Philosophical Progress

And Other Philosophical Studies

Nicholas Rescher

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781614517849
• eBook ISBN: 9781614519935
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

The nine original essays collected in this volume explore the themes of philosophical progress, ultimate explanation, the metaphysics of free will, and the relation of sciences and religion. These essays exemplify Nicholas Rescher's characteristic mode of combining historical perspectives with analytical elucidation on philosophically contested issues and utilize this methodology to address some of the salient problems of the field.

1 Philosophical Progress

1.1 The Question of Progress

Science and technology are inherently progressive enterprises of rational interaction with nature based on increasingly sophisticated observation and experimentation. So here later means better: there is no sense returning to an earlier state of the art after another has visibly established its superiority. But ordinary life is something else again. Here younger generations do not have a track record of profiting from the experience to their elders: each generation learns only from its own mistakes without much benefit of intergenerational transmission. In matters of behaviour be it at the personal (moral) level or at the level of collective action in social and political affairs, people sense and sensibility is but rarely more elevated and worthy than it was in the past. Here thought and action develop kaleidoscopically in relation to another without any strong impetus to amelioration: ordinary life seems to take its random walk over a terrain pervaded by the contingencies of fad and fashion. So to all visible appearances the human condition is such that in science and technology pragmatic rationality rules, while in ordinary life it remains largely inopportune and inert. But what about philosophy?

It is critically important to distinguish from the very outset between progress in philosophy and the progress of philosophy. After all, philosophizing considered in its totality as a field of deliberation and discussion—marches on apace from month to month and year to year. Ever more books pour forth from the presses, ever more journals issue from innumerable publishers. True to the maxim of “publish or perish”, the world’s 25,000 professors of philosophy make entire forests pay tribute to their efforts—to say nothing of the nowadays popular postings in etherspace. All this productivity has greatly enhanced philosophy as a field of academic and scholarly endeavor.

But of course the issue of progress in philosophy—substantive progress in resolving or at least elucidating the issues of the field—is something else again. Here progress seems to occur in a much less massive and impressive way.

Most philosophers incline to view substantive progress in philosophy as a matter of rational consolidation and emergent consensus. And here matters are likely to seem decidedly bleak. For thanks to philosophy’s balkanized nature, it transpires that with respect to virtually all of the problems on the agenda of philosophy there is a plurality of discordant opinion, and that no one position or school of thought has managed to establish itself decisively as the casually agreed position of the community as a whole.

Already at the very dawn of modern philosophy, René Descartes complained that “philosophy has been cultivated for many centuries by the best minds that have ever lived and that nevertheless no single thing is to be found in it that is not subject of dispute.”¹ To all appearances it might well be that, as Bertrand Russell put it in 1912, “philosophy is to be studied not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves, because these questions . . . enrich our intellectual imagination.”²

A sensible treatment of the question of philosophical progress is inevitably going to have to come to terms with complex and controversial issues. For progress in every area of inquiry will never be a merely volumetric matter of more written product—of more discussion and more information. Thus, after all, would overlook the crucial question of importance vs. insignificance of evidential understanding vs. triviality. In philosophy as in every area of science or scholarship the issue of progress will have to provide in matter of illumination and depth of understanding. And it is one of the scandals of epistemology that on this crucial issue of importance we have effectually no guidance from philosophers and cognitive theorists. “How are we to tell what is correct and important, and what is not?” is one of those seemingly unavoidable questions that theoreticians have somehow managed to avoid.

The fact is that the issue before us—philosophical progress—has very different dimensions. In particular, it encompasses a range of very different questions:

• – Can philosophy make progress?
• – Does philosophy presently make progress?
• – Has philosophy made progress in the past? If so, when, where, and how much?
• – What are the prospects of philosophical progress in the future?

And all of these questions presuppose yet another crucially preliminary issue:

• – What is it that would (or could) constitute philosophical progress? Wherein would philosophical progress consist?

And over and above this conceptual issue, there yet looms the normative question:

• – If (and insofar as) philosophy does not make progress, does this impact negatively on the nature of the subject itself. Does it somehow derogate from the subject’s value and significance? Or is it perhaps somehow inappropriate to expect philosophy to be a progressive venture?

After all, there are in theory various different possible modes of philosophical progress. These include in particular

• – raising new issues; expanding the thematic agenda
• – asking new questions; posing new problems and puzzle
• – introducing new ideas = new consideration to take into account
• – clarifying issues; introducing new concepts and elaborating new distinctions
• – finding and substantiating new answers to old questions
• – introducing new perspectives and new points of view

However, when people deliberate about philosophical progress they seldom have such a broad range of issues in view. Almost invariably, they focus on resolving problems and answering questions definitively or at least more reliably than heretofore; on narrowing the range of disagreement and contracting the realm of controversy through making manifest the superior plausibility of certain issue-resolutions. Progress is thus seen as a matter of achieving a rationally substantiated consensus on the basic issues of the field. It is this aspect of the matter that has primarily been of ongoing concern to APA presidents, manifesting itself since the earliest days of the organization. ³

1.2 Presidential Perspectives

Most philosophers much prefer doing some piece of philosophical work to thinking about the prospects of the enterprise at large.⁴ And in the face of a contrast with the obvious progressiveness of the natural sciences, they tried to avoid the onus of such potentially embarrassing questions.

There is, however, something of an exception to this rule—one that becomes clearly manifest in the range of our present concern—namely presidential addresses. The opportunity to deliver such an address seems to embolden its producer to stepping back from matters of detail—to take a broad view of the subject to ruminate—and perhaps even pontificate—about the nature of the field. In this way the topic of philosophical progress has time and again come to figure in presidential addresses.

Among the first to touch the subject was Alexander Ormond (president 1902-03) who saw philosophical progress in terms of an increasing “reasonableness” whose nature is “a test of the congruity of any given content with experience as a whole, or with our ideal of experience as a whole” (p. 53). And here, as he saw it “experience” encompasses our cognitive experience with rational inquiry in all its dimensions. Over time, this experience so unfolds that [the development of] “knowledge—and by this I mean the whole insight we seek into the meaning of our world—is a business that, when viewed largely, will involve the methods and results of both the scientific and philosophical investigations.” Progress, as Ormond saw it, lies in the “integration [of science and philosophy] under some comprehending and synthetic concept of knowledge . . . [which makes it] possible for us to combine the functions of both scientific and philosophical investigations” (p. 55). Progress, thus regarded, lies in enhancing the systematic coordination of empirical and speculative inquiry. To be sure whether and to what extent such progress has been achieved—or is even achievable—is open for discussion and deliberation. The realization of this desideratum might well be a matter less for expectation than for hope, but “so long as we entertain this larger hope, we will not be willing that philosophy should be shorn of the theoretic criteria and aims” (p. 57)—”the interpretation of the world is the light of reason and purpose” (p. 56).

As Ormond thus saw it, philosophical progress is a perfectly meaningful conception that looks to a systemic unification of knowledge. And while this enterprise is (in Kantian terminology) rather a regulative ideal for philosophizing than an accomplished fact that is the fruit of its efforts, nevertheless the prospect of progress is something of which the philosopher should never despair.

George Ladd (president 1904-05) also raised the issue of philosophical progress in his address (p. 124) and lamented that “the barrenness of definite and permanent results shown by philosophical discipline may be made a [proper] subject of complaint” (p. 128). This state of things is inevitable, however, because while the natural world addressed by science is indeed constant, the human world addressed by philosophy is ever-changing. In consequence “each day and generation must have its very own philosophy,” while nevertheless “every age must attack anew the problems which, with all these appearances of variable antiquity . . . need prospectively to be wrought over anew” (p. 128). And yet despite ongoing change a certain progressive directionality is to be looked for. Here amplitude of vision and unity of coordination are the crux. For the characteristic mission of philosophy lies in such matters as “harmonizing with one another and with itself the particular sciences” and also as constituting to the betterments and the uplifting of the life of humanity” (p. 135). Granted, such a road is difficult to travel. But this, so Ladd maintained, is no reason to despair of the prospect of making progress along its way. For as he saw it, the cognitive progress of science, on the one hand, and the social progress of culture, on the other, are destined to carry philosophy forward in their wake.

An unusually hopeful view of philosophical progress was expressed by Andrew Ansley (president 1915-1916) in his presidential address. Turning his back to the European carnage of the day, he saw philosophy as contributing to the consolidation and advancement of “the role of reason” (p. 203) through facilitating “the production of new spiritual fact” (p. 204). This project affords a powerful force that “expands the intellectual and moral order by broadening its scope . . . [and] creating spiritual limits among the segments of man’s world” (p. 204). These “things of the spirit” . . . are the constituent factors of human nature, the essential reality of man’s world. In so far as philosophy fosters these it accomplishes its mission. As they progress, it [too] gains in scope, in consistency, in power” (p. 204). And so, viewed in this essentially Hegelian perspective, philosophy is a progressive enterprise that at once contributes to and itself benefits from a constantly expanding and deepening progress in humanity’s intellectual and spiritual development.

Walter Everett (president 1922-23) approached the issue of philosophical progress in their broadest bearing on human progress at large, defining this as “an increase in the values curiously realized and enjoyed by humanity” (p. 122). The capacity of philosophy to support and foster this sort of progress, while indeed discussable should not be deemed a lost cause. For “it may come to be seen that progress involves not only a transvaluation of certain values, but also a reversal of some current standards of judgment” (p. 137). For “the idea of progress for the future is not an idea that is true or false independent of our human attitude, our intelligence, and [our] will” (p. 139). On this basis, philosophy itself can itself progress through its contribution to human progress at large. And “no uncertainty as to the fortunes of progress can lessen our obligation to labor for it” (p. 140). Accordingly, Everett maintained that philosophical progress deserves to be seen as a practicable and inherently desirable prospect.

Wilbur Urban (president 1925-1926) chose to lecture on “Progress in Philosophy in the Last Quarter Century [viz. 1900-1925],” (pp. 267-88). Here he saw the first task as that of “answering the significant questions as to what real progress is or whether real advances, in the sense of real [contributions to] knowledge have taken place” (p. 269). And he stresses that these themselves are “philosophical, or, if you will, metaphysical questions” (p. 269). And we must, as he sees it, worry whether “the whole epistemological movement of modern philosophy [is] an Abweg leading into a blind alley” (p. 220).

In addressing this question, Urban nailed his flag to the mast of the fact/value distinction. Scientific progress, as he saw it, is a matter of enhancement of our grasp of the worlds’ facts; philosophy by contrast, faces the task of widening the conception [of knowledge] to include ethical, aesthetic, and logical values” (p. 273). For here, scientific inquiry about what people do value does not address the measuredly normative issues of appropriateness—of all they should value. For this issue leads into an autonomous reality, requiring “the recognition that value is a logically primitive conception that can be neither defined nor validated in terms of anything else” (p. 274). Value, that is, is sui generis: its ultimate basis impervious to factual and scientific considerations, (at least at the level of ends as counterdistingishable from means). Insisting that “value is a unique form of objectivity” (p. 274), Urban here envisioned a domain of deliberation apart from the factual realm explicit by science. And he viewed the emerge of this realm as the greatest progressive achievement realized by philosoph...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Preface
• Table of Contents
• 1 Philosophical Progress
• 2 Issues of Ultimate Explanation
• 3 Evidentiating Free Will
• 4 God and the Grounding of Morality
• 5 Contextuality and the Relation to Science and Religion
• 6 Value Exclusion and Neutrality in Science
• 7 Generalization and the Future
• 8 Cognitive Eschatology in C. S. Peirce - The Evolutionary Pathway to Scientific Knowledge
• 9 Reference Theory
• Name Index