Optimism about Philosophy

“I know a lot of people on twitter and social media complain about the current state of philosophy but I tend to be an optimist.”

That’s Gregg Caruso, professor of philosophy at SUNY Corning, in a new interview at What Is It Like To Be A Philosopher?. 

He continues:

I think the future of philosophy is strong. There is more interesting and diverse work being done today in philosophy than perhaps ever before. In fact, I can barely keep up with all the excellent work being done in areas of philosophy that never previously existed.

The days of philosophy being dominated by one or two figures (or methodologies) at a time is over, and I think that’s a good thing. Let a thousand flowers bloom, as they say.

This isn’t to say there aren’t things to be concerned about:

If I have any fears, they are not about philosophy itself but with direction of higher education, which has been moving away from providing students with a well-rounded liberal arts education and toward vocational training. This trend is bad, not only for the discipline of philosophy but for society as a whole.  

The interview, interesting throughout, ranges over Professor Caruso’s life, education, and work. You can read the whole thing here.

How Risk-Averse is Academic Philosophy?

“Philosophical inquiry thrives when it is conducted in a spirit that risks overreaching a bit,” yet “the current incentive structure of academic philosophy in the United States favors cautious and modest research agendas for early career philosophers.”

The journal Axiomathes is becoming Global Philosophy, and in a forthcoming editorial about the change, John Symons (Kansas) discusses a variety of obstacles to global philosophy. “Deglobalization” and the resurgence of nationalism is one kind obstacle, he says, but so is hyperspecialization and the pressure to conform to narrow disciplinary standards. Here’s the passage from which the above quotes were excerpted:

In the decades prior to the financial crisis of 2008, when Anglo-American philosophy departments were relatively financially healthy, a narrowly defined research niche in a fashionable topic could provide easy rewards in the early career of a young philosopher. With cleverness (or a good advisor in graduate school) one’s work could be crafted to satisfy the preferences of a manageably small number of specialists. Their approval was a necessary condition for professional advancement. Securing a tenured position in the traditional American philosophy department was largely a matter of adequately conforming one’s work to the demands of local experts in one’s specialization.

This model of how we certified one another as experts and the incentive structure that resulted, gradually cultivated a risk-averse spirit of caution and conformism among philosophers. In defense of this tendency, we tend to cite notions of increased professionalism, we praise the epistemic humility of modest research agendas, and we note the collective and incremental nature of philosophical progress. But less charitable interpreters might suspect that when young philosophers retreat into narrow niches they are simply adopting a strategy for professional advancement. Either way, the current incentive structure of academic philosophy in the United States favors cautious and modest research agendas for early career philosophers. Philosophical inquiry thrives when it is conducted in a spirit that risks overreaching a bit and welcomes criticism. Philosophy thrives when its creative, skeptical, and self-critical core is not subordinated to excessively cautious American-style professionalism or to equivalent demands from other local elites or traditions.

You can read a pre-publication version of the whole editorial here.

I’m curious if readers agree with Professor Symons’ description of contemporary academic philosophy as having “a risk-averse spirit of caution and conformism,” and whether, as Symons suggests we’re too risk-averse and conformist. These are not necessarily bad characteristics. Any successful discipline has some degree of conformism, for the continued use by subsequent researchers of extant methods on extant topics is one kind of evidence that we’re thinking in fruitful ways about worthwhile matters. Of course, any successful discipline also has some degree of disagreement and change, too. Do we not have a good mix of these? If we’re overly risk averse or conformist, in what ways ought we be less so? And how can we as a discipline encourage that?

[above image created with DALL-E]