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2 days ago
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As someone interested in pursuing a philosophy PhD, there are many things to worry about. Could I get accepted? Could I get funding? Will I be lonely? Will I come to hate it?
But there's a more fundamental question that nags at me: is philosophy pointless? Clearly a fair chunk of people think so. A YouGov poll found 16% of UK adults thought it a waste of time, with 30% responding “Don't know” and 54% viewing it favourably.¹ A survey from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences found 77% of Americans had a favourable view of philosophy, though only 29% had a very favourable view. This also broke down along political lines, with 41% of self-identified liberals having a very favourable view while only 17% of conservatives did.²
Several prominent physicists have expressed disdain towards philosophy. Stephen Hawking, Richard Feynman and Lawrence Krauss are among that group, though the generality of their criticisms fluctuates over their lifetime.
So are the critics right? There are 3 major issues which worry me.
The displacing of philosophy by science.
The problem of language.
The seeming lack of progress in philosophy.
These problems are deep and interconnected, but this post will concentrate on point 1.
It's hard to make a list of what ideas or areas of philosophy have been displaced by science. Partly because people disagree, but also because today's division between philosophy and science in academia didn't always exist. In Ancient Greece, there was no division at all.³ This is why it's a little specious to argue that science has displaced Aristotle's “philosophical” claims about the geocentricity of the solar system, the impossibility of a vacuum, natural motion, and vitalism. Indeed, his discussions on these topics could be argued to be proto-scientific.
Moving into the Late Middle Ages (1200s – 1500s), philosophy still included “natural philosophy”, which would later come to be known as science, though there was increasing tension between the two and the Church, and philosophy was not clearly delineated from theology. Aquinas, perhaps the most famous philosopher and theologian of the period, also subscribed to the geocentrism and incorrect ideas about motion, but again, it is not clear whether this should be considered philosophical, theological or proto-scientific.
The split between science and philosophy/theology arguably started with Copernicus' heliocentric model of the solar system, published in his 𝘋𝘦 𝘙𝘦𝘷𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘣𝘶𝘴 𝘖𝘳𝘣𝘪𝘶𝘮 𝘊𝘰𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘶𝘮 in 1543. This was followed by Galileo's observations in the early 1600s, such as thkse of Jupiter in 1609-1610, and Newton's 𝘗𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘪𝘱𝘪𝘢 𝘔𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢 in 1687, which mathematically formalised physics. At this point, empirical observations and mathematics were being used to study the natural world, instead of speculative argument. Science was still called “natural philosophy” in this period, and Descartes, Galileo, and Newton engaged in it along with mathematics and what we now call “philosophy”, though only Descartes' philosophical ideas remain philosophically influential. Nevertheless, I think it is fair to see this as the point of separation between philosophy and science; however, this means we cannot see this science as displacing previous philosophy, as beforehand there was no distinction.
In the 18th century, philosophy shifted from participating in scientific inquiry to reflecting on its foundations and implications, with Hume's problem of induction arising as a response to Newtonian mechanics, and Kant trying to preserve metaphysics by grounding it as 𝘢 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘳𝘪 conditions for science.
In the 19th century, university departments of physics, chemistry, and biology were created separate from philosophy. The first psychology lab was also created in this time period. The separation was complete. From this period on, positivist philosophers started to argue that parts of philosophy, especially metaphysics, should be abandoned and left to science to figure out. Philosophers such as Russell and Ayer argued that philosophy's role in science was clarification, not speculation. I would argue that much of philosophy of science now adopts this attitude; the difference is just the breadth and depth of clarification that different philosophers adopt. However, in recent years, philosophy has arguably developed a closer relationship with cognitive science and the study of AI.
I think the best view of the history of science and philosophy is not of displacement, but rather of disentangling. Proto-science developed into modern science as modern tools and methods became available. Early philosophy evolved into modern philosophy as scientific methods settled outstanding questions about the natural world, and as it separated from theology.⁴
Nowadays, philosophers generally defer to scientists in investigating outstanding questions about the natural world, though they occasionally synthesise current scientific knowledge on a subject if they feel science is pointing in the wrong direction. However, it is not always entirely clear whether a question can in principle be settled by science, and whether philosophical analysis of it is worthwhile. Furthermore, when philosophers analyse scientific methodology and advise on methods and directions, it's fair to say this is often ignored by working scientists.
In my estimation, the two most contentious areas at the moment are: (1) the relationship between metaphysics and physics, and (2) the relationship between philosophical discussions of the mental and physical, and the scientific study of consciousness and the brain.” These two areas of tension have evolved in very different ways. Different philosophers have and continue to argue about the relevance of metaphysics and its relationship to physics, while physicists have almost entirely ignored the philosophical discussion. In contrast, philosophers and scientists have had a continuous dialogue about the mental world since the scientific revolution.
I am of the opinion that philosophy must be careful to not step on scientists' toes too much in these areas. The assumption must be that if we believe a hypothesis can in principle be settled by science, then scientists are best suited to speculate about it and, hopefully, eventually resolve it empirically.
In a future blog post I will explore a thought experiment which lies on the intersection between philosophy of mind, cognitive science and AI. You can be the judge of whether it strays too far.
Sources and Notes
¹ https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/survey-results/daily/2015/07/10/66930/1
³ Ancient Greek philosophy stretched around 600 BCE and continued as Greece was absorbed into the Roman Empire around 150 BCE.
⁴ There are examples you could use to argue against my view.
Political and Economic Science: The key early modern philosophers working in political philosophy were Hobbes (𝘓𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯, 1651), Rousseau (𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘰𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵, 1762) and Marx (𝘋𝘢𝘴 𝘒𝘢𝘱𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘭, 1867), with writing Rousseau and Marx much later than the start of the scientific revolution. However, their ideas are not only still influential in philosophy, but also in politics, political science, economics, law and more. So it's hard to argue they've been displaced by science.
Philosophy of Language: The 20th century saw a lot of work in the philosophy of language, with major figures including Ayer (𝘓𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦, 𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘵𝘩 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘓𝘰𝘨𝘪𝘤, 1936) and Wittgenstein (𝘗𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘰𝘱𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘐𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘨𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴, 1953). The development of formal semantics, linguistics and computational language models has certainly changed the debate, though again it's not clear to what extent modern science has displaced, built upon or added to their earlier work.
Epistemology: It would take an entire blog post to get into this; suffice to say most philosophers do not accept science has displaced this subject, though the cognitive sciences, probability theory, and statistics have had a strong influence.
