Abstract
Unlike certain commentary traditions of philosophy in which deference to an authoritative author was a central feature, there are within the analytical tradition no recognised authorities to whom the reader is required to defer. This paper takes up the question of whether this anti-authoritarian position in philosophy can be sustained. Three lines of argument are considered. According to the first, there are no credible authorities in philosophy, or, even if there were, these authorities could not be identified by the non-expert reader. According to the second, since no philosopher is infallible, many readers have on many occasions epistemic grounds for non-deference to the author. According to the third, even if some readers have epistemic reason for deference to some authors, an anti-authoritarian stance can be justified in terms of distinctively philosophical values such as conceptual understanding or intellectual autonomy. Although each of these lines of argument contains an element of truth, a sufficient justification for philosophical anti-authoritarianism remains surprisingly elusive.
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Notes
See Zagzebski (2012, ch. 1) for an illuminating discussion of the historical roots of anti-authoritarianism. Compare also the following remarks by Hadot (1995, 76): “Philosophers of the modern era, from the seventeenth to the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, refused the argument from authority and abandoned the exegetical mode of thinking. They began to consider that the truth was not a ready-made given, but was rather the result of a process of elaboration, carried out by a reason grounded in itself”.
Although the genre of philosophical commentary is strongly associated with an attitude of deference to authority, the account given in the text cannot be said to apply uniformly to all commentary traditions. References to “the commentator” in the text below should be understood in relation to the model presented rather than any specific historical practice. For more on the commentary traditions of philosophy, see Smith (1991), Hadot (1995, 73–76) and Futter (2016)
Since the commentator assumed that the authoritative author was a knower, he could not attribute error to him. This sense of ‘could not’ is logical in character: if one regards an author as a knower with respect to a given proposition one cannot consistently attribute error to him or her. To be sure, since the commentator was required to assume that the author was a knower, there is another sense of ‘could not’ applicable here which is not logical but social in character. In this regard, the commentator was not permitted to attribute error to the author in the sense that his forming the judgment of authorial error would open him up to sanction from his teachers or other members of the hermeneutical community. The relationship between the logical and social senses of the requirement to defer to the author is discussed further in §§7-8.
If the reader disputes that undergraduate students are members of the analytical tradition, or that I have accurately characterised the norms for teaching philosophy within this tradition, or that the norms for teaching philosophy within this tradition accurately reflect the practices of the tradition itself, then she or he should substitute “philosopher of average ability” for “freshman philosophy student”. This last phrase is borrowed from Frances (2010b).
I here understand rejection in a robust sense such that it implies the judgment that an author’s claim that p is false (or unjustified) or argument is invalid (or weak). In this regard, it is important to notice that since PA purports to describe the style of reading characteristic of analytical philosophy, its application will in some instances be complicated by the specific meta-epistemic or meta-philosophical doctrines accepted by the reader. Hence it might be that some philosophers within the tradition believe that the reader cannot or should not judge that a proposition is false or argument invalid because, e.g., all philosophical propositions are meaningless (e.g. Wittgenstein (1921)) or philosophical reasoning should not be trusted (e.g. Kornblith (1999)). I do not think that this point fundamentally affects my basic claim that analytical philosophy is, when compared with some commentary traditions, rightly described as anti-authoritarian in its eschewal of any requirement for textual deference.
Cf. LaBarge (1997).
Cf. van Inwagen (2004, 332).
My target here is someone who wants to defend the prerogative to disagree with the author expressed by PA. I do not mean to prejudge the question of whether there are in fact any true philosophical propositions (cf. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus). See also note 5 above.
The question of whether a member of the contemporary philosophical community knows something about the world that Aristotle did not, and which entitles him to reject Aristotle’s philosophical rather than scientific opinion when it conflicts with his own, is not straightforward. I note in passing that in many branches of philosophy, e.g., metaphysics and ethics, Aristotelian or neo-Aristotelian positions are still defended. See also the discussion in §5. In any case, if the historical example is found problematic, then a more contemporary philosophical authority can be substituted for Aristotle.
This is not to say, necessarily, that the assumption was believed. For discussion, see Futter (2016).
The reader who accepts PA affirms the right to disagree with every philosophical author when she believes that she has properly engaged with and understood his text. The important point of contrast with the commentary tradition is that the commentator did not affirm this right: he was never entitled to disagree with the authoritative author. For a discussion of how the commentator could deal with those instances in which the author had seemingly asserted something contradictory or absurd, see ibid., 106–112.
By “epistemic equal” I am then referring to an all-things-considered judgment of philosophical equality with respect to a proposition, not necessarily equality of intelligence, intellectual conscientiousness, amount of evidence considered, and so on.
It might be that the above line of reasoning can be extended to show that the act of disagreement requires the reader to regard the author as her epistemic inferior. For if the reader assumed the author to be her epistemic peer on the point at hand, and hence that she was not any more likely to have reached the truth than the author, she would have no reason to prefer her own judgment of ~ p over the author’s judgment that p. Hence it might appear that when the reader rejects the author’s view, thus concluding that she is right and he is wrong, she in effect assumes that she knows better than the author on the specific point of disagreement. Whatever the strengths and weaknesses of this line of reasoning, I shall set it to one side. It will be sufficient for my purposes that the reader regard the author as, at least, a philosophical equal with respect to a contested proposition.
In the vocabulary of the contemporary epistemology of disagreement literature, the argument is from PA to the denial of the existence of philosophical superiors and hence to the claim that all philosophers are peers (cf. Frances 2010b). On peer disagreement, see Kelly (2005) and Frances (2010a). Compare also what Nathan Ballantyne calls the “dogmatic dismissal” strategy of “preserving rational belief in the face of disagreement” (2015, 143–145).
It might be objected here that I have vastly underestimated the role of argument in philosophical reading. Many philosophical arguments begin with premises that are widely accepted and then proceed to derive conclusions that extend the reader’s knowledge in some way. Although this point is right, I believe, it is irrelevant to the question at hand. The claim is not that philosophical progress cannot occur when one agrees with the premises of the arguments presented, but that it cannot occur when one does not agree. The same point applies at the level of the arguments themselves. The claim is not that progress cannot occur when one agrees with the arguments, but when one does not agree.
I have benefitted from the discussion of this point in Jones (unpublished). However, I have drawn rather different conclusions from those drawn by Jones.
In support of this judgment, see Chalmers (2015).
This qualification is necessary because, as will be argued below, a requirement of textual deference does not compel belief.
What I have in mind here is a case where, e.g., the value of coming to believe a true philosophical proposition on the basis of testimony does not coincide with the value of having understood and assimilated this proposition for oneself. To imagine such a case, one need only think of an instance where someone gets to the truth by believing Aristotle and would not get to this truth by relying on her own philosophical reasoning.
This useful phrase is borrowed from Jones (unpublished, ch. 2).
This way of expressing the point owes much to Jones (ibid., 47–52).
Cf. Aristotle’s account of peirastic dialectic (De Sophisticis Elenchis 2.165 b4-6). For discussion, see Bolton (1993).
The contrast between ordinary and sophistic discourse is vividly drawn in Laches and Charmides. For discussion, see Gonzalez (1998).
See Futter (2013).
The concepts of truth and knowledge are here used as placeholders. It should not simply be assumed that philosophical truth and knowledge are propositional. See also the discussion of conceptual understanding in §8 below.
Compare Catherine Elgin’s description of un-tethered understanding in the sense of knowing one’s way “around the field” (2007, 4–5). Although knowing one’s way around epistemology is not fundamentally a matter of propositional knowledge, I would not regard it as un-tethered.
For an account of Socrates’ dialectical ability in terms of knowing how to conduct a philosophical inquiry, see Gonzalez (1998).
This will require answering, at least, the question of whether “intuitions” generated by the possession of concepts are to be understood as beliefs. For an argument in favour of a negative answer, see Bealer (1998).
True beliefs can be acquired by testimony; but one cannot teach someone else to see logical relationships between ideas. See Plato, Meno 82a-85e, and Burnyeat (1987).
The concepts can be filled out in different ways. For example, let a non-expert be someone who is not Aristotle or Kant.
The third case of uncertainty could refer to an informed suspension of belief or a failure to understand the matter sufficiently so as to be able to make up one’s mind.
The judgment that the author is wrong need not be hasty or ill informed; rather, it is, or could be, justified by strong apparent reasons.
See Bealer (1998). If the reader does not form any intuitions about the truth or falsity of the proposition, but remains in a state of honest perplexity, D does not do any worse than PA’ in encouraging the philosophical activity necessary for conceptual understanding. The psychological position of one who thinks I can’t reject this claim because someone who knows thinks it is true but it does not seem true to me is unstable in a way that would seem likely to inspire inquiry.
Cf. Zagzebski (2012, 25).
For example, if the author of a fiction asserts that Alpha Centauri is 4.37 light years from the sun, the reader will not experience the claim as one on which she is required to make an epistemic evaluation. This would be so even if the writer of the fiction happened to be a well known scientist expressing in his fiction a true and justified opinion.
See Futter (2015). The argument of the next few paragraphs draws on this article.
Cf. Kornblith (1999) on the rationalisation of belief.
This is not in any way to deny the possibility of rational responsiveness, or that the reader might encounter a novel argument. The point is that belief revision of this type occurs within the attached attitude. If the reader is provoked to reflect on herself as moral and epistemic agent when reading this is not because of any norms inherent in the contemporary hermeneutical practice.
See Futter (2016).
I would like to express my thanks to an anonymous referee for Philosophia for constructive commentary on an earlier version of this paper, and to Jill Mortillero for kind assistance during the editorial process.
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Futter, D.B. Philosophical Anti-authoritarianism. Philosophia 44, 1333–1349 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-016-9781-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-016-9781-0