Great Ideas; 13; The Conditions of Progress in Philosophy

Halt! Dilluckman and I welcome you to another discussion of the great idea. Today we conclude the discussion of philosophy. In the course of this concluding discussion I am going to report and respond to many inquiries on the work of the Institute for Philosophical Research. ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― My first is a letter from Mr. Desmond J. Fitzgerald in San Francisco.

His question, how do you account for such a diversity among philosophers? He goes on to ask whether you think, as some suggest, then establish solution of the basic questions would be the death of philosophy. I do not. I do not think so. And I shall try to explain why I do not think so more fully in a moment. Very well. Another one was from Mr. Lawrence Weber in San Francisco. Dr. Heather, would you tell us whether progress in philosophy means that the philosophers today can or should be able to give better answers to the basic questions than the philosophers of antiquity? The answer to that question is yes, Lloyd. Well, then if that's yes, does it mean that John Dewey was a greater philosophy than Plato? No, Lloyd does not mean that. Doesn't mean that at all, but it does mean that Dewey, John Dewey, was in a position to make a great contribution taught the advance of philosophy living as he did in the 20th century. Then there's the question from Mr. Thomas K. Lay in Berkeley.

I think it suggests something very close to the fact that, oh, what you're trying to do at the Institute, where he says, would not group participation of by philosophers, a pooling of ideas, an exchange and discussion of viewpoints, contribute toward progress in philosophy. This procedure, he says, has long been followed by many branches of science. And he wants to know then whether it might not prove useful in philosophy also. Indeed it would, Lloyd. What Mr. Lee suggests is precisely what the Institute is trying to do. For the first time in history, the collaboration of philosophers doing teamwork, just as scientists do teamwork in laboratories. Well, now the parallel with scientific research doctor has occurred to many others who have been asking about the work of the Institute. I have an example here, a question from Mr. Maurice O. Nordstrom, Jr. who lives in Berkeley and wants to know whether when you use the word research in the title of your Institute, does it mean that you employ

something like the methods of science? As I hope to be able to show you, Mr. Nordstrom, the answer is yes. What we are doing at the Institute is very much like scientific research, involving data, inductive generalizations, hypotheses, prediction and verification. Lloyd, are there any other questions about the methods of the Institute? Oh, very many, Dr. Heather, but I think there's one that you'll want to answer right away. It comes from someone who signs his name just J.H. And he asks like many others about the goal of your Institute, but particularly he wants to know whether you and your staff stick to your arm chairs. Perhaps the best way I can answer that question is to show some pictures of the staff at work. And incidentally Lloyd, give our viewers a look at the Institute inside and out. Here we are, all in our arm chairs, seated around the conference table. For the most part, as you can see, we stick to our arm chairs. But every now and then, someone may get excited and get out of his arm chair

as I am doing here, trying to argue at a certain point. And here is the library of the Institute, when it is not being used as a conference room. And there you see the apparatus of philosophers, whose task is to think together, simply chairs around a table. And here is the building that houses the Institute for Philosophical Research. The working rooms of the staff, the research staff, are on the second floor. We have additional library and meeting space in the basement below the street level. When the Institute began its work in that building, there was some misunderstanding about its nature and function. You know, the word philosophy has some queer meaning out here in California. In the early days, we received a great many phone calls asking when we were going to begin to conduct services, or when we would be ready to receive patients. In fact, the title of the Institute caused a good deal of trouble.

I have here two items that I'd like to read you. One is a bill from our H. Macy's address to us as follows. The Institute for Philharmonic Research. And here is a telegram from Chicago reading, the Institute for Philanthropical Research. But the best story about the Institute in its early days is the story of the cable car conducted. One afternoon, as I came out of the Institute, a cable car was going by on Jackson Street, and the conductor leaned over the rear platform and said, hi, Dr. Adler, how is philosophical research coming along? That's the question I'm going to try to answer for all of you. I couldn't answer to him that afternoon. I'd like to begin. I'd like to begin, this answer, by going to the first point that which are all deeply interested, the problem of the disagreement of philosophers, which is the point of departure of the Institute's work. Now, if we avoid the false inference from an improper comparison of science and philosophy with respect to disagreement and agreement,

I think we see that disagreement is the very essence of philosophy, that there will always be disagreement in philosophy. This is not regrettable. On the contrary, imagine the opposite. Imagine all philosophers agreeing. That would be the answer to the question you asked earlier at Lloyd. That would be the death of philosophy. In fact, the absence of disagreement in philosophy would be as much the death of philosophy as the absence of experimentation would be the death of science. But there are two bad extremes here, not one. One of these bad extremes is the unity of agreement, which would be the death of philosophy. But at the opposite end of the scale, as bad a condition, is the chaos of disagreement, which exists today. And in between is what should exist, a disagreement that is based upon understanding of the diversity and of the issue. Disagreement in philosophy is profitable, only in proportion as those who are disagreeing really join issue, really communicate with one another, and understand the whole diversity of opinion and the reason for this diversity.

Moreover, disagreement in philosophy is profitable, only in proportion as all sides of the issue or of the issues are taken into account. Now, on both these counts, disagreement has become less and less profitable in our time. For today, philosophers are not meeting squally in issue with one another, and they are not succeeding in communicating with one another. And they, I think, the general state of affairs is, is we do not understand. We haven't got an intelligible conception of the diversity of opinions on basic issues. Moreover, the contemporary discussion tends to be shallow and constricted. Only contemporary voices are heard of it. It lacks the wide variety of points of view that are relevant to it. A man, you would agree, I think, that a man does not understand an argument for the understand only one side of the argument. So a man doesn't really understand an argument, if he understands only some of the sides to it, when there are many more sides which he has not is not hearing. Now, on both these counts, the institute is trying to provide a remedy.

We are engaged in effort to see if we can formulate the issues on which philosophers will meet and argue against one another. We are trying to find the conditions which will produce communication among them, and we are certainly trying to describe the diversity of opinion and to explain why that diversity exists. Furthermore, we are trying to expand, rather than to finish the disagreement, we are trying to increase the disagreement and bring all voices in. All the viewpoints from the whole tradition of Western thought, many of which are either ignored now or not even known. What we are not doing is trying to solve the problems. We are not trying to establish the final truth on these basic issues. On the contrary, our aim is to achieve with as much dialectical objectivity as we can master and understanding and clarification of the great philosophical controversy. And we think if we do this, we shall provide philosophy with the first condition of progress.

You recall last week I discussed the two conditions of progress in philosophy and compared the progress of philosophy with the progress of science. Let me remind you what the two conditions of the progress of philosophy were by looking at this chart. The first condition of progress in philosophy is dialectical clarification, which brings about a progressively enlightened controversy through a better understanding of the issues and a more adequate statement of the alternative. And this dialectical clarification is the basis for making theoretical advances in which new theories or insights produce a more coherent and comprehensive restatement of all truth. Now I think the title of the Institute for Philosophical Research is sometimes misunderstood because people think that philosophical research of the thought we are doing is an effort to bring about these theoretical advances.

In fact, our whole aim is here. It is a name to bring about the dialectical clarification, which is the basis of making those theoretical advances. In fact, I'd like to suggest that a name is better titles, more accurate titles for the Institute. We couldn't use them because they're not brief enough, they're too cumbersome to speak, but actually better than saying Institute for Philosophical Research would be to call our organization the Institute for studying the conditions of philosophical thought. Or better still, the Institute for Improving the Conditions of Philosophical Progress. Dr. Anderson. Yes, Lord. I can see that what the Institute is doing is of great value to philosophers and to philosophy itself. But I'm not a philosopher, at least not professionally, and I am an educator concerned with the problems of liberal education. I'm quite sure that there are many others like myself who are concerned about this particular problem, that supposing that the Institute is successful in its technical efforts.

What will the value be of that success, specifically and generally, to the laymen and to liberal education, to liberal education and the humanities in general? Thank you, Lord. Let me say it once, at the first, and the direct result of the Institute's work, must be the improvement of philosophy in this generation and then in the next. In this respect, I would say, the Institute is exactly like another Ford Foundation supported project, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, which is, as you know, now trying to locate here in the Bay Area. I am sure that the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, hopes that its work will also indirectly benefit mankind and human society. But I'm sure that in the first effort the Center is trying, its direct effort is trying to improve the work of the behavioral sciences,

research and method in those sciences. So too, the Institute does its primary work of bringing about the conditions of better work in philosophy and progress in philosophy, hopes that its work will be of great value, especially to the whole sphere of liberal education, as well as to the laymen who is faced with fundamental problems. Let me see if I can talk about both these things, the value of the Institute to the laymen and the value to liberal education in that order. You know you had that question, Lloyd, from Mr. Fitzgerald. Let me read the first paragraph of Mr. Fitzgerald's question because it leads right into the question of the value of the Institute's work to the laymen. Mr. Fitzgerald writes, the conflict among philosophers is such a scandal for laymen that seeing the disagreement among the great thinkers, he dispairs of the possibility of even attempting to find answers to the fundamental questions for himself.

That state for the problem is. But Mr. Fitzgerald, it is not the conflict among philosophers, but the unintelligibility of the conflict which makes the laymen despair. On a recent occasion, Mr. Fitzgerald, I said, commenting on the very point you just raised in this letter, that if the laymen supposed he could understand the issues of basic importance to him by somehow comprehending the conflicting views of the adversaries, he might be willing then to examine them and to pursue intellectual inquiries into the sphere of his own basic problems. But he is deterred from doing this by his feeling, that he cannot possibly make sense of the controversies as they are currently carried on, and he is quite right in that feeling. So the Institute hopes to make the basic controversies intelligible and so restore the layman's confidence in his ability to deal with the conflict of ideas as that affects his own life. And I went on finally to say that in this way the laymen may be cured

of what is the most current disease in America, a deep anti-intellectualism, because the cure to this when he no longer dispairs of the possibility of understanding fundamental issues or of taking sides on. And I'd like to illustrate this. I'd like to illustrate this from some current work we are doing on-premise. Let's suppose that a layman, an intelligent layman, or even a philosopher would have sit down and read through in succession all the great literature on the subject of human freedom, a hundred or more basic documents. I think if he were to do this, the result would be he would get the impression very much of the sort that William James says the baby has when the baby first looks at the world that is the great, glooming, buzzing confusion. Or to use another comparison of the literature on freedom if he would just wait out of that way with no preparation,

would look to him as the world of nature, the world of living things, plants and animals, must have looked to a primitive, untuted savage in a primeval, forest or jungle. Consider how different that world looks to us, the world of living things, when you and I walk through a zoo or a botanical garden or a museum in which the whole of biological science is made visible to us and we see the world of nature not as it is orderly jungle, not as an intelligible variety but as an orderly intelligible pattern of things. Let me draw the point from this comparison by showing you another chart. Let's consider the world of living organisms, of plants and animals. As I said a moment ago, to the untuted savage, before he had the benefit to scientific discovery, it was a disorderly, unintelligible pattern, an amazing bewildering disorder. But to those of us who living in the 20th century are fortunate enough to be instructed

by biological classification, genetics and the theory of evolution, the world of living things is an orderly and intelligible scene. Now let me make the comparison by then going to the world of philosophical thought. In the world of philosophical thought, the conceptions and the opinions of the philosophers are here like the plants and animals in the world of nature and the conceptions and opinions of the philosophers to the laymen or to the philosopher and before the kind of philosophical research we are doing at the institute is done is the same kind of a bewildering jungle of conflicting confused opinions in which one can't find one way around, which one doesn't see the pattern of the diversity. But if the work of the institute is done and if we will ever be enlightened by a dialectical ordering and explanation of intellectual diversity, that jungle world of philosophical thought will become as orderly to our eye and to our senses as the world of nature, the world of living things is when we see it set forth in the exhibit at a museum or an astrological god.

So let me come to the second point, which has to do with the value of the institute's work for liberal education. No, I forgot one thing. Before I come back, there's one thing I want to add. In that comparison I just made. The work the institute is doing is very, I remember Mr. Norton's question, is very much like the work of scientific research. Just as the biologist looks at the specimens of nature, analyzes them, classifies them, draws up great classificatory charts and then with something like genetics, the theory of evolution explains how that diversity arose in the development of things in time. So the work of the institute follows a similar pattern of research very much like that of science. We too are looking not at plants and animals, but at thought, at the world of conceptions and opinions. And we must see if we can classify them.

We must see if we can develop hypotheses that give us charts of comparison and enable us to develop hypotheses explaining how this tremendous diversity has arisen. And in doing this, we working with ideas, with conceptions and opinions just as the biologist works with plants and animals to develop in a scientific manner, working with the materials in front of us. We develop hypotheses that we can put to the test in exactly the same way. In that sense, our work is very much like scientific research except at the level of ideas instead of the level of things. Now let me talk to the second point you raised. The value of the institute, the institute's work in relation to the whole of liberal education. The basic fact here is that liberal education and philosophy rise and fall together. The decay of liberal education in our time results, I think,

from two things, the decline of philosophy in our time, and also the loss of faith and the lack of skill in the basic disciplines of discussion. Both of these things must be restored. Both philosophy and skill and faith in discussion must be restored. If liberal education is to be restored to the vigor it once had. Why is this so? I think the answer is twofold. First, because the very substance of liberal education is the great ideas. The great ideas understood in terms of the widest diversity of conceptions and opinions about them, and also in terms of the deepest grasp of the issues to which they give rise. But how can this be communicated? How can this understanding of the great ideas be communicated to the generation of students? I say it can only be done by discussion carried on with the utmost dialectical objectivity and clarity,

and by discussion in which all sides of the issues are fairly represented, represented impartially, and with a sense of that contradiction. Now, it's at this point that one might ask, how does the Institute for Philosophical Research and its work make its peculiar contribution to the advancement? More than the advancement, I would say, in this case, law is the restoration of liberal education in this country. My answer is that every college that is concerned with liberal education, or perhaps I should say, the students and faculty of every college that is concerned with liberal education, should be doing all the time the kind of work that the staff of the Institute is doing, should be engaged in the study of the great ideas and in developing the methods of communication,

the methods of discussion, which are involved in the study of the great ideas indispensable for that communication among men. If this is what every college, faculty, and student body should be doing, if it is pursuing liberal education, then I think the peculiar function of the Institute, doing this more intensively, is to actually function as a pilot plan, to discover, to discover and perfect the methods for such discussion and analysis of the great ideas, to find the procedures by which men can think collaboratively about them, and above all, to put these methods and procedures to work in such a way that we produce some results that not only exemplify the goodness of the procedures and methods, but also themselves are useful to schools and colleges engaged in liberal education. Now I hope, Lloyd, that that begins to answer, answers a little, explains a little if not fully

the work of the Institute in relation both to the layman and to liberal education. Well, answering your question now, Dr. Adler, both as a layman concerned with his own position on philosophical issues, and as an educator concerned as well with liberal education, I must say that I do think I see and understand more clearly, though perhaps not as completely as I'd like to, the program and work that is being conducted at the Institute. And it's also clear to me that this indirect objective of the Institute, which I asked you about, is also going to result, but that it's particularly dependent upon the attainment of your immediate aims and objectives, and of course that's in the main field of philosophy, right? Now speaking about the main field of philosophy, I think I've learned a very important thing with you this afternoon, and that is that the Institute is not undertaking to find the ultimate answers to all questions.

Rather, it's addressing itself to the more modest tasks, all at the same time a very difficult task, of creating a condition whereby the philosophers of the future, the next generation, will be able to do better work and to come about with the results that our questioners are asking is for and demanding of philosophy today. And if that is the case, and you are that way enabling philosophy in the future to come up with the answers to ultimate truth, then I think for force required to ask you one more question and answer to your question. And I think others who are in the same position myself are vitally concerned in that question. And that is simply this, that considering the progress you've made thus far at the Institute, what you estimate now are the chances for your ultimate success in the main issue. Well, Lloyd, if you'll let me knock on what?

While I answer that question, I think I'm willing to say that the chances look very good to all of us at the Institute. We think we have linked the toughest part of the job, which is to find the right method for doing this kind of work, which has never been done before, a kind of scientific work at the level of ideas, like the scientific work done in the classification explanation of a variety of living things. We have learned more of how to do philosophy by teamwork in intensive collaboration with one another. And we have made great headway, I think, in applying these methods and these procedures, which we have only recently invented in our present efforts to clarify and understand the difficult and basic controversy concerning human freedom. I hope sometimes to be able to report to you the results of what we've learned about human freedom. Unfortunately, that is not going to be the next idea we discuss.

Next week, we turn to another great idea, the idea of law. And our first consideration in the discussion of that idea will be the nature of law, the meaning of law in human life. I trust that you will all send in whatever questions you may have about the nature and meaning of law and be with us again next week when we start the discussion of law. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. This is National Educational Television.

Thank you very much.