Many academic disciplines operate through an intellectual division of labor, where each member relies on cross-replication by others to underwrite the foundational truths of that discipline. For example, almost every scientific paper builds on the findings of other authors, not ideas that have been personally verified. The same is true of papers in history and law. Cross-replication allows a discipline to construct a body of reliable information that extends well beyond the capacity of any single member to personally verify.
Things are a little different in the humanities, and particularly in philosophy. Cross-replication does not exist in philosophy. Every philosopher is expected to interrogate every relevant assumption down to first principles, with the exception of scientific, logical, or mathematical facts that have been proven by cross-replication. The bread and butter of philosophy is, of course, the conclusions that have not been so proven. It follows that there is no progress in philosophy because every philosopher has to reinvent the wheel, or rather their own version of it. One must also understand that since these conclusions have not been proven, we should never assume that philosophers know what they are talking about.
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Peer-review in philosophy is a watered-down version of its counterpart in science. In the sciences, peer-review by referees is the tip of the iceberg, with cross-replication being the more extensive, ultimate test (alongside theoretical scrutiny, to determine that the results prove the hypothesis). Crucially, cross-replication in the sciences is often done by non-peers, people who don’t share the same sub-discipline, and are therefore less subject to institutionalized biases.
Even the general public plays a role. Every time you fly, take a paracetamol, or sign a legal document, you are cross-replicating a range of theories in aeronautics, medicine, and law respectively. Rich networks of mutual interdependence among disciplines, and between disciplines and the non-expert public, makes it hard for the sciences (and some non-science disciplines such as history or law) to conceal contradictory or vacuous output behind technical jargon – especially when such output would have tangible, especially negative, public consequences.
In contrast, peer review without cross-replication, especially in a purely theoretical discipline like philosophy (or its equivalents, as in parts of critical, cultural, social, or literary theory) is open to ivory-towerism. One’s peers may approve of one’s output for a variety of reasons – personal, political or fashionable – that have little to do with whether it even makes sense.
Because each philosopher has to personally reinvent the discipline, there are limits to how much philosophy can grow before splitting into sub-disciplines, each small enough for one brain to navigate. This increasing fragmentation raises the likelihood of intellectual parochialism, where the peer-review process is dominated by a few authority figures in a small sub-field, who are then able to keep out dissenting views and promote like-minded peers. Admittedly, the same thing could happen in the more theoretical sciences, but in the applied sciences and some other technical fields, bad theories produce bad results, and often very visibly so.
Given these methodological weaknesses in philosophy, in what sense could academic philosophers be taken to be “experts” in applied ethics or public policy? Especially if, by the discipline’s own standards, each of us is expected to interrogate philosophical theories down to bedrock before we can accept them?
It follows that expertise does not mean the same for philosophy as it does for the sciences and some other technical fields. If an engineer, doctor, or lawyer is properly qualified and professional, you can pretty much take their advice at face value (though a second opinion would not hurt). With philosophers, you are expected to engage in dialogue rather than merely accept their expert opinion by the authority of philosophical qualifications alone. You can only get as much out as you put in. Some philosophers have thought deeply about ethics or public policy, but some bad ideas have been deeply thought through.
The bottom line is, we should never assume that philosophers know what they are talking about, unless they are making factual statements we can verify. Otherwise, we should be prepared to play by their own rules and interrogate their assumptions. If we are doing so purely theoretically, we should bear in mind that our inquiry would be subject to the methodological weaknesses of philosophy in general.
Ben Gibran writes on the social science of communication. He is the author of Why Philosophy Fails: A View From Social Psychology and The DIY Prison: Why Cults Work.
