128 Paul Sheldon Davies
dubious concepts—especially concepts in terms of which we understand ourselves—we
need to abandon our commitment to conceptual conservatism.^3 This is to call for reform
in our basic orientation toward philosophical refl ection. The call is justifi ed insofar as
conceptual conservatism is antithetical to progress in knowledge.
8.1 Progress in Knowledge
I assume that, as a matter of historical fact, human knowledge has grown in the past few
centuries like never before. There has been progress in human knowledge even though
there is nothing intrinsically progressive about it—even though the growth in human
knowledge is the product of any number of happy accidents. Not that the growth of knowl-
edge is cumulative, linear, or otherwise tidy, but rather that we as a collective know more
about reality today than at any other time in the history of life on earth. Not that our
knowledge is infallible or even particularly impressive when compared to our ignorance,
but rather that we understand and can control the world with unprecedented success. We
may not be any wiser in employing what we know—it is an interesting question whether
there has been progress in politics comparable to progress in knowledge, or whether
growth in one depends on growth in the other—but that there is progress in human knowl-
edge since the rise of modern science is hard to contest.
I also assume that progress in human knowledge is unavoidably destructive of what has
gone before. As old theories or old methods of inquiry give way to new ones, we are forced
to put a good many things behind us. By studying the history of science—by refl ecting
on what contributed to the growth of human knowledge in the recent past—and also by
studying the psychological capacities that underwrite human inquiry and the infi rmities
that thwart it, we have discovered that some methods of inquiry are more effective than
others. We have discovered, in particular, that some strategies and expectations make us
more effective at generating accurate predictions and informative, fruitful explanations.
We make progress, then, by accepting new theories in place of old theories, but also by
putting behind us methods of inquiry that have proven relatively fruitless.
What, then, of contemporary philosophical inquiry? Does it contribute to the growth of
human knowledge? The answer, I think, is that to a surprising extent it does not. A good
deal of contemporary philosophical inquiry is deeply conservative by its very methods
and, in consequence, antithetical to progress in knowledge. To see this, consider two ques-
tions. First, how do philosophers gauge their own progress? What qualifi es as progress
and what qualifi es as lack of progress in philosophical refl ection? The answers can be
gleaned by observing what philosophers say and do. And as most of us practice it today,
the overarching goal of philosophical refl ection is to identify concepts of apparent impor-
tance—conceptual categories that bear most intimately on how we understand ourselves
or our place in the cosmos—and then try to preserve those concepts by integrating them