I think philosophers do have something distinctive and useful to add to public discourse. First, we are – or are supposed to be – skilled at reasoning and uncovering flawed reasoning. These skills can be applied to any argument.

Second, Dancy’s comment about the aims of moral philosophy may fit his type of moral philosophy but doesn’t match vast swathes of moral philosophy. Applied moral philosophers are skilled thinkers who spend lots and lots of time thinking about abortion or famine relief or equality or, the list goes on. If we think there is any point in thinking about these issues, how could applied moral philosophers not have something to contribute?

On a certain conception of philosophy, then the thoughts expressed by Quine and Dancy make perfect sense. However, on a more Socratic view, the cultivation of wisdom is not merely for the sake of understanding, but for determining how we ought to live. If we opt for this latter view, and seek to cultivate the intellectual and moral virtues that are necessary for it, then we do have something of value to say to our students who are seeking a good and fulfilling life, and to the culture at large. I for one have never seen philosophy as merely the pursuit of understanding, but as a wisdom-discovering enterprise that has something very positive to contribute to individual and social flourishing. When I have ventured into the realm of public philosophy, in both speaking and writing, it seems to me many are interested and appreciative of what this type of philosophy can do as a means to these ends.

Unless we regard professional philosophy as a mere personal indulgence, of no value to people beyond professional philosophy, we had better ask ourselves what good our work is to people beyond professional philosophy. Why should people like me be paid to do philosophy if our ideas never leave philosophy departments?

Wow. And people complain about articles in the New York Times’ “Stone” column. It’s got nothing on this rubbish. How does one infer from the fact that a student studies philosophy for spiritual comfort that they aren’t *additionally* motivated by intellectual curiosity? What possible reason could one have for assuming that good philosophy students are always or primarily moved by intellectual curiosity?

Anyone with any teaching experience knows good students who are motivated by grades, parental and peer pressure, narcissistic perfectionism, economic insecurity, or financial ambition, as much as by intellectual curiosity. Books have been devoted to the fact that a sizeable percentage of Ivy League students are of this type. Those of us teaching outside of top schools also know that being motivated by curiosity and is a luxury of privilege, one few of our students have. In any case, *my* best philosophy students aren’t motivated in either of these ways. They’re motivated because they find the questions important, and because they care about the answers to those questions, not because they’ve found a glorified crossword puzzle to solve.

Dancy’s comment is strange at best: as if it goes without saying that living one’s life well has nothing to do with “understanding something.” One of the great disappointments of “public philosophy” is discovering that so many philosophers, when they begin to speak outside their area of expertise, are astonishingly poor reasoners. And of course it ignores the context in which we ask if moral philosophers have some value in the public sphere. Who’s the competition? Philosophers are hardly not *singularly* ill equipped to tell people how to live their lives, when they are predominantly given instruction on how to live their lives by algorithms, CEOs, politicians, priests, and cable news.

I’m honestly torn about this, but I think people are being much too harsh on Quine.

First, Quine of course admits that people can have multiple motivations for studying philosophy. He’s specifically talking about people who study it *primarily* for spiritual comfort. And it *is* rather hard to see how people who are doing that are likely to be good at it, since such motivated reasoning can and does sometimes conflict with the direction of the evidence.

Second, the benefits of studying organic chemistry and other sciences for the uninitiated can’t be what justifies their study, since for most of human history those benefits were paltry indeed. What great benefits did the study of anything bring the common people before, say, 1770? Note that I’m not saying there were none, but I am saying that there weren’t many–the average person in 1770 was living a life pretty similar to the life of an average person in 1670 or indeed 1270.

Third, I take it that Quine’s point isn’t that *no* ordinary folk are interested in philosophical questions at all, it’s just that most are not *very* interested, or only interested in certain very specific questions that many philosophers do not work on. I mean, if philosophy is important (to the folk) at all, then the questions about modality and modal reasoning that Quine was interested in are important, since modal reasoning is very common throughout philosophy. But non-philosophers are just not that interested in modal reasoning. Indeed, lots of philosophers don’t have any particular interest in studying modal reasoning!

Finally, it seems to me that Quine’s description of philosophy describes the situation with, say, English pretty accurately. Does everyone here think that there would be something wrong with English professors focusing their attention on “great books” that few ordinary people care about rather than *Twilight* or *50 Shades of Grey*? If not, what is the disanology with philosophy professors studying things that most ordinary people don’t care about?

There is, I think, much to what Quine says here. Much that interests and preoccupies the professional philosopher has little to do with the pressing business of life and so can be thoroughly ignored by the wider culture (as it mostly is). Might the non-philosopher be made to appreciate that some of this work is, in fact, relevant to them, as Matt LaVine suggests? I’m certain of that. But I don’t think all of it can be made so, and this is the realm of ‘philosophy for philosophy’s sake,’ where what drives it are the interests and abilities of the professionals themselves. In this regard, professional philosophers are akin to Civil War reanactors, or Dungeon and Dragons addicts: they are playing a game – albeit a very difficult and conceptually challenging game, but a game nevertheless. That isn’t to denigrate what they do; there is nothing problematic, in itself, with such conceptual games. But rarely can we talk about things in themselves, without reference to anything else. Philosophy’s position in the academy is growing ever more tenuous, and philosophers cannot expect that public or private largesse will continue indefinitely. That is why it behooves those philosophers whose work does impact society – which is, I think, the bulk of their work – not be shy in bringing it to society’s attention. So long as the perception remains that philosophy is aloof from the concerns of the everyday, the more endangered it will become.

I think Bertrand Russell’s discussion of this very subject in “Philosophy for Laymen” is far more thoughtful and enlightening than Quine’s or Dancy’s.
http://www.users.drew.edu/~jlenz/br-lay-philosophy.html

Greg Littmann writes, “people aren’t paying us to benefit ourselves and there is no reason that they should”.

I don’t understand this. As far as I can tell, I’m paid to teach my students well, be on a bunch of committees etc, and to raise (or maintain) the status of my university by doing good research. If my research really just benefitted me–if the profession thought it was crap but I loved it, then I agree: we’re not being paid to do *that*. But Quine’s research, for example, was very well regarded by the profession. So I’m having trouble seeing how Quine wasn’t doing what he was being paid to do.

I think it is worth noting that the impression of Quine’s views that many people seem to have drawn on the basis of the quoted paragraph — that he saw no value in attempts by professional philosophers to engage with non-specialist audiences, or vice versa — is not borne out by his career, which included a very large amount of writing aimed at the educated general reader.

For instance: “The Ways of Paradox” and “Foundations of Mathematics” appeared in *Scientific American*; “On the Application of Modern Logic” was broadcast on the radio in Berlin; “Necessary Truth” was a lecture for the Voice of America; “Things and Their Place in Theories* began as an article in *The American Scholar*; moreover, *Theories and Things* also contains (as well as the response to Adler) reviews from the NYRB, the TLS, and the *Washington Post*; *Methods of Logic* is an undergraduate textbook; and so on.

JDRox, I’d like to reply to three points. Firstly, people are not paying professional philosophers to benefit each other, nor should they. Secondly, that we are rightly paid for our teaching and service doesn’t in itself justify paying us for research. Thirdly, that our research generates “status” for the university is not an end in itself. I put it to you that the justification for funding philosophical research is that we provide important ideas to people outside the profession.

I’m very unclear, Greg Littman, about the sense in which you’re using ‘justify’. Is the claim that it’s morally impermissible to pay philosophers for pure research? Or that no one can ever has adequate reason to pay philosophers for pure research? Or merely that philosophers are in fact never paid for pure research, but only for activities useful outside the profession? (I think all these claims are false, but they’re false for different reasons.)

I didn’t formulate that very well. Let’s use the term ‘research*’ to denote pure research that lacks plausible practical application (in the ordinary sense of ‘practical’) and is not of significant interest to nonspecialists. A lot of things that academics (not just philosophers) do count as research*: a great deal of set theory, some highly speculative aspects of theoretical physics, the history of Byzantine coinage or the details of the administrative structures of Ming dynasty China, and so on.

(I personally don’t want to say that this doesn’t benefit people outside the profession, because I think one derives benefit simply from being part of a world in which human beings acquire and record knowledge about these things, even if one never learns about it and it never has any impact on one’s daily life, but I assume you’d contest that claim.)

Is your view that it’s wrong to pursue research*? That it’s wrong to pay people to pursue research*? That it’s morally licit to pay people to pursue research* but a bad idea? That, in fact, people are never paid for research* but only for research that isn’t research*?

Beau, I’m not clear on what counts as “plausible practical application” or “significant interest” to non-specialists. All of the examples you gave of research* strike me as not research* on the grounds that they may have important practical applications or be of interest to non-specialists. I wouldn’t want to see any of these abandoned. Rather, I would want researchers to ask themselves what the practical applications might be and how to supply information to non-specialists. It is certainly possible in principle that a subject an academic wants to pursue could be a waste of public money, but I suppose that is something you would agree with.

You are correct that I don’t believe it is a benefit to people just to share the world with other people who know things. It strikes me as akin to being poor but having the satisfaction of knowing that other folks have money.

Anon Grad, yes we have a duty to teach. It doesn’t not follow that by teaching, we have discharged our duties.

/Of course/ philosophy has something to contribute to public discourse. We don’t need to stretch very far to reach the public’s curiosity, because it is already reaching towards us. Three examples:

1. Some percentage of the population has always been spontaneously curious about questions of the “How do I know I’m not a brain in a vat?” variety, but how many of them have any idea that philosophy got somewhere on that in the 1980s?

2. In cutting-edge science –or popularizations of it, at any rate– questions are often raised about whether some new theory is empirical enough. (E.g. the “inflation” theory in cosmology, or the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.) It looks to me like people are hungry for a clarification of “empirical enough”.

3. As more people depart religion, there is public anxiety about what’s left of morality: is there still a structure that lets us debate moral questions, or it all sludge and sentimentality now?

My opinion is that we can serve the public best by showing them solutions to problems like these, i.e. scratching actual itches.

The hard part is to get far enough into these topics to provide solutions, within the concentration span of a public that doesn’t want to take a degree course. That will entail sacrifices: bypassing many of the “merely of historical interest” theories, stepping over fine distinctions, simplifying terminology. And yes, there will be a loss of rigour. So here’s the deal: we provide solutions, and just a sketch of the working — which is exactly the same deal you get in popularized science.

That’s my own plan anyway. If you click on my name above it will take you to my new blog, where work has begun.