Topics Philosophers

Question How can one determine authenticity and authoritativeness? For example, how would you gauge the authenticity of the panelists' responses? Does studying philosophy give the panelists anymore authority to issues like abortion, love, or education than the "average" non-philosopher? Is there not a little ego in that notion?

Accepted:
February 28, 2008

Comments

I have a little ego, so I'll offer a little answer.

I agree completely: it's not necessary to have studied philosophy to be able to say sane, sensible things about abortion, love, education and so on. Indeed, it would be very bad news if being able to think well about those sorts of things called for specialized training in philosophy. And in fact, no one on this panel is an authority on what people ought to think about, say, capital punishment. The questions philosophers think about are, as it's sometimes put, essentially contested. It's in the nature of the strange business we're in that no one is an authority on the answers in the way that a physicist might be an authority about the answer to some scientific question. No one should accept the conclusions folks on this panel come to just because we're philosophers, and none of us would want anyone to do that.

What philosophers are often good at, however, by skill, training and inclination, is sorting through the logical and conceptual details that certain sorts of issues present. They are often good at spotting important distinctions, relevant possibilities, potential intellectual traps and so on. Non-philosophers can be good at that too, of course, but it's part of the philosopher's stock in trade.

And so I'd suggest that when anyone reads what a panelist here has to say about some topic, what they should react to is the quality of the reasons and arguments. We hope -- all of us -- that we can say things that people who write in will find well-reasoned and helpful. But our status as professional philosophers doesn't guarantee that we'll succeed, and when we don't, readers ought to reject what we say.