This blog post is a response to Maria’s post of the same name. I’m going to provide my response to it, disagreeing (respectfully, of course) with several of her statements. Maria explains that she doesn’t think philosophy is totally useless, only that it is useless in some areas that she goes on to discuss:
“Obviously, the study of philosophy (and thus, its teaching) is useful, as it tells the story of human intellectual development over time. Second, I don’t believe that individual philosophies are useless; we all have them, and they are crucial to finding meaning in a potentially meaningless life. Finally, there are some philosophies that either run parallel to science or fail to contradict it, and are thus important to explore; for instance, naturalism, nihilism, and existentialism.”
So far so good. So here are the areas she thinks philosophy is useless:
“Morality and Ethics: Morals are not natural laws handed down by god. Morality is our personal (or cultural) sense of right and wrong, and as all things, it is driven by our desire to survive and reproduce.”
The philosophy of morality has quite a large number of schools of thought besides the theistic one, so the first sentence does not establish her point that philosophy is useless. It simply does not follow that because one moral theory is wrong that all moral philosophy is. Her statement that “Morality is our personal (or cultural) sense of right and wrong” seems to express a kind of moral relativism (which is a philosophical moral theory) it therefore means that philosophy is useful after all. Her statement that “morality is driven by our desire to survive and reproduce” is, I think disputable. Why? First of all, natural selection might result in creatures that have quite a bit more to their desires than mere survival and reproduction, and it is possible, if not likely, that we are such creatures. As Richard Dawkins has pointed out, we thwart the ends that natural selection bred us for every time we use birth control. Here’s a hypothetical example to illustrate an important point: suppose that there was a genetic mutation that only occurred in men that caused those who had it to desire above all else to create beautiful symphonies. Suppose that women sought to have sex with men who had such an ability. In that case, eventually the population would have a large number of men whose primary goal in life was to create symphonies. So, natural selection would have resulted in men who had desires above and beyond mere survival and reproduction. And even though such a desire was selected because it allowed those who had it to leave behind more offspring, the men in question might perceive symphony creation to be an end that is good in itself, not just a means to having sex. In fact, they might choose to still create symphonies even if conditions changed and symphony creation meant not having sex. More importantly, though, while evolution certainly has a role to explain why we have a moral sense, such an explanation would not justify any ethical theory. For example: it is possible that rape is a behavior that evolved, or results from some cognitive function that is the product of evolution. Whether this is true or not, such an explanation of rape would not justify the choice to rape.
“The combination of nature and nurture leads me to the conclusion that our decisions are causally linked to and determined by prior events, which are, in turn, determined by earlier events, even if some of those events are, at some level, random. Thus, I would argue… that we have no true free will…”
I’m a compatibilist, so I disagree with Maria’s position, but that’s another story. In any case, Maria’s position that there is no free will is itself a philosophical position, which means philosophy is relevant.
“I believe that questions about the nature of knowledge are best answered by science. How do our senses work? How is memory structured? To what extent does perception influence knowledge?”
I agree with her that the questions she’s just mentioned are best dealt with by science. The other questions she mentions are ones that I disagree with:
“What is certainty?”
This is really a question about what the word “certainty” means. Since the meaning of a word is determined by how it is used, and since getting at the meaning of a word involves looking at our intuitions about when a word is and isn’t used correctly, this question falls pretty squarely within the domain of philosophy. Of course, analyzing how words are used might be considered a soft science, as it does involve some observation, but the heavy use of intuition that plays into this process would probably not cause most people to call it a science.
“Can we ever be certain of anything?”
This question, again, falls under philosophy. Once a definition of “certain” is provided (which itself can only be gotten at with the philosophical process described above) the question then becomes a matter of figuring out whether any human belief matches such a definition, which would be an issue of observation (observing, in some sense or other, a belief) and logic (finding a belief that matches the definition of certainty means that we have certainty of something. A equals A).
“At what point is empirical data sufficient to take something out of the realm of belief and place it the realm of knowledge?”
If we understand knowledge in a fallibilistic way (that is, we allow that there’s a small chance we could be wrong about certain things that we call “knowledge”) then this is a question of how much evidence we need to make it a belief likely enough to call knowledge. As it turns out, I think there is an answer to this, but the way to get at it would involve the tools of probabilistic reasoning, which are themselves logical constructs, not things derived from the use of the five senses or scientific instruments, and so that isn’t an issue that science solves.
“To date, science has been the best tool for answering these questions, and philosophy has shed no light on the issues.”
As I’ve just shown above, three of the questions above not only have been unanswered by science, they probably can never be answered by science, simply because the answer could only ever come from some nonscientific means of getting at the truth.
“In my opinion, politics are more important pragmatically than philosophically. As such, it is better to study what has worked in the past and what hasn’t. An empirical approach is best whenever possible, and, in my opinion, the goal should be to determine what is of greatest good to most. There are many competing political theories and they are all worthy of examination, if only because they are relevant to issues of ethics, morality, survival, and reproduction. But political theories do not exist in a vacuum, and must be analyzed not only as lofty ideas, but as pragmatic solutions to the everyday problems of living. While science may not be the only approach to such an analysis, certainly the processes and tools of science are important to the discussion. In other words, politics must be approached with a healthy dose of skepticism and critical thought.”
I’m in nearly complete agreement with this. I think that science is great for telling us about the results of public policies and such, but the end results that we should strive for is a matter of philosophical discussion, I think.
