Imagine a philosophy conference in Presocratic Greece.

It's an excellent parody, sharp and well-aimed. We have the system-builders, the groupies, the mockers and doubters; where would you be? I'd be with the doubters, and I'll argue that they were right.

The issue is how we are to mark, as well as to make, progress in philosophy; how to avoid "a feeble
and unnecessary surrender to despair, philistinism, cowardice or indolence". The refinements that bring progress about " emerge in the process of attempting to answer the original rough question".

Williamson is right in rejecting the suggestion that the mere divorce of science from philosophy is sufficient to explain progress, and in identifying the problem here as "that one cannot always tell in advance which questions it will be fruitful to pursue." It is the process that brings about progress, not beliefs and not the doubt alone. This takes us to about p.3

My response: Those who jump too quickly to an answer to "what are things made of?" fall; not water, not fire. The doubters have it right: we can intelligibly ask what bread is made of, but not, at least amongst the presocratics, what everything is made of. It is a step too far to ask what things in general are made of. It was exactly by answering questions like "what is bread made of" that we were able to progress towards the broader question. The answerable questions have a large part in this progress. Understanding the nature of grain and water and heat, and how they interact, lead by degrees and indirectly to the questions of chemistry and physics that constitute our present start of play.

This response should not be seen as a rejection of the essays thesis: it is the process that is important. Speculative ambition is an important part of that process. Discourse, the sweeping, theoretical system building, needs dissection, careful analysis of small, concrete questions. Williamson wants both, but insists that discourse must be disciplined by standards akin to those in the sciences.

So to the next issue: how much progress had been made. Williamson is optimistic:

Although fundamental disagreement is conspicuous in most areas of philosophy, the best theories in a given area are in most cases far better developed in 2004 than the best theories in that area were in 1964, and so on. — pp3-4

He argues his point on a case basis - undeniable progress has been made in modal logic and in truth theory, and there has been at least movement in ontology, with the then-raging debate between realism and anti-realism and the semantics of natural languages. There are developments in paraconsistent and intuitionist logic that look promising.

That the progress here is formal, technical and complex does not detract from the fact of progress.

Within this progress Williams sees lost opportunity. Now at about page eight.

There's an updated copy of the essay included as a afterword Williamson's the 2007 book The Philosophy of Philosophy.

Available here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/9780470696675.after

Thanks to @Heracloitus for this info.

For Williamson, systematic philosophical theorising is not the problem, but the lack of seriousness and rigour in it's pursuit. Now I think this not so far from my distinction between dissection and discourse, and worth a proper look — Banno

This has great moving parts: theorizing with rigour. Promising.

way to assess levels of creativity in philosophy. The Williamson article might offer a way to move that discussion beyond mere anecdote. — Banno

‘Mere anecdote or, rigorous metaphysics and “systematic philosophic theorizing”. Philosophic newness, captured in turn of phrase. Creativity is fraught with peril. Continues to intrigue.

how we are to mark, as well as to make, progress in philosophy — Banno

Great question.

rejecting the suggestion that the mere divorce of science from philosophy is sufficient to explain progress — Banno

I reject that. That’s a sideways move at best, not progress to me.

we can intelligibly ask what bread is made of, but not, at least amongst the presocratics, what everything is made of. It is a step too far to ask what things in general are made of — Banno

I think you can intelligibly ask is there an ingredient (so to speak) that all things are made of among other ingredients that only some things are made of, but I still agree “it is a step too far to ask what things in general are made of.”. No need to take a side track, so early.

Understanding the nature of grain and water and heats, and how they interact, lead by degrees and indirectly to the questions of chemistry and physics that constitute our present start of play. — Banno

Staying inside the subject matter between the grain and water and heat, moving slowly, methodically towards eventually, bread, and then chemistry, and quantum physics.... always careful before moving on and retesting, before restating again…

Speculative ambition is an important part of that process. — Banno

Agree. This, to me, is the world part of the equation. It is what the science says or is about. It is the world ingredient.

theoretical system building, needs dissection, careful analysis of small, concrete questions. Williamson wants both — Banno

Yes. Philosophy is a science at the very least; it may be more; it may be about blocks or dead poetry, but science is there in every mix of philosophy proper.

discourse must be disciplined by standards akin to those in the sciences — Banno

For sure. I think that is what Aristotle and Descartes and Hegel and Spinoza and Leibniz and Kant and Wittgenstein and Russell and others were trying to do. Skeptical rigor exists in Plato’s Parmenides, and really in the fact that he made the question and doubting conclusions so central to making dialectical progresses. But, I wander off again. Need more rigour..

undeniable progress has been made in modal logic and in truth theory, and there has been at least movement in ontology, with the then-raging debate between realism and anti-realism and the semantics of natural languages. — Banno

From above:
“systematic philosophic theorizing” and “discourse” and “ways to assess creativity in philosophy”

But now with progress, as:

“modal logic and in truth theory”
“debate between realism and anti-realism”
“semantics”

Doubt I can keep up, but I’ll try.

The philosopher Hans Moeller who has a youtube channel called Carefree Wandering has said that continental philosophers are failed writers and analytical philosophers are failed mathematicians and failed scientists. He identifies as a continental philosopher. I'm a mathematician and scientist. It seems that analytical philosophy should be my thing, but I don't get on well with it. I'll wait until later on in Williamson's article to explain why (if I ever do).

From near the end of the article:

Unless names are invidiously named, sermons like this one tend to cause less
offence than they should, because everyone imagines that they are aimed at other people.
Those who applaud a methodological platitude usually assume that they comply with it. I
intend no such comfortable reading. — Williamson

In an article about image analysis from 1992, the author berated the whole field for a lack of rigor. Picking out individuals is invidious, but the author referenced 45 articles in a subfield and condemned them en masse:

In the thinning literature [1-45] the ideal world of ribbons is not specified, the random perturbation model is not discussed, and the error function is not given. And for this reason the precise problem any thinning algorithm solves is not in fact precisely stated.

I wish Williamson had done something like that.

It is difficult to even recognize and discover a truth about the world; it is harder than that to say it truly.

Working through the article. Here are some initial lines I personally would love to hear developed.

“It is widely known in 2007 and was not widely known in 1957 that contingency is not equivalent to a posteriority, and that claims of contingent or temporary identity involve the rejection of standard
logical laws.”

That’s a tree question.

“One clear lesson is that claims about truth need to be formulated with extreme precision, not out of knee-jerk pedantry but because in practice correct general claims about truth often turn out to differ so subtly from provably incorrect claims that arguing in impressionistic terms is a hopelessly unreliable”

That’s important. A bigger tree.

“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 observation of it.“

Great line. Forrest issue.

“But when philosophy is not disciplined by semantics, it must be disciplined by something else: syntax, logic, common sense, imaginary
examples, the findings of other disciplines (mathematics, physics, biology, psychology, history, . . .) or the aesthetic evaluation of theories (elegance, simplicity, . . .). Indeed, philosophy subject to only one of those disciplines is liable to become severely distorted: several are needed simultaneously.”

Also interesting forrest issue. Still reading…

That the progress here is formal, technical and complex does not detract from the fact of progress. — Banno

I've read about this far with you. Williamson is touching on a favorite topic of mine, the lack of progress in answering traditional philosophical questions. He's more optimistic, of course.

So far in the article, I'd note a couple of things:

- Progress may not be identical with closure on a given topic. I could lament that we haven't answered or achieved agreement on a host of questions, but still acknowledge we've made progress in understanding them. For that matter, rather than lamenting, I could postulate that a lack of closure is a hallmark of what constitutes philosophy.

- One can agree, as I do, that one of the strong points of analytic philosophy is its ability to demarcate good questions that can actually be sharpened and better understood. Within that framework, everything Williamson says about where we stand in 2025 compared to 1925 is correct, as best I know. I'll be interested to see, though, whether he's able to "bootstrap" analytical phil out of the charge that it has selected only those questions which suit its methods.

I could postulate that a lack of closure is a hallmark of what constitutes philosophy. — J

I think a lot of people feel that way, even people paid to do philosophy. Timothy Williamson is not one of them

The obvious retort here is that so far we have only the word of Skalidris and a few supporters for there being at all a decline in creativity, and no clear way to assess levels of creativity in philosophy. The Williamson article might offer a way to move that discussion beyond mere anecdote. — Banno

This is quite the irony. I criticise the rigour and adherence to rigid principles that prevent the exploration of other possibilities, and you suggest my claims need to be presented with more rigour and adherence to these things.

Discourse, the sweeping, theoretical system building, needs dissection, careful analysis of small, concrete questions. Williamson wants both, but insists that discourse must be disciplined by standards akin to those in the sciences. — Banno

I see science as a product of philosophy and I believe philosophy's power lies in creating disciplines. I’m not religious but for the sake of the analogy: it’s as if God tried to become more human. I don’t mean to say science is inferior, but that it does very different things. Copying the standards of science to apply them to philosophy makes no sense to me because I don’t believe philosophy’s goal is to understand the world around us, but to provide various tools to do so.

I don’t believe philosophy’s goal is to understand the world around us, but to provide various tools to do so. — Skalidris

Would you go so far as to say that philosophy also suggests which aspects of the world need to be better understood? Or is that pretty much up to each culture and/or philosopher?

Long ago, Srap Tasmaner threatening me with this essay. — Banno

This is a more promising thread. I appreciate the paper to ground the discussion. :up:

But I might also invite PM contributions — Banno

So long as you remember that PMs do not contribute to public threads any more than a "private language" is generally accessible. What is done invisibly cannot be appealed to to justify a visible thesis. There is no general continuity between any PM and a public thread. They are two different things.

I see science as a product of philosophy and I believe philosophy's power lies in creating disciplines. I’m not religious but for the sake of the analogy: it’s as if God tried to become more human. I don’t mean to say science is inferior, but that it does very different things. Copying the standards of science to apply them to philosophy makes no sense to me because I don’t believe philosophy’s goal is to understand the world around us, but to provide various tools to do so. — Skalidris

Which philosophers are exemplary in this regard, in your opinion? The philosophers I am most influenced by provide tools (a method) which presents a world strikingly different from the one we may take for granted. For instance, Husserl discusses how the transcendental-phenomenological reduction discloses a "new field of being".

In the *Crisis of European Sciences* he describes the reduction as leading to "a complete personal transformation, comparable in the beginning to a religious conversion" .
In *Ideas I Husserl writes that the reduction opens up "a new way of experiencing the world" by bracketing all natural assumptions and focusing on the *how* of givenness rather than the *what*. He states:
*"The phenomenologically reduced perceptual experience is not just a method but an *existential shift*—what he elsewhere calls "the philosopher’s genuine rebirth" .

Progress may not be identical with closure on a given topic. I could lament that we haven't answered or achieved agreement on a host of questions, but still acknowledge we've made progress in understanding them. For that matter, rather than lamenting, I could postulate that a lack of closure is a hallmark of what constitutes philosophy. — J

I'd agree with that. It follows form treating philosophy as a method, as something done, rather than as a set of beliefs. This was one of the themes of my thread on two ways to philosophise.

I'll be interested to see, though, whether he's able to "bootstrap" analytical phil out of the charge that it has selected only those questions which suit its methods. — J

If asking only those questions which suit it's method is asking what bread is made of, rather then what everything is made of, then I think it an agreeable approach. There's a lot to be said for working on questions that are at least answerable.

There's a tension between complaining that philosophy no longer addresses the big issues and agreeing that philosophy must remain incomplete.

The distinction between analytic and continental philosophy has become somewhat anachronistic. There's been somewhat of a convergence, taking the best of both, especially in the recent past. It was never a clear juxtaposition, positing a method against a geographic area.

Timothy Williamson is not one of them — Srap Tasmaner

I haven't yet read much of his beyond the present paper, but from tertiary sources he seem to have some odd approaches to modal logic and epistemology.

If asking only those questions which suit it's method is asking what bread is made of, rather then what everything is made of, then I think it an agreeable approach. There's a lot to be said for working on questions that are at least answerable. — Banno

True. I'll hold off until you walk us through the entire paper. But just as an example of a question that isn't an "everything" question, while at the same time is hard to frame in terms of analytic phil: How should we understand the self-reflexive nature of philosophical inquiry? Is there something important about the fact that philosophical inquiry must also be about itself, and must be done from a point of view?

I'm not sure this can be rendered in terms of logical self-reference, but I'm happy to learn more.

I criticise the rigour and adherence to rigid principles that prevent the exploration of other possibilities, and you suggest my claims need to be presented with more rigour and adherence to these things. — Skalidris

I'll happily stand by my preference for rigour. The complaint that quality in philosophy is in decline remains unjustified.

How should we understand the self-reflexive nature of philosophical inquiry? — J

Isn't the present paper just that, an example of self-reflexive philosophy, in analytic terms?

If you have time, I'd be interested in your reaction to

My response: — Banno

Isn't the present paper just that, an example of self-reflexive philosophy [in analytic terms]? — Banno

Yes, it is, and reading ahead, I notice that Williamson faults the paper for "exhibiting hardly any of the virtues that it recommends"! So I put brackets around "in analytic terms," above. I hope one of the good questions that will come out this discussion will concern whether it's possible to do what Williamson is doing while staying within strict analytic-phil confines.

Should we look more deeply at the examples?

Taking the example "...contingency is not equivalent to a posteriority, and that claims of contingent or temporary identity involve the rejection of standard logical laws..." There have been quite a few threads on these topics on the forums. I think Williamson is right here, that there would be few professional philosophers who would seriously question these results. Those who think necessity = a priori or contingency = a posteriori haven't understood the modal logic developed since the sixties.

The discussion of intuitionism might be both novel and more interesting.

Or do we take it as read that there has been progress in these areas? That would be my preference, allowing us to proceed further in to the essay.

A tangent:

So long as you remember that PMs do not contribute to public threads any more than a "private language" is generally accessible. — Leontiskos

That's a misunderstanding of "private language". A private language is one that cannot in principle be made public, such as the sensation "S" in PI. A conversation via PM can of course be made public, and so is not private in the requisite sense.

I remain open to any comments via PM.

Onward.

Page nine is a defence of the use of philosophy of language.

Those metaphysicians who ignore language in order not to project it onto the world are the very ones most likely to fall into just that fallacy, because the validity of their reasoning depends on unexamined assumptions about the structure of the language in which they reason. — p.9

and

The attempt to provide a semantic theory that coheres with a given metaphysical claim can therefore constitute a searching test of the latter claim, even though semantics and metaphysics have different objects. — p.10

The "linguistic turn" brought with it various philosophical tools that have become quite ubiquitous. Philosophy of language wasn't rejected so much as centralised. Language is the philosopher's main tool, and it will serve them well to understand how it works.

Page ten concerns the nature of discipline in philosophy.

...when philosophy is not disciplined by semantics, it must be disciplined by something else: syntax, logic, common sense, imaginary examples, the findings of other disciplines (mathematics, physics, biology, psychology, history, …) or the aesthetic evaluation of theories (elegance, simplicity, …). — p.10

As I've said before, philosophy is more than just making shite up. It also has to fit in with what we know. "Tightly constrained work has the merit that even those who reject the constraints can agree that it demonstrates their consequences."

Is the upshot here that philosophy cannot be done well by an amateur? I don't think so. More that it can not be done well by a dilettante. But also, it is not served by elitism, but discipline.

And now the essay gets more interesting.

More that it can not be done well by a dilettante. But also, it is not served by elitism, but discipline. — Banno

Bang on. toe-dipping philosophy is invariably embarrassing, but so too is the tendency to dismiss on that basis, rather than the fact that some particular work is embarrassing.

Edit: That said, it;s always going to be reasonable to dismiss on the basis of a preceding pattern of bad work. But i submit we should still give some room for unusually good work popping up in unexpected places.

Post deleted by me. Don’t know what happened there.

More that it can not be done well by a dilettante. But also, it is not served by elitism — Banno

I agree. Philosophy is a rigorous science. Has been since Aristotle at least.

Because everyone at some point wonders “what is this life?” everyone thinks they are some bit of philosopher. Further, children can understand something of philosophic wisdom - “nothing to excess” or “live in the moment” or “do unto others” or “if there is one thing I know for certain, it is that I know nothing…”. For this reason, people who would never pretend to be a theoretical mathematician, or a quantum physicist, or any professor, will pretend to be Socrates over a bottle of wine and teach you what life is really about.

But true philosophy, the rigorous science, becomes nothing more than an art and cannot be practical if it is not shared and taught. It is almost entirely words. Is it an art or is it science after all? It is the science of thinking, and must be demonstrable in application, and so needs to be taught, discussed, and those who are taught philosophy must at least learn how best to think.

But the purely theoretical and the purely analytic are both easily rendered impractical. So the true philosophers need to take care that they do not isolate their expertise from all place in the world of common persons. If the elites who practice proper, scientific philosophic thought do not do as Buddha did, and return to the people, teaching their wisdom to everyone and anyone who listens, then all of the philosopher kings are merely art snobs. For who cares of the difference between idealism and realism in Their kingdoms are sandcastles that very few can even see.

And philosophy will continue to die. At least art has redeeming beauty for the shallow dilettante to enjoy anyway. Every philosopher can’t be Nietzsche. If Wittegenstein isn’t patiently taught, how quickly do you think it would die to history.

we should still give some room for unusually good work popping up in unexpected places. — AmadeusD

That is wisdom. Wisdom can accidentally come from watching a dog. The most elite philosophic scientist has every reason to listen to anyone who claims to offer philosophy. Just to practice the trade and maybe find inspiration.

That is my experience, and from it, my amateur opinion.

So I agree with the article and the quotes above. I just caution there is no wisdom in ignoring amateur philosophers. They should be welcomed as students of life’s mysteries and taught how to be rigorous.

We all need midwives. And compassion.

Especially on an Internet forum (as opposed to a post-graduate classroom, where expectations are more frequently set and met.)

I'd have to do an awful lot of work to properly understand the article in much detail. It's quite meta.

Or do we take it as read that there has been progress in these areas? That would be my preference, allowing us to proceed further in to the essay. — Banno

Let's do that. We could disagree with some of Williamson's example without disputing his overall point: Within analytical philosophy, there is better understanding of the problems -- and even some resolutions of disputes -- than there was in Russell's day.

a defence of the use of philosophy of language. — Banno

Williamson is very good here, because he's not didactic about semantics; he clearly doesn't believe that an exclusively language-oriented method is enough. Rather, he's arguing that, without linguistic self-scrutiny, none of the other good stuff will happen. If anything, his telescope analogy is too generous. As he says, there's a limited sense in which you can study the stars while knowing nothing about telescopes, but I don't think that's even possible with philosophy. What happens, at even the simplest levels, is exactly what you quote here:

the validity of their reasoning depends on unexamined assumptions about the structure of the language in which they reason. — p.9

As for discipline, I'm not thrilled with Williamson's discussion, but I do agree with what you say here:

Is the upshot here that philosophy cannot be done well by an amateur? I don't think so. More that it can not be done well by a dilettante. But also, it is not served by elitism, but discipline. — Banno

My issue with W and discipline is that, if we take seriously the various examples he gives of approaches that can provide discipline, we wind up wondering if "discipline" is really the right word for what he has in mind. These sound to me more like guidelines or standards -- which is fine, and that would prevent us from "making shite up." (When will you learn to spell properly? :grin: ). To me, a discipline implies a fairly rigorous practice, something you have to study and get good at. But W says: "To be 'disciplined' by X . . . is to make a systematic conscious effort to conform to the deliverances of X," and I suppose I can live with that.

Thus the construction and assessment of specific truth-conditional semantic theories has almost disappeared from sight in the debate on realism and anti-realism — p.282

This kind of theory would say that a sentence's meaning is its truth conditions, right? I think the basis of that view is intuitive. It might seem that a little ghostly woo explains how sentences relate to truth conditions. Maybe nothing was built because of that?