Six Further Arguments

This chapter criticizes six arguments for pessimism: the womb of disciplines argument, which suggests that philosophy is by definition the subject that does not make progress; the methodology argument, which suggests that philosophers are using the wrong tools for the problems that confront them; the pseudo-problems argument, which suggests that philosophical problems are not the sort for which progress should be expected; the speculation argument, which suggests that philosophy involves an illegitimate and irresponsible form of speculation; the history argument, which suggests that philosophy bears a different relation to its past than do sciences such as physics, and in consequence exhibits a different pattern of success and failure; and the technicalia argument, which suggests that the technical language so prevalent in philosophy is a bar to progress. In each case this chapter argues that these present no grounds for doubting reasonable optimism.