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David Papineau

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Is Philosophy Just Harder Than Science?[1]

David Papineau[2]

What is the aim of philosophy? Alfred Whitehead considered philosophy to be a series of footnotes to Plato; his position is understandable, of course, since, apparently, in the two thousand five hundred years since Plato's dialogues were written, we see little progress in philosophy, and the philosophers of our day are still grappling with many of the same issues that the ancient Greeks wrestled with. Issues such as: what is the foundation of ethics? How can knowledge be defined? Is there a deeper reality behind this apparent world?

In this regard, philosophy is often unfavorably compared to science, and since science acquired its modern form in the seventeenth century, it has now become a story replete with success. Science has managed to reveal the workings of nature and has brought countless visible and hidden benefits to humanity; mechanics and electromagnetism have become the basis for the technological advances of the modern world, and chemistry and microbiology have rendered great services in the path of liberation from the scourge of diseases.

However, the contrast between science and philosophy has not been problematic for all philosophers. For some, the value of philosophy is based on the process, not the result or product of the work. These thinkers, in line with the Socratic dictum that "the unexamined life is not worth living," acknowledge that reflecting on the predicament in which humans are caught is valuable in itself, even if no definite answers are forthcoming. Another group of philosophers, however, aligns with Marx, who said, "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it." They view philosophy as an engine for political change, and their aim is not to contemplate reality, but to disrupt and change it.

Nevertheless, the majority of contemporary philosophers, myself included, still think philosophy is a path to reaching the truth. Besides, if this is not really the case, what meaning does the work we philosophers do and the methods we employ truly have? Our articles are replete with a dry and stilted precision; we place the materials of our work exactly in their place and challenge the audience to find counterexamples. This work is often not very enjoyable and certainly does not have that much of an impact on people, and well, if all these painstaking analyses do not help us get closer to the truth, there must surely be a better way to spend one's time.

But if our aim is truth, then why is there no sign of progress toward it? With its long-established history, shouldn't philosophy perform better than this in aiding science? One answer to this challenge is that philosophy has been doing just that for a long time. According to the "by-product[3]" theory of philosophical progress, all the new sciences initially took shape as a branch of philosophy, and only when philosophy endowed them with the necessary intellectual possibilities were they able to organize themselves as an independent discipline.

This view certainly has something to be said for it. The physical science we know was founded in the seventeenth century as "mechanical philosophy" by Descartes and others. Similarly, a large part of psychology was formed based on the principles of associationism first proposed by Hume, and economics also grew out of doctrines initially developed by thinkers who called themselves philosophers. This process has continued into the present day, such that in the twentieth century, linguistics and computer science both severed their ties from philosophy to establish their own independent disciplines.

Therefore, based on the by-product theory, the supposed lack of progress in philosophy is nothing more than an illusion. [In fact,] wherever philosophy has progressed, the seed of a new subject has been sown, a subject that later ceased to be part of philosophy and went its own way. In truth, philosophy is full of progress, but these advances have been obscured under the shadow of the constant naming of its intellectual offspring and are no longer visible.

Even so, the by-product theory can only take us so far. [And moreover] the question is, what can be said about those areas where we are still grappling with the problems of ancient Greece? Clearly, philosophy has not yet handed everything over to other faculties and still retains plenty of questions for its students to practice on. The trouble, however, is that philosophy seems to have no settled answers to these questions. When the discussion turns to topics like ethics, knowledge, free will, consciousness, and the like, philosophy professors still, to this day, speak of a range of different options that have been on the table for a long time.

There is no doubt that some of the differences between science and philosophy stem from the different research methods each employs. While philosophy relies on analysis and argument, science deals with data, and for this reason, when scientists are invited to give research talks, they are not permitted to theorize freely, however appealing that might be. For scientists, presenting observation-based findings has become a professional requirement, and that is why, if as a scientist you do not have PowerPoint slides showcasing your latest empirical results, then you essentially have nothing to say.

Considering these distinctions, we are less surprised that agreement among philosophers is less common than agreement among scientists. Data[4] are data. If you present empirical findings, you have achieved your goal. But arguments have their own particular weaknesses and escape routes. Specifically, the arguments constructed by philosophers have many movable parts, and likewise a wide scope for intelligent critics to scrutinize their premises and conclusions. Accordingly, a constant debate and dispute flows among philosophers, whereas scientists, by contrast, must accept one another's claims.

You might think that the difference in research methods arises from a difference in the subject matters studied by science and philosophy, and that, for instance, while the problems of physics and chemistry are always settled by empirical investigation, empirical methods are of no help in solving the problems of ethics or free will. But this diagnosis of yours could be mistaken, for within science itself there are many problems that cannot be tamed or managed empirically; consider, for example, the interpretation of quantum mechanics or the evolution of the altruistic instinct. Yes, these are empirical questions, but they do not readily yield to empirical solutions. The issue is that, although we have all the empirical solutions we could want, we cannot arrive at a coherent theory to reconcile them with one another. And thus philosophical problems rear their heads within science, just as they do outside its bounds.

The real distinction between science and philosophy does not concern their subject areas, but rather the nature of the problem under discussion. Philosophical problems typically present themselves in the form of a contradiction. For example, people can be influenced by morality, yet moral facts are not part of a causal system. Or, free will is incompatible with determinism[5], but it is also incompatible with pure chance. We know we are sitting around a table that is real, yet our evidence cannot rule out the assumption that we are not sitting around this table inside a Matrix-like[6] computer simulation. In the face of such conundrums, we need philosophical methods to untie the knots in our thinking. Sometimes something is amiss, but we are not sure where the problem lies; we then need to codify our assumptions—which often include things we were unaware of—and subject them to critical analysis.

The reason philosophical problems can also emerge in scientific domains is precisely that scientific theories themselves can fall into contradiction. The quantum wave packet must collapse, but this contradicts the laws of physics. Altruism should not persist in evolution, but it does. And it is here that philosophical methods are called upon. We must figure out where our thinking is going astray so that we can then sift through our theoretical presuppositions and find the shortcomings.

It must be acknowledged that scientists are not very good at this, and are mostly content with what Thomas Kuhn called “normal science,” science that operates within “paradigms”—an accepted set of assumptions and techniques that allow the scientist to focus on issues that are thereby resolvable. Most scientists, when faced with a genuine theoretical puzzle, turn a blind eye and hope the problem will go away.

One of the greatest scandals of modern intellectual life is that physicists throughout the twentieth century tried to sweep the problems of quantum mechanics under the rug. Physicists, led by Niels Bohr and the anti-intellectual “Copenhagen interpretation” of quantum mechanics, told students for generations that the glaring inconsistencies seen in the theory were none of their concern. The typical response to any student who had the audacity to question the theory’s soundness was: “Shut up and calculate.” (This catchphrase has been variously attributed to Paul Dirac, Richard Feynman, and others, and the very indeterminacy of who contributed to its usage is itself evidence of the prevalence of this view.)

If you ask me, the particular inconclusiveness of philosophical debates does nothing to diminish the importance of the discipline. It is the natural outcome of the task philosophy faces. Most people do not enjoy grappling with unpleasant paradoxes. It is a rotten job, but someone has to do it. With this in mind, we should no longer be surprised that philosophical problems are not easily resolved. The difficulty of philosophy is not a product of its particular subject matter or the inadequacy of its methods, but rather stems from the fact that the questions philosophy addresses are extremely difficult.

The progress of philosophy, even apart from the subsidiary disciplines that have sprung from it, is perhaps greater than it seems at first glance. On the surface, it appears as if issues in philosophy are never settled, but beneath this appearance, philosophy has by no means been incapable of progress. The point is that, each time the shortcomings of established views are revealed, philosophy ventures into new territories. Throughout the nineteenth century, almost all philosophers thought the universe had a mental structure, but today you would be hard-pressed to find such idealists. In the middle of the last century, “emotivist”[7] accounts of moral judgments were all the rage, but now no one defends this simplistic emotivism. Philosophy’s advance may be slow and contested, but that does not mean it is nonexistent. Philosophy, considering the difficulty of the task it undertakes, has probably progressed just as much as one could reasonably expect.

Is philosophy simply harder than science?

David Papineau considers why philosophy seems to make such slow progress

DAVID PAPINEAU

What’s the purpose of philosophy? Alfred North Whitehead characterized it as a series of footnotes to Plato. You can see his point. On the surface, we don’t seem to have progressed much in the two and a half millennia since Plato wrote his dialogues. Today’s philosophers still struggle with many of the same issues that exercised the Greeks. What is the basis of morality? How can we define knowledge? Is there a deeper reality behind the world of appearances?Philosophy compares badly with science on this score. Since science took its modern form in the seventeenth century, it has been one long success story. It has uncovered the workings of nature and brought untold benefits to humanity. Mechanics and electromagnetism underpin the technological advances of the modern world, while chemistry and microbiology have done much to free us from the tyranny of disease.Not all philosophers are troubled by this contrast. For some, the worth of philosophy lies in the process, not the product. In line with Socrates’ dictum – “The unexamined life is not worth living” – they hold that reflection on the human predicament is valuable in itself, even if no definite answers are forthcoming. Others take their lead from Marx – “The philosophers have only interpreted the world. The point, however is to change it” – and view philosophy as an engine of political change, whose purpose is not to reflect reality, but disrupt it.Even so, the majority of contemporary philosophers, myself included, probably still think of philosophy as a route to the truth. After all, the methods we use wouldn’t make much sense otherwise. Our papers aspire to be pedantically precise. We state our theses carefully, marshal supporting materials, and challenge our readers to find counter-examples. For the most part, it’s not much fun, and it certainly doesn’t do much to influence people. If all that painstaking analysis didn’t help us approach the truth, we could surely find better things to do with our time.Still, if truth is the aim, where’s the progress? Wouldn’t philosophy do better simply to hand things over to science, with its proven track record? Well, one answer to this challenge is that philosophy has been doing exactly that for some time. According to the “spin-off” theory of philosophical progress, all new sciences start as branches of philosophy, and only become established as separate disciplines once philosophy has bequeathed them the intellectual wherewithal to survive on their own.There is certainly something to this story. Physics as we know it was grounded in the seventeenth-century “mechanical philosophy” of Descartes and others. Similarly, much psychology hinges on associationist principles first laid down by David Hume, and economics grew out of doctrines first developed by thinkers who called themselves philosophers. The process continues into the contemporary world. During the twentieth century, both linguistics and computer science broke free of their philosophical moorings to establish themselves as independent disciplines.According to the spin-off theory, then, the supposed lack of progress in philosophy is an illusion. Whenever philosophy does make progress, it spawns a new subject, which then no longer counts as part of philosophy. In reality, philosophy is full of progress, but this is obscured by the constant renaming of its intellectual progeny.The spin-off theory only takes us so far, however. What about those areas where we still seem to be struggling with the same issues as the Greeks? Philosophy hasn’t outsourced everything to other university departments, and still retains plenty of its own questions to exercise its students. The trouble is that it doesn’t seem to have any definite answers.

When it comes to topics like morality, knowledge, free will, consciousness and so on, the lecturers still debate a range of options that have been around for a long time.No doubt some of the differences between philosophy and science stem from the different methods of investigation that they employ. Where philosophy hinges on analysis and argument, science is devoted to data. When scientists are invited to give research talks, they aren’t allowed simply to stand up and theorize, however interesting that would be. It is a professional requirement that they must present observational findings. If you don’t have any PowerPoint slides displaying your latest experimental results, then you don’t have a talk.Given this contrast, it is scarcely surprising that philosophers disagree more than scientists. Data are data. If you are shown some experimental findings, well, there you are. But arguments have loopholes. In particular, the arguments constructed by philosophers tend to have a lot of moving parts, with ample scope for clever critics to query premisses. So there is always plenty of room for philosophers to take issue with each other, where scientists by contrast have to accept what they are told.You might think that the difference in investigative methods is due to the different subject matters studied by science and philosophy. Questions of physics and chemistry can always be settled by experimental investigation, whereas empirical methods get no grip on morality and free will. But that would be the wrong diagnosis. Plenty of experimentally intractable problems arise right within science. Take the interpretation of quantum mechanics, or the evolution of altruistic instincts. These are scientific questions all right, but they admit no simple experimental resolution. The problem is that, even though we have all the experimental results we could want, we can’t figure out a coherent theory to accommodate them. Philosophical problems arise within science as well as outside it.The real difference between philosophy and science is not subject area, but the kind of problem at issue. Philosophical issues typically have the form of a paradox. People can be influenced by morality, for example, but moral facts are not part of the causal order. Free will is incompatible with determinism, but incompatible with randomness too. We know that we are sitting at a real table, but our evidence doesn’t exclude us sitting in a Matrix-like computer simulation. In the face of such conundrums, we need philosophical methods to unravel our thinking. Something is amiss, but we aren’t sure what. We need to catalogue our assumptions, often including those we didn’t know we had, and subject them to critical analysis.This is why philosophical problems can arise in scientific subject areas too. Scientific theories can themselves be infected by paradox. The quantum wave packet must collapse, but this violates physical law. Altruism can’t possibly evolve, but it does. Here again philosophical methods are called for. We need to figure out where our thinking is leading us astray, to winnow through our theoretical presuppositions and locate the flaws.It should be said that scientists aren’t very good at this kind of thing. They are much happier with what Thomas Kuhn called “normal science”, working within “paradigms” of settled assumptions and techniques that allow them to focus on issues that can be settled experimentally. When they are faced with a real theoretical puzzle, most scientists close their eyes and hope it will go away.One of the great scandals of modern intellectual life is the way that physicists brushed the problems of quantum mechanics under the carpet throughout the twentieth century. Led by Niels Bohr and his obscurantist “Copenhagen interpretation” of quantum mechanics, they told generations of students that the glaring inconsistencies apparent in the theory were none of their business.

“Shut up and calculate” was the typical response to any undergraduate who had the temerity to query the cogency of the theory. (This slogan has been variously attributed to Paul Dirac, Richard Feynman and others. The indeterminacy of the attribution is itself a testimony to the prevalence of the attitude.)If you ask me, the relative inconclusiveness of philosophical debate does nothing to discredit the discipline. It is the natural upshot of the task facing philosophy. Most people don’t enjoy banging their heads against nasty paradoxes. It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it. Given this, it is unsurprising that philosophical problems aren’t easy to settle. The difficulty of philosophy doesn’t stem from its peculiar subject matter or the inadequacy of its methods, but simply from the fact that it takes on the hard questions.Perhaps there is more progress in philosophy than at first appears, even apart from the spin-off disciplines. On the surface it may look as if nothing is ever settled. But behind the appearances, philosophy is by no means incapable of advancing. The deficiencies of established views are exposed, and philosophy moves on to explore new territory. Throughout the nineteenth century, nearly all philosophers thought that the world was some kind of mental construction, but you would be hard put to locate any such idealists today. The “boo-hurrah” account of moral judgements was all the rage in the middle of the last century, but no-one any longer defends this simple-minded emotivism. Headway may be slow and contested, but this does not mean it does not exist. Maybe philosophy delivers just as much progress as can be expected, given the difficulty of its task.David Papineau’s new book is Knowing the Score: How sport teaches us about philosophy (and philosophy about sport)

[1]. https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/philosophy-simply-harder-science/

[2]. David Papineau

[3]. spin-off