# Metaphilosophy Landscape Reference note for thinking about the sub-discipline of metaphilosophy—what philosophy is, how it should be done, and why we should do it. ## Source Texts - [[Timothy Williamson]] - *The Philosophy of Philosophy* (2007), especially ch. 9 "Widening the Picture" - Overgaard, Gilbert & Burwood - *An Introduction to Metaphilosophy* (2013) — the only introduction to metaphilosophy in English - Bengson, Cuneo & Shafer-Landau - *Philosophical Methodology: From Data to Theory* (2022) Extracted texts in Attachments/: - `widening_picture_williamson.txt` - `metaphilosophy_full.txt` - `bengson_methodology_full.txt` --- ## The Three Questions Metaphilosophy addresses three interrelated questions: 1. **What is philosophy?** (the nature question) 2. **How should we do it?** (the method question) 3. **Why should we do it?** (the value question) Each can be asked **descriptively** (what do philosophers actually do?) or **prescriptively** (what *should* philosophy be?). The prescriptive question is philosophically more interesting—and any answer to it is itself a philosophical commitment. --- ## The Spectrum: Philosophy's Relationship to Science The most useful organizing principle is a **continuum between two extremes**: **POLE A**: Philosophy is literally part of natural science **POLE B**: Philosophy is not a cognitive enterprise at all Most positions fall somewhere between these poles. --- ## Detailed Positions on the Spectrum ### 1. Philosophy as Literally Part of Science (Quine) **The view**: Philosophy is "continuous with science," lying "at the abstract and theoretical end" of it. "It is within science itself... that reality is to be identified and described." **Key claims**: - No firm a priori/a posteriori distinction - All propositions are in principle revisable in light of experience - Philosophy occupies a protected position in the "web of belief" (like mathematics) - Epistemology should be "naturalized"—contained in natural science as "a chapter of psychology" **Advantage**: Not very revisionist about existing philosophical practice—armchair methods may be appropriate for abstract/theoretical questions. **Problem**: Doesn't explain why philosophy lacks scientific progress despite being similarly abstract to mathematics, which has made enormous progress. **Implication for AI**: If philosophy is continuous with science, AI could do philosophy to the extent it can process data, test hypotheses, construct theories. --- ### 2. Experimental Philosophy **The view**: Philosophy should use the established methods of empirical science—surveys, experiments, neuroscience. **Key claims**: - Traditional "armchair" approaches are inadequate - Philosophical intuitions are empirical data about what people believe - These intuitions vary across cultures, genders, socioeconomic groups - Philosophy needs empirical grounding **Advantage**: Explains lack of progress—philosophers have been using wrong methods. **Problem**: Highly revisionist—implies most philosophers (past and present) have been doing it wrong. **Key figures**: Weinberg, Nichols, Stich; Knobe; Machery --- ### 3. Philosophy as Immature Science **The view**: Philosophy is a science that has not yet "matured"—attained clear view of subject matter, goals, and effective methods. **Key claims**: - Philosophy "has only just very recently struggled out of its early stage into maturity" ([[Michael Dummett]]) - Once mature, philosophy will make scientific progress - Claimed repeatedly throughout history by [[Descartes]], [[Locke]], [[Hume]], [[Kant]], [[Bertrand Russell|Russell]], [[Edmund Husserl|Husserl]], Dummett, Williamson **Problem 1**: Why believe it *this time*? Every generation claims the decisive breakthrough. **Problem 2**: Implies historical philosophical texts become irrelevant—like Descartes on the pineal gland. But wouldn't most philosophers resist abandoning Plato, Aristotle, Kant? --- ### 4. McGinn's Cognitive Closure **The view**: Philosophical questions *are* empirical questions about the natural world, but humans are "not cognitively equipped to solve philosophical problems." **Key claim**: "We make so little progress in philosophy for the same reason we make so little progress in unassisted flying: we lack the requisite equipment." **Advantage**: Explains lack of progress without blaming philosophers. **Problem 1**: Makes philosophy utterly pointless. McGinn bites this bullet, noting only that his view "might be false." **Problem 2**: Fits philosophy of mind better than ethics or aesthetics—odd to say questions about justice are empirical questions we're cognitively barred from answering. --- ### 5. Philosophy as "Midwife" and "Residue" of the Sciences **The view**: Philosophy is the "initial central sun" that periodically "throws off some portion of itself to take station as a science, a planet, cool and well regulated" ([[J.L. Austin]]). **Key claims**: - Questions become "scientific" when definite knowledge becomes possible - The "residue" of unsolved questions is what we call philosophy - When real progress is made, credit goes to the new science ([[Bertrand Russell]], [[John Searle]]) **Explanation of lack of progress**: "Philosophy does not make progress for the same reason that treason never prospers. If it prospered, it would cease to be called 'treason' and would become a glorious revolution" (Smart). **Problem 1**: Ethics and aesthetics don't seem like they could become sciences—and not because of cognitive limitations. **Problem 2**: New sciences generate new philosophies of those sciences (philosophy of physics, philosophy of biology), potentially ad infinitum. --- ### 6. Philosophy as Logic of Science (Logical Positivism) **The view**: Philosophy is "never a system of propositions"—it is "the activity of finding meaning" ([[Moritz Schlick]]). "Philosophy is the logic of science" ([[Rudolf Carnap]]). **Key claims**: - Philosophy analyzes concepts, propositions, proofs, theories of science - Not part of science but *about* science - All genuine problems are either scientific or meaningless pseudo-problems - Traditional "metaphysics" is nonsense **Explanation of lack of progress**: Clarifying meanings is different from accumulating knowledge—no cumulative progress expected. **Problem**: Extremely revisionist—most of philosophy (metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics) becomes "nonsense" or intrusion into science's domain. --- ### 7. Philosophy as Contribution to Understanding (Wittgenstein/Hacker) **The view**: Philosophy makes no contribution to human *knowledge* but contributes to *understanding* of what is already known. **Key claims**: - Philosophy is a "second-order discipline" - It transforms implicit understanding into explicit understanding - Like grammar: Castilian speakers knew their grammar implicitly; the grammar book makes it explicit - "The task of philosophy is not to add to the sum of human knowledge, but to enable us to attain a clear understanding of what is already known" ([[Peter Hacker]]) **The Strawson analogy**: When the first Castilian grammar was presented to Queen Isabella, she asked what use it was. Fluent speakers already "knew" the grammar—they spoke grammatically. But they couldn't *state* the rules. The grammar provides explicit understanding of implicit knowledge. **Explanation of lack of progress**: Understanding isn't cumulative like facts. No "progress" expected in the scientific sense. **Advantage**: Not very revisionist—covers most of what philosophers actually do. **Problem**: Logic seems to be a formal science (like mathematics), not just "understanding." **Implication for AI**: Trickier—AI would need to make *explicit* what humans know *implicitly*. Can AI grasp implicit human understanding? --- ### 8. Philosophy as Transcendental Inquiry (Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty) **The view**: Philosophy investigates "conditions of possibility" of experience and knowledge. **Key claims**: - Transcendental inquiry is "occupied not so much with objects as with the mode of our knowledge of objects" ([[Immanuel Kant]]) - Phenomenology "slackens the intentional threads which attach us to the world and thus brings them to our notice" ([[Maurice Merleau-Ponty]]) - We have "pre-ontological understanding" that phenomenology makes "ontological" ([[Martin Heidegger]]) - Philosophy transforms "the universal obviousness of the being of the world into something intelligible" ([[Edmund Husserl]]) **Differs from Wittgenstein**: Not focused exclusively on language—preoccupied with describing *experience* in everyday contexts. **Explanation of lack of progress**: Fundamentally different enterprise from empirical science—different kind of success expected. **Problem 1**: Fits theoretical philosophy better than ethics or political philosophy. **Problem 2**: Contemporary naturalism makes philosophers wary of "transcendental" claims. **Implication for AI**: Seems hard—investigating conditions of possibility of experience presupposes *having* experience. --- ### 9. Philosophy as World Views (Dilthey, Existentialism) **The view**: Philosophy provides *Weltanschauung*—captures "what it is actually like to live a human life in the world." **Key claims**: - Philosophy integrates how the world is with how we should act - Addresses "the meaning of life" - World views differ "not only because they would assign different importance and truth-value to the same propositions, but also because to accept one rather than the other is to feel one way rather than another about reality and man's place in it" **Examples**: Existentialism ([[Jean-Paul Sartre]], [[Simone de Beauvoir]], [[Albert Camus]])—affirmation of radical freedom, life as "absurd" **Advantage**: Better explains relationship between ethics and metaphysics—the "big questions" are big because answers matter to our lives. **Explanation of lack of progress**: "Some problems endure, endlessly persist, and solving them consists in making a continued effort of coping." Different answers prevail in different circumstances. **Problem**: Not obviously how contemporary analytic philosophy fits this picture. --- ### 10. Philosophy as "Edifying Conversation" (Rorty) **The view**: "Philosophy is not a name for a discipline which confronts permanent issues... Rather, it is a cultural genre, a 'voice in the conversation of mankind.'" **Key claims**: - "The point of edifying philosophy is to keep the conversation going rather than to find objective truth" ([[Richard Rorty]]) - Philosophy should "help prevent it from attaining the secure path of a science" - On the way to "dispensing with philosophy" as a discipline **Explanation of lack of progress**: Progress would be detrimental—philosophy would cease to perform its proper function. **Problem**: Why do philosophers construct rigorous arguments if they've "cancelled the search for objective truth"? **Implication for AI**: AI can certainly converse! But can it "edify"? --- ## Williamson's Abductive Methodology [[Timothy Williamson]]'s *Philosophy of Philosophy* offers the most sophisticated recent defense of philosophy as a **non-natural science**—like mathematics, working from the armchair, but scientific nonetheless. ### Against Deductivism Traditional analytic philosophy was often **deductivist**: derive conclusions from premises by pure logic. But this faces the **over-fitting problem**. **The Gettier case**: After [[Edmund Gettier]]'s counterexamples to "knowledge = justified true belief," philosophers generated ever more complex analyses to handle each new counterexample. Each revision fit the data more closely but became less explanatory—like epicycles in Ptolemaic astronomy. > "What makes a theory or analysis good? Ideally, we want the final theory to be explanatory... not merely to accommodate the data but to cast light on the underlying reality." ### Abductive Philosophy The alternative is **abduction**: inference to the best explanation. Accept the theory with the best overall combination of **theoretical virtues**: - **Simplicity** (ontological parsimony, elegance) - **Unification** (explaining diverse phenomena with unified principles) - **Strength** (making definite, testable predictions) - **Fit with background theory** - **Fruitfulness** (generating new research) This is how science works. Philosophy should too. ### Model-Building From science, Williamson takes the practice of **model-building**: - Models are simplifications that capture essential structure - Multiple models can illuminate different aspects of a phenomenon - Models are assessed by theoretical virtues - No model is "complete"—the question is what aspects it illuminates ### Philosophy as Non-Natural Science Philosophy, like mathematics, is scientific but not natural-scientific: - Both use armchair methods - Both can discover objective truths - Both employ rigorous arguments - But neither relies on empirical observation/experiment The methods are appropriate to the questions asked. **Implication for AI**: If philosophy is assessed by theoretical virtues (simplicity, elegance, unification, strength), those are properties of the *output*, not the producer. An AI-generated theory exhibiting these virtues would be good philosophy regardless of whether the AI "understands" it. --- ## Bengson et al.'s Framework *Philosophical Methodology: From Data to Theory* develops a sophisticated framework for understanding philosophical inquiry. ### Two-Stage Model **Stage 1: Data Collection** - Gather "philosophical data"—the starting points of inquiry - Four features of data: 1. Evidential role (provide evidence for theories) 2. Default status (presumptively correct until shown otherwise) 3. Revisability (can be overturned by sufficient evidence) 4. Non-theoretical (not derived from the theory being evaluated) **Stage 2: Theorizing** - Construct theories to explain the data - Goal: **theoretical understanding** (not mere knowledge) ### Six Properties of Theoretical Understanding A philosophical theory succeeds when it produces understanding that is: 1. **Accurate** (represents reality correctly) 2. **Reason-based** (supported by good reasons) 3. **Robust** (tracks truth reliably across counterfactual situations) 4. **Illuminating** (makes sense of why things are as they are) 5. **Orderly** (systematically organized) 6. **Coherent** (internally consistent, fits with background beliefs) ### The Tri-Level Method Three levels of philosophical inquiry: **Level 1**: First-order questions (substantive philosophical questions) **Level 2**: Methodological questions (how to answer Level 1) **Level 3**: Meta-methodological questions (how to answer Level 2) Philosophy is self-reflexive—meta-level questions are themselves philosophical. --- ## The Progress Problem Philosophy seems not to make progress the way science does. Various responses: ### 1. Philosophy Does Make Progress (Williamson, Dummett, Lewis) - "We know much more in 2007 than was known in 1957" - Best theories are "far better developed" now - Agreement exists on what the problems are and what price each position pays - Logic has made enormous progress ### 2. Philosophy's Goal Isn't Progress (Hacker, Wittgenstein) - Philosophy aims at *understanding*, not *knowledge accumulation* - Understanding isn't cumulative the way facts are - Success = clarity about what we already knew implicitly ### 3. Progress Happens but Gets Reassigned (Residue View) - When philosophy makes real progress, it becomes science - Philosophy gets no credit for its own successes ### 4. The Problems Are Inherently Persistent (World View Approach) - Some problems "endure, endlessly persist" - Different answers prevail in different circumstances - Not failure—just a different kind of inquiry ### 5. We're Constitutively Incapable of Progress (McGinn) - Philosophical problems are real but unsolvable by human minds ### The Aristotle Thought Experiment (Dietrich) Imagine Aristotle time-travels to a modern university: - **Physics class**: Completely lost—feathers and iron balls fall at the same rate? Orbits? Quantum mechanics? He faints repeatedly. - **Metaphysics class**: Knows exactly what the professor is talking about. Raises his hand to discuss errors and important distinctions. What does this show? Not that philosophy has made *no* progress, but that progress comparable to natural sciences is very dim. --- ## Naturalism and Its Limits Most contemporary philosophers are **ontological naturalists**: the natural world is all that exists. > "In the conception of nature's processes which naturalism affirms, there is no place for the operation of disembodied forces, no place for an immaterial spirit directing the course of events, no place for the survival of personality after the corruption of the body which exhibits it." (Nagel) But does ontological naturalism entail **methodological naturalism** (scientism)? **Quine says yes**: Philosophy is continuous with science. **Wittgenstein says no**: Philosophy describes "language-games" and "life-forms" but doesn't do natural science. "We are not doing natural science, nor yet natural history"—"our considerations could not be scientific ones." Philosophical problems are *conceptual*, requiring *clarification* rather than *discovery of new facts*. **Key distinction**: You can accept naturalist *ontology* (no ghosts, no Platonic Forms) without accepting naturalist *methodology* (only science tells us about reality). --- ## Connection to AI-Generated Philosophy Different metaphilosophical positions have different implications for whether AI can "do philosophy": | Position | Can AI Do Philosophy? | Why/Why Not | |----------|----------------------|-------------| | Continuous with science | Yes, to extent AI can do science | Data processing, theory construction | | Understanding (Wittgenstein) | Uncertain | Requires grasping implicit human knowledge | | Abductive/theoretical virtues | Potentially yes | Virtues are properties of output, not producer | | Transcendental inquiry | Probably not | Requires having experience | | World views | Uncertain | Can AI *live by* a world view? | | Edifying conversation | Possibly | AI can converse; can it "edify"? | **The key question**: Is philosophical value a property of the *text* or the *producer*? If value is assessed by theoretical virtues, logical validity, explanatory power—these are properties of output. A text exhibiting them is good philosophy regardless of whether its producer "understands" it. If value requires understanding, intentionality, "stakes"—then the human may be essential. --- ## Summary Table | Position | What Philosophy Is | Progress? | Revisionist? | |----------|-------------------|-----------|--------------| | Quine's naturalism | Part of science | Should make progress | Low | | Experimental philosophy | Empirical science | Will make progress now | High | | Immature science | Science not yet matured | Will progress soon | High | | Cognitive closure | Unsolvable empirical Qs | Impossible | Low | | Residue view | Proto-science | Gets reassigned | Low-Medium | | Logic of science | Meaning-clarification | Different kind | High | | Understanding | Making implicit explicit | Not cumulative | Low | | Transcendental | Conditions of possibility | Different kind | Medium | | World views | Weltanschauung | Contextual | Low | | Edifying conversation | Keeping conversation going | Not the goal | Medium |