Williamson on What Philosophy Ought to Be
As something of a follow-up to the previous post, I just attach some passages from the concluding afterword/sermon (his word) in Timothy Williamson’s The Philosophy of Philosophy (2007), rather unambiguously titled ‘Must Do Better’: something of a manifesto for how/what analytic philosophy ought to be. I have mixed feelings and undeveloped thoughts/concerns about this vision of philosophy but I just don’t have time to comment right now. Still it’s pretty provoking material by itself (and quite nicely written): more than just methodology it’s a matter of philosophical ethics. I only indulged in highlighting some key passages.
Much contemporary analytic philosophy seems to be written in the tacit hope of discursively muddling through, uncontrolled by any clear methodological constraints. That may be enough for easy questions, if there are any in philosophy; it is manifestly inadequate for resolving the hard questions with which most philosophers like to engage. All too often it produces only eddies in academic fashion, without any advance in our understanding of the subject matter. Although we can make progress in philosophy, we cannot expect to do so when we are not working at the highest available level of intellectual discipline. That level is not achieved by effortless superiority. It requires a conscious collective effort. We who classify ourselves as “analytic” philosophers tend to fall into the assumption that our allegiance automatically grants us meth-odological virtue. According to the crude stereotypes, analytic philosophers use arguments while “continental” philosophers do not. But within the analytic tradition many philosophers use arguments only to the extent that most “continental” philosophers do: some kind of inferential movement is observable, but it lacks the clear articulation into premises and conclusion and the explicitness about the form of the inference that much good philosophy achieves. Again according to the stereotypes, analytic philosophers write clearly while “continental” philosophers do not. But much work within the analytic tradition is obscure even when it is written in everyday words, short sentences and a relaxed, open-air spirit, because the structure of its claims is fudged where it really matters. (286)
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How can we do better? We can make a useful start by getting the simple things right. Much even of analytic philosophy moves too fast in its haste to reach the sexy bits. Details are not given the care they deserve: crucial claims are vaguely stated, signifi cantly different formulations are treated as though they were equivalent, examples are under-described, arguments are gestured at rather than properly made, their form is left unexplained, and so on. A few resultant errors easily multiply to send inquiry in completely the wrong direction. Shoddy work is sometimes masked by pretentiousness, allusiveness, gnomic concision, or winning informality. But often there is no special disguise: producers and consumers have simply not taken enough trouble to check the details. We need the unglamorous virtue of patience to read and write philosophy that is as perspicuously structured as the diffi culty of the subject requires, and the austerity to be dissatisfi ed with appealing prose that does not meet those stan-dards. The fear of boring oneself or one’s readers is a great enemy of truth. Pedantry is a fault on the right side. (288)
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Precision is often regarded as a hyper-cautious characteristic. It is importantly the opposite. Vague statements are the hardest to convict of error. Obscurity is the oracle’s self-defense. To be precise is to make it as easy as possible for others to prove one wrong. That is what requires courage. But the community can lower the cost of precision by keeping in mind that precise errors often do more than vague truths for scientifi c progress. (289)
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Rigor and depth both matter: but while the continual deliberate pursuit of rigor is a good way of achieving it, the continual deliberate pursuit of depth (as of happiness) is far more likely to be self-defeating. Better to concentrate on trying to say something true and leave depth to look after itself. Nor are rigor and precision enemies of the imagination, any more than they are in mathematics. Rather, they increase the demands on the imagination, not least by forcing one to imagine examples with exactly the right structure to challenge a generalization; cloudiness will not suffice. They make imagination consequential in a way in which it is not in their absence. The most rigorous and precise discussion often involves the most playfulness and laughter: toying with subtly different combinations of ideas yields surprising scenarios. Humorless solemnity masks sloppiness and confusion. (289)
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When law and order break down, the result is not freedom or anarchy but the capricious tyranny of petty feuding warlords. Similarly, the unclarity of constraints in philosophy leads to authoritarianism. Whether an argument is widely accepted depends not on publicly accessible criteria that we can all apply for ourselves but on the say-so of charismatic authority figures. Pupils cannot become autonomous from their teachers because they cannot securely learn the standards by which their teachers judge. A modicum of willful unpredictability in the application of standards is a good policy for a professor who does not want his students to gain too much independence. (290)
Fabio Cunctator
