Here. An apt observation from the interview:
I think the future of philosophy is going to be one of wide inequality, mirroring the growing wealth inequality in the country. Institutions that are flooded with money will have vibrant research departments, with well-paid and comfortable philosophers who will be, as they always have been, leaders in their research areas, but who have very little incentive to be leaders in bringing more equity and accessibility to the field as a whole. Meanwhile, the places where 90% of college students get their education will have small or non-existent philosophy departments, with underpaid and overworked adjuncts teaching an uninspiring curriculum with multiple-choice tests, leading to even further declines in enrollment.
I think this is going to show up in research as well. With inequality you are going to get younger people and people trying to move up concentrating their attention on the work of those at the top, leaving very little room and attention for outsiders, innovators, cranks, or those in the bottom 90%. We're going to see large and increasingly pedantic literatures on a small set of topics at a time. This isn't new, it's the way philosophy has always been, but its going to be amplified. I think its great that top departments are getting even more money to make their departments bigger and better. But I'm about as convinced in trickle-down philosophy as I am in trickle-down economics.
"[L]arge and increasingly pedantic literatures on a small set of topics" would describe most of armchair metaphysics in the last quarter-century, although the phenomenon is certainly not confined to that currently "prestige" subfield.




Leave a Reply