Nearing the half-way point

It's about half way through this project. So how am I feeling about it? I'm having fun, I'm learning a lot, but I'm finding it really hard. Now, I don't mind finding it hard. If philosophy were easy no one would be doing it. The difficulty and seeming insurmountably of a question is almost definitional of a philosophical question. Easy questions don't get asked in philosophy. But that's all a consolation prize--I really would like to have gotten a much better or deeper understanding of something, and I don't think that I've really gotten there yet. If I keep on plugging away will I gain some new insight on the issues that interest me? Maybe yes, maybe no. There's no way to know.

Here's a disappointment: for now my focus is turning away from the intersection of math and ethics and focusing squarely on the intersection of philosophy of science, epistemology and ethics. We'll see how far that goes. But for now it seems as if philosophy of math has been asked to sit this one out. In retrospect, this was a long time coming, since the power of the indispensability argument is its claim to just be a plain-old boring scientific and inductive argument. What makes it so appealing in philosophy of math is that it seems to be completely acceptable to the scientist.

I'm going to keep on reading about philosophy of math on the side, wondering if maybe there isn't some way in which the mathematical platonist goes beyond inference to the best explanation in order to reach his conclusions. And maybe if ethical realism fails, ultimately we can tie mathematical realism to that sinking ship. Anti-realism tends to be far less interesting to me than realism, though. My deeper convictions are that math and ethics are clearly different than plain old empirical knowledge in some important respects, but that they're completely respectable arenas in which disagreements can be rationally voiced and where certain claims are true and others are false. But I'm going to be open here, and if I find an argument that pushes me towards anti-realism, I'll have to deal with that.

In the mean time, here's where the project currently stands. I don't feel too hopeful about where it is right now. I don't believe that I'm on the verge of finding something. But anyway, here it is: inference to the best explanation is a respectable principle. But what justifies inference to the best explanation? Do you need to fall back onto something normative in order to get the whole thing going? Is that any different from just saying that justification is a normative concept through-and-through? And if some sort of normativity is needed in order to justify scientific claims, how much normative theory creeps in? The question is analogous to one in math after the indispensability argument: so math is necessary for science, but how much math? In the same way, maybe some normative theory is necessary for science (in the sense that in order be justified we need normative theory), but how much normative theory? Does moral theory creep in?

I sincerely think that the answer is "no," but this is likely to be the topic of my half-way point paper that I'm writing this week. To be honest, I keep on hoping that I smell a trail that will send me in a slightly different direction. I think that this direction is absolutely fascinating, but I don't think that it's a very promising one for ethics. But here we go, anyway!