In Philosophical Methodology: The Armchair or The Laboratory?, Matthew C. Haug has assembled a collection of essays impressive in scope and detail, organized around the topics of naturalism and the viability of armchair methods. This sweeping volume covers methodological debates in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, ethics, phenomenology, and aesthetics. The majority of the essays express the current state of methodology in various fields, including both recent and longstanding developments. And while some authors clarify and expand on views they have defended elsewhere, there are enough fresh perspectives to make the volume attractive to those new to the debate as well as those steeped in the literature, particularly in the discussions of intuition and experimental philosophy (Kornblith, Ludwig, Levy, and Bedke), and philosophical progress (Ismael, Wilson, and Ratcliffe).

          The essays are organized into four sections, though many of the discussions cut across these boundaries in their treatments of naturalism, intuitions, and experimental philosophy. I will give a brief summary of each contribution, focusing on some of the highlights, and then I will offer some general comments about the volume as a whole.

Part I: Naturalism: varieties and viability

The first section begins with a remarkably clear and concise distillation of the debate between naturalists and non-naturalists through an exchange between Timothy Williamson and Alex Rosenberg. Williamson argues that naturalists are caught in a nasty dilemma: they may construe science broadly, which allows them to embrace mathematics and history but leaves them unable to reject some of the more influential non-naturalistic methods, or they may construe it narrowly (restricting it, for instance, to the hypothetico-deductive method), which allows them to reject non-naturalistic methods but forces them to exclude certain respected fields and potentially commits them to a dogmatic view of science. Rosenberg responds that the naturalistic commitment to science is not as rigid as Williamson suggests. It is simply a commitment to the idea that “400 years of scientific success” is good evidence that “it will do better than any other approach at getting things right” (33). He argues further that to criticize naturalism because it cannot resolve all its shortcomings is to commit a sort of perfectionist fallacy: “Not yet having a solution to all its problems doesn’t make naturalism into an ‘equivocal doctrine'” (34).

Of course, it is the persistence of the questions naturalism cannot answer–such as the nature and role of mathematics–that motivates resistance to naturalism. Rosenberg admits that naturalists have invested much energy into such questions to little avail. Nevertheless, he concludes that “betting against science has always been a mug’s game” (41). There are a number of excellent anthologies on naturalism, but these short essays from Williamson and Rosenberg condense the fundamental disagreement between naturalists and non-naturalists pellucidly, and they are a highpoint of the collection.

The remaining papers in this section, by Jeffrey W. Roland, Marie McGinn, and Jenann Ismael, survey the contemporary state of naturalistic methodology. Roland sketches the most enduring aspects of Quinean naturalism, which, while not directly about philosophical methods, has implications for what it means to pursue naturalistic projects in the Quinean tradition. McGinn argues that, despite John McDowell’s claim to have developed a non-reductive, naturalistic Platonism about meaning in the Wittgensteinian tradition, McDowell runs afoul of Wittgenstein’s reasons for rejecting the idea that meaning is in the mind. Her discussion helpfully clarifies nuances of both Wittgenstein’s and McDowell’s views of meaning. And Ismael defends the merits of the Sydney Plan’s naturalism about ontology (proposed by Huw Price, Michael Williams, and Robert Brandom) over and against Canberra naturalism (defended by David Lewis and Paul Horwich).

Part II: Methods in metaphysics and epistemology

The first three chapters of part II explain three distinct approaches to metaphysics. Aimee Thomasson defends the “easy approach” to metaphysical objects, arguing that, contra neo-Quinean assumptions, existence questions can be answered using “straightforwardly…empirical and/or conceptual methods” (107) on the assumption that there are no “joint-carving quantifiers,” that is, the truth of ontological claim does not require that reality includes quantifiers. She defends this approach against Ted Sider’s criticism that those who attempt to avoid “serious” metaphysics nevertheless make a substantive metaphysical claim: that reality has no quantificational structure. E. J. Lowe offers a fairly classical metaphysics-first argument for traditional “joint-carving” metaphysics (to use Thomasson’s phrase) and responds to objections from naturalistic metaphysics and naturalistic epistemology. Jessica Wilson, using insights from Thomas Kuhn and Rudolph Carnap, explains three impediments to progress in metaphysics: the idea that there are no metaphysically necessary connections between distinct entities; the idea that composition is simply mereology; and that metametaphysics is essentially a question of semantics. Without these dogmas, she argues, philosophers might come to see other, more viable paradigms for progress in metaphysics.

The remaining three chapters in this section offer conflicting perspectives on the prospects of traditional epistemology, particularly conceptual analysis, in light of an increasing push toward naturalization and experimental philosophy. David Papineau argues that, while traditional, thought-experiment-based philosophical work should continue as normal, philosophers mischaracterize their project when they call it “conceptual analysis.” Hilary Kornblith gives an extended defense of his longstanding position that substantive experimental work is necessary for epistemology, invoking the conclusions of experimental psychology against, not only traditional armchair methods, but also those of the recent experimental philosophy movement.

In the final chapter of this section, Kirk Ludwig defends the role of philosophy as conceptual analysis by showing that a central criticism–grounded in the idea that we should be concerned with the world and not our concepts of the world–commits a fallacy. He argues that, insofar as we are interested in the expression of a conceptual analysis, we are interested in whether the success conditions of the analysis are true; but insofar as we are interested in the terms analyzed, we are interested in the world. Referring to the traditional justified true belief account of knowledge, Ludwig writes, “This is not about the concept of knowledge: it is about knowledge itself. If it is true, then it says something about the conditions under which someone has knowledge” (221, emphasis his). Also worth the reader’s time is Ludwig’s brief critique of experimental philosophy’s claim to undermine traditional epistemology.

Part III: Methods in philosophy of language and philosophy of mind

Part III begins with Georges Rey’s defense of modest, naturalistic Cartesianism with respect to intuition and introspection. Rey does not defend the particular claims of either the armchair or naturalistic philosophers, but calls attention to just how extreme the former’s views seem to be and how dismissive the latter’s seem to be. Rey argues that Cartesian intuition-pumping and introspection cannot be easily dismissed, but neither can the experimental controls that benefit inquiry in so many other areas.

Next, Michael Devitt defends two views. He defends his interpretation of Chomsky as the view that intuitions developed about language by competent speakers constitutes reliable evidence for beliefs about that language. And he defends his rejection of the Chomskian thesis, that is, while intuitions about language count as evidence for what those intuitions are about, they are not evidence of their truth.

In essay 16, Barry Smith offers a sketch of how to use science, in particular, linguistics, to inform philosophy of language. He argues that much of philosophy of language begins with questions that imply non-trivial assumptions about the nature of language. Smith argues that many of these assumptions–such as that meaning is what makes language language–are confirmed or disconfirmed by research in linguistics, and, for cases like these, it is irrational for philosophers to reject sciences relevant to their fields of study.

In essay 17, Lynne Rudder Baker offers a case against ignoring the first-person perspective as a datum of philosophical practice. She argues that first-personal properties–such as “self-” or “I*-concepts”–cannot be reduced to or eliminated by scientific assumptions and methodology. She argues that this shows that traditional armchair philosophy has an ineliminable place in inquiry that is independent of the sciences.

          The remaining two chapters in this section focus on how phenomenology can inform contemporary analytic philosophy. David Woodruff Smith suggests ways that phenomenology can contribute to the study of consciousness, in spite of the analytic turn toward neurobiology. Like Baker, he urges philosophers not to reject the idea that first-person experience is a genuine datum of experience. If we “bracket” (in a Husserelian sense) the idea that an appearance seems to be about a mind-independent world, we can focus on the appearance “just as it is given” (348, emphasis his), and therefore, as a realm of experience worth taking seriously. Matthew Ratcliffe closes this section with a suggestion for how phenomenology can inform the contemporary philosophy of mind with respect to the notion of thecontent of experience.

Part IV: Methods in ethics and aesthetics

The final four essays hang together less clearly than the others, but make important contributions to the volume. Neil Levy does an admirable job of explaining the nature of experimental philosophy’s critique of the traditional epistemic project. He also argues that traditional epistemology is not only consistent with experimental philosophy, but that it can benefit from its findings. Intuition-pumping thought experiments can be fruitful, he argues, even if they are not truth-tracking because they focus our attention on details worth taking seriously. Further, experimental philosophy can reveal areas where traditional thought experiments mislead philosophers, and by using all relevant evidence to “twiddle the knobs” on our intuitions, we may discover “how the next generation of philosophers should be trained” (390). Further still, because “knowledge production is distributed” among all knowers in society, even contaminated intuitions can be used in the progress of knowledge. Finally, Levy argues that some of our intuitions may escape the experimental concerns with arbitrariness because of how they are produced. For example, Levy’s view is that ethical facts are partially constituted by the intuitional and linguistic responses of suitably-placed observers. This significantly limits the ways in which our intuitions about ethics can go wrong, and therefore increases our confidence in intuitions regarding them.

Valerie Tiberius argues that philosophers traditionally interested in well-being have paid little attention to adequacy conditions for their explanations. In particular, they have neglected normative adequacy. Tiberius suggests a set of adequacy criteria, both normative and empirical, suggests a way to combine intuition and empirical evidence in a way fruitful for a practical conception of well-being, and argues that what she calls the “value fulfillment theory” of well-being, suitably qualified, does a good job of meeting these conditions.

Matt Bedke offers a careful, well-informed argument for how intuitions can function productively in ethical decision-making without appeal to non-natural moral facts. He argues that the key is to divorce moral intuitions from realism in favor of a version of “quasi-realism.”

And finally, Gregory Currie closes out the volume by defending traditional armchair methods for some–perhaps many–aesthetic questions. Nevertheless, he argues, some research in aesthetics “has gone badly wrong” (442) because of philosophers’ refusal to take empirical findings seriously. In particular, claims about the effects of narratives on audiences are subject to a wide range of empirical tests. Given that the point of some types of literature is to improve lives, and that there is empirical evidence as to whether this is so, philosophers would be wise to consult that evidence.

Conclusions

One benefit of this volume is  that those newer to this debate get a fairly digestible introduction to the state of philosophical methodology in a variety of fields. Another benefit is that some important distinctions rarely discussed are made explicit, for instance, the difference between armchair and a priori methods (Kornblith, 196), the difference between structure-tracking and non-structure tracking ontological language (Thomasson, 120-21), and the differences in the types of arguments constructed by experimental philosophers (Levy, 383). A third benefit is that some make fresh and controversial contributions that merit serious further treatment in the literature, especially those by Ludwig and Levy.

          There is little to complain about in a volume that covers as much terrain as well as this one. One drawback is that Haug’s attempt, in the Introduction, to survey the entire scope of the book with a handful of subheadings forces him to condense the debates so heavily that it is difficult to follow and leaves the reader a bit unclear about the flow of the book. Another drawback is that a number of the perspectives are from old voices. The views of E. J. Lowe, Hilary Kornblith, Michael Devitt, and Lynne Rudder Baker are well-known and well-trod. The book might have benefitted from fresher voices, who could review these older views while adding fresh insights. In spite of these minor problems, Haug does a superb job of drawing together essays that give the reader a comprehensive sense of the state of these debates as well as a strong platform for further research.

 

© 2015 Jamie Carlin Watson

 

Jamie Carlin Watson, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Broward College, Ft. Lauderdale, FL