Crowd-funding Philosophy

Sometimes an idea just is in the air. Last week in the context of our blogging (originally by Dennis, then more recently yours truly, and Catarina) about the ABC conjecture our very own Dennis des Chene reminded me that the source of the most recent discussion, written by Caroline Chen, requests that "If you enjoy this story, we ask that you consider paying for it. Please see the payment section below." How many philosophers did? (I finally did in context of writing this story!) Now, Daan Oostveen, a journalist writing for a Dutch weekly, contacted me about my views on crowd-funding in philosophy. According to Wikipedia, crowd funding is a "collective effort of individuals who network and pool their money, usually via the Internet, to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations." I often write these blog posts in an espresso-bar/fashion-store that was funded in this fashion (the owners were even on Dutch TV about it).

Now, I certainly expect that (like blogging!) crowd-funding could be a viable financing model for some philosophers.  At NewAPPS we self-consciously decided not to accept advertisements, but if we had I expect we might have had some nice extra cash to fund our annual APA lunch. Crowd-funding is an especially viable funding source for non-academic (or marginal-academic) philosophers, who (a) use  performance-like or primarily digital methods. It might even help develop these fields--something I wish we could do at NewAPPS (but I have come to the conclusion we lack interest and talent in these areas). Also, for charismatic people (b) whose philosophical views and methods lean closely toward self-help/therapeutic/religious spheres/pratices crowd-funding may even be lucrative. (In Holland the glossy Filosofie Magazine has made philosophy a life-style for educated folk near retirement looking for alternatives to religion.)

The main advantage of crowd-funding is that you are not dependent on an individual donor and her ideological and personal idiosyncrasies. You stay in control of your philosophical project in ways that grant agencies and private foundations subtly can alter. This is captured by the key strategic insight of private, American liberal arts oriented colleges/universities--the university brand (and development office) is a shield between numerous donors  and individual researchers. Of course, much crowd-funding is in search of a profit, so philosophy may not be a very promising route. But quite a few crowd-funding is about funding worthy non-profitable causes--and I certainly can imagine that philosophers who wish to improve the world in various ways or raise awareness for variety of causes could use crowd-funding both to promote their views and have extra resources to make a difference (so, good news for Bayesians and applied ethicists, bad news for metaphysical nihilists).

Having said that, in philosophy crowd-funding is a solution searching for a negligible problem. As long as philosophy research can be tied to university/college/high school careers teaching philosophy, then philosophical instructors can always do research on the side. Of course, this model is under pressure, but we shouldn't confuse the existing pressures with whole-sale displacement of the model.

Finally, playing to the crowd raises its own concerns; one could read Plato's  Protagoras or Gorgias of Plato as a systematic attack on crowd-funding. It might be fun if somebody could deploy crowd-funding to promote Plato's distrust of the genre.