Philosophy is frequently (probably most of the time) done in order to signal group membership rather than as an attempt to accurately model the world. Just look at political philosophy or philosophy of religion. Most of the observations you note can be explained by philosophers operating at simulacrum level 3 instead of level 1.
“Signal group membership” may be true of the fields you mentioned (political philosophy and philosophy of religion), but seems false of many other fields such as philosophy of math, philosophy of mind, decision theory, anthropic reasoning. Hard to see what group membership someone is signaling by supporting one solution to Sleeping Beauty vs another, for example.
Here are some axes along which I think there’s some group membership signaling in philosophy (IDK about the extent and it’s hard to disentangle it from other stuff):
Math: platonism/intuitionism/computationalism (i.e. what is math?), interpretations of probability, foundations of math (set theory vs univalent foundations)
Mind: externalism/internalism (about whatever), consciousness (de-facto-dualisms (e.g. Chalmers) vs reductive realism vs illusionism), language of thought vs 4E cognition, determinism vs compatibilism vs voluntarism
Metaphysics/ontology: are chairs, minds, and galaxies real? (this is somewhat value-laden for many people)
Biology: gene’s-eye-view/modern synthesis vs extended evolutionary synthesis
I don’t think this is accurate, I think most philosophy is done under motivated reasoning but is not straightforwardly about signaling group membership
Philosophy is frequently (probably most of the time) done in order to signal group membership rather than as an attempt to accurately model the world. Just look at political philosophy or philosophy of religion. Most of the observations you note can be explained by philosophers operating at simulacrum level 3 instead of level 1.
“Signal group membership” may be true of the fields you mentioned (political philosophy and philosophy of religion), but seems false of many other fields such as philosophy of math, philosophy of mind, decision theory, anthropic reasoning. Hard to see what group membership someone is signaling by supporting one solution to Sleeping Beauty vs another, for example.
Here are some axes along which I think there’s some group membership signaling in philosophy (IDK about the extent and it’s hard to disentangle it from other stuff):
Math: platonism/intuitionism/computationalism (i.e. what is math?), interpretations of probability, foundations of math (set theory vs univalent foundations)
Mind: externalism/internalism (about whatever), consciousness (de-facto-dualisms (e.g. Chalmers) vs reductive realism vs illusionism), language of thought vs 4E cognition, determinism vs compatibilism vs voluntarism
Metaphysics/ontology: are chairs, minds, and galaxies real? (this is somewhat value-laden for many people)
Biology: gene’s-eye-view/modern synthesis vs extended evolutionary synthesis
I don’t think this is accurate, I think most philosophy is done under motivated reasoning but is not straightforwardly about signaling group membership