Digressions&Impressions

On Philosophical Expertise, Systematicity, and Coherence

...The puzzle presupposes that we ought to defer to experts.  But that only makes sense if we've reason to expect that expertise in a domain sufficiently increases epistemic reliability, i.e. the likelihood of true beliefs.  That's certainly the case for many domains -- it's why we should defer to scientific experts, for example.  But it arguably isn't so for philosophy in general.

Philosophical expertise seems compatible with being completely off the rails when it comes to the substantive content of one's philosophical views.  And this is to be expected once we appreciate that (i) there are many possible internally coherent worldviews, (ii) philosophical argumentation proceeds through a mixture of ironing out incoherence and making us aware of possibilities we had previously neglected, and so (iii) even the greatest expertise in these skills will only help you to reach the truth if you start off in roughly the right place.  Increasing the coherence of someone who is totally wrong (i.e. closer to one of the many internally coherent worldviews that is objectively incorrect) won't necessarily bring them any closer to the truth.

Publish

To put a more subjective spin on it: One's only hope of reaching the truth via rational means is to trust that your starting points are in the right vicinity, such that an ideally coherent version of your worldview would be getting things right.  So we've only got reason to defer to others if their verdicts are indicative of what our idealized selves would conclude.  Often, we can reasonably judge that other philosophers have views so alien to our own that it's unlikely that procedurally ideal reflection (increasing internal coherence) would lead us to share those views.  In such cases, we've no reason to defer to those philosophers, however 'expert' they may be.

(Terminological variant: If you want to build into the definition of a subject-area 'expert' that deference to expert judgement is mandatory, then you should restrict attributions of expertise to those whose starting points are sufficiently similar to your own.)

tl;dr: We should only be epistemically moved by peer disagreement (and related phenomena) when we take the other person's views to be evidence of what we ourselves would conclude upon ideal reflection.  Philosophical intransigence is thus often justified, insofar as we can justifiably believe that an improved version of our view could be developed that is at least as internally coherent as the opposing views. This remains true even if we judge that the defenders of the opposing views are (in purely procedural terms) smarter / better philosophers than we are ourselves.--Richard Yetter Chappell@Philosophy, et cetera, "Philosophical Expertise, Deference, and Intransigence" [HT: Liam Kofi Bright & Dailynous.]

I like that in his post, Yetter Chappell does not simply assume that philosophical expertise is like scientific expertise in all the relevant ways.* In particular, he claims that the are very important differences between science and philosophy when it comes to "epistemic reliability, i.e. the likelihood of true beliefs." Drawing on work of Jason Brennan, he assumes that philosophical methods are not sufficient for generating true beliefs (recall also Katzav's skepticism). Let's spot him the thought, for the sake of argument, that scientific communities have methods that generate true beliefs in some specialist domain. (It is not un-problematic as the history of scientific revolutions and belief change suggests.) So, Yetter Chappell rejects (i) the post-Quine-ian (naturalist) tendency to assume that philosophy and science are continuous, and (ii) the popular move that we can use Kuhnian ideas about mature science as the exemplary ideal in our (arm-chair sociology of philosophy and) meta-philosophy. (So, if Kuhn is relevant at all, it's his views on immature, non-paradigmatic science.)

Before one objects that he does not mention Kuhn at all, it is worth noting that Yetter Chappell conceives philosophy as being involved in the generation of "coherent worldviews." (And the idea of a worldview is very Kuhnian.) That philosophers aim at the generation of coherent worldviews is not silly--it is a ruling ideal in the early modern period and in post-Kantian philosophy in the nineteenth century. This way of understanding philosophy finds its most beautiful (soft-Hegelian) expression in Alexandre Koyré's From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe. But while Koyré undoubtedly influenced Kuhn his impact on analytic philosophy is negligible.

For, analytic philosophy is (with a few notable exceptions) fundamentally anti-systematic. (To be sure: by this I do not mean it embraces incoherence!) Rather it embraces an ideal of philosophy (depending on one's sensibility) that is focused on arguments, solving (carefully circumscribed) puzzles, or dissolves apparent paradoxes. This is no surprise: since Russell embraced decomposition or analysis this is part of the disciplinary ethos. (Even philosophers who wish to avoid conceptual confusion tend to do so by way of conceptual distinctions and decomposition.) Of course, there are more ambitious projects (such as L.A. Paul's conception of philosophy as modeling), but few embrace what we may call a kind of synthetic ideal.** There is a lot to be said for the virtues that are consequent of the analytic self-conception and practice. [Even if in another context (recall my series of posts on Nagel's Mind & Cosmos) I have tried to exhibit the costs of such lack of practice in systematicity.]

As an aside, I hinted there are exceptions to the rule. For example, it's true that David Lewis does have a systematic philosophy; but his is unusually modular. (Another exception is Jody Azzouni, who also is systematic, but his approach has little uptake so far and routinely receives hostile reviews.) In his cost-benefit analysis, Lewis does explicitly suggest, in fact, that "making a theory more systematic" is on the benefit side. But if it is not ignored altogether, in metaphysical practice among Lewisians, this condition/virtue/benefit is reduced to considerations of scope.

Okay, let me return to the main argument. It's clear that even Yetter Chappell is not really describing systematicity. This is clear from his diagnosis that philosophical expertise "will only help you to reach the truth if you start off in roughly the right place." That's obviously true if it's okay if one's axioms or foundational concepts are treated as primitive (the favored move these past few decades) or spotted for the sake of argument. But otherwise that's really not true.

What makes systematic philosophy more than mere coherent-ism is that a systematic philosophy has the further burden of having to anchor or ground (etc.) those starting points in bits of reality. This is also why for systematic philosophies more systematicity is (defeasible) evidence that they are getting closer to the truth.

That is to say, I agree with Yetter Chappell that philosophical intransigence is often justified; but I do so in virtue of the fact that so much contemporary philosophy relies either on unquestioned primitives (and/or shared background commitments) or abduction/inference to the best explanation. For in the popular philosophical methodologies today the starting points and conclusions are not themselves really being stress tested (even if one allows that the method of counterexamples does some of that).+

Now one may object that I have said nothing about explaining what the concept of 'conceptual stress testing' means here. Due to constraints on time and space in this post, I will acknowledge that that it is a fair objection and that I have left it very vague. But note that there are bits of science where it is the norm to only accept, say, 'five-sigma results;' this corresponds to a probability of 1 in 3.5 million that it is the result of chance. If one were permitted to transfer this kind of talk to philosophy, one can say that no philosophical abduction has this kind of probability; no argument with (by philosophical standards) modestly contestable premises can aspire to it.

 

A Suggestion to Hypatia from a True Friend

It is our position that the harms that have ensued from the publication of this article could and should have been prevented by a more effective review process. We are deeply troubled by this and are taking this opportunity to seriously reconsider our review policies and practices. While nothing can change the fact that the article was published, we are dedicated to doing what we can to make things right. Clearly, the article should not have been published, and we believe that the fault for this lies in the review process. In addition to the harms listed above imposed upon trans people and people of color, publishing the article risked exposing its author to heated critique that was both predictable and justifiable. A better review process would have both anticipated the criticisms that quickly followed the publication, and required that revisions be made to improve the argument in light of those criticisms.... We are a scholarly journal committed to an anonymous peer review process. We want readers to feel free to offer their honest feedback on manuscripts submitted to Hypatia. Anonymous peer review is important for the scholarly reputation of Hypatia; mistakes in particular instances should not compromise the commitment to anonymous peer review in scholarship.--"To our friends and colleagues in feminist philosophy," Hypatia’s Board of Associate Editors [HT Ásta Kristjana Sveinsdóttir]

The details of the review process at Hypatia are described in the remainder of Associate Editors' statement. These do not live up to the discipline's very best practices (established recently) at Ergo, but -- if impartiality is our aim -- they are much better than how many purportedly 'top' (clubby) philosophy journals were being edited in recent memory (and some still are edited).

Even so, one need not be a student of psycho-analysis to note the anxious manner in which scholarly and anonymous peer review are being coupled in the statement. This confuses the process with the product. (In fact, there is a more general tendency among editors to farm out their judgment, procedurally, to overworked and under-appreciated referees, including the ridiculous practice of giving even transparently incompetent or biased referees de facto veto-power over the publication of a  paper.) Anonymous peer review may be a means to being scholarly and other important ends, it is not itself an end (even if various journal ranking agencies, whose metrics subtly structure the incentives of so much of professional academic life, treat it as such). But in what follows, I accept, for the sake of argument, that anonymous peer review is a condition on being thought scholarly these days.

As the Hypatia debacle is unfolding, Neil Levy notes (on Facebook) that risk averse editors of many journals (an overworked and unappreciated lot) will be less likely to accept papers on trans issues and other issues that potentially attract controversy: if even Hypatia got it wrong, what chance do I have? Such editors will worry that they don't have the expertise to choose reviewers, let alone assess the papers themselves, and rather than risk time consuming and reputation shattering controversy will simply desk reject.+ Levy's observation is important because it reminds us that self-censorship in light of would be social or political controversy is always a live option in philosophy (I routinely discuss this as the Socratic Problem in philosophy).

Now, one response to Levy's worry is specialization and ever more fine-grained scholarly niche construction. Potentially controversial papers would only land at extremely specialized journals with the expertise to handle them. Now, while I think philosophy would have higher utility if a whole bunch of work on infanticide had been marginalized, such a strategy (hyper-specialization) would be undesirable; such specialization would reinforce marginalization of morally and politically important topics. It would also be self-defeating because it would push talent away into other disciplines and practices.

But there is another way to think about specialization here. Rather than specialization being driven by topic, it could be driven by expected fallout* (<-- sorry that sounded too much like an atom bomb) potential, public controversy. That is, some journals can foresee that the papers they publish have a higher than mere chance probability to touch a powerful nerve in scholarly disputes and be taken up in the public culture, public policy, and (alas) the culture wars. Hypatia is, in fact, some such a journal. It is pretty clear that its current review process is ill-suited to Hypatia's participation in would-be-public philosophy. (On what public philosophy might be, recall here.) No amount of tinkering will prevent future debacles. It does not follow it should become more risk averse nor does it follow it needs to give up anonymous review.**

For one can make the anonymous review process public and combine it with crowd-review. What I have in mind is not uncommon in journals devoted (not surprisingly) to climate science. (What follows is inspired by the practice of Earth Science Dynamics; take a look at the flow chart of its review process here. [HT Charlotte Werndl; Joel Katzav))*** Here's how it works. A paper is handled as it always is handled and sent out to referees. These then submit their honest feedback. After minor review by the editor (to check that the report is not abusive, does not remove  confidentiality, etc.) the paper and the anonymous report are put up on the journal's website, where the author can respond to reviewer's objections, even re-submit the paper (with new reports, etc.), and where crowd-reviewers can participate on the paper (non-anonymously [in order to prevent the worst excesses familiar from the internet]). The exact details do not matter here. There are lots of ways to mix the process and many are pretty standard in various sciences. Luckily for Hypatia, it can draw on the expertise of a thriving and innovative community of feminist philosophers of science (some of whom sit on its various boards), many of whom have, in fact, scrutinized peer review practices ([see also this classic empirical paper by Wenneras &Wold] and recent work by Lee et al.)

As an aside, philosophy is a remarkably conservative and clubby professional discipline. (How clubby and boy-centric has long been known [recall here and here], but it has been now amply demonstrated in the Healy data and Weatherson's recent analysis.) This is especially problematic as it attempts to tackle issues that impinge on the lived experience(s) of just a few of its (ahh) gatekeepers.

What matters is that some such mixed referee process can (i) maintain anonymity of the main peer referees (and, thus, keep being thought scholarly), while simultaneously (ii) draw on a wider community of would be experts even interested/informed lay-people and (iii) alert the editors, authors, and referees to potential controversies that (this is important) one would wish to prevent. (The point is not to avoid controversy, but rather to be thoughtful and wise about them.) It also has the nice feature of (iv) creating interest in some of a  journal's publications. And, it puts the responsibility of publication back where it belongs: the editor and her team. Of course, such a would-be-technocratic solution does not end political controversy. But it would internalize political considerations in a transparent and fruitful way in the review process and it would address the systematic nature of the problems (for useful comments of their systematicity see thus post @Feministphilosophers). Of course, such mixed review practices were not practical (time, cost, etc.) in the pre-internet days. But that's no excuse now.

 

Historicizing the Collapse of Kantianism; on Speculative Realism and Knee-Jerk Realism

In 2007 or so, Continental philosophy caught up with the knee-jerk-realist-mood of Analytical metaphysics (recall here), when the four horsemen (Meillasoux, Harman, Brassier, and Hamilton Grant) of Speculative Realism were united in order to reject the Kantian heritage (or correlationism) which had constrained and informed the tradition through phenomenology and its critics. (I learned about this movement from Cogburn here and here.) If we telescope away from the inner logic of technical arguments and rhetorical gestures that led to such rejection, we can still ask the question what might such rejection signify given that it occurs on both sides of the analytical/continental divide?

Kant and Kantianizing tendencies made the intellectual world safe for science while respecting our human craving for the existence of normativity, human freedom, and a mindful God worth having. At bottom Kant's project respects cognitive limits by pleasing our ego's vanity; Kantianism reconciles the individual to being law-governed. Its demise marks the assertion of two opposing tendencies: a self-confident theism -- one that does not hide itself in fideism -- and a self-confident scientism. Obviously, these two tendencies need not be opposed which is why they can act so much in concert.

The theists take heart from the fact that secularization is not inevitable. It exposes the inner contradiction at heart of narratives of modernity, which purport to reject providence and final causes while embracing a myth of progress. Religion is, in fact, not dying off with the aged brought up in fading traditions. In fact, in a world in which capitalism and modern technologies make old linkages and boundaries seem obsolete, transnational, theistic religions, which offer the promise of transcendent justice and order are manifestly attractive to many young.  That is to say, while most Christian Metaphysicians are happy to focus on Christianizing metaphysics, they benefit from the renewed vitality of a sincere, political Islam in the face of centuries of colonialism and political defeats.  

The scientistic or technocratic double down on accelerating technological change fueled by both an open-ended scientific process as well as the massive stream of data and the availability of cheap computing power that can handle it.* They are exhilarated by the universal acids lurking in the sciences which respect no imposed limits. The scientistic embrace meritocracy and are at home with the selection procedures and the implicit cultural superiority or genetic hierarchies that accompanies it. Massive economic and educational inequality is, then, both the material and ideological source of their confidence as well as a feature that demands technocratic amelioration.

That is to say, both streams are at bottom not liberal (but not necessarily illiberal), which is about the individual's submission to impartial law which, in turn, recognizes the individual, even though they are the consequence of the victory of liberalism marked by 1989. Each stream can be reconciled with liberalism, but their tendencies ultimately strive toward the absolute (not just understood as God or the PSR, but also absolute contingency, etc.). This is undoubtedly apt for an age of unfolding man-made environmental catastrophes. 

Guest post by Joel Katzav: Philosophical Competence

[Below is a guest post by Joel Katzav, who inspired my post, which elicited this response by Jon Cogburn (and some discussion) at NewAPPS. It seems only fair to let him explain his position, after I hijacked his idea. The usual caveats apply.--ES]

Eric recently characterized my view that philosophical competence should be taken to include the ability constructively to participate in multiple philosophical traditions. I mostly like his formulation of the view, so I do not want to clarify it further here. I do, however, present some of the reasons I have for preferring it. One reason is pragmatic. The requirement would help to inculcate, in individual philosophers, a better appreciation of the epistemic limitations of philosophy and thus make it harder to maintain the view that philosophy is a science.  Another motivation is more principled. Philosophy, in my view, should be pervaded by forms of inquiry that aim to make no ultimate assumptions in answering its questions, including no ultimate methodological assumptions. Moreover, if it should be thus pervaded, many philosophers should strive not to belong to any philosophical tradition. And all philosophers should generally be able constructively to participate in a variety of philosophical traditions.

The idea that a field of research is a science tends to bring with it the idea that the field has a privileged methodology for addressing its fundamental questions. In the social sciences, for example, the claim that sociology is a science includes a commitment to the view that its questions are best answered by using a certain, so-called ‘positivist’, methodology, one attributed, rightly or wrongly, to the natural sciences and especially to physics. Similarly, when philosophy has been said to be a science, it has often been said to be a science by virtue of its having a privileged method. Russell, for example, told us that

[m]odern analytical empiricism [...] differs from that of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume by its incorporation of mathematics and its development of a powerful logical technique. It is thus able, in regard to certain problems, to achieve definite answers, which have the quality of science rather than of philosophy [History of Western Philosophy, chapter XXXI].