Faults of the Philosophers

Faults of the Philosophers

I am going to do something I have never seen attempted. I am going to enumerate the intellectual faults of the main philosophers of the twentieth century—their erroneous assumptions, intellectual biases, ideological commitments, areas of ignorance, and cognitive weaknesses. It is going to get ugly, I’m afraid, though not cruel; we are all human, after all. I’m not blaming them, just doing some clinical psychology on them. I won’t go into elaborate justifications, but paint with a broad brush (a trowel really).

So, in chronological order: Frege was too oblivious to human psychology and fixated on mathematical symbolism. Russell was too empiricist and impressed with the logic he had created (with a little help from Frege). Moore was too invested in common sense and ignorant of science; also, he was not that brilliant. Wittgenstein was either too theoretical (Tractatus) or not theoretical enough (Investigations); he also didn’t read enough history of philosophy.  And he was too extreme. Carnap was just too positivist. Quine was too behaviorist and ignorant of psychology and biology; he was also dazzled by his own writing. Strawson couldn’t get beyond common sense and the verifiability principle; he didn’t know enough science and found logic perplexing. He wrote too poetically. Austin was scientifically illiterate and unimaginative; also, more critical than creative. Davidson was stuck on Quine and had no time for the philosophy of perception, let alone consciousness. His love of Tarski bordered on the maniacal. He was a sucker for oversimplification and sophistical arguments. Putnam was too clever for his own good; and he had a weakness for contrarian positions. He needed more patience and less pyrotechnics. Dummett was obsessed with externalizing meaning. He never managed to define “realism”. He had no philosophy of mind except an undeveloped behaviorism. Kripke was afraid to be creative and limited himself to criticizing others. He didn’t like philosophical problems (e.g., the nature of metaphysical necessity). Lewis was enamored of the possible worlds gimmick and pushed it too zealously. He also had an out-of-date philosophy of mind. Fodor had no time for philosophy and hated it; he should have been a psychologist.

The general pattern here is that the philosophers in question were often too empiricist, too wedded to common sense, too linguistically oriented, and too limited in their range of interests. They were also overconfident and intolerant of mystery. In general, they needed a deeper acquaintance with science, especially biology and psychology. They never worked in a lab or in the field. In addition, their linguistic abilities were confined to academic prose—I see no imprint of the great prose stylists of the twentieth century. None of them could write a novel. And there wasn’t enough self-questioning.[1]

[1] Let me be clear: these are all brilliant men who all made serious contributions to philosophy, but my stated brief was to identify their faults. My hope is to be helpful to their successors (though I don’t hold out much hope in this regard).