The Gangadeanian culture.

An ad hominem is an informal fallacy where a person purports to debunk another's view on the basis of an irrelevant quality of the arguer. In my experience, informal fallacies (unlike formal fallacies) are often misattributed and ad hominem is probably the most commonly misattributed. The main problem with this fallacy (why it is a fallacy) is that a conclusion or argument is rejected on irrelevant grounds. That is, grounds that have no bearing on the truth of the conclusion. People often think that therefore, any personal attack is an ad hominem---but that's incorrect.

If you question the veracity of a witness in court on the basis of their poor track record as a witness, or their known compulsivity towards lying, this is not an ad hominem. It's good (albeit, inductive) reasoning. Sure they might be telling the truth. It's certainly possible, but you have strong evidence to the contrary that you should heed if you're rational.

I offer these prefatory remarks because I am going to post a criticism about the way that I have seen Gangadean and company do philosophy which gives some reason for hesitation on the conclusions they draw. I don't want to be wrongly accused of an ad hominem in doing so. If you really think I am presenting an irrelevant (to the issue at hand) personal attack, then show me where, but don't conclude that I am committing the fallacy simply because I am raising concerns about a property shared by a person or group of persons.

A second prefatory remark is that everything I will say is anecdotal. It is based on my experience (and the experience of a number of others that I have spoken with). But how else can we report things of this sort save for our own experiences? If you need good instances of the phenomena I will be speaking about, then just take a look a the works by Gangadean and Anderson.

What I want to discuss then is that Gangadean, Anderson and company do philosophy in an unusual way that I ultimately think is harmful and dishonest (whether intentionally or not).

In my previous post I mentioned the one-sided nature of Anderson's post about externalism. Again, his post is just a short blurb and so I don't stake my claim on it. I just think it's merely suggestive or reminiscent of a larger problem that I witnessed in my years of interactions with him and other Gangadean followers. In my experience, they tend to have a very narrow understanding of philosophy and keep to themselves in discussing philosophical and theological ideas (unless proselytizing).

It is a very tight knit community of people that all profess to agree on certain core principles (many of them very strong philosophical and theological positions). If you don't agree on all of the core issues, then you are not welcomed within that community and will be asked to seek fellowship elsewhere. Furthermore, they tend to be very closed off from external ideas and persons. It takes a formal invitation and a process to visit their church and during my time there, there was even an instance where a member unknowingly invited someone that was deemed "not prepared" properly and so had to go through the embarrassing ordeal of uninviting the individual. Some of these are cultural quirks that I don't necessarily have a problem with in and of themselves. However, I submit that it feeds the problematic culture of isolation that is an impediment in terms of seeking truth. Philosophy (and theology) done under Gangadean is like doing philosophy in a nuclear silo... It is done either in classrooms where students are often given very one-sided presentations of ideas or within the walls of the church where preaching is done to the choir, so to speak. It is no surprise that most of the philosophy classes taught by the associated faculty all rely heavily (if not exclusively) on Gangadean's book, Philosophical Foundation. And people at WF really love that book without recognizing just how shallow and narrow it really is.

On rare occasion Gangadean has visited public forums like talks or conferences and I think Anderson does more frequently with respect to his scholarship in religious studies and history. But I never once heard them return to report that they had learned there was a problem with their views. This always struck me as so surprising. Are you really infallible with respect to your philosophical/theological work? Indeed this is the attitude that they seem to have. Giving a talk is not about learning how you might be mistaken about your work, but rather for them, it is going into spiritual battle to disabuse others (anybody that disagrees with you) of falsities.

I have had the pleasure of working with a lot of philosophers so far in my young career. Some of them are world-renowned. Compared to Gangadean and company, most of them have a very different way of doing philosophy. There is an openness. I don't mean anything like relativism. No, they have pretty strong convictions and sometimes maintain extreme views. They argue like the best of them. The openness I am referring to is the willingness to see problems in their own thinking. In the classroom, these professors ask the students to point out problems in their work. They of course try to defend their views, but it isn't rare for them to admit that there is a serious flaw somewhere and for them to rework their own thinking in light of it. What is more, these seasoned philosophers submit their ideas to a wide audience. They don't just probe their own students (who may have something at stake in agreeing with them) or their colleagues. They travel the country and sometimes the world to present ideas to a motley bunch of philosophers that will undoubtedly raise difficult objections and counterarguments. They know ahead of time that other philosophers will disagree with them. They do this, in part, because it makes for better more thought out work that has considered a wide variety of angles. Philosophers recognize that in all probability there are serious problems with their most dearest arguments, because they are fallible beings. Moreover, they recognize that they may be too biased or otherwise close to their own work to see the issues. Finally, they recognize that submitting their work to too narrow an audience is not going to be helpful. In fact, this is part of the reason that it is nearly impossible to get a job at the institution that you graduate from. Departments have, as a whole, a way of doing things, that can sometimes get in the way of truth and introduce biases. Likewise, as graduate students, we are often encouraged to spend a semester or year at a different department. Philosophy as it is done "on the outside" is extremely different from the way that it is done by Gangadean and company.

WF continues to have strong adherents. And as long as students continue to take classes with them, they will likely continue gaining followers (though they lose followers regularly too). But in my experience, Gangadean's kin, by in large, are young philosophy enthusiasts that have an extremely narrow exposure to one way of doing philosophy--that is, the Gangadean way. During my undegrad, when I was a thoroughgoing member of WF, I shared some classes with a student that had taken all (or most) of Gangadean's classes before he moved to the University where I was already studying. He wanted to major in philosophy (at the university) because he had done quite well in Gangadean's classes and enjoyed it. I think he was shellshocked by the difference and after a few classes decided to change his major. As far as Gangadean's followers go, only a few have degrees in philosophy, and even fewer (maybe a handful) have graduate degrees in philosophy (mostly MA's)--and all from the same institution. They also make up a relatively small body as a whole--which again reiterates the kind of exposure that I find worrisome. Obviously none of what I have said necessarily implicates this group as believing falsehoods. It's certainly possible that their beliefs are correct. It's possible that having a closed off system as the one I described has proven most fruitful for them. It's possible but not plausible. We, as thinkers, all make plenty of mistakes and need constant input from others if we are going to arrive at truth. So it seems to me at any rate.