Analytic philosophy has had a rebellious history for which, prima facie, Penelope Maddy's book occupies an interesting position. Ever since Russell declared his vision of remaking philosophy in the image of science, subsequent philosophers attempted to remove the metaphilosophical ground from beneath his feet: philosophy shouldn't be remade, just deflated. As James before them, the deflationary attempts of both Wittgenstein and Carnap involved making philosophy a matter of method, not theory. Quine had no time for their methods — things still seemed too philosophical for his taste. His holism stressed that all we have is Science, there is no first-philosophy. For all his purported deflationism, Quine's naturalism didn't seem to let out enough air, this is where Maddy enters. Maddy's first book, Realism in Mathematics, attempted to give Quine's mathematical Platonism a naturalistically-sound epistemology. In her second, Naturalism in Mathematics, she rejected Quine's Platonism. The aim of her new book is to depict a post-Quinean philosophy, to show what exactly the 'Naturalism' of her previous work consisted of. Though she shies away from it, her work can thus be seen as one of the end-points in the deflationary process that has run through analytic philosophy's checkered history.

As the subtitle of the book indicates, Maddy, along with her predecessors, wants to orientate her metaphilosophy — 'second philosophy'– around method, not theory. Unable then to specify what second philosophy is by discussing its theory, she does so by describing the practices of a character, the Second Philosopher (otherwise known as 'Penelope Maddy'). This expository work is undertaken in Parts I and II. In Part I our understanding of the Second Philosopher is advanced by considering her reactions to Descartes, the skeptical problems that followed, Hume, Kant, Carnap, Quine, and (later) Putnam. Despite the rich and heated scholarship which surrounds these figures, Maddy handles the terrain sensitively, doing well to clearly draw-out the Second Philosopher. The character that emerges wears no scientific snobbery, she likes to try various philosophies out for size — it's only that, in the above cases, none of them quite fit. Her position might be described as scientistic pragmatism. She'll accept anything that works, but 'working' must fit within a scientistic framework of observational and experimental success. As Maddy concedes, in contrast to her departmental colleagues, the Second Philosopher's metaphilosophy is an ascetic one; but is it too ascetic? In Part II Maddy is concerned with showing how there is still much work to be done, paying particular attention to the theory of truth, looking at the likes of Field, Wright, and Wilson. In Parts III and IV more work is found with Maddy moving onto consider issues of truth, knowledge, method and existence in the philosophy of logic and mathematics. In keeping with the Second Philosopher's orientation, the discussion of the grounds of logical truth takes us through some work in psychology of object-perception. For the philosophically trained, one couldn't wish for a better expositor to guide one over this foreign ground; Maddy's writing is, as ever, lucid and personable.

As a work of analytic metaphilosophy, and especially one which tries to occupy the position it does, the book should be of interest to all analytic philosophers, and all those in the sciences wanting a philosophical antidote to whatever philosophical pestering they may receive. Still, Maddy's answer to the worry of where the work lies may still leave her colleagues concerned. One might frame metaphilosophy as a spatial problem: where does philosophy stand with respect to science? Whereas others may answer 'below' or 'beside', Maddy (115) says 'between.' Second Philosophy fills in the interdisciplinary gaps, answering those questions that other sciences don't ask. The concern here is that this leaves philosophy as potentially extinguishable; if the other sciences were to broaden, the gaps would close and philosophy departments would become redundant — officially so, that is. A deeper worry, however, isn't with the extinguishing of philosophy that her position may entail, but the philosophy that still lingers therein. What drove her departure from Quine was discomfort with his confirmational holism; however, holism, of a sort, remains central to her project. At one point (175) she quotes Wilson's incomprehension as to why 'scientism' is a pejorative; the reason is that it denotes an approach which inappropriately extends the methods of science. Holism is the banner under which this is done; it supports imperialistic interference by asserting uniformity. Given that scientism is a distinctly philosophical approach, Second Philosophy suffers from being too philosophical in some areas, and not philosophical enough in others.

The Second Philosopher's overly-philosophical tendencies surface in Maddy's discussion of the existence of mathematical objects. She focuses here on, inter alia, Arealism and Thin Realism; the former denies mathematical existence and truth, the latter doesn't. Enough to raise eyebrows is Maddy's (391) rather Carnap-sounding point that these positions just offer different 'modes of expression' whilst getting at the same facts. The dispute between them ultimately 'appears to hinge on matters of convenience, taste and preference' (389); however, the real crux of the dispute is whether there is such a thing as ontology! The issue is again central to Maddy's scientistic reinvention of metaphysics. Here she says that the questions the Second Philosopher will answer are about whether there are (e.g.) people or species etc. However, the question 'What is there?' does not belong to the scientific method; there is what there is, ontology is incidental to scientific progress. As an aspiring naturalist, Maddy should have argued that confirmational holism is beside the point when it comes to Quine's Platonism. The real problem is that questions of abstracta arise out of the philosophical misunderstanding that physical existence and mathematical existence must somehow come to the same thing — this is holism opening the way to ontic imperialism.

The philosophical baggage she's inherited from Quine is too great a burden for her to be as naturalistic as she would like. The essential problem with scientism is embodied by her claim that '…the Second Philosopher is born native to the laboratory' (91).  The Second Philosopher might well be, but humans are not. Her understanding here leaves her poorly placed to answer the questions she's interested in, leading her to, e.g., concede that she is impotent against neo-Cartesian skepticism. Such paradoxes, however, come after conceptual understanding; we should consider their cogency by questioning their use of those concepts. We don't start with scientific method, a whole load of conceptual apparatus is needed before that can get underway. Observation requires interpretation, but interpretation requires a conceptual base. We are not born native to the laboratory, if we think otherwise important questions over the way certain concepts are used in theory will go unasked – questions that are perhaps most important to sciences of the brain and behavior. Furthermore, we'll be unable to, inter alia, properly characterize the truth-grounds of rudimentary logic, as Maddy would like. She argues (280) that we are reluctant to think of such logic as being falsifiable because of its formal interest, there's no need to appeal to analyticity to explain its truth. But the scientistic need to objectify is inappropriate here. To see why we cannot speak of such logic as falsifiable it needs to be realized that, given its place in our thinking, it comes before truth. These considerations are naturalistically sound, they are based on the observation that concepts come before theory. Indeed the importance of such an observation could well make a home for philosophy as metascience.  Maddy's Second Philosopher, however, is too scientistic to be this scientific. Ultimately, the book doesn't mark a deflationary end-point. As a descendant of Quine perhaps it never could; for all his rhetoric, his deflation was only cosmetic. Maddy tries to move away from some features of Quineanism, but the real problem was never with its particulars but rather its spirit. Her book is no doubt an admirable piece of work, but as a descendant of Quine it was hard-pressed from the start not to be but another testament to the limits of scientism.

Works Cited

Maddy P., [1990] Realism in Mathematics, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

——        [1997] Naturalism in Mathematics, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

© 2007 David Birch

David Birch MA is a postgraduate student at the University of St Andrews. He is interested primarily in Wittgenstein's philosophy of mind.

Categories: Philosophical