Philosophy in Academia is currently in a dismal, forlorn state. Its methodology has become narrowly scholastic, and there are virtually no big fascinating ideas which are circulating, or enthusing a “school” of academic ideologues, or at least none which count as ‘philosophy’ by the best historic standards. Some topics which have been explored in the current issue of The Philosopher (a consciously focused journal critical of academia, a but written by sceptical academians) are: personal disappearance, ghosts, kidnapping, disappeared people, absence, terrorism, oppression, Arendt’s philosophy, underdogs, violence, metaphorising animals, Bergson, friendship, feminism, poetry and parenting…all perfectly good themes for intelligent reflection, but miles away from the main philosophical roots of today’s malaise.

So do we need philosophy?

Yes, (in epistemology) to do outline thought experiments about the most promising scientific and mathematical research programmes which will need to be followed in  the future.Yes (in ethics) to do outline thought experiments about the implications of our best current understanding of the way the human psyche works and flourishes. This will be needed to find ways to cultivate “mature, rigorous and sensible” culture and inter-personal behaviour —and which can only be built securely round what the average person can be expected to plainly recognise as contributive to personal well-being and social stability. After Virtue (Alasdair Macintyre’s iconic book) marked the end of an era when ethics was based effectively on religion and uncritical quasi-feudal norms in society. We now need much greater clarity about the nature of the human condition —in the light of advanced knowledge—  before we can commit to an effective modern scheme of rigorous ethics… one which meets the Kantian standard (i.e. one which we can conceptualise as capable of being observed by everybody and practised rigorously, without harmful implications).

In a word, philosophy needs to be built round thought experiments which consciously explore a positive, hopeful moral and inter-actively social future for humankind.

But, of course, there is an elephant in the room —an absolutely bleak absence of the kind of intellectual confidenceneeded to approach these massive projects hopefully. We are still living in the shadow of the giant Michelson-Morely and Russell intellectual crises. They seem to project a wasteland or a bottomless pit of incomprehension.

The former elites of physics and maths have long since been reduced to despair… because the official line —-<<that physical reality is essentially mathematical>>— has lost its former unquestioned credibility. In the seventeenth century Descartes and Newton gave it a huge boost.  They were followed in the aftermath of Napoleon by the pioneers of “Modern Mathematics” who introduced doubly-pure maths as the heart of a programme to understand physical reality. It was seen as being intellectually challenging and probably the motif of the future. So, for about 150 years there was a culture in physics of total commitment to hyper-abstract, doubly pure maths. It was seen as being the royal road to understanding the material world.  But this <<Dash for Hyper-Abstraction>> was, in practice, little more than an academic ploy…  which carried some nominal public support, and crucially allowed modern maths specialists to treat the subject as an exceptionally high-status artificial game… one in which they could show-off their formidable logical talents.

There was no inclination —in-house— among the High Priests of “modern maths” to think about its wider implications.  As a result they fell into traps, like assuming that sets were, by definition, mathematical objects, like backing a standard sets-based approach to all branches of maths, like backing the absurd idea that this set-based maths could provoke a healthy response from ordinary school children. The result was that “New Maths for Schools” collapsed abysmally in the late 1960s. This was embarrassing to the nth degree.  The leaders of this Children’s Crusade (i.e. the High Priests of math who had backed it to the hilt) painfully lost their status as admired superstars.

This meant that the previous much-vaunted, supposedly correct way of trying to understand physical reality had fallen through the floor.  Something quite different was needed.

But the cupboard was bare… and no one —with the exception of Popper (by then quite old) and Lakatos (who unfortunately died young) — felt sufficiently strongly about this to start looking for a new approach.

We have been drifting philosophically ever since.  Some philosophical drift is hardly noticed by the average busy intelligent person, but six decades of standstill (zero progress) takes its toll.  Things are now becoming visibly dangerous, because demagogues have taken over, and bemused the masses with their half-baked panaceas. We urgently need to wake up and perceive that reality is fundamental Anti-Mathematical.

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