Discipline and Authority in Williamson's Sermons

During the last few days I have been rather critical of Timothy Williamson's dismissive-ness toward most of the rest of us and his inability to accept honest disagreement as a potentially intrinsic feature of philosophy (here and here). Now, amidst Williamson's (2006) kvetching about debased standards he does offer a positive proposal worth reflecting on:

But when philosophy is not disciplined by semantics, it must be disciplined by something else: syntax, logic, common sense, imaginary examples, the findings of other disciplines (mathematics, physics, biology, psychology, history, ...) or the aesthetic evaluation of theories (elegance, simplicity, ...). Indeed, philosophy subject to only one of those disciplines is liable to become severely distorted: several are needed simultaneously. To be ‘disciplined’ by X here is not simply to pay lip-service to X; it is to make a systematic conscious effort to conform to the deliverances of X, where such conformity is at least somewhat easier to recognize than is the answer to the original philosophical question. Of course, each form of philosophical discipline is itself contested by some philosophers. But that is no reason to produce work that is not properly disciplined by anything. It may be a reason to welcome methodological diversity in philosophy: if different groups in philosophy give different relative weights to various sources of discipline, we can compare the long-run results of the rival ways of working. (10)

So beyond "precision" and "rigour" (15), Williamson has a fondness for the disciplining of philosophy. Evidently, without such disciplining philosophy is just too anarchic or disorderly (to echo his language on p. 18). (Let's ignore the oddity that alternative scientific disciplines, aesthetic criteria, thought experiments, and common sense, are all treated as (relatively?) on par as sources of external disciplining) Now, I assume that Williamson is not at heart enchanted by the "capricious tyranny of petty feuding warlords" he eloquently denounces (18). After all, if he were not so quick to deplore the standards of others (and, as I pointed out yesterday, appeals to economic metaphors in an (ahum) undisciplined fashion), one could see in Williamson's stance a welcome advocacy for pluralistic methods, open-mindedness toward other subject-areas, and a kind of principle of tolerance. So, we can charitably understand his eagerness for external constraint as a recognition that without external crutches philosophy just is very difficult; Williamson clearly thinks that philosophical "questions" are not easy to answer.

What to make of Williamson's denial of philosophical autonomy?

It never seems to occur to him that self-disciplining is an option. In fact, Williamson's sermon bespeaks quite a bit of suspicion of philosophical self-legislation. Now, this is partly so because he has emptied philosophy from internal resources (you know, logic, semantics, etc.) and -- with the exception of that 'genius' Frege -- treats philosophy's history with considerable contempt.

But the deeper problem is that while the disciplining is needed to combat our shared lack of rigour (etc.), Williamson does not make clear what all this discipline is good for.  So, when he writes that "None of us knows how far we can get by applying [presently available high standards--ES] systematically enough for long enough," his self-described "sermon" is on the whole silent about where we ought to go; 'far, where?' one might ask. Throughout the paper he tends to treat philosophy as an attempt to answer (hard or theoretical) questions. Now, this indeed captures what many of us do in the past and present. But it is not very precise--not all (hard/theoretical) questions are philosophical, although I am open to the idea that any (such) question can be turned into philosophy (at the risk of social awkwardness). Of course, not all philosophy is an attempt to answer a question; I am not just thinking of Wittgensteinian quietists so despised by Williamson, but also Carnapian conceptual engineering or explication, or phenomenological liberation. (Sure, you can (probably) try to redescribe any activity as a form of questioning.)  

At one point in his paper, Williamson moves beyond questions:

Much contemporary analytic philosophy...seems to be written in the tacit hope of discursively muddling through, uncontrolled by any clear methodological constraints. That may be enough for easy questions, if there are any in philosophy; it is manifestly inadequate for resolving the hard questions with which most philosophers like to engage. All too often it produces only eddies in academic fashion, without any advance in our understanding of the subject matter. Although we can make progress in philosophy, we cannot expect to do so when we are not working at the highest available level of intellectual discipline. (12)

Let's leave aside the fact that from the point of view of doing no harm, muddling through may not be so bad. In this quote Williamson goes beyond positing answering questions and (as I argued yesterday) agreement for agreement's sake; our collective progress is aimed at "understanding of the subject matter." Now, even if granted that this claim makes sense, this rules out quite a bit of philosophy (unmasking, improving the world, cultivation of self, etc.). But Williamson never tells us what "the subject matter" of philosophy is. At the start of his paper he seems to endorse the idea "the best questions ever to have been asked...led to much of modern science." (1) So, he seems to think that the subject matter of philosophy is such that if it leads to understanding it can be operationalized into science. (For example, "truth-conditional semantics for natural languages has developed out of philosophical logic and the philosophy of language into a flourishing branch of empirical linguistics." (6))

Let's grant, for the sake of argument, that we philosophers are in the business of preparing the sciences of the future. I like this idea! It does not follow that in order to make progress in an area we can only do so by disciplined method; as if the context of philosophical discovery (leading to understanding and, thus, science) has been methodized! Ironically, Williamson points to Frege's "innate genius" (12), not his method of discovery.

Williamson also wants to use the idea that we are in the business of preparing the sciences of the future as a way to silence and ridicule his philosophical opponents, and he does so by rhetorically appealing to the authority of the sciences and mathematics (and progress). (I call this move "Newton's Challenge.") As Maudlin pointed out in his review, Williamson does not have the authority to legislate philosophically; the grounds of such legislation are not to be found in the disciplining of philosophy by X.