On Basic Philosophical Competence

A decade ago, David Copp (the distinguished meta-ethicist) was a visitor in Leiden when I was on faculty there. As it happened there was a colloquium with a visitor from Germany, who gave a (once) typical German professorial Lecture: ten points elaborated historically and conceptually; lots of jargon that presupposed considerable background knowledge (from Hegel to Habermas, I believe--but don't trust my memory). And it went over the allotted time. The Q&A was unfolding not very fruitfully. Eventually it was Copp's turn. He respectfully asked if he could summarize what he took to be the main argument of the paper. He laid out the steps, secured agreement on them, and then drew the lecturer's approval. Copp had clearly understood some of the central issues at hand. He then proceeded to raise a powerful objection internal to the project.

In recent decision theory and philosophy of religion, especially, the idea of an epistemic peer has been gaining traction (see this bibliography , and see this useful intro by Helen de Cruz). And politeness demands that professional philosophers see each other as, in principle, peers. But the question of competence rarely surfaces. Among analytical philosophers, competence is often tacitly secured in graduate school with basic skills in baby logic, set theory, modal logic and some knowledge of familiar texts by Quine (mediated via Putnam), Kripke, and (more recently) David Lewis; among a certain generation some background knowledge in physics was also not uncommon. (Throw in some works by Plato, Descartes, and Hume, Kant vs Mill, Rawls, etc.) Of course, within an area of specialization a fine-grained knowledge of the literature of, say, the last five years in light of, say, half a dozen important works from the last half century or so is expected.* There is considerable heterogeneity among Anglophone philosophy departments, so in some places Frege and Wittgenstein play an important role--in the UK, Wittgenstein was a lingua franca for quite a long time. In European philosophy of science, Bayes's theorem provides some such shared language, and competence amounts to the ability to model problems with it.

 

The previous paragraph is obviously descriptively inadequate for a lot of contemporary philosopher's lived experience. I invite readers to replace the details with more accurate narrative apt for them.

Joel Katzav has convinced me that what I have just described is, perhaps, necessary but not sufficient for philosophical competence; we should, rather, conceive philosophical competence as the skillfull understanding of more than one philosophical tradition.  By 'skillful understanding' I mean that one is capable of actively engaging with an alternative tradition or rival school in informative and critical fashion. That is, one is capable of asking illuminating questions about such an alternative (recall the example of Copp above) and one is capable of distinguishing good work and bad work in it (not about it) without simply assimilating it to one's own perspective. (One need not make a contribution to it, but it would, perhaps counterfactually, not be impossible.) The alternative need not be a live school; it can also be a historical alternative. Or, it might exist in an entirely different professional/cultural context. An example of competence is a person capable of working on, say, Mencius (in 14th century China) while writing for, say, a broadly analytical contemporary audience. 

Obviously, there are lots of demarcation problems here--what counts as a 'tradition' is often contested, what counts as 'philosophy' may well be even more controversial. Some folk might deny that they belong to any tradition--they are just working on timeless philosophical concepts and problems. (In such cases, we need different heuristics: that is, can you engage with the great philosophical poems, figure out why Xenophon was revered by some philosophers, etc.)

What counts as a genuine 'alternative' may also be controversial--some important work in history of early modern philosophy, for example, slots any alternative into a shared conversation. Heuristically we might say that if there are genuine translation problems and the principle of charity fails to eliminate strangeness we are potentially dealing with a genuine alternative. Of course, such heuristics also might make one question, 'is it really philosophy?' [This is not the place to answer what THAT is.]  Either way, what counts as an 'alternative' may well be context sensitive in a variety of ways.

Note that this view of basic competence does not entail commitment to pluralism, to relativism or liking/endorsing the alternative. To give an example: for a long time observational astronomers were technically, fully competent in a whole range of astrological practices and theory. But not all such astronomers approved of astrology despite their competency. 

Now, on the view that I advocate it is possible to make contributions to one's own tradition, act like a peer reviewer for journals, and make a fine career in professional philosophy while lacking basic philosophical competence. That is, hyper-specialization and philosophical competence pull in opposing directions. In fact, it is quite possible that basic philosophical competence is not nearly coextensive with being a professional philosopher.** Perhaps it might shame some out of their complacency.

 

 

*I imagine that for so-called continental philosophers a working knowledge of Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger is key.

**I doubt I left graduate school competent in the way I just described (even though I came out of a program with deep commitment to history of philosophy).

Comments

[Name withheld (but Eric knows who I am--Hi Eric!)]

Eric, you are one of the most philosophically competent philosophers I know! Being as widely read in philosophy as you are is a virtue to which I only aspire. But why should anyone be shamed out of their "complacency"? I think most biologists are pretty ignorant of large parts of biology--and will often freely admit it. There is no shame there. The ignorance is OK, because biologists can collaborate and discuss matters with other biologists when necessary.

There's a line I've heard more than once from philosophers of biology: "Most philosophers of biology don't know much biology." (I have been on both the implicit praise and implicit blame ends of this remark, at different times.) I think it's false, in fact, but that's not the point. Rather, I think it's OK that there are some philosophers of biology who don't know much biology. It's still possible to make meaningful contributions, as it happens, although lack of knowledge of biology limits one--just as lack of knowledge of philosophy does. But some ignorance is OK, as long as the philosophers of biology who lack much knowledge of biology are in dialogue with some who do know more. And as long as some philosophers of biology are in dialogue with biologists. And as long as some philosophers of biology are in dialogue with historians of biology and philosophers of physics and formal epistemologists and statisticians and bioethicists and metaphysicians and historians of philosophy and .... (A further point is that interdisciplinary dialogue is facilitated by interdisciplinary knowledge, but one's time is finite.)

[Eric Schliesser]

In the post, I presuppose that's what is good for the sciences is not necessarily good for philosophy. (So, this is why I disagree with Helen de Cruz's post that I link to.) The division of intellectual labor is important in science and, as you note, it is vital then to keep lines of communication open.
I grant that within philosophy the division of intellectual labor is certainly with many successes of the sort that you describe. And I do not advocate abolishing it for a whole range of vital projects. Moreover, it is possible to be involved in philosophy of biology (as a specialist) and have basic philosophical competence in the way I have described. (Obviously there are some opportunity costs along the way, so I understand why specialization is attractive.)

[Still anonymous]

We agree that facility with diverse areas of philosophy is desirable, and that there are useful things that can be done without it. It's clear to me that we both value interdisciplinary scholarly interactions. Perhaps what disagreement there is here is just on how we weight the values of different factors.

[Harvey Lederman]

Great post! Thanks for re-sharing.