Who needs therapy when we have science? (Or, why 100% of philosophy is a waste of space)

To me it has always seemed that Wittgensteinian metaphilosophy relies on empirical claims about language and psychology, and should thus be based on actual empirical, scientific results and theories. It should be thoroughly naturalized, and what would be left should not be called any kind of philosophy any more than sociology of physics should be called physics. It would be just linguistics and cognitive science.

According to Paul Horwich's interpretation of Wittgenstein's later metaphilosophy, Wittgenstein thought that philosophical puzzles are mere pseudo-problems that should be dissolved by loosening the grip of certain over-generalized linguistic analogies and metaphors that generate those problems, rather than solved by developing theories in response to them. Thus even attempting to develop first-order philosophical theories is irrational. Useful philosophy would then consist of "therapy" that would cure the confused philosophers of their philosophical pathology.

An excerpt from Horwich's book (which, by the way, is exceptionally clear for a work on Wittgenstein):

"Traditional philosophical questions about the nature of numbers, time, knowledge, truth, justice, beauty, free will, and so on, derive from their fascination, according to Wittgenstein, from conceptual tensions (paradoxes) that stem in turn from a perverse exaggeration of linguistic analogies. So in his view the aim of reasonable philosophical methodology should be to dissolve such puzzles - to expose the irrational over-generalizations from which they emerge. 

In contrast, attempts at theory construction are not the proper response. ... theoretical responses to our puzzlement are irrational. What we should be doing, rather, is trying to expose and remove the various language-based confusions that engendered it" (Wittgenstein's Metaphilosophy, 2013)

Timothy Williamson correctly points out in his review that if this is really the right account of philosophy, then most philosophers are just wasting resources on a worthless endeavor:

"On the picture that emerges, 90% of philosophy is a waste of space, while the remaining 10% consists of praiseworthy demolitions of the 90%. Horwich does not explain why taxpayers should be expected to fund a branch of the academy with that structure. Would it not be cheaper and more effective simply to abolish philosophy altogether?"

My question is: why should we call the remaining 10% philosophy? After all, it wouldn't consist of philosophical theses, it would just take philosophy as its subject matter and target of investigation, and then make observations about how people use words:

"In so far as theses are propounded in philosophy, they should be barely more than observations about the use of words - reminders offered to help loosen the grip of over-stretched analogies." (Horwich)

It seems like these would be empirical claims and thus amenable to scientific investigation. Should we blame Wittgenstein for not doing empirical science himself or not relying on scientific findings about language and psychology in his books? No, because it wouldn't even have been possible for him. The relevant areas of linguistics and psychology were simply underdeveloped back then.

Now things are different. We can finally replace Wittgenstein's protoscientific armchair speculations with actual science, as Eugen Fischer argues we should do:

"Wittgenstein did not yet have at his disposal the resources to establish the truth of claims about the pertinent unconscious cognition, such as the - empirical - claim that a particular thinker actually is in the grip of a philosophical picture. These resources have been made available by rather more recent work in cognitive linguistics and cognitive psychology, whose results allow us, first, to identify relevant analogies and, second, to explain how they are 'at work in the unconscious'. ... This will allow us to show that, and how, an experimentally documented cognitive process interlocks with an empirically documented linguistic process and results in systematic mistakes in non-intentional reasoning." (How to Practise Philosophy as Therapy, 2011)

"[Philosophical] problems of the kind at issue are systematically generated by inferential urges that involve phenomena identified and examined by different branches of cognitive science: attention and belief bias effects, prototype effects, metaphorical and inadvertent analogical reasoning." (Wittgenstein's 'Non-Cognitivism' - Explained and Vindivated, 2008; references omitted)

Wittgensteinians have no excuse anymore to keep writing in philosophy journals. They should start presenting their ideas as scientific hypotheses supported by scientific evidence.


So it turns out that Horwich's picture, as presented by Williamson, was too optimistic. Actually 100% of philosophy is a waste of space.