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Peter asked:
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Karl Popper was heard to complain "150 philosophers, no philosophy". This neatly summarizes my
objections to academic philosophy. It's treated as if it doesn't matter what we believe in, as if beliefs
have no consequences. Surely philosophers have a duty to put forward systems of belief that make
sense and in which they believe. However this rarely happens. (At least Descartes had a good shot at
it.) Why is this? What do philosophers actually believe? Do none of them have a logical and complete
philosophy? If so one has to wonder what they do all day, and the purpose of their musings — at
least physicists aim for a theory of everything.
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Start with the last claim. Physicists do talk about a theory of everything, but they don't mean a theory
of everything at all. They mean a theory out of which will pop all the basic particles and forces. It is a
long way from there to a theory which explains why strawberry ice cream tasted better than chocolate
ice cream (or why some people with no taste disagree with me about that)!
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I think that many philosophers do have theories which they think are widely applicable to many
questions. This isn't always apparent in the articles of analytic philosophers, because they tend to
concentrate on the particular problem in hand. And postmodern philosophers are notoriously wary of
"meta-narratives", although they, too, seem to think that their general answers to particular problems
have wide applicability. As for having 'a logical and complete philosophy', I think reality is far too
complex to claim that one could write such a philosophy in any but the crudest outline — and
philosophers shy away from crude outlines.
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Tim Sprod
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Philosophers don't have a duty to put forward a system of belief since philosophy is about bringing to
the fore and examining all manner of beliefs. Most philosophers are inclined to adopt a particular set
of beliefs because of an intuitive stance or a conviction or a logical commitment and philosophers will
differ in their inclinations as all people do.
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Philosophers may well muse, but they also teach and write. I'm not sure what is wrong with musing!
Physicists might, although I don't think they do, aim for a theory of everything, but will they find out
why philosophers muse, for instance? Will they account for infinity, our internal sense of time, God or
the nature of aesthetic appreciation or moral evaluation or consciousness?
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Rachel Browne
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