I’m curious about how one would know one has become better at philosophy? For other skills, our reference point is either an objective metric, or the regard of our colleagues. But for philosophy, there’s no metric, and it sounds like you’re saying that the regard of one’s colleagues is not a very useful signal either. After all, you’re claiming that studying philosophy made you no better at the subject, and seem to be characterizing your experience as typical.
Anyway, this seems like the key problem. How can you know how to improve unless you have a way to define improvement? And yet philosophy resists such a definition perhaps more than anything else. Except in the sense of “being familiar with more and more works that are deemed to be important works of philosophy.” That seems like a place to start.
To some extent, I know I’ve gotten better at philosophy simply by finding that my beliefs have changed, and my new justifications clearly seem much better-grounded than my old. This doesn’t work as a general tool (obviously it overly praises those who come to strong convictions, since they will rate their new beliefs extremely favorably), but it’s far more than nothing.
It seems to me that the regard of colleagues would, actually, be a useful signal as well (even if problematic for similar reasons).
However, I’m far more fond of mathematical philosophy, where it is easier to see whether you’ve accomplished something (have you proven a strong theorem? have you codified useful mathematical structures which capture something important? these are subjective questions, but, less so).
It sounds like you have a pragmatic perspective. By synthesizing several perspectives on philosophical improvement, you can find a more robust measure of your skill. All our suggestions so far might be more powerful in combination. We might measure exposure and command of philosophical texts; an increase in self-perception of having a well-grounded perspective over time; an increase in the regard and, perhaps, status of one’s colleagues; and the provable aspects of one’s output. In combination, these seem like a reasonable aggregate measure of improvement.
It would therefore be interesting to know which of these metrics was not showing improvement in Lance’s grad program. Were the other students failing to achieve influence? Not building a command of previous literature? Perceiving themselves as ever-more-befuddled as they studied more? Working on unprovable problems, or failing to find proofs?
I’m curious about how one would know one has become better at philosophy? For other skills, our reference point is either an objective metric, or the regard of our colleagues. But for philosophy, there’s no metric, and it sounds like you’re saying that the regard of one’s colleagues is not a very useful signal either. After all, you’re claiming that studying philosophy made you no better at the subject, and seem to be characterizing your experience as typical.
Anyway, this seems like the key problem. How can you know how to improve unless you have a way to define improvement? And yet philosophy resists such a definition perhaps more than anything else. Except in the sense of “being familiar with more and more works that are deemed to be important works of philosophy.” That seems like a place to start.
To some extent, I know I’ve gotten better at philosophy simply by finding that my beliefs have changed, and my new justifications clearly seem much better-grounded than my old. This doesn’t work as a general tool (obviously it overly praises those who come to strong convictions, since they will rate their new beliefs extremely favorably), but it’s far more than nothing.
It seems to me that the regard of colleagues would, actually, be a useful signal as well (even if problematic for similar reasons).
However, I’m far more fond of mathematical philosophy, where it is easier to see whether you’ve accomplished something (have you proven a strong theorem? have you codified useful mathematical structures which capture something important? these are subjective questions, but, less so).
It sounds like you have a pragmatic perspective. By synthesizing several perspectives on philosophical improvement, you can find a more robust measure of your skill. All our suggestions so far might be more powerful in combination. We might measure exposure and command of philosophical texts; an increase in self-perception of having a well-grounded perspective over time; an increase in the regard and, perhaps, status of one’s colleagues; and the provable aspects of one’s output. In combination, these seem like a reasonable aggregate measure of improvement.
It would therefore be interesting to know which of these metrics was not showing improvement in Lance’s grad program. Were the other students failing to achieve influence? Not building a command of previous literature? Perceiving themselves as ever-more-befuddled as they studied more? Working on unprovable problems, or failing to find proofs?