Indeed, I think a huge reason for the lack of useful progress in philosophy is too much charity.
People charitably assume that if they don’t fully understand something (and aren’t themselves an expert in the area) the person advancing the notion is likely contributing something of value that you just don’t understand yet.
This is much of the reason for the continued existence of continental philosophy drivel like claims that set theory entails morality or the deeply confused erudite crap in Being and Time. Anyone who isn’t actually an expert in this kind of philosophy feels it would be uncharitable (or at least seem uncharitable) to get up and denounce it as psuedo-philosophical mumbo-jumbo it is. It may seem harmless but the existence of this kind of stuff within the boundaries of philosophy means that less extreme but also wrong views are also not cut out.
Charity is more directly harmful within analytic (logic/math based philosophy as opposed to continental nonsense) philosophy where people frequently make the naive assumption that various theories, e.g., the definite description theory of reference and the baptismal naming theory of reference, are somehow either right or wrong and argue for these positions just as they would argue for the claims about the fundamental theory of physics. Yet, more sophisticated philosophers have frequently realized this entire naive realism viewpoint is flawed. There isn’t a real thing meaning, just speech and writing, and thus these theories can only be taken as theoretical tools that help provide a useful framework for organizing patterns observed in speech acts and despite their incompatible assumptions can both be useful as approximations.
Unfortunately, I have observed time and time again that in situations like this the insight isn’t passed on since it would be uncharitable to assume the philosophers who publish in this manner aren’t really just debating which is a better approximation to help organize patterns in speech/writing.
Similarly charity stops people from being called out when they continue to wrestle in print with problems (surprise quiz etc..) that have a clear correct solution that was given decades ago since it would be uncharitable to assume (as it true) they simply don’t have a good grip on the way mathematics can be applied or fails to apply to real world situations.
Indeed, I think a huge reason for the lack of useful progress in philosophy is too much charity.
People charitably assume that if they don’t fully understand something (and aren’t themselves an expert in the area) the person advancing the notion is likely contributing something of value that you just don’t understand yet.
This is much of the reason for the continued existence of continental philosophy drivel like claims that set theory entails morality or the deeply confused erudite crap in Being and Time. Anyone who isn’t actually an expert in this kind of philosophy feels it would be uncharitable (or at least seem uncharitable) to get up and denounce it as psuedo-philosophical mumbo-jumbo it is. It may seem harmless but the existence of this kind of stuff within the boundaries of philosophy means that less extreme but also wrong views are also not cut out.
Charity is more directly harmful within analytic (logic/math based philosophy as opposed to continental nonsense) philosophy where people frequently make the naive assumption that various theories, e.g., the definite description theory of reference and the baptismal naming theory of reference, are somehow either right or wrong and argue for these positions just as they would argue for the claims about the fundamental theory of physics. Yet, more sophisticated philosophers have frequently realized this entire naive realism viewpoint is flawed. There isn’t a real thing meaning, just speech and writing, and thus these theories can only be taken as theoretical tools that help provide a useful framework for organizing patterns observed in speech acts and despite their incompatible assumptions can both be useful as approximations.
Unfortunately, I have observed time and time again that in situations like this the insight isn’t passed on since it would be uncharitable to assume the philosophers who publish in this manner aren’t really just debating which is a better approximation to help organize patterns in speech/writing.
Similarly charity stops people from being called out when they continue to wrestle in print with problems (surprise quiz etc..) that have a clear correct solution that was given decades ago since it would be uncharitable to assume (as it true) they simply don’t have a good grip on the way mathematics can be applied or fails to apply to real world situations.