If there came to be widespread agreement about a metaphysical thesis, would we consider the thesis to be still a metaphysical one? Perhaps when a philosophical dispute has been settled it has become part of a special science. (This point was put to me forcibly by Hugh Mellor and I think that Bertrand Russell held a similar view.) Psychology, mathematical logic, and linguistics have largely hived themselves off from philosophy. Perhaps philosophy continues to be controversial for the same reason that treason never prospers. If it prospered, it would cease to be called 'treason' and would become a glorious revolution. When philosophical discourse ceases to be controversial it ceases to be called 'philosophy.' The worry then may be that this transformation of philosophy does not occur so often as we should hope that it might.
(J. J. C. Smart, "Why Philosophers Disagree," Canadian Journal of Philosophy, supplementary volume 19 [1993]: 67-82, at 81-2)
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 