The article raises some really interesting questions, but I think we need to be more careful to distinguish the following two claims than the authors are:

1. The work published in applied philosophy journals is not of a type likely to generate impact, and is not reflexive about generating impact.
2. “Applied” philosophers make scarcely any impact at all.

Given that the authors have analysed only articles written in applied philosophy journals, their data could provide strong evidence in favour of (1), but would not do much to support (2). The authors seem to be aware of this point, but nonetheless seem at times to slip into assuming that (2) has been established, and argue on this basis: “At the core of the applied model of scholarship, then, is a faith in what we might call the passive diffusion model of knowledge transfer whereby peer-reviewed articles somehow lead to societal benefits. Of course, it’s just this kind of hand-waving nonchalance that precipitated the accountability culture now taking hold of the academy.”

However, (1) could be true even if (2) is false. Because of this, it would be useful for the study authors to cross-reference their results with the 2014 UK Philosophy REF impact cases studies. Here you have 98 cases of philosophy research that UK universities have put forward as having achieved significant impact. Work done for interdisciplinary or nonacademic audiences, and outside of ‘mainstream’ philosophy journals, seems to have played a large part in cementing these impacts in nearly all cases. So if there is an “impact deficit” problem here, it may lie more with assumptions about what sort of work counts as a high quality contribution to a philosophy journal, than with the impact that philosophers are in fact having. (See http://impact.ref.ac.uk/CaseStudies/Results.aspx?UoA=32 for the Philosophy REF Case Studies. There are also some useful case studies of impact by philosophers that were submitted to other REF panels: see e.g. http://impact.ref.ac.uk/CaseStudies/CaseStudy.aspx?Id=10492 for Simon Caney’s work on climate change policy)

The authors don’t seem to have made available the dataset of articles and their inclusion/exclusion criteria, so it’s hard to validate the claim that only one article “explicitly discussed impact as a problem for the field as a whole”. But having written one such article myself, and being aware of a few others, the numbers look on the low side. (See http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs40592-014-0001-z)

http://philosophyimpact.org/2015/04/22/introduction-socrates-tenured/

One excellent example of a philosopher not mentioned in the REF studies who combines clear, insightful research with political activism (in the UK) is Thom Brooks.

I agree with others that measuring (applied) philosophy’s impact solely from examining articles published in applied ethics journals is a fairly narrow approach. Worse, it might limit how we think about what philosophers can do to increase philosophy’s impact in the wider world. Almost certainly, writing for newspapers or magazines, or working with journalists, will get far wider readership than applied ethics journals. But much more importantly, I think philosophers should think think about how to get more engaged with decision-makers where they have some expertise. Bioethics has been a great example of this. Its impact is much less in the journal writing, and much more in hospital ethics boards, and IRBs and other such institutional efforts.

I do theoretical work on social norms. I very much doubt that my papers on the subject are going to have a wider impact beyond some philosophers and economists who likewise want to do theoretical work on norms. Instead, I and others at Penn (led by Cristina Bicchieri) train UNICEF staff to diagnose the presence of (harmful) social norms, and develop approaches to end harmful practices in a more sustainable way. This allows us to make a real-world impact, promoting agency and equality amongst the worst-off in the world. Because of this experience with UNICEF, and my formal theoretical work, I was hired to be one of the core authors of the 2015 World Development Report with the World Bank. As far as I’m aware, I’m the first philosopher to do this. It was a real learning experience for me, and I think I was able to bring philosophical and ethical considerations to the table that would have otherwise may not have been made salient. I had to learn how to translate philosophical work into a language that economists, policy-makers and on-the-ground development professionals could actually use. I’m continuing to do work with both UNICEF and the World Bank, precisely because I think my philosophy background brings something important to the table, and this work allows me to have fairly direct real-world impact. It’s one thing to write an article about the importance of (say) reducing racial and gender discrimination in education, it’s another to go to Guatemala and work with their education Ministry to develop policy approaches to reducing the drop-out rate amongst indigenous girls.

Obviously, I don’t think that all philosophers need to do work like this. It’s important to work on pure philosophy, and it’s important to work out frameworks for thinking about applications. But I do think that philosophy as a discipline would serve itself well to think more broadly about how philosophy can have an impact. If we want to grow as a discipline, and remain healthy, it’s important for us to think about how we can engage with the wider community. We also might want to think about how we can, as a discipline, make this kind of activity more welcomed and not frowned upon. Philosophy has more or less ceded these public outreach efforts to economics and STEM advocates. We don’t really show the public (or particular institutions) that we have a valuable set of tools to understand the world around us. We can do better on this front.

As everyone here has noted, the featured study is rather parochial. Strong philosophical inquiry that also makes concerted efforts to connect with real-world issues (so-called) is happening in many venues. For all that, I think I find the basic premise of the make-an-impact-in-the-real-world view somewhat disagreeable or at least unjustified. It seems to stem from the more general scientistic zeitgeist that reckons “objectivity” and practical usefulness/applicability as the only measurements of value; a zeitgeist that is increasingly putting pressure on the humanities to shape up if they want to keep their funding. I’m not terribly convinced that academic philosophers need to fit themselves to this mold, however – though it is doubtless true that some areas of philosophical inquiry hold a more or less natural relationship to “real-world” concerns (e.g. some moral and political philosophy).

That philosophers only speak to other philosophers (a claim that is over stated, by the way) is not intrinsically problematic. In working out complex ideas, it is only helpful to exchange those ideas with fellows who have the necessaries to fully engage with the concepts and arguments deployed in philosophical analysis. I think it’s perfectly fine to exist in that space if one’s work lends itself to that sort of confined, “esoteric” conversation. This is precisely why a division of labor is important. There are others who can (and likely much better than we philosophers) draw upon said conversations and develop beneficial ways of “transmitting them to society”. In my judgment, if philosophers take on the dual task of doing philosophy and finding ways to make their work explicitly “useful” to the real-world, the work will be compromised. I mean…there’s a reason I’ve chosen to study philosophy rather than one of the STEM disciplines. What the hell was the point of that decision if I’m only to find that I must overhaul all my work to make it more like the sciences!

Of course, I wouldn’t want to downplay the concerns the authors of the study raise. There is doubtless room for philosophers to extend the boarders of discourse. Nevertheless, I’m more inclined to think that if philosophers want to have a more prominent public voice, the goal shouldn’t be to make the work (by forcing it?) more relevant to real-world concerns but to more publicly contend against the predominant and narrow view that STEM fields are the only disciplines of any value given their “objectivity” and practical applicability – this instrumentalization of reason. In short, we need better PR!

I just noticed that the wording at the end of the second paragraph might be read to imply that Kymlicka is not a political philosopher. For the record, he is, to my mind, a political philosopher par excellence.

Perhaps we should aim to have more power, wider recognition, and increased authority in public policy processes, as suggested by one strand in the original blog post, where philosophers would be involved with stakeholders in public policy processes and “could take root and speak with some measure of authority”. But even if we should aim to do so, must we limit our conception of impact in this way?

My hunch is that even if we should attempt to have a more influential role in changing public policy, we must also try to do what other commenters above (e.g., Schaefer, Tirrell, Muldoon) have intimated: namely, have a serious conversation about expanding the current model of what counts as scholarship to include a wider array of activities so that multiple ways of engaging with the community are deemed fully legitimate means of earning tenure and promotion. I don’t think this has much, if anything, to do with the discipline-based nature of the academy. Rather, it relates to current notions of excellence in scholarship. If we don’t widen the notion of academic scholarship, folks who are eager to work beyond the confines of traditional institutional boundaries will have to wait until post-tenure before doing so in a way that is not genuinely risky to their academic careers.

But then the question becomes similar to one that Justin raised at the end of his post: if we decide to enlarge the conception of scholarship, what, exactly, should we include? Precisely which ways of engaging with the wider community should be deemed fully legitimate for tenure and promotion? It looks as though I might have to attend that Public Philosophy Network meeting in San Francisco and find out for myself.

@Michael Brent:

Why assume that this kind of “applied” activity is best done within the confines of a traditional academic career?

You write: “If we don’t widen the notion of academic scholarship, folks who are eager to work beyond the confines of traditional institutional boundaries will have to wait until post-tenure before doing so in a way that is not genuinely risky to their academic careers. ”

But the reality is that increasing numbers of PhD holders have no choice but to “work beyond the confines of traditional institutional boundaries” if they want to work at all, since tenure-track jobs aren’t available to them. If philosophical training really can be usefully applied to other endeavors, why not aim to have philosophers directly employed by the firms or institutions doing that work? I take it that something like this already happens with bioethicists with jobs on hospital review boards. How does this work in other fields – do chemists get credit toward tenure for work done outside the academy, or do they just get industry jobs?

For those interested in reading a philosopher who has written very thoughtfully about what applied philosophy means in the context of bioethics, I would highly recommend Judith Andre’s book “Bioethics as Practice.”

I realize that bioethics attracts a fair amount of deserved scorn, but under its rubric there is also much valuable work being translated from theory into practice.

I agree, discussing impact is not a measure of having impact, nor is it the most effective means of impacting.

But I’m not convinced by your explanation of why philosophy of medical ethics has had more impact than other areas of applied ethics. Here is an alternative (or supplementary?) hypothesis: What accounts for the impact of philosophy of medical ethics upon medical practice is the receptivity of medical practitioners to taking ethics seriously. People who choose to go into medicine already care a great deal about patients – they are the kind of people who want to help others with medicine (i.e. selection bias). So they are the kind of people who are very receptive to applied medical ethics. But people who are in, say business or animal agriculture, are not going into their fields with altruistic motivations. The impact of business ethics and animal welfare ethics is decidedly less impactful. Business ethics does engage with the relevant fields outside philosophy – but its target audience is not as receptive.

I sat in on a bioethics class (filled with premeds) this past semester, as well as a business ethics class (filled with MBA students). Both classes had plenty of people who took the material seriously, but there was a palpable difference in priorities between the two groups of students and a resulting difference in receptivity to philosophy of applied ethics.

To summarize the general consensus of this thread: impact is determined by how one actually interacts with the world outside academic philosophy. There is obviously an important discussion to be had about the best ways to do this (e.g., is it more effective to submit papers to conferences in other fields, or contact policy makers directly?, etc.). But the fact that people do not usually discuss these questions when they are adressing first-order problems in journal articles is hardly surprising. These questions properly belong to meta-applied philosophy (i.e., the applied philosophy of applied philosophy).

On a broader note, my first reaction is that I suspect there is something of an impact issue, even though the authors’ data suggest nothing about this either way. The cynic (in the non-philosophical sense) in me is suspicious of the claim that people listen to philosophers. But whether philosophy has an impact is an empirical claim, and thus cannot be established by a cynical gut-reaction. Upon reflection, I begin to suspect that most of the philosophy that actually tries to be interdisciplinary succeeds to some extent. But applied ethics isn’t what comes to mind. Rather, I think of philosophy of biology, psychology, cog sci, and linguistics. Not so much Phil physics. But I suspect this is due to the sociology of contemporary physics, which seems to be divided between a field of theoreticians who have given into the naive dogmatic speculative metaphysical impulse in their obsession with beautiful mathematics, and the verificationistic experimentalists whose motto is “shut up and calculate”. Neither of these mindsets are very open to philosophical thinking. At any rate, the field is currently in the data collection stage, so there isn’t much point in careful philosophical analyses until all of the data is in. (The theoretical status of string theory becomes a moot point if supersymmetry is experimentally disconfirmed. Or so my physicist friend tells me, at any rate.)

I would also point out that most scientists I know are also driven by a desire to understand the world, regardless of whether their experiments will have some sort of practical implications down the line. The idea that knowledge only has extrinsic practical value is “scientistic” in the sense that it is an idea that belongs to the rabble who worship “Science”. It is not the attitude of actual scientists. When actual scientists are critical of philosophy and the other humanities, they tend to be critical on epistemological grounds. It is not that our knowledge is worthless, but rather that we are just plain bad at acquiring knowledge. Frankly, it is a valid criticism and we should respond to it by refining our methods.

I’ve been travelling and so come to this late. I’m surprised more philosophers do not aim for greater impact of their work beyond academia. My work with MPs, Peers and policy advisors are some of the most engaging and fruitful. A few weeks ago I organised a panel on political theory and impact at the Houses of Parliament. I have a brief piece commissioned by Political Studies Review on philosophy and impact – http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1478-9302.12007/abstract Their next issue is a special issue on political theory and impact where I reply to several critics. Impact is challenging, but more rewarding than many might think.