Topics Profession

Question Are philosophy conferences really hostile? I ask this because I was reading how there was a guy in a conference with his portable white board keeping score of who was winning. I also hear that you guys are vicious trying to pick arguments. Is this some type of philosopher bonding thing or are you guys really just hostile? hehe.

Accepted:
July 15, 2011

Comments

In my experience, among humanists, it is philosophers who ask the most pointed questions: although the questions posed by Anglo-American philosophers (things are different on the Continent, in my experience) are pointed, they are not necessarily hostile, and I have never heard of anyone keeping score so obviously! It is among many philosophers a point of pride that discussions are as focused and pointed as they are, although it is most surprising to other humanists (and in fact I have sometimes inadvertently ruffled feathers when I have raised questions in a talk given in another area of the humanities in a fashion that would be unremarkable in a philosophy conference or talk.) I myself have found that the level of hostility and tension in a conference or talk varies directly with the topic: while there are of course always exceptions, I have found that talks in the general area of metaphysics and epistemology are more tense than talks in subfields of the history of philosophy, ethics, or political philosophy. One of my colleagues has suggested that this may be due to the fact that in the history of philosophy, for example, philosophers seek ultimately to deepen the understanding of certain texts and/or issues, but the discussion is responsible to the texts, whereas in metaphysics and epistemology, the arguments advanced are more personal, as it were, since they do not depend on texts in that way, and thus the position articulated is 'one's own' in a way that even a novel interpretation of a historical text is not. I'd be very interested in the responses of other panelists, especially other panelists with more experience in areas outside of the history of philosophy, the area in which I have done the most work, to this question!