You use the words “solved” and settled” here, but I think they have very different meanings. In particular I can think of two relevant definitions of “settled”: first, that someone, somewhere, has the correct answer; but second, that the correct answer is widely accepted, uncontroversial, and someone ignorant of the field can easily discover it just by reading a textbook..
I think your examples fall into the first category but not the second. According to the PhilPapers survey, only 32% of philosophers “accept” physicalism (a further 20% were “leaning towards” it). Another presentation of the poll said that 73% of philosophers either “lean toward or accept atheism”.
When you can’t get even three quarters of a field to even “lean toward” a position, I don’t think you can call that a “settled question” under the second definition, especially compared to science where hopefully 100% of astronomers would either “lean toward or accept” heliocentrism. And when I complain that philosophers cannot settle questions, I am mostly referring to that second definition.
That PhilPapers survey is rather shocking to me. I knew about the “slow progress”, but this is even more extreme than I thought.
Only 52% for physicalism? Majority support for moral realism? Complete indecision between deontology, virtue ethics and consequentialism? Almost complete indecision on the teletransporter problem? I despair...
Remember there is a great deal of specialisation in philosophy, so a political philosophers opinion on physicalism may not be accurate. Analogously, even a competent biologist would likely be wrong about the details of quantum mechanics.
This is not a surprise. Who wants to be a philosopher and who wants to be a scientist? Who likes to discuss the questions and who likes to discuss the answers? Who values consensus?
I think this objection, though I empathize with your bringing it up, is not really worth our time in considering.
Look, we all know, if we are honest, that there is a kind of skepticism (the result of realizing the problem of solipsism and following through on its logical consequences) that cannot be eliminated from the system. It is universal and infects everything.
For this reason, we really need to know more about why these folks have objections to these conclusions. Why we should give particular credence to the opinions of members of the philosophical professions is not obvious, as certainly this site testifies to the fact that you need not be a professor of philosophy to investigate philosophical questions. I suspect, but let us test, that in a fair number of cases the kind of doubts that are raised can be raised in any and every case of a claim of truth. If this is the case, then what matters it? I do not think our interests, practical as they seem largely to be, require that we be constantly limited by such doubts.
I am sure this reveals me as a scientist, but cannot we agree that in the cases of such doubt we should just move on and get on? We should, I think, care about doubts specific to the problems we are considering rather than doubts general to all problems, or we can be pretty sure that we are not going to get anywhere on any topic ever.
You use the words “solved” and settled” here, but I think they have very different meanings. In particular I can think of two relevant definitions of “settled”: first, that someone, somewhere, has the correct answer; but second, that the correct answer is widely accepted, uncontroversial, and someone ignorant of the field can easily discover it just by reading a textbook..
I think your examples fall into the first category but not the second. According to the PhilPapers survey, only 32% of philosophers “accept” physicalism (a further 20% were “leaning towards” it). Another presentation of the poll said that 73% of philosophers either “lean toward or accept atheism”.
When you can’t get even three quarters of a field to even “lean toward” a position, I don’t think you can call that a “settled question” under the second definition, especially compared to science where hopefully 100% of astronomers would either “lean toward or accept” heliocentrism. And when I complain that philosophers cannot settle questions, I am mostly referring to that second definition.
That PhilPapers survey is rather shocking to me. I knew about the “slow progress”, but this is even more extreme than I thought.
Only 52% for physicalism? Majority support for moral realism? Complete indecision between deontology, virtue ethics and consequentialism? Almost complete indecision on the teletransporter problem? I despair...
Remember there is a great deal of specialisation in philosophy, so a political philosophers opinion on physicalism may not be accurate. Analogously, even a competent biologist would likely be wrong about the details of quantum mechanics.
This is not a surprise. Who wants to be a philosopher and who wants to be a scientist? Who likes to discuss the questions and who likes to discuss the answers? Who values consensus?
I think this objection, though I empathize with your bringing it up, is not really worth our time in considering.
Look, we all know, if we are honest, that there is a kind of skepticism (the result of realizing the problem of solipsism and following through on its logical consequences) that cannot be eliminated from the system. It is universal and infects everything.
For this reason, we really need to know more about why these folks have objections to these conclusions. Why we should give particular credence to the opinions of members of the philosophical professions is not obvious, as certainly this site testifies to the fact that you need not be a professor of philosophy to investigate philosophical questions. I suspect, but let us test, that in a fair number of cases the kind of doubts that are raised can be raised in any and every case of a claim of truth. If this is the case, then what matters it? I do not think our interests, practical as they seem largely to be, require that we be constantly limited by such doubts.
I am sure this reveals me as a scientist, but cannot we agree that in the cases of such doubt we should just move on and get on? We should, I think, care about doubts specific to the problems we are considering rather than doubts general to all problems, or we can be pretty sure that we are not going to get anywhere on any topic ever.