Falsehoods can be interesting

I just noticed some comments over at Philosophy Etc on "Structural Incentives in Academic Work" which are interesting, but, I believe false.

Here's Pablo:
"I find Lewis's writings--all of them--shockingly brilliant. It gives me enormous pleasure to read what he writes. I am always impressed by his cleverness and his inventiveness. And I really, really want his views to be true, since I derive great cognitive comfort from believing in elegant theories. But do I think his views are more likely to be true than those of other philosophers? Well, let me answer with a little thought experiment. Suppose that somehow a superintelligence was created that could tell us the true answer to every philosophical question. And suppose that, before the answers were disclosed to the philosophical community, a “philosophy prediction market” was created—Philtrade—allowing traders to bet for different candidates. Would I buy Lewis stock? No. Nor do I think that there would be any discernible correlation between the “price” of a particular answer and the professional success of its proponent."

This is an interesting thought experiment, but misleading. From "Lewis's work is unlikely to be correct" (assuming that this is true), it doesn't follow that "Lewis's work is a waste of time" (which was the worry of the original post).

First, given that philosophy has been studied for some time now, and not too much has been finally solved, it's unlikely that we'll hit upon the answers on any day soon. So if you're studying philosophy with the aim of saying something that highly likely to be true, you're irrational.

"Ah, but some theories are more or less likely to be true than others!". Yes, that is true. But it still doesn't get us the conclusion that Lewis wasted his time. Sometimes, the most interesting papers are those that say something so very obviously false. I find myself most engaged in philosophy when I'm given a strong argument for a terrible conclusion. In some ways, that's what a paradox is, and those form the meat of much of philosophy.

So second, seeing where strong arguments go wrong can be illuminating. The Gambler's fallacy makes a nice example here. When you finally get to the age where you grasp exactly why this is a fallacy, you've gained a lot of insight into the nature of probability. Equally, seeing where Lewis's reasoning goes wrong, might give us great insight into philosophy. Studying falsehoods can get you much closer to truth.

A third point is that philosophers shouldn't be interested only in truth. We're not interesting only in what theories are true, but also the signifance of those truths and how they relate. Studying Lewis might give you insight even if not truth.

Even if it were true that Lewis is unlikely to have said anything true, his contribution to philosophy can still have been both productive and insightful.

The question is not whether what we say is false, but whether or not it is false in an interesting way. (Can anyone remind me where I'm paraphrasing from there?)