Topics Philosophy

Question We rarely, if ever, see headlines such as "A team oh philosophers in Berlin finally solves the Is-Ought Dilemma!". Of course, philosophy in general rarely makes headlines, but even within philosophy itself, it seems rare for philosophical ideas to be expounded or developed by teams of people, like scientists are doing more and more often. One would think that working in teams would increase the speed of an idea's development magnitudes, considering one would always have others off of whom to bounce ideas, and weaknesses could be worked over far more quickly, in live dialog rather than over months or years of exchanging arguments in academic publications, or books. Yet it seems that most philosophers choose to go it alone; what are the reasons for this?

Accepted:
November 6, 2010

Comments

I don't know what the reasons are, but I think co-authored papers and books are becoming more common, especially in the more technical parts of philosophy (language, epistemology, etc). I could be wrong about that, as I haven't done an extensive study, but that's my sense.

Part of the reason may just have to do with technology. Working on some philosophical problem is a very ill-defined process much of the time. Just writing a paper can be a very long process. When things had to be snail-mailed back and forth, it was difficult to work with anyone not down the hall. Now, of course, collaboration is much easier, both in the developmental phases and in the writing phases, and so, as I said, we are seeing more of it. People can have a quick conversation at a conference, hit on an idea, and then develop it over email, the phone (which is much cheaper than it used to be), Skype, or whatever, and then write the paper without ever having to be physically in the same place again.