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WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY FOR? ALSO AVAILABLE FROM BLOOMSBURY A History of Animals in Philosophy, Oxana Timofeeva Environmental Ethics, Marion Hourdequin Can’t We Make Moral Judgements? Mary Midgley Why Iris Murdoch Matters, Gary Browning WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY FOR? BY MARY MIDGLEY BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2018 Copyright © Mary Midgley, 2018 Mary Midgley has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. Cover design: Irene Martinez-Costa Cover image: Butterflies, moths and other insects with a sprig of apple blossom and periwinkle (oil on copper), Kessel, Jan van, the Elder (1626–79) © Johnny Van Haeften Ltd., London / Bridgeman Images All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-5108-9 PB: 978-1-3500-5107-2 ePDF: 978-1-3500-5109-6 eBook: 978-1-3500-5110-2 Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters. CONTENTS PART ONE The search for signposts 1 1 Directions 3 2 Do ideas get out of date? 7 3 What is research? 15 4 Clashes of method 21 5 Signposting problems 31 6 What is matter? 35 7 Quantum queries 41 8 What is progress? 47 9 Perspectives and paradoxes: Rousseau and his intellectual explosives 57 10 Mill and the different kinds of freedom 61 11 Making sense of toleration 65 PART TWO Tempting visions of science 69 12 The force of world-pictures 71 vi CONTENTS 13 The past does not die 79 14 Scientism: The new sedative 85 PART THREE Mindlessness and machine-worship 97 15 The power-struggle 99 16 Missing persons 117 17 Oracles 125 PART FOUR Singularities and the cosmos 127 18 What kind of singularity? 129 19 Can intelligence be measured? 139 20 What is materialism? 151 21 The cult of impersonality 159 22 Matter and reality 169 23 The mystique of scientism 175 24 The strange world-picture 189 Conclusion 201 Notes 209 References 215 Index 218 PART ONE THE SEARCH FOR SIGNPOSTS 1 Directions What is the aim, the proper object of philosophizing? What are we trying to do? We are not, of course, starting from nowhere, nor are we just riffling through ideas at random. We are always looking for something particular – a link, a connection, a context that will make sense of our present muddled notions. Thoughts that are now blundering around loose and detached need somehow to be drawn into a pattern – perhaps eventually into a single pattern, an all-explaining design. And when one of these patterns seems to be becoming more complete, we approve, and begin to speak of it hopefully as a philosophy. But this doesn’t always work. Often we seem to be trying to resolve a complex jigsaw, one which has mistakenly brought together parts of several different pictures; trying to give a single shape to a manifold vision. Indeed, we are bound to keep doing this, because our minds are