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Why Philosophers Disagree

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

J.J.C. Smart
J.J.C. Smart*
Affiliation:
The Australian National University
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Extract

Why is it that philosophers find it so hard to come to agreement? Many disputes that have gone on for centuries or even millennia are still unresolved, even though there has been increased conceptual sophistication on the part of the contending parties. Consider, for example, the question of free will, where libertarians still contest the field with determinists and compatibilists (who need not deny quantum mechanical indeterminism at the micro level).

Type
Part One: Demarcating Philosophy
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume , Volume 19: New Essays on Méta-Philosophie - Reconstructing Philosophy? , 1993 , pp. 67 - 82
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1993

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References

1 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell1953), Section 309.

2 See Edmund Gettier, 'Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?' Analysis 25 (1963) 121-3, and subsequent literature.

3 G. Priest, R. Routley and J. Norman, eds., Paraconsistent Logic: Essays on the Inconsistent (Miinchen: Philosophia 1989)

4 A.S. Eddington, Space, Time amd Gravitation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1920), 51

5 An Experiment with Time, new ed. (London: Faber and Faber 1939)

6 See my Essays Metaphysical and Moral (Oxford: Blackwell1987).

7 See Smart, ed., Problems of Space and Time (New York: Macmillan 1964), Introduction, 20.

8 Providence and Evil: The Stanton Lectures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1977), 52.

9 In A.N. Prior, Essays on Logic and Ethics (London: Duckworth 1976)

10 See my 'Philosophy and Scientific Plausibility,' in Paul K. Feyerabend and Grover Maxwell, eds., Mind, Matter and Method: Essays in Honor of Herbert Feigl (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press 1966) and 'My Semantic Ascents and Descents,' in Charles J. Bontempo and S. Jack Odell, eds., The Owl of Minerva: Philosophers on Philosophy (New York: McGraw-Hill1975); and see also C.A. Campbell, 'Is "Free-Will" a Pseudo-Problem?' Mind 60 (1951) 441-65 and 'Professor Smart on Free-Will, Praise and Blame,' Mind 72 (1963) 400-5.

11 R.E. Hobart, 'Free-Will as Involving Determination and Inconceivable Without It,' Mind 43 (1934) 1-27

12 Michael Devitt, Realism and Truth (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1984); David Lewis, 'Putnam's Paradox,' Australasian Journal of Philosophy 62 (1984) 221-36; J .J .C. Smart, Review of Putnam's Realism and Reason, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 63 (1985), 533-5

13 'Just More Theory,' Australasian Journal of Philosophy 69 (1991) 152-66

14 See Neil Tennant, Anti-Realism and Logic: Truth as Eternal (Oxford: Clarendon 1987).

15 See my 'Verificationism,' in John Heil, ed., Cause, Mind and Reality: Essays Honoring C. B. Martin (Dordrecht: Kluwer 1989).

16 A.N. Prior, Past, Present and Future (Oxford: Clarendon 1967)

17 See Anthony Kenny, 'Arthur Norman Prior 1914-1969,' Proceedings of the British Academy 56 (1970), 349.

18 In James Hastings, et al., eds., Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics vol. 12. (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark 1921).

19 Mundle, 'Broad's Views About Time,' in P.A. Schilpp, ed., The Philosophy of C.D. Broad (New York: Tudor 1959)

20 Broad, 'Autobiography,' in Schilpp

21 Broad, 'A Reply to my Critics,' in Schilpp, 765; see also his' Autobiography,' 58.

22 See John Earman, A Primer on Determinism (Dordrecht: D. Reidel 1986), for example.