I’m curious to know what you mean by saying that philosophy is a matter of opinion. From your paragraph, it appears you would say that even the most highly confirmed and productive theories of physics and chemistry are also matters of “opinion.” For me, that’s an odd way to use the term “opinion”, but unfortunately, I don’t own a trademark on the term! :)
I don’t think you have completely misunderstood. It is certainly possible to think of General Relativity or Molecular Orbital Theory as simply a very “fruitful vantage point”. But that is not really what I intended. After all, the final arbiter of the goodness of these scientific theories is experiment.
The same cannot be said about philosophical positions in metaphysics, ontology, metaethics, etc. There is no experiment which can confirm or refute the statements of Quine, or Kripke, or Dummett, or Chalmers, or Dennett. IMHO, it is useless to judge based on who has exhibited the best arguments. Instead, I believe, you need to try to understand their systems, to see the world through their eyes, and then to judge whether doing so makes things seem clearer.
Most philosophy is ‘a matter of opinion’ simply because there are no experiments to appeal to, and no proofs to analyze. But it is not completely meaningless, either, even though you cannot ‘pay the rent in expected experience’. Because you can sometimes ‘pay the rent’ in insight gained.
I guess, then, the reason I have difficulty understanding your position is that I don’t see a sharp distinction between science and philosophy, for standard Quinean reasons. The kind of philosophy that interests me is very much dependent on experiment. For example, my own meta-ethical views consist of a list of factual propositions that are amenable to experiment. (I’ve started listing them here.)
But of course, a great deal of philosophy is purely analytic, like mathematics. Surely the theorems of various logics are not mere opinion?
As for those (admittedly numerous) synthetic claims for which decent evidence is unavailable, I’m not much interested in them, either. Perhaps this is the subset of philosophical claims you consider to be “opinion”? Even then, I think the word “opinion” is misleading. This class of claims contains many that are either confused and incoherent, or else coherent and factual but probably unknowable.
Perplexed,
I’m curious to know what you mean by saying that philosophy is a matter of opinion. From your paragraph, it appears you would say that even the most highly confirmed and productive theories of physics and chemistry are also matters of “opinion.” For me, that’s an odd way to use the term “opinion”, but unfortunately, I don’t own a trademark on the term! :)
Have I understood you correctly?
I don’t think you have completely misunderstood. It is certainly possible to think of General Relativity or Molecular Orbital Theory as simply a very “fruitful vantage point”. But that is not really what I intended. After all, the final arbiter of the goodness of these scientific theories is experiment.
The same cannot be said about philosophical positions in metaphysics, ontology, metaethics, etc. There is no experiment which can confirm or refute the statements of Quine, or Kripke, or Dummett, or Chalmers, or Dennett. IMHO, it is useless to judge based on who has exhibited the best arguments. Instead, I believe, you need to try to understand their systems, to see the world through their eyes, and then to judge whether doing so makes things seem clearer.
Most philosophy is ‘a matter of opinion’ simply because there are no experiments to appeal to, and no proofs to analyze. But it is not completely meaningless, either, even though you cannot ‘pay the rent in expected experience’. Because you can sometimes ‘pay the rent’ in insight gained.
I guess, then, the reason I have difficulty understanding your position is that I don’t see a sharp distinction between science and philosophy, for standard Quinean reasons. The kind of philosophy that interests me is very much dependent on experiment. For example, my own meta-ethical views consist of a list of factual propositions that are amenable to experiment. (I’ve started listing them here.)
But of course, a great deal of philosophy is purely analytic, like mathematics. Surely the theorems of various logics are not mere opinion?
As for those (admittedly numerous) synthetic claims for which decent evidence is unavailable, I’m not much interested in them, either. Perhaps this is the subset of philosophical claims you consider to be “opinion”? Even then, I think the word “opinion” is misleading. This class of claims contains many that are either confused and incoherent, or else coherent and factual but probably unknowable.