When I first walked into my first philosophy class, PHIL 1750: “Epistemology,” I didn’t know exactly what to expect. What is the study of knowledge and why should I care about it? I thought philosophy would offer an environment in which I could say and write anything without criticism. I saw philosophy classes as abstract art viewings or TED Talks about innovation — you throw around a lot of buzzwords and everyone nods in agreement. Little did I know that the course would encourage me to properly engage in arguments and to be more amenable in many aspects of my life.
There’s a joke philosophers often hear from disdainful mathematicians: Math departments deserve more funding because they need pencils, paper and trashcans, while philosophy departments need only pencils and paper.
Unfortunately, I quickly found this isn’t at all true. In my first couple of philosophy lectures, I raised my hand to ask some smart-ass question, only to have my stupidity carefully unpackaged and made public by the professor.
Never have my ideas been more thoroughly dismantled than in the margin scrawlings of graded papers, and given Brown’s ideological homogeny, it’s invaluable to have one’s beliefs seriously challenged. It encourages an open mind — an essential asset that can be applied to almost any situation.
The inaccurate view that philosophers will buy any argument stems from hearing about all of the seemingly absurd views to which they subscribe. Who can genuinely consider arguments that show that killing babies is justified, that we live in a computer simulation or that we should pick one box in Newcomb’s problem?
But these judgments of arguments based on their conclusions defeat the stated purpose of argumentation. When two people argue, each person obviously thinks the other’s conclusion is wrong. An argument is supposed to provide rational justification for someone to change his or her view.
Thus, the quality of an argument is solely a function of the reasoning it uses and has nothing to do with the conclusion it entails. If you disagree with an argument simply on the grounds that the conclusion sounds unreasonable, you’re not actually engaging the argument. Engaging the argument also does not mean providing an argument that comes to the opposite conclusion. As with any other academic subject, the techniques of constructing and analyzing arguments are ones that can be improved through consistent practice.
A friend of mine once noted that many people — including my freshman self — see philosophers as professional “bullshitters.” But as we see, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Philosophy is all about recognizing and picking apart bad arguments while accepting good ones. At times, this can lead to superficially counterintuitive conclusions, but philosophers go where their reasoning takes them, whether they like it or not. Personally, I find this commitment to emotional sterility intellectually admirable, even endearing.
But most Brown students consciously choose not to think in such a rigorous manner. Our university’s activist culture is more concerned with being loudly convincing than logically coherent. One online commenter noted on a previous article of mine that the priority is to “Make Change” rather than to pursue the truth. Refusing to properly engage your opponents’ arguments is fine if you’re morally infallible, but it’s naive otherwise.
It’s natural to have predilections for certain conclusions, but emotional attachments inevitably come with irrational biases. If there’s one life lesson I’ve taken away from philosophy, it’s that we should keep our minds open. There are always intelligent people on every side of a debate.
Formalizing one’s own ideas is a fruitful exercise in any context — many times I have started writing a paper only to realize my argument isn’t nearly as convincing as I had thought. But philosophy further requires students to consider the ideas of those with whom they disagree. When writing a paper, it’s not enough to contradict an opposing view — one is expected to refute it.
Critiquing an opponent’s view demonstrates far more thought and understanding than putting forth one’s own views. Coming up with and addressing the strongest possible counter arguments — including those the opponent didn’t propose — forces one to consider the controversial nuances of the discussion. Often there’s at least one counter argument with more bite than initially expected.
So I would encourage all Brown students to take at least one philosophy class in their time here. While the material might not be directly applicable to real life, the critical reasoning skills garnered are useful in nearly any context.
Andrew Powers ’15 can be reached at andrew_powers@brown.edu.
