To what extent do factors such as upbringing and education shape our philosophical views? And if they do, does this cast doubt on the philosophical results we have obtained? This paper investigates irrelevant influences in philosophy through a qualitative survey on the personal beliefs and attitudes of philosophers of religion. In the light of these findings, I address two questions: an empirical one (whether philosophers of religion are influenced by irrelevant factors in forming their philosophical attitudes), and an epistemological one (whether the influence of irrelevant factors on our philosophical views should worry us). The answer to the empirical question is a confident yes, to the epistemological question, a tentative yes.
To what extent do factors such as upbringing and education shape our philosophical views? And if they do, does this cast doubt on the philosophical results we have obtained?
I would expect a person’s education to shape his/her philosophical views; if one’s philosophy is not shaped by one’s education, then one has had a fairly superficial education.
She means that you’re biased towards the way you were taught vs. alternatives, regardless of the evidence. The example she gives (from G.A. Cohen) is that most Oxford grads tend to accept the analytic / synthetic distinction while most Harvard grads reject it.
Yes, I got that from reading the paper. However, the wording of the abstract seems quite sloppy; taken at face value it suggests that a person’s education, K-postdoc (not to mention informal education) should have no influence on the person’s philosophy.
Moreover, the paper’s point (illustrated by the Cohen example) is not really surprising; one’s views on unanswered questions are apt to be influenced by the school of thought in which one was educated—were this not the case, the choice of what university to attend and which professor to study under would be somewhat arbitrary. Moreover, I don’t think that she made a case that philosophers are ignoring the evidence, only that the philosopher’s educational background continues to exert an influence throughout the philosopher’s career. From a Bayesian standpoint this makes sense—loosely speaking, when the philosopher leaves graduate school, his/her education and life experience to that point constitute his/her priors, which he/she updates as new evidence becomes available. While the philosopher’s priors are altered by evidence, they are not necessarily eliminated by evidence. This is not problematic unless overwhelming evidence one way or the other is available and ignored. The fact that whether or not to accept the analytic / synthetic distinction is still an open question suggests that no such overwhelming evidence exists—so I am not seeing a problem with the fact that Oxford grads and Harvard grads tend (on average) to disagree on this issue.
There’s a new article on academia.edu on potential biases amongst philosophers of religion: Irrelevant influences and philosophical practice: a qualitative study.
Abstract:
I would expect a person’s education to shape his/her philosophical views; if one’s philosophy is not shaped by one’s education, then one has had a fairly superficial education.
She means that you’re biased towards the way you were taught vs. alternatives, regardless of the evidence. The example she gives (from G.A. Cohen) is that most Oxford grads tend to accept the analytic / synthetic distinction while most Harvard grads reject it.
Yes, I got that from reading the paper. However, the wording of the abstract seems quite sloppy; taken at face value it suggests that a person’s education, K-postdoc (not to mention informal education) should have no influence on the person’s philosophy.
Moreover, the paper’s point (illustrated by the Cohen example) is not really surprising; one’s views on unanswered questions are apt to be influenced by the school of thought in which one was educated—were this not the case, the choice of what university to attend and which professor to study under would be somewhat arbitrary. Moreover, I don’t think that she made a case that philosophers are ignoring the evidence, only that the philosopher’s educational background continues to exert an influence throughout the philosopher’s career. From a Bayesian standpoint this makes sense—loosely speaking, when the philosopher leaves graduate school, his/her education and life experience to that point constitute his/her priors, which he/she updates as new evidence becomes available. While the philosopher’s priors are altered by evidence, they are not necessarily eliminated by evidence. This is not problematic unless overwhelming evidence one way or the other is available and ignored. The fact that whether or not to accept the analytic / synthetic distinction is still an open question suggests that no such overwhelming evidence exists—so I am not seeing a problem with the fact that Oxford grads and Harvard grads tend (on average) to disagree on this issue.