Past Event: ELLMM City: Julian Davis (Yale and Stanford)

Title: On Conventional Wisdom

Abstract: What is conventional wisdom and why does it hold such pride of place and such dubious distinction in our lives and discourse? Despite ubiquitous references to it in every imaginable field, very little philosophical attention has been devoted to the notion of conventional wisdom itself. Throughout history, culture heroes have challenged the conventional wisdom and have been heralded or persecuted for doing so. My aim in this talk is to demonstrate the existence and features of conventional wisdom as a cognitive and communicative phenomenon. My central claim is that a great many ideas gain currency in discourse as correct to think and express despite marching to a different drummer than truth, knowledge or even belief. I don’t mean to deny that truth, knowledge and belief are philosophically important norms of assertion. Rather, I aim to convince you that, for better or for worse, communication and cognition are often facilitated by a norm of correctness that is more malleable. Received ideas often have the patina of correctness despite being false, not literally true, or at best indeterminate. A related claim is that people reproduce conventional wisdom they know is not true without obviously engaging in deception, lying, bullshitting, propaganda, or other forms of speaking falsely or misleadingly. Many people hold orthodox beliefs embracing conventional wisdom with no awareness that their thought and talk is not tracking literal truth; and yet, it is not always apt to characterize them as merely holding false beliefs because there is an important sense in which they correctly conform to a conventional standard. Sometimes, deception and false belief are instruments too blunt to carve discourse at its joints. Conventional wisdom is a creature of its own that deserves philosophical attention.