So other than commenting on others’ posts, I’ve been a bit, um, blog-delinquent with the hiring season and all. Hopefully I’ll get back on track now, starting with a comment on what’s not wrong with the state of pluralism in philosophy. A recent Proceedings and Addresses of the APA (78:2) is chock full of letters to the editor that criticize aspects of the profession (including, incidentally, two letters on the state of journal decisions on submissions). Among them, John Lachs has a wide-ranging criticism of anti-pluralism among philosophers. Traditionally, this kind of critique has been targeted at analytic philosophers, though Lachs gratefully acknowledges that his criticisms apply to all sorts.
While, as I’ll explain, I think Lachs is right about some issues, I also think some of his criticisms are off-base.
For example, he uses positivism’s "juvenile" suggestion that "much of what philosophers say [is] literally nonsensical" and the more recent relegation of "much philosophy to psychology or literature, and [propensity] to treat colleagues who think in those ways with condescension" as evidence that "exclusion has become standard in the profession in the Twentieth Century" (p.6).
One might wonder, of course, how Lachs thinks he’s justified in calling positivism "juvenile" if he also believes that "the proper attitude of philosophers is to let a hundred flowers bloom." But putting that aside, consider whether those two pieces of evidence really support the claim that objectionable exclusion is the standard in philosophy.
Since positivists have arguments that, e.g., Heidegger’s statements are nonsensical, that doesn’t seem objectionably exclusionary. The arguments might be unsound, of course, but that’s another matter. Philosophers engage in privileging certain views and critiquing others. The positivists did this by going straight for the knees of metaphysicians like Heidegger and attacking very basic methodological commitments — a broad strategy, of course, that Heidegger himself employed. So arguing, on methodological grounds, against opposing views, does not seem to me to be in-principle exclusionary, at least not in an objectionable manner. Half the fun is the methodology itself.
Regarding the idea that some people who consider themselves to be doing philosophy are actually doing psychology or literature, I also don’t see why this is objectionably exclusionary just on its face. We wouldn’t object if someone said that Skinner (or the saccharine pop-psych, self-help drivel of Dr. Phil) or Faulkner (or some trashy romance novel) is a psychologist or fiction writer. And it’s conceivable that some people are mistaken about which field they are working in. So we’d need to have a discussion about what is properly considered philosophy and what is properly considered non-philosophy. Such a discussion would be a good thing, I’d think. But Lachs doesn’t give us a principle for drawing such a distinction. (Indeed, later in the letter, Lachs suggests that philosophers aren’t in a place to claim that non-argument-based writing isn’t philosophy unless we’ve studied "religious thinkers and those who write interestingly and persuasively in the wisdom tradition" (p.13). I found this to be a bit extreme, and it’s where Lachs’ providing a "What Counts as Philosophy" principle might have helped. I also wonder how a writing can be persuasive if it contains no argument, even implicitly.)
Part of the reason for Lachs wanting us to let everyone into the game is that he thinks that, while philosophy is intrinsically and instrumentally valuable, it doesn’t really make any progress towards the truth, for philosophy "offers no compelling evidence for any of its captivating views" (p.7) and so "no philosopher has a right to look down on the efforts of others" (p.6). I find this an odd view, too. While there’s probably going to be some intractable disagreement, criticism and counter-criticism, etc., surely it is too strong to say that all disagreement is intractable. First, we do (hopefully!) offer compelling evidence for our views - that’s what the arguments are for, and it’s part of what distinguishes what we do from, say, the "metaphysics" section of your local Barnes and Noble. Second, surely we can uniformly criticize some views as clearly wrong. To take an easy shot, haven’t we all given up on Thales’ proposal that "all is water"?
Now all that being said, I think that Lachs is right to lament the condescension and contempt that often accompany deep methodological disagreement. (He also gives a helpful history of the exclusion in the APA of the 1970s and the ensuing "pluralist revolt" by the early 1980s, for us junior folks who missed all the fun). He’s right to suggest that we need to approach each other with trust and, I’d add, good faith. And while he confirms my experience that philosophy is now more pluralistic than it used to be, my impression is that we could do better, as, for example, I’m told Australians do with respect to the kind of Continental philosophy done in the U.S. by those who attend the SPEP conference.
But it’s one thing to accuse philosphers of unjustifiably expressing contemptful attitudes. It’s something else to claim that we shouldn’t engage in methodological disagreement, or that we shouldn’t decide that some writing isn’t philosophy, or that we haven’t made any progress at all.
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