Anti-Philosophy
An Anti-Philosophical Look at Well-Being as Foundation for Ethics
2014
Preface
In philosophy there is a therapeutic or anti-philosophical approach that holds that traditional philosophical problems are misconceptions that are to be dissolved. This anti-philosophical approach, following Ludwig Wittgenstein, is anti-theoretical and critical of a priori justifications. Arguably, the idea of well-being as foundation for ethics is that: an unfounded, a priori and scientistic philosophical theory.
Here we first briefly describe the anti-philosophical approach theoretically. Then we look at anti-philosophical positions on a couple of issues, with the hope that you will get a feel for the approach in practice. We conclude by looking at ethics, and in particular Sam Harris's theory of well-being as the foundation for ethics.
Anti-Philosophy and Wittgenstein's Metaphilosophy
Paul Horwich's article "Was Wittgenstein Right?" [1] may serve as as good a manifesto for the anti-philosophical approach as any. See [2] for more, and for further references.
In [1] Horwich points to Wittgenstein's rejection of philosophy as traditionally and currently practiced and his "insistence that it can't give us the kind of knowledge generally regarded as its raison d'être".
Horwich goes on to argue that:
"Wittgenstein claims that there are no realms of phenomena whose study is the special business of a philosopher, and about which he or she should devise profound a priori theories and sophisticated supporting arguments. There are no startling discoveries to be made of facts, not open to the methods of science, yet accessible 'from the armchair' through some blend of intuition, pure reason and conceptual analysis. Indeed the whole idea of a subject that could yield such results is based on confusion and wishful thinking."
Horwich concludes that, according to Wittgenstein, philosophy "must avoid theory-construction and instead be merely 'therapeutic,' confined to exposing the irrational assumptions on which theory-oriented investigations are based and the irrational conclusions to which they lead".
Moreover, these anti-philosophical views are central to Wittgenstein, Horwich argues.
Examples of Anti-Philosophical Positions
Free Will
Ordinary use, with no philosophical aspirations and not contradicting science, as in "She married of her own free will", is unproblematic, of course. To philosophize, in the traditional sense, beyond that is misguided, according to the anti-philosopher.
Continuum Hypothesis
Consider the continuum hypothesis, stating that there is no set with size strictly between the size of the natural numbers and the size of the real numbers. The continuum hypothesis is an open problem in mathematics. One idea is that the set universe ought to be rich, with many sets, which leads to the continuum hypothesis being false.[3] This richness argument, the anti-philosopher might argue, is purely philosophical, and groundless, and therefore should be dismissed; maintaining that the continuum hypothesis should be settled by mathematical arguments. In particular it could be the case that the question isn't mathematically meaningful or useful, that the hypothesis is neither true, nor false. It is then wrong to stipulate, a priori and for philosophical reasons, that the continuum hypothesis is true or false.
Ethics and Well-Being as Foundation for Ethics
Looking at ethics from an anti-philosophical perspective, it is wrong to a priori superimpose overarching ideas of what is good for philosophical reasons. In particular it is wrong to blanketly assume that only well-being matters, or e.g. happiness in the case of utilitarianism. All there is is practical, ordinary reasoning. This is not to say though that some argument based on well-being can’t be valid when it comes to what is right in some particular case. Nor does it mean that science should not be used in ethical arguments of course.
Harris asserts, as an example, that it is wrong to remove children's eyes.[4] This claim is certainly perfectly fine and reasonable from an anti-philosophical point of view. If however removing eyes would result in a slightly larger total well-being --- say that the well-being of the seeing would, for some perverse reason, increase more than the loss of well-being for those whose eyes were removed --- removing eyes would still be wrong, probably, most would likely agree; for reasons other than well-being. Well-being, or happiness, is not the sole reason behind our ethical decisions.
Horwich points to scientism in his critique of traditional philosophy.[1,2] To be sure, utilitarianism, and Harris's well-being ethics, have scientistic streaks. However, as an aside, while scientism may be a prominent cause of misguided philosophizing, to suggest it as essential risks committing the very mistake one is criticizing. For example, set theory in mathematics is arguably useful and well-functioning. Wittgenstein criticizes set theory on misplaced anti-philosophical, and non-scientistic, grounds.[5] Still, his criticism arguably ends up philosophical in nature; as a non-mathematician he has no business condemning set theory. While there is more to the story than this, and regardless of if you agree on these points or not, hopefully it shows that it is possible to do bad philosophy even for the best of reasons. In particular, scientism is not necessary for bad philosophy.
References
[1] http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/was-wittgenstein-right/, Paul Horwich, "Was Wittgenstein Right?", The New York Times, 2013-03-03
[2] Paul Horwich, Wittgenstein's Metaphilosophy, Oxford University Press, 2012
[3] Penelope Maddy, June 1988, "Believing the Axioms, I", Journal of Symbolic Logic 53 (2): 481–511, http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~pjmaddy/bio/Believing%20the%20Axioms%20(with%20corrections).pdf
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mm2Jrr0tRXk, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, "Who Says Science has Nothing to Say About Morality?", YouTube, 2011-05-04
[5] Penelope Maddy, "Wittgenstein's Anti-Philosophy of Mathematics", Johannes Czermak and Klaus Paul, eds., Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Mathematics, 1993, http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~pjmaddy/bio/wittgenstein%27s%20anti-philosophy.pdf