This opens the path for the argument that analytic philosophers are better protected from committing political blunders because of their training in clear and logical thinking, whereas continental philosophers, lacking this kind of training and consequently being prone to empty rhetoric, undisciplined thought, and obscurity, will be much more exposed to the risk of making fools of themselves in politics. This is what many analytic philosophers tend to think.
We Will Teach You How to Think, They Said
The American Philosophical Association (APA), which is heavily dominated by analytic philosophy, seeks to attract philosophy majors with the following message:
The study of philosophy serves to develop intellectual abilities important for life as a whole, beyond the knowledge and skills required for any particular profession. Properly pursued, it enhances analytical, critical, and communicative capacities that are applicable to any subject matter, and in any human context (APA 1992).
This is a remarkably strong and bold statement about the alleged effects of studying philosophy: The pursuit of philosophy is claimed to enhance students’ analytical, critical, and communicative capacities, which can then be applied to any subject matter and in any human context.
The main problem here is that the APA provides no evidence at all for the wonderful improvements in thinking that philosophy supposedly can produce. Moreover, many scholars actually insist that the currently available empirical evidence comes nowhere near to establishing such a sweeping and resolute causal claim. In contrast to the APA’s assurance that studying philosophy improves reasoning skills, psychologists tell us that after a hundred years of debate “the issue of whether generalizable reasoning skills transfer to reasoning contexts outside of formal schooling remains an open question in the opinions of leading researchers” (Barnett & Ceci 2002, 615; emphasis added). What the APA advertises is additionally problematic because it seems to promise something like “far transfer” (i.e., transferring what one learns in one context to other very different subject matters and contexts). And the prospects of achieving far transfer are notoriously questionable (see Holyoak & Morrison 2005, 788–90, and references therein).
All in all, therefore, it appears that the APA is involved in false advertising, which can be explained by ignorance, self-serving intellectual dishonesty, or some combination thereof.
In a recent discussion about the value of philosophy, the executive director of the APA, Amy E. Ferrer, said this:
Philosophy teaches many of the skills most valued in today’s economy: critical thinking, analysis, effective written and verbal communication, problem solving, and more. And philosophy majors’ success is borne out in both data—which show that philosophy majors consistently outperform nearly all other majors on graduate entrance exams such as the GRE and LSAT, and that philosophy ties with mathematics for the highest percentage increase from starting to midcareer salary—and anecdotal evidence indicating that philosophy and other humanities majors are increasingly successful and sought after in the business and technology sectors (quoted in Jaschik 2015).
Ferrer’s defense of the value of studying philosophy is fallacious. It is based on the logical mistake post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Briefly, the statistical correlation between studying philosophy and all these good outcomes does not mean that the former causes the latter. It may well be that those who embark on philosophy studies are simply smarter to begin with and that their subsequent success is in no way (or not mainly) the result of what they learned in philosophy courses.
This pretty obvious alternative explanation for the good performance of philosophy majors is not recognized by the APA as a possibility that deserves any consideration. The same blind spot reappears in a letter that was signed by three officers of the APA (including the well-known Stanford philosopher Michael Bratman) and published on the APA website. Again, the authors first provide statistical data about above-average accomplishments of philosophy majors and then jump to the conclusion that studying philosophy “trains students’ general cognitive skills, improves their ability to reason” and thereby “make[s] philosophy majors highly flexible in the job market” (APA 2014; emphasis added). The three italicized words all assert causal influence and they can be justified only if something more than a merely statistical correlation is provided. The fact that even very prominent philosophers do not sufficiently appreciate the warning that correlation does not imply causation—perhaps the most hackneyed principle of critical thinking—is not the best advertisement for the value of philosophy for critical thinking.
The British Philosophical Association (2016) also promises on its website that the philosophy student will develop the capacities to “think well about important issues” and “learn to be an independent and flexible thinker,” and that these skills will “both be of value throughout one’s life and in demand by many employers.” Again, no evidence is provided that studying philosophy can really bring about these magnificent effects. Moreover, given all that we currently know there is no good reason to accept these optimistic claims.
In 2010 more than a thousand people, including a number of well-known philosophers, signed a petition titled “Make Reasoning Skills Compulsory in Schools” (Burgess 2010). The petition was addressed to Michael Gove, the UK Education Minister. The petition urged the government to make philosophy classes compulsory from a very early age, arguing that this “would have immense benefits in terms of boosting British school kids’ reasoning and conceptual skills, better equipping them for the complexities of life in the 21st century.”
In support of this radical proposal they offered two pieces of evidence.1 One was a collection of articles written by a group of people, all of whom are philosophers and philosophy educators, and who—as we learn in the book introduction—were “all firmly committed” to the view that philosophy should be a compulsory part of the school curriculum (Hand & Winstanley 2009, xiii–xiv). Besides this highly biased source produced by true believers, the petition invoked a 2007 study by two researchers at Dundee University allegedly showing that “confronting core philosophical debates as the nature of existence, ethics and knowledge can raise children’s IQ by up to 6.5 points, as well as improve emotional intelligence.”
There are three major problems here. First, the public campaign to force all children in the UK to take philosophy classes essentially relied on only one scientific study. (Consider an analogous case: If two researchers announced that in their sample of 177 children, taking a certain new medicine was statistically associated with better health, would anyone seriously consider the proposal that, on that basis alone, all children in the country immediately start taking the medicine regularly?)
Second, it is unclear whether the supporters of the petition were aware that the authors of the study in question themselves explicitly cautioned the reader that the results “should not be over-interpreted or accepted uncritically.” (It is hard to think of a more extreme way to over-interpret and uncritically accept a study than to prescribe a national curriculum based on its tentative conclusions.) The authors pointed out that their study suffered from methodological imperfections and warned that sampling was not entirely random, that the possibility of the Hawthorne effect (also known as the observer effect) could not be ruled out and that differences between experimental and control classes could be influenced by factors that were not measured (Topping & Trickey 2007, 283).
And third, even if the gains were genuine, whether they would be sustained after the experiment ended would be unclear. Obviously there would be little point in modifying the national curriculum for elementary schools if the good effects dissipated soon after any such intervention came to an end (which frequently happens with reported increases in childhood IQ).2 So before starting a massive educational reform, it stands to reason that the durability of those effects should be confirmed in the first place, preferably by independent research teams.
Surprisingly, despite all these self-evident reasons against joining the campaign, a number of well-known philosophers (including Simon Blackburn, Jonathan Glover, Bill Brewer, A. C. Grayling, Duncan Pritchard, Peter Simons, Jon