Tower to Agora: Insularity and Philosophical Methodology

Abstract

Academic philosophy sits at a methodological crossroads, facing threats to its foundational practices, well-justified challenges to its lack of diversity across several axes, and fears of irrelevancy in response to modern challenges like widespread conspiracism. This thesis aims to explore these pressure points through the lens of academic philosophy’s insularity problem—its cloistered state within the ivory tower. Aiming to help bring academic philosophy out of this sequestered state, it considers three problems that insular philosophical methodology engenders. First, the epistemic status of philosophical intuitions is threatened by empirical evidence pointing toward a susceptibility to irrational biases. While intuitions can be calibrated by an agent’s confidence, confidence can only be calibrated by a sufficiently diverse community of other agents. Philosophy’s demographic homogeneity must therefore change for intuitions to be adequately calibrated. Second, philosophical argumentation seems ineffective in the face of conspiracism. This is largely because the agonistic method is inattentive to the social motivations of belief in conspiracy theories. Without adapting philosophical methodology to account for this social dimension, philosophers cannot aide in the fight against unwarranted conspiracism. Finally, public philosophy appears to be a fruitful strategy to improve philosophy’s relevance, and therefore chances for survival. However, obstacles stand in the way of public philosophy’s flourishing, rooted in academic philosophy’s condescending attitude toward both the public and public philosophy, and the lack of appropriate training for public philosophy projects. A revolution in both attitude and training methodology is essential for public philosophy to succeed, and for it to save academic philosophy from extinction.