[Bups-dis] Fresh topic: Let's have some more cults.

[D.A. Crowe]

I've managed to be remarkably and unexpectedly ill for the past three* 
days or so (don't row with a cold kids), so length will probably suffer. 
(*now five)

But I wanted to pitch to a wider audience something I keep on bringing 
up on a one to one basis – possibly to some of the people on this list 
at the last conference, I can’t remember.

Sometimes the description ‘a Cambridge philosopher’ (for example) is 
geographical and sometimes it’s more than that. For example, if you said 
it of someone around the time of Wittgenstein, it probably meant they 
were a Wittgensteinian (the costume and mannerisms would give them away 
soon enough anyway). If you said it around the time of Ayer it would 
probably mean they were a logical positivist. Even now if you talk about 
so-and-so being ‘very much’ an Oxford philosopher, they are possibly a 
little bit more interested In language than perhaps they ought to be.

A long way round for a simple concept: there are times in the history of 
philosophy, particularly the recent history of academic philosophy where 
particular places have been associated with particular ways of doing 
philosophy – with particular methods and particular interests. Along 
with this particularisation there tends to be key individuals – perhaps 
blessed with particular philosophical acumen, perhaps in the right place 
at the right time (not only am I not much of a believer in the ‘great 
man’ approach to history, I think I’m less comfortable with it applied 
to philosophy than seems to be the common sense view. Hume, for example, 
strikes me as performing as much a task of synthesising the views of 
others as formulating his own, and those own are informed by recent 
research and discoveries – not purely ‘mental bootstrapping’) but 
perhaps most significantly lacking an adversity towards indoctrination 
and creating a cult of personality. This last aspect is the one I’m most 
interested in,

It strikes me that not only are there not really many cult figures in 
philosophy but there’s an actual effort being made to avoid them. When I 
raise the issue with Cambridge students – and mention the lack of a 
contemporary Wittgenstein – some have suggested he is held specifically 
in mind when people go out of their way to avoid setting up cults. This 
may well be the case, but I can’t help wishing there was some attempt at 
creating some mass movement or other. I tend to get the impression in 
speaking to the graduate students that with the exception of a few 
outliers (moreso among undergraduates, who will occasionally claim to be 
idealists or solipsists, and will be dualists just to spite and so on) 
most people are broadly on the same page. So why not make it official 
and try to convince the undergraduate population that your view (as a 
member of the faculty) is unambiguously the correct one. You can easily 
attend a full series of lectures and remain broadly unclear as to what 
the lecturer’s position. I suppose I’m broadly asking for there to be a 
nice little cult of Simon Blackburn etc, whereby people could judge 
based on where you are what your positions on particular issues are 
likely to be.

It strikes me as a good idea, principally because it seems to be the 
case that philosophy proceeds at a faster pace when there are ‘schools’; 
and those localised, not spread across many different faculties with a 
member here and a member there. The reason simply being that ideas 
become more refined the more brains are working on them for more time, 
and back-and-forth in journals is little substitute for constant 
interchange which would be possible if people were in the same faculty. 
I suppose the best example of this would be the Ryle, Austin, Hare and 
Strawson in Oxford. There are complaints made here and there about 
Austin’s practices (the department was as much dedicated to linguistic 
philosophy by hiring practices and graduate admissions procedures as by 
arguing people round to their view, apparently) but the end result was 
an entire university given over to a particular way of doing philosophy, 
which was in an ideal position to give linguistic philosophy it’s best go.

I’ve a thought that this may happen with philosophy blogs over time. For 
the moment, the academic blogs tend to be general purpose, based around 
a general subject area, and not arguing for one particular view or 
another. There are exceptions to this however, such as the Experimental 
Philosophy Blog (my internet connection is down so I cannot obtain a URL 
– google?); a blog devoted to using the tools of the empirical science 
to investigate certain philosophical questions (at least in part). They 
found at least interesting results on the differences in comprehending 
reference in different cultural groups. The unification here is a shared 
view on a way in which philosophy could develop (a method, but not 
really a method-of-doing-philosophy) by using empirical tools rather 
than introspective methods to talk about intuitions.

On of the reasons this might not happen so much at present is the trend 
against ‘systems’. I’ve never fully understood this, so if anyone can 
explain to me the motivation of being interested in isolated little 
questions rather than trying to integrate one’s whole thought together… 
I’m all ears. But ultimately, if there is going to be places devoted to 
‘a thing’ in philosophy it needs either to be a method or a particular 
system. If two people are working on the same sub-sub topic they are 
either arguing against each other, or else they are arguing the same 
thing in which case (supposing each to be below the level of professor) 
they are rivals. Neither way seems particularly conducive to the 
formation of philosophical covens.

I suppose my suggestion is as much one about teaching methodology as 
anything else. As far as I can see there seems to be a trend amongst 
grad students to almost explicitly be writing in the shadow of their 
graduate supervisor, whereas undergraduates are encouraged to ‘make 
their own mind up’ by the broadest and most superficial surveys of the 
literature followed by the production of an essay. I like it because 
it’s free, but the end result after three years or so (as far as I can 
see) tend to be the u/g in question trooping to the banner of one or 
more major contemporary figure (Davidson, Dennett, McDowell, Rawls, 
Lewis, Quine, Wittgenstein, Bernard Williams, Chalmers – to name the 
objects of groupies I have encountered, including myself). The question 
does occur to me whether this is actually preferential to having an 
individual worldview – that of the professor – forced upon them from day 
one, prompting either development of those views (or ‘deep engagement’ 
with them) or else rebellion from them using their own framework and 
vocabulary, which is a) just as useful, b) makes the person in question 
just as much a part of the same philosophical clique.

So: Universities perhaps not so much encouraging as ceasing to 
discourage indoctrination by higher members of the faculty: a good thing 
or a bad thing? Or: not obviously a bad thing? I suppose it might be 
fair to say here I’m more interested in what is good for philosophy here 
(and no, I’m not wholly sure what that means either).

Hopefully the above wasn’t too rambling. It was written over a couple of 
evenings as it’s rather hard for me to think at the moment (illness). I 
can trust that the main thrust came over, even if the rhetoric was 
somewhat lacking. There’s another linked topic I’d like to just throw in 
at the end, though if anything it’s at a totally different angle.

A while back I came across (I think via Brian Leiter’s blog) an open 
letter which had been written to the American Philosophical Association 
(    ). It asks for philosophers to stop being partisan when it comes to 
funding applications, because at the moment apparently e.g. analytic 
philosophers are rejecting funding applications from people who belong 
to continental traditions deemed worthless. This is, according to the 
letter, a unique phenomenon amongst the academic disciplines: the 
literature folk don’t do it, the historians don’t do it, even the 
educated fleas don’t do it. So why do philosophers do it and (the letter 
asks) please can they stop?**

Here is a thought experiment: I am Steve. I am a philosopher. I’m not 
explicitly a member of any tradition or other, but I have strong views 
about certain stuff going on under the umbrella of philosophy. I have 
managed to get myself appointed to whatever body is responsible for the 
hiring or allocation of funds involved (again – internet connection, I 
can’t actually see what I’m talking about and it’s been a good year or 
so since I read it). I am supposed to consider an application from 
someone who belongs to a tradition which I believe 1) hurts philosophy 
in so far as it’s production of high volume meaningless verbiage casts a 
bad shadow on philosophy as a serious discipline, 2) hurts philosophy in 
so far as it enchants the minds of poor little undergraduates unable to 
think for themselves and 3) hurts the world in so far as it argues for a 
wishy washy relativism that I’m sure will eventually lead to nuclear 
terrorism or irreversible global warming or both. Now, do I have an 
obligation to philosophy to accept this application (it comes from 
someone, after all, who as well as being a philosophical anti-christ in 
my eyes, is nevertheless still a philosopher). Or, do I have an 
obligation to myself to reject them. One of the interesting issues here 
is: as a philosopher should a philosopher from an utterly (in my eyes) 
utterly worthless school actually count for more than a historian or a 
linguist or a psychologist or someone less controversial and probably 
more useful to my work.

The letter does seem to presuppose that the underlying framework in the 
other disciplines is the same for philosophy. But this doesn’t seem at 
all true: at least historians who disagree can usually be sure of, if 
not following the same method, then having the same general goal. With 
philosophy, because it’s all up for grabs there are some traditions 
which not only talk past each other but have a hard time even 
understanding why the other is doing whatever they claim to be doing. As 
a result it strikes me as not unreasonable to say that for one 
philosopher another philosopher (not ‘any other’, thankfully) may be 
absolutely worthless if not on balance detrimental in there effects, and 
therefore less useful than, say, a neutral historian etc.

What do people think? Should philosophers ‘all just get along’? Is there 
some kind of pressure on me to concede that even if I think a certain 
body of work is worthless is ‘might not be’?

Duncan.

**Subsequent investigation, upon attaining an Internet connection, has 
not turned up trumps. I can assure you there is an open letter somewhere 
to this effect, but as I am unable to locate it I suspect it has nothing 
to do with the APA. Regardless, I still consider the question 
interesting and in many respects opposite to the issue with which the 
majority of my post is concerned. I hope no one will mind that I chose 
to leave it as it was despite its considerable gaps.