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Philosophers: do you see yourself making the world “a better place”? (Does that matter?)

Brian Leiter

A recently tenured philosopher writes:

I was wondering if you could request comments from the readers of your blog on the following question: how do academics see themselves as making the world a better place? I am just tenured, and, while I can see how my teaching and advising duties have a direct impact on the lives of students and advisees (hopefully making these lives better at least in some cases), I am far from sure that my research is producing anything else than egocentric pleasure. Note that I am not working in any of these fields which have obvious practical implications, such as applied ethics for example. I wonder if other academics worry as much as I do about whether we spend our time and utilize our skills the way we ought to, or whether we should think about ways to be more useful to the society and the world.

 

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41 responses to “Philosophers: do you see yourself making the world “a better place”? (Does that matter?)”

  1. Gerald Dworkin

    If by "see yourself making the world better" you mean having evidence that my work is improving the world, then I do not have any. Unlike a lawyer or a doctor who can see immediate good effects–an acquittal, a recovery– philosophers can only hope that their work has some positive impact on the world.
    If by "see yourself,etc." you mean do I intend that my work have good effects then the answer is yes. I wrote on assisted-dying partly to achieve conceptual and normative clarity for its own sake, but partly to try and change
    the minds of physicians and the medical profession.
    I think hope is a virtue, but as a philosopher once said when asked when one could hope to see his new book, "You may hope anytime you like."

    Reply
  2. scott sturgeon

    For years I joked that nothing I ever worked on had anything to do with anything that ever properly mattered to anyone. While supervising a mature student on the metaphysics of dispositions, though, I asked him what he did in his day job. It turned out he was a civil servant. I said his colleagues would doubtless laugh if they knew he was working on best-systems approaches to dispositions. “On the contrary,” he said, “the civil service has sent me to do this work.” I looked puzzled so he explained: “The EU has directed member nations to creature metrics of well-being. The UK has decided that well-being depends on the manifestation of virtues, and that virtues are dispositions. To satisfy the EU directive, then, we must know what dispositions are.” I laughed, of course, but I also stopped making my joke.

    Reply
  3. XYZ

    I find this to be a very disconcerting trend. A similar discussion was going at New APPS recently. I fear that this is the mark of a person who may stop publishing, now that they have tenure. Personally, I find it difficulty to understand why people feel this way. Because of various traumatic events I experienced in my earlier personal life, I find great comfort doing my research in philosophy. It is in no way a guilty pleasure.
    It is a chance to focus my mind on something I enjoy and I find meaningful. But if this newly tenured philosopher is looking for something meaningful to do, s/he should consider taking on an administrative role on her/his campus. This is not meant as a joke. Philosophers often prove to be very capable administrators. Consider, for example, Valerie Hardcastle. I believe that in the long run it is good for our profession that philosophers step up to such tasks.

    Reply
  4. David Velleman

    See Sarah Buss, "Needs (Someone Else's), Projects (My Own), and Reasons", The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 103, No. 8 (Aug., 2006), pp. 373-402. (I don't agree with Buss, but the paper is excellent.)

    Reply
  5. Richard Baron

    The question could be asked of many disciplines, especially among the humanities. I think the best answer was given – as it happens, in relation to physics – by Robert R Wilson, the Director of Fermilab, in 1969. A Congressional Committee wanted to know what the country was getting in return for all the tax dollars that Fermilab consumed.

    "It has only to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture. … It has to do with: Are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things we really venerate in our country and are patriotic about. It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending."

    (Source, giving the full text: http://history.fnal.gov/testimony.html )

    This answer is focused on one country, rather than on the world, but that is not surprising in the context – a context that also made the question one about dollars, and about military defence, rather than about the time and energy of talented people, and about other goals. But it should not be difficult to re-use the answer in other contexts.

    In philosophy, the answer might seem only to have application to the few who will make large, long-lasting differences to the discipline. But others, who do not expect to reach those heights, can still use the answer. They cannot be sure that they will not reach those heights. They may also play a crucial role in educating the stars. To quote one who did turn out to be a star, " 'tis Ambition enough to be employed as an Under-Labourer in clearing Ground a little, and removing some of the Rubbish, that lies in the way to Knowledge" (Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, The Epistle to the Reader, page 10 of the Nidditch edition).

    Reply
  6. Landon W Schurtz

    My take on it is that philosophical research is about as far removed from any practical effect on the world as possible, but that doesn't mean it's valueless because philosophy is interconnected. A question in ethics that might have practical impact could turn on some question of ontology, for instance. So in order for the people who do "practical" philosophy to do what they do, they need the people who do, in a word, "impractical" philosophy.

    Reply
  7. Texas Philosopher

    If by "making the world a better place" you mean promoting social justice, or combatting social and political ills, or something else along those lines, then I think the answer is fairly obviously "no." Philosophical scholarship as such does not make the world a better place, except perhaps in a very abstract sense. Even the "fields which have obvious practical implications" do not appear to have much of a real impact. Political philosophy certainly doesn't.

    That is not to say that philosophical writing couldn't promote humanistic or even revolutionary goals; there is no a priori reason that philosophers couldn't become public intellectuals and influence opinions in the way that, e.g., pundits do. But my sense is that few philosophers see this as a worthwhile aspiration, and that many view it as beneath the dignity of serious scholars. In addition–as Professor Leiter himself has intimated on many occasions–it is not clear that ANY public intellectuals have (or, perhaps, have ever had) much direct influence in American culture, politics, etc. (I do not need to rehearse the reasons why this is the case, especially for those who have spent any time outside our liberal colonies on the coasts.) Very few of the people who influence opinion in the United States qualify as intellectuals, unless you consider Rick Warren, Joel Osteen, Glenn Beck, etc. to be intellectuals. I personally think it is a stretch to view the likes of David Brooks and Thomas Friedman intellectuals, to say nothing of Lawrence O'Donnell and Ed Schultz.

    My personal view: *if* one is interested in trying to make the world a better place, there are far better ways to accomplish this than by doing philosophy. I have known (or known of) many fine philosophers who are also dedicated political activists. Their philosophical research is often extremely technical and devoid of any obvious "real-world implications," but this does not seem to prevent them from pursuing meaningful work as activists. (Isn't it interesting that the metaphysicians, logicians, philosophers of language, and epistemologists are often more politically engaged than the ethicists and political theorists?)

    Reply
  8. Zach

    Like the original poster, I am a soon-to-be-tenured professor at a small college (I teach up to 170 students per term). And, like the original poster, I see my greatest social impact — something that is deeply important to me — as being primarily in the classroom and through my role as a mentor. My few publications — articles, a book, a few edited volumes — have generated little or no conversations that have gotten back to me. On a direct level, then, the only social weight I feel from my career is through my teaching and mentorship.

    As a result, I've begun to think of publishing as a hedonic enterprise, something that gives me pleasure and, indirectly, greatly benefits my teaching and intellectual vitality. I've also begun to think that being a professor is not the terminus in my career: I'd like to optimize my social value in other ways that I can't as a professor later on in life.

    Part of me wonders if this isn't a structural flaw in the academy: research and innovation are normative in terms of career ambition and indoctrination, but the greatest social value may lie in quality teaching and mentorship. Or, to ask the original poster's question in a more general way: How much impact does research have, as broadly measured as possible? Is the opportunity cost of doing research better than that of teaching more students more effectively?

    Reply
  9. Craig Duncan

    I myself have been preoccupied with this worry lately. I work in ethics and political philosophy, so you might think that I'd be less vulnerable to this worry than others who work in less applied areas of philosophy. However, even in applied philosophy it is dispiriting to realize how difficult it is to publish an article that will be read carefully by any more than a few dozen fellow specialists. And even if you do succeed in publishing a widely read and discussed article, I can imagine that it is dispiriting to realize how little attention is paid to academic philosophy in the outside world of policy-makers, given the anti-intellectual strains that predominate in our culture. All this can fuel doubts regarding the worth of your research.

    That said, as a partial salve to this worry I typically call my attention to a few further thoughts.

    1. The philosophical project is still a worthwhile one. Even if it is currently under-appreciated by outsiders, it is likely that it won't always remain so.

    2. The philosophical project is a collective project; the vast majority of individuals taking part in it are bound to feel that their individual contribution is small.

    An analogy in light of points 1 and 2 = the work of medieval mason helping to build a cathedral. An individual mason's contribution was doubtless small, and he likely did not live to see the conclusion of the project and witness its full value. His work, though, was more than the pursuit of egocentric pleasure.

    3. (An expansion of point 2 above) Even in fields other than academia, most individuals' contributions to society via their paid work are small contributions at best. Thus you must ask yourself whether your doubts regarding the worth of your contribution stem from the nature of philosophy itself, or alternatively — and more generally — from the puniness of the individual. To use an overused phrase: occasional feelings of insignificance are likely just part of "the human condition."

    4. Teaching and research are not so isolated from one another. As a teacher you are keeping the philosophical conservation going, and it is only because this conversation continues that future first-rate minds will be drawn to philosophy.

    5. Individuals can contribute to society beyond their paid work, e.g. by community service, or by raising their own children well.

    All that said, while points 1-5 help ease my worries, they do not eliminate them. I continue to wrestle. Much philosophical writing is indeed frivolous and low-quality. Perhaps mine is too? And what social contribution might I have made had a chosen a different career?

    However, in my cooler moments I recognize that the balance of argument lies with points 1-5 (and doubtless further points that could be mentioned).

    Reply
  10. Darrell Rowbottom

    There is some philosophical work on the topic, at least as it pertains to philosophers in particular, e.g. Ward Jones's 'Philosophers, their context, and their responsibilities', *Metaphilosophy* 37(5), 623-645.

    Of course, it's really a division of labour issue. A simple analogy does the trick. The citizens of a city-state might be foolish to chastise one of their blacksmiths for working on developing new alloys, rather than forging weapons and armour, in the lead up to war. For the remaining blacksmiths might be producing ample weapons and armour, and the discovery of a new alloy – however improbable – could significantly improve future weapons and armour.

    There is also a role for serendipity, which is why it's often worth devoting a little effort (at the level of the group) to avenues that appear entirely unpromising. (That is, even assuming a thoroughgoing pragmatism.) Mathematical innovations such as complex numbers and non-Euclidean geometry did not have obvious applications at time of their discovery. But no doubt I need not rehearse how they are put to work now!

    Reply
  11. Charles Pigden

    If you are good teacher you may enrich the lives of your students by introducing them to some interesting ideas that they may find useful, illuminating or sustaining in later life. Again if you are a good teacher, you may succeed in imparting a range of skills, habits and values that make your charges better people than they might otherwise have been – smarter, more clear-headed, more intellectually honest, more critical and less dupable, and perhaps (if you are very lucky) a little bit kinder and more decent. You may, if you are lucky as a researcher, discover interesting truths that become widely accepted within the philosophical community or, as second best, you may develop fruitful falsehoods which help to push the debate along, stimulating others to get it right where you got it wrong. Thus if truth is a good (or if some truths are good) you may make the world better place by advancing the cause of truth. But the idea that your research is going to make the world a better place in any sense other than this is almost certainly a delusion, a delusion, if I may say so, to which ethicists are peculiarly prone. Consider what is required if your research work is to ‘make the a difference’ in the sort of sense that you seem to have in mind. To do that you need to develop a set of ideas which, if put in practice or brought to bear on public debates, would somehow make the world better a place. This is, of course conceivable and sometimes it actually happens. But it is not enough to develop these ideas. Nor it is enough to get them widely accepted within the philosophical community (which is in itself a major task requiring luck as well as talent). If they are ACTUALLY to be put into practice or brought to bear on public debates, they must be widely disseminated and widely accepted amongst the non-philosophical elites and preferably by the wider public. They must become the common currency of the punditocracy. They must inform the ruminations of opinionators and direct the decisions of politicians. All this is possible and sometimes it actually happens. A few, a talented and lucky few, manage to develop the kind of beneficial ideas that have this kind of public impact. (Singer, Sen, Rawls and Nussbaum, and in an earlier generation I would suggest Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper.) But there are probably no more than fifty philosophers living at one time who manage to hit the jackpot by coming up with ideas that are BOTH beneficial AND publicly influential (perhaps a couple of hundred more if we lower the bar a bit and allow for small-scale and local benefits). If you are a young academic beginning your career, then you have to realize that the chances are that you won’t be one of them. For myself I am inclined to think that when I am doing philosophical research I am probably not making the world a better place and when I am making the world a better place I am probably not doing philosophical research (though I hope I may get lucky with my research on conspiracy theories which would, I think, be beneficial if widely believed and which is beginning to get some traction in the public sphere). Show me the philosopher who is deeply convinced that his or her research work plays a positive social role, and the chances are that I can show you a liar or at least someone suffering from delusions of utility. It isn’t always so, and it certainly isn’t necessarily so, but usually – sadly – that’s the way it is.

    Reply
  12. gradjunct

    I think that, as goals," being useful to society and the world" and "making the world a better place" are somewhat at cross purposes. I believe the world is a better place than it otherwise would be simply in virtue of the fact that there are people carrying on the activity of doing philosophy, however self-serving or introspective their doing philosophy might be. To my mind, just as the world is better than it otherwise would have been simply for containing the likes of Socrates and Epicurus, so it is better for containing the likes of, for example, Saul Kripke and Joseph Margolis. Even those of us who will never be stars in the academic philosophical firmament, who toil in relative professional anonymity, who are graduate students and adjunct lecturers, play a vital role in keeping philosophy alive and that makes the world better. Does that make us useful? I doubt it. And why should we care? Lots of things that are useful (e.g. guns, bombs, Digital Rectal Examinations, and idiots) are also objectively awful.

    Reply
  13. P.D.

    There seems to be a false dichotomy in the question and some of the replies between teaching and research. For me, doing less research would not mean teaching more or better. Rather, I teach better because I do original philosophy. It cultivates the attitude that philosophy is an active and critical enterprise, rather than just a corpus of work by now-dead writers. I get students to engage in philosophy better (I think) because I'm engaging in it myself.
    It's a bonus that people occasionally read something I wrote and learn something.

    Reply
  14. Jon

    Philosophy is one of the reasons we bother living in the first place. I would think that having more of it would make the world a better to live in.

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  15. Eugene

    "I wonder if other academics worry as much as I do about whether we spend our time and utilize our skills the way we ought to, or whether we should think about ways to be more useful to the society and the world."

    I've always thought the worry about whether there were other, more productive ways that philosophers could (should) spend their time was especially pressing in light of the fact that philosophers tend to be really smart individuals.

    Are philosophers useful to the world? Sure. Would they be far more useful to the world doing other things? You bet.

    Reply
  16. Andrew

    This worry is one of the reasons why I've concentrated in political philosophy and ethics. I rarely have this worry with my own work. Not isn't to discount the work of philosophers in other fields, but my inability to formulate a sufficient answer to this question was one the contributing factors to my veering away from the less practical philosophical subjects.

    With regard to "whether we should think about ways to be more useful to the society and the world" I think the answer is Yes. But, brilliant researchers often aren't the best positioned to determine 'what is most useful to society' nor how best to apply their research to societal undertakings. Intermediaries are very important in this respect – one reason why philosophy is best seen as an interdisciplinary field.

    Reply
  17. John Basl

    I do a lot in applied philosophy (though I'm not at all sure it will make a practical difference), but I'm a strong advocate of the "more theoretical" parts of philosophy. I've often had discussions with my applied philosopher friends and colleagues about whether it's worth doing work in deep metaphysics or philosophy of language. They often point to how insular debates in those areas can be and how little obvious relevance they have to issues that seem to matter. In defense of those debates, I often point to the sciences where lots of work seems inconsequential and certainly most of it will make no difference in any practical sense. Lots of work in the sciences is insular and scientists often fail to explain or even see how their work fits into some bigger picture. But, then there are the scientists who do see the big picture and are able to synthesize the seemingly less important results and make sense of why those insular debates might matter for important stuff. I think that happens in philosophy as well. Of course, not all work matters and some philosophers are on a research trajectory or involved in an insular debate merely because of research inertia (it's where their other work pulled them, they have something to say, they find a puzzle interesting, etc.). That doesn't mean their work isn't part of a nexus of puzzles and questions that have practical importance and that someone won't come along and scoop it up and use it important ways. Even for those projects that are ultimately of no practical value, it's hard to know that in advance. It's like basic research in the sciences; most projects don't work out and may not matter, but you can't know that in advance.

    Anyway, something like that is the reason I'm happy to have philosophers work on issues that seem to be of little substance (especially since philosophy is relatively cheap and the payoff is potentially quote great).

    Reply
  18. Jay Quigley

    You have tenure, my friend! Use it to branch out and make at least some of your writing, teaching, and advising useful in the ways you envision.

    1. I love Darrell Rowbottom's above allegory of the blacksmithy. Consider that, even as a blacksmith can work on multiple projects, a philosopher can have important influence in theroetical philosophy (etc.) *and* (yes) as a public intellectual. Even if one's influence is more local or small-time than, say, a Bertrand Russell or Peter Singer or Daniel Dennett or Noam Chomsky.

    2. Here's one idea for how to make an immediate positive impact: start a local chapter of Giving What We Can (http://www.givingwhatwecan.org/). Get some students excited about it. (Alternatively you could join the network of http://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/)

    Philosophy has no small role in debates of what we owe to the poor, what their well-being consists in, etc.

    3. If philosophy, as a means of self-examination, can make students' lives even a little more worth living, then a well-taught philosophy course can be a huge influence. (Even if it sounds corny: you can make a hundred worlds a better place each semester.)

    I've seen my community college prof friend make students interested in intellectual maturation who otherwise may well have coasted through community college. His class meetings sometimes conclude with an optional meditation period.

    Ideally, it's in the power of a teacher to motivate (more) people not just to become more successful people than they would've been otherwise (whether doctors or businesspeople, or something less posh). Beyond this, teachers can inspire students to become unabashedly *geeky* doctors, businesspeople, or whatever who aren't afraid to think and read for themselves: nerdy thinkers and readers whose (public and private) lives are forever better thought-out.

    Reply
  19. John Gardner

    I'd be the first to say that the world is a better place – constitutively – just in virtue of containing more good philosophy, and more good philosophers. But I take it that the questioner is asking about making the world a better place instrumentally by his or her work, owed to to the dissemination of good ideas in it. Beyond helping students and other scholars to solve puzzles or to frame arguments, I do not believe that my philosophical work has any significant consequences via such dissemination and I do not intend it to have any. I do not intend it to have any, partly because I suspect that any consequences it would have, if it had any, would be really bad. Not because it is bad philosophy (though maybe it is) but because philosophy (in my subfields: moral, political, legal) is ripe for abuse. It is better not to have any effects than to have predictably unwelcome effects through the kind of people who are likely to put my work to use. On the very rare occasions when I have seen my work used by judges, policymakers, journalists, etc. – what Andrew 10:43 callled 'intermediaries' – I have very much disapproved of what they did with it and wished that I had managed to keep it much more secret.

    Digression: Fortunately the UK Research Excellence Framework, while it laboriously measures the extra-academic 'impact' of research, doesn't require that that impact be for the better. If one's research happened to be a constant inspiration to blood-sucking alien life-forms intent on enslaving humanity (not true of mine, but clearly true of some in my immediate vicinity) that would still qualify as an impact so long as the aliens took the trouble to record their debt to one's research. In fact, correctly documented and corroborated, that would be a top-ranking research impact in the REF, as it would have great 'significance' (apocalyptic) and 'reach' (intergalactic).

    Back to main line of thought: If I reflect, as I occasionally do, on whether I could be putting my brain to better use, I console myself with the thought of how little any of my standard comparators ever contributes instrumentally, at least in net terms, to making the world a better place. Lawyers and politicians and religious leaders and journalists and NGO people all like to think that what they do has good consequences for humanity, but I doubt whether most of them are (in the round) doing much more good than ill by their work. And I doubt whether any instrumental good they do, in the round, is particularly closely related to whatever good they may have intended to do. So their example does not encourage me to change my intentions in a more instrumentally do-gooding direction. (Although maybe there is constitutive good in their acting on good intentions.)

    Reply
  20. Carl Sachs

    To a considerable degree, I do think of my research as a selfish pleasure and my teaching as how I contribute to society. And I'd go so far as to say that most of us, under-laborers toiling in anonymity, that's the case. (The stars and super-stars are another matter entirely.) So I do think that the incentive structure for tenure and promotion is badly skewed.

    [Disclosure: I've not yet had a tenure-track position — my employment has been a series of full-time teaching positions with no research expectations. So my research has been done on my own time, for my own reasons. If my research were part of my contractual obligations to my employer, I'm sure I'd feel differently.]

    But, having said that, a few caveats: instead of "selfish pleasure," I might have said, with no less sincerity, that my writing is what I need to feed my soul. That's part of who I am — I'm a writer. I cannot be someone who just takes in information — I have to do something with it, to make it mine, to own it. I have to be a writer. And if other people take some intellectual pleasure in reading my articles and talking with me about my ideas, so much the better — since philosophical dialogue also nourishes my soul.

    A further caveat is that research and teaching can (and, I think, should) mutually inform one another. I can express ideas more clearly in my writing after trying them out with students, and teaching reminds me why my research matters — in the sense of, understanding a bit more clearly where my research fits into the tradition of philosophizing. (For this reason, I prefer teaching introduction to philosophy over over lower-division courses.)

    And I'd like to echo what's been said above about the possibilities for professional philosophers to be public intellectuals, activists, volunteers in their communities, and so on.

    Reply
  21. Raj Patel

    Philosophers have the potential to undoubtedly make the world a better place. This is especially true when philosophy engages with other disciplines. For example, even gauging what it means for the world to be a better place may involve philosophical notions of well-being, quality of life, etc., which some philosophers (such as Amartya Sen) have spent their entire lives working on. I'll note that my interest in philosophy lies in the philosophy of science and in particular the philosophy of economics, which I admit started out as an investigation as to how knowledge can improve the well-being and welfare of the world.

    On the whole, though, I think that most people think philosophers and philosophy departments are irrelevant.

    Reply
  22. A Texas Philosopher

    It is scarcely in dispute that a well-taught philosophy course has the potential to positively impact the lives of at least some students. I take it that even those philosophy professors who dislike teaching or are otherwise indifferent to this kind of outcome would agree.

    That said, I took the OP to be raising a question about the potential of philosophical research to "make the world a better place." I would agree that philosophizing probably has some kind of intrinsic value, that a world in which philosophy is practiced is better than a world in which it isn't practiced, etc. But I understand the question to be about whether philosophical research has any instrumental value for non-philosophers. For example, can philosophical research contribute to the world becoming a more just and/or peaceful place?

    To reiterate, I think it is fairly obvious that the kind of work most of us do within the academy has an intentionally narrow audience and range of application. To this extent, it is not clear that most philosophical research pursued as a component of academic employment, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, has or is intended to have instrumental value in the aforementioned sense. This doesn't mean that it isn't instrumentally valuable in other ways–just that it is mostly irrelevant as concerns improving (or, indeed, changing) the political, social, economic, etc. lot of human beings. I think it is a profound mistake to believe that the work most of us do involves anything other than "describing the world in various ways." If the point is indeed to change it, in whole or in part, academic philosophy in general–and extremely technical work in, e.g., M&E, logic, etc., in particular–is not obviously conducive to this end. This is not a criticism of academic philosophy.

    There is no doubt that political theory and other forms of applied philosophy *could* be marshaled in the service of real-world praxis, but this is generally not what happens with academic philosophy–again, because the form and content of academic philosophy is not especially well-suited to the task. Again, this is not a criticism of academic philosophy, per se–just a statement of fact.

    At its best, the work that we do, whether in applied philosophy or not, encourages us to be conscientiousness about the world and its problems and helps us to think carefully about what we could, or should, do in response. This is probably true of all work that requires rigorous critical thinking about complicated issues. But surely it is a by-product, rather than an explicitly stated goal, of that work.

    In the United States, it is not clear that critical inquiry, analysis, and argumentation play an especially important role in political, social, and economic decision-making. Even public intellectuals are mostly irrelevant on this score. So if it turns out that I am right, philosophers can at least take comfort in the fact that we are not alone. Even science–long held to be the most precise and objective field of inquiry–is rejected by large swathes of the American public. If we are indeed living in a post-rational age, as some have argued (e.g., Chris Hedges), we ought not be surprised at the impotency and irrelevance of intellectuals and other people who trade in rational thinking. Arguments, no matter how rigorous, hold no sway with Teavangelicals, creationists, and climate change skeptics.

    Reply
  23. Ryan Muldoon

    Philosophy itself is surely a rewarding enterprise, and hopefully if you do serious and good work, down the road there is some small chance of shifting ideas in the culture. And the teaching that philosophers do provides them with an opportunity to help students not only reach their own potential, but become aware of their obligations toward others. This is undoubtedly useful, and intrinsically valuable.

    But, surely there are opportunities for more direct influence, if that is your interest? Without leaving the academy, there are still many chances to be more involved in the wider world. In particular, what philosophers often ignore is the possibility for 'translational' work. We have lots of powerful concepts and frameworks and have learned a great deal about reasoning, value, how to organize concepts, etc. One service to the wider world is to write about them in ways that are more generally accessible to a lay audience. Or to consult for organizations that you think are doing valuable work, and bring that clarity of thinking and rigor to the table, so they can take advantage of your expertise. It's both a useful service to the wider community, but also injects new cases and experiences into your own research program. For the past four years, I've been involved in training UNICEF officers about the theory of social norms, and how to use it in a development context to improve outcomes across a very wide variety of cases. I write theoretical papers on the subject, and this provides me with a chance to help people more directly. It takes only a small amount of my cognitive resources away from doing normal philosophy work, and gives me new ideas to explore. Now I do some consulting on the World Bank's World Development Report, since they wanted more than just economists to participate. Since I think philosophers should have more of a voice in these sorts of policy areas, I decided to work to make it happen. This doesn't mean that I don't want to be a philosopher, or stop doing normal philosophy research. It just means that what was once my leisure time is now time for translating my philosophical work into policy suggestions. I still publish papers at a pretty good clip and am finishing my first book.

    Setting up the dichotomy between a completely isolated philosopher, and a hack pundit who bloviates on the air is unfortunate. Do you work on Ontology? There's a massive set of problems that medical professionals could use help with. Epistemology? Nearly everyone needs help understanding evidence and justification. Value theory? There are endless NGOs that would benefit from your expertise. If you don't want to do this kind of work on the side, that's totally fine – standard philosophy is valuable in of itself. But if you'd wish that others had a bit more philosophical sophistication, because then X would be better, there are probably ways where you can try and engage with that issue, and not stop being a philosopher.

    This is, of course, not to say that everyone ought to do both normal philosophy and some secondary efforts of translational philosophy. But, I do mean to say that philosophers shouldn't simply cede the public conversation or policy-making to other disciplines, then say that this was inevitable. I also think it's worth arguing against the idea that the only "serious" work in philosophy has to be maximally distant from real concerns that people face. Philosophers can engage in the 'real world' and still stay philosophers.

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  24. Ben

    I'm surprised by the number of young philosophers I talk to who have not applied systematic thought to this – it seems to me – quite basic question, if only because the question is so frequently asked. There is, though, some literature on the ethics of career choice freely available (see, for example, http://www.80000 hours.com started by students at my own University).

    As another commenter has suggested above, tenure grants a privileged flexibility that makes the question even more relevant.

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  25. Thom Brooks

    Philosophy matters. I believe there is a real value in engaging beyond the lecture hall and traditional outlets to new audiences. The general public has an appetite for philosophy that is often not cultivated as much as it could (and I believe should) be. Why benefit our students and colleagues alone? There is also an important role more philosophers might play in the critique and reform of law and public policy. While I accept much of the wise words of caution noted by John Gardner above, I also suspect philosophers can (and I believe should) play a greater public through engagement and potential impact.

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  26. Patrick Denehy

    At the conclusion of an informal logic class, a student told me he changed his mind about same-sex marriage. He admitted his prior belief against same-sex marriage was susceptible to a slippery slope fallacy we covered, and so, without any other barriers, he changed his belief. I take it that makes the world a better place, if only in a small way.

    As for research, it is less clear. I suspect there are people asking objectively important questions, and others asking objectively unimportant questions. I don't know what separates these, but surely something. Those asking the latter are probably not "making the world a better place" with their research. They may, in fact, be making it worse.

    Regardless, as others have pointed out, asking whether one is "making the world a better place" is a difficult and perhaps psychologically debilitating question. I've found Jonathan Franzen's essay "Why Bother?" (originally, "Perchance to Dream" in Harper's) quite good in alleviating this question.

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  27. Ethicsblogger

    I think Craig Duncan, above, is closest to the mark when he points out that philosophy is a collective project. Perhaps more to the point, however, is that it is a collective project that can bear fruit even if most of us taking part are not *aiming* at generating such fruit. We can all be busy teaching our students and focusing on little philosophical problems that don't matter much to anyone, and still contribute to a body of practice and knowledge that is, in the long run, of considerable importance. Smith's 'invisible hand' needn't be read as just a point about *money,* after all, but about happy, unintended consequences more generally.

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  28. Lindsay Brainard

    As a PhD student in philosophy, I've worried about this a great deal. One thing that assuages my worries on this front is how worthwhile I find philosophical outreach to be. My department's outreach program (http://philosophy.unc.edu/outreach) serves a host of non-academic communities, and I've come to be convinced that this work can indeed be world-bettering.

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  29. Philosophy student

    I have an undergraduate degree in philosophy and I have no doubt at all that my education in philosophy is what guided me to the work I'm doing, living and working in a developing country trying to improve secondary education, especially for women. I never had an applied ethics course, nor did I think to myself "ok so as a result of my normative ethics classes I now consider myself a (say) rule consequentialist, so lets try to figure out what the best career is for me by the lights of rule consequentialism and do that". Rather, my philosophy classes allowed me to develop values and habits of thinking that made me more human and made me a better human, which in turn led me down the career path I've chosen. I want to emphasize that it wasn't through explicitly learning ethical theory that this transformation took place. It was just as much a result of my education in every other area of philosophy, which is what makes it somewhat mysterious and hard to trace, but no less real or important.

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  30. Michael B

    The line, taken to defend seemingly-irrelevant philosophy, that 'Those guys in maths/science often pursue seemingly pointless stuff just for the love, and look how much turns out to be of so much use!' seems pretty hollow since it only over does work for mathematics and science. In fact, put this way, it puts philosophy in stark contrast of not producing useful stuff, whether by design or accident! Otherwise why not just use examples of fruit borne unto 'irrelevant' philosophy? I'd start with logic and computation, if that's your line of thought.

    Besides, the only job that's likely to influence huge swathes of people at once, on important social stuff, in your lifetime, is as a powerful politician. And when was the last time they did anything good for the majority of their people? But so what? Anyone at all who has ever had a really good teacher, who was a really good educational role model, a really good mentor, knows that such experiences can stay with you for a lifetime. That's real, social, important. I say that as a former philosophy student.

    Of course you're more than your job. Research what you like. Then give a few hours a week at your local homeless shelter or volunteer to work the phones for your local Samaritans.

    Myself, I think the final 4 minutes 52 seconds (from 32:00 onwards) of this clip

    give a nice perspective on the value of the arts. It's from Patrick Stewart's address to the Oxford Union.

    For the impatient among you, or if I'm not allowed to post a YT link: he asks why, in Nazi concentration camps, where there was barely enough energy to avoid a beating, did people take the time to produce art? (Or, if you're Wittgenstein, philosophy.) Then he compares a person leaving a hospital physically patched up and ready to heal, with a person leaving a theatre, emotionally patched up and ready to heal, if the artist is good, and lucky.

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  31. Maureen Eckert

    "When you see a good fight — get in it!"

    Often, I tell students that philosophy prepares them to do "almost anything" that requires exceptionally careful reflection, critical evaluation, writing and/or communication. I'm unsure of how this advice doesn't apply to me as well as an advanced practitioner with over a decade now of experience. While I am not living up to the sorts of engagement with the world that philosophers like Peter Ludlow and Thom Brooks have accomplished lately, increasingly I see that speaking out is not some completely other thing *besides* practicing philosophy. Maybe, I miss too many opportunities.

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  32. aerror

    I want to try to approach this from a different angle.

    1. Suppose reading philosophy was as popular as watching football (American soccer). Then, we would hardly worry as much about the impact or importance of our research. Why? Well, lots of people derive enjoyment from watching football. So I suppose if philosophy were this popular, we could rest (relatively) content in thinking we bring lots of enjoyment to people.

    2. But in fact, providing mass enjoyment–or even having an impact on the masses–is unnecessary for being important. Consider the paintings of some excellent but relatively obscure painter; my favorite example is Massimo Rao. He will almost certainly never have the impact of Picasso, Van Gogh, etc. But was his work therefore unimportant? I would say no. He did something distinctive, and did it well–and those who run across his work can derive much enjoyment from it.

    3. Yet we can say precisely the same (can we not?) about your favorite philosopher. Consider Gustav Bergmann, just for discussion's sake. He was well read in his time (or so I understand) though he does not seem to be read much anymore. Does that mean his work is ultimately unimportant? No! *Importance is not some kind of popularity contest.* Bergmann did something distinctive, did it well, and others can appreciate his work if they are lucky enough to run across it.

    4. Naturally, it might be hard to think of one's own philosophical work–or even that of your contemporaries– as having the same kind of importance. Well, maybe it doesn't: Our work may not be as distinctive or as effective at what it tries to do. But maybe some of it is, and we just don't realize it. Maybe we're too "close" to it. Or we are each too indoctrinated in "slave morality" to see our own work that way.

    5. The main point, however, is that philosophy can be important, even if unpopular or low-impact.

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  33. Jeff H

    I'm out of the profession, at least in part, because of these concerns. I did a Master's thesis on the demandingness of utilitarianism, and while I don't think utilitarianism is necessarily the be-all and end-all of moral theory, I thought, and still think, that it gets enough right to be taken seriously – and also that even this modest admission has *massive* implications for how we ought to live that very, very few philosophers take anywhere near seriously enough. And I was no counterexample.

    One of those implications was that if I could provide more benefit to more people somewhere else – which I almost certainly could – I had a duty, or at least it would be far preferable morally, for me to do so. Intellectually I'd have admitted that even at a fairly early stage, but it took a few years after my Master's, but still within my graduate career, to really start internalizing it. But once it did so, I couldn't read, much less write, academic philosophy without feeling like I was helping perpetuate, or at least inappropriately benefiting from, what was at best a massive waste of time, at worst outright fraud.

    In the end, I didn't finish my Ph.D. and so wound up not having the option of an academic career regardless. (Originally I'd planned to get my Ph.D. and then go into government or the NGO sector or something.) But I think my failure to complete my doctorate was partly *because*, after making that decision, my heart wasn't really in it anymore. Frankly it's also partly because of weak support from my department, which may be related – once I started making that view known, I never felt properly supported again and more than once suspected I was being intentionally set up to fail. I'll probably never know for sure, though.

    Now to make a long story short, just under two years in the public sector have left me in some important respects as disenchanted with that as I was with academia. There are areas of policy where I'd probably be pretty happy but they're chronically underfunded and otherwise not treated with the respect I feel they should be, or in some cases even taken seriously. Homelessness is one such area. I strongly suspect the next election in my province will make this worse; in any case I see no possibility it will make it better.

    I don't know what, if any, moral can be drawn from all this. Maybe just that the fatalism in some of the above posts – the "you're probably not making a difference, but with few exceptions, neither is anyone else" stuff – is correct. For my own part, I am looking into self-employment, trying to get a game I've been writing into commercially viable shape. At least that would bring enjoyment to people, if mostly already somewhat privileged people.

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  34. Chris Bertram

    I'm surprised that nobody is arguing the case that many of us are making the world a worse place. Specifically, those of us who teach at "elite" colleges and universities surely play a role in reproducing patterns of advantage, inequality and exclusion. Such colleges are often nice places to teach and there aren't many other places one can pursue a career in philosophy. Still, let's not fool ourselves about the place of our institutions in society and our role in them,

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  35. Richard Baron

    Lindsay Brainard (comment 28) is right about outreach. Philosophy outside the walls of the academy may not be quite as popular as football (compare aerror, comment 32, point 1), but it can be hugely popular, and very stimulating for those who come along and participate. One example in London, with which I am involved, is Philosophy for All: http://www.pfalondon.org . We regularly get 70 people along to monthly lectures that are followed by discussion. We neither need nor desire to dumb down, and we maintain an academic orientation, rather than edging philosophy towards self-help.

    I therefore applaud the UNC initiative, and other initiatives of the same nature. Such initiatives do not have to be created within universities, but universities do have the expertise ready and waiting. Those that are created and run outside universities do benefit greatly from the willingness of university professors to come and give talks. Any professor who fears that their chosen career may be pointless, should go to such an event, give a talk, and bask in the applause.

    (By the way, the UNC link that Lindsay Brainard supplies works if you remove the closing bracket. When blogs create links, they use all the characters before the next space, so if you follow the link with some punctuation, there needs to be a space first.)

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  36. j.

    philosophers always talk guiltily about improving the world. i don't so often hear them talk about improving themselves.

    in the last few years i've often connected those observations, personally, with the devaluation of the vita contemplativa. i don't know what you would call such a thing nowadays, if you're averse to a lot of the traditional meanings that have been attached to it. but it does seem like a way of 'improving the world' which would be distinctively philosophical would be to try to live a contemplative life and to try (for example, by trying to be a good example, which conveniently coincides with simply trying to live the thing in the first place) to help others do so. for there are all kinds of people out there dead set on improving the world. not so many, on living thoughtfully. it often seems that people hardly have any idea how to do the latter without construing it as the former.

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  37. David Livingstone Smith

    I share the concerns of the person who kicked off this conversation. If the way that we spend our money is a moral issue, the way that we spend our thoughts is a fortiori a moral issue as well.

    I sometimes hear younger colleagues state that they would like to do research that has some promise of making a constructive difference to people's lives, and yearn to become more publicly engaged as philosophers. However, they worry that putting such a program into action will be frowned upon by colleagues, and thus be self-destructive when they are seeking tenure. They are confronted with a sort of institutionalized aloofness from practical affairs which, I think, has contributed to the poor reputation of philosophy among colleagues from other disciplines as well as among the general public.

    This can change. There are overwhelmingly many scientifically, morally, and politically significant issues that philosophers can very usefully address (and, I think, SHOULD address)in ways that are intelligible to people outside the profession. However, for this to happen, getting one's hands dirty needs to become regarded as a virtue rather than a vice.

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  38. Larry

    As a former academic (now in the private sector), my impression is that this discussion does not identify the problem correctly, and it allocates blame where it is not due.

    1) There are a number of statements about how anti-intellectual the populace is (e.g., update 9, Craig Duncan) and how there'd be no place for philosophy outside of academia. Let's just say that this is patently false. Many people outside of academia, probably most, are really interested in big questions, do a lot of reading, and consume a lot of educational media. However, they don't have time to consume media that is esoteric and only intelligible to a highly-trained minority. Is that surprising?

    2) Do you know what is really difficult? Showing how what you do is relevant to someone outside of academia. It's probably more difficult than publishing in a top-tier journal. You may console yourself by ruminating on the fact that you have contributed to a body of knowledge and perhaps moved the needle on truth, but, per many of the comments above, this is not at all impactful. And that is probably why it is not consoling to many of you.

    3) Above all else, the most valuable thing you do is teach. It is sad that this is not respected across the board. Socrates was put to death for corrupting the youth, not for publishing a paper on the mereology of simples.

    My guess is that philosophy will continue to languish until philosophers, as a whole, understand that they relegate themselves to insignificance by not engaging with the public at large. If you think this is mistaken, then consider how the world marches on without contributions from philosophers where contributions could have been useful. Examples:

    Knowledge graphs used by Facebook and Google:

    http://www.google.com/insidesearch/features/search/knowledge.html

    Do you think epistemologists were consulted?

    Public policy discussions considering well-being:

    With the exception of a tiny minority, why aren't philosophers more fully in on this one? Why do sociologists, economists, and psychologists rule the roost here?

    The answer in all cases is because philosophers, as a group, choose not to. No one else holds philosophers back. To return to recently tenured prof's question: the answer is that teaching can make the world better but research, with no attempt to show its relevance to people at large, will not (at least in any interesting sense of "better").

    BL COMMENT: It bears noting that in many countries, but not the US, philosophers are consulted on public policy issues. This says more about the US than it does, I suspect, about philosophers. (I am not sure that consulting philosophers is always a good idea, but that's a different issue.)

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  39. William MacAskill

    I'm a DPhil at Oxford and the founder of 80,000 Hours (mentioned in an earlier comment). I'm going to respond a bit to the pessimism about the value of philosophical research. I'm not going to discuss whether philosophers typically do make a difference, but whether one can make a major difference through philosophy. I think one can. At 80,000 Hours we often do recommend philosophy as a place for a high impact career path (thought certainly not the only path). Note I'll only talk about normative philosophy (ethics, pol phil, decision theory, epistemology) as that's my area of expertise. And I'll just make three fairly independent points.

    1. It's not enough to look at the small probability of having an influence as a philosopher; you've also got to look at the influence you do have, if you have an influence, and work out the expected value. And you've also got to consider the long-term impact (over hundreds or thousands of years).

    It seems to me that if we do this, the historical record for the impact of normative philosophy looks really pretty good. Consider, for example, Locke’s influence on the American Revolution, Mill’s influence on the woman’s suffrage movement; Marx’s influence on the rise of socialism and communism; and Singer’s influence on the animal rights movement. If we broaden our horizons, and include Confucius and Buddha in our comparison class, as I think we should, then it’s hard to deny that the work of moral philosophy has shaped millenia of human history. Even a tiny probability of having a comparable impact still has very great expected value. Much more could be said, of course, but there's at least a strong prima facie case for normative philosophy having extremely large impact historically.

    2. It strikes me that making a difference in philosophy often requires an unconventional approach to choosing research questions.
    Rather than thinking in terms of "this is what I do, how can I apply it?" it's better to ask "What are the important, decision-relevant, but currently neglected, issues?" and then ask "How could I contribute to those issues?" I've written a couple of blog posts about this: http://80000hours.org/blog/46-how-to-be-a-high-impact-philosopher and http://80000hours.org/blog/98-how-to-be-a-high-impact-philosopher-part-ii.

    3. There's a market for philosophical research and ideas – namely, people who want to use their lives to do good. GiveWell's charity evaluation relies crucially on many philosophical issues. (And not just in ethics, but epistemology and decision theory too. See, for example, their discussion of how 'skeptical' a prior to have: http://blog.givewell.org/2011/08/18/why-we-cant-take-expected-value-estimates-literally-even-when-theyre-unbiased/). I'd love to see more philosophers weighing in and helping GiveWell with their methodology, and they'd really appreciate that, too. And, from surveys, the majority of young people regard ethical considerations as crucial in deciding which career to pursue (that's millions of young people wanting ethical advice, every year). But they typically have a very poor understanding of how to think about the ethical considerations relevant to their career. That's the gap that 80,000 Hours is trying to fill, and it also would benefit greatly from having more philosophers weighing in on these issues and improving its methodology.

    Finally – If there are any philosophers out there who are worried by this question and do want to use their careers to make a difference, they should get in contact with 80,000 Hours. We've spent a lot of time thinking about this, and can offer advice and provide opportunities to use one's position and abilities to make the world a better place.

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  40. anon

    why is egocentric pleasure bad? don't happy people make a happy world? You don't get paid to do research, you get paid to teach and are expected to do research as evidence that you have something to teach. As always, teaching is the crux of the profession, regardless of how low it is on the list of priorities for many.

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  41. Jmk

    My undergrad professor, the late Bernie Rosen, auctioned himself at his church fundraiser for his services resolving ethical dilemmas. Don't remember what the winning bid was. Joking aside, as a psychotherapist I've used ideas from philosophy (mostly ancient philosophy, but also metaphysics) directly with clients many times. I also use the philosophical way of breaking down ideas almost daily in management/evaluation.

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