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Can Philosophy be a Rigorous Science?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 December 2009

Herman Philipse
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Extract

It is difficult to imagine that a Royal Institute of Physics would organize an annual lecture series on the theme ‘conceptions of physics’. Similarly, it is quite improbable that a Royal Institute of Astronomy would even contemplate inviting speakers for a lecture series called ‘conceptions of astronomy’. What, then, is so special about philosophy that the theme of this lecture series does not appear to be altogether outlandish? Is it, perhaps, that philosophy is the reflective discipline par excellence, so that the very nature of philosophy is a topic that belongs to its domain of investigations? Or is there something more serious at issue? Let me first tell you how the question concerning the nature of philosophy arose for me as a young student, and how I tried to answer it, quite naively, by endorsing Edmund Husserl's programme of turning philosophy into a rigorous science. In a second section, I shall offer three diagnoses of the fact that all such attempts seem to have failed. Finally, I'd like to say a few words on my own research agenda in philosophy and on a public function of philosophers.

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Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 65 , October 2009 , pp. 155 - 176
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2009

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References

1 Husserl, Edmund, Recherches logiques. Translated by Élie, Hubert, Kelkel, Lothar, and Schérer, René. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959–1963)Google Scholar.

2 Derrida, Jacques, La voix et le phénomène. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967)Google Scholar.

3 Cf. Philipse, Herman, ‘Transcendental Idealism’, in Smith, B. and Smith, D. W., The Cambridge Companion to Husserl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 239–322CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Husserl, Edmund, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie (1913), translated as Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book by Kersten, F. (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1982)Google Scholar, §§ 81 & 82.

5 Williamson, Timothy, ‘Past the Linguistic Turn’, in Leiter, Brian, ed., The Future for Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 111Google Scholar.

6 Dummett, M. A. E., ‘Can Analytic Philosophy be Systematic and Ought it to Be?’, reprinted in Truth and Other Enigmas (London: Duckworth, 1978), 457Google Scholar, 442, 454. This text is also quoted by Hacker in his lecture in this series (see next note).

7 cf. P. M. S. Hacker, ‘Philosophy: A Contribution to Human Understanding, not to Human Knowledge’, this volume. Williamson, T., ‘Must Do Better’, in The Philosophy of Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 278 and passimGoogle Scholar.

8 T. Williamson, in Leiter (2004), 111 and 127.

9 Rorty, Richard, Philosophy & the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 394Google Scholar. Cf. Philipse, Herman, ‘Towards a Postmodern Conception of Metaphysics: On the Genealogy and Successor Disciplines of Modern Philosophy’, Metaphilosophy 25 (1994), 1–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Marquard, Odo, ‘Inkompetenzkompensationskompetenz’, in Abschied vom Prinzipiellen (Universal-Bibliothek Nr. 7724, Stuttgart: Philip Reclam jun., 1987), 23–38Google Scholar.

11 This was largely Marquard's view, and it is to be found in many authors. Cf., for example, Russell, Bertrand, The Problems of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), 90Google Scholar: ‘Thus, to a great extent, the uncertainty of philosophy is more apparent than real: those questions which are already capable of definite answers are placed in the sciences, while those only to which, at present, no definite answer can be given, remain to form the residue which is called philosophy’. Russell added, however, that philosophy also raises important questions that will always remain without scientific answers, and that it should ‘keep alive that speculative interest in the universe which is apt to be killed by confining ourselves to definitely ascertainable knowledge’ (90–91).

12 At least, Wilson wrote that scientists and humanist should consider this. See his Sociobiology. The Abridged Edition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975), 287.

13 P. M. S. Hacker, ‘Philosophy: A Contribution to Human Understanding, not to Human Knowledge’, this volume, 7.

14 Ibid, 7. Cf. for example, Hans Reichenbach, Philosophie der Raum-Zeit-Lehre (The Philosophy of Space and Time) of 1928.

15 Cf. Bennett, M. R. and Hacker, P. M. S., Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003)Google Scholar.

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17 Cf. also the discussion between Hacker, Searle, and Dennett, in Maxwell Bennett et al. (2007), 73–162, and the appendix on Searle in Bennett & Hacker (2003), 436–443.

18 Timothy Williamson in B. Leiter (2004), 111–112.

19 Elsewhere, Williamson seems to agree with this point, for in his (2007), 284–5 he writes: ‘Philosophers who refuse to bother about semantics, on the grounds that they want to study the non-linguistic world, not our talk about that world, resemble scientists who refuse to bother about the theory of their instruments, on the grounds that they want to study the world, not our observations of it’.

20 Cf. Popper, Karl, ‘The Nature of Philosophical Problems and their Roots in Science’, in Conjectures and Refutations (4th edition, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972), 66–96Google Scholar. Cf. Philipse, Herman, ‘The Nature of Philosophical Problems: Popper versus Wittgenstein’, in Karl Popper. A Centenary Assessment, Volume II. Metaphysics and Epistemology. Edited by Jarvie, Ian, Milford, Karl, and Miller, David (Ashgate, 2006), 73–85Google Scholar.

21 Cf. John R. Searle, ‘Putting Consciousness back in the Brain’, in Bennett et al. (2007), p. 122. Cf. also: ‘The Future of Philosophy’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, B 354 (1999), 2069–2080.

22 Searle, in Bennett et al. (2007), ibid.

23 Cf. Philipse, Herman, Heidegger's Philosophy of Being. A Critical Interpretation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

24 Sellars, Wilfrid, ‘Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man’, in Frontiers of Science and Philosophy, edited by Colodny, Robert (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1962), 37Google Scholar.

25 Cf., for example, books such as Wilson, David Sloan, Darwin's Cathedral. Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Dennett, Daniel C., Breaking the Spell. Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (London: Penguin Books, 2006)Google Scholar.

26 Cf. Herman Philipse ‘The Absolute Network Theory of Language and Traditional Epistemology’, Inquiry 33: 127–178.

27 Plantinga, Alvin, Warranted Christian Belief. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Swinburne, Richard, The Existence of God. Second Edition. (OxfordOxford University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Cf. Mantra II (The Lancet, 16 July 2005) and STEP (American Heart Journal, 4 April 2006.).

30 Plato, Apology, 21c.