Reactive Philosophy

Reactive Philosophy

The trouble with philosophy is that it is too reactive. This is particularly true of the twentieth century, when philosophy picked up the pace. Analytical philosophy is marked and marred by its negativity—its urge to reject. Russell and Moore rejected Hegel, going to extremes in the process. Logical positivism rejected idealist metaphysics and religion—that being its chief selling point. Ordinary language philosophy rejected the logical philosophy that replaced Hegel. Quine rejected the dogmas of positivist empiricism. Wittgenstein rejected his earlier self. Kripke rejected the doctrines of Frege, Russell, and Quine. Fodor rejected Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, as well as Quine and company. Searle rejected computational philosophy of mind. The trouble is that there was a whole lot of rejecting going on but not much creating. The virtues of the new views largely consisted in their repudiation of earlier philosophy, not in anything they had to say of a positive nature. It wasn’t new ideas that powered them but their criticisms of past ideas. They therefore had little positive impetus in them; they were backward-looking not forward-looking. Once the criticizing was over there was not much else for them to do. Game over. This left the field open to a radical recommendation—get rid of philosophy! Replace it with science, particularly psychology. The trouble with this is that the problems of philosophy are not scientific problems—“experimental philosophy” is an oxymoron. I think we have reached a point where reactive negativism is no longer a productive style of philosophy; we have run out of things to be negative about. We need to get positive! Philosophy needs to absorb science and literature, but not be dominated by them. It also needs to develop a different mind-set: stop criticizing, start creating. By all means do some criticizing, but don’t neglect the creativity—focus on it. This attitude should be inculcated in graduate students: no one should be allowed to do a purely negative dissertation. Encourage imaginative projects, downplay the negative. Reward creative work, frown upon the dedicated critic.

I actually think my blog provides a model of this: I don’t go in much for criticism of others, especially by name; I prefer to think positive. This is the true positivism, not the carping negativism of so-called logical positivism and its descendants. Philosophical acumen should not be rated according to critical sharpness alone; this should be regarded as necessary but by no means sufficient. The new method will be less competitive and personal, more issue-oriented. I think it will also lead to a broader range of philosophical competence, because people are too afraid of criticism as things are; they therefore stick to the tried and true (the old and boring). We are not to be fixated on catching the other guy out, but on coming up with new ideas. I remember years ago hearing a well-known philosopher (name withheld, but an American) congratulate himself on “grinding X to a fine powder” and I thought “Is that really the best you can do?”. And what an attitude! So, I advocate replacing the reactive negative with the creative positive. Critical acuity is a useful tool, but not the point of the enterprise.