Philosophical Progress by Opening Up New Epistemic Possibilities

Many philosophers have despaired of the existence of philosophical progress, or have thought that progress is sharply limited, because rarely do philosophical disputes come to a close with a clear winner. Debates can span centuries or millennia.

I was reminded of this by Alasdair MacIntyre's latest essay, where he writes:

It is not that there is no progress in philosophical inquiry so conceived. Arguments are further elaborated, concepts refined, and creative new ideas advanced by the genius of a Quine or a Kripke or a Lewis. But this makes it the more striking that there is never a decisive resolution of any central disputed issue.

MacIntyre's view is hardly unusual. I'd guess that the majority of professional philosophers regard philosophical progress as limited to (1.) very few of the big issues (e.g., the rejection of the immaterial souls of substance dualism?), (2.) some small or technical issues (e.g., the formalization of propositional logic), and (3.) as MacIntyre says, the elaboration of arguments, refinement of concepts, and introduction of creative new ideas (e.g., the "Mary's room" thought experiment). What seems to be mostly missing from philosophical history is, as MacIntyre says, the "decisive resolution" of the biggest issues.

Such thinking neglects, or at least inappropriately de-emphasizes, the most important form of progress in philosophy: opening up new ideas about what might possibly be true.

In a post a few years back, I distinguished "philosophy that opens" from "philosophy that closes". Imagine that you enter a philosophical topic thinking that there are three viable positions: A, B, and C. Philosophy that closes aims to reduce the three to one -- to show that A is true and that B and C must be rejected. Proving A would constitute philosophical progress, the decisive resolution of a philosophical dispute. As noted, this is rare for big philosophical issues.

Philosophy that opens, in contrast, aims to expand the list of viable positions. Maybe positions D and E hadn't previously been considered or had been considered but dismissed as non-viable. Philosophy that opens gives us reasons to take D and E seriously in addition to A, B, and C. We learn by adding as well as by subtracting. We learn that the epistemically viable possibilities are more numerous than previously supposed. When this happens at a cultural level, it constitutes an important type of philosophical progress (at least if the possibilities really do merit being taken seriously).

Viewed in this light, philosophy is continually progressing! Before the 20th century, maybe materialism (the view that people are wholly physical and don't have immaterial souls or properties) wasn't widely seen as viable. Now it is seen as viable. Furthermore, important materialist sub-positions, such as functionalism and biological naturalism about representation, which were at best wispy ideas before 1960 are now well-developed approaches. But things aren't settled! Panpsychism -- the view that everything, even solitary elementary particles, has a mind or consciousness -- has recently been developed as another viable philosophical view. Even if some religious traditions endorsed panpsychism long ago, it was not taken seriously as a viable alternative in mainstream Anglophone philosophical culture until recently and has been developed in a secular direction.

[Midjourney image of several diverse philosophers arguing, with stars and cosmos in background]

Other recent forms of progress leverage new technologies and scientific theories, enabling us to seriously envision new epistemic possibilities: for example, that we might live in a simulation, or be Boltzmann brains, or that the universe might be constantly splitting in accord with the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics, or that we might have extensive moral obligations to phenomenally conscious insects.

The space of epistemically live philosophical possibilities is of course culturally relative. One reason to read culturally remote history of philosophy is to enliven for us philosophical possibilities that we might not otherwise have taken seriously.

Over the centuries, the global philosophical tradition has accumulated quite a variety of bizarre-seeming views about fundamental questions of human importance. If the aim of philosophy is "decisive resolution" of such issues, this might seem the opposite of progress. Hence, perhaps the despair among those who wish we'd finally settle on the correct view of such matters (their own view).

On the contrary, we are philosophically ignorant. We are blinkered by evolved inclinations, culturally specific presuppositions, and myopic versions of common sense. Let's not hurry toward closure. What is more appropriate given our limitations, what we should strive for, and what constitutes the kind of progress we should want is a better map of the wide terrain of our ignorance -- appreciating possibilities beyond the narrow scope of what we ordinarily take for granted. At delivering a wide range of epistemic possibilities, philosophy has made excellent progress and continues to progress, perhaps increasingly swiftly in the past several decades, as the new kids discover and advance, or exhume and enliven from older traditions, ideas that seem weird to their elders.