What Are Philosophers Good For?

Here are a few thoughts about what I’ve learned from interdisciplinary research.

The more interdisciplinary investigation I do, the clearer it becomes that different disciplines have quite different standards for evidence and argument. Some very traditional analytical philosophy papers on happiness (or whatever) are next to useless, so thoughtless are they, despite their impressive dialectical rigor, in the assumption that philosophers’ intuitions about the meanings of words, or about our judgments in counterfactual cases, is any kind of reliable guide to truth. Thankfully, this is dying in philosophy. Economists are exceedingly careful about their formalisms, but exceedingly careless about what their formalisms are supposed to be about. Psychologists are (well some of them) very careful about experimental design, on one level. But they are often stunningly naive about the interpretation of the data they have gathered. It is perhaps my own disciplinary prejudice, and perhaps I am being self-serving, but I find that the most enlightening work is often by analytically trained philosophers who are skeptical of traditional analytical methods, and apply their diaectical and analytic skills to the interpretation of scientific results. I’m thinking of philosophers like Daniel Dennett, Stephen Stich, the Churchlands, Kim Sterelny, Paul Griffiths, Andy Clark, Jesse Prinz, David Buller, J.D. Trout, etc. There are a bunch of philosophers of biology and physics that one could add here, but they don’t leap to my mind, since those aren’t my areas. But I think it’s worth pointing out that philosophy and philosophical training really are good for the advancement of real knowledge. And I think we’re going see more and more philosophers, armed with a kind of conceptual training that scientists do not normally get, making the transition into primary empirical research, and making major contributions. Here for example is a paper of U of Maryland philosophy professor Chris Cherniak. Where did the “philosophy” go? Who cares!

I think we see similar value-adds from other disciplinary fusions. Economists like Kevin McCabe who have moved into neuroscience are making real contributions to neuroscience as well as economics. It is getting increasingly difficult to tell the difference between some forms of political science and economics. This kind of convergence is very, very good. Despite the stupid institutional impediments caused by the departmental structure of universities, we’re on a track to see the resurgence of the old fashioned “moral sciences.” It is getting and harder harder to tell the difference between philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, economics, political science, and the worthwhile branches of anthropology and sociology. There is considerable value in disciplinary differences in the precise way questions are tackled. But there is even greater value in the fact that all these disciplines are increasingly tackling overlapping sets of questions with increasingly compatible intellectual tools.

9 thoughts on “What Are Philosophers Good For?”

Will,

Do you think that philosophers have ANYTHING reliable to say about the meanings of words? I mean, I’m of the opinion, as I hope and think that many are, that the meanings of words are determined by something like the usage and intentions of the linguistic community in general. So nobody’s intuitiions should count for TOO much more than anyone else’s, I guess. But assuming that philosophers are compentent speakers of their native languages (safe assumption) and assuming that they are better trained to examine their concepts, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to think that they are going to be at least a bit more reliable than the average person in figuring out things about the meanings of words. (I’m ignoring the problems that philosophers encounter concerning their intuitions going all wacky due to explicit theories they have swallowed…)

Clearly, I think, the best way to figure out what a word means includes doing more than just polling some philosophers…Since philosophers don’t make up even a significant portion of their linguistic communities. But what a philosopher thinks is the meaning of a word seems like it should count for something, right?

Will,

Luka, I definitely think that philosophers are better at conceptual analysis than most folk. The problem is, I think, that a good analysis of what the “linguistic community” means by most terms gets you almost nowhere. For instance, an analysis of the basic meaning of “justice” is going to tell you that it has something to do with people getting what they have coming to them. But it is not going to tell you much else. Beyond that, you’ve got to try to persuade people that there is some benefit in seeing it your way–that you have a conception that fleshes out the basic concept in a way that meshes with the way we have reason to want to think and live. The pure “I’ve examined my concept and this is what I came up with” method is pretty much useles.

Check out, for instance, Bishop and Trout’s paper on the Pathologies of Standard Analytic Epistemology for a good critique of the pointlessness of just ruminating on the meaning of “justification” or what have you.