Is philosophy possible?

Wilfred Sellars influentially defined philosophy as the attempt 'to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term'. This chapter explores a serious challenge to the very possibility of philosophy, so conceived, as a discipline in pursuit of truth. There is good reason to believe that the pursuit of truth requires specialization and that what Nathan Ballantyne calls 'epistemic trespassing' - venturing outside one's area of specialization is highly unreliable. Philosophy (as defined by Sellars, and as usually undertaken) routinely crosses disciplinary boundaries. There are therefore serious questions about whether philosophy should be expected to be able to generate truths, or whether we should instead expect to see nothing more than the elaboration of hobby horses and intricate, but mistaken, belief systems. This chapter examines several responses to this challenge and concludes that none succeeds in vindicating philosophy as a distinctive enterprise.