Much of my blogging has been devoted to trying to figure out which distinctions between kinds of philosophical approaches are merely sociological (e.g. reflections of the personal connections and academic credentials of particular philosophers) and which are genuinely substantive. I do think there are rather fundamental distinctions between kinds of philosophers, but (as I’ve been arguing this week) I don’t think they correspond to any kind of “division between departments” or “nexuses” that clearly divide two or three kinds of departments (such nexuses exist, but they are considerably more sociological in character). Nevertheless, I think that Brian Leiter has been on to something by his division of “naturalistic” vs. “humanist” philosophy. I just don’t think that this division explains anything about the sociology of department relations. I just haven’t been able to put my finger on what it is. But this morning, I received an e-mail from the prominent Rutgers graduate Michael Strevens, which was a reply to my grouping Fodor and Stich into a natural kind in the comments thread of a previous posting. Strevens’s comment it seems to me comes as close as I’ve seen to describing an actual natural divide between kinds of philosophers. It does so furthermore by remaining within the space of Rutgers philosophy. I think this suggests that the actual divisions between philosophers (as opposed to the merely sociological ones) do not divide departments into distinct nexuses. Anyway, here is Strevens:
I was bemused to see the names of Fodor and Stich used together to pick out a “Rutgers style” of philosophy. It seems to me that Fodor and Stich are as different as it is possible for two philosophers to be. More precisely: Fodor and Stich lie on opposite sides, indeed opposite extremes, of the most important division in philosophy, which might as much as any be called the humanistic/scientific divide.
Fodor is a humanist insofar as his work on the mind is an attempt to vindicate our self-understanding, our human picture of the mind: it is a law-governed, representation-involving, inference and planning machine in which what is inferred from what depends on the content of the representations involved. That is to put things in modern vocabulary, but the general picture is familiar from way back, and constitutes, in the eyes of many psychologists, the core of a “folk psychology” common to all humankind. Philosophy, in Fodor’s hands, fights on the side of humanity, attempting to justify our ways to the world.
Stich, by contrast, uses the tools of philosophy to undermine our conception of ourselves, to alienate us from our own minds. The aim is to produce discomfort, uncertainty, the sudden dropping away of foundations that had seemed secure. This is genuinely “scientific” philosophy. It fights against humanity, or at least against human culture, which it conceives as an accretion or insulating layer of prejudice, misapprehension, and half-truth. It is an attempt to undercut our ways by appeal to the way the world really is.
For the humanist, philosophy ought never to stray too far from common sense. For the scientist, “common sense philosophy” is about as attractive as “biblical biology”. Humanists may very well perceive scientists as shallow, because scientists distrust and therefore keep their distance from ways of thinking that are central to our conception of ourselves. Scientists may very well perceive humanists as obscure, because until their work is done, humanists must point to aspects of our self-understanding without fully articulating them, or deluded, because without justification or even articulation, they commit themselves to the validity of this self-understanding.
Of course, both camps have equal disdain for technical problem-solvers..."
First, the use of logic or technical tools cross-cuts the humanist-scientific divide described by Strevens. Many of the very best a priori metaphysicians, such as Kit Fine, heavily exploit logical and technical tools. But these tools are placed in the service of capturing our intuitions about fundamental metaphysical facts having to do e.g. with modality and essentialism. The appeal to “technical” in the recently much-abused phrase “technical problem solver” distinguishes metaphysicians such as Kit Fine, who makes use of such tools, from metaphysicians such as Sydney Shoemaker and Alvin Plantinga, who generally do not use them. But this is an utterly superficial distinction. In all substantive senses, Fine, Shoemaker, and Plantinga engage in the same project (though with different conclusions). They take many our common sense metaphysical categories at pretty-much face-value, and assume that our intuitions about them are guides to metaphysical reality (though particular intuitions may be explained away by clashes with other plausible a priori principles).
Logic is most often used as a tool to represent points,
rather than a point in itself. Some people have great facility with this tool,
and others less facility. But use of logic or mathematics does not help make
any kind of distinction between kinds of philosophy or philosophers.
Strevens’s distinction is reminiscent of the distinction
Strawson made between descriptive and revisionary metaphysics in the
introduction of Individuals. Revisionary metaphysicians think it is a
legitimate option to end up with conclusions that validate very few features of
our ordinary conceptual scheme; indeed, such philosophers assign no epistemic
significance to facts about our ordinary conceptual scheme. Descriptive
metaphysicians take the task of philosophy to vindicate central features of
that scheme. Strevens’s distinction between “humanist” and “scientific”
philosophy is similar, but not identical. First, there are strongly revisionary
metaphysicians who are motivated by considerations other than scientific ones
(think of Van Inwagen’s Christian motivations for his ontology). Secondly,
there are philosophers of science (think of Tim Maudlin) who undertake in their
work to justify central features of our conceptual scheme (but maybe this shows
they aren’t scientific philosophers in Strevens’s sense).
-Jason
