The expertise of a dabbler, or, synthetic philosophy revisited
I've been long pondering Eric Schliesser's discussions of synthetic philosophy, which he offers in this neat 2019 paper and in a more recent Substack post. In the post, Schliesser redefines synthetic philosophy and points to its problems and limitations:
Synthetic philosophy is style of philosophy that presupposes or develops expertise in a general theory (or a model, a certain method/technique, etc.) that is thin and flexible enough to be applied in/to different special sciences, but rich enough that, when applied, it allows for connections to be developed among them with the aim to offer a coherent account of complex systems and connect these to a wider culture, the sciences, or other philosophical projects (or both).
As a style of philosophizing, it is ambitious and integrative. But it also has limitations and pitfalls.
Let's look at one issue Schliesser brings up: What is the expertise that synthetic philosophers have?
Related to this question: How can synthetic philosophy survive in an increasing ecology of specialization and extensive division of cognitive labor? Is the synthetic philosopher some sort of sage with unique meta-skills who can a lofty height adjudicate what specialists are doing? And if she can't, what is she even doing? Maybe we can summarize this as a more general question: What is the point of synthetic philosophy?
As Schliesser writes,
My unease about this program is due to the fact that what does the integration, the integrative glue, as it were, is too unconstrained or (to use one of Timothy Williamson’s favorite words) undisciplined. I also worry that it opens the door to the philosopher as creative genius who has mystical powers at understanding the totality of things. In addition — and I was myself not as clear about this back in 2019 —, hyper-specialization makes the kind of integrative project Kitcher wishes to defend a glorious, fool’s errand.
The way Schliesser tries to rescue synthetic philosophers from being dabblers who are doing several things badly that dedicated experts can do much better, is to attribute to them expertise with modeling practices:
through the expertise with a modeling practice (a theory, a set of techniques) the synthetic philosopher can speak in several disciplinary languages and perhaps even generate a philosophical pidgin. Her habitat is to be found in (what Peter Gallison calls) trading zones, or arbitrage opportunities, among disciplines as well as, potentially, on the scientific research frontier, or public facing philosophy or science communication.
Unlike Schliesser, I don't think that synthetic philosophers need to be uniquely good at modelling. Indeed, I am entirely comfortable with the integrative glue being unconstrained. This lack of constraints make for a freedom to philosophize that distinguishes synthetic philosophy as an approach. You can use as your glue a great many different things. Formal methods are one way to do it, but you can (for instance) use continental phenomenology or yogacara philosophy as a unifying framework to put your disparate observations into. Synthetic philosophy is a style of philosophizing, not a subdiscipline of philosophy of science, at least the way I see it. So, maybe the kinds of works that count as synthetic philosophy are in my view much more encompassing than the works Schliesser has in mind (work by e.g., Dennett, Sterelny, Godfrey-Smith).
Synthetic philosophers are not adjudicators of other philosophy from some lofty height. They just do their own thing, which doesn't fit neatly in disciplinary approaches. This makes synthetic philosophy hard to evaluate. Necessarily, a synthetic philosopher who uses history of philosophy insights will have limits in her understanding of it.
I think the strength of this kind of philosophy is to find insights that you don't find within disciplinary boundaries, or that are more difficult to find. For this reason, synthetic philosophers need not, indeed cannot be generalists. Maybe the last true generalist was Ibn Sina (and he was not as strong in math as other disciplines).
So, in my view, you can be entirely idiosyncratic. To take an example, you can have some knowledge of medieval philosophy, continental phenomenology, neuroscience, and feminism and with that knowledge generate a new and original interpretation of medieval mystic female philosophers' writings. Will this synthetic philosopher be as thorough in her knowledge of medieval philosophy as someone who spent his entire career doing this? Likely not. Can she adjudicate medieval philosophy debates? This seems like a high bar for me to clear. But can she offer new insights into medieval mysticism, maybe a bold new interpretation of some authors such as Hadewijch that no one before has offered? Hopefully… I think here lies the strength of synthetic philosophy.
In a sense, synthetic philosophy enlarges and does in a systematic manner what all of us already do. Our work is uniquely shaped by our idiosyncratic knowledge that we got through our reading for pleasure, our education, our life experience, even random conservations with people. The synthetic philosopher cultivates this kind of eclectic approach to knowledge as an orientation and a way to approach philosophical questions. And since our disciplinary knowledge always poses limits, there will always be some new things to uncover for such syncretic and eclectic approaches, no matter how extensive our cognitive division of labour becomes.
I think your eclectic is kind of like a roving trader that sees arbitrage opportunities. But I am increasingly skeptical this is a good model for a discipline although it can work for individuals. (Tagging @NeilLevy10
This is the only kind of philosophy (for better or worse) I am capable of. But the most important thing it seems to me is that the synthetic philosopher is clearly not "doing several things badly that dedicated experts can do much better," because insofar as she is genuinely trying to bring about a synthesis, she simply isn't doing what the hyper-specialists are doing. The main question, then, is just whether an attempt at synthesis is worthwhile, as opposed to hyper-specialization. And the answer to that, it seems to me at least, is obviously "yes."