Philosophers’ Carnival #153: Metaphilosophy

I have two observations.  One, Winter, despite its charms, can bring a certain melancholy—there is even a psychological disorder associated with the season.  Moreover, the end of the Winter term comes with its own kinds of stress for student and professor alike.  Thus, once Summer arrives, the season is usually met with gusto.  A good number of philosophical blog entries this time of year are merely possible, deal with gossip (between McGinn, the new APA website, and Ergo—the new open access online journal—there is plenty to talk about), or, in some cases, the posts are poetry.

The second observation is that philosophers do not often discuss metaphilosophy—nor do many people in general.  We live in a world where ‘bootylicious’ is in the OED and ‘metaphilosophy’ is not.  Moreover, while the IEP and Wikipedia have entries in metaphilosophy, the Stanford, alas, does not (although, there is a good entry on intuition).

I offer these two observations as at least partial explanation for the brevity of this issue of the Philosophers’ Carnival.

Get Intuit Again

The question of why intuitions should be taken as evidentiary is not an easy question to answer.  It appears that the best answer for the question is twofold: (1) it is intuitive to think that intuition is evidentiary and (2) the indirect proof.  (1) is true and even minimally helpful.  (2) is pretty straight forward: any argument concluding that intuition is not evidentiary must itself rely on intuited evidence.  Thus, (2) cannot get off the ground.  (1) and (2) combined do not provide much of an argument, but it is all that we have; and, it appears that there is little by way of argument to the contrary.  So, the intuition advocate claims, it is not much of an argument, but it is all that we have.

Is this really enough?  We certainly do not let other sources of evidence get away with this kind of argument.  The case against perceptual evidence is astounding in the literature.  The same is true for the other sensory sources of evidence.  One might ask why intuition gets a free ride.  I think either one of two things need to be acknowledged in the philosophical literature.  Either philosophers need to acknowledge the epistemic worth of faith (or “trust” or “believing in”) in a source of evidence, or philosophers need to acknowledge that we do not have as much evidence for our philosophical claims as we think do.

Neither approach is desirable.  For, if the first is correct, we have found a termination in philosophical discourse that does not answer philosophical disagreements.  Worse, if some philosophical view is correct and a philosopher is justified in believing that view on the basis of faith, then the philosopher is unable to demonstrate the truth of the view.  If the second option is correct, then we never have philosophical knowledge.  For, for some philosopher who happens to believe the correct philosophical view on the basis of intuition (which all philosophers do), that philosopher still does not have evidence; if the philosopher lacks evidence, then the philosopher does not know that the view is correct.

Whatever You Can Do I Can Do Meta!

How “meta” can metaphilosophy get?  This is an important question in the field.  For, one presumes to answer questions about the philosophy at hand; however, if one is attempting to use the philosophy at hand, it does not appear as if you can do much analysis.  By analogy, think of a physicist trying to design an experiment to discover the nature of science.  Arguably, this is better accomplished by the historian, scientist, and philosopher in serious—probably philosophical—discussion.

The Aftermath of TRM

I am derped in philosophical agony.

I have been working on a method for discovering philosophical solutions.  I call it, the Truth Relations Method.  What I have discovered is not that TRM can find philosophical solutions, but it shows that finding a solution to a philosophical disagreement is impossible.  Needless to say, this caused me some discontent.  However, proof that we cannot resolve disagreements is, I think, philosophical progress as I have claimed in another post.  Below I describe why solutions to philosophical disagreements are impossible.

No One to TRM to

Recently I have written a post about the Truth Relations Method (TRM) for find philosophical truth.  Roughly, one uses the truth relations held between proposed philosophical solutions to determine which one must be true.  It occurred to me that this method only works on a select kind of philosophical problems.  Namely, those problems that have an answer that must be true.  It further occurred to me that philosophical questions need not always have these kinds of answers.  For example, it is not necessarily true that we are free or not free.  Especially given the opacity of this question in philosophical discourse and the evidence we have, it seems that either possibility is actual.  This does not mean that the conceptual analysis of “free will” can go either way.  Thus, TRM cannot answer the question of whether we are free.  Further, I am not immediately sure how this question can be answered.  This does not mean that TRM is useless.  Rather, it means that TRM can only find the truth in those cases that the truth is necessarily true.  I believe an example of this is the conceptual analysis of “truth” itself. (Of course, now I have placed myself under a burden to perform this task—«sigh».  This will have to be a later post.) Or, it seems to me, the answer to the question “what is real?” must be a necessarily true answer.  I also suspect that the questions with a possibly true answer are intractable, but I don’t have an argument for that yet.

This leads me to wonder what kinds of questions in philosophy have necessarily true answers and which ones do not.  I provide a short list of questions and indicate whether (according to me anyway) the answers are necessarily true and which ones are (merely) possibly true.  Feel free to add to the list in the comments below; I will update the list accordingly.  If you disagree with a response that I have given, please feel free to voice your objection below.

It’s a Crying Shame.

Maybe this site should be called Philosophers Anonymous!

Free Why-Phi!

A philosopher and a statue

My area of philosophy is metaphilosophy.  Most people are baffled by this including philosophers.  It is difficult enough to try to persuade people that philosophy is useful never mind that the philosophy of philosophy is useful.  Others have argued that philosophy is useful.  I am not going to repeat nor review their thoughts here.  Rather, I am going to explain how the philosophy of philosophy is useful; this will, in turn, show how philosophy is useful.

Philosophy, I believe, originally began with the intended purpose and belief that one can find answers to philosophical questions, e.g., “What is real?”, “How are we to live our lives?”, “What is knowledge and what do we know?”, and “What patterns of thought do we follow to discover the truth?”.  Each of these fields, in turn, have been called metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, and logic.  Today, the problem is not that we don’t have answers to these questions—the problem is that we have a glut of answers.  Some philosophers have hopes of finding a way through the answers; some philosophers have no hope; and, frankly, most philosophers act as if they don’t care. [1] I am actually going to ignore this question.  I think sometimes philosophers and thinkers in general become too focused on what we think philosophy (or any field of inquiry) should do and ignore what philosophy can do.  I have a few suggestions.  Before that, however, I have a few suggestions as to why metaphilosophy is useful to philosophers, which in turn tells us why philosophy is useful.

Put Your Backs Intuit!

Arguably, philosophers rely heavily on intuition.  In fact, we rely on intuition heavily such that the force of our arguments and the ground of our conclusions are grounded in the strength of intuition.  Some have argued that widespread disagreements of intuition imply a kind of skepticism about philosophy.  Some believe that relying on intuition will resolve these disagreements.  Personally, I think that relying on intuition is rational.  However, I do not think that intuition can solve disagreements.

CFP: Mountain-Plains Philosophy Conference

We have another conference that is open to general submissions.  This is a chance for metaphilosophers to begin showing their stuff.  Bonus: it’s at the Air Force Academy.  I’ve been there.  It’s a sight to see!

You can find the CFP here.

Chalmer Heads Will Prevail

Chalmers presents a short paper on the lack of convergence in philosophy.  He claims there is no convergence of truth in philosophy.  I think few would disagree with this.  He offers several explanations as to why, and in the end encourages philosophers to keep trying.  I think there is more hope for convergence now, and I think there is further progress to be had without convergence.

A Movie About Philosophers . . . yeah?

I came across this video clip about philosophy and an apocalypse when perusing a blog called The Philosophers’ Cocoon.  The idea is that a philosophy professor assigns a thought experiment to his graduating class of seniors.  They are to imagine that a nuclear war is wrought upon them.  They have the chance to survive in a bunker.  The catch is that there are twenty students, one professor, and ten spaces in the bunker.  The professor instructs them that they are to decide who stays and who goes, i.e., who lives and who dies, on the basis of their careers (which is assigned by random lot) and logic.  After playing the professor’s game, the students change the rules.  I have yet to see the movie, but it is thought provoking.  Can philosophy be so applicable to real life when it deals with so many unrealistic scenarios?

Is One Rationally Required to Resolve Disagreements?

I should stop thinking right before I go to bed.  Alas, the deed is done.  I am thinking about disagreements in Philosophy.  Some philosophers have argued that if an exponent is not able to “prove” which view is right and which view is wrong, and the exponent cannot rule out the fact that any given opponent is not a rational peer, i.e., that the opponent has relevantly similar or superior reasoning skills and has all the same evidence, then the exponent must conclude that one’s own views are open to skeptical worries.  In short, if two rational people disagree when both have access to the same evidence, then neither view can be accepted by either—one must withhold judgment.  I wonder why this is true.

What Role Do Presuppositions Have in Ideology?

I was reading a friend’s status update on Facebook (which, as you know, is where all good thoughts come from) that involved being on the “left”, “right” or “middle”.  This tugged at a thought I have not thought much about.  Specifically, how ideologies are formed and their impact on thinking.

I do not want to say that ideologies are necessarily a bad thing.  After all, it seems that once one has a reasonably fully thought out system of values and beliefs, one has an ideology.  On the other hand, one does not want to go full hog on an ideology as well.  For, the inference that a thought cannot be right because it conflicts with one’s ideology is a bad inference.  Systems of thought must be flexible enough to change given new, or perhaps unnoticed, evidence.

This has applications in the philosophical world as well.  It can be argued that, for example, epistemic internalism and epistemic externalism are held as an ideology.  For a further example, that, say, Virtue theory, or Utilitarianism, are held as a result of some kind of ideology.  The questions remain, “where do these ideologies come from?” and “how do they affect philosophizing?”

CFP: Croatian Journal of Philosophy

A CFP for “general” works in philosophy.  Metaphilosophers should be able to produce something of interest for them.  You can find the CFP here.

CFP: The Monist: Evaluating Philosophy

This seems like a project suitable for metaphilosophers.  Don’t let the title fool you; this CFP is not calling for papers on how to evaluate philosophy in the sense that one theory is “better” than another.  Rather, the papers are calling for ideas on how to justify funding philosophy for the purpose of, what we might say, serving the public good.  As metaphilosophers, we can appreciate the “use” of philosophy.  Moreover, since “wisdom” in the ancient sense means what we might call today “knowing how to live a life of happiness”, it seems to be a fitting time to put our money where our mouth is.  That is to say, if we really think that philosophy is important, then we ought to consider how it is directly applicable to a person’s life.  Don’t let the self-help gurus usurp our rightful place!

You can find the call for papers here.

A Solution Exists! (maybe)

One of the biggest critiques of philosophy is that philosophers rarely, if ever, agree on a solution to a philosophical problem.  Some have thought that this leads to a kind of skepticism about philosophy.  I suspect there is a method to provide philosophical solutions.  If this method works, perhaps philosophy will gain some newfound respect.

Method to the madness?

One question that seems to pop up in metaphilosophy (indeed, maybe one of the first questions) is a question on method.  Specifically, “what is the method of philosophy?”  I tend to think that this is a spurious question.  For, philosophers have many different methods!  A question that is easier to answer are “what are the methods used by philosophers?”  We can answer this question first and then ask the more interesting questions, which I think the initial question is supposed to get at, such as “Is there a normative method in philosophy?”, “Should some methods be adopted?  Some abandoned?”, or “What is the point of a philosophical method?”

Please leave a comment on your favorite philosophical method and a brief description of it.