A brief guide to philosophical discussion for non-philosophers
Philosophy is open to all, but doing it effectively requires following some guidelines
Philosophy's openness to all
To me, one of the neatest and most beautiful aspects of philosophy is that it is, in an essential way, open to just about everyone. For example, participating in philosophical exchanges doesn't require having an extensive background in some empirical field of study, nor does it require having any advanced technology or specialized equipment with which to conduct experiments. By and large, one can do the core work of philosophy just by thinking.
What's more, it's not simply that philosophy is open to all in its fundamental method (viz., thinking), but that it positively invites all via the import of its content. That is, philosophical discussions often center on matters that concern everyone. Is there meaning to life? Does anything matter? (If so, what matters?) How should we live? Is there a god? What can we know? True, not everyone will be interested in questions like these, but such questions still seem important to devote at least some thought to, regardless of one's interests or circumstances. A life in which one gives no consideration whatsoever to foundational questions about what kind of world one lives in or one's place in it seems to lack something crucial. Socrates' dictum "The unexamined life is not worth living," while perhaps a tad hyperbolic, nevertheless gestures at a profound truth.
Further, it's not just that non-philosophers should (at least sometimes) think about and discuss philosophy for their own edification; beyond this, I believe that philosophical discussions themselves often stand to gain from the participation of non-philosophers. That is, non-philosophers will often have important perspectives and insights to share. Such perspectives and insights will perhaps sometimes be informed by a given non-philosopher's own distinct training (e.g., scientific training) or life experience, or by being an all-around intelligent person, or by sheer common sense. It would strike me as an egregious kind of gatekeeping to think that philosophical training is a prerequisite for having anything worthwhile to say in philosophical discussions.
A pattern of difficulties
And yet, while I wholeheartedly believe that philosophical discussions that include non-philosophers can be of great value, my experiences force me to acknowledge that such discussions all too often run into various impasses and derailments. That is, to put it candidly, there's a host of intellectual and conversational blunders that often crop up among those who lack philosophical training, and these blunders together function to distort or even outright prevent philosophical thinking. The result is a more frustrating discussion experience for everyone—one which, sadly, can make it all the more difficult for non-philosophers to appreciate the value of philosophy.
I'll now present a list of what strike me as the most common errors and difficulties that come up in philosophical discussions with non-philosophers1:
1. Epistemic arrogance
For those who lack much experience reading, writing, and discussing philosophy, it's often difficult to appreciate how a philosophical issue on which they have a strong opinion—whether it be the existence of God, the moral status of abortion, the just approach to immigration or taxes, or many other matters of controversy—could be subject to reasonable disagreement. It's here that one finds the tendency to assume that the right answer in such disputes is obvious—a tendency that can be present regardless of how extensive and intractable the philosophical debate on such issues has been. Although overconfidence on such matters is sometimes due simply to not knowing about the vastness of the philosophical literature on it, a more unsettling twist is when there's a willingness to immediately dismiss any opinions from the other side that one is presented with—all the more so when those whose opinions one is dismissing have themselves researched the issue at hand much more deeply, and when one is incapable even of summarizing their arguments beyond a soundbite caricature.
Among those who embrace epistemic arrogance to such a degree, one often finds an unwillingness or inability to explain their reasoning on the matter at hand—instead defaulting to thought-terminating clichés like "Just use your brain," or "Fine, you can be wrong if you want!"
2. An antagonistic standpoint on disagreement
It's common to see people treat philosophical disagreements as a boxing match. The point is not to reach the truth, but to rhetorically beat down your interlocutor. Hence the impulse to whataboutism: On this way of viewing disagreements, it doesn't matter if your opponent lands a hit (i.e., makes a decent point) against your view, as long as you can come back with a better hit against her view—even if what you say fails to engage in any way with the point she just made.
3. A dogmatic unwillingness to concede
In large part because of the antagonistic standpoint described above, there's often a flat-out refusal to concede the smallest point, to budge the slightest amount—for that matter, a refusal even to simply admit, when confronted with a challenging objection, that one lacks a response in that moment. Instead, the immediate response, especially when it comes to politically controversial topics, is to dig in one's heels ever more deeply.
4. Cheap psychologizing
A further maneuver that sometimes appears in such discussions is to respond to an argument or position with some variant of "You only think that because..." Such responses tend to shift the focus away from what one might have hoped it would be, namely what the evidence is for the view at hand, and toward an implied attack on the speaker—in particular, that the speaker is not rationally exercising his own intellectual agency and putting forth well-considered reasons that could, in principle, be appreciated by any person who's likewise thinking rationally, but that he is, in his thought, more or less a slave to irrational, parochial influences stemming from his particular life circumstances. This ad hominem element is no doubt a large part of why such a maneuver often leads discussions to become more heated. (Reflect for a moment—have you found that someone's objecting with something like "You're looking at it from a white male perspective," "...a woman's perspective," "…a black perspective," "…a Jewish perspective," or "…a privileged perspective" has ever improved a discussion?)2
5. Erratically shifting between points and neglecting to adequately develop them
Sometimes an interlocutor will flit about between various points and arguments, each underdeveloped in its turn. Such a person, when challenged on one argument for her view, will respond not by defending the argument she just made, nor even by acknowledging or clarifying the challenge, but simply by bringing up an altogether different argument for the same conclusion—as if the goal were to overwhelm the opposing side by sheer force of numbers, in hope that at least one argument, somewhere along the way, will remain standing. Here's one imagined example involving the debate on abortion3:
A: Abortion is wrong. For any child you choose to abort, consider that that child could have been the next Beethoven.
B: Or the next Hitler. While the potential that the resulting person would have gone on to do good is indeed there, we also have to take into account the bad he might have done. Doesn't this pose a challenge to that anti-abortion argument?
A: Abortion violates the baby's right to life. All beings have a right to live, even the unborn.
B: Maybe that's the case, but some would hold that whether a being has a right to life depends on whether it's developed any consciousness. And, at least in the early stages of its development, it's not clear whether a fetus has consciousness.
A: In choosing to abort, you're taking away the future the baby would have had, and that's wrong.
B: I think we're moving a bit fast here. Before we get into that latest argument, could we slow down and talk about whether you have any responses to the objections I've offered to your earlier points?
A: Aren't you glad you weren't aborted?
In any discussion in which either side shifts the terrain of the debate so rapidly, it'll be difficult to make any progress.
6. Refusal to entertain hypotheticals
Of all the discussion pitfalls listed here, this is, to me, quite possibly the most frustrating to encounter. In response to a thought experiment or hypothetical scenario you put forth, a person will sometimes—perhaps sensing the challenge it'd otherwise pose to the principles undergirding his view—flat-out refuse to engage with the thought experiment, simply on the ground that it's hypothetical. Here's an example loosely drawn from a conversation I once had:
Other: Gay marriage shouldn't have been legalized. The original definition of marriage, after all, was that it was between a man and a woman.
Me: Why put any stock in what the original definition might or might not have happened to be? Imagine, for instance, that the original, legal definition of marriage held that it could not be interracial—that to count as a marriage, a union had to be between two members of the same race. It seems that your view would then be that interracial marriage should never have been legal.
Other: But it didn't happen that way; that wasn't the original definition of marriage.
Me: That's not the point. The point is that if it had happened that way, then the principle you're appealing to would have the clearly wrong verdict that—
Other: Why are you bringing up weird alternative-history scenarios? I'm talking about the real world here, bud.
A related, though less extreme, misunderstanding of thought experiments comes up in responses like the following: "Well, what if we just changed the case in such-and-such a way (to where it wouldn't seem to pose much of a problem to my view)?" Put more flatly, the intended import of such a response seems to be this: "It doesn't matter that you might have just posed a counterexample to my view—because here's this other case, a case that's not a counterexample!"
None of these blunders and roadblocks, some might argue, should be too surprising. After all, that the core work of philosophy (viz., thinking) is in principle open to all doesn't mean that everyone is going to automatically be adept at the kind of thinking philosophy involves, nor that having had philosophical training will not improve one's ability to participate fruitfully in this kind of discussion. Even bearing that in mind, though, it still seems to me that philosophical discussions involving non-philosophers are often ground down by the above difficulties more than they need to be. For this reason, I'd now like to propose some foundational guidelines for philosophical thinking and discussion—ones applicable, of course, to everyone, though addressed here primarily to those who are approaching philosophy as newcomers or outsiders:
Some guidelines for better philosophical discussions
1. Understand that your view could be mistaken
This minimal level of open-mindedness or epistemic humility is close to being a necessary condition for a genuine discussion. Without it, a discussion tends to be a matter of talking at (or sometimes shouting at) rather than talking with. The need for at least minimal open-mindedness is especially great when it comes to issues that you yourself have not spent a great deal of time researching the opposing side's arguments on or attempting to state their arguments fairly.
2. See a discussion not as a battle between enemies, but as a collaborative endeavor to reach the truth
Unless someone has given you a specific reason for thinking that she's engaging in bad faith—where this reason can't just be "she supports view X, which I think is a bad view"—assume that she's approaching the discussion in good faith.
If you and your interlocutor disagree about the issue in question, then there seem to be three possibilities: (1) Your view is correct, in which case the discussion is a good opportunity to help the other come closer to the truth; (2) the other's view is correct, in which case the discussion is an opportunity for her to help you come closer to the truth; or (3) both your views are incorrect, in which case the discussion could still help both of you become better aware of the flaws in your respective views, flaws which might well motivate a search for a better view. As long as what you're ultimately after is indeed the truth, a good-faith discussion should be nothing to fear.
3. Know that there's no shame in conceding a point
If your interlocutor raises a point that you don't have a response to in the moment, it's fine to acknowledge that. Sometimes the topic or objection at hand is complex and challenging enough to require time to think through, and it's unrealistic to expect always to have an immediate riposte ready for any challenge your view encounters. If you think of a reply later, perhaps you could bring it up then and see what the other thinks, circumstances permitting. Or maybe you could simply change your mind on the issue in the end; there's no shame in that, either.
In a mature discussion, being willing to concede a point is taken as a sign of strength, not weakness.
4. Avoid cheap psychologizing
In general, avoid trying to analyze your interlocutor's motivations (especially if you're imagining them as hidden or disreputable motivations) for his view. In a philosophical discussion, the major question at hand usually isn't what beneath-the-surface factors might be motivating a belief; it's whether the belief is true. Focus on the evidence for or against the belief, rather than trying to psychologize your interlocutor.
5. Be intentional about shifting to a new point
Always try to resolve the present point or argument before moving to a new one—even if that resolution simply takes the form of acknowledging that the current argument needs more work or that you'll need to think of your interlocutor's objection(s) more. Refrain from responding to an objection by simply and suddenly pivoting to a new argument for your view.
6. Be willing to entertain hypotheticals
Don't dismiss a thought experiment simply because it's hypothetical. As this is such a crucial guideline for philosophical discussion, and as a failure to grasp it betrays a deep misunderstanding of how philosophy works, I'd like to take some time to explain it in more depth.
When explaining or defending our position on a philosophical matter, we always, at some level, appeal to principles. Consider, for example, someone who claims that it's wrong to tell children that Santa Claus exists because doing so is lying, and lying is always wrong. Someone might then challenge this principle (that lying is always wrong) on the ground that it doesn't seem wrong to lie to an ax murderer who asks you where your friend is hiding. If the first person replies by disputing whether such an ax-murderer situation has in fact happened, this would obviously miss the point. The reason this would miss the point is that, if indeed (as the first person in the exchange proposed) lying is always wrong, then it's wrong not just in circumstances that have happened or are currently happening, but in hypothetical circumstances as well. (For instance, if it's true that lying is always wrong, then you can immediately deduce that it would be wrong to lie to your next-door neighbor, even if you haven't ever in fact lied to her.)
That principles (like "lying is always wrong") apply across the board, to all possible circumstances, is what gives them their explanatory power.4 It is also what makes them vulnerable to counterexamples. Whether the circumstances described in a counterexample have ever in fact come about, or whether they're merely possible, is neither here nor there.
For a closely related reason, simply proposing some changes to a counterexample does not rebut it. In the context of the ax-murderer case, this maneuver would look like this: "Well, what if we just changed the case so that your friend is about to detonate a bomb that will destroy the whole planet, and telling the ax murderer where he's hiding, so that the ax murderer goes on to kill him, is the only way to stop your friend from blowing up everyone? Wouldn't it be okay to tell the ax murderer the truth then?" Regardless of whether it's right (as most would agree) to tell the ax murderer where your friend is hiding in that case, the trouble is that that's simply a different case from the one we started with. And so, even though that case might not be a counterexample to the principle that lying is always wrong, we still have an apparent counterexample to that principle (viz., the case in which we don't make any outlandish assumptions about what your friend is about to do, but simply stipulate that he's a normal person who's hiding in fear of his life, and that lying to the ax murderer about where he is, is the only way of saving him). It doesn't matter how many cases are not counterexamples; if even one case, anywhere, is a counterexample to a principle, that shows the principle to be false.
It is my hope that, by keeping these guidelines in mind, we can have more fruitful philosophical discussions—ones wherein philosophers and non-philosophers can learn more from one another.
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While I'm focusing on these errors and difficulties as they come up among non-philosophers, they can, of course, sometimes come up even among philosophers as well.
This isn't to suggest that there can never be any interesting or informative genealogical critique. The kind I'm criticizing in this post is the simplistic, jejune, ham-fisted kind.
In giving this example, I don't intend to impugn anyone's view, nor to suggest anything about my own views. I've chosen abortion for the example simply because it's a convenient, well-worn debate to frame an example around.
For example, if the person making the argument above denied that lying is always wrong, that would immediately call into question his argument that it's wrong to lie to children about Santa; if, say, lying is only sometimes wrong, after all, then the argument would need to be supplemented with some reason for thinking that lying to children about Santa is one of the wrongful instances of lying, rather than one of the okay ones. And, in turn, any reason that would let us make such a distinction would be, or suggest, a principle that would itself apply across the board, to all possible circumstances—or else we'd run into the same problem again.
Thanks for laying all this out so nicely! I could see this being a good start-of-course primer for a gen-ed philosophy class or something like that.
Your post reminded me of "The Righteous Mind" by Jonathan Haidt, a really interesting "moral psychology" book I read earlier this year. The book is only a descriptive, not prescriptive, work about morality, definitely much more psychology than philosophy, but I think you might find it interesting - and that it might make some of these "people being difficult" reactions make more sense. In short, while modern Western secular progressives tend to say all their morality depends only/mostly on "fairness" and "compassion," most cultures have some form of "loyalty," "respect for authority," and "some things are sacred/profane" as moral axioms in their own right. Haidt argues that some form of these moral axioms are hard-wired into our psychology, or at least most people's psychology (including modern secular Western progressives).
I think keeping this in mind makes arguments like the ones you describe make more sense. If you're arguing with someone about same-sex marriage, and the hypothetical arguer says "That's not the original definition of marriage" and gets touchy about examining this point, I bet what's going on there is a high degree of "respect for authority." In this case, I think it's more like "respect for tradition," and - even if they can't consciously articulate it - I bet this is what's driving a lot of their arguments.
(I know, I know, I'm psychologizing my opponent... but I think there's something to this!)
I like all the guidelines you lay out for what an individual can practice in their own attitudes and their own arguments, but I wonder what a follow-up list might look like for the practices you can have that will help your interlocutor be more reasonable. What questions can you ask, or what practices can /you/ do, that make the other person feel more understood and respected so they're more comfortable having some of their deeply-cherished beliefs challenged?
I have no idea if I'd be this level-headed in the moment, but if I were arguing with someone who was insisting on "Don't deviate from the 'original' definition of marriage," I would hope I'd ask them, "Why is adhering to the 'original' definition of marriage important to you? What's special about it being 'original?'" And I wouldn't mean this as a "gotcha" kind of way where I then argue that it's all silly; I'd genuinely want to hear them talk about why this is special to them - and I suspect I'd eventually get at this person articulating "Respect for authority/tradition" as a moral axiom. Once both he and I understand this, I bet we'd have a much more fruitful discussion.
I bet you have much more practice than I do at making these conversations go well, so I'd like to hear what you think.