Mitchell_Porter comments on Epistemic Luck - Less Wrong

74 Post author: Alicorn 08 February 2010 12:02AM

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Comment author: Daniel_Burfoot 12 February 2010 09:49:13AM 0 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 13 February 2010 08:20:56AM 1 point [-]

Let's try inverting your central deduction:

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.

Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 13 February 2010 09:32:56AM *  2 points [-]

[. . .] 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.

But we do see non-academics citing academics. Non-academic amateurs will refer to the likes of Quine, Russell, or Searle.

Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 13 February 2010 10:15:24AM 3 points [-]

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.