Philosophy is about teaching. Specifically, teaching (and learning) to interrogate our views. I mean this in the broadest possible Sellarsean, hanging together-sense of the term, ‘views.’ You might argue, pace pedagogy, that our work is research-first. There is an indispensable research component to our work that we must be careful not to undermine. I agree. Still, research for its own sake is aimless. All observation is theory-laden, and so we must, or at least we do, frame our research toward some objective. The objective toward which I am directed is teaching an interrogative approach to examine presuppositions that shape the views adopted by others, especially those in group settings where an implicit disciplinary culture shapes the behaviors of its members. Penetrating interdisciplinary boundaries and engaging with other domains to examine closely the norms of another discipline that we may teach and learn from each other is good philosophy.
Funny coming from me, an ‘independent scholar.’ Maybe it is this independence that has concretized my view that philosophy’s objective is to role model and encourage the interrogation of–in other words to place pressure on–people’s unreflective views, not that they may be defeated, rather that we may buttress or revise the framework we construct tacitly to interpret the world and our experiences.
Research is one critical activity toward achieving this aim. But research without teaching is self-serving. Pressing a critical attitude without the partnership and two-way street of a skilled teacher is dismissive; hence, successful research looks, at each turn, beyond the researcher. Our discipline does well when we interact with others, exchanging ideas. Taking care to not be a selfish researcher, I introduce what I’ll causally dub ‘philosophy in the wild,’ and I encourage you to consider your engagement while reflecting on my own.
By philosophy in the wild, I just mean the practice of doing philosophy outside of the four walls of the academe—at least the four walls of our academe, the philosophy classroom. Liberating our work from the classroom and doing philosophy in the wild calls on a different skillset. In recent months, I have eschewed the technical language of philosophy in favor of applying our conceptual resources to promoting new methods of theorizing within other investigative domains. While I continue to set my shoulder to the wheel pursuing formal research, I reflect on my greatest academic contributions (to date), and I measure my impact by engagement with non-philosophers and the public. Our services here are needed, and I call on the discipline to consider its role in domains beyond the expected avenues of philosophical discourse.
After completing my terminal MA, it was not clear whether I would find a place in professional philosophy. The PhD is the price of admission for such a career, and unwilling to relocate our growing family and leave my wife’s ten years of service to her job at the local safety net hospital, I applied to the two best regional programs for my specialty. I was waitlisted at one program, denied by the other. I secured an adjunct faculty position at a two-year college, with plans to reapply to doctoral programs the following year. During this time of uncertainty, I was diagnosed with the aggressive brain cancer glioblastoma. Receiving a devastating, life-limiting diagnosis sends a shockwave through one’s life. My goal of applying to doctoral programs was caught in the wake of destruction. My friend, an Associate Professor, spoke candidly to me, “Maybe you can make a bigger impact outside of the academe.” I assumed he was padding my ego after the waitlist and rejection. Maybe so. But he planted a seed.
I had my first crack at translating my philosophical experience into public engagement when, on the advice of my spouse and her best friend, we planned for me to deliver a public talk about my illness experience. It was March 2017, and I was only a couple of months short of living one year with glioblastoma. I nervously sipped coffee in the corner of the large community center while friends, colleagues, family, and former professors filled rows of seats. I took on epistemic humility as my first topic. I articulated the grim prognosis of my disease and the woeful survival statistics. I carefully dissected those population statistics into definitions of means and medians. I employed my competence in philosophy of science to discuss the reigning paradigm of carcinogenesis, somatic mutation theory, and show how our conception of cancer’s origin informs our standard of care protocols in its treatment. I trusted my audience to invest itself in my narrative and for individuals to see their experiences reflected in my own. The ‘philosopher-patient,’ as a good friend calls me, was conceived on that stage in front of 250 friends and strangers.
After the first public talk in March 2017, supported by colleagues in attendance, I have delivered talks in public, academic, and medical settings, including: medical school seminars, lectures for continuing medical education credits, guest talks in a Medical Humanities conference series, an invited lecture for hospice and palliative medicine physicians, and a goals-of-care lecture with occupational and physical rehabilitative therapy professionals. I sit on national advisory councils with the National Brain Tumor Society and the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard. I was selected for a competitive scholarship with medical conferences at Stanford University’s Medicine X (Med X) and the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). I recently completed service to a grant-funded palliative care research project with clinicians and researchers, and I recently served my second year as a reviewer on a peer-reviewed scientific research grant program. I am honored to be selected as an ambassador for an upcoming symposium on the end-of-life, EndWell: Redesigning for the End of Life.
The presence of philosophy throughout these engagements is difficult to overstate. The study of belief justification and the fallibility and defeasibility of human reasoning frames engagement with medical professionals. Deep considerations of human flourishing are brought to bear on end of life discussions. I carry the problem of induction, underdetermination of theories by data, theory holism, and the challenge to scientific realism from the history of science with me into scientific and medical conferences. Arguing for a prominent place for the subjective experience of illness, the ‘what-it’s-likeness,’ in the clinical encounter, without sacrificing a naturalized, or material, view of personhood, is informed by a theory of mind and the hard problem (and really hard problem).
This is what I mean by ‘philosophy in the wild’: the discipline is highly technical, with specialists often writing only for other specialists, and those unfamiliar with the jargon, unable to join the conversation. As with physical barriers, emotional barriers, legislative and systemic barriers, I worry we create disciplinary barriers against our better judgment. Within philosophy, much has been invested to understand human inference, reasoning, and decision-making, yet the technical nature of the discipline reflects an insular, institutional barrier erected that stands between philosophers, studying reason and inference, and a general audience who would benefit from learning more. Philosophers, for our part, may find understanding of our subject increases when we teach these skills to others. To achieve this spreading of ideas philosophers must develop and adapt their communication skills. Akin to the science communication (‘SciComm’) movement to promote the sciences in public discourse, philosophers are asked to hone their communication skills to take their specialty from the classroom and into the wild. The thread stitching together this post is acknowledgement that our work is collaborative in nature. I’ve discussed elsewhere that science communication may be crafted to fit a narrative model, calling on communicators to elicit, interpret, and translate their research into a narrative that addresses diverse audiences. Philosophers may discover new dimensions of our research when we elicit the story our research tells, interpret the story, and translate the message for non-philosophers. That philosophy invites engagement across disciplines that we may view our research as an avenue of engagement beyond the discipline and other investigative domains stand to benefit from our unique philosophical skillset to interrogate our views in an active project of revision and reinforcement.
Adam Hayden
Adam Hayden, MA, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) is a philosopher of science, a champion of humanities-informed practices in medical education, and a person living with brain cancer (glioblastoma). He serves on multiple national advisory councils and committees focused on patient engagement and advocacy. He is a regular guest lecturer at the Indiana University School of Medicine, and he serves his university as research assistant to the Department of Philosophy, Indiana University School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI.
