So, philosophers tend to have these occupational tics, right?
Many years ago I realized that, while teaching, I was automatically adding the one-word question, “right?” to the end of a lot of my sentences.
I believe I contracted this tic from a professor of mine during my student days. But given how common this verbal habit is among philosophers while teaching or giving talks, there’s no way he could be the sole vector responsible for its spread.
I think I’ve stopped doing it, mostly, but I’m not sure, just as I’m not sure how many “uhs and umms” come out of my mouth during a lecture.
I stopped because it’s not a good way to communicate. I mean, on the surface, I suppose it could seem like a kind of super-vigilant approach to making sure your audience understands you, a regular brief check for comprehension. But that is not how it comes off at all. Rhetorically, it functions as the opposite of a real question. To the audience it feels like you are, bizarrely, constantly declaring that what you’ve just said is right. It comes off as pushy, which is a really odd fit with how philosophy is supposed to operate. If the argument you’ve made is a good one, all you need to do is explain it well and we’ll see that; no push necessary.
“Right?” is just one of many behavioral oddities that seem a bit more common among philosophers than other academics or the general population. Since they tend to be adopted subconsciously, we may be unaware of the verbal or gestural tics we’ve picked up owing to our time in philosophy. Sometimes we can learn about these by seeing them in others. Yet if we’ve witnessed them too many times, we may be inured to their oddness. In short, we may not realize what we’re doing or that what we’re doing is a weird thing a fair number of philosophers do.
Of course, not all of the tics we adopt as we’re trained in philosophy are bad. But it would be good to be aware of them so we can be a bit more thoughtful about their use and more effective in our communication, including our communication with students, with other faculty, and with the rest of the world. So if you know of other tics we tend to have, tell us about them. If you don’t, maybe ask a non-philosopher about them.
(Note: this post is not an invitation to mock individual philosophers; mock us as a group, sure, but there’s no need to single anyone out.)
Oh, and of course there’s this classic bit on this topic:
I have a whole bunch of these with which I unconsciously pepper every lecture, including “okay?” and “right?” so I offer myself as tribute for personal mockery.
The classic sketch is originally from “Beyond the Fringe” (1960). I often show it to my students.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVQrpok9KPA
Came here to say the same thing. The John Cleese one is decent but the original is magnificent!
“So if you know of other tics we tend to have, tell us about them.”
“does it make sense?”
These are the sort of fillers philosophers would pick up or gravitate towards while being professional philosophers. Justin’s are of the kind the philosophically inclined bring with them into the profession weather in a developing form or full blown.
Yeah, there are really two sets of philosopher-isms: (1) functional expressions like “in principle” or “epistemically” that are habituated organically from doing philosophy and (2) colloquialisms that aren’t necessarily functional to doing philosophy *or* which are functional but used in an alternate colloquial sense. I think (2) is funnier to talk about and culturally interesting, but (1) is also interesting for different reasons.
The one that I always clock is when someone starts a sentence with “Look.” I hear this a lot more from philosophers than from normal people.
And its cousin: “You might think, ‘Look, …'” when presenting an objection you will then immediately reply to.
I once heard a talk with this phrase said no less than a dozen times.
You know you’re dealing with seriously concentrated powerful philosophy when multiple tics are being combined into one.
Yes — this is the form that grates on me the most.
People don’t start their sentences or objections with ‘Look’ very often. It’s a mildly confrontational thing to say, and suggests that one is exasperated with the other person for failing to see what is apparent.
Starting one’s paraphrase of an objection you’ve heard with ‘Look’ suggests that you’re aiming confidently at verisimilitude (why else add in that ‘Look’?) but failing, since more or less nobody presents objections that way.
“Look: there are always many lessons one can draw from any event.”
This you?
I think it’s an Australianism.
At least, I have heard a whole lot of Australian non-philosophers use that introductory ‘Look’.
(But at least this example does potentially fit Justin’s category of a ‘tic’, which very few examples given here do.)
I think I hear this more from politicians when they are either tired of a topic or want to get to shut everyone up.
“Basically, x”
Other commenters nailed some big ones. I’ll add:
“You might think that…”
“Good.” (Said in response to an objection.)
“There’s basically n views: one view is…” (for n many views).
“For n many…” (which makes no sense when you think about it: e.g., three many?)
Others are not quite tics, but odd/old-fashioned turns of phrase which are sometimes overused enough by philosophers to be noticeable:
“That doesn’t cut any ice.”
“Tollens that ponens.”
“Cash that out.”
“Unpack this.”
“Grist for my mill.”
And one very specific one that irks me for some reason:
“The Xs tell us/say that…” (for disciplines X; e.g., “the physicists tell us that…” instead of just “physicists tell us that…”).
This is a solid list. I just want to remark that, to me, “good” is tolerable as a response to an objection (as in, “Thanks for pushing the dialectic forward!”). But sometimes philosophers repeat it ad nauseam (“good good good good good”) when you’re mid-sentence. I can’t stand this. Does a mid-sentence “good good good good good” mean “keep talking,” or “stop talking”? Either way, it’s got an off-putting, Pavlovian ring to it. People aren’t dogs and shouldn’t be spoken to in such a manner.
I use “cash” and “grist” constantly, “unpack” occasionally, “ice” once in a blue moon, and I am willing to bet a not insignificant amount of money that never in my life have I heard someone utter the phrase “tollens that ponens.” I wonder what the geographic distribution looks like for a lot of these phrases.
Apropos the last thing you mention, Wikiquote (via some book of quotes, which, let’s face it, is probably full of apocryphal junk) claims that von Neumann once started a lecture with “The goys have proven the following theorem…” which I find hilarious.
“not insignificant” i.e. significant
Just as people who are not short are not necessarily tall (they might be of medium height), amounts of money that are not insignificant may not necessarily be significant.
For example, when I was a 10 year old, giving me $5 would have amounted to giving me an amount of money that was neither insignificant ($5 is a lot for a 10 year old) nor significant ($5 is not going to change 10 year old Danny’s life to the degree that it would be apposite to call the amount significant).
I would never bet a significant amount of money on anything, simply because I’m too risk averse. But in cases where I would be willing to bet money, I would not want to waste my time betting an insignificant amount. So I am always only ready to bet amounts of money that are neither significant nor insignificant, insofar as I’m ready to bet anything.
contraries (insignificant and significant) versus contradictories (non-significant and significant)
“bite the bullet”
You’re not into battlefield surgery without anesthesia?
The thing is that a lot of these tics make perfect sense. One looks up at the ceiling because that’s where all the good ideas are stored. And tugging at one’s hair provides express access to them.
I don’t know if it’s still active as I can’t see Twitter anymore without an account, but “Shit Philosophers Say” was a gold mine for these kinds of things –
https://x.com/ShitPhilosophrs
A lot of young people add ‘yeah’ or ‘init’ to every sentance.
“That (your objection) actually makes my case!”
Philosophers would be lost without: “In principle……”
A lot of us put ‘ceteris paribus’ at the end of every sentence, too. ‘Mutatis mutandis’, ‘prima facie’, and others are basically tics that infiltrate our communications. And literally overusing ‘literally’ to apply to all sorts of things that aren’t literal.
Qua, ad hoc, pro tano, reductio, ad infinitum, per impossibile, de se, de re, de dicto, contra, pace, ipso facto, sui generis, ab initio, ergo, ex nihilo, per se, salva veritate, tabula rasa, summum bonum… We sure do love Latin.
It figuratively pisses me off when people misuse “literally”.
I figuratively could care fewer.
“You can tell a story where…”
“It’s easy to get into a frame of mind in which…” (both are also like “on this view’, in that they basically aren’t English).
Sort of
came here to see if anyone had mentioned my personal fave, ‘one thing you might think is…’
That’s a common one, but I’m not sure it’s so bad if done as a stalking horse, and the ‘…’ is actually something a lot of people do think.
I thought we were just asked for common things philosophers say, not necessarily bad things. Many of the expressions listed so far, while common (some of them at least) are not at all bad.
This comes up more in Q&A than in teaching, but the gambit I learned at Princeton was to say, “You could mean two things by X. On the first reading of X, it’s true but trivial. On the alternative reading, it’s interesting but obviously false. So which is it?”
“You can either agree with me or
be wrongcommit a motte-and-bailey fallacy!” would be awesome on a mug or t-shirt or something.Saying “it is the case that p” where just “p” would’ve done perfectly well. I guess this might pop up more often in writing than speaking.
I think it is also common among other disciplines.
“The worry is…”
In response to a question: “It depends what you mean by _________”
(Followed by a list/branching structure of answers explaining each one)
“it is the case that p” instead of just “p”
talking about “upshots” of a view instead of “implications” or “consequences” of a view
“PHI-ing” instead of “doing something”
“on this view” instead of “according to this view” or “in this view”
“S” instead of “a person”
“there exist” instead of “there are”
“That’s a great question. Thanks.” Means I don’t understand or that’s a load of bullshit.
Having just given my first lectures and seen the recordings, I’ve found I’m guilty of the very same (I don’t seem to do it in conference talks, in contrast…), right? However, it’s the amount of – apparently purposeless – waving my hands around that I’m really worried about.
“qua”
“insofar as we…”
“What falls out of this”
“So” and “right?” are the ones I notice the most (sometimes in myself, though I have been pretty conscious of trying to root them out).
Both of them are, I think, rooted in insecurity. Philosophers will so often start a whole line of thought with “so,” as if it is the result of some prior chain of reasoning, when in fact it just occurred to them, or they’re just exploring it, or whatever.
I can echo a lot of what Justin says about “right?,” though I think mostly its effect is not pushiness. I’ve noticed that most philosophers who end their sentences with “right?” a lot tend to do it most when they are unsure of what they just said.
I’ve also noticed (in myself and others) that teachers use “does that make sense?” after saying something that we are pretty sure does make sense, and rarely after we’ve said something that might not have. I think it’s more a reaching out for affirmation than a statement with any pedagogical purpose.
I agree about the discourse-initial ‘so’, but I’m pretty sure I heard it from other academics — scientists, actually — before I heard it in philosophy. (And it’s very common now in other academics — maybe sciences mostly?)
I can’t believe no one has mentioned “I take it that…” (or, in my case, “Soooooooo, I take it that…”)