GRIPh colloquium Helen Beebee

Helen Beebee (University of Leeds): Does philosophy aim at knowledge?

This talk challenges the widespread assumption that philosophy, as an academic discipline, aims at knowledge. Drawing on the persistence of systematic peer disagreement across core philosophical questions, I argue that philosophy is just not equipped to furnish us with much by way of knowledge of answers to those question. This is so whether we think the knowledge at issue is taken to be collective or individual (though I’ll focus on the collective case). This is bad news, of course, if you think that philosophy aims at such knowledge. Fortunately, you don’t need to think that. A more promising conception of philosophy’s primary aim takes it to be aiming at the development of merely ‘tenable' positions.