"The never-ending debates over the central concepts of philosophy" have as their function "to ensure intellectual vitality across the whole spectrum of human knowledge." W.B. Gallie, preface to Philosophy and Historical Understanding.
I am not sure that Gallie is right that vitality is ensured by debate. Ultimately, his idea about what ensures vitality is more complicated, something like : 'a combination of debate and committed action arising out of debate.' He thinks that vitality emerges when people try to live out different conceptions of "democracy" or "rationality" or "tolerance," to show those on the other side of the debate: this is what it really means. I am not sure he is right even in his more complex view. But I am quite sure that vitality matters, that the standards for "good debate" or "good intellectual life" are not internal or technical standards. One can make lots of reasonable points in a dead debate. The question worth asking is: which debates are alive and which are dead? Where does intellectual life have vitality, and what does that mean? How can intellectual life intertwine with other kinds of life so that life as a whole has vitality?
Posted by shea0017 at July 28, 2004 10:12 AMFunny. See very few participants in (professional) philosophical debates who demonstrate vitality in the sense of full, round, radiant healthfulness.
After six or seven years now of looking and reading around have come to the conclusion that whatever draws people to philosophy is not after all a concern for vitality of this sort. Nor have I been able to see much value in merely dialectic vitality.
You suggest that the vitality of philosophic debate might lie in the action it motivates. I suppose so. But I must admit that I don't see much `committed action' arising from contemporary philosophy.
Perhaps a few neuroscientists are chastised now and then, to their general indifference, but that's about it. Ethics seems largely bankrupt as anything other than an institutional marketing strategy. Certainly its theoretical side has about as little to say to contemporary life -- much less, even -- as the debates of theologians of previous generations.
*Shrug*. Suspect that we could ditch philosophy and lose very little. Those who like books could study literature or history. Those who like logic, math or computer science or linguistics. The ethicists could go over to sociology, psychology, and so on and on.
And what would we lose? The hollow profundity of being able to out-talk the next guy -- who's busy doing some actual research.
Posted by: Scott at July 25, 2005 9:38 PM