Let me pre-emptively apologize for the anger a polemical essay of this kind will, no doubt, cause in some readers. For there is no polite way of stating my conviction that a large number of the philosophy profession have misapplied their intellect in pursuits that have tarnished the reputation of our field. But I assure you that I harbor no ill feelings of hatred for my fellow philosophers or the field that we all love. I only feel pity.

I shall thus not apologize for laying a finger in the wound of philosophy’s pitiful state.1

Two years ago, the philosopher and veteran of the blogosphere Eric Schwitzgebel published a lovely book titled The Weirdness of the World—a book aimed at the public to show the mind-bending and strange views that have made it into current debates in philosophy, celebrating “a philosophy that opens” the horizon of our minds. Outsiders of philosophy sometimes look with bewilderment at the weird things that go on in philosophy and come to the conclusion that anything goes. Schwitzgebel wants to affirm that conclusion. We should celebrate philosophy for its wild speculations.

As a fellow philosopher, my view of philosophy could hardly be more opposed to Schwitzgebel’s vision. I think an anything-goes attitude turns philosophy into a circus in pursuit of spectacle. Not a serious academic enterprise in search of truth. With such different views on what philosophy should be, it almost seems like two entirely different creatures roam the floors of the philosophy department.

In a review of Schwitzgebel’s book that surprisingly made it into Science, fellow naturalist philosopher Edouard Machery had this to say:

There are two kinds of philosophers: swallows and moles. Swallows love to soar and to entertain philosophical hypotheses at best loosely........

© Psychology Today