Professor Helen Beebee challenges traditional notions of knowledge and progress in philosophy. She argues that unlike science, which builds on established knowledge, philosophy often grapples with competing theories that resist resolution. She's also an advocate for greater gender equality in the discipline.
Helen Beebee's path to academia was not straightforward. Now the Jane and Aatos Erkko Visiting Professor in Studies on Contemporary Society at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies https://www.helsinki.fi/en/helsinki-collegium-advanced-studies and a Professor of philosophy at the University of Leeds, Beebee initially wanted to pursue management science.
Initially, she wanted to pursue management science. "I wanted to be an advertising executive-it was the '80s," Beebee recalls with a smile. Her then-boyfriend suggested philosophy and politics, but she quickly found politics wasn't for her and embraced philosophy. "I loved being at university-it felt like I'd come home, even though my parents hadn't gone to university."
For now, home is in Helsinki and the Collegium for Advanced Studies. The cross-pollination of ideas that the Collegium offers is something she really enjoys. "I just sit around and get to listen, gosh, it's just lovely," she says. "We have weekly seminars with broad interdisciplinarity. You so rarely get to sit down and listen to people who are doing such different things from what you are doing and at the same time, it's easy to relate these topics to your own work."
Navigating Theories Without Settling Knowledge
One of the themes Beebee has explored is the distinction between the aims of philosophy and those of science. While science is often seen as a quest for knowledge, Beebee argues that this is not a viable aim for philosophy.
Science progresses nowadays in more or less a linear fashion-discoveries build on old ones, leading to a body of settled knowledge. "In general, it's reasonable to say that science aims at acquiring knowledge. Philosophers often talk about scientific revolutions-there was a time when everyone thought Newton was right, and then those ideas were overturned. However, some things in science are now unlikely to be disproven by new theories, like the periodic table, the basic structure of the brain, evolution, or the basics of genetics."
Philosophy, on the other hand, has always had, and always will have, a constant competition between competing theories that never gets resolved, but progress in parallel tracks. While natural scientists may debate more minor details within a shared framework of knowledge, philosophy lacks such consensus. Philosophers in adjacent offices may hold different worldviews-realist, idealist, expressivist-without resolving these divides.
Due to this lack of agreement, Beebee argues that knowledge isn't a reasonable goal for philosophy. "If we're aiming at knowledge, we are doing a spectacularly bad job," she says. Instead, she suggests that the aim of philosophy should be to articulate broad theories - "stories about how things might be".
Philosophy offers unique perspectives, like whether reality is mind-independent or shaped by cognition, that may never be fully reconciled. "I think we should aim at the best version of each of the understandings or theoretical frameworks," she argues.
Women in Philosophy: Challenges and Change
In addition to her philosophical contributions, Beebee is a vocal advocate for gender equality in academia, particularly in the male-dominated field of philosophy. "In the UK, about half of philosophy undergraduates are women. But then the numbers go down: there is a big drop-off between undergraduate and master's level," Beebee notes.
She suggests that the decline in women pursuing advanced philosophy degrees may be linked to the traditionally male-centric curriculum, which often excludes topics that might resonate more with a diverse student body as well as the stereotype of a philosopher.
"It's the very confident, intellectually aggressive kind of character, usually male, that often gets held up as the ideal philosopher," Beebee explains. This stereotype, which is more pronounced in philosophy than in some other fields, can alienate those who do not fit that mould, including many women.
To counter this, Beebee advocates for expanding the philosophical canon to include topics more closely connected to everyday life, such as environmental questions, relationships, and artificial intelligence. "The traditional way of teaching philosophy alienates a lot of people-who cares about the nature of tables when we've got an environmental crisis on our hands? Perhaps we could talk about those things, and increasingly we are-and that is helping to shift the demographics," she says.
