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There are many reasons for philosophy’s stagnation, though the dual influences of specialisation and commercialisation, in particular, have turned philosophy in

There are many reasons for philosophy’s stagnation, though the dual influences of specialisation and commercialisation, in particular, have turned philosophy into something that scarcely resembles the discipline as it was practised by the likes of Aristotle, Spinoza or Nietzsche. A bit weird to use Nietzsche as an example here, considering that he had zero formal education in the discipline called "philosophy" and spent most of his life as a hermit writer with nearly-zero readers. In any case, there is a ton of excellent philosophical work being done and put online today – it's just not accessible to the layman. Bob Brandom, for example, has a YouTube channel with hundreds of hours of video. Unfortunately, most of it is basically impenetrable to the average person. https://www.youtube.com/@BobBrandomPitt https://www.youtube.com/@BobBrandomPitt As someone that enjoyed my BA in Philosophy but nonetheless decided to not continue on to a PhD, I'm of two minds on the topic of philosophy popularization. On the one hand, it's actually somewhat a relief that there is no charlatan figure like Jordan Peterson or Sam Harris out there ruining the perception of the field. When you interact with bona fide academic philosophers, there is a feeling of professionalism that washes over you. It's a reassuring feeling and one I almost never get when reading pop-philosophy books. At the same time, this lack of interest in the public sphere also means that there is rarely any pushback to dumb arguments. Stuff like effective altruism grows and becomes popular not because it's a better argument than the alternatives, but mostly because the people most qualified to critique it...simply aren't paying attention. The same thing can be said for most controversial issues like abortion, gun control, etc. – the people most qualified to answer these nuanced questions are basically uninterested in doing so in a public forum, or aren't given the time and attention for doing so.

vehemenz 3y ago
Just curious—why do you lump Jordan Peterson in with Sam Harris, other than that they both write popular nonfiction?
- keiferski 3y ago
  I’d call them both public pseudointellectuals that purport some philosophical knowledge but mostly don’t engage with the actual academic field, and instead just court controversy to sell books and speaking tours.
  - vehemenz 3y ago
    You'll get no argument from me about Jordan Peterson. However, I'm having trouble reconciling your apparent reverence for "the actual academic field," when Sam Harris thinks and argues like so many of them, including the philosophers he has on his podcast. Blaming him for courting controversy is no different than blaming professional philosophers for avoiding it. Necessities of the trade. I don't think that objection sticks. If there are more substantive problems you have with Harris, then I would be surprised. And I would be surprised if the same problems weren't present among academic philosophers. But if you undermine the credibility of too many academic philosophers, then his lack of engagement can't be held against him.
    - keiferski 3y ago
      Harris is not taken seriously as a philosopher by the academic philosophy community. https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/search/?q=Sam+Harris+&restrict_sr=on https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/search/?q=Sam+Harris+...
      - vehemenz 3y ago
        1. There are plenty of comments in those threads that support my position, as well as the standard gatekeeping positions. 2. This subreddit isn't as representative of professional philosophers as you think. Its demographic skews toward inexperienced grad students who (surprise) use Reddit. 3. I wrote this subreddit off 5 or 6 years ago because it was too concerned with the academic lifecycle and of existing literature of questionable quality. Appealing to authority only works if there is an authority present. 4. Again—you can't have it both ways. There are loads of philosophers who engage with the field who are deeply unserious for reasons more indictable than Harris. Edit: I should add that I don't think Harris is a particularly good philosopher, especially when it comes to his argument for moral realism. But if having bad arguments disqualifies one for being a philosopher, then we'd be committed to rejecting a huge number of contemporary academic philosophers, which doesn't strike me as your position.
nonrandomstring 3y ago
> the people most qualified to answer these nuanced questions are basically uninterested in doing so in a public forum, or aren't given the time and attention for doing so. That's a tragedy isn't it? For smart people to remain cloistered so as to preserve their corner as pristine? It robs everyone, particularly those who publish impenetrable work to an audience of 10 others. Real philosophy for me remains Socratic. Rude and unwelcome, disconsolate and messy, ugly, loud and in the public square.
FredPret 3y ago
If someone is uninterested in publicly discussing a problem that involves public participation & cooperation, they are also unqualified to answer any questions about the problem. Man in the arena and all that.
- keiferski 3y ago
  Sure, on an individual level. But that sounds like a failure at the societal level to me. We shouldn’t want the only people sharing their expertise to be the most comfortable with publicity.
  - FredPret 3y ago
    I disagree - it's only when you try to take ideas out of the textbook and put them in the real world where it is relevant to people that you run into the messy details that make or break ideas. If the ideas are about purely intellectual things, that's fine. But if the ideas are about people's lives or actions, or any complex system in the real world, then the idea isn't really fully fleshed out until someone starts to implement it.
    - keiferski 3y ago
      You seem to think that academics just sit in ivory towers and don’t factor in “the real world” to their arguments. That’s…not how it works, it’s just a poor anti-intellectual characterization. Your supposed “real world alternative” is pop-philosophy writers and loud, attention-seeking people on social media influencing what we ought to do about seriously complex issues like abortion.
      - FredPret 3y ago
        No, I’m not comparing Harris to academic philosophers. I’m speaking in general: there is a class of ideas that aren’t worth anything until they are tried. Because you can’t fully “factor in the real world” in an argument - it’s far too surprising and complex. Examples include economic theories, military strategies, business plans, and getting people to do anything differently at all. Making these work requires attention-getting, sales, and mass attention, frequently on social media. Now if someone has a new theory about calculus or the atom, no ordinary person is going to care and no external factors are involved, and that idea stands alone from its implementation.
Amezarak 3y ago
> A bit weird to use Nietzsche as an example here, considering that he had zero formal education in the discipline called "philosophy" and spent most of his life as a hermit writer with nearly-zero readers. Virtually no philosophers historically had a "formal education in the discipline of called philosophy" and most went unread. He received the sort of classical education that was regarded at the time as a sufficient perquisite and went to the same school Fichte did. He was appointed at a very young age to a professorship of philology. This reads as the sort of slanderous cope that the "scholarly oxen" Nietzsche refers to engage in as personal attacks against a man who proved most of them to be engaged in useless make-work. There is no philosopher in the 21st century who has contributed a hundredth of what Nietzsche did and many of them still continue to plough fields Nietzsche proved to be without foundation, like moral philosophy.
- keiferski 3y ago
  Why do people insist on reading the absolute worst interpretation of every comment on the internet? Honestly. It is so tiresome. If I had to pick a favorite philosopher, it would be Nietzsche. No other thinker has influenced me more, and if you spent half a second searching Nietzsche and my username on HN, you’d see that. But if the man were alive today, he’d be writing a blog with 50 subscribers - because that’s about the level of readership he had during his life. My point was that using Nietzsche as an example of what the philosophy field is like at the public, professional level is not a good example, as the man did most of his work in obscurity to begin with.
  - mistermann 3y ago
    >Why do people insist on reading the absolute worst interpretation of every comment on the internet? Honestly. It is so tiresome. Do you feel similarly about the rigor of the scientific method?
    - keiferski 3y ago
      You're gonna have to unpack that, because it's not clear to me how it has anything to do with my comment.

vehemenz 3y ago

Just curious—why do you lump Jordan Peterson in with Sam Harris, other than that they both write popular nonfiction?

keiferski 3y ago
I’d call them both public pseudointellectuals that purport some philosophical knowledge but mostly don’t engage with the actual academic field, and instead just court controversy to sell books and speaking tours.
- vehemenz 3y ago
  You'll get no argument from me about Jordan Peterson. However, I'm having trouble reconciling your apparent reverence for "the actual academic field," when Sam Harris thinks and argues like so many of them, including the philosophers he has on his podcast. Blaming him for courting controversy is no different than blaming professional philosophers for avoiding it. Necessities of the trade. I don't think that objection sticks. If there are more substantive problems you have with Harris, then I would be surprised. And I would be surprised if the same problems weren't present among academic philosophers. But if you undermine the credibility of too many academic philosophers, then his lack of engagement can't be held against him.
  - keiferski 3y ago
    Harris is not taken seriously as a philosopher by the academic philosophy community. https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/search/?q=Sam+Harris+&restrict_sr=on https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/search/?q=Sam+Harris+...
    - vehemenz 3y ago
      1. There are plenty of comments in those threads that support my position, as well as the standard gatekeeping positions. 2. This subreddit isn't as representative of professional philosophers as you think. Its demographic skews toward inexperienced grad students who (surprise) use Reddit. 3. I wrote this subreddit off 5 or 6 years ago because it was too concerned with the academic lifecycle and of existing literature of questionable quality. Appealing to authority only works if there is an authority present. 4. Again—you can't have it both ways. There are loads of philosophers who engage with the field who are deeply unserious for reasons more indictable than Harris. Edit: I should add that I don't think Harris is a particularly good philosopher, especially when it comes to his argument for moral realism. But if having bad arguments disqualifies one for being a philosopher, then we'd be committed to rejecting a huge number of contemporary academic philosophers, which doesn't strike me as your position.

nonrandomstring 3y ago

> the people most qualified to answer these nuanced questions are basically uninterested in doing so in a public forum, or aren't given the time and attention for doing so. That's a tragedy isn't it? For smart people to remain cloistered so as to preserve their corner as pristine? It robs everyone, particularly those who publish impenetrable work to an audience of 10 others. Real philosophy for me remains Socratic. Rude and unwelcome, disconsolate and messy, ugly, loud and in the public square.

FredPret 3y ago

If someone is uninterested in publicly discussing a problem that involves public participation & cooperation, they are also unqualified to answer any questions about the problem. Man in the arena and all that.

keiferski 3y ago
Sure, on an individual level. But that sounds like a failure at the societal level to me. We shouldn’t want the only people sharing their expertise to be the most comfortable with publicity.
- FredPret 3y ago
  I disagree - it's only when you try to take ideas out of the textbook and put them in the real world where it is relevant to people that you run into the messy details that make or break ideas. If the ideas are about purely intellectual things, that's fine. But if the ideas are about people's lives or actions, or any complex system in the real world, then the idea isn't really fully fleshed out until someone starts to implement it.
  - keiferski 3y ago
    You seem to think that academics just sit in ivory towers and don’t factor in “the real world” to their arguments. That’s…not how it works, it’s just a poor anti-intellectual characterization. Your supposed “real world alternative” is pop-philosophy writers and loud, attention-seeking people on social media influencing what we ought to do about seriously complex issues like abortion.
    - FredPret 3y ago
      No, I’m not comparing Harris to academic philosophers. I’m speaking in general: there is a class of ideas that aren’t worth anything until they are tried. Because you can’t fully “factor in the real world” in an argument - it’s far too surprising and complex. Examples include economic theories, military strategies, business plans, and getting people to do anything differently at all. Making these work requires attention-getting, sales, and mass attention, frequently on social media. Now if someone has a new theory about calculus or the atom, no ordinary person is going to care and no external factors are involved, and that idea stands alone from its implementation.

Amezarak 3y ago

> A bit weird to use Nietzsche as an example here, considering that he had zero formal education in the discipline called "philosophy" and spent most of his life as a hermit writer with nearly-zero readers. Virtually no philosophers historically had a "formal education in the discipline of called philosophy" and most went unread. He received the sort of classical education that was regarded at the time as a sufficient perquisite and went to the same school Fichte did. He was appointed at a very young age to a professorship of philology. This reads as the sort of slanderous cope that the "scholarly oxen" Nietzsche refers to engage in as personal attacks against a man who proved most of them to be engaged in useless make-work. There is no philosopher in the 21st century who has contributed a hundredth of what Nietzsche did and many of them still continue to plough fields Nietzsche proved to be without foundation, like moral philosophy.

keiferski 3y ago
Why do people insist on reading the absolute worst interpretation of every comment on the internet? Honestly. It is so tiresome. If I had to pick a favorite philosopher, it would be Nietzsche. No other thinker has influenced me more, and if you spent half a second searching Nietzsche and my username on HN, you’d see that. But if the man were alive today, he’d be writing a blog with 50 subscribers - because that’s about the level of readership he had during his life. My point was that using Nietzsche as an example of what the philosophy field is like at the public, professional level is not a good example, as the man did most of his work in obscurity to begin with.
- mistermann 3y ago
  >Why do people insist on reading the absolute worst interpretation of every comment on the internet? Honestly. It is so tiresome. Do you feel similarly about the rigor of the scientific method?
  - keiferski 3y ago
    You're gonna have to unpack that, because it's not clear to me how it has anything to do with my comment.