James Maclaurin: Philosophy's place is logical, really

COMMENT

As all the hoopla dies down after the release of the Government's performance-based research fund rankings for tertiary institutes, two surprising facts have come to light. First, against expectations, one subject is the best discipline averaged across all our universities and boasts New Zealand's most successful academic department (Otago) and, by a small margin, its second most successful (Auckland).

Second, the subject is not business-driven, or high-tech. It is a subject that has been modestly absent in the promotion of the much-vaunted knowledge economy.

New Zealand's most successful research subject is philosophy. This result will have some in Government scratching their heads.

Philosophy is not a major recipient of contestable funding. Most of the big grant money goes to science and business. I suspect that some in the business community are already muttering about universities that are better at producing philosophers than promoting our overseas earnings.

But I think the Government should not be surprised, and the business world should not be unhappy.

Philosophy is the oldest academic discipline. The modern use of the word "academia" comes from Plato's academy founded in 387BC.

So how is it that, after 2500 years, when you might think that philosophers would have mined all the intellectual gold their discipline had to offer, philosophy still manages to top the research rankings in modern universities?

The answers tell us much in an age in which we are often seduced by the advertising agency's rule of thumb - that if it isn't new, it isn't interesting.

Philosophy is about reasoning, how it works and how occasionally it all goes horribly wrong. What we often think of as philosophical questions are really just those in which reasoning is important.

This explains many things. Philosophy can do well in research rankings despite modest funding because you don't need a lot of money to think about thinking.

Philosophy remains a popular subject for students because mental agility shows no signs of going out of fashion.

Philosophy is also at the centre of many a research project. That is why a doctorate of Philosophy (as opposed to a PhD in Philosophy) is the highest research degree awarded in many academic disciplines.

Once you understand what academic philosophy is about, it becomes a little less surprising that philosophers are inherently theorisers and, therefore, researchers, and also that they are bound to have their fingers in many academic pies.

People do philosophy because they love it. No one embarks on a philosophy degree to earn a meal ticket. A popular joke T-shirt among philosophers states plaintively "I will teach for food".

That said, philosophers point out the irony of the common beliefs about the employability of philosophy graduates. According to university graduate surveys, good philosophy students do just as well as good commerce students in the job stakes.

But employability is a red herring because philosophy is much like mathematics. Philosophy departments turn out few graduates. Our core business is teaching philosophical skills to non-philosophers, who will go on to be better scientists, economists, lawyers, doctors, and so on.

Those who earn a doctorate in philosophy do so because they have an abiding fascination with the discipline.

Without that level of intellectual commitment, research success is hard to come by. Successful research is not a 9-to-5 sort of occupation.

Perhaps the best answer to why philosophy is still so popular is because you cannot kill it. Philosophical issues never go out of fashion.

Philosophical questions are too numerous to name but they include such issues as what characteristics are fundamental to the human condition? What makes someone morally virtuous? What is truth and to whom should we turn for knowledge?

But to say such questions are timeless is certainly not to imply there is nothing more to say on them. With every new discovery, from evolution to genetic manipulation, from the rise of empire to the rise of spam, the issues that we thought we understood well suddenly come alive again.

Today, more than ever before, governments, businesses and the ordinary person have an urgent need to address big-picture questions about the impact on humanity of new technologies and unheralded social phenomena.

Philosophy could not have survived for 2500 years without learning to move with the times but in many respects, the modern academic environment might have been purpose-built for the growth of the average philosophy department.

The political and scientific climate has meant philosophers have had to turn down invitations to speak in a variety of settings within academia and in the community.

In the past year, I have addressed academic groups in botany, ecology, anatomy and structural biology, geography, the Australasian Association of Palaeontologists, and a workshop on spatial information research.

Philosophy seldom hits the headlines, but if philosophers have one message to pass on in this brief spell of media attention, it is that in future you may want to be a little more sceptical when you hear someone suggest that philosophy is old hat or that New Zealand's research and teaching dollars ought to be spent on vocational subjects (for which read those whose title sounds like the name of a job).

Many traditional humanities subjects did well in the recent assessment exercise and there will always be those who complain that such subjects provide no direct benefit to the economy.

But it will be a sad day if universities teach only economically beneficial subjects. In such a climate we might turn out too many graduates who cannot see basic logical truths such as "indirect benefit is still benefit".

* Dr James Maclaurin is a senior lecturer in philosophy at Otago University.