Philosophical Swallows vs. Moles | Psychology Today Singapore

Machery’s metaphor is unfortunate, of course, for a multitude of reasons. After all, animals do not metamorphose into other species. I and many other philosophers are also animal lovers. How could anyone want to get rid of swallows? Don’t we want a diverse ecosystem? Furthermore, given the choice between being a swallow soaring through the skies or a mole burrowing in the dirt, philosophers uninterested in finding themselves constrained by science will feel themselves vindicated. Swallows are free. They can explore the whole world, whereas moles can only ever explore parts of it. Worse, moles have poor vision. So it might be read as a kind of self-own of Machery to describe himself as a mole.

But there is a better way we can think of the difference between moles and swallows here, and it is ironically one provided by Schwitzgebel himself in the final paragraph of his book:

Childlike philosophy toys with wild ideas at the boundaries of our understanding. Wild theorizing about consciousness is common. But are these ideas useful or true? Can we plug them in straightaway into our existing conceptions and put them to work? For me, if I was already sure they were false and useless, that would steal away their charm. But to be in a hurry to judge their merits, to want to expunge doubt and wonder so as to settle on a final view that we can put immediately to work, to want to close rather than open—let’s not be in such a rush to grow up. What’s life for if there’s no time to play and explore? –Eric Schwitzgebel

Rather than thinking about the two kinds of philosophers as swallows and moles, I believe it is more useful to think of them as placed at different stages in the maturity of philosophical development. Children and adults. Childlike and mature philosophy. Or in Reichenbach’s terminology, the ‘speculative philosophy’ of the past and the ‘scientific philosophy’ of the future.

Children engage in wild speculation entirely untethered from the knowledge humanity has accumulated. Even logic is thrown out of the window. As adults, we look at their innocence and curiosity with nothing but encouragement and love. But if an adult fails to distinguish imagination from reality, the only response left is pity. Childlike philosophy is but one step in one’s development as a philosopher. But eventually it is time to grow up.

Earlier in his book, Schwitzgebel writes: “It would just be too sad if the world had no space for speculation about wild hypotheticals.” Sad that may be. But no one is trying to ban wild speculations. They are just no longer viewed as philosophy and should thus be confined to the fiction sections of bookstores. They can still make for an enjoyable read and even hit bestseller lists nonetheless. Mature philosophy is also not against all speculation or diversity either. Science is filled with speculations that are motivated by what we have learned. Science is filled with bizarre and unintuitive conclusions because intuitions and common sense play little to no role in the search for truth. But what would be a truly sad and pitiful state of affairs is if “wild” speculations entirely unconnected from the sciences were continued to be viewed as serious philosophy within the field. For it would justifiably lead to the continued decline in the respect philosophers once held. It would undermine the status of philosophy as a serious academic field in search of truth.

If we are keen to experience the weird, diverse, and wonderful, one has to look no further than to the actual world.