One might reasonably hope that professional philosophers would be better reasoners than the population at large. That is, after all, a large fraction of their job.
Overcoming these biases completely may well be impossible, but should we really expect that years of training in careful thinking, plus further years of practice, on a population that’s supposedly selected for aptitude in thinking, would fail to produce any improvement?
(Maybe we should, either on the grounds that these biases really are completely unfixable or on the grounds that everyone knows academic philosophy is totally broken and isn’t either selecting or training for clearer more careful thinking. I think either would be disappointing.)
Well, if they weren’t explicitly trained to deal with cognitive biases, we shouldn’t expect that they’ve magically acquired such a skill from thin air.
One might reasonably hope that professional philosophers would be better reasoners than the population at large. That is, after all, a large fraction of their job.
Overcoming these biases completely may well be impossible, but should we really expect that years of training in careful thinking, plus further years of practice, on a population that’s supposedly selected for aptitude in thinking, would fail to produce any improvement?
(Maybe we should, either on the grounds that these biases really are completely unfixable or on the grounds that everyone knows academic philosophy is totally broken and isn’t either selecting or training for clearer more careful thinking. I think either would be disappointing.)
Well, if they weren’t explicitly trained to deal with cognitive biases, we shouldn’t expect that they’ve magically acquired such a skill from thin air.