Nathan asked:

What is your stance on the following statement:

"No-one, including philosophers, can anticipate every possible counter-argument to their argument. If
it were possible, philosophy would have ended long ago. The sense in which all the major problems
of philosophy still go unanswered today is the result of our inability to make arguments without
possible criticism. i.e. We are cognitively unable to formulate "hard-edged" answers to questions that
fall outside the fields of pure math and logic."

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As soon as I read this quote, I thought to myself, "That doesn't sound right"; but it is much harder to
say what might be wrong with it.

Firstly, the four statements made in the quote don't all say the same thing. I thought about each one
in turn.

No-one can anticipate every possible counter-argument to their argument. I want to say, "Well,
obviouslynot!" There could be an indefinite number of counter-arguments; although we would
normally take into account that some counter-arguments are much more effective and problematic
criticisms of the original argument than others.

If it were possible to anticipate every possible counter-argument to our arguments, philosophy would
have ended long ago. I'm not sure it would've got started in the first place if that'd been the case!
Wouldn't dialogue have been completely unnecessary, as a single philosopher could put forward their
argument and then proceed to answer all the counter-arguments? On the other hand, just because
you could anticipateevery possible counter-argument, it doesn't follow that you could answerall of
them.

The major problems of philosophy have never been solved because we can't make arguments which
can't be criticized. Not everyone would agree about what 'the major problems of philosophy' are. I
imagine the writer of the quote is thinking about questions such as "Does God exist?", "What is the
basis of morality?", "What is justice?", and I would agree that a single correct answer to these
questions has not been agreed on, and in that sense they have not been solved. But what about
areas of study that were once part of philosophy, but which have now become separate sciences?
Are these problems of philosophy that have been solved? For example, has physics answered the
question "What is the universe really made of?", a question which was considered by several Ancient
Greek philosophers? Is philosophy the only field of study in which the major problems have never
been solved? Have the major problems of science been solved? What about the major problems of
pure maths? And is it true, as the statement suggests, that the reasonthe major problems of
philosophy have never been solved is because we can't make arguments which can't be criticized?

What about the final sentence of the quote? The way our minds work makes it impossible for us to
formulate 'hard-edged' answers to questions that fall outside pure maths and logic. Notice that the
quote has moved from talking about 'arguments' to talking about 'answers' — they don't sound like
the same kind of thing to me. And what is meant here by 'hard-edged' — a metaphorical term?

I think the whole quote is an expression of the way that certaintyof knowledge, in philosophy, has
sometimes been taken to be, or to be exemplified by, the logical necessity of answers in pure maths
and logic. It is indeed impossible for us to formulate logically necessary answers to questions that fall
outside pure maths and logic. But you shouldn't be surprised by this! I think it has more to do with the
way the world works than the way our minds work. The logical necessity of answers in maths and
logic is written into the system when its rules are formulated. But the world of experience is incredibly
complex. We don't have precisely defined words to talk about it with; and the reason we don't have
precisely defined words is that we are not talking about precisely defined things,but abstractions,
qualities, feelings and so on. We can feelincredibly certain about matters of experience (the example
often given being that we feel certain the sun will rise tomorrow); but they are still not logically
necessary(i.e. it would not be self-contradictory if the sun did not rise tomorrow).

Despite the complexity of the quote, it is unclear whether the writer thinks it is a good thing or a bad
thing, that philosophy continues. I would argue that it is inevitablethat philosophy continues, because
of the nature of the world we live in; but I also think it is a good thing. I'm glad we live in a world that is
interesting enough to have room in it for philosophy.

"But if the ardent seeker after truth is not content with that, if he is only interested in answers that are
right or wrong, if he wants final, conclusive certainty he must go elsewhere — to the study, for
example, of pure mathematics. As he does so he will be shutting with a clang the door that leads to
the world of 'it all depends'. And this will be a pity for it is the world in which we live.

E.R Emmet Learning to Philosophize"

Katharine Hunt

That seems an odd quote to me; I must confess I haven't seen it. But it's clearly wrong. First, the only
sense in which we can formulate answers to questions in math is if we accept and understand the
assumptions, terms and operations of the system. When those are clear and restricted enough we
can sometimes formulate "hard-edged" answers to problems, but a) they're not all clear enough for
that, b) they're not all solvable, even theoretically. Second, take something like the proof of Fermat's
Last Theorem, or better, the Four-Color Theorem. Those questions were put and answered in a
hard-edged manner, but only because computers were available to evaluate, and in the case of the
Four-Color Theorem, create (through iteration) those answers. So there's a sense in which some
questions and answers in math cannot be cognitively formulated either.

But most important, I think, is the point about philosophy "ending". If questions and answers being
hard-edged is the property responsible for that, then why haven't math and logic themselves, the
paradigms for the quote, ended long ago? There seems to be a problem with that, doesn't there?
Whether or not "every possible counter-argument" is anticipated or not, there will always be further
questions and developments of the various points of view, and new systems to work out, just as there
have been in math. When the author speaks of "all major problems", how can he (I assume it's a
man) know that they would have been solved? All major problems (and I'm not even sure what that
phrase means) in math haven't been solved, by a long shot. Now all that aside, I agree with some of
what is behind the statement; a great deal of philosophy is the result of confusion and ambiguity in
ideas and statements of ideas. Oh well, the best we can do is keep working on that, isn't it.

Steven Ravett Brown