Humility

My first semester in graduate school, I was hit with a severe case of impostor syndrome and became convinced for a while that I had been admitted by mistake. I kept entertaining the thought that my application had been mixed up with someone else’s in the selection process, or that someone at the office had accidentally sent me an acceptance letter instead of a rejection letter and that it was only out of mercy or embarrassment that the department had decided to let me stay after the mistake was discovered. There were probably many combined reasons for this. This was my first time studying in English and I was experiencing difficulty writing papers in this foreign language, as well as adjusting to norms that were somewhat different from what I was used to in my home country. I was studying alongside some brilliant students and felt inadequate in comparison. And the professors seemed to consider it their job to teach us humility. We had been admitted to a highly competitive graduate program, most of us presumably near the top of our class in college. It seemed to be taken for granted that our intellectual self-esteem at arrival would be very high, that we had to be taught to be more humble, and that the best way to accomplish that was through extensive and harsh criticism.

Philosophy has a long tradition of training students in humility, and both epistemic and intellectual humility are considered important traits for a good philosopher.^{Footnote 8} The ideal of epistemic humility is frequently introduced early on when students first encounter philosophy and hear of Socratic wisdom, or of how Socrates was wise because he did not think of himself as knowing anything.^{Footnote 9} The notion of intellectual humility has formally been one of the subjects of virtue epistemology, but less formally, intellectual humility in one sense or another has been emphasized as an important habit in philosophical training, such as when my professors in graduate school made sure to criticize our work heavily. It is considered very important to get a philosophy student to comprehend and internalize the following and more: that they may fail to grasp a complex issue at first glance, or that they^{Footnote 10} may even misinterpret it as one that is less complex; that gaining a good understanding of a subject matter may take considerable effort on their behalf; that if they do not understand their interlocutor it is possible that it is due to their own failure to understand rather than the interlocutor’s failure to express themselves properly; that if they have a disagreement with someone, it is possible that it is the other party who is right.

It is of course good for anyone to grasp all this; we must all be aware that we are not omniscient and infallible authorities on everything and each of us must be able to practise self-criticism in order to produce good work. We have all seen shoddy work produced by people lacking in self-criticism and even felt embarrassed on their behalf. Holding one’s own work up to a high standard can thus be helpful if one wants to produce something of a high quality. However, it is not self-evident what the best way is to instil a healthy dose of humility and self-criticism in people, be they philosophers or something else. Is it really best to have humility and self-criticism in as large quantities as possible? In the case of self-criticism, the answer is clearly negative; regarding humility, we may have to consider first exactly what we mean by the term. Self-criticism can be so extreme that it becomes stifling, resulting in no work produced. My own largest battles back in graduate school consisted of periods during which I could not bring myself to write anything that would become a part of my dissertation because I felt that all my attempts at it were doomed to produce things too bad to be worthy. Whatever intellectual humility is, I doubt I had too little of it during those periods. What I lacked was self-confidence. I did finish in the end, after a long struggle with my self-criticism; I had to learn to rein it in. In the years since, I have always found the management of my self-criticism to be one of the most difficult aspects of my work.

There is nothing extraordinary about my story. In fact, I believe it is quite ordinary, especially for women in philosophy. Many do not make it through graduate school; I am one of those who did. I had several friends there with brilliant minds and wonderful ideas who gave up along the way, not to mention all the people who for some reason were put off by philosophy or its culture well before graduate school. But let us return to the matter of intellectual humility.

There are different approaches to describing intellectual humility in the literature on virtue epistemology. On some accounts, it consists in getting as far away from certain vices as possible, such as arrogance and vanity.^{Footnote 11} On other accounts, being intellectually humble is to be at the right balance point between too much and too little self-esteem, between arrogance and servility or self-effacement. On such an account, being intellectually humble would mean having just the right amount of self-criticism in intellectual matters.^{Footnote 12} The difference between these two kinds of accounts matters in that they lead to different pedagogical approaches. It seems possible to instil humility in the first sense by making sure to provide enough criticism. The more the better, if humility is the only goal. Given the second kind of view, however, heaping negative criticism on philosophy students may not always be a good idea as there are various other traits that must be nurtured as well to keep the proper balance.

My worry is that in many philosophy programs, a great part of the training is focused on giving negative criticism without much encouragement. This may be due to the fact that many philosophy instructors themselves underwent such training and take it for granted that this is the way one does things, or at least they are not familiar with other methods. A downside of this is that philosophy students enter with different backgrounds. Many women and members of various minorities begin receiving the message from a very early age that their intellects are not up to all that much and that they’d better concede their judgements to those who are more respected than they are—those who have more intellectual authority. On the other hand, there will also be students with high levels of intellectual self-esteem who have never received such indoctrination in intellectual self-doubt and have even become used to considering themselves intellectually superior to some of their fellow students, or to people ‘like them.’ When all these students repeatedly receive the same message of ‘what you did was not good enough, you are too arrogant and must become more critical of yourself and your work,’ it is very likely that those who already have low self-esteem will readily take it to heart and become even more intellectually submissive and self-critical, whereas those with high self-esteem, who would actually be most likely to benefit from more self-criticism, will be more resistant recipients. In other words, sending the same harsh message to everyone may result in reinforcing a flawed social dynamic already existing between the students when they enter and exacerbating insecurities of underprivileged students. A member of a marginalized group who enters philosophical training may exit such training with a mindset that we might call ‘too intellectually humble,’ or alternatively ‘intellectually submissive’ or ‘self-effacing.’ Not only is this harmful in the context of the person’s own work and personal wellbeing, but also in the context of interactions with those lacking such humility. Another concern is that people who are intellectually submissive, or highly self-critical, are more susceptible to becoming victims of gaslighting, which I will cover in the next section.

To illustrate the lack of sensitivity in some of the literature on intellectual humility to different conditions of the ‘potentially humble,’ I present an example. In an influential paper, Robert C. Roberts and W. Jay Wood make the claim that intellectual humility can be defined in contrast with a list of 14 vices. The two vices on which they focus are arrogance and vanity. My purpose here is not to discuss Roberts and Wood’s account of intellectual humility, but to scrutinize this description they offer of vanity:

The implication here is that anyone who is more than “a little bothered” by not being taken seriously, by being slighted in society, or being thought worthless by others is vain and in need of more humility, “enslaved to others’ approval.” What Roberts and Wood seem to have in mind is a well-established person who on a regular basis has no reason to worry about being taken seriously or to worry about their social status, and who can rely on social support. For such an individual, it may seem vain to linger on a single incident of being disrespected even though it may sting a little. However, this description becomes problematic when it comes to those who are frequently or systematically not taken seriously, who get slighted on a regular basis, and are considered less worthy than others because of their social status. It ought to be clear that feeling hurt, exasperated, or even desperate when being silenced, yet again, or slighted in the context of frequent slights are, after all, perfectly normal and justifiable human feelings that have nothing to do with vanity. They signify a will to be treated with due respect, to be able to communicate successfully with others, and a desire to have one’s dignity intact and to accomplish one’s goals.

The message in the passage is by no means uncommon. Members of marginalized groups often feel pressured to trivialize their perceptions of unjust treatment. Such treatment often takes the form of microaggressions where each individual instance may seem completely insignificant when taken out of the context of the accumulation of similar instances. Furthermore, the perpetrators of microaggressions may be completely unaware that they are doing anything problematic.^{Footnote 14} Thus, members of dominant groups will lack understanding of the ongoing injustices and there is a risk that they will deny that they occur or be unwilling to acknowledge them for what they are. I say more about this example in the next section when I discuss gaslighting. What is important for now, however, is to keep in mind that philosophy students differ in their social status and vulnerabilities and making the blanket assumption that they are all equally arrogant or have the same self-esteem when they enter a philosophy program and addressing them as if they all had the same needs and were likely to respond in the same way to criticism can be downright harmful to many of them. This is another reason to emphasize the need for philosophy to find ways to become a discipline in which different kinds of people can feel comfortable and respected.

Gaslighting

In recent years, so-called ‘gaslighting’ has gained increasing attention as a tool of manipulation and psychological abuse.^{Footnote 15} Gaslighting occurs when a person manipulates another by making them doubt their own perceptions, memories, judgements, experiences, and, finally, sanity. The manipulator or abuser—the gaslighter—frequently uses methods such as lies, denial, misdirection, and contradiction. In other words, the target of the gaslighting is led to believe that they are crazy, that their judgements, memories, and experiences cannot be trusted, and that they would better off relying on someone more dependable, such as the perpetrator, the gaslighter, for judgements and decisions. The term is derived from a British play from 1938 by Patrick Hamilton called Gas Light,^{Footnote 16} which was adapted into a movie twice, in 1940 and 1944.^{Footnote 17} In the play/movie, a man keeps looking for stolen jewels in the attic of a house he has moved into with his wife. Every time he goes searching and turns on the lights in the attic, the gaslights in the rest of the house are dimmed as a result, the wife is puzzled by the changes in the lights, but the husband flatly denies that anything can be going on with the lights and blames this on her imagination. In addition, he resorts to various tricks to undermine his wife’s credibility and to make her think that she is losing her mind, such as hiding items or putting them in odd places and then blaming her for misplacing them.

The context in which gaslighting tends to be presented is usually on an individual level so that we hear about individuals who get abused in this manner. There are occasional mentions of gaslighting in a political context when it is claimed that the public is getting duped.^{Footnote 18} What I think has been neglected, however, is the systemic gaslighting that is very much implicated in the oppression of subordinated groups. Let us return to the passage above where Roberts and Wood are describing vanity.^{Footnote 19} I take it that they are not directing their words at anyone in particular nor that they have any malicious intent, unlike the husband in Gaslight. However, the passage does have a gaslighting effect on people who are routinely subjected to the kind of disrespect described, which Roberts and Wood so casually imply that only a vain person would be more than “a little bothered” by. The effect of such words, whether intended or not, is that readers who recognize feeling distressed in the circumstances described feel a pressure to think of their reactions as unwarranted; in this case, as a sign of vanity. This is not among the worst possible types of gaslighting. In more extreme cases of gaslighting, the perpetrators are guilty of committing an injustice and at the same time they deny that it is taking place and insist that something completely different is going on. This is not going on in the example from Roberts and Wood. But their example does have the effect of making the recipients of the message confused about appropriate reactions to injustices committed towards them and distrustful of their own assessment of how others ought to treat them.

Gaslighting, as described here, involves epistemic injustice. Epistemic injustice can take many forms, such as when members of marginalized groups do not get to be proper participants of knowledge production, do not have full credibility in the social environment, or when they are for various reasons and through various means, often structural, silenced. This has been considered in various forms, not to be confused with one another, such as hermeneutical injustice, epistemic oppression, testimonial injustice, and epistemic violence.^{Footnote 20} An important feature of gaslighting is that those who are victimized by it suffer from several forms of epistemic injustice. They are denied credibility and doubly so, in that their credibility is not only doubted by others but they are led to mistrust it themselves. They are silenced and come to have great difficulty making sense of their experiences.

I believe that women in philosophy have endured systemic gaslighting through the ages.^{Footnote 21} Before moving forward with that claim, however, I will provide an example of the gaslighting of women as a group taken from another academic discipline.

The American quantum physicist and Nobel laureate Richard Feynman published his autobiography in the 1980’s,^{Footnote 22} which included various anecdotes from his life in the preceding decades. Many who have read this book have been quite shocked by Feynman’s sexism; he tends to speak of women as consumer products. Others read it without being concerned about that aspect and just think of Feynman as an eccentric and funny fellow. But on to the example: Feynman took up drawing in the 1960’s, and became sufficiently good at it for his work to be displayed in an exhibition in California. Here we have Feynman describing one of his portraits:

The way Feynman makes it sound, he was acting out of concern for Marie Curie’s memory. The implied problem is that people only saw Curie as a boring, sexless scientist obsessed with “the radium part” and neglected to think about her as a sexual being: “as a woman, as feminine, with beautiful hair, bare breasts, and all that.” Surely, this reinvention of Curie’s image by Feynman would be a great service to her memory.

The problem is that Feynman’s message can easily be interpreted as patriarchal gaslighting, to be experienced by any intellectually ambitious woman who finds the sexualization and objectification of Curie uncomfortable or offensive. The message conveyed is: ‘If you are a woman, your intellectual accomplishments will remain insignificant. Even if you manage to become a double Nobel laureate, you are still destined to be reduced to a sex object, created for the sheer enjoyment of the male gaze. Even death will not ensure safety from sexual harassment. If you are a woman, you are your “beautiful hair, bare breasts, and all that.”’ If Curie’s intelligence is insignificant and her breasts are her defining feature, what hope is there for the rest of us? As is typical in gaslighting cases, the person delivering the message, Feynman, acts as if he is saying and doing something completely innocuous: he is just trying to help!

It is important to consider here that Feynman’s is not an isolated voice, but one speaking from a vantage point of authority. A woman feeling uneasy with his treatment of Curie may expect to be met with considerable resistance if she speaks up; not just by Feynman, but by a great many other interlocutors. Because of the social context, she can expect to be discredited and told that she is overreacting, insecure, unfair, envious, imagining things, hysterical, paranoid, or crazy. Feynman is certainly not the first man (nor the last, I’m afraid) to reduce a woman to a sex object. We are accustomed to a social environment in which women are routinely put down in this manner. Women who are trying to be taken seriously in a professional setting have frequently had to endure sexual harassment of various forms, women are harassed simply when they are walking down the street, they are expected to meet certain standards of beauty to please men, etc. It is extremely common that women’s complaints about aspects of this are met with incredulity, or worse. Thus, while Feynman’s message is delivered by him alone, it is done so in a context in which women who dislike it, and are even outraged by it, cannot expect to be heard if they voice their objections. Feynman, on the other hand, expects the support of his audience.

Thus, women with intellectual aspirations who feel uneasy by Feynman’s depiction of Curie are being gaslighted. On the surface, Feynman is doing something nice for Curie’s memory by reminding us of her neglected sexuality (the implication being that this is what all women want).^{Footnote 24} But what is really going on is that a brilliant woman is being turned into a sex object; thus, her intellectual achievements are made to seem less significant. In a sexist environment, this affects all women, who receive the message that the same is bound to happen to them. But since the message is made to be about something else on the surface, their objections are likely to be silenced, they will not be believed, and they are conditioned not to take their own perceptions seriously.

In philosophy, women have consistently received the message that it does not really matter that there are no women in the curriculum. They have been told that it cannot be helped anyway because unfortunately so few women were present in the history of philosophy.^{Footnote 25} Furthermore, why should female philosophy students even care about such frivolous details as the gender of the philosophers they are reading? Aren’t women those who keep insisting that gender should not matter when it comes to the right and ability to do philosophy? Surely, women asking to read work by women philosophers are just practising reverse sexism! If women want more women in philosophy, it is up them to prove that they are good enough to be there. They just have to make sure to work hard, speak up, and then there is nothing that can stop them, is there?

At the same time, many women trying to work in philosophy have felt that there was something seriously off about this message. They have felt as if they were not fully respected and as if they did not properly count—as if they were not smart enough, not worthy, that they did not belong. Philosophy has had and still has recurring problems with sexual harassment. And here I can start a list of what gets in the way of women fitting in. According to a recent study in the US, the belief that innate talent or ‘brilliance’ is crucial for success in their given discipline turned out to be far more common among philosophers than in any other academic discipline. The same study showed a negative correlation between belief in innate talent in an academic discipline and the number of women and black scholars in the same field.^{Footnote 26} This should come as no surprise if we consider what kind of thinking this reflects. The stereotypical genius is never a woman.^{Footnote 27} If philosophers are to a great degree on the lookout for genius-types, they are hardly very open minded about women in the profession, let alone if they are far from resembling the stereotype. Here we can also think about stereotype threat^{Footnote 28} and what that does to a person’s performance and self-esteem. And considering the brilliant genius stereotype, we need to recall our cultural tendency to overestimate men’s intelligence and underestimate women’s intelligence.^{Footnote 29} How likely can it be that women in philosophy will feel just as sure of themselves and well supported by their peers and mentors as the men?

The point is that women in philosophy have been receiving all kinds of messages telling them that they are incapable of practising philosophy or even thinking philosophical thoughts. Some of these messages have been overt, when they have been told directly that women have no place in philosophy, but mostly they have been indirect and subtle to a varying degree.^{Footnote 30} The marginalization of women takes many forms, including a lack of female role models, lack of mentorship, attributions of intellectual inferiority, sexual harassment, hostility from peers, negative reactions to topics considered too ‘feminine,’ the male point of view being taken for granted as a universal human point of view, getting talked over in conversations, not having their input acknowledged, etc. At the same time, when women have voiced concerns about any of this, the reactions they have received have frequently consisted in accusations about them complaining over frivolous things, or even things that are simply not there. If they are not happy in philosophy, the problem must be on their side, and they should leave and find something else to do.

Thus, the few women who have persevered have been in the situation of receiving constant messages about how they are trying to do something they are really incapable of doing. At the same time, discussions about their receiving these messages have been unwelcome, and even the existence of those messages as something systematically directed at women has not been acknowledged. Each woman has been taught to interpret those messages individually, as an indicator that there might be a problem with her personally: that she might not be good enough. Through the profession’s resistance to women’s attempts at expressing their discomfort, they have been encouraged to internalize the idea that it was not the profession of philosophy that has a problem that needs to be fixed, but instead that there is something wrong with their unease or even with them personally. I remember being consumed with guilt and shame throughout both my undergraduate and graduate years for not speaking enough in class. At the same time, the atmosphere was such that I felt strongly discouraged in most of the classes to speak at all, terrified of saying the wrong thing and exposing my stupidity to the ridicule of loud men. I had professors who kept telling me that I had to start speaking more in class. It was only towards the end of graduate school that I began to realize that perhaps the problem was not exclusively on my side.

With increased awareness of philosophy’s gender problem in recent years, there are some signs indicating that there may be changes ahead in this respect. Even though the gender proportions in philosophy have not changed much yet, there has at least been progress when it comes to acknowledging the problem and beginning research in order to find ways to solve it. Just the acknowledgement of the problem does help in many ways: while many women have all along been talking amongst themselves about these issues, others have felt isolated. Admitting widely that philosophy has a gender problem caused by a flawed culture is a confirmation for each of the women that it is not she who is the problem, but the culture of philosophy. But speaking of the need for change, valuable as it can be, is only a first step. We must find ways to make those changes as well. And there are still many philosophers who remain unconvinced of the need for any change.

The Cult of Intelligence

In a recent paper,^{Footnote 31} Maren Behrensen and Sofia Kaliarnta reflect on the prevalence of depression among academic philosophers, prompted by Peter Railton’s disclosure of his struggle with depression in a keynote address at the Central APA. They argue that while depression of course has the potential to strike anywhere, there are several contributing factors making academic philosophy what they call a ‘depression machine,’ especially for philosophers who belong to some vulnerable group or another or do not fit the stereotypical philosopher mould. They identify four factors: “first, a deeply ingrained tendency to treat learned skills as innate talents; second, a deeply ingrained tendency to treat philosophy as a vocation, not a profession; third, an extremely competitive environment; and fourth, a reward structure that fosters ‘impostor syndrome.’”^{Footnote 32} Factors three and four are, as Behrensen and Kaliarnta readily admit, not unique to philosophy but prevalent in the whole academic world and I will not dwell further on them, despite their importance in the grand scheme of things. The second factor has to do with how being a philosopher often becomes integrated with our self-identity so that, for instance, lack of success in the (highly competitive and unjust) profession can seem more of a personal failure than it otherwise would. And the culture of philosophy, according to Behrensen and Kaliarnta, encourages us to identify as philosophers in this manner.

Before moving onto a discussion of the first factor, which will take up the bulk of this section, I want to say a few words about this second factor. First, it seems quite plausible to me that people who practice philosophy are prone to integrating their being philosophers with their self-identities. I do not have any data to back this up, only anecdotal evidence from people I have known. If the culture of philosophy encourages people to think this way of themselves, it presumably has something to do with how we practice and relate to philosophy. Those who become sufficiently enamoured with the subject to want to try for a career in it become so impassioned and find it so consuming that they cease to be able to think of themselves as non-philosophers. This phenomenon is not unique to philosophy. It is very common among artists, for example, and among many academics. This phenomenon in and of itself does not have to be a negative thing. People who identify strongly with their chosen profession are clearly passionate about their work and there are many things to be said for that kind of dedication. But the downside is that when something goes wrong, such as when work in that profession is not to be had, the disappointment can threaten one’s very self-identity. For that reason, Behrensen and Kaliarnta’s hypothesis that this is a risk factor for depression among philosophers sounds plausible.

The first risk factor listed by Behrensen and Kaliarnta in their paper is the emphasis philosophers place on intelligence, or “treat[ing] learned skills as innate talents.” Their point is that philosophy has a culture that places an enormous emphasis on intelligence, and furthermore that we use quite superficial methods to gauge it. Those who write in a certain way, speak in a certain way, have certain mannerisms, or who look a certain way are perceived as intelligent, and are by the measure of many philosophers thus considered as having the innate talent it takes to become good philosophers. Recall what I mentioned above about the prevalent belief among philosophers that having an innate talent for philosophy was important for success. It is also quite common to hear philosophers speak of philosophical talent as something that people either have or do not have.

According to Behrensen and Kaliarnta, the emphasis on superficially measured intelligence and/or presumed innate talent becomes a risk factor for depression for all those who fall outside the norm or fail to fulfil the criteria against which these things tend to be measured. That means that anyone who is not a self-confident, able-bodied white man from a privileged background will be at risk.

Eric Schwitzgebel points out in a blog post on what it takes to seem smart in philosophy that all those who manage to seem smart seem to be white men.^{Footnote 33} His point is that while certain behaviours are considered indicators of smartness, such as speaking and writing in certain ways, people’s judgements of intelligence are also affected by who it is that is speaking, writing, etc. Studies on implicit bias and stereotypes suggest that people have certain expectations and make judgements about other people on the basis of group membership, even without realizing it themselves. These expectations tend to be in accordance with ruling social norms. In other words, well-intentioned as we may be, through our cultural biases we are likely to have the unintended expectation that the most intelligent people are white men, a perception reinforced by their speaking style, itself associated with other forms of privilege, such as class. In light of this, I would like to point out how the same or similar behaviours can be interpreted differently given existing preconceptions about the person. Take speaking slowly, which could be interpreted as a sign of being deep and thoughtful in a man already perceived as intelligent, while a woman speaking in the same manner might be read as hesitant and insecure.

Myisha Cherry and Schwitzgebel argue in the article “Like the Oscars #PhilosophySoWhite”^{Footnote 34} that the appearance of smartness plays a crucial role in evaluations of philosophy because it is difficult to evaluate the quality of philosophical work. As Schwitzgebel points out in his blog post, those who happen to be good at appearing smart and likely to be evaluated as such are white privileged men. The result, according to Cherry and Schwitzgebel, is that their philosophical work tends to be favoured over that of others, whose work is more harshly judged. A similar claim is made by Katrina Hutchison in her paper “Sages and Cranks: The Difficulty of Identifying First-Rate Philosophers.” She argues that, because the evaluation of philosophy is subjective, and therefore judgements about which people are good philosophers are subjective, there is a great risk that philosophers end up basing their judgements in such matters on stereotypes.^{Footnote 35}

Let us pause for a moment and contemplate the claims that have been made here. According to Behrensen and Kaliarnta, philosophers from marginalized groups are at risk for depression because of the profession’s obsession with intelligence and innate talent and superficial ways of measuring such things. Cherry and Schwitzgebel are also of the view that philosophy has a culture of emphasizing superficial measures of intelligence and talent and that these measures favour privileged, white men. Furthermore, they claim that the reason that philosophers place this importance on the superficial appearance of intelligence is that evaluation of philosophical work is difficult. Hutchison makes a similar claim. Thus, we have two main claims to consider: that philosophers have a culture of evaluating work on the basis of superficial measures of appearance of smartness, and that the reason for this is that philosophical work is especially difficult to evaluate by other standards.

The first claim is clearly empirical and can only be evaluated as such. Is it really the case that the philosophical profession has the kind of culture described? I have already mentioned the study done by Sarah-Jane Leslie and others that showed that philosophers were more likely than others to consider innate ‘brilliance’ important for success in their field.^{Footnote 36} In the absence of empirical studies on the value philosophers place on the appearance of intelligence or their way of measuring, we must rely on anecdotal evidence for further support of these claims. There has been plenty of that, in my own experience and in the experiences reported by many colleagues. Whether these values are more or less prevalent in philosophy than elsewhere is of course impossible to say. There seems to be a strong association with reason and deep thinking within philosophy, which is strongly associated with intelligence, but such associations may to a varied extent be in place in other disciplines as well. The part of the claim that judgements made about appearances of intelligence tend to be carried out in a superficial and biased manner is something for which we have good support, from work on implicit bias of various forms.

The second claim, if true, provides some support for the first one. That is, if it is the case that it is very difficult to evaluate philosophical work through objective methods, then philosophers will surely have to resort to some other methods of evaluation. And this will at least lend plausibility to the idea that they may sometimes rely on the outwards credibility of the messenger.^{Footnote 37} It seems clear that philosophy does not provide measurable results in the same manner as natural or empirical sciences often do and the success of philosophical ideas cannot be measured or quantified by their application. This, however, is generally the case for humanistic disciplines. We may wonder, then, whether philosophical methodology is somehow especially difficult to evaluate. I think we can return here to what I said at the beginning of the paper about the fuzzy borders of philosophy and how philosophy can be about almost anything. It may be that these features make it more difficult to distinguish good from bad philosophy. Of course there are other areas of life where objective evaluations are difficult. Art of various forms comes to mind, and in fact there may be similar problems in place there when it comes to what it takes to get ahead. Often, what matters for getting ahead as an artist are superficial traits such as having the right look or being the right ‘type.’

I am not claiming that evaluations of work in art, or in philosophy, are only made on superficial grounds. Nor do I think that Cherry and Schwitzgebel or Hutchison would want to make such a strong claim about philosophy. People who believed that whenever they evaluated the work of other philosophers, be it students or peers, their judgements were solely determined by how strongly they could associate the people in question with the stereotype for intelligent person or talented philosopher might as well give up now. And the same goes for art, of course. People who believed that their appreciation for music was solely determined by how cool the musicians appeared could hardly believe that they really appreciated music. The point is, rather, that even though we do our best to be fair in our evaluations of philosophical work, and though we have shared ways of evaluating it, noticing when someone has made progress, etc., our evaluations are for the reasons described also influenced by the philosophical culture’s admiration for intellectual genius, via implicit biases shaped by prevailing social norms.