Are 38-Year-Olds the Best Philosophers?
I'm sitting here looking at the covers of Donald Davidon's recently re-issued anthologies. Boy does he look old. Is that what philosophers look like?
Davidson was born in 1917. The pictures must have been taken near the time of his death (I'd almost say after) in 2003, when he was 86. But his most famous, best regarded essays were written long before, in the 1960s and 1970s, when he was in his 40s and 50s. Why not grace the cover with a picture of him from that era? Non-philosophers often think of philosophers as old. My mother advised me, when I was an undergraduate, to do science first and philosophy when I'm old, since the best scientists are young the the best philosophers are old!
Davidson actually started a bit late. In my philosophy of mind class, I present to students the dates of the philosophers we read and the dates of publication of the assigned essays -- some of the most important essays in historical and 20th-century philosophy of mind. To calculate age, I subtract one from the difference of the years (if you're born in the middle of 1900, in 1950 you're 49 for half the year, and there's always a delay before publication). Here's the list from the main part of the course:
Rene Descartes: 1596-1650. Meditations on First Philosophy: 1641 (age 44).
John Locke (1632-1704). Essay Concerning Human Understanding: 1689 (age 56).
George Berkeley (1685-1753). A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge: 1710 (age 24). Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous: 1713 (age 27).
Julien Offray de la Mettrie (1709-1751). Man a Machine: 1748 (age 38).
J. J. C. Smart (1920- ). "Sensations and Brain Processes": 1959 (age 38).
Hilary Putnam (1926- ). "The Nature of Mental States": 1967 (age 40).
David Lewis (1941-2001). "Psychophysical and Theoretical Identifications": 1972 (age 30). "Mad Pain and Martian Pain": 1980 (age 38).
Ned Block (1942- ). "Troubles with Functionalism": 1978 (age 35).
Frank Jackson (1943- ). "What Mary Didn’t Know": 1986 (age 42).
Paul M. Churchland (1942- ). "Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes": 1981 (age 38).
Colin McGinn (1950- ). "Can we solve the mind-body problem?": 1989 (age 38).
David Chalmers (1966- ). The Conscious Mind: 1996 (age 29).
Supposing these data are representative, here are two theories:
(1.) Philosophers tend to peak around age 40; or
(2.) Philosophers who haven't done anything very influential by age 40 tend to withdraw from publishing philosophy, or not aim very high, for the rest of their careers; and those who do achieve eminence by age 40 tend to regress toward the mean for the rest of their careers. (How many great ideas, or bursts of genius, can you expect one person to have?) This second theory would explain the overrepresentation of great work by 40-year-old philosophers without committing to the thesis that 40 years of age is the best time to do philosophy.
(I just left 38 behind me last weekend. What will I think of this issue, I wonder, when I'm 60?)