The Greatest Human Achievement Of All Human Achievements Is Philosophical

To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.

- George Orwell

What is that simple but yet brilliant insight from Agnes Callard?

I would give the number one human achievement of all human achievements, I think, is philosophical, and I think is the idea of human rights.

Please listen to her insightful interview on EconTalk - On Philosophy, Progress, and Wisdom: 

Russ Roberts: Let's get started. Agnes, the philosopher David Chalmers has a paper, "Why Isn't There More Progress in Philosophy?" The title implies that there isn't much progress. Do you agree?

Agnes Callard: I think that progress in philosophy just means something slightly different from progress in some other fields. And so, if we're judging it by those standards, it will look as though there isn't much. I read that paper a while ago. I can't quite remember it. I think maybe Chalmers's view is that there's something like kind of outsourcing a philosophy where in effect philosophy creates these ideas and then they go off into other fields to become progress.

And that's once again saying like the progress part is the extra-philosophical part, is the thing that happens when logic becomes a science of its own or moves over into math. But, I actually do think that there are some internal standards that we could use to think about progress in philosophy. They just might not be as useful for comparing each other fields.

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Russ Roberts: In particular, I think a philosophy--I feel really foolish saying this to a real philosopher, but bear with me--I think the point of philosophy is to help us not answer questions, but how to think about questions.

I think the truth standard or the science standard or the progress standard is really the wrong standard. It's like saying has human nature got--have we gotten more virtuous over the last 3,000 years? The human being, not me or you, but humanity. And I'd say we haven't changed so much. To me, philosophy is the way that we think about the challenge of living a meaningful life, being virtuous, coming to grips with suffering, coming to grips with the complexity of our consciousness and how it interacts with our actions and thoughts.

And I don't expect philosophy to answer those--I mean, I think it would be absurd for philosophy to try to answer those questions, other than to tell me that they can't be answered. And then, to me, philosophy should--and I don't think it does this particularly--but I would like philosophy to speak in the voice that I can understand as someone alive in 2020, so that I can do a better job coping with those questions. Not answering them, but coping with them. What do you think?

Agnes Callard: So, I think you're right that philosophy shouldn't answer those questions, but that's not because they don't have answers or because there's no truth there. It's because philosophy can't do that for you. You have to answer those questions. That's what philosophy has been trying to tell you. And, so I think one really deep difference between progress in philosophy and progress in science is that in some sense progress in science is all about having less science to do. It's like we're trying to finish science, right?

And, so the progress means we've tied those loose ends. It may turn out we didn't tie them as well as we thought; we've got to go back, right? But, progress in philosophy is not about making there be less philosophy that has to be done. It's about making it the case that the people who are philosophizing in the future can do it better. In some way, there's more philosophy to be done, the more philosophical progress we make.

And, so I disagree with you about how human beings haven't gotten better over the past couple thousand years. I think they have gotten better, and they've gotten more virtuous, and it's because of philosophy.

So, I would give the number one human achievement of all human achievements, I think, is philosophical, and I think is the idea of human rights. That did not exist in the period that I mostly work on, the ancient world. People didn't have the idea of human rights. You start to see glimmerings of it I think really in the Bible, but it's not really fully--I would say it's fully articulated in the enlightenment by someone like Kant, the idea of human dignity.

I think nowadays, most human beings in the world just operate with this idea as almost like just written into their basic ethical framework of their way of thinking about conceptualizing the world, dealing with people around them is that people have--everyone has a kind of dignity and a kind of innate worth and that they have to be treated with respect.

I think that's a genuine change in human beings. It's a conceptual change and an ethical improvement that is because of philosophy.