tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post4517004447601202756..comments2024-03-25T11:49:21.281-07:00Comments on The Splintered Mind: Was the Latter Half of the 20th Century a Golden Age for Philosophy?Eric Schwitzgebelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comBlogger47125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-88147717347043039952013-02-25T13:43:19.829-08:002013-02-25T13:43:19.829-08:00@David
Yes, I chose those three precisely because ...@David<br />Yes, I chose those three precisely because of their quality--they represent the kind of genius the last sixty years have produced, and they come out of a very similar sociological situation to academia in its current state.<br /><br />I don't think an Aristotle or Kant or Spinoza or Nietzsche could come out of that situation--I don't mean to make the obvious point that such philosophers cannot be created by training. I mean the current climate is suited to ignore, misunderstand or perhaps actively suppress that kind of work, if such a philosopher should come along.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-52641886226171330912013-02-25T12:06:47.334-08:002013-02-25T12:06:47.334-08:00One reason to think about the height of the schola...One reason to think about the height of the scholastic period as a comparison to our current age and achievements, rather than the ancient Greek or early modern periods, is that it is in many ways sociologically most like our own: lots of philosophers working in universities with a flowering research project in logic and language leading to a greater focus on argumentative rigor than is usual throughout the history of the discipline. And there are some of us that think that Abelard, Scotus, and Ockham (as well as some of their less well-remembered contemporaries) are among the very best philosophers of all time, precisely because of the way they combine creativity and rigor. David Sansonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05457084578553644647noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-20838034400942810682013-02-24T13:57:47.917-08:002013-02-24T13:57:47.917-08:00I'm 9:40. Badiou and Zizek will be utterly for...I'm 9:40. Badiou and Zizek will be utterly forgotten within the decade. The issue is not that absolutely nobody in philosophy has a broad knowledge of the humanities, but that most people in the profession do not. There are no general standards of competence, so hacks like Zizek can come in and fake deep knowledge and nobody can call him on it. There isn't a large body of people with the skills to evaluate work of the kind Zizek pretends to do.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-45192133823203019152013-02-24T11:25:50.125-08:002013-02-24T11:25:50.125-08:00@ 9:40
Well, undoubtedly even in the present dark ...@ 9:40<br />Well, undoubtedly even in the present dark age there are some who know many languages, have proper appreciation for art and literature, and can boast of a profound knowledge of history, including that of non-Western philosophy. Some of these, like Badiou or Zizek (or whoever), will at least count as 'minor figures'. So, even if well-roundedness is a necessary condition for a Golden Age, I'm not sure that the "Christ no" is justified. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-81321686503584272902013-02-22T21:40:05.453-08:002013-02-22T21:40:05.453-08:00Christ no. It will be remembered as the period in ...Christ no. It will be remembered as the period in philosophy where the major figures knew the fewest languages, had the least feeling for literature and art, and displayed the grossest ignorance of history (even that of their own discipline). It will hopefully be notable as the only period in which the traditions of Indian, Chinese and Arabic philosophy were widely available and yet virtually ignored by professional philosophers.<br /><br />Feyerabend talked about how academic specialization functions: "Assume you are incompetent to do <i>X</i>. Then you define a profession such that <i>X</i> does not make sense in it and now you can be praised for your professional acumen when avoiding <i>X</i> ... It is not only true that intelligence has decreased, the decrease can actually be shown to be an advance when measured by the new and specialized standards."<br /><br />This is a pretty unfair way to look at many major philosophers of the latter 20th century, but I think the period as a whole will be remembered on precisely those terms: remembered for a sociological split intended to increase the sphere of acceptable professional ignorance, for both analytic and continental philosophers, as well as for the sub-disciplines within each of those ridiculous divisions.<br /><br />Undoubtedly a few Abelards, Scotuses, Ockhams, etc, will rise to the top of the scholastic heap.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-22227149307226704802013-02-22T19:44:55.831-08:002013-02-22T19:44:55.831-08:00anon 4:07 "The canonical greats are great pa...anon 4:07 "The canonical greats are great partly because they showed up while low-hanging fruit was still on the philosophical tree. I think that taking significant additional steps gets exponentially more difficult. I sometimes think about how even mediocre grad students, transported by time machine to old Koenigsberg, would make Kant feel like quite a dullard."<br /><br />Hahaha. Seriously? Someone needs a reality check. First of all, most good philosophers nowadays, let alone mediocre grad students, don't engage with Kant very well. And not just because his arguments were constructed to persuade contemporaries occupying a notably different perspective from us. Kant's thought is hard, and his insights (if you call them that) continue to be discomforting. I find it difficult to imagine that anyone who's really wrestled Kant would make such a silly claim. <br /><br />Second of all, there's plenty of low hanging fruit nowadays. Most fruit that philosophers seek hang low. It doesn't maintain our ego as well, but the low fruit's still there even after modal logic and The Journal of Philosophy and the rise of Philosophy of X. It just takes a special way of looking to find them. And it's usually easier just to worry about technical niceties. We do know more now than before, so we have to know more science to make philosophical progress, but philosophy proper is surely no harder now than when religion and myth were our best way to make sense of things.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-61868003938567525802013-02-22T18:32:31.632-08:002013-02-22T18:32:31.632-08:00I feel like Quine, Searle and Rorty have all made ...I feel like Quine, Searle and Rorty have all made substantial contributions and progress has been made in the philosophy of science but if you are looking for really ground breaking contributions to philosophy in the later half of the twentieth century one must look to the Continental tradition. I admit the Analytic tradition has seemed to lack inspiration and creativity in the last half century.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-4557616712012400812013-02-22T17:02:49.625-08:002013-02-22T17:02:49.625-08:00"I sometimes think about how even mediocre gr..."I sometimes think about how even mediocre grad students, transported by time machine to old Koenigsberg, would make Kant feel like quite a dullard. The same goes for any of the other historical greats." <br /><br />This presupposes that, for whatever reason, people are now much smarter than they used to be. This is, as many anthropologists or psychologist would say, quite implausible. And it seems to me to run contrary to all evidence. (sadly, a brief look at the textbooks from early 20th century is a good lesson - they contain what we now teach at universities but were aimed at high schools)<br /><br />In any case - the fact that I manage to understand special theory of relativity as a teenager does not mean that I could re-work Einstein's theories... it just means that I was able, like many others, absorb the theory because it has been worked out by so many others to the point that it became accessible to teenagers and its weaknesses easily discernible. <br /><br />The modern universities and medieval monasteries were crawling with hundreds of people who could do that. If you doubt that, I suggest reading any of the commentaries of on Lombard's sentences or disputations by any minor theologian. Some of them are astounding and no less sophisticated than your average article in jphil or mind.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-1329635792682534152013-02-22T16:07:20.549-08:002013-02-22T16:07:20.549-08:00I guess I've taken it for granted that this is...I guess I've taken it for granted that this is the most active and productive era of philosophy by a long shot. I really do feel like the present-day active philosophers could easily re-do the work of any one of the historical greats, if he and his subsequent influence had been erased from history. And yes, I'm including Hume, Kant and Plato in the list. But that's an unfair comparison, because we have such a huge numerical advantage compared to the previous eras.<br /><br />The canonical greats are great partly because they showed up while low-hanging fruit was still on the philosophical tree. I think that taking significant additional steps gets exponentially more difficult. I sometimes think about how even mediocre grad students, transported by time machine to old Koenigsberg, would make Kant feel like quite a dullard. The same goes for any of the other historical greats. We have made great progress as a discipline, and if we don't seem great in our own eyes, it's because we are judging ourselves by much higher standards than those we used to judge the early moderns.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-23770341911069798602013-02-22T14:36:52.767-08:002013-02-22T14:36:52.767-08:00Here we might look at the medieval era in which Ar...Here we might look at the medieval era in which Aristotelianism dominated. Very few would consider this to be a golden age of philosophy. Why? Well, first of all, we consider Aristotle's system to be flawed, and thus the work done by the medievals filling out his system to be a waste of time. But even if Aristotle's system was correct, would this not imply that the time in which Aristotle built his system was the Golden Age, and the time which followed a Silver Age? <br /><br />What I am suggesting is that we seem to measure "Golden Ages" in terms of system-builders rather than in terms of philosophers with good arguments. What makes system-builders like Plato, Aristotle, Kant and the Moderns stand out is the fact that they tried to answer philosophical questions from the ground up. This is not something that the current Weberian climate of philosophical academia encourages. Rather, we are encouraged to be a field of specialists, analogous to the sciences. <br /><br />The question is whether in future generations the twentieth century will be seen to be more analogous to the Modern period consisting of people like Descartes, Leibniz, Berkeley, Spinoza, etc., or more analogous to the Hellenistic period in which many philosophers worked under particular philosophical systems, such as Stoicism or Epicureanism. I suspect our future colleagues will judge it in the latter fashion. It seems fairly reasonable to imagine the twentieth century being called the "Linguistic Period", and that Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Kripke, etc. being taught as figures within the same general intellectual tradition.<br /><br />Now, if the problems with reference and other things get worked out such that for the rest of history, philosophy continues to rely heavily upon the method of linguistic analysis developed during this period, there is a decent chance that it might be considered a Golden Age. That remains to be seen. <br /><br />Right now there seems to be growing unrest with the foundations of our dominant philosophical systems. First of all, there were the problems with Kripke's theory of direct reference that have remained unsettled. Secondly, more and more people are writing on "meta-philosophical" topics such as the role of intuitions in philosophical methodology (e.g. Williamson and Cappelen). A third example would be the whole X-Phi movement. And I would also add the growing concern with 'metametaphysics' as further evidence of unrest. All this suggests to me that the field is perhaps awaiting some sort of paradigm-shift, or the next great system builder.<br /><br />Of course, this is not to suggest that philosophy makes no progress. Well... maybe it does.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-4073343873783966232013-02-22T14:11:12.938-08:002013-02-22T14:11:12.938-08:00Anon 01:10: Wolff is a nice example. Or Spencer. ...Anon 01:10: Wolff is a nice example. Or Spencer. Or Bergson. For sure, there's no guarantee Lewis (say) isn't a case like that. Maybe that's even where the smart money goes. I feel myself swung both ways.<br /><br />Anon 01:51: I would argue that Plato should be read without too much charity or reverence. I have principled reasons for favoring such an approach to the great philosophers of the past, which I have explored in some of my other blog posts. This doesn't mean that one can't appreciate Plato's awesome coolness.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-90260344182464508452013-02-22T13:51:58.084-08:002013-02-22T13:51:58.084-08:00Do you even know how to read Plato?Do you even know how to read Plato?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-78343426585745396212013-02-22T13:10:44.173-08:002013-02-22T13:10:44.173-08:00From Anon 02:13: functionalism, though arguably an...From Anon 02:13: functionalism, though arguably anticipated several times before (or so Nussbaum and Putnam argue about Aristotle, and one can find traces of it elsewhere, e.g. Hobbes) is a nice idea. But I am not sure to what extent it is a philosophical idea, rather than an application of an idea or concept from the then emerging field of computer science to an old philosophical problem created by Descartes' new understanding of matter (to offer that would be something).<br /><br />Btw. it is a mistake to think that Descartes' influence was mainly in LEMMings. That view is a result of writing textbook histories in 19/20th century that greatly simplified what was actually going on. <br /><br />In any case, I think that we are not in a position to answer questions about such recent history. Take the influence of Lewis or Kripke on contemporary phil. It is comparable to, though probably not as big as, the influence of C. Thomasius and C. Wolff in the 18th century (there were Wolffians and Thomassians). I do not think anybody would want to suggest that that was a golden age of philosophy. In fact, nobody but historians cares at all.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-31307782263574254532013-02-22T10:14:14.611-08:002013-02-22T10:14:14.611-08:00Anon 04:30: If one needs a thinker who revolutioni...Anon 04:30: If one needs a thinker who revolutionizes both LEMMings (language, epistemology, metaphysics, and mind) AND some normative areas (ethics, political, aesthetics), then probably the late 20th century doesn't supply any. But that's a very high bar, and even Descartes' influence was mostly LEMMings! Plato, Aristotle, Locke, and Kant are some who had powerful influence across the LEMMings/normative divide. So if you need a thinker like that, then probably the late 20th century was not Golden unless we decide retrospectively to think of Wittgenstein as a great ethicist or to elevate someone like McDowell to the top ranks, or something like that.<br /><br />But if transforming LEMMings alone is enough for glowing greatness, the period does produce some not *wholly* implausible candidates, like later Wittgenstein, Lewis, and Kripke. I think it still remains to be seen what the historical judgment of these figures will be. Lewis seems to be glowing only ever more brilliant in the decade since his death, to judge by his increasingly reverential treatment in recent metaphysics.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-36051321837259975392013-02-22T10:01:57.685-08:002013-02-22T10:01:57.685-08:00William: Yeah, maybe so. I can work myself into d...William: Yeah, maybe so. I can work myself into different moods on this issue.<br /><br />Jonathan Livengood: I'm not sure we *should* adjust for population size or background level of education. Suppose the nuclear holocaust happens tomorrow and we are plunged into a dark age with some access to the philosophical work of the past but not the institutional structures to support the creation of lots of professional-quality philosophy. And let's suppose that my optimistic view of late 20th-century philosophy has merit. I don't think we then discount the value of the tradition by saying it doesn't count because there were lots of professors. Rather we celebrate the ability of society to have sustained so much good work for so long. In much the same way, we don't see the number of philosophers in Athens as a strike against its Goldenness but if anything the reverse.<br /><br />Re scientists and literary figures: I see some similar difficulties with historical perspective, winnowing, and the fact of many making it harder for one to stand out. It's probably safe to say that the period produced no scientist as individually revolutionary are Darwin or Einstein.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-90517158031791520782013-02-22T09:51:36.052-08:002013-02-22T09:51:36.052-08:00Thanks for the continuing comments, folks!
Anon 1...Thanks for the continuing comments, folks!<br /><br />Anon 10:41 and John Turri: Yes, those are reasonable points, in my view.<br /><br />Anon 02:13: In philosophy of mind, I think that both functionalism and the treatment of mental content as having a grounding in evolutionary history and social context were major new contributions -- not entirely unanticipated, perhaps, but reaching maturity only in 1950-1999. Contrast these recent attempts to marry together mind and evolution with the epiphenomenalism of Huxley and the social Darwinism of Spencer, for a sense of how much treatment of the issues has matured. (Not that there's nothing to Huxley or Spencer -- but they didn't even seem to see the range of philosophical options that are on the table today.)Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-13020328888039746022013-02-22T09:18:46.017-08:002013-02-22T09:18:46.017-08:00So could anyone recommend an historically sensitiv...So could anyone recommend an historically sensitive article explaining just why Kripke, Quine, Davidson, and others in this tradition are Great Philosophers? I'm genuinely curious here. I've read and re-read NN, WRPL, WO, etc, but though the works are clever, sometimes "rigorous", and usually enjoyable (not to mention solid contributions to philosophy), the philosophers centering this literature lack the depth of vision or mind-bended sensitivity that enabled the great philosophers to take the leaps they did, showing less twisted minds what to catch up to in a more explicitly rational manner (Kant's leap being a prime example, as Eric pointed out). By this criterion, Great recent philosophers would certainly include Wittgenstein and Sellars, and probably at least Carnap, David Lewis, and Ruth Millikan. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-44175089022555450792013-02-21T16:30:10.941-08:002013-02-21T16:30:10.941-08:00We need to distinguish between depth and Breath: l...We need to distinguish between depth and Breath: late 20 century anglo-american has many wonderful thinkers, but does it have a thinker or two who changed the philosophical paradigm, not just in one or two areas, but in most if not all areas of philosophy? It seems to me that a golden age has to have one or two thinkers of this caliber, in addition to many other lesser but still powerful thinkers. When Descartes, for instance, unfolded his program he introduced conceptualizations that even his philosophical enemies were forced to use, for hundreds of years. Is this going to be the case with Kripke or Lewis? Will the conceptualizations of possible world semantics be obligatory even for its opponents, or will one be able to continue to articulate other respectable semantic programs without much bother? I suspect the latter. <br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-10506788628189433112013-02-21T16:20:32.948-08:002013-02-21T16:20:32.948-08:00What does the picture look like if you adjust for ...What does the picture look like if you adjust for population size or background level of education?<br /><br />And what if we throw the net more widely than the canonical philosophers -- for example, to include scientists or literary figures?Jonathan Livengoodhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08264815112941067048noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-91435701941883527872013-02-21T16:19:44.556-08:002013-02-21T16:19:44.556-08:00The Twentieth Centry had 3 great eras: Cambridge U...The Twentieth Centry had 3 great eras: Cambridge UK early in the Century; Vienna 1918-1936; and the USA 1960-1980. We are now in the afterglow of a great era. I would narrow the recent phase to 1960-1980 although Qune was active before then. Most of the options (e.g. in Philosophy of mind) were played out by the end of that phase, a bit like the pop music of the 60s that is endlessly revived. Pick up the Philosophical Review or Journal of Philosophy from the that era and you see fresh philosophy being minted. Now it is more 'scholastic' in a negative sense. It is true that the modal paradigm of Lewis/Putnam/Kripke was problematic, which is why Fine is important. But, by and large, we should mourn!Williamnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-4679024623917822562013-02-21T14:13:38.455-08:002013-02-21T14:13:38.455-08:00The one thing that strikes me as entirely correct ...The one thing that strikes me as entirely correct is the unprecedented institutional support (in US at least, perhaps elsewhere too) for philosophy in those years. But I think that that simply coincides with a broader trend of supporting humanities or academy in general in those years and it has very little to do with philosophy itself. It did mean, I think, that a lot more people could do philosophy as a profession than ever before (at least so I would think). <br /><br />The rigor of arguments, and such. I am not sure whether that's exactly a good measure. The way I tend to think about it is rather whether or not a philosopher opens a new way of thinking about something - a way that then proves fruitful for at least some time to come. This is one of the reasons why Plato is so great. It's true that a lot of his arguments are weird, terrible or unclear or have odd presuppositions. But his writings are full of new and original ideas about how to think about things - in fact, many times he comes up with the idea that something is a subject to think about - in terms of principles and explanations - in the first place - the idea of soul, language, or art (etc.). Similarly, Aristotle realizes that we could have normative rules for thinking, and so on. This is very different from simply working out various versions of an already established idea, usually by slowly filling up the logical space of possible options or more refined -isms. It's one thing to think of various possible versions of materialism, quite another to come up with the idea of materialism in the first place. I am no expert, but I would suspect that the same holds of people like Kant or Descartes. So, looking back at 1950-99, is there a philosopher that really open a new way of thinking for us? Maybe Kripke? I am not sure. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-9019286279581830292013-02-21T13:14:45.936-08:002013-02-21T13:14:45.936-08:00Hi Eric,
In absolute terms, way more people were ...Hi Eric,<br /><br />In absolute terms, way more people were able to dedicate way more of their time to doing philosophy in the second half of the 20th century than in any half-century prior to that. Accordingly, I suspect that if we rank periods by the amount of knowledge and insight created, the second-half of the 20th century was the best ever. If we adopt a different measure -- in terms of the heights of individual genius or brilliance achieved -- things might seem different, but perhaps that's mainly due to the slipperiness of the measure.John Turrihttp://john.turri.org/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-38753855790998649672013-02-21T10:41:23.456-08:002013-02-21T10:41:23.456-08:00If I understand the (clearly ironical) comment fro...If I understand the (clearly ironical) comment from 09:36:00 correctly, it suggests that it's unlikely for 1950-99 to amount to a Golden Age because (i) it's unlikely that the works of that time will be "pored over by countless generations of students in numerous disciplines", and (ii) in this respect they compare unfavorably with the works of Plato and Aristotle. This raises the question, though: Why is (ii) the case? Is it because Plato and Aristotle were just so unsurpassably good? Or is it because they merely surpassed their contemporaries (admittedly by far, but then there aren't that many to compare them with) and were among the first philosophers whose works have survived?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-87027497288853436442013-02-21T10:33:19.683-08:002013-02-21T10:33:19.683-08:00Anon 07:28: If one evaluates philosophy by its pra...Anon 07:28: If one evaluates philosophy by its practical effects in the public sphere, I agree that 1950-1999 looks much weaker than many earlier ages.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-61836709469074248832013-02-21T10:31:54.960-08:002013-02-21T10:31:54.960-08:00Gottlob: Yes, maybe so.
Hockett: Sure, more names...Gottlob: Yes, maybe so.<br /><br />Hockett: Sure, more names can be added. I wasn't committing to a specific top-15 list.<br /><br />Chris: I didn't mean to be exclusive. But I think ancient Greece and the early modern period are probably less controversial.<br /><br />Bobcat: Maybe so; I can't pretend to an informed opinion about that.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.com