As a graduate student from a racial minority, I find this very patronizing. I work on the epistemic of modals, because I think questions about necessity and possibility are philosophically more fundamental, even though sociologically or historically they are less important than questions about race. But the “core” of my interest is philosophy, not sociology or history. I would have become a racial studies graduate student, if I really cared to be in a field where my experience as a racial minority was at the center of inquiry.

If we don’t become more open to this supposedly ‘peripheral’ ‘applied’ stuff then philosophy will be dismissed from the academy in a few decades.

I wrote the first comment. I’m sorry about the quick reaction – it was too quick. Sorry about that (and apologies to professor Barnes). However, in case you are wondering why I got so pissy, here is how it sounded to me:

– I don’t mean to suggest that you don’t care about epistemic modals or realism about ordinary objects, but I’m going to say a lot of things that imply that you don’t REALLY care about epistemic modals or realism. You THINK that you care about these topics because of philosophical reasons. But if you look carefully, you notice that you only care about these things because a canon full of white people cared about it. In fact, if we liberate you and let you come and write about your ideas, it’s likely that the foundational topics are going to change. It would be bizarre, if they didn’t…

It’s true that much other work in philosophy has some metaphysical commitments/presuppositions, but it doesn’t really follow that metaphysics need be a core area of the discipline. Much work in philosophy is committed to certain familiar arithmetic assumptions, but arithmetic is not a core philosophical discipline.

What would make one area really ‘core’, I think, is if the answers to questions that are currently the active topics of debate would make a big difference to how debates in other fields could go.

Now your mileage may vary on this, but I don’t think metaphysics as it is currently done has that feature. I don’t think that many live debates in epistemology, ethics or language turn on the resolution of active debates in metaphysics. (Whereas live debates in epistemology, ethics and language often do turn on the resolution of debates in one of the other two.) So metaphysics doesn’t feel, by this measure, that ‘core’. With one notable exception; work on social ontology feels very important to some issues in political philosophy, social epistemology, etc. But it’s hard to see the broader philosophical implications of work on, say, location.

Could be I’m wrong about what makes something core. Could be I’m wrong about the relation between metaphysics as it’s practiced and other areas as they’re practiced. In fact, I’d be surprised if I’m not wrong about one of those two things. But I think there is a decent case that metaphysics isn’t particularly core to current philosophy. One doesn’t have to be ‘deliberately obtuse’ to make that case.

And even if it isn’t ‘core’, metaphysics is really important. It’s been a central focus of European philosophy since the pre-Socratics, was one of the central foci of medieval Islamic philosophy, of Indian philosophy of several different eras, etc. The questions it asks are intrinsically interesting, whatever their implications for the rest of philosophy, as evidenced by their lasting importance across a range of cultural backgrounds. People shouldn’t diss metaphysics. But I think the case that it is no more ‘core’ than philosophy of race is (perhaps surprisingly) plausible.

I live for the day when people will stop talking about the “core” and the “periphery” in our field. There is no way to do so without valorizing certain interests or lines of thought and disparaging others, and no way to do that without privileging certain arbitrary sensibilities. And once you seet up the core, you entrench it and perpetuate the whole thing.

I can only think of one reason we need ‘a core’ and this is so that there are enough people doing the same thing that we can talk to each other and make…I want to say ‘progress’–perhaps that is optimistic. There needs to be the possibility of a conversation among us. I truly don’t believe we need a core for that reason, however. The structure of philosophy will provide this. People really will already cluster around a set of ideas because they need interlocutors and because philosophy has a particular history. Since graduate school I have rarely heard the ‘core’ or ‘foundation’ idea used except to shut out bits of philosophy that are too intermixed with social realities–even very implicitly. You might say then that it is an ideology that is designed to prevent certain ideas from being examined, but this would be way too simple. It seems to arise from the history of philosophy as well as from the power of science. I think it is an unconscious imitation of science and a (respectable) attempt to hew to our history. But this is just a guess. The fact is that I do not think anyone can truly defend it in a foundational way that doesn’t take big pieces of the argument on faith–pieces about ‘what matters’ that ultimately devolve into what someone values (which could be perfectly legitimate but it’s going to be hard to show they are universal). There’s no foundation to the foundation in other words. So I’d say we should go for these things on pragmatist grounds. What are the pragmatic reasons for having a core? We can’t imitate the social sciences. We’d just turn into bad social scientists. Does having ‘a core’ make it easier for us to hitch our wagon to science? And is science the way to go for the whole field? Sometimes people think this–but why? Science is about so many things in any case. It certainly doesn’t make us further from science to talk about race or gender really. There’s plenty of science about that. If we all just want to do philosophy of physics maybe that seems like a safe landing spot but I have my doubts–physicists are not exactly begging for us to hang out with them. Are we going to be handmaidens to linguistics then? Psychology? Biology? Where exactly are we trying to go? We may have more to contribute both to science and the world if we do open up to these more socially-laden topics.

I, too, have a bad reaction to the idea that demographics are just going to change what’s core though. I get where the grad student was coming from with his or her comment. And there’s another issue–it implies only racial minorities will care about race–or want to do it. Only women are interested in feminism. Feminism: Philosophy by and for women! Boy, howdy I can’t think of a better way to make every philosopher who doesn’t do these things think twice about whether they are worth doing–not just white and male philosophers but–I don’t think if someone said ‘hey you’re a woman, so here’s the kind of philosophy you will like’ I would never have been attracted to feminism. Instead a white male philosopher (actually two different white male philosophers) got me to read feminist philosophy of science, which they considered an interesting take down of a certain way of thinking about how science is done–and it seemed to them that anyone who cares about philosophy of science should think about. The truth is that it can take a woman to DO that philosophy sometimes. This is why you desperately need diversity in an intellectual community. Different people know different things. That it takes a woman to figure out some bizarre things about a current notion of scientific objectivity could be true in the way that you wouldn’t have the same Theory of Justice if Rawls hadn’t been interested in European history and the wars over religion. And then you wouldn’t find out all the essential things that are left out of Rawls until you read Charles Mills, who noticed them because of the things he knew, not because of his demographic category. I’ve never met Charles Mills but I get the feeling reading him that a lot of what he knows is from reading books he read and thought about–just as Rawls’ take on liberty is from books he read and thought about. Why people have the thoughts they have has many explanations but the great thing is that you get way more fertile research programs if you have diversity of thought and diversity of people does lead to that. However, it’s not a direct path from demographics to X type of philosophy. I’m pretty sure this (roughly) is what Professor Barnes means when she is talking about demographics but I’d be curious to know.

So one practical reason to avoid having a core is that it will make you stupid. You will start pushing away ideas that could be quite fertile over time for your field. You risk becoming parochial and insular. The ‘core’ idea and the ‘foundational’ idea and the pushing away of anything you aren’t used to is a recipe for dogmatism. It’s also very boring.

“My two cents. For me metaphysics would be the core of the discipline and very little else would be worth thinking about until metaphysics has been sorted out. Any other approach will lead to theories about this and that based on metaphysical assumptions that are, well, just assumptions, and thus very possibly utterly wrong assumptions. I’m not even sure that I’d call person a philosopher where they do not focus on metaphysics as the core of the discipline. We would then be dealing with minor symptoms instead of the disease and there could no hope of a cure.”

This strikes me as wrong for a number of reasons.

First, all areas of human inquiry make tacit ontological assumptions(it’s pretty hard to inquire into some phenomenon or other without making some assumptions about what exists). If your position is that ‘very little else would be worth thinking about until metaphysics has been sorted out), then there is little worth thinking about. This would include the natural sciences, mathematics, all other areas of philosophy(Including those that are traditionally included core, like epistemology, ethics, mind, and so on). If sorting out ontology is required for any productive thinking on a topic to take place, than pretty much the whole of human intellectual history is filled to the brim with unproductive thought.

In addition, your comment seems to be inconsistent with the current practice of metaphysics, or at least analytic metaphysics. You seem to perceive metaphysicians to make lofty rulings of what does or doesn’t exist from on high, and the other disciplines to revise themselves based on their rulings. But from what I understand of metaphysics(at least, contemporary analytic metaphysics), the theorizing tends to be constrained by those other areas of human inquiry you look down upon. It’s typically considered a demerit to some metaphysical theory or other if it is inconsistent with science(for example, the objections to the A-theory of time posed by relativity). In the metaphysics of mathematics, metaphysical theories rise and fall due to their ability or inability to capture mathematical practice. The metaphysics of mind continue to be influenced by findings in cognitive science. And metaphysics is full of tools meant soften the blow of radically revisionary theories(Paraphrase, fundamentality and the grounding relation, Sider’s conception of structure, etc). It’s not to say that working in ontology might lead us to revise or reconsider theorizing in other domains, but it is hardly the sort of one way street you are making it out to be. Metaphysics hasn’t operated as the ‘Queen of the Sciences’ for quite some time, and I think for the most part that’s a good thing.

Also, it doesn’t seem to that merely being about metaphysics or ontology is what determines whether or not something falls into the ‘core’ or the ‘periphery’, either. While I’m mainly interested in formal epistemology, I have both a interest in metaphysics and philosophy of race. One falls into the core, one falls into the periphery. However, a big topic, with a large literature surrounding it, is dedicated to the ontology of race. Discussions in such areas use the same tools as metaphysicians, as the same questions as metaphysicians, and can be as rigorous and interesting as anything else going on in metaphysics. Yet, it is shunted to the periphery, while other topics like mereology are not. That isn’t intended to attack people interested in mereology, but to suggest maybe what is going on socially in philosophy isn’t merely people latching onto the sorts of debates that are more central or important in the discipline.

“Also, while I do not mean to belittle problems of representation, I struggle to see what difference it would make to the issue here what type of human being we happen to be or which social group we fall into. Philosophy does not care. If a person does not see metaphysics as the core of the discipline then for me they have not yet found the plot, let alone gone as far as to lose it.”

As a black student in philosophy, even one whose research interests tend to skew towards the so called ‘core’ areas of philosophy, shortsighted. While you might not find this stuff interesting or important, minorities might be apt to find such things interesting, because the issues tackled or the sorts of issues that minorities face in their everyday lives. And by applying philosophical tools to clarify and intellectually confront such issues might might be the spark that ignites a lifelong interest in philosophy in people who would otherwise write it off. Sure minorities might find that spark elsewhere(I’m an example of a minority who found that spark thinking about analytic metaphysics), by not shunting such issues to the side such as it has been traditionally done in philosophy, one might have the opportunity to light that spark with a variety of students who otherwise might dismiss the discipline. And given the low representation of certain minorities in academic philosophy, it seems like a small step we can make towards a more diverse academic environment.

Hi Grad Student. – Thanks for engaging with my comment.

You say – “First, all areas of human inquiry make tacit ontological assumptions (it’s pretty hard to inquire into some phenomenon or other without making some assumptions about what exists).”

Quite so, This would exactly and precisely my point. So we make that assumption and then create fairy-tales based on it. Russell points out that almost all our sentences begin ‘There is an x such that…’ We ignore metaphysics almost all of the time even in philosophy.

– “If your position is that ‘very little else would be worth thinking about until metaphysics has been sorted out), then there is little worth thinking about.”

It’s okay. This is not my position. Some topics can be sorted out with no reference to first principles and quite independently of them. But we are talking about core issues, and I feel that these are almost invariably going to have metaphysical significance.

— “This would include the natural sciences,..”

Well , I do happen to believe that scientists would do well to study metaphysics, if only to prevent some of the nonsense they talk about philosophy. But much of science need take no notice of philosophy. It’s when scientists
talk about creating fundamental theories while ignoring metaphysics that I laugh.

–“mathematics, all other areas of philosophy(Including those that are traditionally included core, like epistemology, ethics, mind, and so on). ”

If we are talking about foundational mathematics then for me all of these areas ARE metaphysics Certainly ethics, epistemology and the study of mind are metaphysical studies and cannot avoid being so.

“–If sorting out ontology is required for any productive thinking on a topic to take place, than pretty much the whole of human intellectual history is filled to the brim with unproductive thought.”

Yay. There you go. My point is made.

–“In addition, your comment seems to be inconsistent with the current practice of metaphysics, or at least analytic metaphysics. ”

I certainly hope so. I am not proposing a particular way of doing metaphysics, just noting its unavoidability. If one method doesn’t work then pick another.

–“You seem to perceive metaphysicians to make lofty rulings of what does or doesn’t exist from on high, ”

This is the job, the entire purpose of the discipline. If it cannot make lofty rulings on existence then it is not doing its job.

–“It’s typically considered a demerit to some metaphysical theory or other if it is inconsistent with science(for example, the objections to the A-theory of time posed by relativity).”

There is no known case of metaphysics being inconsistent with science. There are multiple cases where a metaphysician’s opinion is inconsistent with a scientist’s opinion, but all this means is that on or both opinion is unworkable.

–“In the metaphysics of mathematics, metaphysical theories rise and fall due to their ability or inability to capture mathematical practice. ”

Just as they should.

–“The metaphysics of mind continue to be influenced by findings in cognitive science.”

I’d like to see an example. I cannot see one. The Mind-Matter problem is a lot older than cognitive science.

–“Metaphysics hasn’t operated as the ‘Queen of the Sciences’ for quite some time, and I think for the most part that’s a good thing.”

I feel it is a tragedy of such such proportions that it is difficult to express the scale of it.

–“Also, it doesn’t seem to that merely being about metaphysics or ontology is what determines whether or not something falls into the ‘core’ or the ‘periphery’, either. While I’m mainly interested in formal epistemology, I have both a interest in metaphysics and philosophy of race. One falls into the core, one falls into the periphery. ”

Whether a topic is core or not would, for me, depend on the depth in which it is being studied, not the subject matter. If you have an interest in epistemology then metaphysics is your area of interest.

–“As a black student in philosophy, even one whose research interests tend to skew towards the so called ‘core’ areas of philosophy, shortsighted. While you might not find this stuff interesting or important,”

Whoah. You are misreading me. Let me put it like this. If were responsible for expanding the diversity of the profession and interest in it, I would teach metaphysics to every community college student in the country. There is no topic that can be completely dismissed as unimportant or important. Most topics depend crucially on their metaphysical underpinnings, and where these are ignored the result is confusion and misunderstanding. I would cite Dan Dennett, David Chalmers and Ayn Rand as good examples, for all three visibly ignore the topic and end up in what is obviously a muddle. Should we increase access to muddle? Who would that help?

I’m not arguing against diversity, my ‘career’ as I like to call it, has been all about promoting access and diversity. I’m arguing for not ignoring metaphysics, for by so doing we turn philosophy into a post-modernist relativistic muddle that has forgotten its own roots. I’m arguing for access to something worth having access to., and this for me would mean dealing with the core issues rather than allowing students to wander off into rootless sophistic theoretical fantasies.

The whole distinction of core and non-core is short-sighted and harmful. I think Brian is absolutely right that the distinction of core/noncore comes down to what is considered necessary in an undergrad dept., what is needed to go into graduate school, etc., but these standards may represent nothing more than the prejudices and interests of earlier generations. In the case of my own institution–where we teach a diverse and wonderful group of majors, most of whom are not bound for graduate school in philosophy–these standards are not only arbitrary, but irrelevant on the practical level. On the other hand, we know from experience that teaching about race, gender, sexuality, ability and class–not to mention nonwestern perspectives–attracts many students to the major, inspires high-level student work, and serves the goals of the university in that–since we teach many classes in the university’s core curriculum–our students learn to responsibly discuss the pressing political issues of the day. At a small liberal arts college, this is our “core”.

I do not mean to denigrate in any way those who work in more traditional epistemology, metaphysics, history of philosophy, etc. I agree that every philosophy student should be exposed to these subfields and every prof should be conversant with them. This has nothing to do, however, with the value of philosophy of race. Anyone who is inquiring, say, into the reality of races (itself probably not a representative topic for philosophy of race, but we’ll go with it) would have to be conversant with epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of science, history of philosophy. There is no lack of “core” expertise. But if her topic is deemed non-core, than she is likely to be marginalized in many ways–not least on the job market, if every department considers the teaching of “pure” metaphysics to be a core necessity and discussion of race to be a luxury. This will have poor consequences for the diversity of the faculty, for diversity within the curriculum, and of course, it will lead to recruiting the same-old cohort of white men to the discipline.