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Philosophical Progress Philosophical Progress In Defence of a Reasonable Optimism Daniel Stoljar 1 3 GreatClarendonStreet,Oxford,OX26DP, UnitedKingdom OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford. ItfurtherstheUniversity’sobjectiveofexcellenceinresearch,scholarship, andeducationbypublishingworldwide.Oxfordisaregisteredtrademarkof OxfordUniversityPressintheUKandincertainothercountries ©DanielStoljar2017 Themoralrightsoftheauthorhavebeenasserted FirstEditionpublishedin2017 Impression:1 Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced,storedin aretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans,withoutthe priorpermissioninwritingofOxfordUniversityPress,orasexpresslypermitted bylaw,bylicenceorundertermsagreedwiththeappropriatereprographics rightsorganization.Enquiriesconcerningreproductionoutsidethescopeofthe aboveshouldbesenttotheRightsDepartment,OxfordUniversityPress,atthe addressabove Youmustnotcirculatethisworkinanyotherform andyoumustimposethissameconditiononanyacquirer PublishedintheUnitedStatesofAmericabyOxfordUniversityPress 198MadisonAvenue,NewYork,NY10016,UnitedStatesofAmerica BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData Dataavailable LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2017944924 ISBN 978–0–19–880209–9 Printedandboundby CPIGroup(UK)Ltd,Croydon,CR04YY LinkstothirdpartywebsitesareprovidedbyOxfordingoodfaithand forinformationonly.Oxforddisclaimsanyresponsibilityforthematerials containedinanythirdpartywebsitereferencedinthiswork. Contents PrefaceandAcknowledgements vii 1. Introduction 1 2. MattersArising 20 3. AnArgumentforOptimism 38 4. TheArgumentDefended 60 5. ExtendingtheArgument 83 6. TheExtensionDefended 103 7. TwoArgumentsfromDisagreement 121 8. SixFurtherArguments 143 Conclusion 165 References 169 NameIndex 181 SubjectIndex 184 Preface and Acknowledgements Can there be progress in philosophy? On the one hand, it is often thoughtthatphilosophicalproblemsareperennialsforwhichitispoint- less to expect a solution. On the other hand, professional philosophy seems to have organized itself, perhaps unconsciously, around the oppositeview:howelsetoexplainthepanoplyofbooks,papers,journals, conferences, graduate programmes, websites, etc.? Who is right? And whatturnsonwhoisright? This book defends a reasonable optimism about philosophical progress.Optimistic,becauseIarguethat,contrarytowidespreadbelief, we have correctly answered philosophical questions in the past and therefore should expect to do so in the future. Reasonable, because the optimismIhaveinminddoesnotextendtoeveryinstanceofthesortof problem called ‘philosophical’ or even to every subkind of that sort of problem. IndefendingreasonableoptimismIhaveatleastthreesortsofoppon- ents. First are the unreasonable optimists who think they have some recipe or formula to solve all philosophical problems. So far as I know thereisnosuchrecipeorformula,butthatisnoreason for pessimism. Secondarethepessimistswithinphilosophy.Itissurprisingtodiscover howwidespreadpessimismorsomethingneartoitisinphilosophy;we willneedtoexamineandunderminethereasonsbehindthis.Thirdare thepessimistsoutsideofphilosophy.Fromtheoutside,thatphilosophy makesnoprogressseemsatruism,andsoitisimportanttopointout,as Iwilltrytodo,thatitisatruismthatisfalse(or,iftruismsareessentially true,thatitisnotatruismatall). The book falls into four parts, each of which has two chapters. The first part introduces the issues. Chapter1 outlines the version of optimism I wish to defend, making it clear, among other things, that what Ihaveinmindisoptimismaboutbigquestions,andnotjustsmallones. Chapter2 discusses in further detail the nature and significance of reasonableoptimism. Thesecondpartpresentsanargumentforoptimismthatfocusesona particular type of problem, which I call a boundary problem. Roughly, viii PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS a boundary problem is a logical problem involving independently plausible but mutually inconsistent theses, each of which concerns what it takes for a claim, or a certain class of claims, to be true or knowable or understood. To solve problems of this sort you need to resolvethetension:eithertorejectormodifyoneorotherofthetheses. The argument for optimism focused on boundary problems has two premises: first that philosophical problems are often of this type; and secondthatifthatistrue,reasonableoptimismistrue.Chapter3setsout theargument,defendingthefirstpremisebypresentingitasalegitimate generalization from a set of cases, and the second premise by pointing outthatnumerousproblemsofthissorthaveindeedbeensolvedinthe past—I focus particularly on cases in which we have solved problems of this type by rejecting or modifying(what I call)the boundary theses thatareconstitutiveofthem.Chapter4respondstovariousobjectionsto theargument. Thethirdpartstartsbyaskingwhethertheargumentdefendedinthe second part may be extended from boundary problems to problems of other types, and argues that it can be—to a type of problem I call a constitutive problem. Roughly, a constitutive problem is an explanatory problemthatpresupposesthatvariousitemsofphilosophicalinterestare located at the apex of what I call a constitutive hierarchy, a vast and complicated explanatory structure among facts (i.e. true propositions). To solve problems of this sort, you need to provide information of a certainsortabouttheexplanatorystructureinquestion. The argument for optimism focused on constitutive problems is structurally the same as that focused on boundary problems: its first premiseisthatphilosophicalproblemsareoftenofthistype;itssecondis that if that is true, reasonable optimism is true. Chapter5 defends the argument—I focus in particular on the point that there is no ‘unit of explanation’(toborrowaphraseDavidLewisusesinasimilarcontext) andthatprovidingexplanatoryinformationaboutconstitutivestructures is multidimensional. Chapter6 responds to various objections to theargument. The fourth part turns from defending optimism to criticizing arguments for pessimism. In Chapter 7, I discuss two arguments from disagreement, one of the central sources of scepticism internal to the discipline about philosophical progress. The first, which is due to David Chalmers, asserts on empirical grounds that there is no large PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix collective convergence to the truth on the big questions of philosophy. Irespondthattheempiricalclaimsappealedtointhisargumentshowno such thing, for they are silent on whether the current disagreements in philosophy are over the same issues as disagreements in the past. The second argument, which is inspired by Peter van Inwagen, asserts that disagreement in philosophy is of a certain special epistemological kind, viz.itrationallyrequiressuspensionofjudgement,atleastinmanycases; henceprogressisimpossible.Irespondthatrealcasesofdisagreementin philosophyarenomorepronetomeetthisdescriptionthanarerealcases ofdisagreementinotherfields. In Chapter 8, I consider six further arguments against progress: the womb of disciplines argument, which suggests that philosophy is by definition the subject that does not make progress; the methodology argument, which suggests that philosophers are using the wrong tools for the problems that confront them; the pseudo-problems argument, which suggests that philosophical problems are not the sort for which progress should be expected; the speculation argument, which suggests thatphilosophyinvolvesanillegitimateandirresponsibleformofspecu- lation; the history argument, which suggests that philosophy bears a different relation to its past than do sciences such as physics, and in consequence exhibits a different pattern of success and failure; and the technicalia argument, which suggests that the technical language so prevalent in philosophy is a bar to progress. I argue that, while these considerationsraisesomechallengingissues,theypresentnogroundsfor doubtingreasonableoptimism. Inabriefconclusion,Ioffersomereflectionsonwhat,apartfromthe argumentsjustconsidered,thecausesofpessimismmightbe,bothinside andoutsidethedisciplineofphilosophy. Thisisasmallbookonabigsubject,indeedaverybigsubject.Ihave nottriedforanexhaustivetreatmentofthesubject.Foronething,Ihave stuckmainlytoexamplesfrommyownareasofexpertise:philosophyof mind and related parts of metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy oflanguage.ButIamwellawarethatotherexamplesmightbediscussed and that even the examples I do consider are treated very lightly. Why therestriction?Partlyit’s‘writewhatyouknow’.Partlyit’sbecausethose who express pessimism or something close to it, as we will see in Chapter1,veryoftenhavetheseareasinmind;hencewedonotdistort the topic by focusing on them. And partly it’s because I do not aim in