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us and all we can see is bare behaviour (although Wittgenstein’s criticisms have still not been heeded by many philosophers today). We do not infer that somebody is in pain when we see them stub their toe and cry.⁶² In that case we can see that they are in pain and we can distinguish that case from one in which we do make an inference, for example, when we see a packet of paracetamol opened next to a half-drunk glass of water on the table. There is a logical connection between pain and pain behaviour, namely that pain behaviours are (defeasible) criteria for someone being in pain. So, neither materialism nor verificationism provide us with good reasons for thinking that methodology in the social and natural sciences should be the same. The issue of progress in the social and natural sciences will be discussed in the next section below.

1.5Progress

As already noted above, the impressive progress made in the natural sciences is one of the motivations to have the social sciences emulate the natural ones in one way or another. Academic philosophers and scientists have been unimpressed by the results of psychological theorizing and philosophical argument by contrast with rapid developments in physics, biology, and chemistry as well as by the lack of agreement among social scientists in contrast to natural scientists. For example, Semir Zeki, an academic working in neuroesthetics, has complained about ‘the poverty of the results’ in philosophy ‘in terms of understanding our brains and their mental constitution’⁶³ and the philosopher Paul Churchland has lamented the lack of progress made by ‘folk psychology’ (the name he gives to our ordinary framework of psychological concepts, which he takes to be a theory of human behaviour) which he thinks has not progressed in 2,500 years.⁶⁴ More recently the physicist Stephen Hawking has declared that ‘philosophy is dead’ and claimed that it has been superseded by developments in science. Zeki thinks that neurobiology should take over problems about the mind (as well as problems concerning justice and honour) from philosophy, Churchland thinks that ‘folk psychology’ (our ordinary framework of psychological concepts as well as concepts employed in psychology) should be abandoned in favour of a neuroscientific psychology, and Hawking thinks that philosophers should give up on questions like ‘why are we here?’ and ‘where do we come from?’ and leave them to science.⁶⁵

      There is surely something to these worries about a lack of progress in philosophy. Philosophers still puzzle over Zeno’s paradoxes from 2,500 years ago. There are contemporary Aristotelian ethicists but there aren’t any contemporary Ptolemaic scientists. Philosophers are still troubled by sceptical doubts about our senses and by disagreements about what it is that we see and hear. More than two millennia ago Plato made attempts to define knowledge and philosophers today are still making similar attempts. Is it any wonder that people like Hawking think that philosophy might as well just be abandoned?

      Ludwig Wittgenstein had an explanation for why it is that philosophical confusions have endured for millennia. It is that these problems are conceptual problems, that is, problems that result from misunderstanding certain concepts, and that the ‘traps’ set by language – the features of language that cause confusion – have remained in place:

One keeps hearing the remark that philosophy really makes no progress, that the same philosophical problems that had occupied the Greeks are still occupying us. But those who say that do not understand the reason it is // must be // so. The reason is that our language has remained the same and seduces us into asking the same questions over and over again. As long as there is a verb ‘to be’ which seems to function like ‘to eat’ and ‘to drink’, as long as there are adjectives like ‘identical’, ‘true’, ‘false’, ‘possible’, as long as one talks about a flow of time and an expanse of space, etc. etc. humans will continue to bump against the same mysterious difficulties, and stare at something that no explanation seems capable of removing.⁶⁶

It could be claimed that progress, of a sort, has been made in philosophy but that some philosophers and scientists have failed to recognize it as such. In his later work Wittgenstein laid out some of the confusions that have troubled philosophers over the centuries and contrasted their confused formulations with ‘surveyable representations’ of the problematic expressions. Surveyable representations clarify the meaning of expressions that are causing confusion, showing the way in which the relevant expression is ordinarily used, and perhaps contrasting it with other similar expressions or giving examples of conceptual connections with other expressions – whatever helps to reduce confusion and produce clarity and understanding. One example of this is Wittgenstein’s discussion of the concept of ‘knowledge’ (discussed above, in Section 1.2.3). Elsewhere he dissolves problems from the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus, ‘Can one step into the same river twice?’;⁶⁷ clarifies a centuries-old question from Augustine, ‘how is it possible to measure time?’;⁶⁸ describes the correct use of words like ‘know’, ‘believe’, ‘certainty’, and ‘doubt’ in dissolving sceptical problems;⁶⁹ discusses problems resulting from thinking of sensations as private;⁷⁰ as well as many other philosophical problems from over the past centuries.

Whereas progress in science consists in making empirical discoveries and devising ever more powerful theories, progress in philosophy consists in clarification of concepts which are causing puzzlement and does not involve constructing theories at all. Philosophy should not be blamed for failing to uncover or discover truths about our brains since that is the task of biology and of neuroscience. What philosophers can do is clarify concepts employed in neuroscientific and psychological research (and in other areas of scientific and social scientific research) and thus help to formulate appropriate questions and to ensure that the results of research are expressed clearly. As Bennett and Hacker say in Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, philosophy’s task ‘is to clarify the conceptual scheme in terms of which our knowledge is articulated. Its achievements are its contribution to our reflective understanding of the logical structure of our thought and knowledge about the world. It cannot contribute to knowledge about the brain, and it should not be expected to. Philosophers are not closet scientists.’⁷¹

      People like Semir Zeki, Paul Churchland, and Stephen Hawking are confused if they think that philosophy is to be blamed for failing to solve problems that science might solve, since philosophy is of a different nature to the natural sciences. We hope for increases in our knowledge and improvements in theory from science, discarding falsehoods and accumulating truths along the way. However, we cannot hope for such things from philosophy because philosophy is not a cognitive discipline. It aims at developing our understanding rather than contributing to our knowledge of the universe and the natural world. Its progress can be measured in terms of problems that have been clarified and understanding gained rather than in terms of knowledge.

As for psychology, Churchland is confused if he thinks that it can be replaced by neuroscience.⁷² Our ordinary psychological expressions do not constitute a theory, although various theories might be formulated employing those psychological expressions. Churchland’s position involves various paradoxes (philosophical or conceptual problems). For one thing, he cannot fault ‘folk psychology’ for failing to explain memory or the ways in which learning transforms us if he is correct in thinking that psychological expressions should be eliminated, since psychological expressions are employed in formulating the problems.⁷³

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