Are Philosophers Absurd? Progress, Testimony & Division of Labour

Philosophy now resembles, in many ways, a mature scientific discipline—with large division of cognitive labour. Big philosophical questions are broken down into ever-smaller research questions and addressed in growing thousands of publication units. But to what purpose? Philosophers are notoriously sceptical about deferring to each other’s published findings. Most publications seem to increase, rather than reduce, philosophical disagreement. There is a looming worry about absurdity in this activity. Great intellectual effort—and countless careers—are spent on things that seemingly do not settle core questions of the field. I explore a somewhat more optimistic perspective. Rather than viewing progress as something made by the philosophical community writ large, I suggest we might instead locate progress in the small research communities that populate it. This new perspective allows us to do several things. Firstly, it allows us to reject extreme pessimism about deference to philosophical testimony. Secondly, it provides some rationale for the division of labour found in contemporary philosophy. And thirdly, it suggests that there may be a sense in which many big philosophical questions have already been answered.