Thanks, updating. I didn’t study philosophy, only took an “introduction to philosophy” class and it was like I described.
On the 2 + 2 = 3 article, pretty much all of the ideas in there are covered in a standard philosophy undergrad curriculum, although the students are not told that they are the right ideas, and contradictory ideas are covered as well.
Having an opportunity to figure it out on my own, seems cool. Not being corrected, ever, if I am wrong, seems cruel.
So I am not sure what exactly is the lesson learned. Is it “trust your brain to find the right answer” or “there is no right answer, but you can still win by arguing smartly”?
Having an opportunity to figure it out on my own, seems cool. Not being corrected, ever, if I am wrong, seems cruel.
So I am not sure what exactly is the lesson learned. Is it “trust your brain to find the right answer” or “there is no right answer, but you can still win by arguing smartly”?
Philosophy does not have consensus-forming mechanisms that are remotely as effective as the ones in science. I do think this is a problem with the discipline. Philosophers get published (and famous) for producing clever arguments in support of some conclusion, or for cleverly showing that some other philosopher’s clever argument doesn’t work. They don’t get penalized in peer review for failing to show that their preferred conclusion is all things considered the right one. There are broadly agreed-upon conventions for the evaluation of arguments, but there are no agreed-upon conventions for meta-analysis which allow someone to survey all the arguments for and against a particular claim and unambiguously decide on which side the balance of evidence lies. So the sort of thing philosophers end up agreeing about (and teaching students) is “This is a clever argument for conclusion X, without any clear flaws” or “This argument for conclusion Y does not work for these reasons.” Consensus is formed about the status of arguments, rather than about conclusions.
In general, a professor of philosophy will be comfortable telling a student whether her arguments for some conclusion are good or bad, but will not feel comfortable telling her whether the conclusion itself is true or false. I think this is mostly attributable to a worry about giving the false impression that there is a disciplinary consensus about the issue. None of this means, of course, that philosophers never arrive at a consensus about anything. You won’t see evidence of the consensus in a philosophy class though, because the consensus is usually about which conclusions are almost certainly false. And those conclusions (and their corresponding arguments) are simply not taught in the class (unless it’s a class on the history of philosophy, where the pedagogical purpose is different). So the illusion of complete lack of consensus is really due to the fact that consensus hasn’t yet winnowed down the viable options to a single one. It doesn’t follow that there has been no winnowing at all.
ETA: As evidence of the depressing lack of consensus in philosophy, check out the PhilPapers survey. There are only two positions surveyed on which more than 70% of professional philosophers and philosophy Ph.D.’s agree: non-skeptical realism about the external world (76.6%) and scientific realism (70.1%). Atheism comes close with 69.7%. By contrast, there are 16 questions where all the answers have less than 50% support.
ETA: As evidence of the depressing lack of consensus in philosophy, check out the PhilPapers survey. There are only two positions surveyed on which more than 70% of professional philosophers and philosophy Ph.D.’s agree: non-skeptical realism about the external world (76.6%) and scientific realism (70.1%). Atheism comes close with 69.7%. By contrast, there are 16 questions where all the answers have less than 50% support.
So what? I guess the survey just wouldn’t ask questions on which there’s consensus. And if you surveyed physicists about whether they think neutrinos are Majorana particles, whether cosmic rays above 10^19 eV are mostly protons or mostly heavier nuclei, and stuff like that you’d likely get similar results.
If you look at the questions in the survey, pretty much all the big topics covered in an undergraduate philosophy education are represented. It isn’t just a selection of particularly controversial topics. But you’re right that I should have specified this in order for my comment to make sense.
Thanks, updating. I didn’t study philosophy, only took an “introduction to philosophy” class and it was like I described.
Having an opportunity to figure it out on my own, seems cool. Not being corrected, ever, if I am wrong, seems cruel.
So I am not sure what exactly is the lesson learned. Is it “trust your brain to find the right answer” or “there is no right answer, but you can still win by arguing smartly”?
Philosophy does not have consensus-forming mechanisms that are remotely as effective as the ones in science. I do think this is a problem with the discipline. Philosophers get published (and famous) for producing clever arguments in support of some conclusion, or for cleverly showing that some other philosopher’s clever argument doesn’t work. They don’t get penalized in peer review for failing to show that their preferred conclusion is all things considered the right one. There are broadly agreed-upon conventions for the evaluation of arguments, but there are no agreed-upon conventions for meta-analysis which allow someone to survey all the arguments for and against a particular claim and unambiguously decide on which side the balance of evidence lies. So the sort of thing philosophers end up agreeing about (and teaching students) is “This is a clever argument for conclusion X, without any clear flaws” or “This argument for conclusion Y does not work for these reasons.” Consensus is formed about the status of arguments, rather than about conclusions.
In general, a professor of philosophy will be comfortable telling a student whether her arguments for some conclusion are good or bad, but will not feel comfortable telling her whether the conclusion itself is true or false. I think this is mostly attributable to a worry about giving the false impression that there is a disciplinary consensus about the issue. None of this means, of course, that philosophers never arrive at a consensus about anything. You won’t see evidence of the consensus in a philosophy class though, because the consensus is usually about which conclusions are almost certainly false. And those conclusions (and their corresponding arguments) are simply not taught in the class (unless it’s a class on the history of philosophy, where the pedagogical purpose is different). So the illusion of complete lack of consensus is really due to the fact that consensus hasn’t yet winnowed down the viable options to a single one. It doesn’t follow that there has been no winnowing at all.
ETA: As evidence of the depressing lack of consensus in philosophy, check out the PhilPapers survey. There are only two positions surveyed on which more than 70% of professional philosophers and philosophy Ph.D.’s agree: non-skeptical realism about the external world (76.6%) and scientific realism (70.1%). Atheism comes close with 69.7%. By contrast, there are 16 questions where all the answers have less than 50% support.
So what? I guess the survey just wouldn’t ask questions on which there’s consensus. And if you surveyed physicists about whether they think neutrinos are Majorana particles, whether cosmic rays above 10^19 eV are mostly protons or mostly heavier nuclei, and stuff like that you’d likely get similar results.
If you look at the questions in the survey, pretty much all the big topics covered in an undergraduate philosophy education are represented. It isn’t just a selection of particularly controversial topics. But you’re right that I should have specified this in order for my comment to make sense.