"Drebenized"

UPDATE:  Moving to the front again, from January 10, 2005.  Very interesting comments, on some very interesting ideas and questions about what exactly it is philosophers are doing.  I hope some other philosophers will comment.

UPDATE:  Moving to the front from December 20; this generated much excellent commentary during the holiday period, but I suspect many may have missed it, and others might have useful contributions.

===============================

I recently picked up a remaindered copy of Future Pasts:  The Analytic Tradition in Twentieth-Century Philosophy, ed. J. Floyd & S. Shieh (Oxford University Press, 2001), an interesting collection of essays in honor of the late Burton Dreben, a philosopher at Harvard whose influence far outstripped his actual publications. 

Dreben taught for more than three decades at Harvard during a time when it reigned supreme as the preeminent philosophy department in the United States, and perhaps the English-speaking world:  this was the department of Quine, Rawls, Putnam, and Goodman which, until the 1970s, had no serious rival.  Dreben's influence came partly from the impact he had on his more prolific colleagues (most importantly, Quine) but primarily from his teaching, and the opportunity being at Harvard afforded him to educate (some less sympathetic would say, "indoctrinate") both graduate students and (famously) junior faculty (most of whom would go on to posts elsewhere:  several are represented in the Floyd & Shieh volume [for example, Thomas Ricketts, Michael Friedman, Gary Hatfield]). 

Dreben's pedagogical impact was so great that philosophers began to speak of some young philosophers being "Drebenized," i.e., of being converted to Dreben's rather distinctive view of philosophy, and of philosophy's development in the 20th-century.  (Martha Nussbaum, by contrast, has written about the gross sexism of the Harvard Department in the early 1970s, mentioning G.E.L. Owen by name, and Dreben by description--a subject, perhaps, for a different day.)

I had always heard that view represented by a dictum attributed to Dreben:  "Philosophy is garbage.  But the history of garbage is scholarship."  The Floyd & Sheih volume has a more mild version of that saying as its motif:  "Nonsense is nonsense, but the history of nonsense is scholarship."  In either version, the question is:  why did Dreben have such a dim view of the discipline?  What was this skeptical view of philosophy which so many of those "Drebenized" adopted?

John Rawls's "Afteword" to the Floyd & Sheih volume offers some suggestive remarks about "Burt" Dreben's view of philosophy.  Here are some excerpts (from pp. 419, 421-422):

[Dreben] will say...that many misread Taraski's theory of truth, not understanding that Tarski is doing mathematics, proving a theorem in mathematical logic, and that Tarski's result on the theory of truth has nothing to do with philosophy.  Tarski's result cannot be seen as a philosophical theory of truth, for there is no such thing.  Philosophy doesn't contain such theories.  Rather, it seeks understanding, and that is different....

Burt often says that there are no theories in philosophy.  This goes together with his calling metaphysics "nonsense," as he often does.  But what does Burt mean by saying this?  One thing he means is that philosophical arguments rest on premises, or taking certain things as given--on "data," as he often says.  One of Burt's favorite examples is the long dispute between Carnap and Quine about analyticity.  Carnap takes as his "data" that analytic statements are true in virtue of the meanings of their terms, and he presents a theory of meaning to support this claim.  The statements Carnap takes to be paradigmatically analytic, however, Quine thinks are simply obvious.  Anyone can see that they are true.  For Quine, there is no particular kind of way in which they are true.  They are simply true.  Neither philosopher can convince the other of the premises, or the "data," of his argument.

Burt would not, of course, deny the plain fact that philosophers make many complicated arguments.  But he thinks that at bottom there are no arguments one philosopher can use to convince another of a metaphysical point.  At the basic level, philosophers simply rely on and appeal to different "data."  It is a standoff with no resolution by argument.  Burt has said that Quine is a metaphysician, a metaphysician of science.  By that he means that Quine doesn't argue for physicalism, or scientific realism.  He assumes it and works out his view from there....

There is no theory of truth, no theory of meaning, no theory of knowledge, no theory of perception, and the rest, despite centuries of philosophers discussing these things....[T]he theory of quantification is a theory, but he stresses that it is a theory in logic and mathematics.  It is not philosophy, which has to do with understanding and should lead to that....

The crucial questions in understanding Burt's view are:  What is philosophical understanding?  What is it the understanding of?  How does understanding differ from having a theory?  I wonder how I can give answers to these questions in my work in moral and political philosophy, whose aims Burt encourages and supports.  Sometimes Burt indicates that my normative moral and political inquiries do not belong to philosophy proper.  Yet this raises the question.  Why not?  And what counts as philosophy?

Rawls doesn't try to answer the questions in the final paragraph.  Assuming that Dreben was not just perversely and obstinately stipulative about what is to count as philosophy and what not, can anyone explain Dreben's view?  His view about the status of philosophical argument has a pleasing resonance (to my ear) with Nietzsche's views, but, as Rawls describes it, Dreben's views also sound more dogmatic than principled (e.g., why isn't what Rawls does "philosophy"?).  What do philosophers think?  No anonymous postings, of course.

UPDATE:  More pertinent discussion of this topic is going on here; and regarding Dreben and logic, see Richard Zach's brief comments and link here.

Comments

[Rob Kar]

Though Jason Stanley will scream bloody murder to hear me say it, I took several seminars with Burton Dreben as an undergraduate, and also had Warren Goldfarb as one of my main mentors, so I got a good dose of this line of thinking--and, perhaps, some small nugget of appreciation (though not more than one might hope for at that young age!). Here are my no-doubt-youthful and somewhat inaccurate impressions of some of Dreben's basic lines of thought. Others with more sustained and closer contact will have better testimony.

One of the points Burton Dreben was interested in hammering home is that we, as philosophers, sometimes too easily take for granted the meaningfulness of some of the questions we are asking. Language has all kinds of genuine uses, and, in all kinds of substantive fields, it is fruitful and insightful to begin seeking explanations for various facts that we've uncovered and building theories that help illuminate the facts. But sometimes the 'data' that we're beginning with are not content-laden facts at all, but rather prephilosophical pictures--on this view--about things like what is true by virtue of meaning, what is merely obvious, and so on (to use the example from Rawls's afterword). When we make these kinds of statements, we are typically expressing various attitudes, which play real and important roles in our lives; but we are taking the surface grammar of the statements to indicate a deeper affinity with certain other kinds of statements for which explanation and theory construction is more appropriate. Then we begin to engage in full-blown philospophical theorizing, but about nothing, as it were. And many of the debates between philosophers (say realists and anti-realists) begin to look like grand efforts at sparring in the wind. There is no adjudicating these debates; for they are not really debates *about* anything for which the tools we are applying have any role. And wherever we come out on these questions, the language itself would continue to play its useful and genuine roles with or without the theory. So the theory is importantly unhinged from any real uses of the language. Wittgenstein's motto (adopted by Dreben) in response to the criticism that he is destroying everything important by engaging in this kind of project is that what was being destroyed were only houses of cards, and what they were clearing up was the rough ground of language upon which real and useful thought might stand. (Tarski's theories, interpreted as proofs in logic would be an example: there is useful work to be done in logic, but not--on this view--on theories of truth.)

If you see things roughly along these lines, then you can see that what Dreben was saying about Rawls is best understood more as a compliment than as a dogmatic rejection of Rawls's work as 'philosophical' in some privileged sense. Where Rawls--it seems to be--is deeply in line with Dreben is in his willingness to treat certain meta-ethical questions as ultimately not so useful. What Dreben--it seems to me--respected in Rawls's work is that Rawls got down to business and actually produced useful work helping us see in the detail the kinds of principles that underly actual normative practices in modern constitutional democracies. To say that this was not 'philosophy' was to say that it was useful and worthwhile--if I understand what Dreben was getting at. It was to say that Rawls's work did not suffer from the kinds of problems that Dreben thought infected much philosophical thinking.

Stepping back, it seems to me that there's something a bit sad that has happened both with this line of thought and with some more recent responses to it. Dreben was often fond of saying things like 'philosophy is over' and that all that is left to do is the 'history of philosophy.' Many philosophers outside of the group that were highly influenced by Dreben at Harvard have come to think of this as a quirky and unorthodox outlier view, one that is perhaps better seen as creating obstacles to philosophical development than offering anything useful. Certainly, it seems to me that when you look at work like that of Allan Gibbard's in meta-ethics, we have learned quite a bit by sticking to certain questions and not just 'stopping philosophy'--as Dreben sometimes suggested. But at its best, Dreben-like thinking might still make us philosophers more reflective about what it is we are doing when we ask philosophical questions, and might prompt us to spend more time carefully framing and choosing our battles. Perhaps this means that we--like Rawls--will end up no longer doing 'philosophy' in some bad sense and only in a more useful sense. But this couldn't be all bad.

Going in the other direction, though, I think there's something very important to learn from Rawls's last question too--even if we were to accept Dreben's insights. Dreben saw Rawls's work as useful, and not as falling prey to many of the kinds of criticisms he (Dreben) was fond of waging. (The same is true of Tarski's work.) But most of us think of this as philosophical work in some sense. The appropriate conclusion for us to draw, then, is that it's not going to be so easy to know the genuine scope and reach of Dreben's intended criticisms. It would seem to me a laudable goal to ask, persistently and reflectively, where our work lies on this dividing line as we do it. And this kind of questioning--it seems to me--may end up being more compatible with more useful philosophy than the advocates of the different sides of this debate sometimes concede. So I wonder: is there a way to usefully incorporate Dreben's insights into more current philosophical thinking than presently seems to be occurring?

[tamar]

A bit of background on the "history of nonsense" quote.

"Nonsense is nonsense -- but the history of nonsense is scholarship" is actually a quote from Saul Lieberman, who uttered it when introducing Gershom Scholem at a famous lecture in the 1940s at the Jewish Theological Seminary in NYC. (Lieberman was a great Talmudic scholar; Scholem was, of course, one of the greatest scholars of Jewish mysticism. Bios of each can be found at http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/slieberman.html and http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/scholem.html.) Dreben's first wife's father was Shalom Spiegel, who was a great scholar of medieval Hebrew. (Bio at http://www.jtsa.edu/campus/registrar/bulletin/spiegel.pdf.) So the quotation had great resonance for Dreben, in multiple ways.

A version of the (Lieberman-Scholem) story can be found in Cynthia Ozick's 2002 New Yorker profile of Scholem at: http://gonsalves.org/favorite/Scholem.htm

[Keith DeRose]

I can't help with any answers, but I am curious and would like to add to the questions.

I believe I got all my "info" on Dreben directly or indirectly from defenders of what Dreben declared "nonsense." I think it's fair to say that these opponents of Dreben's didn't think there was anything worth worrying about behind his charges, but that's perhaps to be expected. It made me curious.

One obvious and quite fundamental question that Dreben must have faced, but that in my almost complete ignorance I don't know his answer to, is whether he counted his own disagreements with other philosophers over whether this or that is nonsense as among the disputes that only appear to be meaningful but are really just "grand attempts at sparring in the wind"?

Anybody know his answer? Is it addressed in the book?

[david]

A point related to Keith's question: I'm sure I know less than anyone here about Dreben, but from the above description he sounds to me at least as "unhinged" from "real use of language" as he apparently accuses others of being. For instance, it appears that what Dreben would call "philosophy" is what most people would call "bad philosophy," and what Dreben would call "not philosophy" is what most people would call "good philosophy." Putting the distinction Dreben's way certainly seems to have more startling consequences than putting it in the way I think most of us would. But it's not immediately clear to me that Dreben's way doesn't just misuse the word "philosophy."

[Matt]

David,

I think the problem w/ your reading is that Dreben would (almost certainly) consider very large parts of what goes on at, say, Rutgers or Notre Dame it be "philosphy" in his pejorative sense, but most philosophers don't seem to think this is "bad philosophy", at least not according to the latest gourmet report. (Note that it's not clear he'd think all the work at either place is "philosophy" in his pejorative sense- but the large chunks of more or less a priori, pre-critical metaphysics would be.) So, he's surely using the world in a technical sense, and this confuses lots of people, and is perhaps not a good idea, but he's not saying what you seem to think.

[Matt Simpson]

I had the good fortune of knowing Burt Dreben during his later teaching career at Boston University, when he was married to Juliet Floyd, a former student of his at Harvard and one of the editors of the book in question. He was a popular teacher of important classes on Russell, Wittgenstein, and others. He was also a distinct voice in a pluralistic and fascinating department.

In his later life, at least, his outlook seemed to rest on the thesis, which Professor Leiter correctly traces to Nietzsche, that all arguments about the ultimate nature of things lean on certain "choices" or "options" that are not themselves demonstrable. For him, this meant that philosophical theories are ultimately arbitrary, being the product of the thinker's prejudices or will rather than of reason itself. In this sense he was situated in the same place as other postmodern thinkers like Rorty.

Rawls indicates, of course, the problem with this position, which is the problem with all kinds of radical skepticism: it rests on assumptions about the nature of reality, knowledge, and language that are themselves "arbitrary" by its own lights. Dreben's nemesis at Boston University, Stanley Rosen, liked to remind his students that this problem in Dreben's philosophy was the same one that Plato successfully objected to in the philosophy of Protagoras.

I wonder if the flourishing of serious normative philosophy in the last thirty years suggests that history has passed over the postmodern moment of Dreben, Rorty, etc.

[david]

First Matt,

I am sure you're mostly right, but I still feel like I have a small bone to pick here. Dreben's claim, according to the second Matt, is apparently that "philosophical" arguments rest on arbitrary, non-demonstrable assumptions. But it seems to me that these are exactly what most of us would call *bad* philosophical arguments. Now Dreben's view might be, as you suggest, that an awful lot of philosophical arguments are "bad" in this sense; Dreben might want to show that philosophers at Notre Dame or Rutgers almost always fail to make "good" philosophical arguments, i.e. arguments with non-arbitrary premises. And if that's his view, then for all I know, he is right. But Dreben should defend that claim with an argument, rather than with a unconventional and obfuscating definition of "philosophy". (And of course I'm not claiming Dreben hasn't provided the requisite argument. I'm only claiming I don't see the argument yet.)

[Keith]

the problem with this position, which is the problem with all kinds of radical skepticism: it rests on assumptions about the nature of reality, knowledge, and language that are themselves "arbitrary" by its own lights. Dreben's nemesis at Boston University, Stanley Rosen, liked to remind his students that this problem in Dreben's philosophy was the same one that Plato successfully objected to in the philosophy of Protagoras.

But do you know how Dreben responded to this problem?

[Steven Gross]

Here’s a few quick reflections on just a few things from above. I had a fair number of conversations with Dreben and attended a few of his classes when I was a student. But I don’t have a basis for saying much with great confidence, or to say much at all regarding some of the above. (I don’t have much of a guess about how Dreben would answer, for example, Rawls’ questions about what philosophical understanding is and what its about.)

Dreben thought you couldn’t make good sense of some (OK, many) philosophical debates. Rawls alludes to attempts to explain (if you prefer, philosophically explain) logical validity. Rawls suggests that Dreben’s view has some affinities with Kant’s view that there is nothing more fundamental than reason itself to which one can appeal in assessing reason and its products. Just to say this would be consistent with a position that held that would-be attempts were therefore mistaken. Dreben went further in holding that in fact in some sense one couldn’t really even understand them.

Dreben didn’t make pretend he had some neutral criterion for meaningfulness that his opponents would accept. As Rawls notes, Dreben’s pedagogical methodology (when he was at his best, at least) was to closely examine specific attempts to address various questions—such as the aforementioned question of what makes validities valid. (Call these ‘metaphysical’ questions, or ‘philosophical’ questions, if you want. I don’t know whether it would be particularly interesting to try to discuss in the abstract what counts as one. I can’t imagine he thought there was some general criterion for this either.) So, he would spend a semester looking, for example, at the twists and turns of how Russell’s views on such putative questions developed, attempting to bring out that it’s not even clear what the question was supposed to be, what would count as answering it, or even as a relevant consideration.

I suppose that proceeding in this way via cases, without the benefit of an agreed upon criterion of meaningfulness, was what made him in some sense Wittgensteinian. When someone with this sort of methodology ascends from specific worked cases (or when someone else does so on his or her behalf), you’re not likely to get much of interest besides sloganeering. That’s in the nature of the case. But (in addition to his work in math logic) Dreben did publish 8 or 9 articles (perhaps more) toward the end of his life. So, one might want to look at what he said to see some examples of how he proceeded and to see what one thinks of the results—though, as Rawls mentions, Dreben was at his best when people who knew the texts well and had some developed views of their own pressed him. And that doesn’t show up so much in the published papers. Also, the papers I’ve read tend more towards limning Quine’s point of view than towards the sort of criticism gestured at above.

Now, since he didn’t have a neutral criterion to offer, it’s not surprising that his opponents might not have found that his applications of this method always yielded compelling results. He took it to be the case that in these disputes, as elsewhere, there’s an element of judgment. It’s not always very pleasant, when you’re not convinced, to be told you’re among the goats, not the sheep. (I know from experience!) But, in reply to Keith’s query, I think you can see why he wouldn’t take the mere fact that he didn’t convince some people to be sufficient for his claims to be themselves nonsensical. He didn’t argue generally, from the difficulty of persuading others, to nonsensicality, so why should he argue this way as applied to his own disagreements? (We likewise tell our freshmen that the difficulty of convincing others doesn’t seem in itself sufficient to conclude that moral claims are subjective or what have you.) Of course, Keith didn’t explicitly attribute this kind of argument to Dreben, but what other reason did you have in mind for thinking he might face the problem that his own disagreements with others about the status of certain disputes must itself by his own lights be counted among the disputes he considered nonsensical?

(Speaking of those were not convinced, I can’t resist an anecdote. Dummett had just delivered a lecture on Wittgenstein on logical necessity. Dreben arose excitedly to disagree with the interpretation. “But Burt,” Dummett said,” you think *all* this stuff is nonsense.” To which Dreben replied,” No, no, no, no, no! . . . Well, yes.”)

Let me close by registering my disagreement with the suggestion that Dreben held that fundamental philosophical matters are a matter of arbitrary decision. He *did* claim that one mark of a great philosopher (at least, one kind of greatness) was that their views were sufficiently developed and ramified that they affected their very conception of the task, methods, data, and questions of philosophy; and that as a result it was often very difficult to find neutral ground upon which the views of two great philosophers could be adjudicated. Among his favorite examples were Carnap and Quine’s disagreements. He was quite amusing on Carnap’s reply to Quine in the Schilpp volume, where you find Carnap trying to explain some elementary logic to Quine, as if Quine maybe couldn’t follow a few elementary steps in the propositional calculus. Carnap and Quine had deep respect for each other and knew each others’ work intimately. And yet they so often seem to talk right past each other. Now there’s an interesting datum. (Another intersting example: Locke vs. Leibniz on “first truths,” the topic of Margaret Wilson’s first paper. I don’t know whether Dreben was formally on her dissertation committee.) But Dreben’s view surely wasn’t that one could then just choose whom to agree with, say by flipping a coin.

Interestingly, Rawls says something that sounds a bit like the poster’s remarks about arbitrary choices. He writes that, according to Dreben: “Whether we accept a mathematical structure as helping us to understand an intuitive logical notion like validity is up to us.” Perhaps this isn’t so well put. Note, however, that Rawls immediately continues: “It depends on our judgment upon critical reflection.” Then comes the remark about Kant on reason.

By the way, what’s this about one person seeming to fear that another would (supposedly) scream bloody murder for having taken someone’s class? Should one really care in this manner what others think about whom one reads, talks to, productively disagrees with, etc.? What happened to ‘nothing philosophical is foreign to me’ and ‘think for yourself’?

Oops, what I had intended to be a few sentences has become rather long-winded. Clearly, I am procrastinating. (See John Perry’s essay on putting procrastination to work.) I must get back to more pressing matters.

[Tad Brennan]

"...Stanley Rosen liked to remind his students that this problem in Dreben's philosophy was the same one that Plato successfully objected to in the philosophy of Protagoras."--matt simpson

"But do you know how Dreben responded to this problem?"--keith de rose

Keith--maybe he responded
"What Rosen said is scholarship! What Plato said was garbage!"

I wish I had his faith in the historian's alchemical ability to turn dross into gold--I should have thought that the history of philosophy, like programming, worked on the GIGO principle. (Or am I just mistaken in assuming that he thought the title of "scholarship" conveyed any higher worth than garbage?)

[Keith DeRose]

But, in reply to Keith’s query, I think you can see why he wouldn’t take the mere fact that he didn’t convince some people to be sufficient for his claims to be themselves nonsensical. He didn’t argue generally, from the difficulty of persuading others, to nonsensicality, so why should he argue this way as applied to his own disagreements? (We likewise tell our freshmen that the difficulty of convincing others doesn’t seem in itself sufficient to conclude that moral claims are subjective or what have you.) Of course, Keith didn’t explicitly attribute this kind of argument to Dreben, but what other reason did you have in mind for thinking he might face the problem that his own disagreements with others about the status of certain disputes must itself by his own lights be counted among the disputes he considered nonsensical?

I was genuinely asking for how he responded. For all I knew (and, actually, for all I still know), Dreben agreed that his own claims of nonsense were themselves nonsense. And for all I knew and know, he denied this -- in which case, the natural follow-up indeed would have been to ask on what basis he escaped the charge that he claimed others fell to. If he "didn’t have a neutral criterion to offer," did he have any criterion, or even a guide, to offer, so that opponents could then assess whether the offered guide is a reliable one? Or was the situation really as it was represented to me -- and I stress that I never witnessed any of these encounters, and got my reports of them entirely from the anti-Dreben side -- that he simply pronounced, and if his pronouncement was challenged, he had only force of personality (but a considerable amount of that) to back it up?

[Steven Gross]

Keith writes: "I was genuinely asking for how he responded. For all I knew (and, actually, for all I still know), Dreben agreed that his own claims of nonsense were themselves nonsense. And for all I knew and know, he denied this." Sorry Keith, I wasn't trying to be coy. In anticipating the follow-up question, I meant to be suggesting the answer. (Expecting too much of accommodation.) So, more flat-footedly: No, I don't think he considered himself to be speaking nonsense when he said things like "Here Russell has literally fallen into nonsense." And I don't think he would have thought someone who disagreed would have fallen into nonsense. You could say that he thought there was a fact of the matter about whether Russell had fallen into nonsense, and about whether he, Dreben, had in so saying. But I believe, following Quine, he would have had a deflationary view of such fact-talk: to say it's a fact that P is just another (perhaps emphatic) way of saying P.

He certainly sometimes simply pronounced. (And sometimes pronounced and pronounced at great volume.) This was sometimes very annoying and could be pedagogically disasterous. That why I said he was at his best when pressed by informed interlocuters. It got him out of diatribe mode and back to the texts he was using as examples.

I don't know if I have much that's informative to say about what on Dreben's view might have been a guide to when you've got a bad question. I suggested something above about marks of a bad question: not having a sufficient grasp of what would count as an answer to the question or as even a relevant consideration. But I'm hesitant to ascribe anything more specific or substantive to Dreben -- first, because I really don't know what he'd say; second, because he had a particular interest in the failed attempts of philosophers to successfully supply clear, non-question-begging criteria for meaningfulness (Carnap again is a particularly sophisticated example). I know that's not very satisfying: both my ignorance of what he'd say, and his reluctance to say anything more substantive and specific. But one could see whether those papers he published supply some further materials for an answer, maybe not explicitly, but as an example of his practice. Perhaps they don't.

For fun, I supply a favorite quote of Dreben's - Kant on the question 'What is truth?' (paraphrasing from memory): It's a mark of great sagacity to be able to tell when one has a good question and when not. Otherwise one winds up with the ludicrous spectacle, as the ancients said, of one man milking a he-goat and the other holding a sieve underneath.

Incidentally (anticipating a possible reaction), I wouldn't think it'd be correct to conclude that Dreben was unflective about his methodology -- which would be quite damning given his repeated charge that many philosophers (not the "great" ones, though) tend to be unreflective about their methodology with bad consequences.

Finally, a (no doubt unecessary) disclaimer: I'm not defending any of this, just trying to add some possibly helpful remarks based on my encounters, to the extent I am in a position to do so.

[Keith DeRose]

Thanks, Steven!
(I should divulge that I recruited Steven to add to this discussion, and that he did so despite [or perhaps in light of his above mention of Perry on procrastination: because of] a looming deadline he faces.)

[Steven Gross]

Let me add one other remark. I don't mean to make it sound like Dreben was some mystic, and one either saw the light or didn't (though that was the sort of disasterous pedagogical effect he could have). Even though he might not have been willing to say much in direct answer to such questions 'when is a question a good (read: non-nonsensical) question?', he had lots (and lots and lots, sometimes) to say in reply to questions like 'what happens when Russell tries to provide an explanation of logical truth?'. And perhaps through such examples of worked cases he did after all say something indirectly in answer to the first, more general question.

[Steven Gross]

Oops - our posts crossed, making it seem that I've ignored your 'thank you'. So: you're welcome. And thanks for alerting me to the thread and raising your question.

[Kosta Calfas]

Not really a comment, but a question. Given Dreben's apparent affinity and familiarity with Wittgenstein's work, do you think he meant "nonsense" in a perjorative or reified sense. Specifically, I'm alluding to the tension in Wittgenstein scholarship between whether for Wittgenstain "nonsense" unsinnig i.e. "that which cannot be said" should be taken as an endorsement of ending metaphysics ethics and aesthetics, or whether consigning them to silence is a variety of reification or mysticism. It might be interesting to know if Dreben's point wasn't in fact that while the content of philosophical argument is worth pursuing, the methodology is erroneous or confused.

When Rawls says of Dreben "But he thinks that at bottom there are no arguments one philosopher can use to convince another of a metaphysical point." could it be the case that Dreben doesn't think "argument" is the proper method by which metaphysical points can be made, which is not to say "there are no metaphysical points." If so, this would save him from the charge of being a "radical skeptic." I don't know enough about Dreben to conjecture one way or the other, but it seems a worthwhile enterprise given his influence and might even shed some light on the Tractatus Debate to see if or how one can flush out such a position.

[Samuel Rickless]

Steven:

Perhaps I haven't read previous posts carefully enough, in which case I apologize in advance. I guess I have a comment related to Keith DeRose's question. Perhaps it ultimately IS Keith DeRose's question. I don't know. Anyway, here it is.

Earlier you said this:

"You could say that he [Dreben] thought there was a fact of the matter about whether Russell had fallen into nonsense, and about whether he, Dreben, had in so saying. But I believe, following Quine, he would have had a deflationary view of such fact-talk: to say it's a fact that P is just another (perhaps emphatic) way of saying P."

The nature of nonsense, and what should count as nonsense, are philosophical questions, or so it seems to me. (You can imagine Socrates asking: "What is nonsense?") If someone disagreed with Dreben about the nature of nonsense (and, say, provided reasons for thinking that Dreben's views about nonsense were false--or nonsense), what could he say in his defense? He couldn't give a theory of nonsense (e.g., nonsense is the violation of Wittgensteinian "rules of grammar") without contradicting his own view that theories are nonsense. He couldn't just say that it's an empirical question to be decided by normal scientific inquiry. The only thing left is: dogmatic pronouncement. Perhaps this is why Dreben engaged in so much of it.

[Gary Kemp]

I think the debate occupying most of this thread is misplaced. I think that Dreben along with Quine (and the later Wittgenstein) would say that there is no criterion of sense, no sharp distinction between sense and nonsense. Nor is there any one way of failing to make sense, such as not being verifiable. Ways of making sense are unsurveyably diverse. In the end, there is no way to stand above the fray; Dreben, I gather, was not pretending to do that. But there are some perhaps characteristic ways in which philosophical theorising fails to make enough sense, or rests on unnoticed analogies/pictures etc, to be rationally tractable, and--if Dreben is right--it is possible in particular cases to diagnose the confusion. Dreben's waving away of large tracts of philosophy is a kind of promissory note: diagnoses could be made in detail. On this way of putting the point, there is no danger that a thesis about what makes sense will fail to satisfy itself.
A grain of salt: I get my Dreben second-hand, having been taught by Peter Hylton, and read Ricketts, Friedman, Goldfarb with care, and above all Quine. Even so, it seems to me that Rob Kar hits many nails on the head.

[Steven Gross]

Hi Sam,

No long time no see -- hope you're well! I'm writing this quickly myself and am on the road (and so might not have a chance to follow-up on other posts, at least not immediately).

Dreben held (I *think*) that, just as lots of other 'What is F?' questions--though not all--might be bad questions (or at least questions no one has been able to do anything useful with in a way that might enable us to find the sense in them), so it might be with 'What is nonsense?', depending on the kinds of answers you think would count as acceptable candidate answers. It might be, on his view, that 'nonsense' is a context-sensitive term of criticism and/or one that expresses a 'family resemblance' concept and/or that for these or some other reasons isn't amenable to the attempt to provide an informative analysis into necessary and sufficient conditions. Perhaps then it might not have, to use your term, a "nature" in some senses of that term (and so no nature to disagree about). Likewise perhaps he would then agree that there's a sense in which there's no "theory" of nonsense, as you suggest--again depending on what's meant here by a theory.
And yet he might hold that there are examples to give, reasons to be invoked for or against an application, and perhaps even some illuminating things to be said about it more generally. After all, this is how it is with more mundane concepts. Someone who thinks there's no "theory" of games isn't precluded from offering reasons why such and such is or isn't a game. (And, depending on what's intended by theorizing, they might not be precluded from theorizing about games.) -Or at least one can imagine someone with views like Dreben's replying.

One way he tried to argue for this sort of view was to look at particular attempts to articulate a theory of nonsense (that is, a theory of sense). In other words, in this case, we're not limited to speculating about how he would answer the sort of person you describe (a person who disagrees with him about nonsense) because it was one of his regular pedagogical schticks to spend a semester examining what he considered the deepest attempt to offer (albeit unsuccessfully) something like a theory of nonsense: Carnap's. One would then need to ask whether what he said about Carnap was convincing.

I'm not sure I'd agree that among Dreben's reasons for thinking there isn't a theory of nonsense (in the sense you're suggesting) would have been the fact that this would have contradicted the thesis that all theories are nonsense. I'm not sure he held such a thesis -- again depending on what's meant here by a theory. Nor am I sure he would recognize, or at least try to put to use here, a distinction between empirical theories and non-empirical theories. There are attempts to give explanations that we assess by the lights of our best current standards. Beyond this, we don't possess a criterion for good explanation that we can deploy in advance of our explanatory endeavors (that, as it were, can anticipate what our explanatory endeavors might yield). Some questions we couldn't make much sense of have turned into questions we can illuminate after all and that find a place in on-going science. (Is it then a good question to ask whether the meaning of such questions must therefore change?)

On pronouncements (dogmatic and otherwise): If there are concepts for which we can't articulate agreed upon conditions of application that can mechanically settle all cases (so that no element of judgment is called for), then there will be applications of the concept where no dispositive reason can be offered to those who disagree. Does it follow that all such applications are unwarranted? Surveying the concepts we in fact deploy, one might want to answer "no" -- even while agreeing that we are under some obligation to expand the reach of our reason as far as possible (or perhaps: as far as reasonable given our other obligations).

Is the worry that Dreben, both in his pronouncing something to be nonsense and in his pronouncing upon nonsense itself, is dogmatic because he must be (indeed by his own lights) violating an evidentialist constraint? Or perhaps the worked examples (which, again, is what one should really turn to) provides sufficient reason to satisfy the evidentialist at least qua evidentialist?

(By the way, none of the above is meant to deny that Dreben often presented at the very least the appearance of dogmatism, with bad pedagogical consequences -- as Sam and I both witnessed. But to decide whether his views in fact amounted to dogmatism, one would need to examine them at their best. Perhaps someone with an interest and some time might post an opinion on something specific in his published writings.)

Sorry, this is not only quick, but also hand-wavy and rambling! That's the best I have time for at the moment. Perhaps my unguadred remarks will provoke something better from others!

[Steven Gross]

Gary posted his comment while I was typing mine. His post sounds on target to me, except (I think) where he says the debate occupying much of the thread is misplaced. My impression is that he's weighing in on one side.

[Alva Noe]

Dear All,

A brief personal note: Burton Dreben left Harvard the year before I arrived as a graduate student. He joined the faculty at Boston University and gave a series of seminars there. I attended some of those seminars and it was there I got to know him. He was, as I encountered him, an extraordinary teacher and a loving and generous man. Whatever he _said_ about philosophy and its status, his practice displayed his personal engagement with philosophy and its great figures. He allowed students to feel the importance of problems and the beauty of the work of some philosophers. And he allowed students to take themselves and their own aspirations seriously.

The questions that Brian poses about Burton Dreben are, I think, better cast in the substantive philosophical mode, as questions about how contemporary philosophy is to manage with, or reckon with, the critical legacy of Wittgenstein, and also that of Logical Positivism and Quine, a legacy that is ours, in part, thanks to Professor Dreben.

[Jason Stanley]

As a graduate student at MIT in the early 1990s working on Frege, I attended several of Dreben's classes. Sometimes I enjoyed them a lot, and sometimes I felt my time was being wasted. They weren't very well prepared (whatever blocked him from publishing presumably also blocked him from preparing for seminar). But he was an extremely entertaining speaker, and there were humorous rants about why this or that paragraph was nonsense. The worst element of the classes involved his playing up to his fan club, people who were there to feel like they were in a special in-group of agonizingly deep profoundity, where they could chuckle together at those silly fools who wasted their time working hard at philosophy. As a poster above said, he was at his best when interrupted from a monologue and forced to defend a particular interpretation against a textual objection. At least, that's when real progress could happen, and I learned a lot from those encounters.

At any rate, I went on to work on Frege and develop a reading of Frege in opposition to his. I met with him occasionally, and he was very encouraging and helpful, even though I was arguing for an interpretive line with which he strongly disagreed. In the end, he wrote a letter for me on the job market. Many philosophers would have problems writing in support of someone disagreeing rather radically with them. It shows a lot about his character that he did not.

So I learned very much from discussions with him, and he supported me professionally in my career, despite deep disagreements. But as I have become more senior in the profession, and better acquainted with the sociology of academia, I think I have a clearer sense about what Dreben was going through. Like numerous academics in every field, he had an incredibly hard time working. Judging from his career, I imagine he had a hard time sitting for long hours reading or writing. Since working is what we are paid to do, those of us who can't work develop elaborate reasons to placate our egos about our inability to produce it.

One commonly supplied reason for an inability to publish is that one's own work is so much more rigorous than everyone else, that it takes much longer to produce (people who publish are sloppy). Another commonly supplied reason is that one doesn't produce work because one is so much deeper and more profound than everyone else (people who publish are shallow). Almost every academic who suffers from an inability to publish thinks that s/he can't because of one of these two reasons. It's simply not clear to me that all Dreben's stuff about nonsense isn't just a particularly elaborate version of reason number 2, given particular salience because he was tenured at Harvard, which was indisputably a great department during the mid-point of Dreben's career.

I guess with these remarks I am finally coming around to seeing the value of a Wittgensteinean 'therapy' analysis of certain philosophical positions...

[Kosta Calfas]

I imagine Brian Leiter will comment about Jason Stanley's remarks, especially since it bears directly on his interest in a "hermeneutics of suspicion." I wonder, however, generally, whether critiques of philosophers' views are becoming evermore biographical.

Of course philosophers who do not publish come up with all sorts of reasons, but does the fact that these reasons are borne of psychological problems invalidate their views? Simply because a particular philosophical position can be in some way linked or explained by their disposition (psychological or otherwise) does that invalidate the philosopher's position?

Wittgenstein had the same problem with publication that Dreben seemed to, and is notorious for excoriating philosophy journals and those who published in them. Does this make Wittgenstein's philosophical views any less important and simply reducible to "sour grapes"?

I think the burden is not on the philosopher, but on the reader not to ask, exclusively, whether the work is a product of this or that disposition, but to be able themselves to take the objective critical stance necessary to assess the position on its own merits. Relatedly, the unconventional or marginalized philosopher is often uniquely positioned to present us with novel positions whose virtues or benefits would not be immediately apparent to a person comfortable in their tradition and station in life

Given the characters in the philosophical pantheon, I don't think anyone can suggest that only sound minds produce sound philosophy. We should not allow ourselves to be swept up in this "hermeneutics of suspicion" and go on some scholarly crusade to sanitize and purge ourselves of philosophies borne of unclean minds. There's a certain wisdom in the Rawlsian veil of ignorance as it pertains to assessing philosophy.

"When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be." -J.W. Goethe

Gotta love Goethe.

[Alva Noe]

A quick post to challenge Jason (who is a friend, someone I know to be a sweet guy with a jolly disposition). Jason writes that it is simply not clear to him that Dreben's views about nonsense and related philosophical matters are not an expression of, on the one hand, his anxiety about working (publishing) and also, on the other hand, his confidence that his own ideas were deeper and more profound than those of other people. Pretty damning thing to say about a deceased former teacher. What support does Jason offer? He offers the consideration that as he (Jason) has become more senior in the profession, "and better acquainted with the sociology of academia," he has acquired "a clearer sense of what Dreben was going through".

I suppose that could be the basis for such a judgment, especially if you take as a suppressed premise the thought that Dreben's ideas about these questions (philosophy, nonsense, et cetera) were empty or unreasonable or wrongheaded or just plain false. Is that what Jason is supposing?

But without that premise, one is tempted to suppose that Jason thinks that his own personal experience of the academy and its sociology provide grounds for thinking one particular philosopher, Burton Dreben, was a kind of self-deceived hypocrite. Or maybe he means for us to conclude that in fact he has a very specific personal knowledge of Dreben which he is unwilling to make explicit and which lend support to his harsh judgment.

Considering that friends of Dreben's read this blog, it would be an act of kindness not to leave us guessing!

For my part, I'll mention that I had the impression that Dreben liked to read and think hard about philosophy. Indeed, the fact that he published little is not in itself evidence that he didn't write a great deal and take pleasure in writing. As the case of Wittgenstein illustrates, publication isn't a reliable indicator of how much one writes.

[Jason Stanley]

Alva,

I'm looking forward to reading the unpublished works of Burton Dreben. If they turn out to be as brilliant as the Philosophical Investigations, I will be the first to admit that my diagnosis was incorrect.

The brute fact is that a good portion of academics are unproductive. The fact that Wittgenstein was also unproductive at various times in his career is poor evidence that unproductiveness is a good guide to brilliance. Quine was really productive. Elizabeth Anscombe was really productive. Rawls at least published one of the most important works of the century during his lifetime. And hey, so did Wittgenstein.

I liked Dreben, and he seemed to be a pretty good philosopher and relatively decent guy. But in the end we all should be judged on what we actually produce. That's a really demanding standard, I realize. But it would be improper to judge my former teachers according to more relaxed standards than I judge other philosophers. I see no other way for academia to be a meritocracy. We admire Wittgenstein now because he actually did end up producing important work. He was admired during his lifetime because he wrote an incredibly important book early in his career.

Given the available evidence, the best hypothesis is that Dreben still gets talked about because he happened to be at Harvard when lots of other people were there who published lots of really important philosophy. Prestigious institutional affiliation can make up for a lot of old fashioned hard work.

[Jason Stanley]

Kosta,

Last I checked, no philosopher at Harvard in the 1970s or 1980s could count as 'unconventionalized or marginalized', and certainly not Dreben. If you want unconventionalized or marginalized, you gotta go to Eastern Illinois or Western Kentucky.

[Jason Stanley]

It seems to me that Alva is suggesting not that we discuss Burton Dreben, but rather discuss whether Wittgenstein had any good point in his remarks about nonsense. That's a different topic.

[Alva Noe]

Jason,

I would never suggest that unproductiveness is an indicator of brilliance. But I would be careful about assuming that a failure to publish is an indicator of lack of brilliance. In fact, I wouldn't even be comfortable with the assumption that failure to publish is an indicator of a lack of productivity!

Wittgenstein's position in philosophy during the forties and fifties depended on his having published the Tractatus earlier on, to be sure. But his lectures and engagement with philosophical life and discussion at Cambridge were important channels of his ongoing influence. Numerous other writers -- several members of the Vienna Circle, for example -- took themselves to be working out ideas of Wittgenstein's gleaned from conversations with him. (Whether they were right about this is another matter.) Socrates and Rogers Albritton are two other philosophers whose influence and quality is not reflected in their publication records.

Those who admire Dreben do so because of their encounter with him as a philosopher and because of what they learned from him. And no facts about his personality or his publication record or his being at Harvard are relevant to the question whether his particular reading of Wittgenstein (for example) is a good one, or whether his attitude to contemporary philosophy is one from which we can learn. The question is not, Why did Dreben say what he did? but rather, What did he say and what can we learn from it. The lack of publication means it isn't easy to answer this question.

I appreciate the concern about meritocracy, etc, that Jason raises. Maybe fairness requires that publication should be a criterion of quality for purposes of promotion. That's not my view, but I can see why one might think that. But those sort of conditions have nothing to do with the question of quality. And for us, now, a few years after Dreben's death, that's what matters for assessing his legacy. He isn't up for tenure!

[Alva Noe]

I missed Jason's post about whether I meant to suggest that we should discuss Wittgenstein's views about nonsense instead of Dreben. That's not what I meant. What I meant was that there are two ways to take Brian's opening question about why Dreben had such a dim view of the discipline. One way is as seeking a personal story about why Dreben was the kind of person he was. Another way is as asking whether his criticism of philosophy is justified and/or something from which we can learn. I think the second way of addressing the issue would be worthwhile. I doubt that the first way of pursuing the question can be, at least in this kind of forum.

[Matt]

Jason,

The fact that Rawls, Putnam, and Quine all regularly thanked Dreben for his help (look in World and Object or Ontological Relativity, Political Liberalism ["my debt to him is beyond recounting"] etc.) seems to tell pretty strongly against the idea that he is talked about merely because he happend to be at Harvard when other famous people were. Now, if you just mean that, if he'd been somewhere else, he could not have influenced Rawls, Putnam, and Quine as he did, given how little he published, that's likely true. But if you mean that we have little reason to think he was independently quite good as a philosopher or that he's only considered good becuase he was at Harvard at this time and not becuase of his skill (or even mostly becuase of this) that seems unsupported in itself and rather strongly undermined by the information we have from Rawls, Putnam, and Quine.

[Varol Akman]

My doctoral supervisor's supervisor's supervisor is Dreben so I have some interest in this matter. Would someone explain how he got a tenure from Harvard with his minor ouevre? (oeuvre means a substantial body of work, so my adjective is presumably a poor choice)

Not a pointed question really but rather a wish to be enlightened.

[Kosta Calfas]

Jason,

The question is not whether a philosopher is actually as marginalized or unconventional as they think they are, but did they believe themselves to be marginalized and unconventional? And, did this belief or feeling of marginalization inform their philosophical views. I think in Wittgenstein's case, we can answer this in the affirmative since he, on numerous occasions, expressed his dislike of the cambridge and oxford crowds. As for Dreben, I imagine anyone who spends as much time as he seemed to criticizing the activity of his peers probably didn't feel any kind of philosophical repore with them.

I think we can ask the extent to which the propensity for demarcating "sense" and "nonsense" and condemning that latter is reducible to a certain personality type or reactionary disposition. Before we can do this, however, we must be clear on what the philosopher means by nonsense, and whether, in fact, nonsense is, for Dreben, a term of condescension, reification, constructive criticism or whatever. So I think Alva's preocupation with the merits and nature of Dreben's ideas about "nonsense" are warranted as a necessary first step to what you propose.

As others have noted, Wittgenstein presents a serious challenge to most of your assertions; like this one:

"Given the available evidence, the best hypothesis is that Dreben still gets talked about because he happened to be at Harvard when lots of other people were there who published lots of really important philosophy. Prestigious institutional affiliation can make up for a lot of old fashioned hard work."

By that token, "the reason Wittgenstein still gets talked about is because he happened to be at Cambridge when lots of other people..." You get the idea. As for the notion that: "Rawls at least published one of the most important works of the century during his lifetime. And hey, so did Wittgenstein." Lest we forget that the Tractatus would probably have been on a stack of burning manuscripts were it not for Russell to agree to write the introduction. You'll recall it was rejected several times by publishers. I am not suggesting that Dreben's work is on par with Wittgenstein's, but let's not blind ourselves to facts in order to suit our ideals; affiliation, circumstance and yes even luck matters. Merit alone is seldom, if ever, the sole determinant in the fame or influence of a philosopher. Whether this is right or wrong is another matter entirely.

Varol,

About Harvard tenure, don't bother wasting your time, have you seen their latest ranking on the Philosophical Gourment!? Try Rutgers instead. Although, thanks in part to the gourmet, getting tenure at Harvard, at least in philosophy, might be substantially easier than it used to be. Best of luck, and if you get in, be sure to send Brian Leiter a thank-you note.

Cheers.

[Steven Gross]

Part of my reply to Sam above might seem unfair. Sam speaks of Dreben's holding that theories are nonsense. And isn't that what Rawls attributes to Dreben in the quote Brian supplies? (I hadn't looked back at the quote or the previous posts before dashing off my post.)

Well, Rawls speaks of *philosophical* theories. (And he doesn't say they are nonsense, but rather that there aren't any -- though he then says this is connected with Dreben's calling metaphysics nonsense.) But Sam suggests that Dreben couldn't say that empirical theories would help. And if this exhausts the possible kinds of theories (if), then he can't have a theory; thus dogmatism.

I still think dogmatism doesn't follow. But perhaps myprevious post's brief remark about theories doesn't accord with Dreben's views at least as reported by Rawls. I think what I said is consonant with Dreben's views as I recall them. Perhaps one could reconcile this with Rawls' remarks by noting that Dreben often used terms like 'philosophical' and 'metaphysical' as epithets -- on par with 'nonsense' -- without presuming that we had a prior independent grasp of what in general makes a theory count as (in this sense) philosophical that could thus illuminate what makes it nonsensical. One hopes that Dreben also recognized perfectly legitimate uses of the terms on which Rawls was doing philosophy in articulating a theory of jusitce (a theory that is not nonsense)! --Perhaps Dreben speaks to the status of Rawls' work in his contribution to the Cambridge Comnpanion to Rawls (I'm away from my books at the moment). Maybe that might help move the thread away from mere abstract meta-philosophy (my bad).

(I'm not interested in moving the thread further into personal matters. But just to address the factual question raised above: Dreben got tenure on the basis of his work in logic (mainly proof theory) at a time when number of publications was less important than it tends to be now. I believe he had 6 or so publications (and some abstracts) at the time, plus an unpublished manuscript on the decision problem that ultimately led to the co-authored book with Goldfarb. (Phil departments at research universities often say these days that a publication per year in major journals is what's expected for tenure -- not that it's sufficient!) I recall hearing that his outside referees formed a particularly impressive bunch, including Goedel. For those interested in what publications there were, including the later non-technical pieces, a google search quickly located the following bibliography:

http://phil.flet.keio.ac.jp/person/sagisawa/bdreben.htm

[Paul Bohan Broderick]

I was a grad student at BU at the same time as Matt Simpson, he arriving after and departed before me, if I'm not mistaken. I never had the impression that Dreben and Rosen viewed themselves as rivals in any way. Rather each of them had their own questions which seemed to rarely connect. What was more interesting to watch was the graduate students trying to incorporate elements of both Dreben and Rosen into their own

Jaakko Hintikka gave a guest presentation one night in Dreben's Wittgenstein seminar. There had been a great deal of anticipation before hand, this was billed as a real "clash of the titans" sort of presentation. The main event was nothing of the sort, Hintikka read his paper. If memory serves, Dreben also spoke from prepared notes (those this would have been so unusual that I'm suspicious of my memory at this point) and, like any exchange of prepared comments, there was far more light than heat. Many in the audience had been eagerly anticipating the heat.

Dreben used to say that Carnap "didn't have a philosophical bone in his body" and I got the general impression that Carnap was not suppossed to have been better off for this anatomical deficiency. Most of that semester, his presentations turned on a distinction between "nonsense"(unsinnig) and "senseless" (sinnlos) in the Tractatus. The moral seemed to be that there's value in pursuing philosophy (though meaningless), but that there are different types and degrees of meaninglessness, some valuable, some not.

[Jason Stanley]

I just wanted to respond to Steve Gross's misleading post on the 'factual question' of how much Dreben published. Steve writes:

"Dreben got tenure on the basis of his work in logic (mainly proof theory) at a time when number of publications was less important than it tends to be now. I believe he had 6 or so publications (and some abstracts) at the time, plus an unpublished manuscript on the decision problem that ultimately led to the co-authored book with Goldfarb."

Note (as one can see from the CV Steve helpfully linked us to) that from 1949 to 1961 Dreben published a total of eight pages. Three of those eight pages are in a volume called "summaries of talks presented", i.e. they are abstracts. What little that comes after 1961 seems to be either coauthored or relatively expository.

Perhaps Steve wishes to make the point that Dreben's tenure was justified on the basis of incredibly important and influential work in logic. So perhaps Steve could provide evidence that Dreben's work in proof theory was highly influential in logic. Perhaps the result of a JSTOR search from 1947-1961 (presumably the years in which this work would be influential) turns up numerous references to this work? Perhaps later surveys of proof theory spend a lot of time discussing it?

Steve says that "he heard that Goedel was one of the referees". O.k., can Steve provide some publications by Goedel that generalize or push forward Dreben's results? Or even reference them?

I feel bad about this. But I don't see why it helps for Dreben's acolytes to implicate falsely that Dreben was some superstar in logic who gained tenure on the basis of his important and influential work (which is clearly Steve's implication). We can discuss whether someone's being an outstanding colleague who provided intelligent conversation, exemplary behavior, and terrific teaching should merit one tenure at a leading department. But let's please not distort the facts.

[Steven Gross]

Dreben joined the faculty at Harvard in 1956. So, I was counting the number of papers through 1963. There are 5 in 1962 and 1963. There's only one entry that looks like a full paper prior to that -- the 1952 paper in Proc of the Nat. Acad. of Sciences. (Perhaps I shouldn't have counted that -- I don't know how things worked then, in particular whether it would have gone into a tenure dossier.) As you say and I indicated, the rest look like abstracts (apart from the 1949 entry which is his undergraduate thesis).

It was asked on the basis of what did Dreben get tenure. Curious, I took a second to google and passed on the info. Besides reporting that I had heard (who knows when) that his outside referee committee had been particularly august, I passed no judgment on whether he ought to have gotten tenure. I've never read those papers and am not competent to judge -- nor did I claim or implicate otherwise.

(Incidentally, I don't know why I'm called an "acolyte." I had one class with Dreben and audited a few seminars. I've participated in this thread, first, because Keith (who knew I had known Dreben) asked me if I might have any useful thoughts; and then because Sam asked me a question -- not because I intended to take on the mantle.)

[Jason Stanley]

Steve,

O.k., Dreben published five papers totalling 28 pages in 1962 and 1963. Only one of the five was single authored (a 15 page survey piece). The rest were co-authored (some with more than one co-author). Still doesn't seem very impressive, unless an independent case can be made for the importance of the work.

I shouldn't have said that you're a Dreben acolyte, that was unfair. You publish a lot (of really good work, I might add, from which I've learned a lot). And it's very hard for me to see in your work evidence of Dreben's influence.

I think it's probably clear from my remarks that I think Dreben has had a negative influence on philosophy, one that we still see today. It's difficult to have this view, since I liked the man, and learned a lot from him. So from my perspective, he clearly had a positive impact as well. But there is a certain kind of way of being in philosophy that I blame (rightly or wrongly) on his influence. That way of being involves not publishing much at all, and making a career by creating a cult of personality based on a myth of inexplicable depth. No doubt Wittgenstein had a cult of personality too. Indeed, I think we still see the terrible effects of this in philosophy. But Wittgenstein also gave us a substantial body of brilliant work, which more than makes up for the numerous Wittgenstein cult followers currently lurking around. In effect, Wittgenstein proved by his work that his was not a *myth* of depth.

[Rob Kar]

I've said earlier what I think might be useful about trying to understand some of Dreben's criticisms of philosophy. As someone who has profited equally from conversations with Jason Stanley, let me now say what I think is importantly true--though perhaps exaggerated--in Jason's reactions to Dreben. I should start with a throat-clearer, as I did before: I now do ethics/philosophy of law, though in a way that has been partly shaped by my undergraduate experiences with Dreben-like thinking. The influence is not that of an acolyte: I, after all, continued in philosophy, and think I understand some of Jason's worries about Dreben. With regard to Jason, I knew him only passingly at Harvard, but got to know him much better when I was doing my doctorate at Michigan. I grew to respect both his mind and his character immensedly. Although I didn't study under him there per se, this was mainly due to differences in our fields, and I did get a fairly clear sense of his ways of approaching some of these issues.

Assume for a moment that Dreben's line of thinking can be helpful in the following way: it might help clarify when the pursuit of certain seemingly urgent and deep philosophical questions is in fact being driven by prephilosophical pictures of the way language works, what meanings are, or what have you, which lead us to look at the questions in a certain way, thereby rendering them unsolvable. It would then help to see what is happening, reorient our take on things a bit, and--perhaps--allow other more genuinely urgent or deep questions begin to take on those mantles. But if this is right, then Gary Kemp said something I agree with and that seems important to me: Dreben's broader dismissal of philosophy was ultimately something of a promissory note--and necessarily so, given his methodology and rejection of general criteria of meaning or nonsense. Dreben had the conviction that similar points could be made with reference to a broader class of inclinations to philosophize--though, as I've said before, Dreben also seemed to acknowledge boundaries to this class (see, e.g., Rawls's work). This leaves those trying to understand what they might legitimately learn from him with an important question as to how to clarify this boundary (and I don't necessarily mean by drawing a sharp line--I mean by gaining the kind of 'understanding' of the problem that Dreben wanted philosophical insight to produce).

It is at this point that I find some of Jason's reactions most useful. Though they are not framed in this way, I think they can be understood as having in part a moral basis. The most important worry to have is not--I don't think--whether Dreben published enough, or even what complex set of facts may (or may not explain) his publication record. The real worry is whether his project was carried out with sufficient responsiveness to the phenomenon it was dealing with (namely, philosophy) to warrant abiding trust in a promissory note of this precise kind. Though I watched some of this from the sidelines, it seemed clear to me that whatever insight Dreben had, many ended up following and internalizing his promissory notes without being able to articulate or follow up on them in ways that were sufficiently responsive to various developments in philosophy to warrant abiding trust. But some of the people doing work in philosophy (Jason Stanley clearly falls into this category) are incredibly dedicated and have spent enormous amounts of time working out various positions in ways that are detailed and responsive to a number of standing or developing objections. Work of this kind deserves praise, whether it ends up right or not on the merits; and it seems to me that, in these circumstances, one must earn the right to dismiss such lines of thought. One must do so in part by responding to the developments in a responsible way and, even, by being especially careful not to allow facts about institutional authority to affect the debate. At least in the academic context (though I would think in others as well), this means publicizing one's reasons in ways that others can digest and understand and react to with the same level of care and responsibility.

Jason speaks of a "myth" or "cult" of depth in these circles. I'm not convinced the depth is/was a "myth," but there was certainly a cult-like quality to this phenomenon in the following sense: There were a number of people who were motivated by perceptions of depth to trust in the basic Dreben-outlook before they were able to articulate clearly what the full problems were with various other approaches to philosophy in a responsible manner. And I do think that institutional facts had some effect here--whether or not Dreben was aware of the fact. I remember many graduate students at Harvard during that period being almost afraid to talk, as they entered into what seemed like a field with such depth, inhabited by so many people of such stature in the department. But this was, in my view, a deeply unhealthy aspect to that place at that time, and one that may have encouraged dismissals that were less responsible than they could have been. It would seem to me fine if one's personal reasons for leaving philosophy were based partly on trust of certain figures who one finds particularly captivating or seemingly deep. But there is a difference between these personal reasons for action (or for various life decisions) and arguments that have been vetted and tested through publication and critical evaluation by one's peers. To dismiss various developments in philosophy without giving those who engage in it grounds of this latter kind seems to me wrong--even morally wrong. It leaves very little for many well-motivated and hard-working people to work with. And it should be clear from the history of thought that even the best thoughts, once publicized and scrutinized, can be developed, reoriented, or shown wrong. So I see no reason to think Dreben's promissory note--if adequately spelled out--wouldn't undergo similar developments once placed in a broader set of others' hands.

I have sometimes been troubled by this. I remember asking Dreben once about whether he thought there was a moral dimension to Wittgenstein's work. (I thought there was.) He said he thought that the work could return a certain dignity to ordinary human life and ordinary human language. But if this is true, then it would seem to me even more important for those who genuinely understand the view to make the position clearer, rather than simply allowing the position to ground personal reasons to turn away from philosophy without published explanation. I do wish, for this reason, that people who understood Dreben's thoughts better would weigh in, rather than letting the comments be dominated by those of us who, admittedly, understand only the outlines.

[Keith DeRose]

Those who have been reading Brian's blog for a while (see for instance the discussion at: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2004/12/the_thread_on_t.html) know that I am very much on the same page with Jason on the matter of giving publication record a big role in the evaluation of philosophers. I also tend to be suspcious of appeals to how good someone is in conversation made to defend the position some philosopher may have attained despite a noticeable lack of publications. But while I think that most such appeals are bad rationalizations, there can of course be legitimate appeals of that variety; here I'm agreeing with Alva Noe from several comments above. Most of the admiration philosophers (including myself) have for one of Noe's examples, and my dissertation advisor, Rogers Albritton, for instance, derived mainly from this source (though what few papers he did publish were very well thought of by many). In an extreme case, it may well be rational to judge someone who didn't publish much himself but played a very important role in some very important philosophy written by others to have a better (even if more difficult to assess) philosophical record than someone who wrote a good amount of good-but-not-very-important philosophy himself. Much depends on the details, of course. That someone is mentioned and thanked doesn't show that they played a central or important role in the production of a book or paper. And often we don't know the details -- and I certainly don't have them in the case of Dreben. But it seems that, given the importance of some of the work he apparently is thanked for, he may very well deserve a distinguished record. I don't mean to be judging otherwise (though I also don't know enough to agree).

Oh, on one other matter...
Steven writes that he got into this discussion "because Keith (who knew I had known Dreben) asked me if I might have any useful thoughts." I suspected he'd have useful thoughts because he's a very good philosopher who had some relevant personal experience with Dreben, and was at least somewhat sympathetic (at least to the point of thinking he'd learned much of value from Dreben: something Jason says his true of himself as well), but also on the other hand no "acolyte." I think my suspicions proved correct: Thanks for all the useful observations & thoughts, Steven.

[Alva Noe]

Philosophical excellence can have different expressions: publication, conversation, engaged citizenship, collaboration. The idea that the presence or absence of one or the other of these is a sine qua non for value in philosophy is crazy. Some of the best philosophical minds I know aren't philosophers. I don't assume that philosophers tenured at top schools are, for that reason alone, excellent philosophers, and I don't suppose that failing to get tenure is, in itself, an indicator of anything substantial. I can think of two excellent and promising younger philosophers who were recently denied tenure from top institutions. These points are neutral as regards the question of cronyism and justice in hiring and promotion practices. I'm for the latter, and how.

I feel uncomfortable with some of the foregoing discussion because, or so it seems to me, Dreben has simply been used as a hook for a host of institutional or generalized complaints that really have little to do with him. I don't want to go there. But I'll risk going _near_ there.

Consider three issues.

1. Charisma in philosophy. Austin and Wittgenstein were stunningly charismatic and this caused them to have, it turns out, a quite negative influence on many students. What students pick up is the swagger and the attitude -- the need to come down on the issues in the right sort of way -- but they have trouble with the philosophical substance. In the case of Wittgenstein, at least, the "imitable" features of work seem to be mostly negative and stultifying. Wittgenstein himself, though, was a philosopher, not a dogmatist, and his work is filled, I believe, with argument and critical analysis. (Here I disagree with Dreben, who once said in my presence that if you find an argument in Wittgenstein, you've misinterpreted him.) Anyway, lots of other philosophers are charismatic (not only great ones). Certainly Dreben was charismatic, and I think his strong influence on people -- the excitement he generated -- has a lot to do with that. And Dreben was also "negative." I loved sitting in on Dreben's classes when I was a graduate student, but I would have encouraged only the very best undergraduates to do so. This isn't a comment about his ideas, but about the dangers of blending charisma and negativeness.

2. It's possible to see the whole of twentieth century analytic philosophy as preoccupied with the question of how to make sense of philosophy and its projects in light of changing ideas about the a priori. The development from Wittgenstein of the Tractatus, through the Vienna Circle, to Quine, Davidson, Putnam, Kripke, along one line of development, to Austin, Ryle, and the later Wittgenstein, along a different line of development. In that context, Dreben's challenges to philosophers, are really just a moment of a larger story. That is why I suggested that the question of why Dreben had such a dim conception of philosophy (originally posed by Brian Leiter) ought fruitfully to be reframed as a question about why philosophy in the 20th century is so problematic for itself (and it is).

3. What was Dreben's challenge to philosophy? Well, consistent with what I say in 2, I think he just added his voice to a chorus of concerns along these lines: Does philosophy have its own subject matter? What differentiates a philosophical as opposed to a natural scientific investigation of a question? These are the sorts of questions that a concern with sense and nonsense comes down to. Dreben was consistently deflationary in his answers. Physics and math are just physics and math and will never underwrite philosophically interesting "metaphysical" conclusions. But in a way this is just a pun on metaphysics, for if you have a more deflationary conception of what problems it is that philosophy is asking (e.g. can we reduce arithmetic to logic?), then its clear that math (or mathematical logic) does provide an answer for philosophy. Alternatively you might have a richer conception of what falls in the domain of the science. (That's my view. I think science and philosophy are deeply interwoven. Scientific breakthroughs can be philosophical breakthroughs, and vice versa.) -- I would say that these remain important questions for us now. They certainly matter for my work in philosophy of mind and cognitive science.

[Brian Leiter]

I was particularly struck by Robin Kar's most recent posting, but I want to thank not only him, but also the others for their thoughtful and educational contributions to this thread. It's almost enough to make me think the blogosphere can have intellectual content!

Permit me a casual observation regarding the significance of the institutional fact that Dreben was at Harvard (at a time when that *really* meant something), and not out in the provinces (like Austin or, God forbid, New Brunswick!). The giants of Harvard Philosophy in the 1930s and 1940s were Ralph Barton Perry, William Ernest Hocking, Raphael Demos, Donald Williams, John Wild, and C.I. Lewis. I imagine their former students thought very highly of these individuals, and that some of these philosophers were deemed deep and important. I also strongly suspect that the contributors to this thread have read only Lewis and, maybe, Williams. I imagine some others have at least "heard" of some of the others. None of them are significant figures in 20th-century philosophy: that is surely clear in the year 2005. It was surely not clear in the year 1945. Does this support, as the philosophers of science like to say, a pessimistic induction? I'm not sure.

[Varol Akman]

My PhD (1985, Rensselaer, not Haavad) advisor was Wm. Randolph Franklin who was a student of Harry R. Lewis at Harvard. Lewis himself was a student of Dreben. Lewis' PhD (1974) thesis in Applied Mathematics is titled "Herbrand Expansions and Reductions of the Decision Problem." Both Lewis and Rohit Parikh (an older student of Dreben, c. 1962?) are distinguished computer scientists.

By the way, here's what The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic Volume 5, Number 4, Dec. 1999 wrote when Dreben died:

In Memoriam. Burton Dreben, Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Harvard University, and Professor of Philosophy at Boston University, died of lymphoma on July 11, 1999, at the age of 71. He was born in 1927 in Boston and graduated from Harvard College in 1949. His affiliation with Harvard was almost continuous thereafter, although he retired from Harvard in 1990 and taught at Boston University from 1991. He worked on the decision problem for first-order logic and was author, with Warren Goldfarb, of The Decision Problem: Solvable Classes of Quantificational Formulas (1979). With collaborators he discovered in the 1960s the errors in Herbrand's proof of his fundamental theorem and corrected them to the extent possible. He was a pioneer and a very influential figure in the historical study of analytical philosophy and the history of modern logic. He served the ASL as an editor of The Journal of Symbolic Logic and as Treasurer.

[Ali]

The following quote puts in sharp focus aspects of Professor Lieter’s initial question:

"What Rawls is saying is that there is in a constitutional liberal democracy a tradition of thought which it is our job to explore and see whether it can be made coherent and consistent. . . . We are not arguing FOR such a society. We take for granted that today only a fool would not want to live in such a society . . . . If one cannot see the benefits of living in a liberal constitutional democracy, if one does not see the virtue of that ideal, then I do not know how to convince him. To be perfectly blunt, sometimes I am asked, when I go around speaking for Rawls, What do you say to an Adolf Hitler? The answer is [nothing.] You shoot him. You do not try to reason with him. Reason has no bearing on this question. So I do not want to discuss it." [Dreben, “On Rawls and Political Liberalism," Samuel Freeman ed. The Cambridge companion to Rawls (Cambridge, U.K. ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2003): 316-346, here 328-329, emphasis in the original].

[Kosta Calfas]

Perhaps it's simply the case that philosophical talent seeks out the places where that talent can be best harnessed. You'll recall that after his disasterous stint as a student of aeronautical engineering, Wittgenstein allegedly sought Frege's advice as to where he could study the philosophy of mathematics and was then directed to Russell at Cambridge.

As for Dreben, I was thinking he might have fallen victim to his master's success. Wittgensteinians, especially those who were personally acquainted with him, were actively discouraged by the master from pursuing philosophy. None of Wittgenstein's students (Malcolm, Rhees, Anscombe, vonWright) ever attained the level of fame or influence Wittgenstein did. When they attempted to publish something of their own, it came off as contrived from the original. Even students of W. separated by distance and discipline could not help but remain influenced. One could read Drury's 'Danger of Words' (1973!) continuous with the Philosophical Investigations and not notice the books are by two different authors. O'Drury wrote a disclaimer at the beginning of the book acknowledging Wittgenstein's influence on the book's content but claiming responsibility for the ideas and errors contained therein. Nonetheless, the book still read like lost Wittgenstein lectures.

Wittgenstein was at a university where he, given his talent, was able to indoctrinate persistent and engaged young philosophers with his teaching. Those philosophers at an already prestigious school gained appointments at other prestigious schools where the philosophy could be transmitted. It sounds like the difference between W. and Dreben is that the latter didn't come with original work that broke from the already entrenched Wittgensteinian tradition.

I think everyone goes through that unhealthy phase of unabashed Wittgenstein worship (the author of this post included). For someone like Dreben, who was both temporally and personally closer to it than the rest of us, the influence was probably even more pronounced. Maybe Dreben was "Wittgensteined."

[Ali]

"For someone like Dreben, who was both temporally and personally closer to it than the rest of us, the influence was probably even more pronounced. Maybe Dreben was "Wittgensteined."

Maybe, but also consider the following:

===
In his short but very interesting biographical piece on Burton Dreben (referred to by Professor Leiter in his post) Rawls writes (referring to Dreben): “Though Burt considers Wittgenstein one of the greatest philosophers, he thinks that he also was not a great or even a good man. Burt believes that his moral and religious ideas, his concern with his guilt and personal salvation, were indeed rather childish, and that Wittgenstein didn’t know and didn’t understand the religion of the prophets. What counted for them was the order of righteousness, justice, and humanity in the public world of the people and in their customs and practices of life. Sacrifices, prayers and hymns cannot substitute for these [Rawls refers here to Isaiah 58]. Lincoln was not a philosopher, but Burt would say he was a great man . . . . Lincoln understood the religion of the prophets, as the Second Inaugural makes clear, and Burt has said that a grove of oaks would have been a better memorial to Lincoln than the classical temple he was to have." (p. 423).

It is worth mentioning that Dreben had great influence on Rawls especially on his presentation particularly in the later writings. Three crucial works for understanding later Rawls were written and worked out in close collaboration and consultation with Dreben (see pp. 424-425).

I fear that I am going to be referred to here as the "Third Matt." I find this thread quite interesting. I studied very closely with Burton Dreben throughout graduate school: I took or audited nearly all his courses (!) during my seven years in graduate school; he supervised my dissertation as well. So if there is a Dreben cult, I am no doubt a prime member (though I think I'm late on my membership dues).

Unsurprisingly, I have the highest respect and admiration for Burton Dreben, but I certainly can understand why he always had his detractors. Some of the critical comments above are certainly not without justification. However, I do want to take issue with the remarks of Jason Stanley, which seem to me to be grossly unfair. Jason supposes that Dreben had a very hard time working, that he may have been unable to sit "for long hours reading and writing." All of "that stuff about nonsense" (which is to say everything Dreben had to teach about philosophy) was then just an elaborate rationalization for this supposed inability to work--a lame attempt at suggesting the profundity of his own thought. Now it might be tempting to suppose that Jason's hostility toward this deceased professor who, he admits, once went out of his way to help advance his own career, is due to a sneaking suspicion that Dreben is right, that despite Jason's self-professed productivity, there is a troubling sense of something vacuous at the core of all that effort. I say it might be _tempting_ to put forward such a line. But then, of course, I would have to recognize that this is just baseless speculation, that in truth I know nothing of Jason's psychology, or his innermost attitudes toward his own work and that it would therefore be useless to build any theories on the supposition that I do. (And, by the way, engaging in such suppositions would not produce "nonsense" in anything like the sense discussed in the thread above, but something more akin to slander, or, at best, gossip.) So, likewise, it would seem best for Jason to refrain from his speculations as well.

For the record, Dreben did not have any difficulty concentrating. On the contrary, he had an endless capacity to stay focused on intellectual questions--it was precisely this quality, together with an intense interest in the work of his colleagues and students that made him such a valued reader and critic. (His photographic memory was a good asset as well.) Indeed, he was, until his dying day, more obsessed with philosophy--with reading, thinking about and discussing philosophy--than anyone I have met before or since. His difficulty with writing, whatever its cause, was longstanding. He never wrote a dissertation; indeed, he once told me that he even had trouble writing enough for his qualifying exam in graduate school (he said wryly that the only reason he passed was that his examiners were unable to decipher his handwriting and so he got a chance to "read"--i.e. elaborate on--his answers for them). While he did write a few articles on philosophy late in his career, they did not really convey what was interesting about his philosophical position. So clearly Dreben's gifts were in the realm of the spoken word and could only be seen (by some) in his teaching and, perhaps especially, in one-on-one discussions with colleagues and students. Perhaps Jason believes this limitation should disqualify him from holding a position in academia, or at least from having any