Everyone is a Philosopher: Public Philosophy in Practice
By: Cargile Williams & Ricky Mouser
Philosophy, Wilfrid Sellars tells us, is about "how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term" (Sellars, Science, Perception and Reality, 1).
On that definition, everyone is already a philosopher, but most people don’t realize this about themselves yet. We all have deep commitments about how things hang together, of how to make sense of the world and our place in it, but few of us have interrogated our worldviews systematically. Even fewer of us really know how to start. Are wrong answers even possible?
In a world that’s already complicated and growing more complex all the time, we can’t become experts about everything. Yet we’re all faced with a hostile epistemic landscape where predatory interests would very much like to shape our worldviews for us, thank you very much. As professional philosophers, it’s our job to help others become more sophisticated versions of the philosophers they already are. But how do we start?
Fortunately, public philosophy tends to look a lot like teaching. There are no external motivating tools like grades, and the power dynamics are less pronounced. But we already have a whole toolkit designed to help others better appreciate the slow, careful, more deeply philosophical ways of thinking. Good teaching also requires that we clear up common misconceptions about what doing good philosophy looks like.
First, instead of trying to make anyone feel ‘dumb’, or even ‘smart’, we need to help other people enrich their vocabulary so they can evaluate the philosophical ideas for themselves. What we really want is to help others take pride in becoming more curious and careful thinkers. Now those are some virtues to strive for! You can learn to think more curiously and carefully with practice. But it can be deceptively hard work.
Second, we need to create encouraging spaces where it’s safe to consider how our assumptions might be wrong. We don’t just want people to learn more sophisticated ways to dig their heels in on their pre-existing views. To facilitate these kinds of spaces, it helps to ask participants in the conversation to give positive feedback, stay kind, and keep criticisms constructive—and, perhaps most importantly, to have fun. As professional philosophers, we also need to learn to sometimes step back and let others try out and learn from their ‘bad’ ideas. It’s part of the process too! You might be surprised at how sophisticated a conversation can get if you let non-experts hash out the possibility space.
Third, we need to emphasize that we’re on the same team. Philosophy doesn’t have to feel like a competition. It’s a lot more productive to frame philosophy as a cooperative game where we’re all on the same team looking for good moves together, even if we don’t agree. If we’re all coming together to think about the same pressing issues that affect our lives, it’s easier to see the project of public philosophy as one that succeeds or fails in community. This lowers the stakes of individually getting it wrong, which makes it easier to change your mind when new reasons come to light. But it’s still scary. Sometimes we even realize that we can no longer affirm key values we’ve been living by. Your whole worldview is potentially at stake! Because there’s so much to lose in being curious and careful, it takes tremendous courage.
We also need to recognize what we, as professional philosophers, can help facilitate these public conversations. We can ask better questions that get at the heart of the issue and avoid well-worn online debates where the moves are rehearsed. We can help others reframe their ideas more charitably and incisively to help them recognize what was good about their initial philosophical insight. We can introduce relevant authors and ideas to enrich the conversation and help people understand real problems they’re facing in their lives.
After all, philosophy can help all of us live better lives. We’ve all absorbed sloppy or ideological thinking through osmosis from our particular upbringings and broader culture. Instead of being helpless in the face of these facts, studying philosophy equips us to become more nuanced interlocutors. This makes us much more dangerous, independent thinkers in a very particular way: We learn to question and challenge accepted ways of thinking and living, and to propose our own alternatives that build from a deeper understanding of how previous positions work (and fail) from the inside. In an epistemically hostile world, we can stop being quite so harmless and vulnerable to the bad thinking that surrounds us every day. Becoming more curious and careful thinkers can help us all identify and dismantle ideas that formerly held power over our patterns of thinking and living.
Socrates famously proclaimed that the unexamined life is not worth living. That’s a bit too strong. But the examined life is way better for you! Helping others learn how to examine their own lives a little more thoughtfully should be our primary goal as public philosophers.
Towards that end, here’s some of the work we’ve done in the past year. Last summer, we founded philosophy for humans—a public philosophy project aimed at improving ethics literacy, with a focus on issues raised by artificial intelligence. We designed this project to host a number of different outreach efforts so we can keep trying new things.
We started by organizing a free, Zoom conference titled “Who’s Responsible for ChatGPT?” that drew over 250 attendees, including IU students and faculty, independent scholars, industry professionals, AI experts, and international researchers. Thanks to the IU philosophy department for being our first sponsor! With additional support from six other sponsors inside and outside the university, we were able to recruit philosopher C. Thi Nguyen to give the keynote titled “Quantification and the Limits of Scale.” The conference itself was a great success, and several participants expressed gratitude for being able to hear ideas that made better sense of their experiences and for being able to try out ideas of their own.
More recently, we’ve launched the Philosophy Jam podcast to give early career philosophers a space to talk about their work in progress. Topics have included: the differences between our real-life values and our game values, how we should understand riots and evil, American democracy and sports, and moral responsibility for character understood as a narrative. Fellow IU philosophy graduate students Kjell Fostervold and Paul Howatt have joined the pod to talk about their work, and Kjell has even cohosted a few episodes.
Ricky has also been experimenting with video essays, starting with “Should we Expect a Wisdom Explosion?” This video explores the eugenic origins of our ideas of intelligence, considers the difference between intelligence and wisdom, and asks whether a superintelligent AI would be superwise. Conference attendees were interested in these topics, so we’re looking for entertaining and helpful ways to explore them.
Cargile has been developing a philosophy card game called Objections! which is designed to teach middle school students and above different ways to object to bad arguments. The game is built for 3-5 players, each round takes about five minutes, and there are enough arguments supplied for six rounds. The game is still in its beta version, but it’s ready for classroom use. It comes with a short lesson plan that can be expanded or modified, and instructors can incorporate their own bad arguments for students to analyze.
We have future plans to develop a short, accessible eBook titled How to Think About Values to provide an entry point for avoiding reductive, numerical thinking about our rich and often conflicting values.
The College of Arts