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2015 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

METAPHILOSOPHY
Vol. 46, No. 1, January 2015
0026-1068

THE SCIENCE OF PHILOSOPHY

COLIN MCGINN

Abstract: If philosophy consists of conceptual analysis, is it thereby debarred from

being a science? This article argues that it is not and that philosophy so conceived
is a science. The argument takes the form of careful attention to the meaning of
science, experiment, empirical, and related words. Philosophy is a formal
science. This does not mean it is not part of the humanities. The role of observation
in other kinds of science is investigated. There is more methodological homo-
geneity in the various sciences, including philosophy, than has been recognized,
despite some clear differences. Seeing this helps restore philosophy to its rightful
place in the academic firmament.

Keywords: metaphilosophy, science, experiment, intuition, observation, concepts.

What is the nature of philosophy? Two views have been influential. One
view is that philosophy is continuous with sciencea kind of proto
science or a commentary on the sciences or a synthesis of them.1 Accord-
ing to this view, philosophy is an empirical discipline, though more
removed from data than typical science: it is not different in kind from
physics, chemistry, and biology. Thus the subject of philosophy comes
under the general heading of science because of its methodological
similarity to the received sciences. Historically, philosophy once con-
tained the sciences, which eventually broke off from it, and it is still a kind
of science-in-waitingpupal science, as it were. The second view is that
philosophy is quite unlike empirical science, both in methodology and
subject matter: it is an a priori discipline, removed from observation and
experiment. According to this view, philosophy is to be contrasted with
empirical science, and is often regarded as properly one of the human-
ities. In its purest form, the second view takes philosophy to consist of
conceptual analysis aimed at establishing a priori necessary truthsthe

1
We associate this type of view with Quine, but Russell too espoused it. Perhaps I should
add that both philosophers were prepared to jettison such parts of traditional philosophy as
could not be so subsumed: what was discontinuous with science in the inherited corpus of
philosophy should be consigned to the flames. In this they shared the predilections of the
pruning positivists.

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antithesis of empirical science. Thus philosophy is held not to be a branch

of science, having its own distinctive nature as a field of inquiry.2
I hew to the second view: philosophy is conceptual analysis (in a
suitably broad sense). I wont be defending that view here; I will presup-
pose it.3 My question is whether it is correct to withhold the designation
science from philosophy as so conceived: is it consistent to hold that
philosophy consists of conceptual analysis and that it is a science? I shall
argue that these are compatible propositions; and I shall further contend
that philosophy is a scienceindeed, that it can be rightly described as an
empirical experimental natural science. These may seem like surprising
claims, but actually they spring from obvious linguistic facts. Thus phi-
losophy, in my view, consists of the a priori analysis of concepts and is also
an empirical experimental natural sciencewith no tension between these
two traits. Moreover, all this is trivially true, once we attend to the
linguistic facts.
What is a science? Better: what does the word science mean? Here we
naturally reach for the dictionary (the English dictionaryI am restricting
myself to the English language here, though I suspect the points apply to
other languages too). Consulting the Concise Oxford English Dictionary
(eleventh edition), we find two definitions: 1, the intellectual and practical
activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour
of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment;
2, a systematically organized body of knowledge on any subject. The
word comes from the Latin scientia, knowledge, from scire, to know.
For scientific we find: 1, relating to or based on science; 2, system-
atic; methodical. These definitions are worth careful study. The first
definition of science would apply to the analysis of concepts, construed
as constituents of the natural world, up till the phrase through observa-
tion and experiment (but see below where I point out that even this last
word can apply to conceptual analysis). Presumably this definition is
deemed by the dictionary editors to cover only part of the accepted
meaning of the term, because it excludes what are traditionally called the
formal sciencesarithmetic, geometry, mathematical logic, abstract
computer science, game theory, information theory, general systems
theory, and the like. These sciences are not empirical in the usual sense
they are not based on observation and experimentbut they are suffi-
ciently rigorous, organized, and systematic to qualify as sciences. So it is

2
These are not the only conceivable metaphilosophies: one might hold that some phi-
losophy consists of synthetic a priori propositions, in which case conceptual analysis does not
exhaust the field; or one might favor a purely therapeutic view of philosophy in the style of
the later Wittgenstein; or even hold an inspirational view. But the two metaphilosophies I
have mentioned are the most popular.
3
For a defense of this position see my Truth by Analysis: Games, Names, and Philosophy
(McGinn 2011a). The position is nowhere near as narrow as we have been taught to think,
once we have a properly inclusive conception of analysis.

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not the status of a discipline as empirical that makes it a sciencethat

adjective applies also to history and geographybut whether the subject
achieves the right level of internal rigor and systematic organization.4
We can say right away, then, that philosophy will not be disqualified
from falling into the category science simply because it is not empirical:
a priori science is not a contradiction in terms, as formal science is
not. Philosophy properly belongs with the formal sciences, not the
empirical sciences, but it is no less a science for that (nor is it any less
scientific).5
But the dictionary will only take us so far here. We need to identify the
marks of genuine science and see whether philosophy shares these
marksand we must not bias our discussion by favoring such sciences as
physics and chemistry. I take it that what distinguishes a discourse as
scientific are such traits as these: rigor, clarity, literalness, organization,
generality (laws or general principles), technicality, explicitness, public
criteria of evaluation, refutability, hypothesis testing, expansion of
common sense (with the possibility of undermining common sense), inac-
cessibility to the layman, theory construction, symbolic articulation, axio-
matic formulation, learned journals, rigorous and lengthy education,
professional societies, and a sense of apartness from nave opinion.6 Thus
4
Note that the dictionary editors require that a body of knowledge should be system-
atically organized before it qualifies as a science, so that episodic history or disconnected
geography will not count. Of course, it is necessary to say more about what this systematic
organization amounts to in order to have a more precise definitionwhich I supply in the
text. What is crucial in the dictionary definition is that science can refer to knowledge on
any subjectso long as the knowledge is of the right systematic kind.
5
Someone might say that empirical science is pleonastic, since all science is by defini-
tion empirical. But this is semantically implausible, because mathematical science is
surely not contradictory. If someone were to insist that as he uses the word science all
science is by definition empirical, I would respond as follows. Let us introduce the word
schmience to refer to any discipline that has all the marks of science except being empirical:
then mathematics and logic will count as schmience, as will philosophy in my estimation. The
point of any classificatory scheme is to capture salient similarities, even where differences
exist, and I am suggesting that mathematics and philosophy share important traits with
disciplines already described as science. As instances in which the word is naturally
employed by philosophers to characterize their discipline, let me cite Galen Strawson and
Edmund Husserl (neither of whom shares the naturalistic view of philosophy). Strawson
(2008, 1) writes that philosophy is one of the great sciences of reality, and he goes on to list
its similarities with the so-called natural sciences, despite being a priori. Husserl published a
famous essay in 1911 entitled Philosophy as Rigorous Science, extolling the virtues of his
phenomenology and contrasting it with the prevailing naturalism of the day; and his own
metaphilosophy was scrupulously a priori.
6
I am not here trying to provide a definition of science, still less specify a clear-cut
demarcation criterion in the manner of Popper and others; I am simply listing the salient
marks of science as we ordinarily understand the term. This is enough to recognize that
astrology, say, will not qualify as a science, mainly through lack of truth and justification,
and neither will simple geography, through lack of laws and generality (among other things).
If I were pressed to settle on the core notion here, I would suggest the presence of highly
general laws or principlesof which philosophy can boast many. But it is probably best not

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mathematics, as much as physics, is inherently difficult to understand,

arduous to learn, rigorous, technical, jargon filled, highly general and
abstract, based on objective epistemic procedures (proof not experiment),
specialized, professionalized, and so on. Given all this, it would be arbi-
trary to deny that mathematics is a science, and historically it has been so
classified (as in Gausss famous remark Mathematics is the queen of the
sciences). Only misplaced ideology would insist that physics is a science
but mathematics is notbeing nonempirical is not to the point.7 Thus the
attribute of being based on observation is not a necessary condition for
being a science (nor is it a sufficient condition, or else random remarks
about whats going on around you would be science).
Now it seems to me clear that contemporary academic philosophy, as it
is practiced in typical university philosophy departments, has exactly the
marks I have just recited: it is technical, rigorous, jargon filled, difficult to
master, expansive of common sense (or at variance with it), explicitly
articulated, and so on. Someone might balk at the attribution of
refutability and theory construction, holding that nothing like the phys-
icists experimental testing and empirical theory construction applies to
philosophical claims. But again, we must not bias the discussion by pre-
supposing dubious paradigms of the scientific. The obvious fact is that
philosophers revel in the construction and refutation of arguments of
highly explicit and articulated kinds, often symbolically formulated; and
when they propose a conceptual analysis, they offer necessary and suffi-
cient conditions that may easily be refuted by ingenious counterexample.
We philosophers are often wrong, and demonstrably so. We propose
theories of concepts (for example, the causal theory of perception), and
our theories may be falsified. Also, the presence within philosophy of
formal logic, philosophy of logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of
physics, philosophy of biology, philosophy of psychology, and even
abstract theories of justice all testify to the affinity of philosophy with
scienceeven if the philosopher is just in the business of analyzing con-
cepts (both scientific and lay). My own view is that philosophy can be

to insist on a rigorous definition of science in terms of noncircular necessary and sufficient

conditions.
7
The case of geometry is instructive: it was traditionally regarded both as a priori and as
giving the truth about real spacedoes the former imply that it cannot count as science? But
then isnt it also a rigorous description of one piece of physical reality: viz., space? Some
propositions of physics itself have an a priori character, as with Newtons laws of motion or
Descartess definition of matter. The only kind of view of mathematics that could disqualify
it from being a type of science is that it is merely a game with symbols to which the notions
of truth and falsity do not applythat is, that we cannot know mathematical propositions
(since strictly there are none). Science presumably requires at a minimum that some actual
propositions be actually known (but notice that on some instrumentalist views of physics we
dont have real truth and falsity either).

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aptly described as the logic of concepts, and I take it that logic is a

formal science in good standingso philosophy is logical science, as I
conceive of philosophy.8
Not only is contemporary analytical philosophy a science, we can also
fairly claim that philosophy was the first sciencelong before the forma-
tion of physics, chemistry, and so on as special sciences. Philosophy
attained the status of science well before physics ever did. To see this, just
compare the physics of the pre-Socratics with the metaphysics of
Aristotle: the former is oracular, poetic, and unsystematic, as much myth
as fact, while the latter is carefully worked out, rigorous, and systematic
scientific. Geometry has some claim to be the original science (a formal
science), but Aristotles syllogistic logic can reasonably claim to be one of
the earliest forms of scientific studywhen physics and chemistry were
just glints in the eye of ancient thinkers. The sciences later split off from
philosophy, but philosophy was already a sciencemetaphysics was a
science before physics was (and Aristotles metaphysics holds up better
today than his physics). To the unprejudiced eye, physics owes its present
scientific status to a combination of sound philosophy and advanced
mathematicsthat is, to the achievements of the formal sciences. Without
a solid methodological philosophy (itself arrived at a priori), and without
the achievements of mathematics, especially geometry and calculus (them-
selves also arrived at a priori), physics would not be the imposing scientific
edifice it is today.9 Empirical observation is only part of the story (see
below for more on this). One might even say that philosophy, at its origins,
was the consummate science, especially symbolic logicthe model and
ideal for other disciplines. It took physics and chemistry a long time to
catch up.
Now I must deal with two objections to my classificatory picture. First,
if we classify philosophy as a science, do we not deny that it belongs to the
humanities, and isnt philosophy largely concerned with the human?
Here again the dictionary provides a useful starting point: for human-
ities the OED gives learning concerned with human culture, especially
literature, history, art, music, and philosophy. The obvious reply to this
natural objection is that science and the humanities, so defined, are not
mutually exclusive: in principle, there can be a science of human culture.
8
See McGinn 2011a, esp. chap. 7. Philosophy can thus be described as the science of
entailment. If you feel that some of philosophy is too impressionistic and inchoate to count
as science, then by all means amend my claim to read that a great deal of philosophy qualifies
as science (and is everything that is talked about in physics and biology departments properly
scientific?).
9
This needs more discussion, but I think my point is clear enough: it is not the mere
presence of observation in physics that makes it so impressive and successful but rather its
mathematical articulation and abstract generalitywhich have a quite different source.
Also, the very emphasis on observation is not the result of observation but instead reflects a
distinctive epistemological positionthat knowledge of reality is best gained that way rather
than by means of revelation or inherited authority.

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Arent anthropology, sociology, social psychology, and economics pre-

cisely sciences of human culture in a broad sense? Suppose we agree that
the human conceptual scheme is a part of human culture (not part of
human biology); then studying human concepts is by definition the prov-
ince of the humanities. But why cant this study itself be a science? Isnt the
study of concepts by cognitive science a scienceand yet we are agreeing
that human concepts are part of human culture? There is simply no logical
opposition here. Some kinds of study of written texts attain the status of
science (word-frequency counts and so on), so language studies can
qualify as science too. And isnt linguistics a scienceyet with language
part of human culture? It isnt the subject matter that counts but the
style, methods, and results. Butand this is even more obviousit is
simply false that philosophy is (exclusively) about human culture, even if
its method is agreed to be conceptual analysis. For large tracts of philoso-
phy concern the nonhuman world: the essential nature of space, time and
matter, causation, necessity, probability and laws, consciousness, choice,
perception, knowledge, justification, and truth. Some of these subject
areas indeed concern the psychological, but that doesnt make them an
aspect of human culture: they may rather be aspects of the biological
world, and may also apply to nonhuman animals.10 But anyway, many of
these areas of study are not even about psychological matters, so philoso-
phy isnt one of the humanities as the dictionary (quite reasonably)
defines the term. It is about the whole world, not the specifically human
world. Some parts of philosophy do deal with aspects of human culture
aesthetics, philosophy of law, social theory, maybe some of ethicsbut
many do not. I would not myself want to describe human concepts as part
of human culture (though they are part of human nature), despite their
being psychological entities; so I dont think that conceptual analysis is
ipso facto a study of a component of human culture. At any rate, there is
no good objection here to counting philosophy as a science in good
standing.
The second objection I want to consider is more serious. You might
agree that the distinctive method of philosophy does not preclude its being
a science, but you might also fasten onto another aspect of the dictionary
definition of sciencethat a science is an organized system of knowl-
edge. And here the objection is apt to be that philosophy cannot boast an
established set of resultsa body of accepted knowledge, agreed upon by
all, and neatly set out in the philosophy textbooks. For where are the
philosophical facts to be set beside the facts of physics, chemistry, and

10
Obviously, I am rejecting a pan-cultural view of realitythat it is all social con-
struction or some such. I am supposing that philosophy deals with reality as suchthe real,
objective article. I take this to be compatible with the thesis that methodologically philoso-
phy proceeds by conceptual analysis: in philosophy we analyze reality conceptually (see
McGinn 2011a).

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biology? Philosophy, it will be said, does not make the kind of progress
made in the sciences, including the formal sciences; it just isnt as
epistemically solid. The very idea of philosophical knowledge is an oxy-
moron, a sheer fantasy.
Now there is much to be said about this kind of objection to the
scientific standing of philosophy, but I shall try to be brief. First, we must
not underestimate how much knowledge philosophy has actually
acquired, of a quite straightforward sort, mainly in the way of establishing
certain distinctions: that is, philosophers have clarified certain important
distinctions that were previously blurred and unrecognizedand this is
real cognitive progress (use and mention, type and token, particular and
general, name and quantifier, necessary and contingent, fact and value,
knowledge and belief, analytic and synthetic, sense and reference, charac-
ter and content, implication and implicature, and so on).11 Second, phi-
losophy has discovered and articulated the various theoretical options that
are available in any given problematic area, even if it has not actually
settled which options are the true ones: it has mapped out the philosophi-
cal geographyand this too is genuine cognitive progress. Knowing what
these options are, and appreciating their strengths and weaknesses, is a
large part of what makes philosophy appealing to many of uswe hadnt
thought of them before we came to the subject, and they add to our store
of knowledge (they also expand our imagination).12 But still, it may be
retorted, dont the sciences do more than merely articulate the theoretical
optionsdont they decide which are correct and which incorrect?
Well, that depends. The further from direct observation the science
becomes, the harder it is to produce consensus and conclusive verification.
Contemporary quantum physics is an obvious case in point: many options
and no agreed way to settle which is right. So, is theoretical physics not a
science? Biology cannot decide how life originated on earth, though some
options have been sketched out; so, is biology not a science? Psychology
is notoriously beset by disagreements, sometimes fundamental, but it
would be a stern linguistic policeman who denied the label science to
psychology (ditto economics and sociology). No science is immune to
controversy and polarized opinion, once you get beyond the lower reaches
of the discipline. But there is a more telling point to be made, concerning
difficult and easy science. Suppose I establish a new field of study called

11
Even if some people see fit to reject some of these distinctions for one reason or
another, it cannot be denied that they have clarified previously murky ideas and paved the
way for superior ways of thinking.
12
One type of knowledge delivered by philosophy is knowledge of knowledgeand of
ignorance. We learn the scope and limits of knowledgewhat is doubtful or unproven or
merely groundlessly accepted. This is real knowledge, not available to those who refuse to
study the subject; according to Socrates, it is knowledge of a particularly valuable kind. What
philosophy does not provide is knowledge of particular empirical matters of factbut why
is that so marvelous? Philosophy produces its own kind of knowledge.

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mysteryonics in which all the hardest questions of science are to be

pursuedfrom physics, biology, psychology, and so forth. No easy ques-
tions are allowed in mysteryonics! Then, clearly, this subject will make
little solid factual progress, compared (say) to botany or geography, pre-
cisely because it is about the most difficult questions of all. We might say
that mysteryonics encompasses the hard sciences, with hard now
connoting sheer intellectual difficulty. Should we say that this subject is
not science at all? That seems to limit the word unduly to easy science (we
might call this field easyatrics). Surely science can come in degrees of
difficulty, and it is invidious to withhold the label from the tougher areas.
But then isnt the word philosophy really a name for a subject that deals
with really difficult questions (though sometimes with easy ones)? So the
degree of difficulty of philosophy shouldnt be interpreted as an inherent
lack of scientific status. Speculative problematic hard-to-do science is still
scienceand it may be necessary and unavoidable science (for any intel-
lectually honest and adventurous inquirer). So long as the questions are
real and the standards of investigation are rigorous, we can still claim the
title science. If physics and chemistry had proved harder to do than has
emerged historically, would they not then be sciences? And just because it
is relatively easy to establish particular historical or geographical facts
doesnt make these studies into science (or the best science). Degree of
difficulty is beside the point. We should certainly not let crude outdated
positivism dictate how the term science is to be applied (to be scientific
is to be conclusively verifiable).13
I am resisting the idea that certain sciences constitute paradigms for
what a science must bethe sciences regularly deemed empirical. In
particular, I am rejecting the notion that there is any necessary link
between the concept of a science and the concept of observation: some
sciences are observational, and some are not (I shall be returning to this).
We must avoid the fallacy of the misplaced paradigm, here as elsewhere
which is often the science of physics. There is simply nothing in the
meaning of the word science to entail that a science must be based on
observationthat is, perception by means of the (outer) senses of objects
and events in the scientists physical environment. So, in saying that
philosophy is a science I am certainly not saying that philosophy is based
on observation, like physics. I am saying that despite not being based on
observation philosophy is a scienceand has been for a long time. Nor is
it my view that philosophy must be refashioned in order to become like a
science: it is already a science. This is true even of the part called ethics,
which could be called axiological science (the phrase moral science
already exists). There can be a science of valuethat is, a systematic,

13
The whole positivist emphasis on verification distorts our view of the essential char-
acter of scienceespecially if we try to reduce theoretical propositions to something called
empirical content. But this is by now an old story.

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rigorous study, involving generalizations and demonstrations.14 If phi-

losophy consists of conceptual analysis, then it is (in Kantian terminology)
an ampliative science, not an augmentative sciencethat is, it pro-
duces analytic truths and not synthetic truths. But again, there is no good
reason to insist that augmentation of knowledge is definitive of science, so
long as the other features are present. If mathematics is likewise
ampliative, not augmentative, that is no reason to deny that it is a (formal)
science.15
It might now be conceded that there is no linguistic impropriety in
applying the word science to the discipline of philosophy, but be main-
tained that certain key distinctions still exist between philosophy and
other sciencesdistinctions that blunt the force of the application of that
word. Thus it will be said that philosophy is neither an experimental
science nor an empirical science nor a natural science. These characteris-
tics are usually taken to connote epistemic virtues, in which case philoso-
phy lacks the virtues that are typical of other sciences. It is a science in
name only, it may be said, lacking the traits that constitute the distinctive
virtues of sciences in general. Is this line of thinking justified? I shall now
argue that it is not.
Is conceptual analysis experimental? The OED defines experiment as
follows: a scientific procedure undertaken to make a discovery, test a
hypothesis, or demonstrate a known fact, from Latin experiri, to try. I
take the primary sense here to be that of testing a hypothesis; so, does the
activity of conceptual analysis test hypotheses? I suggest that it does: for
this procedure involves the production of a hypothesis about the analysis
of a conceptspecifically, a set of (putative) necessary and sufficient
conditionswhich is then tested by means of thought experiments. For
example, we might propose the hypothesis that knowledge is simply true
belief and test that hypothesis by imagining cases in which a subject has
true beliefs and asking ourselves whether he has knowledgeand we
might go on to produce a counterexample in the shape of a subject who
has a true belief that is completely unjustified. We might then amend the
hypothesis to maintain that knowledge is true justified belief and proceed
as beforefinding that these conditions are not sufficient either (we come
14
There is not just moral value to be considered but also norms from nonmoral domains,
for example logic and epistemology. In logic we are certainly concerned with the normative
question of how to reason, but that doesnt disqualify logic from being a science. And does
the use of logical norms in reasoning within physics mean that physics is not a science either?
A logical system simply is a science of (logical) norms. Normative science takes its place as
one type of science among others.
15
The old distinction between the inductive and deductive sciences is useful here. Math-
ematics and philosophy are deductive sciences, being concerned essentially with entailment,
and hence proceeding by proof and argument; while physics, chemistry, and biology are
inductive sciences, being concerned with deriving laws of nature from particular observations
(perhaps using inference to the best explanation). The genus is science, and the species are the
inductive and deductive sciences.

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across Gettier cases). We have conducted an experiment in our mind to

test the analytic hypothesis we have conjectured to be true. It consists of
conceiving possible cases in which the conditions are met and then asking
ourselves whether our understanding of the concept indicates that the
concept applies in these cases. True, we did not make any perceptual
observations in performing such a thought experiment, but the dictionary
does not specify that experiments must be conducted by deploying the
senses perceptually. The heart of the definition is trying out a conjecture in
an open-minded spirit and coming up with a confirmation or a refutation.
We certainly did not presuppose an answer to our question before under-
taking the procedure: we let the procedure decide the question only after
it had been completed. The hypothesis makes certain predictions about
our intuitions in possible cases, and then we check to see if our intuitions
confirm or disconfirm the hypothesis. The intuitions function as evidence
for or against the hypothesis, and they are grounded in our actual grasp of
the concept in question. So it is not wrong to describe the method of
conceptual analysis as an experimental procedure: this is quite literally
true, as the dictionary defines the word (and as we normally understand
it). Maybe uttering the sentence Conceptual analysis is experimental
science will typically have conversational implicatures that are false,
conjuring up images of physical dissections of concepts and Bunsen
burners of the mind; but in its literal content it is a perfectly true statement
(it has no false logical implications). Thought experiments are indeed
experiments, just as we would naively suppose from the phrase. We have
here a procedure that arrives at truth in a non-question-begging way by
consulting a body of data (intuitions) generated especially for the
purpose.16
I can imagine an opponent sputtering that these so-called experiments
are not conducted in a laboratory, like real scientific experiments, with
suitable equipment: there is no such thing as a philosophy lab! But is
that true? Here is how the OED defines the word laboratory: a room or
building equipped for scientific experiments, research or teaching, from
the Latin laborare, to labour. So the core notion refers to a space
expressly set aside for performing scientific experiments, as opposed to a
space set aside for day-to-day living or for throwing parties or for darts

16
Compare conceptual analysis with chemical analysis. A chemist might conjecture that
water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen and tests this hypothesis by contriving suitable
chemical combinations (she already knows that oxygen or hydrogen by themselves are not
sufficient to produce water). Just so, a philosopher might conjecture that knowledge is true
justified belief (he already knows that belief and truth separately are not sufficient to produce
knowledge). The questions in both cases are fundamentally mereological. The chemist uses
empirical observation, the philosopher uses intuitions about possible casesbut the type of
question is the same: that is, what constitutes what. There are facts about what constitutes
our concepts, and it is possible to ascertain what these facts are, just as there are ascertainable
facts about what constitutes water (see McGinn 2011a).

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matches. But dont philosophers have rooms especially set aside for
research purposesspaces in which they philosophically labor? We call
them studies or offices or seminar rooms. I shuffle into my study in
order to do philosophical research work and in that room I often carry out
thought experiments to test analytic hypotheses; so, am I not spending
time in my philosophy lab? The implicatures of saying this in certain
contexts will doubtless include suggestions of white coats and expensive
equipment, but there is nothing literally false in the proposition itself: I am
simply laboring to make philosophical discoveries in the space set aside for
making such discoveries. There are many kinds of laboratory, varying in
their contents according to the subject in question. If I am pressed to
specify what equipment I use in my lab, I might reply that I require a chair
and desk with suitable writing materials and some peace and quietthese
are the tools of research that I employ (physicists, more grandly, have their
massive particle accelerators). I work in a lab performing thought
experimentsand my most precious tool is my brain.
My interlocutor might at this point reluctantly agree that I am guilty of
no outright linguistic solecism in describing conceptual analysis as
experimental but insist that such experiments hardly qualify as empiri-
cal. Here the question becomes trickier, because empirical can mean
several things. Let us again turn to the dictionary for some initial guid-
ance: empirical is defined as based on, concerned with, or verifiable by
observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic, from the
Greek empeiria, experience. Now we can agree that conceptual analysis
does not proceed by observation, but what about experience? During a
thought experiment, dont we have certain experienceswhat might be
called conceptual experiences? Conscious cognition is one variety of
experience in a suitably wide sense; not all experience is sense experience.17
When I judge that I have imagined a case of true belief that is not
knowledge, do I not report a certain conscious experience that I had? The
conscious episodes called intuitions are just a type of cognitive
experiencepart of my total phenomenology at that time. Similarly, we
may have mathematical experiences, as when a proof is appreciated and
accepted. In the case of conceptual analysis, the intuitions play an eviden-
tial role, so we can say that they constitute empirical (experiential)
evidence in this broad sense. We certainly did not proceed from pure
theory or logic without regard for any new cognitive inputwe were open
to new cognitive experiences. Thought experiments are thus rightly
described as empirical in a perfectly good sense of the word. Indeed, we
can even describe them as a posteriori in the sense that they establish their

17
We have emotional and conative experiences as well as sense experiences, and the
exercise of our rational faculty also involves distinctive modes of experience. If we refuse to
apply the word experience here, then what word shall we use instead? Clearly there are
conscious goings-on of some sort.

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results only after certain experiences have been obtained; they are not
dogmatically held quite independently of what experience may bring. It is
only after the analytic investigation has been completed that a conceptual
hypothesis is accepted; it is not presupposed at the start.
It now appears that philosophy and physics are alike in being experi-
mental empirical sciences, cleaving strictly to what these words literally
mean. So, what distinguishes them? Here we might appeal to the notion of
perception: physics relies on perception of things, but philosophy (con-
ceived as conceptual analysis) does not. Surely that distinction is rock
solid! Not quite: the dictionary must again give us pause. Under per-
ceive we find become aware or conscious of, from the Latin percipere,
to seize, understand. There is nothing here restricting perception to the
five (or more) senses: intellectual perception is a type of perception too.
Thus I can be said to perceive that true belief is not sufficient for
knowledge by conducting an appropriate thought experiment. Here per-
ceive is synonymous with apprehend, which has both sensory and
intellectual forms. Thus philosophical investigation involves perception in
this capacious sense: I often become aware or conscious of something
while engaged in philosophical thought. I see that something is so.
But we can easily recast the thought behind this suggested differentia by
bringing in the senses explicitly: philosophy does not depend on percep-
tion by means of the senses. Even here we must tread carefully, since one
traditional view is that we have an inner sense capable of sensing what
lies withinin the place where concepts lurk. According to that view, I do
sense the makeup of my concepts, because I use my inner sense to gain
insight into them. The obvious amendment here is to qualify sense by
outer: philosophy, unlike physics, is not based evidentially on the deliv-
erances of outer sense. The dictionary provides a useful gloss on this
philosophical notion: sense is defined as faculty by which the body
perceives an external stimulus; one of the faculties of sight, smell, hearing,
taste, and touch, from the Latin sentire, to feel. And that notion of
sense certainly excludes conceptual analysis, since I dont use my bodily
senses of sight, touch, hearing, smell, and taste to excavate the content of
my concepts. If we use observation to capture the use of the senses in
this narrow sense, then we can correctly say (at last!) that physics is based
on observation and philosophy is not. But notice that we can still claim
that philosophy has the qualities (in both the descriptive and the norma-
tive sense) of empirical experimental science: the methodological gap is
therefore not as wide as we might initially have thought.18
18
We can truly say that we acquire information about concepts by interacting with them
in the course of conceptual analysisas we acquire information about material things by
interacting with them in the course of empirical observation. Concepts are real mental
entities that we can gain knowledge about by directing our attention to them in the process
of conceptual analysis, thus deriving necessary and sufficient conditions for their application.
The mode of interaction here is admittedly not by means of the outer senses, but so what?

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Is philosophy a natural science? I think there are two senses in which it

is. First, it is not a supernatural science (which looks like a contradiction):
it doesnt deal with the supernatural, unlike theology. In this sense the
formal sciences are also natural sciencesbecause not supernatural. But
philosophy differs from the formal sciences in that it can also be about
objects that exist in nature, as numbers and the like do not. Metaphysics
deals with the nature of material objects and causation, say, and philoso-
phy of mind deals with consciousness and choice, and philosophy of
language deals with human natural languages. The subject matter consists
of things that exist in the natural world, not the abstract world. It is
therefore entirely appropriate to say that philosophy is a natural science
(concepts themselves are perfectly natural entities in both senses of the
word).
We can even describe both philosophical and physical knowledge in
causal terms. As the physicist causally interacts with her subject matter of
physical objects to gain knowledge of their properties, so the philosopher
causally interacts with his subject matter of concepts to gain knowledge of
their properties. That is, concepts are psychological entities that we inves-
tigate in conceptual analysis, and these entities play a causal role in
producing knowledge about themselves.19 When I come to know that
knowledge is true justified belief, say, it is my concept of knowledge that
causally controls the process of analytic belief formation; I arrive at this
analysis because of the concept of knowledge that I possess. So, again, at
a deeper level we find an affinity between the knowledge systems of physics
and philosophy, not stark difference. The acknowledged difference, relat-
ing to the use of the (outer) senses, comes to seem relatively minor, not a
mark of clear superiority on the part of physics. We can see a significant
methodological parity.
Still, it may be retorted, there is that clear distinction, and observation
is clearly an epistemic virtue; so, isnt physics a better (empirical experi-
mental natural) science than philosophy? And given the honorific force of
the word science we can see why someone might want to apply it
preferentially to sciences like physics, as opposed to sciences like philoso-
phy (the formal sciences). In reply to this, I propose to make a more
radical suggestion: physics is not inherently an observation-based science,
and conceptual analysis is not inherently observation independent. We
can, in fact, invert the epistemic basis of the two types of science. This is
actually not so very difficult, on reflection. Consider first a brain in a vat,
observing nothing: all its sensory experiences are hallucinatory. This
individual might, however, be an aspiring physicist. Let us stipulate that
this physicist in a vat has experiences as of being in a physics lab and

19
The case is not essentially different from gaining knowledge of our feelings, sensations,
and thoughts by means of introspection; conceptual analysis just digs a little deeper into the
structure of our thoughts and other propositional attitudes.

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performing experiments, but never is really so situated: the vat supervisors

feed in these hallucinations, making sure to provide her with data that are
in fact correct. They simulate the course of experience of an actual per-
ceiving human physicist conducting actual experiments, but no real obser-
vations are ever made.20 On the basis of these hallucinatory experiences,
our aspiring physicist in a vat might well come to entertain some physical
theories; and since the data dont mislead her, and she is a scientific genius,
she comes up with true physical theoriesfollowing first in the path of
Newton and somewhat later of Einstein. I suggest that she is engaged in
the science of physics, even though she never makes any actual observa-
tions (only apparent observations). In other words, veridical perception of
experimental results is not a necessary condition of doing physical science.
Human physics is based on observation (so long as we are not actually
brains in a vat!), but this is a contingent not a necessary truth. All the
procedures of inference and theory construction are the same for the
physicist in a vat as for the physicist in a lab, so it would be quite
unwarranted to declare the latter a genuine physical scientist and the
former not.
If you are worried that the vat-physicist case at least still involves
sensory experience, then consider a further case: all the evidential knowl-
edge possessed by the typical physicist is fed into the genetic makeup of a
hypothetical physicist, so that she knows all the physical data innately.
There are no sensory experiences (even hallucinatory ones) as of a meter
reading such and such, just basic beliefs about what meters read in such
and such conditions.21 But we can suppose that there is no innate knowl-
edge of the correct theory that explains all this innately known data; that
will require scientific intelligence of a high order. So the would-be physicist
here needs to construct theories to explain the data written into her genes;
and if she succeeds in doing that then, I submit, she is engaging in physical
science. Yet she never makes any observations. After all, doesnt God have

20
One might wonder whether the vat supervisors make observations as a basis for the
information they feed into the brain in a vat, so that there is an ultimate observational basis
for the knowledge acquired by the latter individual. The case would then be just like a
testimony case. But we can get around this objection by stipulating that the supervisors do
not acquire their knowledge of physics by observation: they might have it innately or have
godlike faculties or be equipped with a kind of super blindsight. All we need to do is eliminate
the role of ordinary veridical sense experience from the epistemic picture, and this seems
easily done. After all, some philosophers believe that perceptual experiences play no eviden-
tial role anyway.
21
I am here relying on a basic principle about beliefs: viz., no belief is necessarily caused
by a perceptual experience. Any belief actually based on a sense experience could have arisen
from some other causeeither by inference from another belief or as a basic innate belief. It
is only contingently true that beliefs are caused by sense experiences, though in the human
case this mode of causation is very common. A conceivable believing subject could have the
same beliefs about the world as us and yet have no sense experiences at all, according to the
principle.

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98 COLIN MCGINN

scientific knowledge of the physical universe, and yet makes no sensory

observations, not having any bodily senses? Thats just the way we do it,
given the limits of what we know before interacting with the world
through our sense organs; it is not essential to the very existence of
scientific knowledge of physical reality. Science and sense experience are
not inextricably linked.
The same point can be made in a different way. As things are, we learn
about the brain by observing it: we open up the head and take a look,
applying various observational techniques. But is this essential to knowl-
edge of the brain? What if an aspiring brain scientist, perhaps more
ingenious than we humans are, undertook to learn about the brain by
means purely of introspection? He introspects his states of mind, record-
ing their laws and ways, and tries to infer what is going on in the under-
lying reality of the body (we can suppose that he has never seen a brain).
Why should he not be able to come up with hypotheses about what the
organ is like? He might conjecture that it has a cellular structure (other
organs in the body have been observed to be cellular), and that it exhibits
localization of function, and even that mental processes are powered by
electricity (many other biological processes are, and it fits the introspective
data nicely, what with the rapidity of mental processes and the like). He
might with sufficient ingenuity come up with a theory very much like our
observation-based theory, yet he never observes brains at all, proceeding
entirely from introspective data plus some ancillary knowledge of the
natural world. I submit that he is doing neuroscience, despite the absence
of an observational foundation. Thus there can be science without obser-
vation (though not without evidencebut philosophy has evidence too:
that is, conceptual intuitions).22
Now my interlocutor is itching to make her final devastating
objectionviz., intuitions are not evidence at all but just subjective
hunches and prejudices! I wont attempt here to reply fully to this kind of
objection, having done so elsewhere,23 but I will make one point that
completely undermines this entire line of objection to the enterprise
of conceptual analysis per se: namely, there is really no reason that con-
ceptual analysis must proceed in a nonobservational first-person style
22
Let me be clear: I am not saying that observation cannot be evidence, only that not all
evidence is observationalthat is, based on experience generated by outer sense. Of course,
we could stipulate a new sense of observational to mean just whatever is evidentially
basic, whether this is sense experience or something else; but then we are affirming only that
science is necessarily based on evidence. The conceptual analyst believes in evidence too, in
the shape of conceptual intuitions, so no epistemic distinction has yet been identified. Once
observation is detached from sense experience no deep epistemic distinction between
physics and philosophy exists, because both are evidence-based enterprises. We can all agree
that rational belief requires the existence of reasons for belief, trivially so, where these reasons
might or might not be sense experiences.
23
See McGinn 2011a, chap. 9. Others have also defended the role of intuitions against
intuition skepticism.

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(though I see nothing wrong with such a procedure); we can, instead, opt
for third-person observational conceptual analysis. There are at least two
ways of doing this. One is simply to investigate the concepts of others by
eliciting their judgments about possible cases (Would you describe the
following case as an example of knowledge?). This is the survey method
much employed by the social sciences: questionnaires, statistical analysis,
and so on. It is a method well suited to discovering the content of other
peoples concepts when that is your main interestas with anthropologi-
cal investigation. But it is still conceptual analysisthat is, discovering the
necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of a concept. And it
is straightforwardly observational, as much as any other survey of
opinion. But a second, less orthodox, method might involve delving into
the brain mechanisms underlying concepts: by discovering the neural
correlates of a concept it might be possible to find out what other concepts
the given concept embeds. Thus the concept of knowledge might have a
neural correlate that contains as a part the neural correlate of the concept
of belief or justification; this would be evidence, of a sort, that one concept
contains another. It would be difficult research to carry out, and rather
indirect, but it would surely be observationaland it would result in
information about conceptual constituency. So there is nothing inherently
nonobservational about conceptual analysis. Such brain information
could certainly supplement ordinary first-person inquiry into concepts. If
our first-person conceptual judgments were highly unreliable for some
reason, this might be a sounder way to proceed. At any rate, it is not
logically ruled out. Such an inquiry would proceed from sensory observa-
tional knowledge, by contrast with the hypothetical methods of doing
physics and neuroscience sketched above. To those who champion obser-
vation as the defining mark of the scientific, I ask whether they would
agree that conceptual analysis would be methodologically superior to
theoretical physics in the scenarios here imagined. Somehow I doubt
itwhich shows that the presence of observation is not so critical to solid
science as some people seem to suppose. We dont derive intellectual
prestige inversion as a straightforward corollary of observational inver-
sion. I myself think it is highly invidious and implausible to place so much
emphasis on observation as determining what is sound respectable science.
This is a legacy of positivism we can well do without.
This brings us to the amorphous but unavoidable question of science
and epistemic virtue. The positivists made testability the central episte-
mic virtue of any theory, and any field of inquiry. And by testability
they meant testability by means of sensory observation. The more
observationally testable a proposition is, the better it is. If a proposition or
theory is not testable, or very hard to test, that is a demerit of the propo-
sition or theory. Testability is regarded as the epistemic virtue. This pro-
duces a highly distorted picture of epistemic virtue. There are certainly
many other epistemic virtuessuch as generality, depth, interest, impor-

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tance, profundity, objectivity, impartiality. Not only is testability not

clearly correlated with these virtues, it also seems inversely correlated
with them. The more testable a theory is the less general and profound
it is apt to be. The reason is that human knowledge, particularly scientific
knowledge, aspires to transcend the human viewpoint and human
limitationsto describe the world as it exists independently of the human
perspective24but testability directly reflects the nature and limits of
human faculties. To be testable is to be testable by humans. This means a
maximally testable theory is one that must cling to how the world appears
to usthe world as accessible to human faculties. If the faculties are the
human senses, then testability is restricted to aspects of the world to which
those senses are sensitive. The more a theory can be tested by the use of the
senses, the more it will be limited to appearances and the less to reality
beyond appearances. A maximally testable theory is therefore apt to be
trivial, as with a theory that lists the colors of objects in ones immediate
environment or gives the weight of every person in a particular town. Once
a theory attempts to penetrate the local appearances, as with microphysics
or cosmology, the harder to test it becomes. The most interesting theory is
likely to be the one that is least testable. It might not even be (humanly)
testable at allyet very interesting nonetheless, and even true. We see this
situation played out in contemporary theoretical physics, where the main
theoretical options seem virtually incapable of experimental or observa-
tional demonstration (string theory, the many-worlds hypothesis, and so
on). Big philosophical theories are notoriously difficult to establish and
test, but they can be extremely interestingsuch as Platos theory of forms
or possible-worlds metaphysics or panpsychism. Philosophy is more like
difficult science than easy sciencemore like theoretical physics than
taxonomic botany. We dont think of botany as the queen of the sciences
simply because its propositions (some of them) can be easily tested; we
understand that testability is just one epistemic virtue among many. Criti-
cizing philosophy because of its relative lack of observational testability
therefore reveals a mistaken picture of what epistemic virtue consists in.
And, of course, testability is a discipline-relative concept, with the formal
sciences differing from the natural sciences in respect of how they are
tested. Nor should it be forgotten that philosophical propositions are
often quite straightforwardly refuted.25

24
This is what Bernard Williams (1978) called the absolute conception. See also
Thomas Nagel (1989). How human beings test a theory, say by directing their eyes at a
measuring instrument, is actually at variance with what the content of the theory aspires to
be: that is, independent of the human viewpoint.
25
This point is really quite obvious, but it is often ignored: it is not that philosophical
claims are somehow too wishy-washy to be falsifiable. I think myself that philosophy can
boast an epistemic superiority compared to physics, because of its extreme generality, depth,
and transparency. I discuss the epistemic limitations of physics by contrast with both phi-
losophy and psychology in Two Types of Science (McGinn 2011b).

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Are there viable conceptions of philosophy according to which it is

clearly not a science? Dont say that normative studies fail to be a science
because science deals only in facts, not values: this fails to envisage the
possibility of moral science, that is, a scientific value theory. Such an
axiological science is so by virtue of its rigor, system, and organization, as
compared with nave common sense, and certainly many practitioners have
sought to develop a science of morals (for example, Benthams quantitative
utilitarianism and Kants deductive deontology). To be sure, some parts of
philosophy, as it exists today, might well not meet high standards of rigor
and hence fail to qualifyperhaps the philosophy of sex and love would
be an example. Nor need we assert that nothing can be of intellectual value
that is not properly scientific: thus the humanities of literary studies and
cultural history, or even marriage counseling and horse whispering (what-
ever exactly that is). My position is certainly not that science is the only
form of worthwhile cognitive activity.26 It is just that philosophy as it
exists today, and has existed for quite some time, is aptly described as a
science, with all the virtues that attach to that particular form of inquiry. I
suppose this may be contested by people characterizing themselves as
Wittgensteinians: they may see a sharp contrast between the activity of
philosophy and anything deserving to be called a science. But three
points may be made about this. First, philosophy as I conceive it is a sui
generis science, not to be assimilated to the so-called natural sciences of
physics, chemistry, and biology (and these differ among themselves too). I
am emphatically not taking physics as my scientific paradigm (I might even
take philosophy as my paradigm of the scientific). Second, Wittgensteins
later therapeutic conception of philosophy is really an extreme and
minority position, fitting ill with vast tracts of the subject, early and late
(which Wittgenstein seemed willing to dismiss completely). Third, it is not
so clear that no trace of the scientific, in my capacious sense, survives in
Wittgensteins work. The Tractatus is certainly a scientific treatise in my
sense (as is Russell and Whiteheads Principia Mathematica, on which the
Tractatus is modeled); and even the Investigations can be construed as a
kind of treatise in linguistic science, with its naturalistic surveys of the
different forms of language and inquiry into natural language grammar.
The Investigations is quite rigorous and systematic in its way; it is certainly
not just a collection of vague poetic pronouncements and gnomic exhorta-
tions, or unrelated aperus. It is a piece of analytical philosophy, after all,
possessing the kind of rigor and organization characteristic of such phi-
losophy (it is nothing like the writings of, say, Thoreau or the utterances of
26
I want to make room for poetry and literature as valuable sources of knowledge, but
they are clearly not science. I might even be prepared to uphold the cognitive value of music
and dance. I even think life tips can be worth listening to. It is just that some areas of
human discourse are aptly described as science and some are notwith philosophy falling
into the former category and poetry not. This is purely a question of descriptive accuracy, not
some kind of misplaced science worship.

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Eastern mystics). And Wittgenstein was himself originally a scientist. We

might reasonably construe him as resisting the emblematic pull of the
natural sciences, interpreted narrowly, not as repudiating the word
science altogether as properly applicable to philosophy.27
It seems to me, then, that the standard conceptions of philosophy
continuous with (empirical) science, a priori conceptual analysis (concerned
with de re essence), and even Wittgensteins later philosophyare all
compatible with the idea that philosophy is aptly described as a science.
And if you look at what is actually done professionally today in university
philosophy departments the impression is overwhelming, no matter what
metaphilosophy you may favor. Nor is there any cogent reason that I can
see to resist the label. Then why is it not so regarded? The reasons are no
doubt many: misplaced paradigms of the scientific, traditional university
classifications, mistaken ideas of value as something inherently subjec-
tive and hence unscientific, a lingering association with religion and the
spiritual. But surely part of the reason is the word philosophy: its
etymology, history, and popular connotations. For how can a general love
of wisdom count as a particular science with its own specific subject matter
and methods? The name of the subject accordingly blinds people as to its
real nature. This is why I have suggested elsewhere that we would do better
to rename the subject in order to reflect its true status as a science.28 Just as
the other sciences have shed their earlier label as species of philosophy, so
we philosophers should shed our traditional (and misleading) name. Unfor-
tunately, there is no convenient alternative name already in existence, so we
need to invent a new one or adapt a word already in use. The best I can come
up with is ontics, which for various reasons strikes me as preferable to
other possible choices (ontology is already in established use as a name
for a part of philosophy). It sounds a bit like physics and a bit like
ethics, and is intended to express the concern of our subject with general
questions of being. I wont try to defend this linguistic choice here. My point
is that if you sympathize with my thesis that philosophy is really best viewed
as a science, then you might well want to have a name for the subject that
reflects that positionas philosophy plainly does not. Of course, we
could keep both names in use, at least for a hundred years or so, in order to
acknowledge the past and avoid bafflement. But having the name ontics
27
If it is countered that Wittgenstein opposed explanations in philosophy and the search
for causal laws and generalizations, then we can note that not all science is explanatory and
causal: some science is modestly descriptive and taxonomic, as with much of biology (and
mathematics is hardly explanatory and causal). Nor does the emphasis on intellectual
therapy preclude a scientific foundation, since such therapy may well proceed from a scien-
tific basisthat was the claim made on behalf of psychoanalytic therapy. Wittgensteins
therapeutic efforts proceed from a naturalistic description of the many forms of language
and from a quite specific conception of the nature of meaning. I see no reason to withhold the
label science from his brand of linguistic investigation, any more than from other forms of
linguistic study (Austin, Chomsky, Grice, et al.).
28
See my Philosophy by Another Name (McGinn 2012).

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to hand would dispel a lot of misunderstanding about what kind of subject

philosophy is and also do justice to its status as a branch of scientific
learning. The title of this article might then be recast as The Science of
Ontics, which carries no whiff of oxymoron. Psychologists once decided to
rename their subject behavioral science because they felt this label better
reflected the nature of the discipline they practiced, and the newfangled
cognitive science has much the same point (is academic psychology
really the study of the psyche?). I am making a similar proposal: ontical
science is simply more accurate and descriptive, less misleading. Using this
term in conjunction with the traditional label will foster a better under-
standing of the field so named, and eventually the label philosophy may
fall out of common use. No doubt there was a period in which the study of
matter and energy was called both natural philosophy and physics, as
the transition from one term to the other was made; I advocate such a
transitional period for the field today called philosophywith ontics
the term that will eventually be preferred.29 If philosophy is indeed a
science, to be set beside other scientific subjects, then it needs a name that
fits its real nature.

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Miami, FL 33155
USA
CMG124@AOL.com

References
McGinn, Colin. 2011a. Truth by Analysis: Games, Names, and Philosophy.
New York: Oxford University Press.
. 2011b. Two Types of Science. In Basic Structures of Reality:
Essays in Meta-Physics, 14264 New York: Oxford University Press.
. 2012. Philosophy by Another Name. In The Stone, published
online by the New York Times under Opinionator (4 March).
Nagel, Thomas. 1989. The View from Nowhere. New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
Strawson, Galen. 2008. Real Materialism and Other Essays. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Williams, Bernard. 1978. Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry.
Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
29
The professional name scientist was introduced as recently as 1833, by William
Whewell; before that we had natural philosopher or man of science. In a similar spirit we
philosophers could rename ourselves onticists, if we are persuaded that philosopher is
not an apt name for what we do. Apparently there was a good deal of discussion in the Royal
Society regarding the merits of the name scientist; we can envisage just such debates about
the proper labeling of the people now called philosophers. I think myself that onticist
has quite a nice ring once you get used to it.

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