Most philosophers are wrong
I recently completed the Open University’s module A222 Exploring Philosophy and a prospective student from another class asked me what it was like.
- Is it about the knowledge of the great philosophers?
- Or is it about ‘doing philosophy’ and demonstrating one’s own ideas?
It is very much the latter. There’s hardly any memorisation of facts and most of one’s grade seems to come from explaining an idea clearly and making a good argument for or against it regardless of whether the conclusion of the argument is correct.
Most of my essays took this form:
- Explain what X is.
- Explain what Philosopher Y said about X.
- Explain why Philosopher Y is wrong (*) about X.
- Guess what Philosopher Y might say about my argument.
- Explain why Philosopher Y is still wrong.
Fortunately, the great philosophers were mostly wrong so there is a lot to work with!
(*) You could argue that they were right about X too of course but that’s boring. And you can still get a good grade without introducing any original ideas, but that’s boring too.
I especially liked that we were encouraged to disagree with both the great philosophers and with our tutors. As long as you make a good argument, you can agree or disagree. It’s all good. It’s hard to imagine another class like that. I’ve just started my next class about the Classical World and I doubt that I’d get a good grade for arguing against my tutor’s explanation for Achilles’s long sulk in the Trojan War but in philosophy, it’s expected.
Looking back at the philosophers we studied, I wonder if they were chosen specifically because they were so wrong. Let’s look at a few examples…
John Locke (1632-1704) believed that someone continues to be the same person if and only if they have the same memories. If your 40-year-old self doesn’t remember what your 15-year-old self did then your 40-year-old self is no longer the same person.
Continuity of memory is not a reliable way to determine whether someone is the same person. People lose memories for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes they lose them temporarily and recover them later. Does this mean that they were briefly a different person? Sometimes we forget some memories but remember others. Does that mean we are a little bit the same? Of course not. Derek Parfit would disagree but he is wrong too.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) said that doing something right simply to feel the warm glow of satisfaction of doing the right thing has no moral worth. Conversely, striving to do the right thing simply because it is the right thing is morally valuable even if your efforts will inevitably come to nothing.
I think Kant was wrong.
Doing something that makes the world better has moral value whether or not it makes you feel good, whether or not it follows your conception of duty and doing something that you know to be futile has no moral value either way.
René Descartes (1596-1650) believed that we are made of two distinct substances—the body is made of material stuff and the mind is made of immaterial stuff. Furthermore, the immaterial stuff is the part that constitutes the ‘real you’ because we can imagine what it is like to live without a body but we cannot imagine not being able to think.
There is no immaterial substance and the mind is simply what the brain does.
John Rawls (1921-2002) argued that people with natural talents or with a natural tendency to work hard do not deserve to be rewarded for their talents or tendencies because, ultimately, they acquired their talents and tendencies through the luck of genetics or their upbringing and no one deserves to be rewarded simply for being lucky.
People who work hard deserve to be rewarded regardless of where their ability or motivation came from.
Not every philosopher we studied was wrong about everything but most were wrong about most things. Was this just a big coincidence? Or perhaps the course designers deliberately choose philosophers who are wrong so we could argue against them?
I can bet a common argument will be, “I’m not racist.” That’s a very white starting point. (Spoken as a white person here.)
The next stage of argument might be, “Am I?” And after that, “Oh crap. Sorry about that.”
Great article! I agree with you on almost everything – particularly Rawls. You didn’t mention Hume? He was my favourite philosopher from the course and I think I am the only one who actually liked his ideas on induction. Having said that, his bundle theory of self seems bonkers. Anyway, thanks again for an entertaining article. I share your worry that the new course may lose some of the opportunities for robust discourse. Current and emotive subjects should be philosophy topics but can be a minefield.
Hume is my favourite philosopher too and I also disagreed with his “bundle theory of self”. It was a bit long to fit in here though and hard to fit into a few words.
I originally had a bit about Popper too but it was boring even just complaining about him!
BTW I thought Hume’s ideas on induction were clever and interesting and irrefutable but, still, I don’t think they changed very much. Scientists still do science — and not in the way that Popper claims — Popper was wrong!
I thought I’d find this article a bit controversial with its tagline on WhatsApp about the philosophers being wrong! Well how wrong was I, I think I agree with just about everything you’ve written!
Funny u should mention Popper in your reply to Justine. I could never figure out why u disliked him so much! Then recently, whilst reading ZenATAOMM, I came upon a whole section questioning scientific method , culminating in Pirsig decrying it as ‘scientifically produced antiscience – chaos’, on account of the multiplication of hypothesis leading away from, rather than towards the truth. Could Zen.. be the source of your disdain for Popper I wonder 🤔
( It was lovely to see the return of ‘your style of writing ‘ Kevin , so readable 😊)
Interesting theory about Pirsig vs Popper! Could be! It’s been many years since I read Zen and the Art though. He did manage to put me off Aristotle for thirty years so — maybe!?
Thank you for your kind words, Angela. I definitely enjoy writing with my own voice too.
Oh, yes, I agree and even Hume said that he used induction in his everyday life, but Popper was definitely wrong! 😊
I must remind myself about why Pirsig disliked Aristotle so much – he seemed like such a nice chap. Admittedly he concentrated on the individual and one’s impact within a small radius of friends and family, but it has the advantage of being applicable to everyone. Nowadays we think of our impact on a wider scale in terms of society, the environment and so on, but Aristotle was a man of his time.
My 30-year-old memory says that Plato, according to Pirsig, treated the world holistically like eastern religions do. Aristotle wanted to break everything up into little pieces to understand it better and so caused the decline of western civilisation.
Aristotle caused the decline of Western Civilisation?! Wow! That’s a lot to lay on the poor guy who just wanted everyone to be happy. Thanks for the link to your review – I’ll read it now 😊
I reviewed Zen etc here BTW
https://www.raggedclown.com/2010/04/10/it-changed-my-life-book-two/
PS. I have had a Changed my Life Book Five post sitting in my drafts folder for about five years. I should finish that. 😕
I finished “It Changed My Life — Book Five”
https://www.raggedclown.com/2023/11/20/it-changed-my-life-book-five/
“We bought ten copies of Kent’s new book and all agreed to read it over the weekend. I had never been so excited about a book on software methodology. We were all excited.”
How does your notion of them being “wrong” compare to the notion that you just don’t find how they frame something as useful as an alternate framing you prefer, or you find it to be excessively pedantic, or you not finding some metaphor of theirs particularly apt?
I ran into a surprising amount of all of those categories in that Warburton book you recommended.
It seemed to me a lotta the stuff like “are you the same person” comes down to how you define what that means. Or is subjective. Like it’s not wrong to prefer chocolate to vanilla or vice-versa.
Perhaps high-contrast statements like “disagree” or “wrong” are meant as catalysts for lively discussion. The kind that are best held face-to-face in comfy chairs with an appropriate beverage at hand and plenty of time to reach to hear each other out and reach a mutual understanding.
Oh, I think they are wrong. Dead wrong.
Rawls, for example, takes his “people who work hard don’t deserve to be rewarded” thing and builds a whole political philosophy from it. He is considered the greatest political philosopher of the Twentieth Century and was a favourite of liberal politicians like Clinton and Blair. He was wrong though.
In Rawls’s world, all the products of your labour would be commandeered by society and distributed fairly according to the rules. People who work hard are *entitled* to more only if it results in the least well-off getting more too. But they don’t *deserve* more. I think this is wrong. I think people who work harder deserve more.
Blog-length refutation to follow.
The most wrong philosophers were the ones writing about philosophy of mind but they were so wrong that I did not have space to write about them here.
Some of that was just weird point-of-view stuff that I don’t find useful but most of it was just wrong.
And don’t get me started on the philosophy of religion.
So, Kevin, you write a lot about all these wrongs. But what is right, then?
Yes, I know, it sounds like a philosophical question.
That’s a lot of philosophy to cover in one little comment but, briefly:
People who work hard, deserve more.
You are the same person you were 10 years ago.
Consequences matter.
Mind is what the brain does.
The Blues is one of black America’s greatest contributions to world culture.
Either:
* we change our understanding of the Blues to deny that it reflects the lives of the people who wrote the songs or
* we stop referencing the Blues in popular culture because it is racist or
* we hire white people to play Blues guitars in commercials.
Refute away, but I didn’t mean to imply that wrongness *never* applies in the area of philosophy – just that I found it interesting in reflecting on my surprising-to-me resistance to so many of those ideas I read about that the boolean wrongness was less cut-and-dry than I expected in many cases. For me what felt initially like “wrong” was really “not useful” or “a waste of time”.
The distinction may not be important unless someone is trying put their ideas to work in the world in a way that affects people.
One thing that sucks about philosophy is that when you encounter a philosopher who is wrong, you can’t just says “This philosopher is wrong.” They don’t like it when you do that. You have to read their whole book first.
Rawls’s A Theory of Justice is 624 pages and I’ve read over a dozen books on philosophy of mind and they are all wrong. It’s tiring.
I’ll read Mr Rawls’s book anyway, I suppose. I hope he is a good writer.
Philosophical debates can get heated. I was at an OU tutorial debating whether people who contributed to their health problems should receive the same level of treatment as those who didn’t.
Smokers were an easy target, but when someone suggested that heavy cream bun eaters were in the same category he was shouted down.
Someone has to speak up for the cream bun eaters, John!
I believe he was using cream bun eating in the ad absurdum way. Although his craving for tobacco could have altered his judgement.
Just saw this on Facebook “The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand. We listen to reply” Stephen R Covey. I know I’m guilty of this but I still get surprised when someone’s reply bears no relation to what I’ve said. One example the other day I was called a “Facebook Zionist” for sharing a picture of Anne Frank with the comment “Forever Young” I replied that I had no intention of getting into a trolling match but that the only side I was on was humanity’s and that I would continue to share posts showing the horror of the bombing of Gaza as well as photos of destitute holocaust survivors arriving in Palestine/Israel/Judea and Samaria or whatever at the end of the war when no other country would take them. The reply was “try telling that to the International War Crimes Tribunal” My point being that I think it is important to listen/read carefully any argument and acknowledge any valid points and not put up strawman arguments in order to oppose it. Another case in point being the other day I asked whether scientific postulation of dark matter was an example of speculative thinking similar to the postulation of the existence of God, the scientists were not happy. I think to an extent science is the new religion and should be included in the topics not to be talked about over Christmas dinner. Reminds me of the journalist Mehdi Hasan who wrote a book called “win every argument” I agree with him on a lot of things but I think it is more important to understand than to win, and I do sometimes wish he would pause for breath!