Topics Philosophers

Question Is it appropriate for philosophers who specialize in specific branches of philosophy to comment on philosophical branches outside their field of training? By analogy, a professional chemist would almost never publish books or articles in computer science. Why then should we even consider the political theories of Noam Chomsky (a linguist and philosopher of language) instead of those of Machiavelli or Leo Strauss? Or the moral writings of Bertrand Russell (a logician and philosopher of science)?

Accepted:
April 25, 2013

Comments

First, let's consider what constitutes 'training'. Should we, for instance, be focusing solely on the subject(s) in which someone has taken a formal degree? It's true that Chomsky didn't formally study politics as either an undergraduate or a doctoral student: but then, neither did Machiavelli or Strauss. And Locke started out in medicine, Wittgenstein started out in engineering, David Lewis started out in chemistry, and, yes, Russell started out in mathematics. And so on. If we're going to dismiss them from the philosophical canon on those grounds alone, then we'd be losing an awful lot. What's more, if this was going to be our touchstone, then the career of any academic would be decidedly short: after ten or twenty years, their own field will have moved on from how it was when they first studied it, thereby rendering them ineligible to carry on working in it, at least without taking a second degree as a refresher course. But that would be a silly conclusion to draw. Better, I'd have thought, to acknowledge that people can carry on learning on the job, making their own independent study of a field outside the framework of a formal university degree programme, and maybe even outside the domain of the academic department (if any) with which they happen to be professionally affiliated. And, on that criterion, Chomsky has certainly put in the hours. He's been making a close study of global politics for more than sixty years! I'd say that this should qualify as adequate training, and should entitle him to comment on what he's found. You might not like the conclusions of his analysis, but you surely can't deny that he does know what he's talking about.

And then let's consider what constitutes 'specialization'. Although Chomsky has written a colossal amount in both fields, my impression is that -- as far as sheer volume is concerned -- he's actually written more on politics than on linguistics. So should we perhaps treat that as his true area of specialization, and dismiss the linguistics as just a side-project? Or, more plausibly, should we just acknowledge that he specializes in two distinct areas, running along in parallel?

But then, all this seems to be beside the point anyway. Shouldn't we judge a contribution to a field on its own intrinsic merits, rather than on the credentials of its author? That, after all, is the principle at the heart of the blind peer review process upon which academia is built. Great figures can sometimes slip up, and nobodies can sometimes make important contributions: so to prejudge their works on the basis of prior reputation would be to do great harm to the progress of the subject at large. Once a work has passed that peer review (or even if it has bypassed it -- on reflection, I guess some of Chomsky's political works probably haven't been through that process), the wider reading public generally will have some information on its author, and can make their own minds up. If they see a work getting good reviews, especially if they know that it's coming from an author who generally tends to have something interesting to say, then they might choose to engage with it. If they see it getting poor reviews, or if they don't have a high opinion of the author's works more generally, then they might choose to look elsewhere. That's the prerogative of every reader: no one has time to read everything, so we do need to be selective. But let's not remove works like these from the selection pool prematurely, without even considering them, just because of some ad hominem prejudice about their authors.