SERIOUS PHILOSOPHY SUSAN HAACK

“the spirit is the most essential thing---the motive” C. S “the spirit is the most essential thing---the motive” C. S. Peirce (1869)

Cali, noviembre de 2016

las cuestiones aquí ¿qué es la filosofía seria? ¿qué se necesita para hacer la filosofía seriamente? ¿un sentido de humor tiene un papel legítimo en la filosofía seria?

mi propósito mostrar la importancia del insight de Peirce de que lo que más importa es el espirito, el motivo, de la indagación filosófica y que el humor, un tono guasón (“playfulness”) y incluso, a veces, chistes, pueden ser de ayuda

mientras una actitud muy solemne o lo que Peirce llama “la vaniosidad de astucia” (“the vanity of cleverness”) es inevitablemente un obstáculo

estructura de la conferencia empiezo con un relato verdadero que ilustra las cuestiones continuo explicando lo que requiere la filosofía seria

y entonces muestro como un sentido de humor puede ayudar y como la solemnidad puede impedir el trabajo filosófico serio

exactamente un ensayo en la interpretación de Peirce esta conferencia no es exactamente un ensayo en la interpretación de Peirce

más bien una tentativa de resolver un problema metafilosófico con la ayuda del pensamiento amplio y profundo de Peirce---¡mi maestro! y ahora, lo siento; pero tengo que continuar en inglés…

once upon a time… over dinner the night before I was due to give a paper in her department a young professor solemnly told me, “there’s no place for humor in serious philosophy” an awkward moment, to say the least

… since my paper (on the relation between science and literature) was full of playful literary allusions and verbal jokes

it was a long time coming, but now I can explore what’s wrong with the idea that, to be serious, philosophical work must be humorless

1. Preliminary Thoughts on “Serious”

a raft of uses/meanings the apocryphal billionaire who complains about household expenses: “a million here, a million there, and pretty soon you’re talking serious money” (= significant) a serious illness, a serious condition (= dangerous)

& a serious crime (= a felony, not just a misdemeanor) to the friend who seems preoccupied, “why so serious?” (= glum) BUT ALSO: the serious student (= one who has a genuine desire to learn & is willing to work)

& I, for one, think of some people in our profession as serious philosophers, others as more concerned to make their name, ensure a comfortable professional life, or …, etc.

etymologically “serious” comes from the Latin, “serius,” “weighty, heavy” hence my first approximation to an explanation of what’s wrong with the idea that, to be serious, a philosopher must be humorless, that …

it confuses the two sides of seriousness, supposing that because philosophical questions are significant, and require real work (= weighty) a serious philosopher must eschew playfulness and humor (= heavy)

on the contrary, I will argue taking philosophy seriously DOESN’T mean you must eschew humor NO: playfulness can actually help, while solemnity and self-importance will, for sure, stultify your work

he’s a truly serious philosopher; AND … why begin with Peirce? he’s a truly serious philosopher; AND …

he explores how a genuine, committed philosopher must go about his work articulates the role in inquiry of “Musement,” a kind of intellectual play has a mordant wit, and (just once) suggests why humor can help in inquiry…

2. The Serious Philosopher

I believe, like Peirce philosophy is a kind of inquiry (not, e.g., therapy, or “just a kind of writing”) & so it requires “drawing the bow upon truth, with intentness in the eye, with energy in the arm” (1.235, 1902)

as he also says, it requires “honesty and sincerity and a real love of truth,” AND “peirceistence” and “peirceseverance”

i.e. a serious philosopher must really want the truth (not just some convenient conclusion) & he must really want the truth (not just vaguely wish he knew it) [both implicit in the “bow” metaphor]

Peirce describes the first of these as “the Will to Learn,” and as the “Scientific Attitude” the second phrase might raise concerns that Peirce’s conception of philosophy is scientistic BUT NO: Peirce never suggests handing philosophical questions over to the sciences to resolve, nor replacing them with scientific questions

& neither does his talk of “love of truth” betray an antiquated kind of truth-worship, a conception of an inquirer as a collector of true propositions it just means: if he’s inquiring into whether p, he wants to end up believing that p just in case p, that not-p just in case not-p (& that it’s more complicated than that if it IS more complicated than that)

serious inquiry is demanding---and not just intellectually, like a riddle or a Rubick’s cube; it requires humility, willingness to start over, tolerance of risk, and a kind of self-abnegation

in a paper on “Telepathy and Perception” Peirce writes that anyone who does psychical research must accept “that it would be hard and incessant work, mostly drudgery, requiring him to be occupied mostly with knaves and fools” “that it would cost him a great deal of money, considering all that it would prevent him from earning”

& “that it would never bring him much honor, but would put a certain stamp of obloquy upon him” “that even among the company of those who professed to love the truth, … there would be found, in the more richly endowed sciences, individuals who would treat him in the narrowest and most despicable spirit”

& (cont. 7.609, 1903) “that after his whole life had been poured out into the inquiry, it was not unlikely that he might find that he had not found out anything” it’s a scary thought, but this is mostly true, also, for anyone who engages in serious philosophy!

perhaps not “mostly” fools and knaves, but still …

a serious inquirer will shun both “sham reasoning” (making a case for a proposition predetermined in advance to which you are already committed) “fake reasoning” (making a case for a proposition predetermined in advance to the truth of which you’re indifferent, but defending which you hope will make you famous, or, etc.)

in real life, of course inquirers fall on a continuum (more and less serious)--- it’s not a categorical distinction

& (to be clear) there’s no guarantee that only serious inquirers ever arrive at the truth the sham and the fake MAY pick true propositions to defend & (as Peirce has just reminded us) a real, serious inquirer may fail

the idea is, rather “to pile the outworks of truth with the carcasses of this generation … until some future generation, by treading on them, can storm the citadel”

probably the truly serious philosophical inquirer has always been the exception rather than the rule (remember Plato on “real” philosophers in Republic V!) Peirce complains about the sham reasoning of “seminary philosophers,” “academic professors,” and about…

the “sophisticated” chatter of dilettantes ... among dilettanti it is not rare to find those who have so perverted thought to the purposes of pleasure that it seems to vex them to think that the questions on which they delight to exercise it may ever finally get settled, and a positive discovery which takes a favorite subject out of the arena of literary debate is met with ill-concealed dislike. This disposition is the very debauchery of thought (5.396, 1878).

& [The pragmaticist] is none of those over-cultivated Oxford dons---I hope their day is over---whom any discovery that brought quietus to a vexed question would evidently vex because it would end the fun of arguing around it and about it and over it (5.520, c. 1905).

today “seminary philosophy” is less influential in the profession (though not extinct) but sham reasoning in aid of one fad or fashion or another is ubiquitous & so is fake reasoning---in aid, of course, of the fake reasoner!

the professionally ambitious blithely propose wildly implausible ideas, hoping to become famous (or at least notorious) e.g.: no one believes anything; it is pointless, or superstitious, or politically incorrect to care whether your beliefs are true; there is no truth… physics explains everything; science is just rhetoric & politics…

& the less ambitious tag along, jumping on fashionable bandwagons presumably in the hope that this will provide them with opportunities to join a clique and, better yet, a publication cartel

i.e., a group of mutually supportive academics who review and cite each others’ papers, books, etc.

the ambitious and the pedestrian alike do this either consciously or, more likely, in a convenient fog of self-deception…

no wonder philosophy is often perceived by outsiders as a pointless exercise (“mere semantics”) BUT this is a dangerous travesty philosophy often has serious real-world consequences

e.g. whether any kind of criminal-justice system is defensible depends on answers about evidence and truth, & about agency and responsibility

& whether it’s reasonable to devote significant social resources to science depends on answers to questions about the claims of the sciences to give us knowledge

& even though some philosophical work will have only the most indirect bearing on real-world issues, and some will have none the tiniest detail, even if it bakes no bread, may contribute something vital to our understanding of the world

Peirce acknowledges that some may find his work in logic so “dry, husky, and innutritious” they can’t believe “there’s any human good in it.” But it is worth the pain of learning… … as is the multiplication table

in short philosophy is a respectable kind of serious inquiry not an idle game, not something to be undertaken frivolously & indeed, as the saying goes, no joking matter

3. The Place of Playfulness and Humor

but doesn’t what I just said imply that philosophy must ESCHEW humor? indeed, isn’t that what Peirce meant when he said that “in order to be deep it is requisite to be dull”? & that some branches of sciences aren’t in a healthy condition unless they are “abstruse, arid, and abstract”?

no! there IS a place in serious philosophy for playfulness and humor & Peirce was well aware of this

first (easier) part a serious inquirer of any kind often needs to come up with new ideas, etc., and maybe new words to express them… & while this process will be informed by his background knowledge, it is very different from systematic study, regimented inference, and the like

Peirce writes of “Pure Play, … a lively exercise of one’s powers [that] has no rules, except this very law of liberty”

his word for the special kind of Pure Play involved in coming up with a conjecture to explain something puzzling is “Musement” this is an essential part of the serious business of philosophical inquiry

now for the second (harder) part the place of humor in other stages of philosophical inquiry I begin obliquely, with the role of humor in COMMUNICATING philosophical ideas

today professional philosophy is usually written in a deadly, deadpan, “style of no style” bland, chewy, impersonal prose, larded with cliquish technicalities intended to convey professionalism, objectivity, the au courant

this academic automatic-writing invites academic automatic-reading: look for the jargon, pigeon-hole the author in one clique or another, and then just coast without real thought

this “style” (if you can call it that) impedes real communication which requires a real connection with your audience humor, however, can help do the trick, make that real connection

some examples….

another…

& another…

of course the humor should be relevant humor just breaking off to tell a joke will give your audience a respite, but won’t help get your point across, and may distract their attention while a relevant joke, pun, or caricature gives them a nudge in the right direction

well, inquiry … is a lot like holding an intense discussion with yourself & sometimes you must think through details of no inherent interest so a joke, a pun, an amusing caricature of the idea whose grip you’re trying to break

can both break the tension & nudge you towards a solution so, for this reason, is even better than a brisk workout or a stiff drink!

there are examples in the driest writers, e. g there are examples in the driest writers, e.g. Frege on Mill’s philosophy of mathematics

& in Peirce e.g., his description of Descartes as marking the period when philosophy “put off childish things, and began to be a conceited young man”

& this, on nominalism in British philosophy … as if a man, being seized of a conviction that paper were a good material to make things of, were to go to work to build a papier mâché house, with roof of roofing paper, windows of paraffinned paper, chimneys, bath tubs, locks, etc., all of different forms of paper…

but most to the present purpose is this … from his 1903 Harvard lectures, where, having just described pure self-consciousness, the most degenerate form of Thirdness, as “a mere feeling that has a dark instinct of being a germ of thought,” Peirce breaks off to tell an anecdote:

“I remember a lady’s averring that her father had heard a minister… open a prayer as follows: “O Thou All-sufficient, Self-sufficient, insufficient God.” Now pure Self-consciousness is Self-sufficient, and if it is also regarded as All-sufficient, it would seem to follow that it must be Insufficient...”

& then he adds “… I ought to apologize for introducing such Buffoonery into serious lectures. I do so because I seriously believe that a bit of fun helps thought, and tends to keep it pragmatical.” THAT’S EXACTLY RIGHT!

4. Postscript on “the Vanity of Cleverness”

keeping thought “pragmatical” not losing your intellectual footing requires you to be vigilant against slipping into pretentious obscurity, and, above all keenly aware of your fallibility and limitations

remember Peirce on the need for “contrite fallibilism” to which “the blight of cocksureness” is a major hindrance

this is why the touches of humor you find in serious philosophers are often wryly self-deprecatory: e.g., Carnap warning himself against the danger of producing an elegant theory that applies to nothing

&

&, of course “there are certain mummified pedants who have never wakened to the fact that the act of knowing a real object alters it … … and I am one of them”

the academic environment today with its constant demands for abstracts, proposals, reports, etc., encourages self-aggrandizement, exaggeration &, inevitably, the vice Peirce calls “the vanity of cleverness”

Peirce’s phrase captures a phenomenon all too common in today’s academy the over-confidence of those who, priding themselves on their quick wits forget that serious philosophy also requires creativity, risk-taking, commitment, mature reflection, … not to mention intellectual luck

but clever undergraduates are encouraged into graduate programs clever graduate students land jobs in fancy places clever professors snag “prestigious” grants, publish in “prestigious” journals, etc.

cleverness begins to seem the main thing so that those who “make it” (institutionally) seem highly susceptible to the vanity of cleverness & we forget how important it is to be able to laugh at your own pretensions, your wildly premature celebrations of half-baked solutions, etc.

all the more reason to say (by way of conclusion) that the serious philosopher should work in earnest—but NOT in GRIM earnest

¡gracias por vuestra atención!