Philosophy and public relations

I've been thinking today about Tim Hunt's open letter to philosophers, "Why We Need Philosophy Communication" (thanks to Daily Nous for drawing my attention to it), particularly in light of:

1. This recent pilot study indicating the usefulness of philosophy in childhood education
2. The recent surge in empirically-oriented philosophy ("experimental philosophy", philosophy of physics, philosophical psychology, etc.).
3. The recent surge in Templeton and other types of grants for philosophical research (although of course I know concerns have been expressed about Templeton). 
4. The small but seemingly growing number of philosophers like Lisa Guenther who are combining philosophy with activism, and
5. The seemingly increasing extent to which philosophers are creating and engaging in popular media (see e.g. John Perry & Ken Taylor's  Philosophy Talk, Myisha Cherry's UnMute Radio, Richard Brown & Pete Mandik's SpaceTimeMind podcast, etc.).

Basically, it occurred to me that, despite Hunt's concerns, more and more philosophers are working hard to engage and attract the public to philosophy. Indeed, the more I started to think about the cool things people (such as those listed above) are doing, the more excited I started to feel--as though philosophy might really be on the cusp of turning the proverbial corner in terms of public interest.

Which got me to thinking: what else might philosophers do to drive up interest in the field? Here's one thing that occurred to me: disseminating philosophical "results"/arguments to the press. 

A few years ago, when I did some experimental philosophy, I encountered a person from Stanford's psychology department at a holiday party and told them what I'd found. The first thing out of their mouth was, "You should send out a press release." Indeed, I learned very quickly that psychologists do this all the time, and, as you can see here, the American Psychological Association has a press department where they post and send out press-releases--releases that often get picked up and disseminated in the popular media.

Although it might not seem obvious how press releases and the like might help philosophers, I would be willing to bet it would work in a number of philosophical fields: experimental philosophy, philosophy of physics, philosophical psychology, and even ethics and social-political philosophy. For example, LA Paul's recent work on transformative experience and childbearing has gained a ton of well-deserved attention. Now consider Judith Thomson's famous article, "A Defense of Abortion." This paper positively transformed philosophical debate over abortion--an issue, obviously, of great public interest. It not only transformed philosophical debate over the ethics of abortion: it is, to the best of my knowledge, one of the most-cited articles in the history of applied ethics. And yet, despite all of this, it appears that almost no one outside of academic philosophy has ever heard of it (not only have none of my students ever heard of it before taking my ethics courses; other faculty in other departments I've known have never heard of it, either).  

Must it be this way? I suspect not. Although the arguments of ethicists, metaphysicists, and the like generally don't involve "findings" of the sort reported in the sciences (we, alas, mostly merely have arguments!), mightn't simply reporting philosophical arguments of potential public interest to the press be worthwhile, particularly if they came from respected institutions (such as, in Thomson's case, MIT)? I, for one, think one can only imagine how much public debate Thomson's article might have caused if it had been more widely disseminated. Indeed, some philosophers have even started to go this route. Consider Alex Guerrero's recent article at Aeon on his work on "lottocratic" alternatives to democracy. Or Jason Brennan's public engagement on the ethics of voting (though I couldn't disagree more with his arguments!).

Finally, mightn't the APA play a helpful role in this? When one goes to the American Psychological Association website, one finds all kinds of public engagement: a "press room", links to advocacy, and so on. Although our APA's website is greatly improved over past years and the APA is taking steps to expand into public relations (such as through its forthcoming blog)--and while, of course, our APA only has so many resources--it seems to me that "public relations" stuff is precisely the kind of thing that a professional academic association should focus on. The way I see it, all things being equal, the more "outreach" we engage in, both individually and collectively, the better!

What do you all think? What more could we do, individually and together, to increase public awareness and interest in our field? What should we do?

Comments

[Jason Chen]

This is a very interesting topic.

I've been teaching philosophy workshops on the side and they have been relatively successful. All I did was create a meetup group and find a venue that'd be willing to host. Surprisingly, there are always at least a few people who show up. I've mainly covered topics that you'd traditionally see in an ethics and political philosophy course, but recently I've been thinking of covering current events and linking them up with philosophy. So the next workshop I'm going to host is going to cover the killing of Cecil the lion and why we think killing a lion is bad.

I'm hoping that this new tactic will be successful in drawing more interest to philosophy.

[Filippo Contesi]

'Tim Dean'?