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Has Philosophy Made a Difference and Could it be Expected To?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2010

John Haldane
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Extract

In 1989 Oxford University Press launched a new programme of monographs in moral philosophy entitled the ‘Oxford Ethics Series’. Given that the series' editor is Derek Parfit it is unsurprising that the books published to date feature rigorous analysis and argumentation regarding the nature of reasons and requirements. Perhaps by way of intended commitment to this profile, the following brief statement appears on the cover of the first volume (Shelly Kagan's The Limits of Morality): ‘The books in the series will contain philosophical arguments about morality or rationality. The aim will be to make undeniable progress’.

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Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 48 , September 2001 , pp. 155 - 174
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2001

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References

1 Parfit, Derek, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: O.U.P., 1984) 453–4.Google Scholar

2 Anscombe, G. E. M., ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’, Philosophy, Vol. 33, 1958CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reprinted in G. E. M. Anscombe, Ethics, Religion and Politics: Collected Philosophical Papers, Vol. III (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981) the passage comes on p. 30 of the latter version.

3 See MacIntyre, A., After Virtue (London: Duckworth, 1981)Google Scholar who writes (at p. 51): ‘Thus moral utterance has throughout the period in which the theistic version of classical morality predominates both a twofold point and purpose and a double standard. To say what someone ought to do is at one and the same time to say what course of action will in these circumstances as a matter of fact lead towards a man's true end and to say what the law, ordained by God and comprehended by reason, enjoins’.

4 In fact I doubt that an unrestricted version of this claim is true, but a qualified one, perhaps no less significant in import might be established, namely either religious ethics or no absolutist ethics. See in this connection Geach, Peter, ‘The Moral Law and the Law of God’ in Geach, God and the Soul (London: Rouledge & Kegan Paul, 1969)Google Scholar; reprinted in Joram Graf Haber (ed.) Absolutism and its Consequentialist Critics (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994).

5 Churchland, Paul, ‘Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes’, Journal of Philosophy, 78, 1981, 73–75Google Scholar. Needless to say I contest Churchland's account of ordinary psychological expalanation. For a debate see Churchland, Paul and Haldane, John ‘Folk Psychology and the Explanation of Human Behaviour’ Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume, 62, 1988CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Paul Churchland, ‘Theory, Taxonomy and Methodology: a reply to Haldane's Understanding Folk’, and Haldane, John, ‘Theory, Realism and Common Sense: a reply to Paul Churchland’ both in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. 93, 1993CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The more general ‘progessivist assumption’ in philosophy of mind is questioned in Haldane, John, ‘The State and Fate of Contemporary Philosophy of Mind’ American Philosophical Quarterly, 37, 2000.Google Scholar

6 Nagel, Thomas, ‘Conceiving the Impossible and the Mind-Body Problem’, Philosophy, 73, 1998, 343CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Nagel, Elsewhere writes that ‘As we judge the results [of a few great figures of the past] to be mistaken in fundamental ways, so we must assume that even the best efforts of our own time will come to seem blind eventually’ The View from Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986) 10Google Scholar. Even here, though, the progressivist assumption is detectable.

7 Smart, J. J. C., ‘Why Philosophers Disagree’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary 19, 1993, 81.Google Scholar

8 See Flugel, T. C., A Hundred Years of Psychology (London: Duckworth, 1933) pp. 79–80Google Scholar. On Bain in general see Cross, R. C., ‘Alexander Bain’, The Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 44, 1970.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Mace, C. A., ‘George Frederick Stout’ Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. XXXI.Google Scholar

10 C. A. Mace, ‘George Frederick Stout’, 5.

11 For an attempt to survey natural law, its history and its bearing on contemporary issues see Haldane, John, ‘Natural Law and Ethical Pluralism’ in Madsen, R. and Strong, T. (eds.) Attitudes to Ethical Pluralism (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, forthcoming).Google Scholar

12 See Hacking, Ian, The Emergence of Probability (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975).Google Scholar

13 See Quine, W. V. O., ‘The Nature of Natural Knowledge’ in Guttenplan, S. (ed.), Mind and Language (Oxford, 1975)Google Scholar. For Quine's view of the bearing of naturalized epistemology upon the problem of induction see his ‘Natural Kinds’ in Rescher, N. (ed.), Essays in Honour of Carl G. Hempel (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1970).Google Scholar

14 For an extended version of this account of the origins of inductive scepticism see Haldane, John, ‘Insight, Inference and Intellection’ in M. Baur (ed.) Insight and Inference: Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, 73, 1999.Google Scholar

15 Reid, Thomas, Inquiry and Esays (eds.) Beanblossom, R. E. & Lehrer, K. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983)Google Scholar, An Inquiry: ch. 5 (Of Touch), section III (Of Natuiral Signs) pp. 43–44.

16 See The Philosophical Works of the late James Frederick Ferrier (ed.) SirGrant, Alexander and Lushington, E.L. (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1975)Google Scholar in three volumes—shortly to be republished by Thoemmes of Bristol. Of particular interest is the Institutes of Metaphysics (Vol. I).

17 For an interesting discussion of the relation between idealist metaphysics, social philosophy and politics see Vincent, Andrew and Plant, Raymond, Philosophy, Politics and Citizenship, The Life and Thought of the British Idealists (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984).Google Scholar

18 See Moore, G. E., ‘The Refutation of Idealism’, Mind, 12, 1903Google Scholar, and ‘External and Internal Relations’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 19, 1919–20; both reprinted in Philosophical Studies, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970).

19 Rescher, Nicholas, ‘Who has Won the Big Battles of Twentieth-Century Philosophy?’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 36, 1999.Google Scholar

20 Rescher orders the information alphabetically by headline topic and includes headings where there was at least one column of entries. There is more work to be done on the staistics available by consulting The Philosopher's Index (Bowling Green, OH.: Philosopher's Infornmation Center).

21 Here I am also drawing on Rescher's essay ‘The Rise and Fall of Analytic Philosophy’ in Rescher, N., American Philosophy Today and Other Philosophical Studies (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994).Google Scholar

22 Smart, op. cit., p. 82.

23 Kenny, Anthony, The Oxford Illustrated History of Western Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) 363–4.Google Scholar

24 Paul, John II, Faith and Reason (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1998) Ch. VII, section 81, p. 119Google Scholar. For some discussion of the encyclical relating it to secular philosophical concerns see Haldane, John ‘The Diversity of Philosophy and the Unity of its Vocation’ in McInerny, R. (ed.) Faith and Reason (Southbend, IN: St Augustine's Press, 2001).Google Scholar