Episode 339: Is Analytic Philosophy Truthmaxxing?

Very Bad Wizards

In Episode 339 of 'Very Bad Wizards,' hosts Tamler Summers and Dave Pizarro engage in a meta-philosophical discussion exploring the ethics of monetizing

Key takeaways

• Monetizing public philosophy on Substack is not inherently unethical, especially when compared to traditional academic publishing models.
• The idea that 'philosophy must ring true' emphasizes emotional resonance and real-world impact over mere technical correctness.

Main topics

• The ethics of monetizing public philosophy on Substack
• Bernard Williams' concept of 'philosophy that rings true'

Notable quotes

"Philosophy that could change lives. Keeping that behind a paywall is unethical."

"Good philosophy on any theme will display some kind of urgency or intensity, and routine philosophy will lack it."

Conclusion

The episode concludes that while ethical concerns about access to knowledge are valid, they must be contextualized within

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist Dave Pizarro, having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say, and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes. In Speaker 2 (0:17) this business of show, you have to have the heart of an angel and the hide of an elephant. Speaker 5 (1:10) Just a very bad wizard. Speaker 4 (1:13) Welcome to Very Bad Wizards. I'm Tamler Summers from the University of Houston. Dave, it's my birthday. We don't need to get into, like, numbers and data about, like, what birthday it is, but it is my birthday. What'd you get me? Speaker 3 (1:31) First of all, go shorty. You don't Speaker 4 (1:37) remember? Speaker 3 (1:37) I already gave you your gift. You don't remember? Speaker 4 (1:39) What was that? Speaker 3 (1:41) I don't know. I'm just trying to make you think that I got you something because I know your mental faculties are dimming. So I figure I could just convince you that I bought you something already. You can Speaker 4 (1:51) gaslight me. I Speaker 3 (1:53) got you a Substack subscription to... Kate Mann's newsletter. Speaker 4 (1:58) Oh, nice. Speaker 3 (2:00) Huge. Well, Speaker 4 (2:02) that's great because people need to reward the labor of women. Speaker 4 (2:09) Yeah. So in this episode, this is a pure like philosophy in the weeds kind of meta philosophy episode. We are in the second segment going to talk about Bernard Williams, his article on hating and despising philosophy. By Speaker 3 (2:27) the way, what a great writer he was. Speaker 4 (2:29) Yeah. I almost think it's been a little overplayed what a great writer he is, but I do like his style. It feels very conversational. I do think it gets, not in this, because this was for the London Review of Books, but in some of his books, it can get a little convoluted, his sentences. But I know that's going to be, for the Bernard William heads out there, that's going to be sacrilege. But he's one of my favorite. philosophers of the 20th century, so I have no real issue, and certainly like a top 5 % writer. Yeah, we'll talk about that, and then we'll also talk about someone who I think might be a better writer, Lily Hugh. This is hot off the presses because it was just published, and I happened to see it online at Mind, you know, one of our premier journals, a review of Christoph Scheringa's A Social History of Analytic Philosophy. which I really enjoyed that review. And it definitely sent me down a rabbit hole, not a rabbit hole deep enough for me to actually look at the book that she's reviewing, but a lot of other things about that book. So that's what we'll be talking about in the main segment. But first. But first. Speaker 3 (3:42) First, there was just like, you know, getting to meta philosophy. This was a little thing in the sociology of philosophy. It created quite the stir in the circles of at least philosophers who are online, including the Daily News, which had a post on this. This is a sub stack post by a philosopher named Walter Veit or Veit. I don't know how to pronounce it. Like Heisenberg. Like who? Heisenberg? Walter Veit. Walter White. But this is Veit. I Speaker 4 (4:12) mean, I still think that Speaker 3 (4:13) could Speaker 4 (4:14) have been yes and it may be like. Speaker 3 (4:16) I was trying to figure out what I was yesing. Speaker 4 (4:20) Is senility setting in on me or is it setting in? Yes is the answer Speaker 3 (4:27) for both. So this was an article that he posted on his Substack called Is it unethical for academics to monetize Substack? So a little brief history, a little timeline of what happened was Walter Veidt posted this. And the version that he originally posted by name used as examples of people to make an argument. His argument was, no, philosophers should not monetize Substack. And he was making an ethical argument that they should not. And he singled out Kate Mann and Philip Goff as philosophers who do a lot of public philosophy and who have a Substack that they charge for. They have lots of articles behind a paywall. And he got some pushback. He wrote a follow-up article specifically about Kate Mann. Your colleague. My colleague, whom I really like. And he ended up apologizing, taking down that second one that was about Kate Mann. It was entitled, How Kate Mann's Feminism Hurts Women on Monetization, Entitlement, and Trickle-Down Feminism. He took that one down and then he actually scrubbed the first article of mentions of any individual person and has now an apology saying that he apologized personally to the two academics who were originally named as examples and says, my argument doesn't require me to name anybody. I was wrong. I shouldn't have done it. So the link that we'll have in the show notes is to that version. I have the other two versions saved. Speaker 4 (5:55) Here's a little bit of even deeper sociology. My phone. was completely almost unusable with all the texts from you and Paul to each other about this salacious scandal. That's Speaker 3 (6:07) right. You should have muted the group text. Speaker 4 (6:10) So to all the people I didn't get back to during this period, I apologize. Yeah. And I didn't really look into it, except there was a great line. I have long pondered whether I should write this post since criticizing other academics isn't looked upon too kindly. But the institution of academia ultimately matters more than any individuals. This is from the one where it had before he, but it's also still there, even though he's not criticizing, I guess, any individuals in particular now. But that is such a ridiculous claim to make. Speaker 3 (6:49) Yeah, he says to not call out right afterwards, to not call out unethical behavior in our academic colleagues is going to lead to nothing but a loss of trust in the institution that we all Speaker 4 (6:57) depend on. I mean, the absurdity of that, like, you can't overemphasize it. Like, the institution of academia may not survive that Philip Goff and Cape Man, like, monetize their sub stacks. I mean, it's just cloud cuckoo land right there. Speaker 3 (7:13) Yeah. So I couldn't get behind this argument at all. And like. So he says specifically, he's come to the conclusion that many academics are using Substack in an unethical way, or at least in a manner that violates the values they profess to hold. So he's calling them out for hypocrisy, for endorsing some values, such as sharing of ideas. Because Speaker 4 (7:34) they're public philosophers. They want to share their ideas with the public. Yes, that's right. So Speaker 3 (7:40) he says he has a couple of arguments. in this when he says that he thinks that it's unethical to say in your request for money that you need it, that it's necessary or supportive or it will allow them to or helpful in order to write public philosophy, despite being in a secure tenured position. And then he says he thinks that paywalling alone even if you're not whatever in a secure position, that it's still bad to keep your valuable philosophy, the philosophy that could change the lives. This was really directly connected to the second segment. Philosophy that could change lives. Keeping that behind a paywall is unethical. Speaker 4 (8:22) Yeah. And of course, like the immediate response to that, you know, that point or that claim is, well, like. We write books that people charge money for. You know, we write for journals that are paywalled and, you know, they cost way more than any $5 a month on Substack. But his point is those are not meant for the public. Yeah. Or at least on the Daily News that I skimmed thing, he says those aren't made for the public. This is supposed to be for the public. And so now to make those paywalled, you know, that's beyond the pale. Speaker 3 (8:56) Yeah. But like he never really tackled that first point that we write books or some academics write books and charge money for them and make money in that way. And I saw even in like the comments that like I never saw him directly engage that because there's nothing about Substack specifically that is new. Like, I mean. This is not a novel thing. Like academics making money off of their work that's on top of their income at the university is not a new thing at all. People give talks, you know, some make a lot of money giving talks to corporate audiences or whatever. Well, that is unethical. Until somebody asks you. So he never tackles that. And then he says, no, this is how this can become ethical. I think you donate all of your subscription income to charity and that will become ethical. Speaker 4 (9:44) Which, again, doesn't follow. Weird. Well, I think you're missing a step, and that involves the internal dynamics of Substack itself, which is they don't promote Substacks that aren't paid. They don't have a lot of paid subscribers. So they front the ones where there are a lot of paid subscribers because they're a business and it doesn't really help them. to have a bunch of people writing for free on their platform. So he says, okay, given that, given that more people will see it if you charge money and people are willing to pay for it, then, and it's just such a bizarre thing, then that's okay as long as you give all that to charity, which he then says, you know, in a very singer-like way, I will do. And so he does that and he gives it to causes. Shrimp welfare. Speaker 3 (10:37) Well, but also farm. Yeah, 50 % to shrimp welfare and 50 % to farm kind. Speaker 4 (10:42) You have a lot of contempt for caring about shrimp, but I don't. Speaker 3 (10:46) Yeah, well, I'm a vegetarian, so I de facto am doing more for shrimp than you. But I don't care about shrimp. I think of all the animals Speaker 4 (10:55) to support. That was a weird one. I guess we could be charitable and try to come up with, I don't know, the best. presentation of this argument if we're in the mood to be charitable. Sure. Steel man? Steel. Yeah, we're going to steel man this argument. Speaker 3 (11:15) But really quickly, can I just respond to that separate link? Like that link that you said I was missing still doesn't, if the argument is that keeping your philosophy behind a paywall because the public deserves it because you're doing public philosophy and you shouldn't get. paid. It's still paywalled if you donate your money to charity. It just doesn't do much for what sounded like a pretty strong argument that people deserve your philosophy to be free. I Speaker 4 (11:38) think it does because people won't even know about your public philosophy unless you have paid subscribers, is his point. That's just the internal dynamics of Substack and the platform. Speaker 3 (11:49) Yeah, but if your argument is that it just shouldn't be paywalled, giving that paywall money to charity is not. No, Speaker 4 (11:55) but so if you look at the Substack charts, it's all people who have paid subscribers. And you sometimes find out about Substacks through their algorithms of you might be interested in this, you might be interested in that. And they always give you ones with a lot of paid subscribers. So if you didn't pay well anything, the platform would never promote your blog. And so it wouldn't be very public. It would just be you writing on that, that someone who had a friend or someone who... who liked it would give it. Speaker 3 (12:26) No, I mean, I get that. I get that the one big way that your Substack might get traffic is from making those lists. But that's certainly not the only way. And it still does not unpay while your articles. Like then don't argue that it's unethical to have them behind a paywall because if all you're doing is saying, well, it's still unethical, but like this is slightly better than, okay, I guess. But then you're not. arguing that it's unethical to have a paywall at all. Speaker 4 (12:52) You're not arguing that it's the absolute value, that it's the value that trumps all other values. Yeah, that's true. But I mean, I think his point is, in an ideal world, Substack would just promote the free ones just as much as they would promote the paid ones. And then your point would hold. But given that we're in this world, there has to be some kind of moral compromise. The lesser of two Speaker 3 (13:16) evils, like get my Speaker 4 (13:16) philosophy out there. And given that the real, like, I take it his biggest point here is the reputation of academia. being somehow sullied by, which I think is completely crazy. Which Speaker 3 (13:32) is only true if you think that it's a reputation-sullying behavior. Yeah, and certainly Speaker 4 (13:37) not based on any, like, evidence. It's like, I don't think there's literally a single other person who has said, these fucking academics, and then they have the nerve to charge on Substack. So now I think all academia is bullshit. But given that that's the argument, And if that were true, then it might mitigate the blow to academia's reputation if people knew that you were giving all the money to charity and that you only are doing this at all because of Substack's kind of ruthless capitalism. Speaker 3 (14:07) Right. So, you know, one of the things that annoyed me about his approach was that Cape Man. I think makes it very clear that if you can't afford a subscription, just email her and she'll give you a free one. Yeah, Speaker 4 (14:17) which we don't do. Speaker 3 (14:18) Which we don't even do. Like Sam Harris does that. And I thought Speaker 4 (14:22) - Speaker 3 (14:22) But we're not genocidal. Speaker 3 (14:27) So I thought it was kind of in bad faith to ignore that in the original article. And then later on, you know, the one that he took down, he was like, well, it's not that clear because, you know, and he put like a screenshot of where you had to look to see that message. It was a very weird behavior. But sticking to the argument, what I wanted to know was, so we're both tenured professors, full professors. We have good jobs. Did you feel at all like this was shots at us? Not personally, but. Speaker 4 (14:55) Well, no, first of all, because it's a podcast, not a... It's different, right? Yeah, completely different. I mean, there's not even, like, I can't believe you brought that up. Well, number one, unlike, I think, Kate and some philosophers, our main episodes are free. you know, and it's more of the bonus stuff, which I don't think is public philosophy and psychology. It's often public, like talking about a movie or a show we love. Or recently, The Odyssey, which might be thought of as more academic, but because we're such, you know, we exude moral purity, we're now making that free for everybody. Speaker 3 (15:31) Exactly. And Speaker 4 (15:31) yeah, our Speaker 3 (15:32) main episodes being free. I don't think anybody should be denied of the dick jokes that we've made over the years. Speaker 4 (15:38) Yeah, Speaker 3 (15:38) exactly. It would harm the reputation of academia. Hey, Speaker 4 (15:42) by the way, it's almost, maybe by the time this gets posted, it will be our 14th anniversary as a podcast. Speaker 3 (15:47) Yeah. Speaker 4 (15:48) No, I mean, but sometimes there are certain points about like you make this money. We do have good jobs. We have very steady jobs. And then on top of that, you're making this money. But I think the thing that he leaves out, which would apply to us too, is just how much work it is. And like, that's not work that's. particularly rewarded by our universities. They're very nice to let us do it and not make a fuss about it. I had that thought too. If you're publishing on Substack, Speaker 3 (16:17) sort of counted on your Vita, I might feel a little different about it. I don't know that I would, but it certainly would seem like you're killing two birds. Speaker 4 (16:26) But also like good for you. Speaker 3 (16:28) Yeah, good for you. I know. That's the whole thing that I just don't understand. It's like, you know what? Don't pay then? I don't know. Like what people do in their own time. You know, if you're getting into the weeds at like, what percentage of your time are you doing this on university time or on your own time? Then it's like, mind your business, you Speaker 4 (16:45) know? Yeah. Then it's like, are you in a band? Are you like rehearsing on university's time or not? I, yeah, I don't think that would work, but. you know, also writing is fucking hard. Like there's a reason that I don't have a sub stack because I don't want to write a like two long blog posts every week. Like, uh, I mean, on top of this, it would be impossible, but like, you know, like it's really hard to do. And if you weren't going to get paid any money, I assume this is true for Kate and Philip Goff. They just wouldn't do it. They would just do their normal work. So. The reason that it's there is to gain you that extra money. And it's not like we get paid like a million dollars a year. Like we don't get anything close to like what probably a lot of our the people we know get in their jobs. And so you got to fucking hustle. Get Speaker 3 (17:34) out there slinging dope. Also, just like I feel like, man, I know that that he's a philosopher and that this is a criticism of philosophers, professional philosophers. And maybe there's some belief in the purity of what philosophers are doing that's driving this, or maybe it's just because it's like his own backyard. But for fuck's sake, like I'm friends with a ton of people who work at business schools who make so much money doing external consulting and giving talks and selling their books that coming after like even the top five philosophers in terms of income from... something like subsec or even selling books, like they could never touch. It's like a drop in the bucket. So if the argument is about academia in general, well, then it's like that, that battle has been lost. And I also think that like the actual opposite is true in that, like if people are willing to pay for philosopher's thoughts, that says something good about what philosophy is doing, you know? Speaker 4 (18:31) Yeah. Cause Speaker 3 (18:32) you're a capitalist. The only things that have value. Speaker 4 (18:36) pay for. Yeah, by definition, yeah. No, but I actually, like, I agree with you, joking aside about that, like, I think people like Philip Goff and Cape Man have actually, if they've affected the reputation of academia at all, or even of just philosophy at all, it's been in a good way. Yeah, I think so, too. Their success has been good for academic philosophy, because as we'll see in the next segment, People don't think Speaker 3 (19:02) very highly of us, you know? And they didn't before, you know, in 1996 or whatever, before Substacks. Speaker 4 (19:08) Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 3 (19:08) I think in general, the venues that have been created with the internet, things like Substack and even YouTube and podcasting that have made it possible for people to share their thoughts, academic and non-academic, has been great. Like there are people I would support. just because I love what they're doing. It's like, I don't care how much money they make. And it's none Speaker 4 (19:32) of my business what Speaker 3 (19:33) they do with the money that I Speaker 4 (19:34) give them, Speaker 3 (19:35) you Speaker 4 (19:35) know? Yeah. Speaker 3 (19:36) And that's what the, I think that it's good that Walter Vate backtracked and said that he shouldn't have talked about specific people because he was doing things like. trying to calculate income. Speaker 4