Why isn’t the field of philosophy concerned with communicating its ideas to the general public?

https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/i6ku8v/why_isnt_the_field_of_philosophy_concerned_with/

created by margotiii on 09/08/2020 at 15:06 UTC*

523 upvotes, 30 top-level comments (showing 25)

Why isn’t philosophy communication a thing, the same way science communication is a thing?

I come from a scientific and engineering background. In these fields, science communication is something that most understand as an important undertaking. Science communication is even taught as a course to many graduate students. There are famous science communicators like bill nye, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Bryan Green, and more. That’s just in physics. There are tons of pop science books on pretty much any niche topic of science that make these topics easy to understand and are written in engaging ways for the non-scientific public.

Why is philosophy not like this?

Im currently reading Nick Bostrom’s book, Superintelligence and also reading Luciano Floridi’s book, The 4th revolution. Both of these books are meant for the lay public. That said, Bostrom’s book reads like a stale pack of saltines. It’s amazing to me how he could take a topic like AI and super-intelligence and make it so dry and boring. Same with Floridi’s book which is also targeted to the lay public. It even says in the description that this book is supposed to be an introductory text on information philosophy for a general audience. Not so. This book is written primarily in an academic style with a few splashes of story and anecdote attempting to spice it up. If the target of these books are a non-academic audience, both of these books are failures in my eyes. There are tons of reviews of these books that seem to agree.

Obviously it’s not just Bostrom and Floridi I’m knocking. Philosophical source text, even modern ones, are notoriously difficult to read.

From my understanding, it hasn’t always been this way. Plato famously wrote for a general audience and seemed to succeed in his time in doing so. It used to be common for philosophers to express their ideas in poetry, story, or even write in hexambic pentameter which at the time was considered entertaining to read.

Why don’t modern philosophers make any serious attempts to communicate these extremely important ideas in an engaging and easy to understand way?

EDIT: Downvoted to oblivion! Seems like the consensus here is that philosophy does a great job of communicating its ideas to the general public.

EDIT: There are more philosophy communicators out there than I thought. Thanks for answering my question, philosophers!

EDIT: thanks everyone for the great discussion. Definitely answered my question and opened my eyes to new resources. Also, the downvoting clearly didn’t last. Don’t know why this post got early hate.

Comments

Comment by TychoCelchuuu at 09/08/2020 at 16:16 UTC

363 upvotes, 4 direct replies

Obviously there's a ton of public philosophy, but as for why there isn't more, and why there isn't as much as public science, I think it's a mixture of a lot of things. A few potential reasons:

1. People don't trust philosophers as much as they trust scientists and so one faces a much higher hill to climb, if it's even possible, if one's goal is to convince people.

2. Philosophers despise dogmatism and failing to think for oneself. They are less concerned with conclusions alone and more concerned with the reasons supporting those conclusions. But one cannot really communicate the reasons to the public any more than a scientist can communicate their experiment methodology to the public. It's too complicated. And so unlike science, where what's valuable is the result you reach rather than the process by which you got there, philosophy has less that's worth communicating to the public.

3. Philosophical views tend to be things people either don't care about at all or care about so much that they are not likely to be happy to have those views challenged. Science sits in a comfy middle ground: it has implications which people care about a lot, but few people have strongly held views about the nature of scientific topics that they're inclined to cling to even in the face of scientists saying otherwise.

4. Philosophers tend to have a harder time arriving at consensus than scientists and so it's not like there are obvious "right answers" that we can bring to the public like newly-discovered scientific stuff.

5. A lot of philosophy gets done in stuff the public is already consuming, like novels, TV shows, and movies. (The recent TV miniseries *devs* was all about free will, for instance.) It's not professional philosophy but it is philosophy, and so people who are interested in philosophical topics often have their fill of engagement just with what they're already consuming. Meanwhile it's hard to get science just from watching a TV show or reading a book or whatever. (There are exceptions, but they are relatively few.)

6. A lot of science is done by professional (or quasi-professional) scientific communicators rather than scientists themselves, which is possible only because there's a ton of money floating around science departments. There's no money to pay people to be professional philosophy communicators.

7. Scientists suck up huge amounts of taxpayer money and perhaps feel some duty to justify this. Philosophers barely cost anything so we might think that philosophers don't feel like they have to show people they are getting their money's worth.

8. It's rare for scientific results to be anti-establishment, controversial, dangerous to talk about, etc. In some areas of philosophy one's views can be quite controversial such that if you publicize them a lot you're asking for a lot of trouble. Peter Singer gets tons of death threats, or at least he used to. I doubt many scientists get death threats.

I could keep going but that should give you a start.

Comment by Shitgenstein at 09/08/2020 at 16:01 UTC*

80 upvotes, 1 direct replies

EDIT: Downvoted to oblivion! Seems like the consensus here is that philosophy does a great job of communicating its ideas to the general public. This community isn’t an echo chamber at all...

I'm currently (at the time of replying) seeing this submission with 10 points (100% upvoted). No idea what you're on about.

And there's lots of philosophy communication. This subreddit is one example of people doing just that.

Major philosophers *do* participate in communicating philosophy, for example, here's Daniel Dennett on Big Think communicating his view on consciousness[1]. I remember seeing him on TV when I was in high school, contributing to my early interest in philosophy of mind before I really knew what that was. Here's David Chalmers TED talk on consciousness[2]. Here's Massimo Pigliucci communicating Stoicism as a philosophy for ordinary life[3].

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-Nj_rEqkyQ

2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhRhtFFhNzQ

3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yhn1Fe8cT0Q

It'd be nice if we had a popular TV series like Bryan Magee's *The Great Philosophers* but this sort of thing isn't just whether philosophers are interested but if there's public interest and a market for this sort of entertainment. It's likely the case that popular science just grabs more eyeballs than popular philosophy, which makes it a more financially-viable endeavor, raises the profiles of those who communicate it, etc.

Clearly, though, there's passion for sharing philosophy without remuneration, like panelists here doing this stuff entirely for free!

Comment by Voltairinede at 09/08/2020 at 15:12 UTC

107 upvotes, 3 direct replies

I think all the panelists here will probably just disagree with you. There's plenty of public philosophy and plenty of public philosophers, it's not as prominent because philosophy isn't (even in the same league) as prominent as science.

Plato famously wrote for a general audience and seemed to succeed in his time in doing so

No he didn't? He wrote for Aristocratic men.

Comment by as-well at 09/08/2020 at 15:33 UTC

35 upvotes, 1 direct replies

Public philosophy is a thing. Dailynous.com has a sidebar full of it. In some universities, doing public philosophy is part of the evaluation for professors, so it is also kinda important.

Obviously it’s not just Bostrom and Floridi I’m knocking. Philosophical source text, even modern ones, are notoriously difficult to read.

Yes, because philosophy is typically written for academics. Almost all academic disciplines have been professionalized and streamlined so that one does not always have to explain everything - like Darwin still did in the *Origin of Species*. Trust me, I've just spent a few weeks on-and-off reading computer science and statistics papers, that stuff is impenetrable if you're not coming from those disciplines.

Why don’t modern philosophers make any serious attempts to communicate these extremely important ideas in an engaging and easy to understand way?

Because all academic communication has a central problem, to find a level most readers are comfortable with. Especially with rather complex ideas, this is a trade-off. Be honest: There's some good science comm around quantum mechanics out there, but do you really understand it without investing tons of time? Probably not.

Same with philosophy. Sometimes, they write simpler than for an academic audience, but not simply enough that everyone finds it engaging and is able to undrestand. Sometimes, they try to make stuff even more simple, at the risk of losing the more in-the-know audience. It appears to me that you find those books to fall on the wrong side of this trade-off. That's ok, often happens to me with physics, too.

Comment by drinka40tonight at 09/08/2020 at 18:10 UTC*

16 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Awhile ago, I wrote something short about this.

https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/258zoh/why_cant_philosophical_arguments_be_explained/

The basic thought is that telling people about the developments in science can be a lot different than telling people about the developments in philosophy. That said, there are plenty of works that are engaging and aimed at a general audience. Like, any of the podcasts here should work: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskPhilosophyFAQ/comments/4i0faz/what_are_some_good_philosophy_podcasts/

The NYT has the Stone: https://www.nytimes.com/column/the-stone

Richard Marshall has a great series of interviews with lots of philosophers: https://316am.site123.me/articles/index-of-all-interviewees?c=index-of-interviewees

But yeah, there will be lots of applicable things one could say to respond to your concern.

Comment by RussBoi at 09/08/2020 at 16:01 UTC

12 upvotes, 1 direct replies

good philosophy for the general public (usually doesn't require a background or prior understanding in philosophy) can be found on the IAI website!!! The Instiutie of Art and Ideas has daily posts for everyone from every point of the philosophy spectrum :)

Comment by Provokateur at 09/08/2020 at 19:58 UTC

9 upvotes, 0 direct replies

You've received plenty of answers, so I thought I'd just offer a recommendation. "Ethics" by Alain Badiou would be a great book to check out. Badiou does a lot of strong, cutting edge work in academic philosophy (less so in the past few years, as I believe he's retired) but wrote "Ethics" as an introductory text for undergrads that still gets into a lot of his cool, high level philosophy concepts in an accessible way. He also does some weird stuff with mathematics, which might appeal to you having an engineering background.

EDIT: Also, 4 hours in I'm seeing the post as 90% upvoted with 122 karma, which is very good for this sub.

Comment by [deleted] at 09/08/2020 at 15:12 UTC

14 upvotes, 1 direct replies

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Comment by TheDevilsYouDont at 09/08/2020 at 17:57 UTC

10 upvotes, 1 direct replies

Zizek has built a career out of public philosophy, not just for people who do philosophy but for everyday people.

Comment by 99kedders at 10/08/2020 at 04:04 UTC

5 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Something I heard mused once is that American public education curriculum does not include philosophy for a specific purpose: we teach kids what to think instead of how to think. I can’t remember where I heard it or read it, but it has always stuck with me. So in answering your question, perhaps the average American is missing philosophical discourse because they are not able to recognize it. Another author noted that many forms of entertainment media address philosophical issues. Something to think about.

I’m not going to repeat what others have already expressed. You’ve been open and graciously received all of the feedback, so it doesn’t help for me to restate what has already been said.

Comment by ruld14 at 10/08/2020 at 04:42 UTC

4 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Surprised nobody has shared this podcast in the comments yet Philosophize This! By Stephen West on Spotify.

Great podcast, he goes in depth but also gives real life examples of the ideas to make the abstract a little more concrete. Probably not for the average listener, but great for those who want to dive into philosophy and don't know where to start.

Comment by AbraxasII at 10/08/2020 at 10:16 UTC

3 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Other commenters have already given good answers about why what you say is/isn’t the case, I just have two book recommendations that sort of fall into the category of “philosophy communication.”

1. Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes, by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein. This one’s a classic IMO.

2. Riddles of Existence: A Guided Tour of Metaphysics, by Earl Conee and Theodore Sider. My professor had us use this as supplemental reading in our introductory metaphysics course so we could understand some concepts in advance of reading the much more dense original texts. This book is written by two academic philosophers and it reads much more like an academic book than Plato and a Platypus, but it’s still way easier to read than most academic philosophy papers. I think it’s pretty accessible to your average Joe.

Comment by ahumanlikeyou at 09/08/2020 at 21:13 UTC

2 upvotes, 0 direct replies

I think one issue is that thinking clearly and carefully on paper just isn't always that interesting. When I read lay-things, often forays into "interesting" territory bring in all kinds of misunderstanding and hidden (false or undefended) assumptions. And THAT is bad philosophy.

Now I don't mean to say this is always true, or inevitably true, but just that it is often true.

Lastly, I'd say, there's lots of stuff that's boring at first but when you really get into it, you start to see things and that makes it more interesting.

Comment by ahumanlikeyou at 09/08/2020 at 21:19 UTC*

2 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Check out Wi-Phi and Hi-Phi. There's more popular philosophy than you have found.

Also, fwiw, the entire profession is aware this is an issue and is moving to fix it.

Comment by [deleted] at 17/01/2021 at 02:44 UTC

2 upvotes, 1 direct replies

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Comment by diomed22 at 09/08/2020 at 15:47 UTC

2 upvotes, 1 direct replies

Because philosophy is a difficult subject, and it is hard to make a difficult subject accessible without dumbing it down to the point where it becomes filled with errors and simplifications. If you want to understand philosophy properly, you are going to have to spend many hours trudging through books, which many people aren't willing to do.

Comment by [deleted] at 09/08/2020 at 16:57 UTC

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Comment by [deleted] at 10/08/2020 at 09:41 UTC

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Comment by [deleted] at 10/08/2020 at 09:51 UTC

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Why isn’t the field of philosophy concerned with communicating its ideas to the general public?