On Synthetic Philosophy; or Williamson vs Kitcher, again.
A few weeks ago (here) I ‘reviewed’ Timothy Williamson’s actual review (here) of Philip Kitcher’s (2023) What’s the Use of Philosophy? (OUP). I had not read Kitcher’s book yet. One important omission of Williamson’s review is that it fails to convey what Kitcher’s positive program is. Yes, this is indeed introduced by way of ample nodding to (as Williamson notes) of the “pragmatist tradition” of James, Peirce, and Dewey. But in a way that is not quite what’s distinctive about Kitcher’s new articulation of his program.
Let me explain. To be sure, my aim is not mere score keeping among the disciplinary royalty. I am, as regular readers know, interested in the fate of synthetic philosophy (which Kitcher promotes, and I also promote in a different variant).
Williamson himself is quite transparent about what he is doing in the review. So, let me first quote Williamson:
Lurking here is an important methodological point about the nature of philosophy of the special sciences. Williamson’s own stance reflects what I take to be the late twentieth century orthodoxy, where philosophers in the special sciences were hired because they were ‘cheerleaders of science’ and so the philosophical work to be done presupposed the rationality and truth-aptness of science and the point of the philosophers was to restate it (in a certain sense) in a unified or regimented language.
The previous paragraph is caricature, of course. Although is worth noting that Kitcher’s own argument is framed against some such caricature. In fact, Kitcher’s own narrative is poignant because he uses his two teachers, Hempel and Kuhn, to both characterize and problematize the caricature (before he rejects it).
To be sure, like all caricature there is a kernel of truth in it. Rather than being alert to the risk of replication crisis, philosophers of science either cheered on bad ‘science’ or, what may be worse, were uncritical consumers of it. But enough about that.
Importantly, Kitcher does not praise the ordinary philosophy of the special sciences (caricatured by Williamson and myself). Rather, he praises a particular kind of philosophy of the special sciences; Kitcher dubs it “modus Cartwright” (p. 89) in honor of his friend, Nancy Cartwright (and the “Stanford school” (p. 145) she exemplifies). He uses the phrase at least another ten times, so it’s a bit surprising Williamson missed it. Here’s how Kitcher introduces ‘modus Cartwright:’
Again and again, throughout her writings, she offers her readers some facts about areas of scientific work or about social programs, sometimes unfamiliar, sometimes juxtaposing the familiar with the previously unrecognized, points to tensions among them or with standard judgments about them, and offers a perspective on them to resolve the tensions and to make sense of the whole. As I have since reflected on that conversation, I have begun to think she is not alone in coming to her innovative (and sometimes startling) views through this kind of argument—I’ll dub it modus Cartwright, in her honor. It’s all over the history of Western philosophy, at the moments when a thinker is introducing new principles and new concepts (pp. 88-89)
In context, this ‘modus’ is contrasted to (i) the giving of arguments that has become so characteristic of the way recent analytic/professional philosophy understands itself. In Kitcher’s description we can recognize a few features: (ii) the modus presupposes deep knowledge about some (a) scientific discipline or (b) social program (etc). The practitioner of the modus (iii) diagnoses an apparent tension or discordancy within or between these (a&b, etc.). (It seems plausible that one could also inherit the tension.) The practitioner of the modus then (iv) introduces new principles or concepts (or distinctions, etc.) and, thereby, (v) dissolves the tension and, so, (vi) makes a new sense of a-b in a new more holistic way.
Of course, (this is not quite in Kitcher) the modus itself is a kind of argument that may be dubbed (recall) an extended consideration. Kitcher himself adds that the scale on which the modus happens can vary (see p. 125; and also the remarks on Rawls and Kuhn on pp. 130-1)
Now, Kitcher repeatedly insists that he himself has been trying to practice ‘modus Cartwright’ (p. 89; 145). Thus, as immanent critique Williamson’s review fails entirely. (Of course, Williamson didn’t quite say he was doing that; so I leave it to you to discuss how we should evaluate the legitimacy of Williamson’s approach.) I return to Williamson at the end.
Sometimes Kitcher treats the desired secondary effects (vi) in terms of increase in coherence: “They try to bring order to the phenomena, resolving tensions and increasing coherence. They offer a perspective to help those subcranial chaos.” (p. 133) And If understand Kitcher correctly, the activity that falls under (iv), or perhaps the whole modus (vi), is what Kitcher calls synthetic in character (p. 130) or just synthetic philosophy (p. 168)
Before I continue, it is worth noting that Kitcher seems right that something like the ‘modus’ is ubiquitous in the history of philosophy. Kitcher’s proposal has, for example, a distant (okay rather distant) family resemblance to the project of coining concepts in Deleuze and Guattari What is Philosophy? (Or my own notion of philosophic prophecy.)
Either way, the modus is characteristic of the philosophy that Kitcher wants to champion and champions throughout the book. My criticism of it is that it black-boxes or leaves mysterious the art of synthesis or the manner in which the philosopher generates the material by which coherence is produced. And so rather than seeing philosophy as a skilled practice, one that relies on a distinct expertise or intellectual technology, she is the modern incarnation of a kind of romantic, ineffable genius (although one with the luxury to read and reflect). To put it in old-fashioned terms, the context of discovery of the ‘'modus’ is black-boxed.
This is not a criticism against the modus. I agree with Kitcher that it exists and is valuable. I also agree that philosophy of the special sciences are in a good position to deploy and enact the modus. (Kitcher himself does not restrict himself to special sciences; he also lionizes, say, Cavell’s contributions to literature and aesthetics.) But as my parenthesis hints at, I think standing by itself the modus is not a good way to help us think about the distinctive professional role philosophers can play inside and outside the discipline.
As regular readers know my own proposal for synthetic philosophy, which is very close to Kicther’s proposed modus, is centered on the skilled use or deployment (or reinterpretation, etc.) of a particular somewhat general-purpose model or theory (or technique) and thereby connect or illuminate different special sciences or subfields within the advanced division of cognitive labor. Kitcher’s own skilled deployment of Darwinism throughout his mature writings (including What’s the Use of Philosophy—he has really skilled treatment of why the ‘cottage industry’ of ‘evolutionary debunking arguments’ ought not have gotten off the ground in the form that they have—)* exemplify the skill (although not the purpose). But about my own view soon more.
To be sure, I think Kitcher’s articulation of the modus is considerable progress compared to his older view of synthetic philosophy, which (recall) I associate with his (2012) Preludes to Pragmatism. There synthetic philosophy really meant a kind of ‘integrative world-making’ which is constitutive of synthetic philosophy: "Setting aside any further ventures in philosophical midwifery, societies and individuals continue to need an integrated picture of nature that combines the contributions of different areas of inquiry, and different fields of investigation can be assisted by thinkers whose more synthetic perspective can alert them to missed opportunities and provide them with needed clarification." (215)
Unfortunately, this much broader picture is also present in What’s The Use of Philosophy. He often treats this project as synonymous with ‘synthetic philosophy’ or a ‘synthesizing’ project; this he often associates with the “best integrated knowledge” (p. 21 ). I quote two exemplary passage:
Philosophy, so understood, is a synthetic discipline, one that reflects on and responds to the state of inquiry, to the conditions of a variety of human social practices, and to the felt needs of individual people to make sense of the world and their place in it. Philosophers are people whose broad engagement with the condition of their age enables them to facilitate individual reflection and social conversation. (13)…
Philosophy at its greatest is synthetic. It doesn’t work beside the various areas of inquiry and culture and practice. Instead, it works between and among them. As Dewey puts the point, it tries to offer the meanings of what human beings have come to know. In that consists the successor discipline we need to replace the metaphysics of the past. (p. 54-55; emphasis in Kitcher)
In fact, while he recognizes that “overreach produces superficiality,” (p. 134; p. 136) throughout the book Kitcher also champions “large(r) synthetic” vision(s)/schemes (e.g., p. 56; p. 116; p. 121, p. 132) and wide “synthetic scope” (p. 126, p. 127) whose point is “in supplying synthetic perspectives to help people with the perplexities generated when they think about the world in which they live and about their own place in it.” (p. 137)
As I have noted, Williamson has so little time for any of this that he can barely summarize Kitcher’s interest in promoting it accuately. Williamson treats Kitcher as advocating for the ‘utility’ of philosophy. Williamson uses ‘utility’ three times in his short review twice implying that Kitcher advocates for the “practical utility” of philosophy. This terminology subtly ascribes to Kitcher a kind of vulgar benthamism. Williamson himself notes that Kitcher’s “book contains many memorable potential quotes that a populist politician could use to justify shutting down philosophy departments, even though Kitcher intends no such consequence (151).”
I agree with Williamson that Kitcher’s book lacks political prudence against this (non-trivial) risk. (Not for the first time I am struck by how alert Williamson is to such risks in his writings.) But it’s also worth noting that Kitcher himself never uses ‘utility’ or its cognates, and that far from being a vulgar benthamite the tenor is despite his egalitarian sensibilities more Humboldtian in character.
When Kitcher confronts the role he sees for his philosophy he puts the issue like this: “Do the efforts at synthesis generate resources that prove useful, whether for some systematic field of inquiry, or for collective efforts to resolve difficult questions, or for people’s attempts to make sense of their lives?” (p. 151) It would be crass not to see the nobility of trying, as Kitcher does, to make philosophy live up to this demand. In fact, Williamson must have felt the pull of it, because much of his review is about marshalling evidence of professional’s philosophy’s use to other fields of inquiry. These gentlemen are not so far apart, after all.