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David McNaughton (Florida State) takes up the question (scroll down for the link to the paper). (Thanks to Peter Königs for the pointer.)
Thoughts from readers? Comment only if you have read Prof. McNaughton's paper; signed comments will be strongly preferred.
McNaughton's question is an uncomfortable one that philosophers have mostly not attempted to answer seriously. Most philosophical writing is, indeed, boring, although boredom itself is surprisingly varied: writing may be boring through being suspenseless, overly fussy, obsessed with technical minutiae, long-winded, obscure, or concerned with nothing of any possible significance. Philosophy is often boring in these ways, but there is a much more unsettling kind of boredom that philosophical prose can induce. Philosophical writing is faceless, characterless, and inexpressive. It is a dry prose, produced under a strict set of constraints that aim to efface everything of the author, a flavorless but (we are told) nutritious paste that is an ideal vehicle for the neutral transmission of content.
Philosophers present themselves as thinkers first, not writers. But writing is what we produce, and so we need to be much more reflective about who we want to be as writers. I suggest that the facelessness of philosophical prose not only accounts for why it is so tedious to read, but also to write. It should be disturbing to spend so much of one's life producing texts that are not only boring in all the familiar ways, but in which we ourselves do not appear. This point is captured elegantly in these paragraphs by the art historian James Elkins, from the conclusion of his book "Our Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts":
ENVOI, ON OUR DRY TEXTS
It would be wrong to conclude without underscoring the unimportance of all this. To say that what art historians and other academics write is rarely read outside a community of likeminded scholars, is to say that it will be forgotten forever. The books we write—most emphatically including this one—are consigned to dust from the instant they appear. Some, which will never be read, turn to dust in our hands, even before they are printed. Each year there are tens of thousands of dissertations in the humanities, and even seminal texts are lost in fifty years’ time. Scholarship, as Derrida says, is dangerously “biodegradable.”
Thinking about the differences between the kinds of writing that go under names such as art history, visual theory, methodology, and historiography, I have been led toward a way of considering the texts that is, in important respects, alien to all of them. In general terms, the readings in this book approach art historical writing as if it were expressive in intent. What I have wanted to know is how the writing stands up as writing, as what is uninformatively called imaginative or creative writing—as if a principal purpose of art historical writing were to act on a reader as a novel, a short story, or a poem, rather than as a source of information. In doing so I have tried to read the texts in a fuller way, and cast some light on the nature of their relation to one another; but I have also been motivated by some ideas about the value of scholarly writing in general. The conviction on which this book is built is that in the end all the questions we customarily ask ourselves regarding the choice of theories and theorists, methods and methodologies, evidence, interpretation, and the constitution of the discipline are swept aside by what we actually produce. Our writing is our testament, it is what matters about what we do. And if that is the case, then our writing must be understood as an expressive endeavor, one that speaks for us and for our contemporary situation. To me art history is in a certain sense an arbitrary profession, since I tend to use it to explore my own thoughts, and to learn about myself. An object is always also a mirror of what I want to see, and of how I understand myself.
What this commonplace helps us remember is that even though our texts afford some challenging puzzles, academic writing may be inexpressive and in the end uninteresting because it is chosen by people who do not wish their writing to compete on a higher level. There has always been truth in Nietzsche’s descriptions of scholars (“the herd animal in the realm of knowledge,” and so forth) and in those terms, art historical writing may be a fitting expressive vehicle: a kind of writing that is highly evolved to complement and maintain a certain kind of life. Our texts appear as history, as facts, as discoveries, as stories, even sometimes as truths, and they function in all of those capacities—but they are also our way of recording who we are. We need to begin to think about how our quizzical, convoluted, dry and distant writing tells the story of our lives.
This is really fantastic, if a bit depressing for someone contending with the tenure clock. The best philosopher I've known was one of my undergraduate professors who only had his MA and never published a thing; he started his career where it was still possible to get a job & tenure that way. His whole life was a great service to his students, his university, his community. He embodied the ancient conception of philosophy as a way of life, and taught me many life lessons I've tried to remember through grad school and the tenure track. Philosophy and academia are worse off because there isn't a place for professors like that anymore.
One theme in the paper is that too many publications focus on questions that are narrow and insignificant. Such publications are out there, sure, but in my opinion they aren't very common. What *is* common is that authors refrain from explaining, or at least refrain from focusing on, why their topics are significant despite being narrow. As a case in point, there are some recent epistemology papers trying to specify exactly what "fallibilism" amounts to. The discussions get specific and technical, and can seem to be insignificant game-playing. But they actually connect up relatively directly to central questions like "is knowledge possible?", and they inherit their significance from their connections to those questions. The authors don't focus on those connections, because they assume their readers recognize them. Thus it happens that the discussion is narrow, and can seem insignificant, but really isn't.
Maybe we should make more of a habit of explicitly bringing out the significance of our discussions; maybe it is a widespread problem that we don't do that. But I don't think it is a widespread problem that those discussions are insignificant in the first place.
I enjoyed reading this paper, and it reminded me of the discussion we had on this blog a while back on Kitcher's article "Reconstruction in Philosophy".
The following 2 passages very McNaughton might help entice others to read the full article:
"A life devoted to solving crossword puzzles has little to commend it – and certainly does not deserve public subsidy. We should reject this conception of our discipline. Philosophy can and should deal with important issues. It should enable us both to understand our place in the world and to live in it. And yet what troubles me is that the structure of our profession is in danger of encouraging the production of work that is indeed competent, professional, subtle, and technically clever, but which adds little, if anything, to the sum total of human knowledge worth having."
"But I suppose I feel that if philosophy can’t use its own resources to overcome the innate tendency to narrowness and smugness that besets all academic discourse, there’s not much hope for the rest of the academy; and it’s a bit depressing to find that the vivification of the intellect – rather than just the intellectualisation of life – just isn’t part of the culture even at the traditional epicentre of the subject."
Cheers,
Colin
While I share some of McNaughton's worries, especially about the pressure to publish too early, I'm concerned about overly romanticizing the alternative.
The pressures for early professionalization are driven primarily by competition for scarce jobs. Is there any fairer way of distributing scarce research jobs than by measuring actual research output? Some of McNaughton's examples have too much of an elitist 'good old days' flavor to them. Even if we can identify groundbreaking philosophical geniuses in retrospect, do we have a good way of doing so prospectively, so we know gets ten years to start producing? Most importantly, do we have ways of doing so that are more inclusive of women and minorities than 'the good old days?'
Very interesting article. Just one quick comment. There are not many outlets for philosophy done in a more expansive style. But I think there is probably a market niche waiting to be filled. So somebody — not me — should start a publication, primarily devoted to philosophical writing, marketed to a non-academic but educated and reflective audience, in which philosophers regularly do philosophy in a less narrowly focused, less pinched way.
As a first year undergraduate, with a previous degree, I often consider what form philosophy can and should take. Perhaps I should admit that my concerns are not for money and employment, but I can't see myself writing in a hard academic style outside of my coursework. What good is philosophy if it is only accessible to the academic? Why is there not greater experimentation on the forms of philosophy? We celebrate Plato's dialogues and Nietzsche's aphorisms, but relegate ourselves to mind-numbing analytics. I plan to spend my time on Earth seeking innovation. It is more than likely that I will fail to achieve anything significant, to assume otherwise would be arrogant, but I believe the pursuit will be a noble one.
Background: I'm a philosophy PhD-program dropout.
Much of this paper matches my own conclusions about what's wrong with philosophy, arrived at in grad school and reflecting my experience in the first several months after I left. Cleverness for the sake of cleverness seems like a huge problem.
On the other hand, I found myself strongly disagreeing with the long quotation from David Garrard. I'd like to see more cut and dried solutions to problems. But in fact philosophy seems to have trouble producing those. All too often, a superficially clever argument (in the way needed to impress one's colleagues) turns out to hinge on claiming obviousness for something that isn't obvious to the other side of the debate, or doing something generally handwavy, or doing something otherwise so problematic as to call the value of the whole work into question.
What I'd like to see more of–if it can be had–is careful attempts to resolve problems that are both (1) important and (2) actually resolvable.
I have to admit that I have not submitted a paper to the general program of any of the APA meetings for quite some time now just because I cannot write the kind of philosophy paper that generally gets accepted: dry, boring, nit-picky, displaying rigor for the sake of rigor, and on subject-matter that has little real impact or relevance outside of the insular community for which it was written.
To be fair, not all of the papers on the APA programs display these characteristics. Still, enough do, I think, to warrant the generalization. Perhaps relevance or impact (similar to grant proposals) should become a new criterion for evaluating papers submitted to the APA divisional meetings. Until then, I'll continue to write, present, and publish my work where I can find an audience that sees philosophy as accessible, creative, visionary and suitable for addressing what John Dewey called "the problems of men."
To Ken Taylor: I agree. The APA Committee on Public Philosophy does conduct an Op-Ed contest to encourage philosophers to write on public issues, by "honor[ing] 5 standout pieces that blend successfully philosophical argumentation with an Op-Ed writing style. Winning submissions will call public attention directly or indirectly to the value of philosophical thinking. The pieces will be judged in terms of their success as examples of public philosophy: being accessible to the general public, focused on important topics of public concern, and characterized by sound reasoning. Winning authors will receive a $100 award and will be recognized in a formal announcement from the APA Committee on Public Philosophy in 2013." The due date for submissions is May 20th. More info can be found here: http://www.publicphilosophy.org/activities.html
Shane Ralston:
I'm not really thinking op-ed style pieces. And I'm not really think necessarily of "public issues" — although I don't mean to exclude such things either. I am thinking of philosophy that engages a broad but still intellectual public more or less on the home turf of philosophy itself — the good, the true, the beautiful, what is there and how can we know what there is, the limits of science, the nature of interpretation — all that sort of stuff that we do when we talk mainly to and for each other. I just think that it is possible to have those philosophical conversations in a way which brings a broader intellectual public on board, rather than puts them off. That may not be the way we want to do it when want to get down and dirty, as it were, and engage in no holds barred philosophizing. I do actually think there is a place and important place for philosophy done in a narrowly focused and what I earlier called more "pinched" fashion. I don't think such philosophy is sterile at all. I just think it's "in-house." I wouldn't at all want to see in house philosophy die.
But I think there is also important philosophical work to be done that is not of the in-house variety. We haven't allowed ourselves to do enough of it. We don't reward it in the academy. We don't acknowledge its importance. And too few of us are actually practiced at it. I would love to see that change. I would love to see some of those who are philosophers of the first rank, when it comes to doing what I called in-house philosophy, allowing themselves to spread their wings and also write for a wider intellectual audience. Some do it. But I think it's an under-occupied niche. And I think there should be high profile venues where this sort of thing appears regularly.
McNaghton's diagnosis of the problem is perfectly accurate. This is probably the most important problem in contemporary analytic/Anglophone philosophy. Whilst I find the Continental option, in many instances, already un-usable as an outlet for genuine and rigorous philosophy—roughly because of the predominance of "Slapdashery", in McNaughton's useful classification—the analytic/Anglophone environment is at serious risk of becoming soon un-usable, too—for, in a sense, the opposite reasons, roughly identifiable in the other three styles of writing as identified by McNaughton (the "Oxford Obscurantist" style bothers me especially, for the wide favour it (still) seems to be seen with by academic audiences).
Agreeing with some of the previous comments, I am not sure the cure of the problem is to abandon the publication system. But I do think this needs to be reformed. Journal editors need to start changing their policies about acceptances, to favour insight and genuine interest over mere technical flawlessness (or mere appearance of this).
The second, and related, thing that needs to be changed is the intellectual credit that is currently bestowed upon the philosophers who think and work in the way that McNaugthon so accurately describes ("techno-nerds", as a friend of mine at Oxford aptly calls them). The capacity to split hairs in finer and finer pieces in papers, talks and seminars should start to be considered just one, amongst many others, of the talents a philosopher can have, and one that, most importantly, is, in itself, not indicative of the quality of a philosopher's mind or contribution.
Four sentences – or a book:
1. Philosophy is difficult and complex and it’s hard to be vivid and entertaining while doing justice to that
2. The professional structures of philosophy reward the tedious and dutiful over the innovative and challenging
3. The science (and maths) envy of Anglo-American philosophy encourages technicality and jargon
4. Many philosophers are stunted individuals who lack the capacity to communicate with non-philosophers
I'd strongly second Ken Taylor's suggestion. Here's another consideration that supports it. In terms of numbers, undergraduates are the world's largest consumers of philosophical research. They particularly care about how interesting an article is. To engage them with our discipline, (or even to get them to do the readings), we need to have interesting articles on philosophically deep topics that are accessible to non-specialists. The sorts of articles that Taylor suggests seems to fit the bill perfectly.
There are some classic papers along these lines. However, many of them come from an era when the under-representation of women and other minorities was even worse than it is today. This is a problem for anyone who wants to teach from a syllabus that has good minority representation. Since under-representation has been improving, (though not nearly as much as anyone should like), I think Taylor's suggestion would also help with this problem.
I also worry that these sorts of articles are particularly hard to publish in the current journal system, as it is aimed at a researcher-audience and reviewed and edited by researchers. The typical undergraduate doesn't care particularly about how a reading engages with the scholarly literature, or even about the reading's originality. For good reason, researcher-oriented journals do.
I very much second this: "Philosophy and academia are worse off because there isn't a place for professors like that anymore."
I also worry about the emphasis of current debates to the neglect of those that have stood the test of time. Every grad student in philosophy today has heard a professor say "Really? You haven't read X's article/book [insert title]?" The reason the student's answer is 'no' is that the article/book is simply no longer taught in most schools. Where and when, besides in your "free time," does one read Grice, Frege (and I mean besides 'Sense and Reference'), C. I. Lewis, Sellars, Feigl, Schlick, Carnap,… n (where n = any foundational figure to the Anglo-tradition)? How are young philosophers (or perhaps even the mature) to avoid the pitfall of rewriting/recycling ideas unintentionally? – the Anglo tradition seems to ignore key parts of its history. Without understanding the what came before, it's unclear to me why I should contribute to the growing literature published today. Rather, I feel as though I should wait until I really have something to say; if that time never comes, at least I can say I've lived the examined life, and perhaps I'll be able to inspire someone who does have something important to say.
At the current rate, in conjunction with current trends, philosophers of the future will be required to have an MA, two PhDs. (one out of the discipline, to ensure funding), a post-doc, articles, and a book to be employed somewhere. However, it's not clear to me that they'll have to know much philosophy, and if they do, whether they'll be required to teach it.
There are journals like this – http://www.philosophersnet.com/ is one example. There could be more, but it's not like there is no place to send these articles.
McNaughton is surely correct that philosophy has suffered from over internalization. But it is interesting as well that McNaughton places the sciences last on his list of four disciplines that have always influenced philosophy. I think this undervaluing of science is part of the problem. Surely of these four, it is the sciences that have had, historically, the closest relation with philosophy. Did not modern psychology, for instance, originate in (or at least was practiced in) nineteenth-century philosophy departments in Germany, before it split off to become an independent discipline? (and let us recall the influence that philosopher-psychologists such as Brentano and Stumpf had on Husserl). And of course the close historical connections between physics and philosophy are too numerous and well-known to mention; just to recall, Descartes, Leibniz, and Kant made serious contributions to the physical sciences of their time. Today, given the increasing complexity of physics, similar accomplishments would probably be close to impossible, but I suspect that this would not be the only reason. Mill and Jevons made important contributions to economics; Max Weber, the sociologist, was a student, and to some extent a disciple, of the Neo-Kantian Heinrich Rickert (who was Heidegger's teacher as well). And of course, Aristotle himself would appear to have been the ultimate interdisciplinary polymath.
So until fairly recently, and probably throughout most of its history, philosophy has maintained close symbiotic connections with at least some forms of science, the particulars contingent upon time and place. I'm not sure when the roots of the present disassociation arose or to what it can be attributed, but I suspect that certain attitudes towards the sciences, held in common by both analytical and continental philosophers, are responsible, (for a summary of this situation see, for example, K. Mulligan, P. Simon and B. Smith's "What's Wrong with Contemporary Philosophy", and Jan Koster, a linguist, sums up a similar situation, which he takes to characterize contemporary humanities in general, in "Linguistics, Historicism and the Humanities".)
Thus, I think philosophy actually needs to cultivate a closer relationship with the sciences (understood in the broader sense exemplified by the German conception of 'Wissenschaft'), despite what some have said about the supposed intimate relationship between analytic philosophy and math/natural science. It's not technicality and rigour as such that are the problem; it's the rather pretentious claim that genuine conceptual technicality and rigour, (and the speculative, second-order thinking that it is supposed to lead to) are the exclusive domain of philosophers only, philosophers brought up only on philosophy, that is. Certainly some academic disciplines, including some of the sciences, could use larger does of reflective philosophical thinking (I shall refrain from naming names), but others, and a great deal of the sciences in particular, have produced work that has been every bit as philosophical as academic philosophy can be, and additionally have been crucial to its development.
Writing good philosophy (innovative, substantial, clear, fruitful) is very hard.
Writing well (engaging, vivid, lively, witty) is very hard.
It is truly a mystery why doing both simultaneously is so rare?
"[S]omebody — not me — should start a publication, primarily devoted to philosophical writing, marketed to a non-academic but educated and reflective audience, in which philosophers regularly do philosophy in a less narrowly focused, less pinched way"
I agree. I am not sure if the following is what you have in mind though.
Without wanting to dilute the term 'philosopher' or 'philosophy' down to the point of meaninglessness, and ranting about 'Here's what's wrong with the world today!' this all seems only to be a problem if you think a philosopher is only someone who works at a university in a philosophy department.
I am not trying to be glib or disrespectful to anyone (my background is degrees in philosophy) but the older I get the more seriously I take the claim I read years ago in a Mark Rowlands popular philosophy-through-sci-fi book: that (e.g.) science fiction (often) just is philosophy. [And how are such books received by academia? That book was my first step towards vegetarianism so, you know, they can get people thinking. Even philosophy students.]
Without wanting to tread on toes, can we *really* deny that no novel, no film, no play, no satire or comedy is in any way *legitimately* addressing philosophical issues and arguments? And in (sometimes) a very rich, exciting, and accessible-to-the-public way? Is it really so hard to believe that good writing and performing are simply thought experiments fleshed out in a full-blooded way? Like arguments, some are good, some are bad.
Honestly, some of the best arguments or refutations on philosophical things I have ever seen have been summed up in a 20-minute episode of an intelligent comedy or even a single comedic remark, in context. But because it is comedy it is seen as glib, or not taken seriously, or even completely missed that someone has condensed a very valid point, on a very serious topic, into a throwaway joke.
I agree with the point about maths/physics envy. I also think there is an insecurity (in some, by no means all) to not be seen as an 'art' because then we must surely be all opinion and woolly. But can there be any doubt that The Matrix (part one!) got more kids and teenagers to take a look at Plato than any PhD thesis ever did?
I have much love and respect for academic philosophy. I don't argue such things above are a replacement for it, merely that they're all non-competing tools. But when all you have is the journal, every problem looks like an academic essay…
MIchael B:
You and are I not really on the same page. Though I have no objection to the sort of thing you are talking about, it's not at all what I have in mind. I really am talking about members of the academic establishment — professional, academic philosophers — making much more of an effort to occupy a n under-occupied niche in American intellectual culture. I don't deny that poets and novelist and comedians can have some philosophical insight. But hardly any such people are practiced at turning insight into a moving and convincing philosophical argument.
What I want to see is something different — the emergence (or re-emergence) of new genre of philosophy, produced by professional, rigorously trained philosophers of the first rank. I say re-emergence cause think back to the days when philosophers wrote in a dizzying variety of literary forms — meditations, aphorisms, essays, dialogues, pensees, etc. Philosophers writing in such genres produced many works that many still regard as canonical works of our intellectual tradition. Some — though a diminishing number apparently — believe that many such works are essential ingredients in a liberal arts education.
I am thinking of a style of philosophizing that aims to be the successor of those kinds of works. So the genre I have in mind would involve philosophizing about genuinely deep and hard philosophical problems of all sorts. The difference with "sterile" — and I really mean only to mention that term and not use it here — academic philosophy of the sort that got this discussion going would be that it was explicitly aimed at and written for a broad intellectual public. Now I think the character of the two endeavors will necessarily differ. Think of it as philosophy done for an audience of fellow professional philosophers (and fellow philosophers in training) vs Philosophy done for a broader intellectual public (which would include philosophers but would not exclude non-philosophers). The two undertakings would necessarily have different standards of presentation. The one, for example, would be more rhetorical in style, use more "literary" forms,etc. The other will be less concerned with presentation and more concerned with making it mutually manifest that the author is trying to get it precisely right — which will often involve building air-tight, unescapable fortresses of argument and distinctions. At the same time, I wouldn't want to see writing done for a broader audience abandon rigor. We still need to make distinctions, give convincing reasons, be sensitive to potential objections, etc. But maybe we needn't be quite so anal about spelling it all out in mind-numbing detail.
I think both styles of philosophizing have their places. In our time, we have just honed one to high level of scholarly almost scholastic sophistication. The other is a somewhat neglected art form. It shouldn't be. I'd love to see it revived. I'd love to see philosophers as a collective mutually commit to trying to revive it. It's really too important a thing to be left to non-philosophers. Or so it seems to me.
Hi Ken,
Thanks for replying to me.
I see where you are coming from.
Do you mean academic professional philosophers as only people who work in a university philosophy department etc.? The creator of a journal or a publisher etc. can put in place whatever restrictions they like and I'm not going to say you are wrong.
Relatedly, but moving on, I don't think professional, academic philosophers are the only people who can rigorously explore philosophy for a broad audience. Nobody can punch like a professional boxer. But professional cage fighters and professional kickboxers are also quite capable of teaching a broad, non-professional-boxer audience how to punch. It would be odd if boxing coaches objected to such things.
I wonder about the criteria of writing for a broad audience including non-philosophers? Are professional academic philosophers the best at that? Science communication is its own master's program. Personally I find science writers to be much better at writing for people like me (educated, interested, layperson) than professional academic scientists. Others might disagree.
Would someone be allowed if they got their philosophy PhD and then explored ethical dilemmas through fiction? I don't mean to be glib, I'm genuinely curious.
Anyway, you are just explaining what you'd like to see, no problem. The more tools the better.
"I don't deny that poets and novelist and comedians can have some philosophical insight. But hardly any such people are practiced at turning insight into a moving and convincing philosophical argument."
Without trying to bend 'philosophical argument' to breaking point, this bit I more disagree with I'm afraid. I think some of them can have a lot of philosophical insight.
I really think it is quite the opposite than that "hardly any such [poets, novelists and comedians etc.] are practiced at turning insight into a moving and convincing philosophical argument." You probably mean a piece of prose? In which case I agree. But I don't think prose is the only way of giving an argument although I realise I am probably on shaky ground here. Still, if a proposition can be expressed non-verbally (pointing?) then maybe grant me this!
Taking them together, some artists (e.g. talented and thoughtful writers, directors, composers and actors), are *very* practised at producing "moving and convincing philosophical arguments"! Isn't the whole point of this post that 'hardly any such people…' applies to many academic philosophers? At least, when writing professionally?
I'm certainly not claiming that e.g. a film can do everything the written word can. (Professional, academic) philosophers have some unique skills. Well, not unique but more honed. But it is also pretty obvious that a film can do certain things the written word cannot. And fiction, something an article cannot. And I don't see why those things cannot be used to give a convincing and moving philosophical argument, just because it doesn't explicitly say 'I am concerned here to argue that…'.
These things don't compete. And each has strengths and weaknesses. The article is one vital tool, going for depth and rigour. The popular article is another, going for breadth and trying to hook a reader. A film is the fleshed out thought experiment giving the argument emotional content.
If we make a screenplay of the trial of Socrates, word-for-word, is that no longer philosophy? A film of a science fiction book is still science fiction, right? Why not so if the dialogue is written today, by a philosophically-savvy screenwriter?
A well-written story, compelling premise, believable dialogue, good casting, subtle use of blocking & wardrobe & lighting & sets etc. with intelligent direction, an emotive score and sympathetic portrayals through powerful acting… taken together can present a "[very] moving and convincing philosophical argument".
Almost no one on earth is moved to change behaviour by logical reasoning alone. I don't mean to patronise. I wish it were otherwise. Smokers know the facts. They just don't care. So *if* we want philosophy to change behaviour (we might not), rather than just find out something (nothing wrong with that), we better find *additional* tools to the logical prose because no one is finding rigorous written arguments *on their own* to be convincing and moving.
That's why climate change is such a challenge. People are convinced by the argument. But they are not moved by it. And I say this as someone who has moved from logic and language, to maths and statistics – talk about inert!
"Philosophy done for a broader intellectual public (which would include philosophers but would not exclude non-philosophers). The two undertakings would necessarily have different standards of presentation. The one, for example, would be more rhetorical in style, use more "literary" forms,etc. […] We still need to make distinctions, give convincing reasons, be sensitive to potential objections, etc. But maybe we needn't be quite so anal about spelling it all out in mind-numbing detail."
I quite agree. It sounds good. I'd read it. I just think – without wishing to insult an entire profession[!] – "It's really too important a thing to be left to non-philosophers" is selling everyone else short, if we mean 'university lecturer in philosophy'. They are our allies, no competitors!
Cheers.
Blogs offer a low-risk and accessible venue for creative philosophy (e.g., see http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2013/04/adam-and-eve-in-happiness-pod.html). I also hope we see more philosophy presented in widely read media like NYTimes, New Republic, etc.
I had not heard of Sturgeon's Rule that "90% of everything is crap" (see Chalmers' link above). I have been telling my students for years that 90% of philosophy talks are crap (too technical for a general audience of philosophers, too little explanation of the significance, poorly delivered, or some combination of the above). People have been focusing here on writing, but it seems like we also need to consider how to make our talks more interesting, accessible, and creative.
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