“On Making Progress in Philosophy (All Other Things Not Equal)”
Philosophers have recently become interested in two questions having to do with progress in our field: (1) What counts as advancing the intellectual enterprise called philosophy? (2) How do we ameliorate the present sorry state of the profession of philosophy? These questions are usually taken to be independent of one another: how to construe and measure what counts as progress in the enterprise of philosophy is one thing; how to make the profession more welcoming and inclusive to people who have traditionally been excluded or alienated from the profession quite another. I suggest that the two questions are closely linked and that there are reasons to think that expanding our understanding of what counts as progress in philosophy is critical to diversifying our community.
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