Neil deGrasse Tyson, the famous astrophysicist and science popularizer, recently made some disparaging remarks about philosophy. His remarks prompted several responses, one of the best coming from Massimo Pigliucci, a philosopher friend of Tyson's. Of course, philosophy has always had its detractors among intellectuals and non-intellectuals alike. Indeed, misology, the hatred of logical analysis and argumentation, dates back to Socrates' contemporary critics. My aim here is to defend a blunt claim: it's dumb to hate philosophy. In current Internet fashion, I want to offer five reasons why it's dumb to hate philosophy.
- Philosophy is the foundation of rational thought. Sound melodramatic? It's not. If you were tasked with writing a book about the history of rational thought, you would begin with philosophy and discuss much of its history. Philosophy began when certain ancient thinkers started to investigate how the world works without relying on tradition, myth, or authority. Instead, these thinkers relied on logic and observation to draw conclusions about the world. They were the first scientists. After them, we come to the big three in ancient philosophy: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Socrates and Plato would develop the dialectic method, in which disputants seek the truth about a question through rational analysis, and Aristotle would write the first formal logic textbook.
- Speaking of logic, philosophy gave the world logic. If you take a course in logic, a philosophy teacher will teach it. Why is this a big deal? Logic is the study of arguments and rational inference. No matter how intelligent you are and how much empirical evidence you have, if you can't formulate a sound argument, you can't provide support for your position. Likewise, if you can't spot bad arguments, you're at the mercy of anyone who seems to present a semi-coherent case for his or her position.
- Statements about the nature and scope of science are philosophical, not scientific. For example, ponder this question: what is the difference between a good scientific theory and a bad one? That crucial question cannot be answered by science; it can only be answered by philosophical inquiry, that is, by the logical analysis of criteria that a scientific theory should meet before we can say that it is a good theory--or even a scientific theory at all. Scientists who engage in such analysis are doing philosophy, not science.
- Political philosophy shapes entire countries. Most people don't read Locke, Hegel, Marx, and Mill, but their ideas, for better or worse, influence our political processes. Locke's political philosophy, for example, underlies the U.S. government. Marx's political philosophy, filtered through Lenin and Stalin, shaped the Soviet Union. One of the most important questions in political philosophy is just how far government should go in intervening in the everyday affairs of civil society. This question is the reason for gridlock in American politics. Some Americans believe that government should have a minimal role in those affairs, whereas other Americans believe that government should play a large role in those affairs. The upshot is that this is a philosophical dispute.
- Philosophy majors perform very well on the GRE. Why? Because the study of philosophy flexes verbal, analytic, and quantitative muscles. Philosophy majors need to interpret texts, re-construct arguments, and understand formal systems of logic. Moreover, several famous executives majored in philosophy, as well as many successful people.
I suspect that the root of philosophy hatred is that people want philosophy to do something other than what it does. This is misguided, because, again, philosophy is the foundation of rational thought and logic. No, philosophy won't solve world hunger, drive you to the airport, or fix you a gourmet meal. But it will give you the tools to analyze arguments and clarify difficult problems.
