I want to point out what may be two incorrect presuppositions in the question. First:
I am referring [...] to [...] the [philosopher] who deserves the most credit for advancing human philosophy towards being more true.
There may be an assumption here that the work of “advancing philosophy towards being more true” is mostly done by philosophers (in which case, it’s reasonable to ask which of those philosophers has done the biggest slice of that work). But actually it seems likely, at least to me, that if you look at present-day philosophical opinions and long-ago philosophical opinions, pick out the changes about which we can be most confident that today’s opinions are better, and ask how it came about that philosophers used mostly to believe X but now mostly believe Y—then in many cases the reasons would be largely down to progress in (what is now called) science rather than in philosophy.
So if the question were altered slightly, asking for the person rather than specifically the philosopher who deserves most credit for advancing human philosophy towards being more true, people like Eratosthenes and Darwin and Einstein might be better candidates than the likes of Socrates and Hume and Russell.
The second possible incorrect presupposition is that “being more true” is the best way to compare the merits of philosophical positions. Isn’t it possible, and even likely, that many philosophical questions are ones for which there is, actually, no fact of the matter about whether one answer or another is correct? Some philosophical questions might be important even if they don’t have true answers as such; answering them one way rather than another might lead to greater happiness or scientific progress or something.
In such cases it might actually be best to find a way to reframe the debate so that it doesn’t take the form of arguing about truth and falsehood. (So, for instance, suppose it turns out that moral realism is wrong, so that many, many philosophical debates about substantial questions of ethics were asking questions that have no true answers; it might then be better to ask questions like “what moral principles tend to lead to stable societies and happy lives?” or something.)
In terms of what counts as “philosophy”, I was using a fairly modern conception of it. If that is granted (although come to think of it I could be challenged on that), then it follows that modern scientists have generally not considered such questions- Einstein, Darwin etc have not considered questions that fit into the modern idea of philosophy.
I also see no reasonable way to argue that there is “no fact of the matter” about whether morality is true or not. The basic idea of “just plain right/wrong” is incoherent and therefore clearly wrong in the same sense free will is clearly wrong.
What counts as philosophy: my point wasn’t that science should be included under the heading of “philosophy”, but that scientific advances may have had a big impact on philosophical questions.
Morality: I think I wasn’t clear enough. (Either that or I’m now misunderstanding you.) I wasn’t saying there might be no fact of the matter about whether moral realism is correct; I was saying that if moral realism is incorrect, there might be no fact of the matter about any question of the form “is doing X in situation Y morally right or not?”. (As to the question of whether moral realism is incorrect, I am inclined to agree with you that it is. But that wasn’t my point; I was just offering a concrete example.)
On that matter, could you give some more evidence to demonstrate your points? I’m curious but a bit skeptical without examples to back it up- modern philosophy is in a metaphorical sense designed by retreating further and further from empirical questions, and thus would not have in its domain questions which scientific advances can help with.
As for morality- let’s assume moral realism is incorrect (a highly credible hypothesis). This puts moral realism on the same sort of level as free will. Therefore, if asking “Is doing X in situation Y morally right or not?” the correct answer in any case is “No- there is no such thing as ‘morally right’.” This is just asking the question “Does person X in situation Y have free will or not?” (common in law and ethics) is one where in all cases the answer is “No- there is no such thing as ‘free will’.”
Origins of philosophical progress: Take as an example the “mind-body problem”, which one could state as follows: Our bodies appear to be machines made of meat, but somehow thinking doesn’t tend to feel like an activity done by meat machines; how does that work out? Once upon a time, the great bulk of answers given by good philosophers would have fitted into the framework of “substance dualism”; there’s mind-stuff and matter-stuff, and then various ways of explaining how they are connected (e.g., Descartes thought they interacted somehow in the pineal gland, Leibniz had his “pre-established harmonies”, etc.).
Nowadays, there are still substance dualists but most philosophers are physicalists, and the terms of the debate have changed considerably. And I think this is mostly for two reasons. First, science and medicine have uncovered more and more reasons to think that our thinking is done by our brains, and that our brains are indeed meat machines. Second, religious belief has declined, mostly (I think) for reasons that have nothing much to do with the activities of professional philosophers in the intervening time, though some of them have a lot to do with the activities of scientists (e.g., Darwin and other evolutionary biologists giving a better explanation for the variety and adaptedness-to-environment of life; Newton and his many successors giving credible candidates for literally all-encompassing physical theories).
Morality: Assuming moral nonrealism, it isn’t necessarily best to declare all moral judgements false. It might well be better to regard them as (e.g.) statements about the values of the person making those judgements (or the society they’re in, or something). If we do—and perhaps even if we don’t—then we should evaluate those statements by criteria other than truth. Suppose one person says “Sending Jews to the gas chambers is morally wrong” and another says “Sending Jews to the gas chambers is morally right”. I have, and I bet you have, and I bet we would both prefer as many people as possible to have, a very strong preference (to say the least) for the first of those statements over the second. Which, still conditional on moral nonrealism, indicates that sometimes statements need evaluating on grounds other than objective truth even if at first glance they look like attempts to state objective truths.
(For the avoidance of doubt: I am not trying to make, explicitly or implicitly, the argument that goes “See, you’re capable of seeing that ‘gassing Jews is wrong’ is better than ‘gassing Jews is right’; therefore you must embrace moral realism because otherwise there’s no coherent way to see that”. I think that’s a very wrong argument, though I recognize its psychological force.)
Origins of philosophical progress:
Strictly speaking, this fits into my point- the idea of philosophy has been redefined and modern mind-body theories use arguments that aren’t empirically verifiable. Some might consider this a dubious distinction, however, so I’ll ignore that.
It should also be pointed out that the progress in philosophy was done much sooner- there were physicalist philosophers since the earliest period of history. There are more physicalist philosophers than mind-body dualist philosophers nowadays, but physicalism hasn’t triumphed in the sense of becoming a philosophical consensus.
The scientists who ensured the triumph of physicalism would have converted future philosophers to physicalist viewpoints, but would not have greatly contributed to the progress of the philosophical minority who would have advanced its progress anyway. Even in the hypothetical world where there was no Industrial Revolution whatsoever for some reason, a philosophical minority would have proceeded to get as far as proper philosophers have today (case in point- look at Epiricus and how much he suceeded at on something approximating pure reason). The difference would be that there would be innumerable false theories out there as well.
Morality: Any believer in moral objectivity would consider this approach utterly patronising (I know partially because I once was one)- it is that much, as it assumes they are wrong without actually showing why. Back in the day, I would punch you for saying something like that.
The problem with your conception is that it makes it hard to consider some sorts of philosophical questions that deserve considering if the human “model” of these matters is to be as accurate as possible. For example, imagine trying to consider a question “Should I act selfishly or selflessly?” whilst considering the pros and cons of it. A flawed philosopher might argue something like “Selflessness is my subjective preference, so I’m going to go with that” without considering the implications of alternatives properly. Things worth considering for said philosopher include the implications of acting in various ways
Of course, it also means it becomes significantly harder for history students to have a decent understanding of the past- the conception of things as morally wrong has, as a concept, played a massive role in history. Many parts of history cannot be understood if you do not realise that people saw morality as more than a subjective matter of feelings.
I want to point out what may be two incorrect presuppositions in the question. First:
There may be an assumption here that the work of “advancing philosophy towards being more true” is mostly done by philosophers (in which case, it’s reasonable to ask which of those philosophers has done the biggest slice of that work). But actually it seems likely, at least to me, that if you look at present-day philosophical opinions and long-ago philosophical opinions, pick out the changes about which we can be most confident that today’s opinions are better, and ask how it came about that philosophers used mostly to believe X but now mostly believe Y—then in many cases the reasons would be largely down to progress in (what is now called) science rather than in philosophy.
So if the question were altered slightly, asking for the person rather than specifically the philosopher who deserves most credit for advancing human philosophy towards being more true, people like Eratosthenes and Darwin and Einstein might be better candidates than the likes of Socrates and Hume and Russell.
The second possible incorrect presupposition is that “being more true” is the best way to compare the merits of philosophical positions. Isn’t it possible, and even likely, that many philosophical questions are ones for which there is, actually, no fact of the matter about whether one answer or another is correct? Some philosophical questions might be important even if they don’t have true answers as such; answering them one way rather than another might lead to greater happiness or scientific progress or something.
In such cases it might actually be best to find a way to reframe the debate so that it doesn’t take the form of arguing about truth and falsehood. (So, for instance, suppose it turns out that moral realism is wrong, so that many, many philosophical debates about substantial questions of ethics were asking questions that have no true answers; it might then be better to ask questions like “what moral principles tend to lead to stable societies and happy lives?” or something.)
In terms of what counts as “philosophy”, I was using a fairly modern conception of it. If that is granted (although come to think of it I could be challenged on that), then it follows that modern scientists have generally not considered such questions- Einstein, Darwin etc have not considered questions that fit into the modern idea of philosophy.
I also see no reasonable way to argue that there is “no fact of the matter” about whether morality is true or not. The basic idea of “just plain right/wrong” is incoherent and therefore clearly wrong in the same sense free will is clearly wrong.
What counts as philosophy: my point wasn’t that science should be included under the heading of “philosophy”, but that scientific advances may have had a big impact on philosophical questions.
Morality: I think I wasn’t clear enough. (Either that or I’m now misunderstanding you.) I wasn’t saying there might be no fact of the matter about whether moral realism is correct; I was saying that if moral realism is incorrect, there might be no fact of the matter about any question of the form “is doing X in situation Y morally right or not?”. (As to the question of whether moral realism is incorrect, I am inclined to agree with you that it is. But that wasn’t my point; I was just offering a concrete example.)
On that matter, could you give some more evidence to demonstrate your points? I’m curious but a bit skeptical without examples to back it up- modern philosophy is in a metaphorical sense designed by retreating further and further from empirical questions, and thus would not have in its domain questions which scientific advances can help with.
As for morality- let’s assume moral realism is incorrect (a highly credible hypothesis). This puts moral realism on the same sort of level as free will. Therefore, if asking “Is doing X in situation Y morally right or not?” the correct answer in any case is “No- there is no such thing as ‘morally right’.” This is just asking the question “Does person X in situation Y have free will or not?” (common in law and ethics) is one where in all cases the answer is “No- there is no such thing as ‘free will’.”
Origins of philosophical progress: Take as an example the “mind-body problem”, which one could state as follows: Our bodies appear to be machines made of meat, but somehow thinking doesn’t tend to feel like an activity done by meat machines; how does that work out? Once upon a time, the great bulk of answers given by good philosophers would have fitted into the framework of “substance dualism”; there’s mind-stuff and matter-stuff, and then various ways of explaining how they are connected (e.g., Descartes thought they interacted somehow in the pineal gland, Leibniz had his “pre-established harmonies”, etc.).
Nowadays, there are still substance dualists but most philosophers are physicalists, and the terms of the debate have changed considerably. And I think this is mostly for two reasons. First, science and medicine have uncovered more and more reasons to think that our thinking is done by our brains, and that our brains are indeed meat machines. Second, religious belief has declined, mostly (I think) for reasons that have nothing much to do with the activities of professional philosophers in the intervening time, though some of them have a lot to do with the activities of scientists (e.g., Darwin and other evolutionary biologists giving a better explanation for the variety and adaptedness-to-environment of life; Newton and his many successors giving credible candidates for literally all-encompassing physical theories).
Morality: Assuming moral nonrealism, it isn’t necessarily best to declare all moral judgements false. It might well be better to regard them as (e.g.) statements about the values of the person making those judgements (or the society they’re in, or something). If we do—and perhaps even if we don’t—then we should evaluate those statements by criteria other than truth. Suppose one person says “Sending Jews to the gas chambers is morally wrong” and another says “Sending Jews to the gas chambers is morally right”. I have, and I bet you have, and I bet we would both prefer as many people as possible to have, a very strong preference (to say the least) for the first of those statements over the second. Which, still conditional on moral nonrealism, indicates that sometimes statements need evaluating on grounds other than objective truth even if at first glance they look like attempts to state objective truths.
(For the avoidance of doubt: I am not trying to make, explicitly or implicitly, the argument that goes “See, you’re capable of seeing that ‘gassing Jews is wrong’ is better than ‘gassing Jews is right’; therefore you must embrace moral realism because otherwise there’s no coherent way to see that”. I think that’s a very wrong argument, though I recognize its psychological force.)
Origins of philosophical progress: Strictly speaking, this fits into my point- the idea of philosophy has been redefined and modern mind-body theories use arguments that aren’t empirically verifiable. Some might consider this a dubious distinction, however, so I’ll ignore that.
It should also be pointed out that the progress in philosophy was done much sooner- there were physicalist philosophers since the earliest period of history. There are more physicalist philosophers than mind-body dualist philosophers nowadays, but physicalism hasn’t triumphed in the sense of becoming a philosophical consensus.
The scientists who ensured the triumph of physicalism would have converted future philosophers to physicalist viewpoints, but would not have greatly contributed to the progress of the philosophical minority who would have advanced its progress anyway. Even in the hypothetical world where there was no Industrial Revolution whatsoever for some reason, a philosophical minority would have proceeded to get as far as proper philosophers have today (case in point- look at Epiricus and how much he suceeded at on something approximating pure reason). The difference would be that there would be innumerable false theories out there as well.
Morality: Any believer in moral objectivity would consider this approach utterly patronising (I know partially because I once was one)- it is that much, as it assumes they are wrong without actually showing why. Back in the day, I would punch you for saying something like that.
The problem with your conception is that it makes it hard to consider some sorts of philosophical questions that deserve considering if the human “model” of these matters is to be as accurate as possible. For example, imagine trying to consider a question “Should I act selfishly or selflessly?” whilst considering the pros and cons of it. A flawed philosopher might argue something like “Selflessness is my subjective preference, so I’m going to go with that” without considering the implications of alternatives properly. Things worth considering for said philosopher include the implications of acting in various ways
Of course, it also means it becomes significantly harder for history students to have a decent understanding of the past- the conception of things as morally wrong has, as a concept, played a massive role in history. Many parts of history cannot be understood if you do not realise that people saw morality as more than a subjective matter of feelings.