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Philosophy as Synchronic History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 March 2021

DANIEL STOLJAR
DANIEL STOLJAR*
Affiliation:
AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITYdaniel.stoljar@anu.edu.au
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Abstract

Bernard Williams argues that philosophy is in some deep way akin to history. This article is a novel exploration and defense of the Williams thesis (as I call it)—though in a way anathema to Williams himself. The key idea is to apply a central moral from what is sometimes called the analytic philosophy of history of the 1960s to the philosophy of philosophy of today, namely, the separation of explanation and laws. I suggest that an account of causal explanation offered by David Lewis may be modified to bring out the way in which this moral applies to philosophy, and so to defend the Williams thesis. I discuss in detail the consequences of the thesis for the issue of philosophical progress and note also several further implications: for the larger context of contemporary metaphilosophy, for the relation of philosophy to other subjects, and for explaining, or explaining away, the belief that success in philosophy requires a field-specific ability or brilliance.

Keywords

metaphilosophyphilosophy of historyphilosophical progressexplanationphilosophy of science
Type
Article
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , Summer 2021 , pp. 155 - 172
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Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2021

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Footnotes

Earlier versions of this article were given to audiences at the Australian National University, Uppsala, and Umeå, and as the presidential address at the annual conference of the Australasian Association of Philosophy, in Adelaide, in 2017. I thank all present on those occasions, and others with whom I have profitably talked about this material. I found particularly helpful reactions from Lucy Allais, Adrian Currie, David Chalmers, Frank Jackson, Alan Hájek, Torfinn Huvenes, Daniel Kilov, Matthew Lindauer, Conor Leisky, Sebastian Lutz, Knox Peden, Una Stojnić, Pär Sundström, and Hezki Symonds. I am sure I have forgotten some people; I apologize for not mentioning them. I am also grateful to the journal's editor and two anonymous reviewers for this journal; their hard work made this a better article than it would otherwise have been.

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