I suspect academic philosophy has shifted the emphasis so far away from actual discussions towards written essays that philosophers focus more on writing philosophy than on talking to people and having a substantive back and forth exchange.
I'm watching debates on philosophical topics almost every day, and my experience is quite a bit different. When I see debates between philosophers and non-philosophers on topics which are clearly philosophical, usually the professional philosopher has the upper hand, to put it mildly. For example, the debate between Huemer and Sapolsky on free will - I don't think Huemer had a strong case, but Sapolsky didn't even seem to understand the issue (btw, generally I find Sapolsky's work more interesting, because those empirical facts about what may influence human behavior are intriguing). Another example was the debate between David Benatar and Jordan Peterson about antinatalism - Peterson was hopeless in that debate. I can list many examples from debates in philosophy of religion, where the non-philosopher usually simply doesn't have a coherent view about confirmation theory, or misrepresents what theism/naturalism entails.
Now I agree that facing non-philosophers can be useful: out of a lot of weak objections, some interesting idea can come to surface.
With respect to the excessive politeness and 'performativeness', I agree that the latter is annoying, but I think the most likely explanation is lazyness - maybe some people don't put their best efforts in trying to defeat the opponent, because it would take time and a thorough review of the literature, in addition to empirical research, where is the case. I have no problem with politeness, even when it's excessive, because there are too many debates on youtube which err in the opposite direction, so excessive charity doesn't do much harm.
I am curious what is particularily deffective about the methods employed by analytic philosophers, other than assuming some empirical claims about intuitions to be true. I think it can be revised: instead of saying 'it is obvious that P, and since P entails Q, you have to accept Q', I can say 'if it is obvious to you that P, as it is obvious to me, then you have to consider its consequence Q'.
Finally, the jargon thing. I think this is a very serious problem for continental philosophers, but we, in the analytic tradition, at least try to make our cases clear, even though we sometimes fail to do so. At least no one argues, in analytic philosophy, about what Kripke wanted to said in one of his articles. Maybe there still is too much jargon, but I don't think we can just get rid off it. A bit more worrying, to me, is that many analytic philosophers are likely monolingual, and they rely too much on some peculiar properties of the English language. I am Romanian, and translating analytic philosophy into Romanian is quite challenging, and that may be an indication that some jargon, at least, is idiosyncratic to English.
I watch debates like that myself and agree with your assessment (that Huemer has an upper hand against Sapolsky). I think this generalizes to many other discussions between philosophers and non-philosophers. I haven't seen the discussion between Benatar and Peterson but I'd bet it's much the same.
The choreographed debates I'm describing are more common between philosophers than between philosophers and non-philosophers.
I'm not a fan of hostile debates, but I don't think the best response is excessive politeness to the point of not holding people's feet to the fire. Compare to fighting: I wouldn't want there to be no-rules fights where people kick sand in people's eyes and smuggle in illegal weapons, but I also don't want to see people bat at each other with feather dusters. Neither achieves much.
Addressing the problems with analytic methods in a short response would be extremely difficult. I think Wittgenstein, pragmatists, ordinary language philosophers, experimental philosophers, and others have all raised serious problems of various sorts. Here's one article that outlines what I regard as part of the problem:
People do argue about how to interpret philosophers in the analytic tradition. Not all the time, but it's still part of it. It's not as bad as continental to be sure, but it's one among a number of problems. I agree about the narrow emphasis on English.
Yes, if I think about that, the best discussions between philosophers usually involve non-academic philosophers, like Kane Baker. I also like Huemer mainly because he's funny. The excessive charity can also be motivated by the peer review system, I guess no one wants to appear as angry or arrogant, or too confident, and to risk getting bitter reviews. Otherwise it seems unlikely that philosophers just are disposed towards being nice, I don't think philosophy doesn't provide ways to convincingly defeat someone in a debate, by coming with less famous arguments or just being better at making distinctions and using the formal apparatus. I think that since basicaly every analytic philosopher knows some propositional and first order logic, just being good at logic doesn't offer such an edge like being good at confirmation theory, particularly all things Bayesian. Anyway, some of these debates may not be won just by holding the true views, because we don't know how to get there even if there are philosophical truths. But there are empirical debates which also seem to persist, like capitalism/socialism, or nature vs nurture, etc. I wonder if these debates are spicier.
Philosophers are incentivized to be very careful, maybe, because that's how they write academic papers, and that discourages bold approaches. I'm just speculating now, but yes, I'd like to see some real fighting.
I tend to agree about the main issues with analytic philosophy, that's why I rather like to read books on 'border' issues, like those centered around confirmation theory and philosophy of statistics.
I guess there is some arguing about interpretation issues (especially on the older ones, like Frege or Wittgenstein), but they seem to take much less effort (with the exception of Wittgenstein, who's as bad as Heidegger). And often it doesn't come out of an interest in knowing what that philosopher thought for its own sake, like how historians are studying Kant, for example, but rather out of care not to be accused of making strawmen, or in order to refute many possible versions of an argument.
I think the best solution to mitigate some of these problems is to convince more people from different cultures to get into analytic philosophy. Maybe this way making empirical studies about intuitions will be more representative. I know that you often point to the fact that non-philosophers have no intuitions on philosophical issues, but is it that interesting? Of course people don't have intuitions about problems that were not presented to them. I also lack intuitions one way or the other on philosophical topics that I know nothing about. Take for example the analysis of knowledge in the context of Gettier cases. Here we may say the folk intuition, if there is such a thing, may be relevant to solving the problem, since we are talking about how we choose to define our own concept (or how to engineer it). If you're right, that is indeterminate, of course, but maybe folk or commonsense intuition is just the intuition of non-philosophers after getting a reasonably elaborated and approved by all sides of the debate introduction to that issue. I guess you addressed this point in your work, I'm just curious if it's a viable idea.
I'm watching debates on philosophical topics almost every day, and my experience is quite a bit different. When I see debates between philosophers and non-philosophers on topics which are clearly philosophical, usually the professional philosopher has the upper hand, to put it mildly. For example, the debate between Huemer and Sapolsky on free will - I don't think Huemer had a strong case, but Sapolsky didn't even seem to understand the issue (btw, generally I find Sapolsky's work more interesting, because those empirical facts about what may influence human behavior are intriguing). Another example was the debate between David Benatar and Jordan Peterson about antinatalism - Peterson was hopeless in that debate. I can list many examples from debates in philosophy of religion, where the non-philosopher usually simply doesn't have a coherent view about confirmation theory, or misrepresents what theism/naturalism entails.
Now I agree that facing non-philosophers can be useful: out of a lot of weak objections, some interesting idea can come to surface.
With respect to the excessive politeness and 'performativeness', I agree that the latter is annoying, but I think the most likely explanation is lazyness - maybe some people don't put their best efforts in trying to defeat the opponent, because it would take time and a thorough review of the literature, in addition to empirical research, where is the case. I have no problem with politeness, even when it's excessive, because there are too many debates on youtube which err in the opposite direction, so excessive charity doesn't do much harm.
I am curious what is particularily deffective about the methods employed by analytic philosophers, other than assuming some empirical claims about intuitions to be true. I think it can be revised: instead of saying 'it is obvious that P, and since P entails Q, you have to accept Q', I can say 'if it is obvious to you that P, as it is obvious to me, then you have to consider its consequence Q'.
Finally, the jargon thing. I think this is a very serious problem for continental philosophers, but we, in the analytic tradition, at least try to make our cases clear, even though we sometimes fail to do so. At least no one argues, in analytic philosophy, about what Kripke wanted to said in one of his articles. Maybe there still is too much jargon, but I don't think we can just get rid off it. A bit more worrying, to me, is that many analytic philosophers are likely monolingual, and they rely too much on some peculiar properties of the English language. I am Romanian, and translating analytic philosophy into Romanian is quite challenging, and that may be an indication that some jargon, at least, is idiosyncratic to English.
I watch debates like that myself and agree with your assessment (that Huemer has an upper hand against Sapolsky). I think this generalizes to many other discussions between philosophers and non-philosophers. I haven't seen the discussion between Benatar and Peterson but I'd bet it's much the same.
The choreographed debates I'm describing are more common between philosophers than between philosophers and non-philosophers.
I'm not a fan of hostile debates, but I don't think the best response is excessive politeness to the point of not holding people's feet to the fire. Compare to fighting: I wouldn't want there to be no-rules fights where people kick sand in people's eyes and smuggle in illegal weapons, but I also don't want to see people bat at each other with feather dusters. Neither achieves much.
Addressing the problems with analytic methods in a short response would be extremely difficult. I think Wittgenstein, pragmatists, ordinary language philosophers, experimental philosophers, and others have all raised serious problems of various sorts. Here's one article that outlines what I regard as part of the problem:
https://philarchive.org/rec/BISTPO-6
People do argue about how to interpret philosophers in the analytic tradition. Not all the time, but it's still part of it. It's not as bad as continental to be sure, but it's one among a number of problems. I agree about the narrow emphasis on English.
Yes, if I think about that, the best discussions between philosophers usually involve non-academic philosophers, like Kane Baker. I also like Huemer mainly because he's funny. The excessive charity can also be motivated by the peer review system, I guess no one wants to appear as angry or arrogant, or too confident, and to risk getting bitter reviews. Otherwise it seems unlikely that philosophers just are disposed towards being nice, I don't think philosophy doesn't provide ways to convincingly defeat someone in a debate, by coming with less famous arguments or just being better at making distinctions and using the formal apparatus. I think that since basicaly every analytic philosopher knows some propositional and first order logic, just being good at logic doesn't offer such an edge like being good at confirmation theory, particularly all things Bayesian. Anyway, some of these debates may not be won just by holding the true views, because we don't know how to get there even if there are philosophical truths. But there are empirical debates which also seem to persist, like capitalism/socialism, or nature vs nurture, etc. I wonder if these debates are spicier.
Philosophers are incentivized to be very careful, maybe, because that's how they write academic papers, and that discourages bold approaches. I'm just speculating now, but yes, I'd like to see some real fighting.
I tend to agree about the main issues with analytic philosophy, that's why I rather like to read books on 'border' issues, like those centered around confirmation theory and philosophy of statistics.
I guess there is some arguing about interpretation issues (especially on the older ones, like Frege or Wittgenstein), but they seem to take much less effort (with the exception of Wittgenstein, who's as bad as Heidegger). And often it doesn't come out of an interest in knowing what that philosopher thought for its own sake, like how historians are studying Kant, for example, but rather out of care not to be accused of making strawmen, or in order to refute many possible versions of an argument.
I think the best solution to mitigate some of these problems is to convince more people from different cultures to get into analytic philosophy. Maybe this way making empirical studies about intuitions will be more representative. I know that you often point to the fact that non-philosophers have no intuitions on philosophical issues, but is it that interesting? Of course people don't have intuitions about problems that were not presented to them. I also lack intuitions one way or the other on philosophical topics that I know nothing about. Take for example the analysis of knowledge in the context of Gettier cases. Here we may say the folk intuition, if there is such a thing, may be relevant to solving the problem, since we are talking about how we choose to define our own concept (or how to engineer it). If you're right, that is indeterminate, of course, but maybe folk or commonsense intuition is just the intuition of non-philosophers after getting a reasonably elaborated and approved by all sides of the debate introduction to that issue. I guess you addressed this point in your work, I'm just curious if it's a viable idea.