I agree with most of the points but there’s a bit more to say on grants. It is possible to get a month of summer salary from a grant, and in universities where there are constant questions about how much the school will fund the PhD program, this can make an incentive for faculty to get grants to ensure continuity of funding for a few more grad students.
I think there’s also a question of what it means to earnestly believe one’s philosophical views - it feels to me that a lot of what I do is figure out some argument for something, realize the way it is most interesting to present as a view, and then gradually become convinced as my mind shapes itself to fit the view I am publicly defending. Once that view is in place, it’s harder for outside sources to change it (whether arguments or funding) but I don’t think there’s much in the way of good evidence that people use to form philosophical views initially. Rather, disciplinary structures push people to adopt distinctive views, and this creates a kind of diversity in the field that is good, even if individuals hold their views for what we might call bad reasons.
I think philosophy is subject to its own questionable research practices, which stem from "choices that aren't visible on the page." (Wes Buckwalter has a paper on this.) And I tried to address your objection in my essay:
A version of your objection: "I just read a sound argument about AI but couldn’t endorse the conclusion because the author has a grant from Anthropic."
But: "The existence of industry funding doesn’t render otherwise sound arguments unsound, but it can distort philosophical inquiry in other ways. Philosophers with industry ties may raise some questions while neglecting others that are just as important. They may give weak objections plenty of air while dispatching strong objections in a few sentences."
Like, yes, in principle a reader could criticize an industry-friendly argument by realizing that it ignores more important questions, or inappropriately raises/diminishes the warranted salience of objections. But these things won't occur to everyone, even experts, so biased authors can mislead, intentionally or inadvertently.
I was thinking that such problems *were* "all visible on the page", though you're right that they might not always be obvious. I guess the larger issue is that I doubt industry funding makes any noticeable difference to the likelihood of philosophers making misleading arguments of that sort. I expect that philosophers *without* industry ties may do all the things you describe roughly equally as often!
I broadly agree with this, though I'm not sure about
> it’s not as though philosophical thought experiments are subject to p-hacking
Suppose a philosopher was instructed: "come up with 10 variants on the Trolley Problem, and then publish the variant which is most compelling case for utilitarianism". If I read that paper, and believed that they'd only come up with 1 or 2 variants before publishing, then I'd update too far towards utilitarianism! So I think there could be a plausible mechanism for biasing the literature, though I still doubt it's commonplace currently
Philosophers differ in their intuitive attunement to different ideas. I could easily imagine that one philosopher's *first* attempt at a utilitarian-friendly variant would reliably be better than another's best out of ten attempts. So it seems to me a bit strange to update on anything to do with how many variants someone needs to generate before they hit upon a good one. Without knowing more about the particular individual in question, there's just not a strong enough general correlation between psychological facts and philosophical ones, IMO.
I agree with most of the points but there’s a bit more to say on grants. It is possible to get a month of summer salary from a grant, and in universities where there are constant questions about how much the school will fund the PhD program, this can make an incentive for faculty to get grants to ensure continuity of funding for a few more grad students.
I think there’s also a question of what it means to earnestly believe one’s philosophical views - it feels to me that a lot of what I do is figure out some argument for something, realize the way it is most interesting to present as a view, and then gradually become convinced as my mind shapes itself to fit the view I am publicly defending. Once that view is in place, it’s harder for outside sources to change it (whether arguments or funding) but I don’t think there’s much in the way of good evidence that people use to form philosophical views initially. Rather, disciplinary structures push people to adopt distinctive views, and this creates a kind of diversity in the field that is good, even if individuals hold their views for what we might call bad reasons.
I think philosophy is subject to its own questionable research practices, which stem from "choices that aren't visible on the page." (Wes Buckwalter has a paper on this.) And I tried to address your objection in my essay:
A version of your objection: "I just read a sound argument about AI but couldn’t endorse the conclusion because the author has a grant from Anthropic."
But: "The existence of industry funding doesn’t render otherwise sound arguments unsound, but it can distort philosophical inquiry in other ways. Philosophers with industry ties may raise some questions while neglecting others that are just as important. They may give weak objections plenty of air while dispatching strong objections in a few sentences."
Like, yes, in principle a reader could criticize an industry-friendly argument by realizing that it ignores more important questions, or inappropriately raises/diminishes the warranted salience of objections. But these things won't occur to everyone, even experts, so biased authors can mislead, intentionally or inadvertently.
I was thinking that such problems *were* "all visible on the page", though you're right that they might not always be obvious. I guess the larger issue is that I doubt industry funding makes any noticeable difference to the likelihood of philosophers making misleading arguments of that sort. I expect that philosophers *without* industry ties may do all the things you describe roughly equally as often!
I broadly agree with this, though I'm not sure about
> it’s not as though philosophical thought experiments are subject to p-hacking
Suppose a philosopher was instructed: "come up with 10 variants on the Trolley Problem, and then publish the variant which is most compelling case for utilitarianism". If I read that paper, and believed that they'd only come up with 1 or 2 variants before publishing, then I'd update too far towards utilitarianism! So I think there could be a plausible mechanism for biasing the literature, though I still doubt it's commonplace currently
Philosophers differ in their intuitive attunement to different ideas. I could easily imagine that one philosopher's *first* attempt at a utilitarian-friendly variant would reliably be better than another's best out of ten attempts. So it seems to me a bit strange to update on anything to do with how many variants someone needs to generate before they hit upon a good one. Without knowing more about the particular individual in question, there's just not a strong enough general correlation between psychological facts and philosophical ones, IMO.