During one of my epistemology classes, my professor admitted (I can’t recall the context) that his opinions on the topic would probably be different had he attended a different graduate school.
I read this as an admission that modern academic philosophy has nothing whatever to do with the search for truth and everything to do with status-seeking, signalling, and affiliation games. But at least he was being sort of honest.
Concern with status can actually foster truth-seeking, and not just interfere with it. You can be the star who discovered something new, you can expose someone else’s status as undeserved, and simply maintaining your own status (in a truth-seeking community) can motivate you to take extra care with what you say and do. The social emotions are not inevitably a source of noise and error.
(And by the way, your own comment is an intemperate denunciation. I hope that a little sober reflection would lead you to conclude that maybe modern academic philosophers do have a professional interest in truth after all, and that even if they are collectively doing it badly, your particular diagnosis is factually wrong.)
And by the way, your own comment is an intemperate denunciation
This I admit happily. The only question is whether or not my intemperance is justified. Consider how absurd it would be for a professor of physics to admit that his opinion regarding a problem in physics would be different if he had attended a different graduate school.
maybe modern academic philosophers do have a professional interest in truth after all, and that even if they are collectively doing it badly, your particular diagnosis is factually wrong.
Imagine I had said “Soviet communism has nothing whatever to do with feeding the people and everything to do with status-seeking, coalition games, and power politics”. You could as easily complain that soviet communists do have a professional interest in feeding the people, even if they were doing it badly, and that my diagnosis was factually wrong.
The only question is whether or not my intemperance is justified.
If you think your intemperance is justified, then you’re using the word “intemperance” wrong.
Consider how absurd it would be for a professor of physics to admit that his opinion regarding a problem in physics would be different if he had attended a different graduate school.
I would be no more surprised by this claim than the one about the epistemologist. Should I be? Do proponents of string theory tend to come from the same schools?
I would be no more surprised by this claim than the one about the epistemologist. Should I be? Do proponents of string theory tend to come from the same schools?
I think this is pushing the argument too much. I’m sure you see his point that physics is different than philosophy.
You can still make interesting counter-arguments (for example, string theory is one—another is that if even if you agree about the solution, you can have different philosophies on the correct approach) but I think it muddies the waters to pretend you don’t know what he’s talking about in the first place.
I’m choosing this as an example only—I haven’t noticed you doing this before, but I’ve noticed it in threads with people arguing with me and I’d like to have a name for this, so I can call them on it. Mainly it makes the argument extremely inefficient. In his next thread, Daniel Burfoot might imagine he needs to go in more detail about the differences between physics and philosophy (which would be tedious) or just recognize that he was parried and ignore it.
I think this is pushing the argument too much. I’m sure you see his point that physics is different than philosophy.
The claim was that it would be “absurd” if a professor of physics admitted that his opinion regarding a “problem” would be different if he attended a different school.
I fail to see what would be absurd about it. I take the word “problem” here to mean something that doesn’t have a settled answer in the field, so I had to reach as far out as string theory to find something accessible to the non-physicist. I honestly don’t see in what relevant way physics is different from philosophy here. I likely would’ve had the same reaction regarding any academic field.
I agree with your point: something doesn’t become a “problem” in physics unless it’s so hard to find observational evidence that favors one view over another that it can’t be quickly resolved.. So the remaining things left that count as problems are the very ones where different experts can reasonably hold different views, and one will see a stronger case in schools that support a particular view.
On the opposite end, problems in philosophy that actually get solved are then spun off into other fields and so no longer count as philosophy. What we now call “physics” was at one time “natural philosophy”.
Still, I think there’s a difference in that philosophy hasn’t been spinning off productive scientific research programs in the past few decades. But don’t think that was Daniel_Burfoot’s point.
I see, the fallacy was mine: the typical mind fallacy. I thought of ‘problem’ as something that—in physics—would be already solved and straightforward.
Consider how absurd it would be for a professor of physics to admit that his opinion regarding a problem in physics would be different if he had attended a different graduate school.
It’s a weird thing for anyone to admit; the epistemologist is just in a particularly awkward position. I spoke of philosophy because that’s what I have experience with; but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that similar trends of students following teachers hold in other disciplines.
I thought about this for a while and came up with a tight argument:
First, note that it is implausible to claim that academic philosophers are the only people doing philosophy. There are certainly private individuals engaged in the search for philosophical truth as well—Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Eliezer Yudkowsky are two such individuals whose names spring immediately to mind; there are doubtless many others. To claim that only philosophy professors can do good philosophy would be like claiming that only literature professors can write good literature.
Given that there are many non-academic philosophers out there, if we assume that academic philosophers (and philosophy journal editors) are disinterested truth-seekers who are not motivated by political and status concerns, then we should expect to see articles written by non-academics published frequently in philosophy journals, or at the very least we should expect academic philosophers to frequently cite the non-academics.
So, not knowing the actual state of things, since I don’t read many philosophy journals, I will expose my theory (academy philosophy is not about truth-seeking) to falsification by predicting that philosophy journals almost never publish articles by non-academics (i.e. someone without a university affiliation and a Phd), and academic philosophers very rarely cite work done by non-academics.
Given that there are many academic philosophers out there, if we assume that non-academic philosophers are disinterested truth-seekers who are not motivated by political and status concerns, then we should expect to see frequent collaborations between non-academics and academics, or at the very least we should expect non-academic philosophers to frequently cite the academics.
A very analogous argument to yours would allow us to conclude that non-academic philosophy is not about truth-seeking.
It goes the other way too; Taleb and Yudkowsky are not completely ignored by academia. Nonetheless, the insularity of academic intellectuals and the disdain for academia of non-academic intellectuals are real phenomena. There is a symmetry to the situation, but Dan wants to draw an asymmetric conclusion.
Philosophy journals use blind anonymous review (although of course this is imperfect). Journals are actually the least status-influenced major venues for academic philosophy influence (comparing to books, workshops, teaching elite students).
Cryptography conferences have published at least some articles from non-academics: both (or all four, depending on what you count) of my publications at the least.
Interesting. Do you work in a related field in private industry? I assume fields like pharmacology and chemistry publish a lot of non-academics because there is so much corporate research.
No, I’m pretty much a dilettante, a coder who takes an amateur interest in these things, though my employers are usually in favour and pay eg expenses to go to conferences. I haven’t done much, but here’s what I’ve done if you’re interested.
Actually, quite a lot of articles are published by people in industry (e.g. pharmaceutical companies, biotech companies) for biology. Greg Cochran (a physicist by training, with no academic affiliation) publishes evolutionary biology articles in good journals, attends conferences, etc. You see more non-academics publishing when there are more people with the relevant skillsets outside academia, and fewer otherwise.
And by the way, your own comment is an intemperate denunciation. I hope that a little sober reflection would lead you to conclude that maybe modern academic philosophers do have a professional interest in truth after all, and that even if they are collectively doing it badly, your particular diagnosis is factually wrong.
I totally agree. I think Daniel will sit down and realize ‘remarkably little’ would have been more accurate ‘nothing whatever’ and also marginalize most potential backlash.
I read this as an admission that modern academic philosophy has nothing whatever to do with the search for truth and everything to do with status-seeking, signalling, and affiliation games.
Hansonian cynics may be inclined to argue that one could just as well substitute almost any other discipline for “philosophy” in that sentence.
I read this as an admission that modern academic philosophy has nothing whatever to do with the search for truth and everything to do with status-seeking, signalling, and affiliation games. But at least he was being sort of honest.
Concern with status can actually foster truth-seeking, and not just interfere with it. You can be the star who discovered something new, you can expose someone else’s status as undeserved, and simply maintaining your own status (in a truth-seeking community) can motivate you to take extra care with what you say and do. The social emotions are not inevitably a source of noise and error.
(And by the way, your own comment is an intemperate denunciation. I hope that a little sober reflection would lead you to conclude that maybe modern academic philosophers do have a professional interest in truth after all, and that even if they are collectively doing it badly, your particular diagnosis is factually wrong.)
This I admit happily. The only question is whether or not my intemperance is justified. Consider how absurd it would be for a professor of physics to admit that his opinion regarding a problem in physics would be different if he had attended a different graduate school.
Imagine I had said “Soviet communism has nothing whatever to do with feeding the people and everything to do with status-seeking, coalition games, and power politics”. You could as easily complain that soviet communists do have a professional interest in feeding the people, even if they were doing it badly, and that my diagnosis was factually wrong.
If you think your intemperance is justified, then you’re using the word “intemperance” wrong.
I would be no more surprised by this claim than the one about the epistemologist. Should I be? Do proponents of string theory tend to come from the same schools?
I think this is pushing the argument too much. I’m sure you see his point that physics is different than philosophy.
You can still make interesting counter-arguments (for example, string theory is one—another is that if even if you agree about the solution, you can have different philosophies on the correct approach) but I think it muddies the waters to pretend you don’t know what he’s talking about in the first place.
I’m choosing this as an example only—I haven’t noticed you doing this before, but I’ve noticed it in threads with people arguing with me and I’d like to have a name for this, so I can call them on it. Mainly it makes the argument extremely inefficient. In his next thread, Daniel Burfoot might imagine he needs to go in more detail about the differences between physics and philosophy (which would be tedious) or just recognize that he was parried and ignore it.
The claim was that it would be “absurd” if a professor of physics admitted that his opinion regarding a “problem” would be different if he attended a different school.
I fail to see what would be absurd about it. I take the word “problem” here to mean something that doesn’t have a settled answer in the field, so I had to reach as far out as string theory to find something accessible to the non-physicist. I honestly don’t see in what relevant way physics is different from philosophy here. I likely would’ve had the same reaction regarding any academic field.
I agree with your point: something doesn’t become a “problem” in physics unless it’s so hard to find observational evidence that favors one view over another that it can’t be quickly resolved.. So the remaining things left that count as problems are the very ones where different experts can reasonably hold different views, and one will see a stronger case in schools that support a particular view.
On the opposite end, problems in philosophy that actually get solved are then spun off into other fields and so no longer count as philosophy. What we now call “physics” was at one time “natural philosophy”.
Still, I think there’s a difference in that philosophy hasn’t been spinning off productive scientific research programs in the past few decades. But don’t think that was Daniel_Burfoot’s point.
I see, the fallacy was mine: the typical mind fallacy. I thought of ‘problem’ as something that—in physics—would be already solved and straightforward.
It’s a weird thing for anyone to admit; the epistemologist is just in a particularly awkward position. I spoke of philosophy because that’s what I have experience with; but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that similar trends of students following teachers hold in other disciplines.
OK then. On what basis did you form this opinion—that university philosophers are not seeking truth? What’s your evidence, your argument?
I thought about this for a while and came up with a tight argument:
First, note that it is implausible to claim that academic philosophers are the only people doing philosophy. There are certainly private individuals engaged in the search for philosophical truth as well—Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Eliezer Yudkowsky are two such individuals whose names spring immediately to mind; there are doubtless many others. To claim that only philosophy professors can do good philosophy would be like claiming that only literature professors can write good literature.
Given that there are many non-academic philosophers out there, if we assume that academic philosophers (and philosophy journal editors) are disinterested truth-seekers who are not motivated by political and status concerns, then we should expect to see articles written by non-academics published frequently in philosophy journals, or at the very least we should expect academic philosophers to frequently cite the non-academics.
So, not knowing the actual state of things, since I don’t read many philosophy journals, I will expose my theory (academy philosophy is not about truth-seeking) to falsification by predicting that philosophy journals almost never publish articles by non-academics (i.e. someone without a university affiliation and a Phd), and academic philosophers very rarely cite work done by non-academics.
Let’s try inverting your central deduction:
A very analogous argument to yours would allow us to conclude that non-academic philosophy is not about truth-seeking.
But we do see non-academics citing academics. Non-academic amateurs will refer to the likes of Quine, Russell, or Searle.
It goes the other way too; Taleb and Yudkowsky are not completely ignored by academia. Nonetheless, the insularity of academic intellectuals and the disdain for academia of non-academic intellectuals are real phenomena. There is a symmetry to the situation, but Dan wants to draw an asymmetric conclusion.
Philosophy journals use blind anonymous review (although of course this is imperfect). Journals are actually the least status-influenced major venues for academic philosophy influence (comparing to books, workshops, teaching elite students).
I didn’t realize journals of theoretical physics, biology, cognitive science and history were publishing a lot of non-academics.
Cryptography conferences have published at least some articles from non-academics: both (or all four, depending on what you count) of my publications at the least.
Interesting. Do you work in a related field in private industry? I assume fields like pharmacology and chemistry publish a lot of non-academics because there is so much corporate research.
No, I’m pretty much a dilettante, a coder who takes an amateur interest in these things, though my employers are usually in favour and pay eg expenses to go to conferences. I haven’t done much, but here’s what I’ve done if you’re interested.
Actually, quite a lot of articles are published by people in industry (e.g. pharmaceutical companies, biotech companies) for biology. Greg Cochran (a physicist by training, with no academic affiliation) publishes evolutionary biology articles in good journals, attends conferences, etc. You see more non-academics publishing when there are more people with the relevant skillsets outside academia, and fewer otherwise.
It’s not like no status seeking occurs in those fields.
I totally agree. I think Daniel will sit down and realize ‘remarkably little’ would have been more accurate ‘nothing whatever’ and also marginalize most potential backlash.
Hansonian cynics may be inclined to argue that one could just as well substitute almost any other discipline for “philosophy” in that sentence.