[Bups-dis] Philosophical Success?

[Carl Baker]

Hi all,
 
Peter van Inwagen's recent book about the problem of evil contains a fascinating chapter about what it is for a philosophical argument to be a success. It raises questions of what we're trying to do when we make an argument.
 
One account that Inwagen considers is the idea of a two-person debate. Imagine that A is a realist about universals and B is a nominalist. They're offering arguments to each other for their respective positions. So would a successful argument for realism be one that convinced B to turn from his nominalism? While this would clearly be successful, it looks far too strong. Realists and nominalists will be unlikely to agree on many of their premises, and will simply reach an impasse. Moreover it looks like few philosophical arguments would be a success under this account.
 
The alternative that Inwagen puts forward is as follows. The realist and the nominalist are joined by an audience of 'ideal agnostics' - they have no beliefs either way about universals. The realist gets to put forward his arguments for realism. The nominalist then gets to critique these arguments, and shed doubt on the premises. The argument for realism would be judged a success if the audience of ideal agnostics were to come around to realism as a result of the exchange. Equally, if the debate were performed the other way around - nominalist arguing, realist criticising - the argument would be successful if the agnostics came around to nominalism.
 
This is fascinating stuff, but it seems to have some problems. Firstly, we might worry about the possibility of an ideal agnostic. What beliefs exactly will this agnostic have to be agnostic about? Many obscure things might bear on the realism/nominalism debate, and ideal agnosticism might require no beliefs about all philosophical topics! But this looks untenable. If the concept of 'ideal agnostic' is flawed, then we might want to reject this account.
 
Secondly, under this account we will never have any knowledge of which arguments are successes, since even if ideal agnostics were possible, there are none around. Some people might prefer judging success by unideal agnostics - and, indeed, this seems to be how philosophical esteem is sometimes judged, since we say that many philosophers are 'successful' whose views we disagree with.
 
Thirdly, Inwagen admits that even on this account there are very few (if any) successful philosophical arguments. But then why should we accept this standard for success, if it won't be instructive in helping us to succeed?
 
Do you think these problems are conclusive, or can Inwagen get around them? Do you have any ideas as to what a better conception of philosophical success would look like?
 
All the best
 
Carl
 
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