How Difficult Is Philosophy?

It’s Absurd

Philosophy is much, much harder than people think. Frankly, it’s almost comical how difficult it is. However hard we initially thought philosophy is, it is harder. And guess what? It never gets easier, no matter how long you do it.

In this post I’ll talk about the extreme difficulty of philosophy. It’s tempting to draw conclusions, but I’ll refrain!

KIT FINE & VAGUENESS

One of the best philosophers of the last few decades is Kit Fine. It’s unlikely that you’d read his publications, since he works on topics that aren’t covered in the vast majority of undergraduate courses. (The most fundamental philosophical issues, regarding truth and meaning, are treated in only a superficial way in those courses.) In any case, around a dozen or so years ago I heard that he was going to teach a PhD seminar on the topic of vagueness, at NYU (which is almost unanimously considered to have one of the best philosophy departments in the world, pretty much however you want to judge it). Fine is so good that other professors—including the best ones—will attend his seminars, since they know they will learn something valuable. The description for the seminar was something like “We need a whole new approach to the study of vagueness, so let’s explore options”.

That’s telling. Fine had been working and publishing on the topic for something like 35 years at that point, and had even thoroughly developed his own famous approach in multiple works. And yet, after all that time and effort, he suspected we all needed a new approach, since the old ones weren’t right. He was still missing something fundamentally important. He wasn’t messing around with details.

Just in case you were wondering, Fine is not lacking in self-confidence. Ummm, just no. I once published a criticism of one of his central papers. His published response to me was basically, “Frances is wrong here in his crucial premise”. He did this with no accompanying supporting argument whatsoever. Well, okay!

There’s nothing atypical about that story.

PHILOSOPHY OF QUANTUM MECHANICS & THE PROBLEM OF INDUCTION

When I was at the University of Leeds, in England, a visiting speaker came to give a talk to the faculty and graduate students. I don’t recall the main topic, although I’m pretty sure it was in the philosophy of quantum mechanics, since that’s what the speaker’s primary research was in. He was a superb philosopher. As you might expect, it’s incredibly challenging to do the philosophy of physics, since one needs to have true expertise in both philosophy and physics. Gaining expertise in one field of study is plenty; doing two is nuts. His work in the philosophy of quantum mechanics is read all around the world.

During the latter part of his talk, he applied some of his theses to the classic Problem of Induction. When it came to the Q&A, my colleague Peter Simons began his query with something along the lines of “I don’t think you fully understand the depth of the Problem of Induction”, and then proceeded to explain why. It was plain to everyone that Simons was right and the speaker was wrong.

If you studied philosophy as a student, then this might seem bizarre: if the speaker is so damn great, like I claimed, then how in God’s name doesn’t he understand the freakin’ Problem of Induction, which is covered in undergraduate classes?

Well, I have no doubt that he had an ordinary understanding of the problem. Sure. But it often takes years to fully understand a philosophical problem. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had discussions with good, experienced philosophers who have never grasped the depth of certain well-known philosophical problems, such as the Liar Paradox or the Sorites Paradox. When they talk about them, I can tell that have only a superficial understanding. This pretty much explains why they find some of the solutions to the paradoxes to be crazy. Since they don’t fully grasp the problem, they haven’t realized that every possible solution is anti-commonsensical in a truly radical way. Once you have realized that fact, then you won’t be put off by bizarre proposals.

WORKING FOR DECADES ON ONE TOPIC

Just a week ago I finished writing a short book on philosophically interesting scientific issues about color and sent the book proposal to a press for evaluation. I’ve been working on it for decades, endlessly trying to figure out the answer to “Where are colors located?” (some location options: surfaces of ordinary objects, our eyes, our brains, the air between our eyes and the objects, a non-physical realm). I’m happy with the book, but I don’t pretend I have correctly identified the answer to its question. People have been working on this problem for literally centuries (e.g., Galileo, Descartes, and Locke, among others, worked on a primitive version of it with their discussions of primary and secondary qualities). Even with all the progress that’s been made, in the science and philosophy of color, people today are still working on it, not knowing the answer to that straightforward question.

Heidegger worked on his “What is Being?” question for decades.

At the end of his life Wittgenstein was still quite puzzled about simple knowledge claims like “I know that I have hands” and “I know my name”. He had been working on them for decades. He would be the first to tell you he found it all very confusing, all the way to the very end of his life. If you think the epistemology of knowledge is pretty straightforward, well, I guess you’re a better philosopher than Wittgenstein. Uh huh.

And on and on.

This isn’t a series of people working endlessly on small matters, after they’ve figured out the answers to big questions. Moreover, it’s not like science, where we keep accumulating more and more bits of knowledge. Yes, there is some accumulation, but most philosophical research is like what I pointed out in my previous post, with progress embedded in chaos.

We all go through this process, for years and years.

So, is a great deal of philosophy hopeless?

PROGRESS WITHIN DIFFICULTY

Not at all. Like I said in my previous post, each person makes stunning amounts of progress when studying philosophy. Honestly, if you have done philosophy for more than 2 or 3 years, surely you have seen it in your own experience.

Maybe you started out thinking that the existence of horrific suffering obviously shows that God as traditionally conceived doesn’t exist. Nothing wrong with that; it’s a totally intelligent and plausible position to take at that point. But then, after studying a few diverse articles on it, writing about it, and then having someone who really knows the topic pick apart your arguments, you know that it’s not obvious at all.

Or maybe you thought the solution to the Sorites Paradox was pretty straightforward. Then you read Tim Williamson’s book on it, and you realize that there’s nothing at all straightforward about it.

Or maybe you read Frank Jackson’s “What Mary Didn’t Know” argument against physicalism, and you formed some opinion on the strength of the argument. That’s all perfectly fine. But then you went deeper, read some more challenging articles on the issue, wrote about it yourself, and then had someone who has published on the topic evaluate your arguments—and not pull punches. Then you realized you didn’t know the lay of the land at all.

I like the comparison of philosophy with sports.

SPORTS & PHILOSOPHY

When I was taking some philosophy courses as an undergraduate and then as a graduate student but in physics, it was like I was on a high school baseball team. I was good enough to be the regular center fielder, which is great and worth celebrating. But it was just high school, and it wasn’t like my school was exceptional in any way. In fact, we were utterly ordinary, in a comparative sense.

So, yeah: I was good as a center fielder, and got a little praise. It’s worth being proud of that. But come on.

Then I became a PhD student in philosophy. Once again, let’s suppose I’m doing really well, with all As in my courses and plenty of praise from the professors. I even get a couple papers accepted for presentation at conferences. So, things are going well. But really? It’s like hitting .330 in the class B minor leagues: it’s fantastic relative to the peer competition but that’s all. None of those papers I wrote then were publishable in journals with high standards. Every major argument (so, set aside the minor ones) had serious flaws, even if people who read them were impressed with the work as that of a student.

Now suppose I’ve got my PhD and first job as a postdoc or assistant professor. I’ve arrived. I’ve published more, and those publications weren’t in any of those silly journals that don’t have high standards. But really? It’s like I’m hitting .240 in Major League baseball. I’ve got a job! But I have yet to produce any work that’s really worth the time of other experts in the field.

There’s no way around it: doing philosophy even marginally well takes a crazy amount of time.