I’ve been too busy to blog about all the things I wanted to this month. From the Black Lives Matter protest to the Ophelia Benson departure to a weird John Loftus flameout currently going on. So here I’m quickly trying to catch up. Last on deck: the Loftus flameout…
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Another odd thing that has happened is that John Loftus, a well-known atheist and theology critic (who blogs at Debunking Christianity), has developed a bizarre bee in his bonnet against Jeff Lowder, co-founder of the Internet Infidels and also a well-known atheist and theology critic (who blogs at The Secular Outpost), which has led Loftus now to say no one can claim to be a philosopher who doesn’t have a Ph.D., and not only that, but strictly in just “philosophy.”
Oh no, not even me! Even though I have a Ph.D. in the history of philosophy; and even though I actually have published several articles in peer reviewed philosophy journals; as well as a well selling book in philosophy (which just cleared 10,000 unit sales), and another in the philosophy of history (which passed mathematical and historical peer review); and I have been blogging seriously about philosophy for nearly ten years.
I know this issue is obscure to most. It only arouses my interest because I was a board member of the Internet Infidels, and the editor in chief of their flagship project The Secular Web, for several years. And I know first hand that Lowder has done a lot of good work in philosophy of religion without “credentials,” and knows more about that subject field than most non-specialist professors of philosophy, and this deserves to be acknowledged.
Loftus has had bad blood with Lowder since at least 2013 (writing such posts as Jeff Lowder is the Devil in Disguise, and on an on), eventually leading Loftus to get all huffy about Lowder’s “academic credentials.” Perhaps Loftus sees him as in competition with Lowder. Rather than simply disagreeing with him on some things; as even do I, but I see no grounds to slag him off, much less as lying about his credentials a la Ravi Zacharias, because Lowder has never done that.
Since no one can do science or history well without doing philosophy well, all scientists and historians are de facto philosophers. They don’t need to have specific degrees in it to do this. They would all benefit from more training in it, but that’s a failure of the academy, which serious scholars make up for by training themselves. And anyone who critiques Christian theology and apologetics, is doing philosophy, and therefore a philosopher. And in fact, every human being should be a philosopher. It should be their religion, as I explain in Sense and Goodness without God (that very well selling and highly praised book I just mentioned): see I.1-2, pp. 3-19.
You don’t need a Ph.D. to do philosophy, and therefore be a philosopher. I’ve been down this road before: I’ve laid out my criteria for who counts as a philosopher in the matter of Jesus, and in my own case.
You can be a bad philosopher, mind you. But you are still a philosopher.
For example, IMO, Sam Harris is a lousy philosopher. But he still writes seriously in philosophy, and thus is still a philosopher. And even many Ph.D.’s specifically in philosophy are really awful philosophers. So the credential is no assurance. Nor is its absence, as history has proved countless times. Good philosophy can come from the well-studied anywhere. And frankly, I find the “you are not a philosopher” nonsense to be a dodge to avoid addressing their arguments. Maybe if they suck at philosophy, you can prove that. Then call them a bad philosopher. But it makes no sense to call them not a philosopher…when you just proved they were doing philosophy.
Bad philosophy is different from pseudophilosophy (as the latter is a pretense, or a sham using bogus methods, and not an honest effort). Just as bad science is different from pseudoscience. And lots of bad science gets published under peer review. Whereas, good science is still being done by amateurs. If good science can be, so can good philosophy. On the distinction between bad philosophy and pseudophilosophy, and the fact that science is philosophy, and much else of relevance here, see my talk Is Philosophy Stupid?
I’ve said the same in history. For example:
Neil Godfrey and Tim Widfowfield, who both write at Vridar … happen to be some of the most astute and well-read amateurs you can read on the internet on the subject of biblical historicity. I call them amateurs only for the reason that they don’t have, so far as I know, advanced degrees in the subject. But I have often been impressed with their grasp of logic and analysis of scholarship. I don’t always agree with them, but I respect their work.
And yet history is fundamentally harder to excel at than philosophy in that doing history well requires extensive study in the period and materials discussed (its literature, culture, language, and so on, all as I outline in the opening of Chapter 2 of Proving History), whereas doing philosophy well (especially as a critic) requires only a sound grasp of logic and how to identify fallacies of logic.
The rest depends on independent study. For example, a philosopher (even a Ph.D. in it) does not have to have a degree in cosmological science to publish in the philosophy of cosmology. But she should get as acquainted with that science as possible, well enough to represent and understand correctly the scientific facts she relies upon, as scientists have determined them. Philosophers range across far too many subjects to expect them to have degrees in them all. And all that a degree in philosophy gives you is, one hopes, some dedicated training in reasoning well. (Plus a ton of history, which is actually more useless than the academy thinks, as other critics of academic philosophy have noted, as I discuss in my talk linked above).
Loftus’s obsession with Lowder not having college degrees in what he has clearly excelled at from life study is mind boggling, just this year generating no less than seven blog posts! This suggests something more is behind this than an honest gripe.
These range from Socrates Would Not Be Recognized As a Philosopher So Why Should We Recognize Jeff Lowder? (in which Loftus confuses how philosophers are vetted with what knowledge they should possess to be good at it—a standard by which Lowder far exceeds Socrates) to: An Exposé of the Dishonesty and Hypocrisy of Jeff Lowder (in which Loftus makes a number of paranoid claims without any evidence or even relevance); Another Example of Jeff Lowder’s College Level Approach to the Philosophy of Religion (in which Loftus demonstrates nothing more than that Lowder was once wrong about something…a fate that can be claimed of literally every philosopher alive); The Stupidity of Jeff Lowder: “Nontheists Should Stop Using ‘Freethought’ as an Umbrella Term” (in which Loftus doesn’t even understand what Lowder was arguing, as aptly explained by Damion Reinhardt, with whom I concur); On Lowder’s Stupid Atheist Meme #4: “Let’s Put an End to the Philosophy of Religion!” (by this point just repeating himself); and then the Ravi Zacharias comparison (which bears no similarity) and Vic Reppert On the Fundamental Divide Between Jeff Lowder and Me (in which he finally gives away the game: this is just a dick measuring contest to Loftus, who is annoyed by what may actually be the case: that Lowder knows more about and is better at a subject Loftus claims to have more degrees in and more years of experience doing, as if degrees and clocked time should substitute for performance).
Conclusion…
Credentials are a way to vet someone as having gone through a training process. College degrees are in effect just an efficient system in place for doing that for us, so we don’t have to vet everyone from the ground up ourselves. And as such they have tremendous value. But plenty of people who pass that vetting process still suck. Thus, in the end, credentials matter less than quality of argument and body of work. (You will notice “credentials” don’t get much of a mention in my article On Evaluating Arguments from Consensus.)
Meanwhile, some people study and work at a field for decades on their own and become quite good at it, at least as good as the worst certified Ph.D., and often enough better. We are at a disadvantage with them only because a reliable third party hasn’t vetted their having adequately studied and practiced the subject. But that just means we are back to what we originally had to do, which is vet their having done so ourselves. Which requires examining their body of work to see if it is of adequate quality to meet a claim of expertise.
And a claim of expertise does not require always being right. As otherwise we would have to conclude experts don’t even exist. A productive discussion can be had then as to what makes someone more or less of an expert, and enough of an expert for a given purpose. But degrees don’t factor in that, except insofar as we are using them as proxies for vetted work. It is therefore in fact the vetting of the work, not the degree certifying that, that verifies expertise.
As soon as we forget that that’s all credentials do, we are no longer actually talking about expertise.
Thanks for the catch-up, Richard.
Loftus unfortunately has done this before. I followed his blog, but I think he had to shift blog home, and then for a while he was all a-ranting, so I unfollowed him.
I did like his points, and I am sure he’s both knowledgeable and smart
John banned me from his blog due to my comments in the Socrates thread. He claimed I was being continuously stupid, though he did not ban the who people agreed with him who had also denounced using logic.
Credentials are useful in assessing the likelihood that a particular person has a high degree of competency in a subject, but as I point out to Loftus it is not necessary since a person can demonstrate the same competency without a degree. I figured Loftus would actually ignore people asking about yourself being a philosopher since it seems obvious to me that S&G displayed a high level of competency in philosophy, as do many of your articles and blog posts, but instead he stayed consistent and denied you being a philosopher. Consistency is nice, but not maybe at the sacrifice of staying irrational (e.g. Some Christians stay consistent by saying the slaughter of the Canaanites occurred and was justified, but the cost of their consistency is looking like moral monsters).
In any case, everyone, so Loftus included, should assess arguments on their structure and the truth of the premises. If someone seems at face value to be incompetent then we can perhaps justifiably ignore their opposition, but if not then it seems only rational to check the merit of their viewpoints.
One of the reasons that Loftus has blown a gasket was this post by Lowder http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2015/05/22/another-terrible-atheist-debate-performance/ . Lowder’s post is about a debate that Loftus participated in. The debate has to go down as one of the worst I have ever seen, it is cringe worthy, and I agree with much of what Lowder wrote.
Wow. That was bad. I have a hard time saying that. I love his books. I think he has great ideas and knows what he’s about. But that was just…. sad. I’ve never seen any of his other debates etc. Is he always so… spastic? A great orator he is not. That was hard to watch.
Speaking of “talking outside one’s field of specialty”, I am glad you finally accepted big bang cosmology just this century! It’s never too late! 🙂
If only Jeff Lowder had taken the place of John Loftus in his recent debate with David Wood. I’m sure that “Yingianity” seemed like a good idea at the time but it didn’t go down quite so well on the night.
I too am baffled at what the real source of John’s gripe seems to be. I suspect part of it just has to do with his ego. Even Luke Muehlhauser concluded that at one point on his older blog and mentioned how he had to skip over a lot of what he was saying just to find the meat of an argument or point he was making.
I’m also curious by the way, for what reasons you personally consider Harris to be a poor philosopher? I don’t disagree with you incidentally, I think he is also, but I’d be interested if you went into that a little more (perhaps you have in another post, I apologize if I missed it). In a recent podcast however with the armchair historian Dan Carlin, Harris does take to issue from the beginning, the idea that you’re not doing science, or philosophy or whatever have you, without the appropriate credentials to back it up. I’d suggest you listen to it, I found it quite entertaining.
http://www.dancarlin.com/product/common-sense-293-sitting-down-with-sam/
Your last sentence seemed garbled. What does Harris say in that podcast? (I don’t have time to find the remark, so if you know, a clearer description would be helpful!)
As to Harris’s bad philosophy, I teach a whole course on one huge bundle of examples of it, and am teaching that course online now: I use his book on Free Will as a treasure trove of bad philosophy, albeit of a very typical variety, which is what makes it very useful as a teaching tool.
If you search my blog for his name you might find other examples. Plus my discussion of the debate between Pigliucci and Shermer touches on how Harris’s failure to take philosophy seriously and thus properly engage with it on his Moral Landscape thesis is another source of examples of bad philosophy, even though overall I think his thesis is (when properly articulated) correct.
no one can claim to be a philosopher who doesn’t have a Ph.D.
Plato would be heartbroken to hear that.
Well said. I think it’s ironic Loftus claims no one can be a philosopher without a Ph.D in philosophy when he doesn’t actually have one himself. He has an MA and started a Ph.D program, but never finished. I’ve also seen him dismiss Alvin Plantinga, who, however you feel about his work in philosophy, actually has a Ph.D, from Yale no less. This, along with his criticisms of yourself, and so much so, shows that Loftus isn’t really interested in credentials after all. He’s only interested in who agrees with the Gospel According to Loftus. No wonder that he’s surrounded himself with people at his blog who will either pat his back or whom he can condescend to for their religious beliefs. Anyone else, including fellow atheists and skeptics who don’t pat his back, will be banned unceremoniously.
Note that Loftus in the linked articles repeatedly insists he is not a philosopher and never claims to be. Which creates a bizarre confusion as to what then he thinks he is doing, almost all of the time. If it’s not philosophy…?
He sometimes says he is a biblical studies expert and thus is doing biblical studies. But in actual fact that comprises only a small fraction of most of what he writes about, in print and on his blog. Mostly he is writing about philosophy: what to believe about the world; why to reject certain philosophical arguments; the skillful deployment of logical analysis on propositional claims; etc. That’s philosophy. So to say he is not a philosopher amounts to saying he is not qualified to do most of what he is doing.
This is all just weird. Because he even has a whole book on epistemology that he considers groundbreaking (I actually agree). And his other book on why be an atheist is a classic example of a treatise in the philosophy of religion. His Darwinian Problem of Evil is a classic example of a novel argument in the philosophy of religion. And so on. He also thinks philosophy of religion isn’t a thing and should be abolished (and that those who “do” it are, as Boghossian says, just children). Even though most of what he does is in that field!
Baffling.
Yes, in hindsight that was even somewhat confusing to me as well. Apologies.
Happens around the 4:30 minute to 5:00 minute mark.
Sam: In my career, I have weighed in on questions that fall outside the official area of my academic expertise. And occasionally I get push back on this very point. that I don’t have a credential that should cause someone to be confident about your opinions in this area – let’s say on the topic of religion for instance. But many of these areas simply require that you read the books – and be attentive to one’s sources and, have conversations with experts, and then, at a certain point, you’re playing the same language game the experts are, and it’s certainly appropriate to have humility and be attentive to the frontier’s of one’s ignorance, but, in science this really breaks down quite starkly, because I’m surrounded by scientists who simply do not have the academic bonafide as you would expect, and yet they are contributing in various areas of science at the highest level. There are physicists that don’t have Ph.D’s in physics, there are computer scientists that don’t even have college degrees. I’m in dialogue right now with an expert in artificial intelligence that never went to high school (Eliezer Yudkowsky). At a certain point, it’s a matter of how you can function in a given domain, not a matter of what your CV looks like, and scientists, as long as you’re making sense, accept this far more readily than people in the Humanities…
Unless you’re making mistakes, and not correcting them, I don’t see how you’re not functioning as an expert in those topics you touch… Maybe there’s a distinction between if you want to become an expert on World War 2, on the Nazi side of it, you need to deal with primary sources in German and that’s some wrinkle there, but I’m just wondering how to see it…
Dan: I think it depends on the specialty we’re talking about. For example, if you’re a brain surgeon, I think we can both agree that you’re not going to want your amateur brain surgeon coming in and saying: “Listen, I read this expert and this is how he suggests we do it…” So there’s a specific specialty there. I think bringing up the Humanities though is a wonderful point because the Humanities, by it’s very nature – look at the subjects that make up the Humanities: law, religion, language, arts, music, these are all things with much more leeway I would say, in terms of even the creative than you get in something like brain surgery for example. I think the way to put it would be – you were suggesting that people outside that area of expertise have something perhaps that they can bring to the table. In a lot of these cases, I think it three dimensionalizes things a little bit, to have somebody from another discipline, apply – you know, the mode of thinking common in their discipline to an unusual realm, in other words, to get a 360 degree view of things, sometimes, take a historical event. You might want to have World War 2 examined by somebody whose an expert in military affairs, obviously, or somebody whose an expert in international relations is going to write a book with a different point of view. One of the best books I ever read on World War 2 was done by an economist, who looked at it from a completely different point of view. And so, in that sense, you can three dimensionalize reality, and that’s what you’re looking at with history…
What I maybe bring to the table is that I’m looking at things from outside the specialty. When you look at historians today, you’re looking at scientists, in a certain realm. These are people that aren’t going to talk about things they can’t quantify, any good scientist is going to want to back up the things they say in a peer reviewed journal, that’s how a lot of historians are today. But the specialty, of what they study, takes away that ability to look at things from a farther away lens.
The problem is that most historians aren’t dealing with brain surgeons, they’re dealing with human beings, and that by it’s very nature, is hard to quantify and hard to get your mind around. I would think that gives me a lot more leeway than a brain surgeon, and they’ve been kind to me, all these professionals. I don’t think they always like the way that I will dramatize events, but I look at this like what Alfred Hitchcock famously said about what drama is. Drama is just reality with the boring bits taken out…
😮 😀
Yeah, that was the article I kept thinking you had in mind, which I’ve already read and thought it was very good. Perhaps Harris in part, gets by with his general audience a lot more than maybe, most ivory tower academics because he is a popularizer (similar to you in many respects, I’d think), sometimes is interesting to listen to because he is a wordsmith, and frankly, most philosophers don’t seem to be very keen on jumping into public issues and debate as he has.
Thank you, Frosty. That’s a fantastic contribution to the conversation here. I appreciate your taking the time to provide all that!
I agree with all of that, except insofar as it would be qualified by what I say in the first section of chapter 2 of Proving History for the challenges of becoming an expert in history. Though I’m careful not to say this is impossible without degrees, I do outline why there are difficulties in getting the requisite expertise that they don’t mention in the dialogue above, except Harris, who briefly acknowledges part of it (though there is more to consider).
But note that this requires actually studying the field. Harris does not appear to study philosophy. He continually regards it with contempt instead. And he does not seem facile with the techniques of formal or informal logic either. Nor does he appear to have learned what expert philosophers do, such as about the importance of precision or the pitfalls of ambiguity in your semantics. Nor does he interact with actual philosophical progress made in a subject he is discussing, in any way that suggests he has adequately read up on it. Nor does he put anything through professional peer review (not that one must always; but surely once and a while!). And so on.
Richard, why is it that by the time you finally respond I am weary, really weary of writing any more? But I am.
The reason this is baffling to you is because you have not taken the time to understand what I’m doing. I cannot fault you for that though, since your time is limited.
There is already too much ignorance here for me to respond to, from both you and your commenters. I could respond to everything you and they have said, easily.
I leave you with this link, that helps to explain some of the criticisms I’ve received:
http://www.debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2015/08/why-haters-hate-kierkegaard-explains.html
Harris agrees with you. In the Harris-Carlin podcast — http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/shouldering-the-burden-of-history — the discussion of credentials begins at 2’30, with Harris asking Carlin whether his lack of credentials ever diminishes his work in the eyes of his audience and professional historians. Carlin responds that both the public and the academy have been very supportive of his work, adding that he always tries to incorporate quotes from experts into his presentations precisely because he is not a professional historian and wants to support his claims with more credible and trustworthy sources. Harris then responds to the second point at 4’25:
“I wonder how deep that caveat actually cuts, however, because in my career I have weighed in on a variety of questions that fall outside the official area of my academic expertise, and occasionally I get pushback on this very point: that you don’t have a credential which would cause someone to be confident about your opinions in this area, let’s say, on the topic of religion for instance. But many of these areas simply require that one read the books and be attentive to one’s sources and have conversations with experts, and at a certain point you’re playing the same language game the experts are. It’s certainly appropriate to have humility and be attentive to the frontiers of one’s ignorance — but, you know, in science this really breaks down quite starkly, because I’m surrounded by scientists who simply do not have the academic bona fides you would expect, and yet they are contributing in various areas of science at the highest levels. There are physicists who don’t have PhDs in physics, there are computer scientists who don’t have even college degrees… So at a certain point it’s a matter of how you can function in a given domain, not a matter of what your CV looks like…” [He goes on, but my quote ends at 6’00]
In Harris’ defense, I will also add his write-up of his contentious television exchange with Ben Affleck and Nicholas Kristof, which shows that he practices what he preaches. (Link here, with embedded youtube video: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/can-liberalism-be-saved-from-itself ). Affleck accused him and BIll Maher, the host, of anti-Muslim bigotry, and when Harris responds to the charge on his blog, he explicitly makes the issue about arguments, not expertise:
“Of course, Affleck is also being widely reviled as an imbecile. But much of this criticism, too, is unfair. Those who describe him as a mere “actor” who was out of his depth are no better than those who dismiss me as a “neuroscientist” who cannot, therefore, know anything about religion. And Affleck isn’t merely an actor: He’s a director, a producer, a screenwriter, a philanthropist, and may one day be a politician. Even if he were nothing more than an actor, there would be no reason to assume that he’s not smart. In fact, I think he probably is quite smart, and that makes our encounter all the more disheartening.
The important point is that a person’s CV is immaterial as long as he or she is making sense. Unfortunately, Affleck wasn’t—but neither was Kristof, who really is an expert in this area, particularly where the plight of women in the developing world is concerned. His failure to recognize and celebrate the heroism of my friend Ayaan Hirsi Ali remains a journalistic embarrassment and a moral scandal (and I told him so backstage).”
I am including this material because as a long-time reader of both you and Harris I am puzzled why you take so many shots at him for his philosophical work when he clearly attempts to inform himself, engage seriously with the field, and address objections to his own work. He even held an essay contest a while back to encourage rebuttals to his work in morality. He really cares about ideas and dialogue. Perhaps you have a personal history with him that I am not aware of, but I think if you would actually address his work substantively, perhaps by inviting him to participate in an open exchange, you would be surprised at the results. Harris goes out of his way to have exchanges with people who disagree with him, like Daniel Dennett and Noam Chomsky. It would be better than simply saying all the time, “Harris is a terrible philosopher,” “Harris doesn’t care about philosophy,” “Harris doesn’t take philosophy seriously,” “I teach classes on how bad Harris’ philosophy is.” It just sounds petulant.
‘
See my response to Frosty on this. I agree with Harris on these points (with some caveats), but that does not mean Harris always practices what he preaches, particularly when it comes to philosophical subjects. I find that in philosophy, he almost always sucks. I would conclude that even if he had a Ph.D. in philosophy, though, if that consoles you any (assuming having said degree did not improve the quality of his work). There are certainly many lousy philosophers with said credential, as I noted before. So it’s the work I’m judging, not his quals. And it might come down to this: I think it takes a lot more work to be good at philosophy than Harris realizes.
Exactly! Until she retired last year, my wife was an elementary school teacher, and she asked me to visit her classroom a couple of times each year and do Mr. Science kind of demonstrations (lots of dry ice and liquid nitrogen – fourth graders love them some LN!) One question I was often was asked was, “How old you do you have to be before you can be a scientist?” I replied that they could be scientist now, at the age of 9 or 10, as long as they checked their ideas against the real world. One of the great tragedies in this world is that not everyone is a scientist, in that regard. Of course, to make a living doing science would take a bit of study beyond fourth grade, but really anyone can be a scientist.
Similarly, I imagine everyone could be a philosopher too, if only they thought deeply and critically about the questions they were asking.
Perhaps an even greater tragedy is that not everyone is a philosopher.
His comments under his “Lowder=Zacharias” thread are quite sad; to paraphrase:
“Oh no, someone went and told Richard Carrier that I wrote this, and now he’s going to write about it himself! On his own blog! Why can’t he just comment here, where I can control what is and isn’t seen and who can or cannot respond to him?”
I also came out the other end of reading those comments not quite sure whether he considered you a philosopher or not.Very garbled.
On his debates, I would extend the critique of his oral debates to the written one he had with Randall Rauser (sic?). I thought he started off okay, but still felt his rebuttals were poor, and got progressively worse.
And people need to understand if they publish something in public, they get criticized in public. They don’t get to control their critics.
Update: Randal Rauser has added his own take on the issue, which I think is worth reading as well.
(The comments on Ed Brayton’s Facebook post about my article are also of interest.)
I know two people from Usulutan, El Salvador. That town’s people call themselves Usulutecos. Just as each religion’s members assume their religion is exceptional, Usulutecos think they’re special, as this T-shirt illustrates. https://www.amazon.com/Guanaco-Usulutan-El-Salvador-Gift/dp/B082TFBHXG
It reflects a ubiquitous human tendency to think of self as not only good, but terrific. Everybody stands head and shoulders above the average person.
Thank X that we Americans never fell prey to a provincial prejudice like exceptionalism.
(I posted this under John Loftus, because he represents the outsider test of faith.)