I’m not saying there are no good amateur philosophers. I am saying there are not enough good enough amateur philosophers to iindicate that the professionals are systematically underperformi.ng by comparison.
I’m not saying there are .ni good amateur philosophers. I am saying there are not enough good enough amateur philosophers to iindicate that the professionals are systematically underperforming.
There are multiple problems with this response. First, I already outlined how “X is performing better than Y” is not the only metric to decide that “Y is performing badly” or “Y could perform better.” To expand on that point, since it apparently didn’t occur the last time, it might help to consider other fields that currently have serious issues. Many branches of science have terrible problems with reproducing results, biology and psychology being high on that list. I don’t need to point to someone currently doing psychology today to identify this as a problem and discuss causes and solutions. Similarly, another related problem is the file-drawer effect. I don’t need to show that someone else is avoiding it to discuss that it is a bad thing and discuss what one can do to prevent it.
Anything can be said to fall short of some theoretical ideal. Usain Bolt runs slower than some theoretical person who runs faster.
Biology and psychology are presumably doing worse than other, real, actually existing sciences...otherwise, why single them out?
If you have a realistic proposal to get more good quality work done in the same time, lets hear it. So far, it sounds like you want to get things done faster by cutting corners.
Anything can be said to fall short of some theoretical ideal. Usain Bolt runs slower than some theoretical person who runs faster.
Sure, but that doesn’t mean we cannot discuss ways of running faster. Even the best athletes are able to work at getting better at what they do without seeing anyone better than they are.
Biology and psychology are presumably doing worse than other, real, actually existing sciences...otherwise, why single them out?
If you prefer we can look at chemistry which is not doing as badly compared to biology and psychology. I can still look at it and notice frequent failures to reproduce, retracted papers, and other signs of problems and conclude that there are steps to improve.
If you have a realistic proposal to get more good quality work done in the same time, lets hear it. So far, it sounds like you want to get things done faster by cutting corners.
So in the case of the STEM fields, the basic steps are pretty clear: pre-registration of experiments, better use of meta-studies, willingness to accept papers that don’t do much other than just reproduce an earlier experiment, etc.
In the case of philosophy, the steps are also pretty clear :Teach introductory philosophy with less emphasis on the ancients, don’t make philosophy students read primary source texts when there are better secondary texts (Kant is one serious example of this), make phil students have to take more STEM classes as undergraduates. These are all concrete, obvious proposals.
I’m not saying there are no good amateur philosophers. I am saying there are not enough good enough amateur philosophers to iindicate that the professionals are systematically underperformi.ng by comparison.
There are multiple problems with this response. First, I already outlined how “X is performing better than Y” is not the only metric to decide that “Y is performing badly” or “Y could perform better.” To expand on that point, since it apparently didn’t occur the last time, it might help to consider other fields that currently have serious issues. Many branches of science have terrible problems with reproducing results, biology and psychology being high on that list. I don’t need to point to someone currently doing psychology today to identify this as a problem and discuss causes and solutions. Similarly, another related problem is the file-drawer effect. I don’t need to show that someone else is avoiding it to discuss that it is a bad thing and discuss what one can do to prevent it.
Anything can be said to fall short of some theoretical ideal. Usain Bolt runs slower than some theoretical person who runs faster.
Biology and psychology are presumably doing worse than other, real, actually existing sciences...otherwise, why single them out?
If you have a realistic proposal to get more good quality work done in the same time, lets hear it. So far, it sounds like you want to get things done faster by cutting corners.
Sure, but that doesn’t mean we cannot discuss ways of running faster. Even the best athletes are able to work at getting better at what they do without seeing anyone better than they are.
If you prefer we can look at chemistry which is not doing as badly compared to biology and psychology. I can still look at it and notice frequent failures to reproduce, retracted papers, and other signs of problems and conclude that there are steps to improve.
So in the case of the STEM fields, the basic steps are pretty clear: pre-registration of experiments, better use of meta-studies, willingness to accept papers that don’t do much other than just reproduce an earlier experiment, etc.
In the case of philosophy, the steps are also pretty clear :Teach introductory philosophy with less emphasis on the ancients, don’t make philosophy students read primary source texts when there are better secondary texts (Kant is one serious example of this), make phil students have to take more STEM classes as undergraduates. These are all concrete, obvious proposals.