Professional academic philosophy use to have a reputation for bloodsport. The stereotype of a philosopher was very combative and argumentative; an accepted measure of philosophical skill was one's ability to dominate one's dialectical opponents, whether in print or in person.

When I was in grad school people spoke in awed terms about a professor who made a visiting speaker cry during their job talk.

This story wasn't given in a totally unambivalent way, but there was definitely a positive spin on the professor's demonstrated philosophical acumen.

Philosophy still has that reputation to some degree, and it still deserves it to some degree. The discussion of academic work in philosophy is more combative than other humanities, as far as I can tell. But the really aggressive tone is less common now.

"Philosophy as bloodsport" was never a good idea. For one thing, it reflected/reinforced weird gendered conceptions of philosophical engagement. But for another, it just wasn't a good way to figure out the right answer to the hard questions philosophers think about.

If you're rewarded for "winning the argument" equally whether it's on a technicality or a deep substantive concern, the social enterprise of coming to philosophical knowledge isn't going to go as well as it would if discussion were more truth-aimed.

It's now less common, especially among younger philosophers, to go conspicuously into combat mode when e.g. giving talks.

But here's a different thing I've been noticing lately. It's very different in tone, but similar in epistemic effects.

Philosophers sometimes hear/reinterpret challenges to their views, treating them as supplemental suggestions or interesting side topics, instead of the challenges they are.

This is friendlier and less aggressive, but just as unhelpful for the project of figuring out what's true.

E.g., I recently attended a talk where someone defended a theory of X in terms of Y, and one of the questions was, "what about these cases of X that are not Y"? They said "yes, that's also a good question to think about in future work".

I think there was a deeper flaw in the old, aggressive, way of doing things, that was sort of papered over in some people's practices by being friendly and polite. The deeper problem wasn't aggression, it was unwillingness to budge on the views one has staked out. This persists.

Like, we all know these are super hard questions! It's not embarrassing if the view I'm defending turns out to be subject to a pretty plausible objection. "That's a good point and I'll have to think about whether my view can be generalized" is a move that should incur no shame!

And it makes things cooperative and advances the dialectic, too. We can go on to think about the part that seemed right and the part that didn't seem quite right, and work on getting a better version of the view. Pretending you got it perfect the first time doesn't do any of that

On the whole I do think the status quo is better than the old version that involved more over assertions of dominance. It makes the field more welcoming, for instance.

But I think some of us kept a little too much of the "stand your ground at all costs" mentality, even if under a friendlier veneer.

(And one weird twist to it is, if you're the one who raised the objection, and you want to make sure they understand that it was actually an objection, then YOU have to get a little bit more aggressive about it, and risk looking like a bit of a jerk yourself.)

Anyway, those are a few of the observations I was thinking about today about norms of discourse at philosophy talks, have a nice evening everybody