Revisiting Public Philosophy in Uncertain Times

With the recent attacks on the Department of Education and higher education, what's a public philosopher to do?

Illustration by Vikas Beniwal (@philosophypins)

This month’s Substack is a dialogue between Former APA Blog Editor-in-Chief Nathan Eckstrand and Michael Crawford, Copy Editor for the Blog. As advocates of public philosophy, they discuss the role it should play in the field and society at large.

Nathan: My interest in public philosophy overlaps with my interest in politics and current events, as my Blog work shows. Reflecting on the news of the past few weeks (e.g., Trump’s executive actions and mass firings) leads me to wonder what I can do, as a philosopher, to provide useful context to what’s happening. This raises the perennial question for public philosophy of what it can or should do. What thoughts do you have on that question?

Michael: When I first became interested in philosophy in 2008, I was struck by how much it felt like it was already happening around me, and that seems to be even more the case now. But it happened in plain language, hiding in everyday conversations about what to fund, what not to fund, who deserved legal recognition, who didn't. At the time, the now-defunct New York Times series The Stone was around, and there was a general attitude that that kind of writing wasn’t “real philosophy” and could harm someone’s career prospects. Yet now more than ever, public figures—especially those involved in tech—are comfortable speculating explicitly on philosophical topics.

Philosophers can help with the quality of public discourse. Specialized language can cut through the noise of public and political rhetoric. If philosophers sit out from public discussion because they think writing for the general public isn’t worth doing, cultural conversations about these topics will occur regardless, and they will be led by the people with no qualms about using sophistry. Public policies will be written without any help, criticism, or pushback from philosophers—who, presumably, care enough about these topics to research and teach the ideas underlying them.

Nathan: Agreed. It is worrisome how much of the public debate is based on poor arguments. Yet most of the philosophers I’ve met are concerned about public issues. One of the challenges philosophers face is a lack of opportunities and time to do public philosophy. For example, Blog editors have occasionally mentioned creating a podcast. It’s never happened because no one has time to work on it. As you mentioned, few institutions recognize public philosophy as worthwhile work.

Society’s lack of time and opportunity also contributes to public philosophy’s difficulty influencing public discourse. (This comes in addition to the significant roles emotions and childhood development play in human decision-making.) When I have discussions with friends on topics of public interest, my interlocutors often admit that I have well-informed arguments. Yet, they assume that other evidence for their views exists. When I encourage them to find and share this evidence with me, they say they lack the time and resources.

I believe a similar dynamic occurs in all forms of public philosophy. How often do public philosophers engage people who disagree with them? And how often do people have the time or resources to explore what public philosophers say? This is another hurdle public philosophy faces.

Michael: It does seem like we have less free time, possibly because more things compete for our attention. This competition brings out intense emotions, and successfully managing that requires cognitive labor. While we can look up anything we want, we are backed into a corner by that same ability. Without discipline and focus, we are just as likely to encounter disinformation as we are to find something reliable. A lot of good information comes in the form of professional jargon, which obscures as much as it sharpens our ideas. Becoming fluent in such specialized language takes time, making it hard for people to learn about ideas they’re interested in. To the extent that philosophical discourse operates similarly, it inhibits public interest in conversations on topics that should include philosophers.

On the other hand, a professional philosopher’s job is primarily to teach, publish, and advise. The main opportunities for engaging with professors are in classes (where one is being graded) or at public lectures (where professors focus on explaining their work rather than Socratic dialogue). The deck is stacked against people who are not students but want to engage with a professor on an issue they’re curious about. It’s also stacked against professors who want to engage in those conversations but lack the time to do so. Because of this, there are fewer incentives for these interactions to begin in the first place.

As it stands, if I want to engage with a public philosopher that means commenting on a blog, visiting their website, or emailing them. But the focus of a scholar’s job is to publish for academic audiences that read academic journals, not respond to comments or questions.

Moving away from that could take the form of Socrates Cafés, or universities taking more explicit approaches towards non-majors (or non-students) as their intended audiences. Perhaps even both. But a shift towards the general public as an intended audience is important. Right now, professional incentives do not encourage it. It is hard to imagine what that would look like. A professional public philosopher would be more like a journalist, since—as I mentioned earlier—non-philosophers are already talking publicly about philosophical topics.

What are some other ways that philosophy as a field can effectively address the general public? It doesn’t have to replace a focus on academic work intended to be in conversation with other academics, but it could supplement it.

Nathan: I’m skeptical that there’s one clear answer to that question, though it is an important one to ask. Public philosophers begin their work for a variety of reasons. Some enjoy the work, others want to share ideas they find meaningful. bell hooks and Kate Manne, among many others, highlight social injustice. The Blog started in 2016 as a way for APA members to share their work with each other, but expanded into public philosophy as editors and writers searched for new content. Given the diversity of the public’s communication preferences, having diversity in public philosophy seems wise.

One important point numerous public philosophers make is that the distinction between ‘professional’ and ‘public’ philosophy is problematic. The public is always present in academic settings as it contextualizes any philosophic work. Every member of society relies on philosophical ideologies, knowingly or not. One way of engaging non-professional philosophers is to emphasize that the difference between professional and public philosophy is arbitrary. This will hopefully make the field more accessible.

Yet confronting injustice often requires a willingness to challenge people who don’t realize how their actions contribute to oppression. While public philosophers who do this are sometimes called arrogant, I believe it is consistent with the role philosophy has historically played.

You mentioned the danger of uninformed public figures determining policy. Given where our country is currently, what philosophical ideas do you think public figures would benefit from?

Michael: We play fast and loose in political discourse with terms like “evidence” and ”source”; the relationship between facts, values, and opinions; and terms like “artificial intelligence.” We’re collectively bad at applied epistemology, and it affects our wallets as much as it does our social and political arrangements. For example, there are huge amounts of money being invested on the promise that artificial intelligence can model human intelligence. These philosophically-contentious terms get used as weasel words, given how often they are ambiguous, inconsistently defined, or vague. Supposedly obvious distinctions, such as the one between facts and opinions, are quite difficult to make sense of, and are among our oldest philosophical disagreements. Having some sense of that difficulty would ideally put someone hearing that sort of language on alert for a vague or misleading claim.

The term “democracy” gets conflated with Athenian-style direct democracy. Given its many meanings, the term becomes used in arguments that try to bludgeon opponents into agreement rather than improve understanding. When people mistakenly assume, for example, that someone is arguing that our republic is a direct democracy instead of a type of democracy, they’re more likely to disregard their interlocutor’s argument.

Here I want to champion the work of our very own APA Blog, as it seeks to address philosophical issues with the general public in mind as an audience. That orientation alone puts it in a minority of philosophy blogs, even, many of which are aimed towards professional issues within the field as much as they are to philosophizing.

Are there some ways more public philosophers could help inform discourse without becoming partisans in society’s debates?

Nathan: Your statement about democracy reminds me of the Substack piece I wrote last August about how the seminar format (i.e., no ideas are off the table; concepts are explored from multiple perspectives; everyone looks at the rationales for their beliefs), could it be applied publicly, would be healthy for society.

Similarly, I sometimes think that the best thing public intellectuals could do for democracy is to model how to have discussions effectively. Providing the public with content is useful, but as I indicated above, I am not sure it creates the conditions for people to change their minds.

Right now, for instance, there are many people worried about whether we’re in a constitutional crisis or seeing the rise of fascism in America. Others see this as a golden age. That’s such a stark difference! You’d almost think people were living in different countries (though given how media ecosystems work, that’s not entirely false). I sometimes feel that when public intellectuals appear in public, more attention is given to their subject matter rather than the methods and media they use to share it. Yet these are central to the work of public intellectuals. (Maybe public intellectuals could do more to draw attention to it.)

I have little hope that elites in politics and business will encourage healthy public discourse, but believe public intellectuals can do that work. The trick is to do it in a way that allows members of the public to feel heard. People are more likely to change their minds when that happens, and public intellectuals often have a reputation (sometimes deserved, sometimes not) for being arrogant. This isn’t an easy task, but it’s an important one.

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From the APA Archive: In 2018, Nathan wrote an article for the Blog exploring disturbing parallels between the first Trump administration and Arendt’s account of totalitarianism. It’s worth revisiting, not because we live in a totalitarian state (we don’t) or because what’s going on now is the same as the events of 2018 (they’re not), but because understanding the present in reference to the past is useful. There are some noteworthy parallels between 2018 and now.

What I’m watching: Nathan just finished Say Nothing, a Hulu show about the Troubles in Ireland. It follows two sisters who joined the IRA in the 70s, and dramatizes real people and events. It tracks how they were radicalized and then changed or renounced their views. Based on a book by the same name, the show makes a strong statement about the lasting effects of the Troubles and the politician Gerry Adams (who denies ever being a member of the IRA, though the show writers clearly don’t believe him).

Michael is (somehow, for the first time) watching classic 80’s sci-fi movies he somehow never saw reruns of as a kid: Alien, Terminator, Total Recall, Escape from New York, and The Thing, to name a few. It’s interesting to see how various cultural phobias and concerns given form in film can seem dated or quaint with the passage of time, and how others seem to be timeless, even if some of the specifics have changed.