One of the things that students find frustrating about philosophy is that they don’t get definitive answers to the sorts of questions that philosophers ask. These students aren’t frustrated because philosophy doesn’t give them any answers. They’re frustrated because it gives themtoo many answers. For example, I teach a course on freedom and determinism in which the students learn (a) that the macroscopic universe is deterministic, so free will doesn’t exist, (b) that we can make choices that aren’t determined by prior events, so free will exists, or (c) that the macroscopic universe is totally deterministic, and we have free will. When students ask me which of these theories is true, I can’t tell them.

If this were a scientific issue rather than a philosophical one, there would be a way to decide which of these views is the right one. All you’d have to do is gather the evidence, weigh it up, and see which theory matches the facts. But things work very different in philosophy. It’s not that we can’t lay our hands on the evidence that would allow us to see which if any of our theories is the right one. It’s that there isn’t any evidence for us to lay our hands on.

The philosopher Peter van Inwagen nailed it when he wrote, “Disagreement in philosophy is pervasive and irresoluble. There is almost no thesis in philosophy about which philosophers agree.” Sure, there’s disagreement in science—especially at its cutting edge—but “there is a large body of settled, usable, uncontroversial theory and of measurements known to be accurate within limits that have been specified. The cutting edge of philosophy, however, is pretty much the whole of it.”

我要直截了当地说，我不认为哲学上的分歧是一个问题，或者更准确地说，我不认为这是一个问题，就像许多其他哲学家认为这是一个问题一样。另一方面，我不认为这不是问题，不像很多哲学家认为的那样，这不是问题。我将在接下来的文章中解释为什么。

哲学上的分歧是否是一个问题，这个问题与一个邻近的问题紧密相连:在过去的2500年左右，哲学是否取得了任何进展。让我们回到范·因瓦根对哲学和科学的对比。没有人能真正怀疑几个世纪以来科学已经取得了巨大的进步。无论它们在历史上多么有趣，当今的科学家都不认为来自数百年或数千年前的文本能让我们了解物理世界的运作。Contrast this with those philosophers who take the work of guys like Plato dead seriously—not just out of historical interest, but because they think that Plato (or some other “giant” of philosophy)got the facts right.

Van Inwagen contrasts the existence of settled science—established knowledge that every scientifically literate person accepts—with the chaotic disarray of philosophical opinion. This comparison isn’t entirely right. Although it might not be obvious to outsiders, there is such a thing as (more or less) settled philosophy—claims that the majority of philosophers accept as true. But so-called settled philosophy isn’t on a par with settled science. Scientific controversies are settled by evidence. Chemists hold that chlorine atoms have seventeen protons because that’s what the evidence shows, Q.E.D. Even in the wilder, more unsettled regions of science—the cutting edge where evidence is thin and opinions are rampant—investigators look for evidence to settle controversies. That’s not to say that scientists are never pig-headed about their views, it’s just to say that they have methods for bringing opinions, sometimes kicking and screaming, before the tribunal of evidence.

Settled philosophy isn’t like that at all. For example, these days, most philosophers think that everything that exists is physical—that there aren’t any non-physical things. So, physicalism is more-or-less settled philosophy. But how come philosophers believe this? It’s not because they performed some crucial experiment or because they’ve surveyed the cosmos with a metaphysiscope. Convergence of opinion is only evidence of progress if it comes about in the right sort of way—namely, through the use of methods that give us an objective handle how the world is. But philosophers can’t appeal to such methods, because they don’t have any to appeal to. So convergence can’t be held up as demonstrating that we have moved forward like the scientists have.

Here’s a different argument in support of philosophical progress. Have a look at Aristotle’s philosophy of biology, and then eyeball some present-day work in philosophy of biology. There’s just no escaping the fact that the modern stuff is a whole lot better than the ancient stuff. Isn’t that progress? Well, sort of. Askwhyit is that present-day philosophy of biology is so much better than ancient philosophy of biology, and a big part of the answer—in fact, almost all of the answer—has got to be thatbiologyhas progressed. The engine of science has powered ahead and philosophy of science has come along for the ride.

I think that philosophy has made lots of progress—it’s just not made progress towards truth. If that sounds strange, you might have too parochial a view of what progress is. We tend to think of progress on the model of scientific progress—that is, progress towards truth. But why adopt a one-size-fits-all conception of progress? Why think that progress in philosophy is the same kind of thing as progress in science, or any other empirical discipline? As a man of sixty-three, I can lift a lot more weight in the gym than I could when I started lifting back in my thirties. That’s progress, but it’s not progress towards truth. Progress is just movement towards some goal. If your goal is truth, then progress is progress towards truth, and if your goal is bench-pressing a lot of weight, then progress is progress towards benching a lot of weight. It would be silly to say that my weight lifting hasn’t progressed because it hasn’t brought me any closer to the truth! So why fault philosophy for not having failed to get closer to the truth?

The question of whether philosophy has progressed can only be answered by answering a deeper question. What’s the goal of philosophy? What are we after—or rather, whatshouldwe be after—when we’re doing philosophy?无论这个问题的答案是什么，它都不是对真理的追求。That’s not to say that philosophy can’t play a supporting role in the truth project. It certainly can. As the philosopher Daniel Dennett likes to say, “There’s no such thing as philosophy-free science.” Philosophy is a good worker but a bad boss. It’s great at helping out, but it should never be put in charge.

我讨厌这么说，但那些认为哲学会传递真理的哲学家们是在徒劳地追逐。其中一些人认为哲学没有产生它应该产生的东西，因此，凡·因瓦根所描述的理论混乱是一种丑闻。我不同意。

Others think that philosophy has in fact discovered truths. I disagree with this view too.

I disagree with both of these views because I think that philosophy is in theoption这是我们的事业，而不是真理事业。它的工作是表明有许多解决问题的方法，并阐明这些替代方案的含义。因为我的学生不理解哲学在期权交易中的作用，他们抱怨哲学给了他们太多的答案，这也是为什么我不认为有太多的答案是一个问题。在没有资源的情况下，寻找大量的答案，并决定哪一个是正确的答案，这就是哲学的意义所在。