Whither a philosophical paradigm?
Is it possible to adequately define a philosophical paradigm? Based on my investigations over the last few days, I would argue that it is a logical impossibility. The very reason that science rests at level 2 commensurability is precisely that it eschews all arguments that could reside at level 3. It does this by making a basic assumption about the matter on the grounds of the attractiveness of the theory that results, and on the fruitfulness of the experiments it suggests. The trouble is, these matters are exactly the kind of things that philosophers want to argue in the first place. In other words, the arguments science must of necessity eschew are precisely the kind of arguments on which philosophy thrives.
The very brevity of my entry on the free will problem provides an example of this. If we are to incorporate free will or its absence into any level 2 paradigm, then our specific resolution relative to any level 2 field of enquiry seems obvious, and difficult to write much about. The original free will problem itself, however, remains on level 3, and is still very worthy of philosophical debate. Yet it is this very level of commensurability for the claim that prohibits scientists from being able to make it an issue themselves. They must keep it a basic assumption only, or else they would never be able to achieve any fruitful experimental results. They would instead be perpetually involved in a foundational disagreement--by definition, a level 3 enterprise.
Indeed, the arguments wouldn't be philosophically worth pursuing if we thought that a consensus seemed inevitable. Any red-blooded philosopher would simply end up finding them banal. And for those who did not, they would simply call themselves scientists, because these are the kind of people who want a right or wrong answer. No true philosopher has ever been concerned about arriving at 'the' right or wrong answer. This was one of the first things that the first-year tutor told us in our tutorial on the philosophy of social science. She was very sorry to disappoint us, she said, but in this field, there were no right or wrong answers... and a true philosopher doesn't care! She has only ever cared about how strong her arguments are for either side. This is reflected in a statement made by another one of my first-year tutors, who said that in philosophy, it is the arguments that count. It does not matter whether you are 'right' or 'wrong' at the end of the day, but how well you argue for your views.
This is perhaps the clearest statement that I have heard yet that philosophy is by definition a level 3 enterprise. When natural philosophy reached level 2, they stopped calling it philosophy and it became natural science. Admittedly, philosophy has some claim to ownership of logic, which must be considered a level 2 discipline. But logic in philosophy, at least as a level 2 discipline, has only ever been ancillary to debates that are otherwise at level 3. Hence, it is simply a tool to assess the strengths of the relative arguments that exist at level 3, in order to help determine their 'respectability'.
Just to show that this is not an objectively original view, here is the way other people have expressed it in the Wikipedia:
Source: Wikipedia article, "Progress (philosophy)"
This would make me a "pessimist" about philosophical progress.
The very brevity of my entry on the free will problem provides an example of this. If we are to incorporate free will or its absence into any level 2 paradigm, then our specific resolution relative to any level 2 field of enquiry seems obvious, and difficult to write much about. The original free will problem itself, however, remains on level 3, and is still very worthy of philosophical debate. Yet it is this very level of commensurability for the claim that prohibits scientists from being able to make it an issue themselves. They must keep it a basic assumption only, or else they would never be able to achieve any fruitful experimental results. They would instead be perpetually involved in a foundational disagreement--by definition, a level 3 enterprise.
Indeed, the arguments wouldn't be philosophically worth pursuing if we thought that a consensus seemed inevitable. Any red-blooded philosopher would simply end up finding them banal. And for those who did not, they would simply call themselves scientists, because these are the kind of people who want a right or wrong answer. No true philosopher has ever been concerned about arriving at 'the' right or wrong answer. This was one of the first things that the first-year tutor told us in our tutorial on the philosophy of social science. She was very sorry to disappoint us, she said, but in this field, there were no right or wrong answers... and a true philosopher doesn't care! She has only ever cared about how strong her arguments are for either side. This is reflected in a statement made by another one of my first-year tutors, who said that in philosophy, it is the arguments that count. It does not matter whether you are 'right' or 'wrong' at the end of the day, but how well you argue for your views.
This is perhaps the clearest statement that I have heard yet that philosophy is by definition a level 3 enterprise. When natural philosophy reached level 2, they stopped calling it philosophy and it became natural science. Admittedly, philosophy has some claim to ownership of logic, which must be considered a level 2 discipline. But logic in philosophy, at least as a level 2 discipline, has only ever been ancillary to debates that are otherwise at level 3. Hence, it is simply a tool to assess the strengths of the relative arguments that exist at level 3, in order to help determine their 'respectability'.
Just to show that this is not an objectively original view, here is the way other people have expressed it in the Wikipedia:
Pessimists, on the other hand, take the lack of progress to be an essential feature--arguing that philosophy must remain without paradigms as long as it is remains philosophy rather than something else. One way of putting the worry might be this: for something to count as a paradigm just is for it to be the sort of achievement that cuts off certain sorts of foundational worries about the essential nature of the subject-matter and the validity of particular methods for studying it. But those sorts of foundational worries are quintessentially philosophical worries. That doesn't mean that it is never worthwhile to set such questions to one side--you can't make any serious progress in physics, for example, while you are still arguing over whether it is coherent to talk about laws of nature. But it does mean that whatever it is you are doing, you are, in an important respect, ceasing to do philosophy. If this is correct, then there is no chance of achieving progress in philosophy by adopting a paradigm--adopting a paradigm can achieve progress in something else, but only by making it cease to be philosophy.
Source: Wikipedia article, "Progress (philosophy)"
This would make me a "pessimist" about philosophical progress.
Comments