Philosophy

Why are philosophers so dodgy when asked a question? It seems like I can never get a straight answer from the few philosophers I know. Is this the philosophers' fault or a fault in the questions being asked?

Comments

I'm sure that some philosophers, like many non-philosophers, are dodgy when asked a question. This tendency can be fueled by worries about unpopularity or future recriminations, for example.

I'm also sure that some questions deserve dodgy answers. If you ask me whether you should give up your job in order to take care of your mother, I will be rightly reluctant to give you a direct answer since I cannot have knowledge all of the relevant considerations (even if you try to share them all with me), and since this is not the sort of decision that one person should make for another.

I suspect, however, that most cases of what you are calling "dodgy" answers are actually just very complex answers -- answers that spend a lot of time trying to clarify the terms of the question, and answers that include lots of conditionals (If ____, then ____; but if ___, then ____; etc.). If you ask whether or not we have free will, for example, I will first want to say quite a lot about the different things that might be meant by free will. I will then go on to say that if free will requires the intervention of non-physical causes in a physical world, and if the physical world includes not only all properties that are themselves physical but also all properties that supervene on the physical world, then there is not free will, but if free will is present as long as one choices is not coerced, and if coercion depends on interpersonal threats, then there is free will. This answer will be frustrating to anyone who wants a simple "yes" or "no" answer, but it is the only sort of answer that is responsible to the complexity of the issues involved.

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