Introducing the Problem of Impact
by Emily Thomas (Durham University)
Impact and societal engagement are becoming increasingly important for early career philosophers. We are encouraged to apply for conference grants, research grants, even large project grants. Many of these funding bodies are not merely interested in funding research, they are interested in funding research that can positively impact society.
What’s more, many European countries have introduced university monitoring systems, including the UK, Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Portugal, Italy, Norway, and Sweden. Some of these systems financially reward high performance, which may not just mean producing excellent research. It may also mean research that impacts society. In other words, research impact can lead to money.
If you’re developing new cancer treatments, or renewable sources of energy, the potential societal impact of your research is easy to see. It’s a lot harder to imagine how your work could positively impact society if you’re working on medieval theology, or the philosophy of art, or the metaphysics of time. With the support of an award from the British Academy, I’ve pulled together a short series of posts on ways that philosophers can achieve societal impact. Each of these philosophers have achieved impact in very different ways, which will - I hope - help us to think outside the box.
The first post considers blogging. Enjoy!
Emily
“On Blogging and Policy”
Podcast by Thom Brooks
If you're working on theoretical philosophy, I think the only honest position is that it will have no, or negligible, impact. To pretend otherwise seems crass and profoundly anti-philosophical. If you can't get funded for such work for its own sake, you should probably just try to fund it yourself (perhaps taking a non-academic job), or not do it.
Posted by: Recent Analytic PhD | 02/18/2018 at 08:17 PM
Impact vastly prefers the more practical disciplines. Philosophers who work in core areas have to kind of fake it to a degree. It's not that philosophical views don't affect people; it's that these effects are hard to measure or see in action, and are not always the logical consequences of the views in question. It's obvious what the impact of cancer research might be; it's a lot less obvious what research into the nature of properties or time or... might be. However, it would be a mistake to think that because the impact isn't obvious that the research isn't worth doing or has no impact. Our philosophical perspectives provide the foundations of our society, our thought, and our culture. Without these foundations, society and culture erode over time. Yes, societies even have views on time (and other abstract things): how we think about it, what it means to us, how we interact with it. Philosophers help build and improve our societal foundations by thinking about these issues. Better foundations mean clearer and stronger thinking, less confusion, and better science too.
Posted by: Anonymous | 02/19/2018 at 06:53 PM