Some very good work falls under the heading "ordinary language philosophy," but the idea that unusual uses of language are thereby wrong must be rejected, since technical and innovative, poetic uses have to be allowed. For instance, Adam Foulds describes a bird "flinching" up a tree in his novel The Quickening Maze (which I haven't read--it was reviewed in The New Yorker). It would be absurd to criticize Foulds for straying from ordinary usage. It would be equally absurd, it seems to me, to criticize Heidegger for talking about "the Nothing," when a string of German writers, including Goethe, have done so before him. Indeed, even if they had not, Heidegger would be entitled to innovate in this way.
This point is somewhat acknowledged by almost everyone, although I have still heard people talk as if only ordinary ways of using language are OK. But classic early analytic philosophers (Frege, Carnap, the early Wittgenstein) write as if poetry does not belong in philosophy. Proper philosophy must be more objective. One result is that ethics is edged out of philosophy, although meta-ethics is allowed to remain. Political philosophy goes, too, until the (hardly objective) imaginative thought-experiments of Rawls and Nozick bring it back. It is at least extremely difficult, though, to remove every last somewhat subjective element from questions about what is a person, what has consciousness, what makes sense, and so on. The ideal of philosophy as a subjectivity-free science seems to be a mistake. We have to appeal, it seems to me, to shared senses of what is reasonable, for instance. So there is an inescapable element of dialogue and subjectivity in philosophy. Which, to my mind, makes the idea of philosophy as solving problems problematic. In a sense what philosophers study is each other. Which is why I like the idea of studying people and books more than problems, admire scholarship, and am skeptical about pragmatism.
This is all too short and condensed, but I'm bound to return to it.
But perhaps one could equally say that "the ideal of science as subjectivity-free seems to be a mistake." (This is not unrelated to the complaint that the idea that "meta-ethics" can be separated from substantive ethical thought is incoherent...) Would you still want to say something to the effect that the ineliminable elements of subjectivity--in philosophy and, let's say, science--are not an essential obstacle to a kind of objectivity as well? (Is this related at all to your skepticism about pragmatism?)
ReplyDeleteYes, I can certainly imagine someone making a good case that the ideal of science as subjectivity-free seems to be a mistake. But it seems reasonable to want to minimize subjectivity in some sciences (I'm not sure about the social sciences). And I don't see the existence of some subjectivity being a problem. That is, chemists and others seem to be able to get along OK, even if (perhaps) there is some ineliminable element of subjectivity in what they do. I suppose I say this because they produce chemicals that work. There is no parallel in philosophy that I can think of. Lots of Wittgensteinian philosophers say that they want to apply Wittgenstein's ideas and methods in order to solve problems (this is what I meant by pragmatism--a very bad choice of word), but has any problem ever been solved this way? In a way the answer is Yes, since I remember having concerns about free will that went away when I read a very Wittgensteinian paper on the subject by Bill Brenner. But that paper would not work in this way for everyone, I'm pretty sure. He might have dissolved my problem, but he hasn't solved the problem.
ReplyDeleteScience is done in the third person, while therapy is done in the first and second person. (Can I say this?) I think this is one way in which philosophy is like therapy. And I think this pushes philosophers in the direction of studying texts and having conversations with each other, as opposed to tackling (generic) problems impersonally. Working on people and texts rather than problems is unpopular, though, because it seems both boring and pointless. I want to stick up for this kind of seemingly boring and pointless work. I met an astrophysicist once who told me he was often asked what astrophysics contributed to national defence. He liked to reply that it was one of the things that made the country worth defending. I don't think we should look to philosophy for anything practical (although it can improve one's critical thinking, just as studying literature can improve one's writing). Kant is worth understanding in roughly the way that astrophysics is worth understanding. At least, that's the kind of thing I want to say.
The point about minimizing subjectivity makes sense, but I'm trying to put my finger on what you think the difference is for philosophy (though I agree that the thought that philosophy must be like the sciences is misguided). Would it help to say something such as that the way in which science "solves problems" (how does X work? why does Y happen?) is not at all like what goes on in philosophy (as you understand it)? In part--and I'm getting this from somewhere but I don't remember where--this is because the history of philosophy matters for philosophers (or should matter) in a way that the history of science doesn't matter for the contemporary scientist? And could we say that this is because the philosophical problems are, in an important sense, always the same types of problems? (Perhaps this has to do with the thought that we can speak of progress in science, but it's less clear what progress in philosophy is?) At any rate, I agree with what you say about the study of texts as worth defending, but is that necessarily something altogether separate from "working on problems"?
ReplyDeleteI agree--studying texts is not separate from working on problems. And this is surely connected to the fact that the history of philosophy is important in a way that the history of science is not. I'm reacting mostly, I think, against Wittgensteinian philosophers who aren't interested in exegesis of Wittgenstein but instead want to see people apply a Wittgensteinian approach to problems Wittgenstein did not address. I don't disagree with these people completely, but a) I don't think that something's being boring should be considered a good reason to avoid it, b) people like Cavell and Mulhall show how interesting work on texts can be, and c) an emphasis on problem-solving in philosophy strikes me as unlikely to produce the desired results (which is not to say it will produce nothing). I suppose I tend to think that if philosophy dealt with problems that can be solved then it would have solved some of them by now. I understand the idea of philosophy as therapy as implying that individual people have problems that philosophers can help them with, and what helps me might also help others, but that there is always some personal element to these problems so that they are not problems for humanity in the way that a disease we can't yet cure, for instance, is. Or perhaps I could say that philosophical problems are pseudo-problems or confusions, so that they cannot be solved but only dissolved. But that doesn't seem like a helpful thing to say--just Wittgensteinian cliches. It would be better if I could say why there must be this personal element, but I'm not sure I can. I suspect, though, that it's because I think there is ethics in all philosophy, and ethics has something inescapably personal/subjective/whatever-you-want-to-call-it about it.
ReplyDeleteI get the frustration about "Wittgensteinian cliches"--this is what makes even mentioning the idea of "therapy" seem somehow precious.
ReplyDeleteAbout the personal element, it might be a start to say that we show something about ourselves in our getting interested in, hung up by, drawn to, particular philosophical problems or texts. This isn't just true of philosophy, of course--the person who conducts cancer research in an inspired way shows something about her concern for others (perhaps; details would matter here). But in philosophy, perhaps one could say that we can never discount that a person's interest (or obsession, etc.) with a text or problem--and understanding the nature of that interest, etc.--is not an integral part of "working" on the problem. So, when I was spending a lot of time a few years ago reading and writing about happiness and well-being, I would ask myself--why am I worried about this? What is my stake in this? Am I not happy? I didn't do this too often, but doing it sometimes seems to me an important part of "working on the issues." (I take everything I'm saying here to apply equally to texts...) And you might say that such reflection should be the rule--part of the process--rather than the exception. By contrast, understanding one's motives in doing scientific research may not drive the research forward, at least, it would seem to me, not so often. That's a very rough, but does something like that help get unstuck here?
(Or again, you might think about the story reported by Russell, that when he asked Wittgenstein whether he was thinking about logic or his soul, Wittgenstein replied, "Both!" It might seem to show something peculiar about LW, but perhaps--if we try to take the story and the remark seriously--it says something about the conception of philosophy you seem to have in mind, that how one thinks even about logic reveals (and is influenced by) the state of one's soul, and vice versa.)
Thanks. I think this does help. I'm starting to realize how big a topic this is. I was thinking earlier today that a philosophical issue such as whether Platonism about numbers is true has seemingly little to do with ethics, but even this has what I would like to call an ethical component or aspect. And this is very much connected to the question of why one might be interested in the issue in the first place. By this, though, I mean not so much one's motive as one's intention or goal. What kind of account of happiness or numbers or whatever am I trying to produce? What is this for? I don't just want a working definition (presumably), I want a full and accurate account. But what right do I have to say what 'we' mean by the word or concept in question? If I offer a positive account, mustn't this be a kind of propaganda? If I instead criticize other people's accounts, then... I don't know. This might be OK, but it isn't solving the problem.
ReplyDelete"What is this for?" is a good question and a hard question. And I tend not to like appeals to "intrinsic value" (or even to the thought that such projects are what make the country worth defending). NOT because they are wrong, but are cliche, as you suggest about the Wittgensteinian remarks.
ReplyDeleteBut the point about therapy, though it seems precious (and it would be better if there were a different word), is important, and in its own way practical. Finding our way out of a muddle does have practical value in that it allows us to get on with our business. (And the "results" aren't often publishable, for example--at least not as a journal article, etc. But that doesn't mean there isn't a result. I think this is part of the difficulty here, in being able to say what forms "results" can take in philosophy besides a publication, etc., and perhaps also why many papers, etc., will seem to many to contain only trivial "results.") I want to think more about "we."
Yes, there are lots of cliches to avoid here. But I do think it is OK to study things just because they are interesting, as long (perhaps) as one's interest is not too idiosyncratic. You don't need a reason to study the universe, and that includes the minds and works of great writers and thinkers. And I think you can learn a lot from philosophers, but mostly what you learn is to see things a different way. (Was that anything more than a string of cliches?)
ReplyDeleteGetting out of a muddle has value, certainly, although I've never been paralyzed by a philosophical problem. I think the results are mostly of value to a small number of like-minded people. But that's OK.
Perhaps you'll be interested in this call for papers, if you're thinking of writing more about this. (Scroll down.)
ReplyDeleteThanks. I don't know whether I'll be able to get anything ready in time for that, but it should be worth reading when it comes out. And perhaps I'll work out something in time.
ReplyDeleteone thing i don't notice coming up in this discussion is the idea of 'a reason' or 'reasons'. in the circles i move in, a lot of the dialectic you've presented here is only implicit—the people i know aren't particularly concerned to be scientific or what have you. but they gravitate strongly toward the 'objective' side of things, and accordingly to a problem-centric view and a style of engagement with problems, mainly because they suppose that certain things stand in need of reasons, and there's some kind of fact about what counts as a good reason and what doesn't. this demand for reasons tends to be applied to wittgenstein or OLP-style dissolutions of problems, as well, with the result that the effectiveness of such dissolutions is extremely limited.
ReplyDelete(it's possible to try to shift 'problem' talk over into 'personal problem' talk; i think it's easier when you introduce 'reason' talk since the role reasons play in the former is at least analogous to the role that reasoning, as a way of talking, plays in the latter.)
Do I want to shift problem talk over into personal problem talk? Perhaps I do. One problem with problem talk is that it can be hard to identify the problem in question. What is the free will problem? Is there such a thing as the concept of mind or the self? Understanding contemporary debates on such issues is easier if you know the classic texts, and these often also define the terms of the debate. So it is at least worth paying attention to what people like Hume and Descartes say. And since it's possible to ask lots of questions about things like free will, and to get confused about exactly what question is being asked or answered at any given time, discussion is more likely to be productive if the focus is on what some particular person has said or written in some particular text. And then the issue is not so much free will per se as Hume (or whoever) on free will (or whatever). And then we are bound to attend to his/her reasons for saying what they say.
ReplyDeleteTalking about personal problems makes them seem of limited interest (which they are), but the problems of a Hume, Descartes, or Kant are of at least somewhat general interest, since it is quite possible to share these problems and to learn from what the likes of Hume have said about them. And writing about what Kant wrote about free will is at least writing about something real. If philosophical problems are all really pseudo-problems then writing about them is not really addressing anything real.
Wittgenstein lectured on things like free will and did not take a very historical or scholarly approach, even though he's the one I most associate with the philosophy-as-pseudo-problems idea, but he did say that it matters who comes up with an idea. And in Philosophical Investigations he says he is demonstrating a method, and this is a very interlocutory method. I don't know how you could apply it in writing without addressing specific texts rather than supposedly generic problems.
one problem with your opposition between problems and texts there is that contemporary analytic philosophy is not unfocused on texts for all its focus on problems. that's part of how it manages to be so characteristically traditional, by maintaining a rigid discipline of response to texts that has induced a sequence of them that resists clear understanding to anyone who hasn't followed them in their historical order. part of its perversity (in contrast to other traditions or sorts of tradition) is that it tends not to treat them as texts are treated in some other modes of activity, like, 'this text is really interesting, let's read it together and talk about what you think about it'. more like: 'what do you mean, you don't know what we're talking about? go read kripke (1980)'.
ReplyDeletebut when cavell, for example, declares his conception of philosophy in terms of texts rather than problems, i gather that he's declaring that he will count in-bounds aspects of, let's say, the production and reception of texts that philosophers normally rule out-of-bounds. it's not just that texts provide a point of reference, and one we can be sure isn't spurious. they're expressions of our interests (in the fullest sense).
Another problem with my opposition between problems and texts is that I sort of want to deny this opposition. I think I'm responding here to two specific things. One is a workshop I went to on teaching philosophy in high schools, in which there was explicit disagreement about whether to focus on problems or on historical texts. I tried to argue that, however exactly texts might be handled, the focus should not be exclusively on problems. I don't think I won the argument.
ReplyDeleteThe other thing I had in mind was the suggestion that anyone who knew where to find a paper on some obscure issue in Heidegger scholarship must have gotten into philosophy for the wrong reasons. I took this (perhaps wrongly) to imply that philosophers should be trying to solve problems as opposed to working on texts.
Whether texts are treated in the perverse (or "perverse") way you describe or the more Cavellian way is slightly beside the point I was trying to make. But if I'm right, then the question of how to treat texts in philosophy immediately comes up. And I suspect I would be on your and Cavell's side in that debate.
it's hard to imagine how people would resist denying that the focus be exclusively on problems. did they think that focusing on texts would be too hard (even for the likely go-to texts, plato and descartes)?
ReplyDeletei could have sworn there was a swipe at "book-philosophers" in one of schopenhauer's prefaces to 'world as will', but i don't see it right now. maybe i'm thinking of some other philosopher. but he certainly deploys all sorts of other tropes one would usually associate with philosophers focused on problems rather than texts.