A follow-up on this previous post.

Marcus Arvan at University of Tampa has an interesting post here about “selling the discipline” of philosophy to get more majors. Among his major selling points are the familiar 1) that philosophy majors in fact eventually enjoy higher salaries than people who majored in other disciplines, and 2) philosophy majors kick  everyone else’s butts on the all the major graduate and professional school exams. The line is supposed to be, “Dear Parents and Students, don’t worry, philosophy will help you with your goal of getting a job.”

Though it’s not Arvan’s intent, he’s defending what are rather straightforwardly bad business ethics practices here. Alas, I see this all too often among my philosophy colleagues. It’s bad. They should feel bad about doing it. And they should stop.

When I was a first-year undergraduate, I thought I wanted to go to medical school. I read an article at the time showing that classics majors had the best admissions success rates (back then) of all majors when applying to medical school. The article was careful, though, in its explanation. It didn’t say that there was any evidence that classics prepared one for medical school. Rather, classics is hard and takes a lot of work. You can’t B.S. and half-ass your way through a classics degree the way you can through a communications or psych degree. You actually have to learn Latin and Greek, and that’s really really hard. Accordingly, the kind of people who choose to major in classics are 1) smart, 2) diligent, and 3) studious. They are the kind of people who will get into medical school, more or less regardless of what they major in. (That said, the fact that they choose a difficult major does help signal to  medical school admissions boards that they are smart, diligent, and studious. Philosophy can at least say that, too. More on that below.)

Suppose a classics faculty member tries to sell the discipline by saying, “Hey, everyone, major in classics! We’ll get you into medical school!” That’s not acceptable. After all, the best explanation for the high admissions rates is that it’s a selection effect, not a treatment effect. Classics doesn’t make you a good candidate for medical school. Instead, the people who choose to major in classics are also people who are good candidates for medical school. (Relevant: See here.)

It’s at least logically possible that the success of philosophy majors is a treatment effect. I know that I found the analytic section of the old GRE (which had logic games) easy because I could just put everything in formal notation and then derive answers mechanically, without thinking.

But here’s the rub–it’s not okay to sell something by saying that it causes X unless you actually have good evidence that it causes X. It doesn’t matter, even a bitty bit, that most philosophers sincerely believe studying philosophy makes people smart. They have a basic business ethics duty not to sell something unless they have sufficient evidence that this belief is right.

Arvan is aware of the distinction between selection and treatment. He says,

I don’t think I assumed that correlation implies causation. Causation is hard to pin down with all of this stuff. What we do have is some good statistics on our side, and — or so I say — good reasons to sell our discipline using them.

 

As I like to say in comparison, if pharmaceutical companies did this–if they sold drugs sincerely believing and claiming  these drugs cured some diseases, but didn’t actually have good evidence that the drugs cured the diseases–we’d say that drug companies were immoral. They wouldn’t be guilty of lying, per se, but rather negligence in advertising. And that’s what I see in droves among philosophy departments, among people who ought to know better.

Or, suppose a car dealer sincerely believed that the car he was selling was the safest car in the world, but hadn’t actually checked to see whether that was the case. When he sells the car on the basis of safety, he’s not lying per se, but he’s negligent in his sales tactics.

The other problem with Arvan’s response is that there is a significant empirical literature on this very question, on why certain majors earn more, on the relationship between IQ and earnings, on IQ and chosen major, and so on. (This is why “causation is hard to pin down” isn’t an excuse. The problem is that people are pinning down causation, and the evidence is not in your favor.) The most charitable thing that I can say on his behalf from the literature is that picking a hard major signals to employers that you are smart and conscientious, and so can help you get a job. Beyond that, though, there is little evidence that it’s really preparing you for the job or helping to make you smarter. (Google “transfer of learning,” read the results, and weep.) So, we can’t use the existing patterns to justifying trying to get more of the middling or dumb students to major in philosophy.

Right now, the people who major in philosophy tend to be conscientious and smart. Being conscientious and smart, they tend to be successful after college. That doesn’t give unconscientious, not-so-smart students any reason to major in philosophy.

Excuses?

We need to do it, or we won’t get majors.

Response: Too bad. You wouldn’t accept that from a business–“We need to be negligent in our advertising practices, or we won’t get business.” If the only way your department can survive or add another tenure-track line is to engage in dishonest business practices, your department should die or not get the line.

Other departments do it!

I’ll leave it to my five-year-old son to explain to you why this isn’t a defense.