to teach pre-set curriculum with well-defined (achievable) goals.

For, in addition to the image of philosophy, there are classic works, often drawn from those canonical figures that figure in the image of philosophy, which are routinely but not exclusively used to introduce students to philosophy (e.g., an intro to ethics course with Aristotle, Hume, Kant, and Mill--hopefully Sophie de Grouchy before long, too) [recall, recall, and more if you use Google]. Arguably, Nietzsche has become canonical within professional philosophy because teachers could not resist the allure of assigning him in their courses. There could be quite a bit more experimentation and innovation in the pool of such classics. In preparing a course on Islamic philosophy, I encountered Ibn Tufayl (recall) and was certainly not the first to be struck by how easily he could fit in any text-based introductory course in epistemology, philosophy of religion, and political philosophy. 

What does exist in professional philosophy is a kind of hero-worship of living authority figures and the recently deceased.* Manifestly odd views can endure because they are associated with some such hero and, more importantly, because they put (often informal, but no less tight) conceptual and methodological constraints on what is acceptable within professional discussion. Williamson describes the mechanisms involved in a recent essay: he patiently explains the fear factor that surrounded Quine for a while [recall my post]. This is why in the overthrow of such heroes we find more than argument--there is also rhetoric; Williamson describes Lewis's metaphysics as "extreme" (9) and memorably, but unflatteringly, notes that Lewis is "also known as ‘the machine in the ghost’ for his eerie computational power, mechanical diction, faint air of detachment from ordinary life, and beard from another era." (8)

This hero-worship is associated with a lot of the worst features of the discipline; the common cruelty, the lack of respect for viewpoints associated with outsiders, the willful ignorance, and the awful systematic demographic patterns of exclusion. So, if we abolish the canon in professional philosophy without ending the hero-worship not much will change about the professional practice.

On Escaping Our Gated Community

Rawls himself said in the opening pages of “A Theory of Justice” that we had to start with ideal theory because it was necessary for properly doing the really important thing: non-ideal theory, including the “pressing and urgent matter” of remedying injustice. But what was originally supposed to have been merely a tool has become an end in itself; the presumed antechamber to the real hall of debate is now its main site. Effectively, then, within the geography of the normative, ideal theory functions as a form of white flight. You don’t want to deal with the problems of race and the legacy of white supremacy, so, metaphorically, within the discourse of justice, you retreat from any spaces worryingly close to the inner cities and move instead to the safe and comfortable white spaces, the gated moral communities, of the segregated suburbs, from which they become normatively invisible.--Charles Mills in the New York Times.

When I was a student and graduate student such a functional analysis of debates within philosophy of the sort Prof. Mills provides was, well, strictly off-limits. So, I was pleased to see it shared approvingly by so many folk that I admire and respect. For philosophy to properly understand itself and the places -- metaphorical and physical -- it occupies and leaves empty, the 'effective' consequences of our conceptual moves need to be made available for discussion. 

In his comments, Prof. Mills is very careful to distinguish between Rawls's original intent and what happens in that most important no-place: "the geography of the normative." He does not explain the causal factors that might have facilitated the 'retreat.' And normally  this would be the place where I would talk about incentives and institutions, and deepen my argument about why Rawls's  technocratic political ideal -- and perhaps also the very idea of a neutral, formal language -- was so attractive to many (recall). But in re-reading the interview with  Prof. Mills I noted that he is very explicit about one feature of the agency of professional philosophers; he writes, "You don’t want to deal with the problems of race and the legacy of white supremacy."

Now, I take it that Prof. Mills is not merely offering a psychological diagnosis about individuals, but, rather, offering the claim that professional (political) philosophy has evolved in such a way as not being capable -- de facto -- of practicing certain important forms of philosophical inquiry; it allows the proliferation of disciplinary "norms of cognition that so function as to work against successful cognition."* These norms also facilitate the further entrenchment of certain forms of social injustice -- victims are further made cognitively invisible (recall this post).

For the nobler among us the pull of "correcting injustices" is, perhaps, large enough to follow Prof. Mills and "exit Rawlsland." But I also note that Prof. Mills leaves the rest of us an additional argument (no, I don't mean that gated communities filled with the like-minded are very boring places); rather, he promises us better access to a more "realistic perspective" on social reality--one in which our cognition has a better chance of not being (too) empty.

 

On/Against civility in Professional Philosophy

In the corridor or the classroom or the seminar, civility is at least an aspiration – that we speak and listen to each other in a civil manner: it is an aspiration within an existing community – hence the political overtones of the word. Why should we bother? Civility is an attitude displayed in the content of what one says, revealed by tone or linguistic choice, but it is fundamentally an attitude to another person – of taking them seriously, of treating them with respect and care, and without prejudice. This, I take it, matters intrinsically – just because whatever enterprises we are engaged in, we are engaged together. This explains the shock and outrage and the sympathy for its target when civility seems to be cast aside. MM McCabe [at Feministphilosophers]

Among the few great joys of the recent philosophical blogosphere are the contributions by Mary Margaret McCabe, a distinguished philosopher.* Her blog posts are subtle, and she treats her readers like adults; moreover, she practices what she preaches. Even so, I was disappointed by her post because it does not really address known objections to the view that she puts forward. I have in mind, especially, an argument articulated by Johnson and Kazarian in a widely read piece at NewAPPS. In particular, they noted that the  demand for "civility" ("collegiality," etc.) is "the sort of requirement that only works, practically speaking, in very homogeneous communities." Even though I think Johnson and Kazarian overstate the homogeneity required, there is no doubt that civility is only possible when a lot of agreement is presupposed. In the class room this agreement is stipulated, but elsewhere it cannot be taken for granted.

Now, McCabe is not naive; her post is worth reading because she is very  sensitive to the fragility of civility. As she puts it "civility is [always--ES] under construction." This strikes me as the right stance. Even so, she goes on to claim "but it continues to be an aspiration." Yet, as she notes in the quoted post above, civility presupposes "existing community." The problem is that even professional philosophy is not an existing community and has not pretended to be one in living memory. My own group -- analytical philosophy -- has shown itself systematically willing to be unreceptive to, and frequently  dismissive of (etc.) to outsiders (Continental, Feminists, Straussians, cultural theorists, etc.). It would be all wrong to just point to one particular blogger's public persona, and to ignore both the years of complicity of the 'professional haves' in such behavior as well as to overlook the revered role of sneering and putdown in our tradition (and, perhaps, the history of philosophy more generally): from Russell onward (Anscombe, Geach, Carnap, Ernest Nagel, etc.) sneering and the elegant putdown have had a treasured role in the tradition (and others). So, it would be perverse to aspire to something that is probably not possible and, along the way, becomes a club/stick to silence critics and promote (unwanted) conformity without a prior accounting of the role of incivility in the tradition. Indeed, "The future of collaborative discourse is more important than its past," but the very idea that historical trajectory can (largely) be dispensed with is, itself, a move in philosophical history with itself (a problematic) history.

Moreover, a lot of extremely polite and civil folk are not really engaged in "the possibility to speak and to listen together." (In a zero-sum environment [jobs, grants, journal space, etc.] this may be unavoidable.) But civility, as operationalized in certain modes of expression, is not the proper response to polite condescension or the argumentative brush-off nicely formulated. The odd locution of the previous sentence, is partly a consequence of Prof. McCabe's tendency to treat expressions of anger as the contrary to civil behavior.** Sometimes we treat another with respect for their person-hood and care by getting angry at them (ask any parent); we signal that we take their attitudes seriously enough to be willing to signal that they have crossed some line. Finally, sometimes our own person-hood and respect for self demands from  us that we get angry at another. Reactive attitudes are an intrinsic part of one's persoon-hood and one of the means toward expressing respect; recognizing their value may well be intrinsic to establishing community. (This is not to deny that due to power differences, the norms of expressing anger may vary with status.) Rather, given the huge potential for abuse that comes with the civility standard, I would wish that we focused more attention on concrete steps at building community and reducing the existing scope of abuses of power.

LEMM & HISTORY NOT ATTRACTING BLACKS IN THE PHILOSOPHY PROFESSION

 There is a willful, not necessarily a conscious, preference among many members of the philosophy profession largely to maintain the status quo in terms of: the social group profiles of members; the dynamics of prestige and influence; and the areas and questions deemed properly or deeply "philosophical." None of this is good for black folks.--LK McPherson at NewAPPS, Dec. 12, 2011.

I put a screaming headline on this post. That's because I just finished reading “What is the State of Blacks in Philosophy?” (2014) Critical Philosophy of Race, by Tina Fernandes Botts, Liam Kofi Bright, Myisha Cherry, Guntur Mallarangeng, and Quayshawn Spencer. DailyNous posted a link to the piece, but to my amazement it has not generated any significant public discussion that I am familiar with. So, let me provoke some. According to the paper (this is summarized on DailyNous from which I quote):

• Blacks make up just 1.32 percent of the total number of people professionally affiliated (as grad students or faculty) with U.S. philosophy departments.
• Approximately 0.88 percent of U.S. philosophy Ph.D. students are black.
• Approximately 4.3 percent of U.S. tenured philosophy professors are black.
• Of black philosophy Ph.D. students in the U.S., half are female. That is about double the rate of the U.S. philosophy Ph.D. student population as a whole.
• The distribution of black female Ph.D. students across philosophy Ph.D. programs is much lower than black males. Specifically, 69 percent of black female Ph.D. students are at Penn State.
• The top areas of specialization for U.S. black philosophers are (1) Africana, (2) Race, (3) Social and Political, (4) Ethics, and (5) Continental philosophy.

One bit of terminology: Fernandes Botts et al. use "BIPs" to refer to Blacks in the Profession; I follow this convention. Before I offer some commentary I want to note that the "4.3 percent of U.S. tenured philosophy professors are black" number is based on the number of tenured APA members. I think it would be a  mistake if that number became the baseline for future discussion of BIPs. For, Kate Norlock reminds me that NCES has calculated (based on now ten year old data) that there are about 13,000 full-time philosophy faculty. (These are NOT all tenured, of course. But it excludes nearly all PhD students/ABDs.)* The number of BIPs in the (non-graduate-student) full-time teaching population, is, thus, probably closer to approximately 1%. This is back-of-the-envelope calculation, so should be treated with caution; it excludes part-time faculty! But that rough 1% number matches better, I think, the other data collected by Fernandes Botts et. al.

Correlation isn't causation. But....ahhh...correlation can also not be ignored.  So, to be blunt, every time we treat the LEMM as the CORE parts of philosophy (recall) and every time we mock SPEP-style Continental philosophy, we are, in effect, also (further) marginalizing (insulting, demeaning, etc.) the majority of BIPs. Every time you are a bystander to this, you are very likely complicit to making matters worse when it comes to the status of BIPs.

Or to get to the nub of the matter: the way professional philosophy understands what philosophy is may well be part of the problem. The issue has been explored with subtlety by Kristie Dotson in her now famous paper (see also her post at NewAPPS and McPherson's post linked at the  top of this post). I think we need to acknowledge that analytical philosophy, the way it has evolved, and the way we understand the history of philosophy are part of the problem. This is not to deny that we may have inherited Plato's original sins. (See also this post; so, yes, I was probably too optimistic, if not just deluded, in this post.) How much, I don't know. (This is not to ignore problems within Continental and other areas of philosophy; I am just not the right person to speak about them.) That is to say, rather than only focusing on fighting bias (explicit/tacit)), and improving procedures, we should be open to the possibility that our systematic downplaying of those parts of philosophy that seriously question both the philosophical status quo as well as the political/social/cultural/institutional status quo, and philosophical complicity in it, may, in fact, contribute to the very problem here.

When I was an undergraduate I was in awe of most of my philosophy teachers. I admired their intelligence, their argumentative skill, and their intellectual integrity. At the time, I didn't think I could become as good as them, but I wanted to join a club in which I could participate as a peer in the noble quest for the search after truth and justice. Professionally philosophy has treated me better than I expected. In looking at the numbers collected by Fernandes Botts and her colleagues, I now recognize that I was also striving to join and be allowed into a club very much like myself. And while I want to scream like my headline, this belated -- 'what took you so long?!' -- insight makes me wonder how many of my aspirations are tainted.

On the Carnap-Strawson debate and the soul of Analytical Philosophy during the Cold War

If the reader is shocked or offended by the two last-mentioned procedures, I hasten to assure him that they, occur, of course, only in the more barbarous regions, like America, where the sacrilege of tampering with the holy tradition of language is sometimes connived at.--Carnap "P.F. Strawson on Linguistic Naturalism" (937)

The distinction I used above between the way things happen in the world, and our own natures, is here, though vague, important. For it is a part of our nature that, things other than ourselves being as they are, it is natural for us to have the conceptual apparatus that we do have. But human nature is diverse enough to allow of another, though related, use of philosophical imagination. This consists in imagining ways in which, without things other than ourselves being different from what they are, we might view them through the medium of a different conceptual apparatus; Some metaphysics is best, or most charitably, seen as consisting in part in exercises of this sort...Of course, even when it can be so interpreted, it is not presented as a conceptual or structural revision by means of which we might see things differently; it is presented as a picture of thing as they really are, instead of as they delusively seem. This presentation with its contrast between esoteric-reality and daily delusion, involves, and is the consequence of, the unconscious distortion of ordinary concepts, i.e. of the ordinary use of linguistic expressions. So metaphysics though it can sometimes be charitably interpreted in the way I suggest, in fact always involves paradox and perplexities of the kind I first mentioned; and sometimes embodies no rudimentary vision, but merely rudimentary mistakes. Strawson (1963) "Carnap's Views on Constructed Systems Versus Natural Languages in Analytic Philosophy," (516; [emphases in original--ES])

Branden Fitelson wrote me a lovely, critical letter in response to viewing my lecture, "Anti-Mathematicism and Formal Philosophy" at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy available online. In it he reminded me of an exchange by Strawson and Carnap that he uses in teaching. The papers represent philosophical fireworks of the highest order--they are, as Strawson's title indicates, a debate over the very soul of analytical philosophy. The papers repay repeated re-readings, and both sides make many  insightful observations on the philosophical merits of formal philosophy (a topic I regularly post about, see here and here). In particular, one is reminded -- and this is especially noteworthy in a philosophical age in which the guide to graduate education provided by the PGR does not even consider expertise in philosophy of education as worthy of note -- that one of the central philosophical issues is the nature of philosophical education.*

As a speculative aside, prompted by some remarks by Jason Stanley, the displacement of philosophical education as worthy of any attention was, in part, due to the success of Strawson's and Carnap's students and their intellectual allies in discrediting the non-scientific wing of Pragmatism associated, say, with Dewey. Subsequently, even Plato scholarship was reconstituted as unrelated to philosophical education. (The Meno and Theaetetus are then taught as obviously belonging primarily to the history of epistemology, etc.)

To return to my main point, in his response to Strawson, Carnap construes the debate as one between (linguistic) "naturalists" (that is Strawson, although this is not Strawson's term) and "constructionists" (Carnap). This construction allows Carnap to recycle some of his anti-Quine-ean moves against an opponent that has fewer resources to respond. He then offers effective responses to most of Strawson's charges, showing that they rely on unreliable distinctions/assumptions, misrepresentations of Carnap's program, and, crucially, that even where Strawson's positive program has merit, the two programs can be mutually supportive. Now, due to Strawson's title and the way the dialectic is construed it seems that what is at stake is ultimately the respective roles of natural language (and empirical observations on use), and the role of formal languages (and the merits of explication).+ Because Carnap has the last word in the Schilpp volume, he also gets away ignoring a feature of Strawson's argument (the passage quoted above) that Strawson admittedly qualifies as not being "central," (515), but does characterize as "inportant" and "a wide field open to philosophical imagination." (516)

I have quoted Strawson's defense of the role of "imagining ways in which, without things other than ourselves being different from what they are, we might view them through the medium of a different conceptual apparatus." Now the first thing to note is that this is presented as an extremely modest enterprise. There is no sense that an alternative conception of reality might be a guide to action or generate a vision of reality worth attaining (see philosophical prophecy). Given that Strawson makes disparaging remarks ("grandiose plan of logical atomism") of Carnapian "planners," the conservative implications are deliberate here. Strawson's version of descriptive analysis and descriptive metaphysics, self-consciously leaves things alone (recall yesterday's post). No doubt there will be howls of derision from Oxford -- if they pretended to care about my digressions -- but this is (further) evidence of the ignoble effects of the cold war on philosophy's self-image.

On The Historian of Philosophy as a Kuhnian Revolutionary

Thomas Kuhn opens The Structure 0f Scientific Revolutions with the following statement: 'History, if viewed as a repository for more than anecdote or chronology, could produce a decisive transformation in the image of science by which we are now possessed.'  I hope that it isn't too pretentious to end my polemic with a paraphrase of that statement: History of philosophy, if viewed as a repository for more than assorted arguments and errors, could produce a decisive transformation in the image of philosophy by which we are now possessed.--Daniel Garber (2005) "What's Philosophical about the History of Philosophy?" (146) in Analytic Philosophy and History of Philosophy.

The quoted passage is the final one of Garber's essay, which proudly defends so-called 'antiquarian' history of philosophy. It does not ask to what degree Kuhn's Structure produced a decisive transformation in the image of science. Nor does Garber explore to what degree a changed image of science leads to a change in the practice, evaluation or funding of science(s). But leaving aside Kuhn's self-presentation, there is no doubt that Kuhn's image of science -- hegemonic paradigms/consensus, revolutions, puzzle-solving, etc. -- changed the philosophers's image of philosophy often by way of contrast or emulation of an image of science--recall, for example, here and here on Williamson). Garber does not note the irony that to this day, Kuhn's status as a philosopher is controversial even long after his ideas have become conventional wisdom.

Garber's essay, thus, presupposes that there is an image of philosophy and that this image matters in some sense to the practice of philosophy. Even Timothy Williamson agrees with this much: "This book [The Philosophy of Philosophy--ES] grew out of a sense that contemporary philosophy lacks a self-image that does it justice." (ix) Williamson constructs an image that can do justice to what he claims is an existing practice and one that he favors; his image, we may add, is especially suited to his skills and interests--justice is convenient, that way. Garber proposes that history of philosophy can prepare, either indirectly by those that practice a disinterested history of philosophy, or more directly by those with a plan, the future of philosophy. He claims that,

[A]ntiquarian history of philosophy can help us to look at philosophy itself and its relations with other disciplines and with the larger world in a fresh new way. It is often taken for granted that the discipline of philosophy that we practise today is substantially the same as it was in past times. It is this assumption that underlies the way in which philosophers have generally used the history of philosophy as a source of arguments and problems for their current work. But a careful and genuinely historical study of early modern philosophy gives us a rather different conception of the subject, something from which we as philosophers in the twenty-first century can learn." (138)

One might think that the main message here is the denial that philosophy is essentially a stable kind with an eternal essence (recall Bolton). But while non-trivial, the key point is that this entails that there is always a possible alternative to the status-quo image of philosophy, or that the ruling self-image can be adapted to the new ends. Garber is explicit about this: