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Join us on our quest for the extraordinary!
Sam McKee (@polymath_sam) has 9 university qualifications across 4 subjects including doctorates in history and philosophy of science and molecular biology. He researches both at two British universities and contributes to both space science and cancer research. Meet fellow polymaths and discipline leaders working on the frontiers of research from all over the world. Be inspired to pursue knowledge and drive the world forwards.
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Polymath World (00:02.455)
Welcome back to another episode here on the Polymath World channel and we're dipping back into philosophy again. This time with another very good friend of mine, Dr. Max Baker-Heitch, who is the Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy at Oxford University. Max, thank you so much for being with me here today.
Max Baker-Hytch (00:20.652)
Yeah, thank you for having me, Sam.
Polymath World (00:22.989)
So we like chatting philosophy now and then, part of my background, and I've known you for, gosh, about a decade now, at least. I think I first met you in 2011 when you were fresh-faced post-doc back at Oxford, but could you tell the audience something of your journey into academic philosophy?
Max Baker-Hytch (00:31.538)
Mmm. Mm-hmm.
Max Baker-Hytch (00:43.69)
Yeah, sure. So,
I actually had never heard of philosophy at all, I mean, not as an academic subject that I would know anything about. Obviously I had heard of the word. Until really I got to university. And it was just because my mum, who had been an RE teacher and had taught philosophy and ethics at the A level, had suggested that I might like philosophy. But I wasn't really sure what I wanted to study at university.
And so, yeah, I had put down philosophy and politics. And so I went to Exeter University and that's what I studied there. And I actually ended up switching the politics half of it to theology. But yeah, and actually just really found my niche, suppose. I've completely fell in love with the subject of philosophy. yeah, cut a long story short, I had a year out after I graduated from my bachelor's
bachelor's degree. Then I decided, I did really want to pursue academia further. So I went back, did a master's in philosophy at Exeter. And then I applied for a number of PhD programs. And the one I ended up taking up was a PhD in philosophy at Oxford, which I did from 2010 to 2014. And then I had two postdocs. So a postdoc, Sam may have said this already.
but a postdoc is kind of the first rung on the academic career ladder and generally your job is just to do research and publish in academic journals and so yeah I had two of those in quick succession one was in the philosophy department at Oxford for one year and then the next one was at the centre for philosophy of religion at the University of Notre Dame in America quite near Chicago and that was a further year and then I
Max Baker-Hytch (02:43.92)
came back to Oxford in 2016 and took up a permanent position as he said as Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy at Wycliffe Hall. yeah, I sit on both Philosophy and the Theology faculties at the University and I do the usual kind of mixture that academics do of research, publishing in journals, publishing books, and we might get into
what I publish on and then teaching undergraduates in the tutorial system and supervising some PhD students.
Polymath World (03:23.585)
Yeah, I've got a couple of friends that you're supervising at the moment, which is terrific. So did you not do philosophy A level or GCSE?
Max Baker-Hytch (03:27.414)
Mmm! Haha.
Max Baker-Hytch (03:34.348)
I did not. No, no, did, I did REA level, sorry, not REA level, I did RE to GCSE. But no, I didn't, it wasn't, it wasn't at all on my radar, as I said, really, until I got to university.
Polymath World (03:51.469)
That's really interesting. Were you one of those children that was always asking why and had to know the meaning of everything?
Max Baker-Hytch (03:59.854)
Yeah, I do think I did, looking back, ask a lot of philosophical questions and I just didn't have those labels to put on the questions and the things I was thinking about. but so yeah, I remember as a young child, I used to have thoughts about like, well, it that it was a really strange concept that, you know, something would
have existed forever. But then it was seemed to me to be an equally strange concept that something just began to exist with nothing before it. And so, yeah, I would use to think about things like that, but I just didn't know that that was called philosophy.
Polymath World (04:44.471)
I think a lot of people are inclined towards philosophy and don't realize it yet. They haven't discovered how much they'd enjoy it. mean, Mark Twain said that all men are philosophers anyway. I guess you're quite lucky that you found that you had the philosophy bug just at the right time for university. Could you tell us a little bit about what your time in America was like? Notre Dame, for those that don't know, is the...
Max Baker-Hytch (04:49.87)
Yeah, I would agree with that.
Max Baker-Hytch (04:57.464)
He
Max Baker-Hytch (05:04.706)
Yes.
Max Baker-Hytch (05:09.326)
Hmm.
Polymath World (05:10.851)
the home of Alvin Plantinga, a really great philosophy name and author in the latter half of the 20th century, a prize winner himself. So what was that like?
Max Baker-Hytch (05:22.06)
Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, it was fantastic. So yeah, so essentially, I would say, for my field, which is philosophy of religion, there's
you know, in Britain, probably Oxford is sort of the epicenter for that, just in terms of the concentration of people who work on that area. In America, it's Notre Dame, but also increasingly, I should say, be fair, Baylor. But yeah, so Notre Dame really grew a strong reputation in philosophy of religion as a result of the very important work of figures like Alvin Planting there, but
Peter van Inwagen. But yeah, so Alvin Plantinga
was an American philosopher who did some very significant work sort of really beginning in the 1960s where he made the case that belief in God could be rational in roughly the same way that belief in other people having minds like my own mind could be rational. So he tries to say, well, look, all of the sort philosophical arguments for God's existence are a little
inconclusive, he claims. But that doesn't mean that belief in God can't be rational. And so, yeah, he tries to build up this analogy with belief in other minds. So the belief that right now I have that you have a mind, that you're thinking thoughts, that when you make certain facial expressions, you're having certain inner reactions to the things I'm saying and so on. Now, of course, there, the arguments that you really do have a mind like mine are inconclusive.
Max Baker-Hytch (07:09.072)
Inclusive in a way as well or that they're not fully decisive like there is a logical possibility I can't exclude that you are just a kind of zombie in a sense of like you have all the same outward behaviors all the same neurophysiology as me, but there's no inner experiences and So yeah, Plantinger argues that look if we can be rational in the one case in believing in other minds Then we can be rational in believing in God and so yeah
And that was his book, God and Other Minds, and he really kind of built from there. And his sort of defense of the rationality belief in God has a certain flavor that I would say is influenced by his particular strand of the Christian tradition, that sort of Dutch reformed strand of the Christian tradition, where he's not all that keen on sort of arguments to try to demonstrate or make
probably the existence of God, rather he wants to say that belief in God can be rational even when it's just formed in quite an instinctive way. So he wants to be able to say that the kind of average religious believer in the pew who's never really thought about philosophical arguments can be rational. So yeah, now and
That's not to say I necessarily fully endorse planting his approach, but he has certainly been massively influential and he was involved in setting up this Center for Philosophy of Religion at Notre Dame, which every year has four postdoctoral fellowships. So yeah, I had one of those and yeah, was a very formative year. In terms of the work I did while I was there, was mainly publishing, I was breaking up my doctoral dissertation into
chunks that I then published in various journals of philosophy, as well as coming up with some new papers as well. Yeah, and formed friendships there that I still maintain to this day. I go out to the US maybe once or twice a year for conferences and see many of the same people. So yeah, it was a very important year.
Polymath World (09:25.467)
It sounds amazing. A lot of people I know of do a PhD in the humanities, but not a postdoc. So the postdoc really is rigorous teaching and publishing, just an opportunity to do that for a little while.
Max Baker-Hytch (09:42.934)
Yeah, I mean, a postdoc is not a degree. It's a job. So you don't have to do a postdoc before you go into a permanent academic position. it's increasingly the way these days that with the way the job market in academia is. And unfortunately, there are in truth very, very few academic jobs these days. yeah, postdocs are typically becoming an essential step towards getting a permanent academic
position. And normally, yeah, so most postdocs are research only, so you don't do any teaching, you just work on your research and publishing. And that was this case with the two postdocs I had. Occasionally, you'll see what's called a teaching postdoc, which is kind of the opposite of that, where you just teach, you don't really do any research. But generally, if you're wanting to get a position at a research heavy institution, then you'd want to do a research postdoc.
Polymath World (10:42.295)
Right. I'm interested to know who your other inspirations are. Who was it in philosophy that really struck you and helped you fall in love with it and find your interests.
Max Baker-Hytch (10:54.475)
Yeah, well...
Richard Swinburne is really the huge figure on this side of the Atlantic in philosophy of religion. So, you know, if Plantinga, not just single-handedly, but Plantinga and figures in America like William Alston, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Eleanor Stump, and so on, if they kind of, they sort of spearheaded a revival of theistic philosophy in America, you would have to say that Richard Swinburne did that in Britain.
but by taking a very different approach to planting is so, you know, as I said, planting, wanted to try and say that.
belief in God is much more like, you know, it's more like ordinary perceptual beliefs or beliefs in other minds in the sense that it can kind of be formed in this instinctive way, and you don't have to have complicated arguments for it. Whereas Swinburne kind of went a very different track. So Swinburne started out actually as a philosopher of science, reflecting on the scientific method and the the sort of types of
Yeah, the way that scientists draw inferences to the best explanation, the importance of simplicity as a criteria for choosing theory and science and that kind of thing. so, yeah, really sort of starting in the 1970s, Swinburne wanted to really build an analogy between inference to the best explanation. And he specifically built this up with a Bayesian framework, which is just a way
Max Baker-Hytch (12:35.788)
of kind of modeling how you update based on new information, how you update your probabilities based on new information. So Swinburne wanted to think about the case for theism in terms as in some sense being analogous to inference to the best explanation in science. And so Swinburne really pioneered, I would say, a revival of the project of natural theology as it's known. So natural the
is the project of trying to build a case for the existence of God and the attributes of God without referring to divine revelation.
without referring to any, you know, alleged scripture and just by drawing inferences from the world. yeah, so Swinburne really, I would say pioneered or helped pioneer a revival of natural theology and with this specific emphasis on probabilities. And so, yeah, in his book, The Existence of God, he kind of sketches a cumulative case for God.
which is very much in this Bayesian probabilistic framework where it's not dependent on any single piece of evidence, but the idea is that multiple lines of evidence, each independently lift the probability to some degree that God exists, but when combined, they lift the probability to a large degree. That's the idea. So yeah, so Swinburne definitely has been a significant influence for me as well.
Polymath World (14:14.188)
and now you're working at the same institution. Do you see him? Do you see him around very much?
Max Baker-Hytch (14:18.254)
You
I know, yes, know Swinburne quite well. Yes, I've got to know him over the last 10 or so years. And yet I see him every few weeks. yeah, I've had the privilege of giving a paper very recently at a conference to celebrate his 90th birthday. That was a really good occasion, actually. It was just before Christmas. And five of us gave papers on each of us speaking on some theme of his work.
responded to each of them. yeah, it's wonderful actually to see he, you know, at 90 he's still incredibly active, doesn't appear to have lost any of his sharpness. And yeah, was, you know, giving absolutely as good as he got in those paper response sessions.
Polymath World (15:11.235)
That's wonderful. Now I think we're all about interdisciplinary here on Polymath World Channel and you work with different converging and overlapping streams in philosophy. Philosophy of religion, philosophy of mind, epistemology. So people might be surprised that philosophy of religion is actually really hot and there's a lot going on and it's quite modern. I think when people...
Max Baker-Hytch (15:13.07)
Yeah.
Max Baker-Hytch (15:26.701)
Yeah.
Polymath World (15:38.229)
think of philosophy of religion, they think of it as quite old, maybe not much going on. So could you explain how philosophy of religion has sort of boomed back? Is it partly because of these interdisciplinary information?
Max Baker-Hytch (15:42.497)
Yeah.
Max Baker-Hytch (15:48.503)
Yeah.
Max Baker-Hytch (15:52.286)
I think so. mean, okay, so the thing is...
In terms of how you map the discipline of philosophy and where philosophy of religion sits, the way I would see things is that philosophy of religion is an applied branch of philosophy. okay, if you think about, I mean, what some people would say are the three core disciplines of philosophy, epistemology, questions of how we can have knowledge, what knowledge is, et cetera, metaphysics, question of what there is at the very most fundamental level, and ethics.
question of what you want to do and so on.
So I would say, with ethics, you then have the field of applied ethics and political philosophy is arguably a form of applied ethics. Right. So I would see philosophy of religion as, yeah, applied epistemology and metaphysics and perhaps a bit of ethics as well, but mostly epistemology and metaphysics. so, and also applied philosophy of mind and philosophy of mind itself is arguably applied.
metaphysics mostly. so yeah, philosophy of religion naturally I think benefits whenever there are interesting developments in any of these fields of which it is an application, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and so on, then I think that should naturally stimulate work in philosophy of religion. So actually my first postdoc
Max Baker-Hytch (17:26.158)
The one at Oxford was part of a Templeton funded project called new insights and directions in the epistemology of religion and so the idea there was to Look at a number of interesting developments in the field of epistemology over the last couple of decades Especially in terms of things like the epistemology of testimony Which has been a lot of work done on in the last few years the epistemology of disagreement like what's the rational
significance of me learning that let's say you and I who have thought about a topic in as much depth and you I you're you seem to be as as Conscientious and well-informed as me and and I learn you you come to the opposite conclusion to me Should that mean that I lessen my confidence and should it mean you lessen your confidence so that epistemology of disagreement thinks about that kind of thing the epistemological questions about the causal
origins of belief. So if I learn that a particular belief I form is something
that could have been affected by a cognitive bias that we've discovered. What should that do to my rational confidence in that belief? So all of these things are areas in epistemology where a lot of interesting work has been done in the last few years. so that project that I was a postdoc on was seeking to just bring some of those insights into conversation with epistemology, with philosophy of religion, thinking about in the context of religious belief,
what's the rational significance of learning that you disagree with someone who's thought about the issues apparently as much as you and all of that sort of thing. So yeah, for those reasons, yeah, philosophy of religion is very much alive and there's lots of interesting new work going on all the time. so one thing that's a really interesting development, I think, is the application of so-called experimental
Max Baker-Hytch (19:33.926)
philosophy to philosophy of religion. So experimental philosophy is a sort of movement in philosophy. It's a bit controversial because some philosophers don't think that it really counts as philosophy but...
Anyway, I mean, there's always controversy in philosophy about anything that's that's kind of methodologically new. so the idea is that, you know, for example, there's, there's a famous thought experiment in in philosophy, thought experiment, that's maybe not quite the right word, but called the Gettya problem. So the idea is that for a long time, epistemologists said that knowledge
If I know that something is the case, then I have to have a belief that that thing is the case, it needs to be true, and I need a good reason to hold it. So we can, the idea is that with a Getty case, we come up with an example where those conditions seem to be met, but it seems that I don't have knowledge. So suppose I'm in my car, I look at the fuel gauge and it says full, I've got no reason to doubt the fuel gauge. If the fuel tank is full,
So I have a belief it's justified, it's got a good reason backing it up, and it's true. But, unbeknownst to me, the fuel gauge is stuck on full.
Okay, so even if the fuel tank had been half full, it would have said full and I would have believed it. And so many philosophers or even perhaps almost the vast majority would say that is not an instance of knowledge, even though it is a justified true belief. And so we need a we need another condition that can block cases like that from counting as knowledge. Now, experimental philosophy comes in because whenever philosophy
Max Baker-Hytch (21:26.064)
say, oh, well, it's intuitive that whatever, you know, it's intuitive that in that kind of case, I don't have knowledge. And so some people have wanted to say, well, why don't we go and test these intuitions? Why don't we go and see what the person on the street would say when we give them a getty a case, for example, and then we can kind of try and build up a picture or we could even ask questions like, do people in Eastern, you know, East Asian cultures also have these same intuitions?
or is there variability across cultures? And so that's the discipline of experimental philosophy. And so recently, a good friend of mine, Ian Church, and some colleagues have been applying methods of experimental philosophy to philosophy of religion, asking questions like, so there's a certain kind of argument for God's existence that you'll be familiar with that has a premise that says everything that begins to exist must have a cause for its existence, right?
certain kind of cosmological argument for God's existence that has that premise. people who like that argument will often say, well, it's just so intuitive that that's true, that everything that begins to exist must have a cause for its existence. Other people have said, well, you know, I'm not sure it is so intuitive. I can imagine something coming into being without having a cause. And so I don't think this totally settles the issue.
But it is interesting anyway to think well what actually would would the ordinary person on the streets say about this? Would they have this intuition? And so Ian and his colleagues have gone out and done this experimental work trying to gauge whether these sorts of intuitions are as widely held as some philosophers say. So yeah, that's another interesting area where philosophy of religion is continuing to flourish, I think, and to draw on insights from
areas of philosophy.
Polymath World (23:28.643)
Well that's really interesting and it's not too hard to see the sort of the applications and potential real world benefits of this. That's really interesting. I would... you kind of beat me to the punch here a little bit but I would love to know what you consider to be some of the biggest problems in philosophy of religion going forward.
Max Baker-Hytch (23:50.094)
Mmm... Good.
Yeah, well, so there's one sense in which those have stayed the same for thousands of years, right? So the central questions of philosophy of religion are does God exist? Can belief in God or can religious belief maybe a bit more broadly construed ever be rational? So those still are the central problems of philosophy of religion and and they're not kind of going away anytime soon. I mean,
In a sense that that just is kind of what the discipline of philosophy of religion is built around. However, the specific form that takes and the specific arguments that are under consideration is changing over time for sure. So yeah, there are, I would say there are some interesting new arguments for God's existence that have been put on the table in the last few years. One of the most interesting ones I think has been developed by Dustin Crummett
Brian Cutter and it's a pair of American philosophers and it's called the argument from psychophysical harmony. Because it's a little bit of a complicated argument and I don't want to sort of butcher it by explaining it poorly I won't go into great detail there but it it basically has to do with the way in which the subjective experiences that we have
Like that when I stubbed my toe for example, I have a certain kind of subjective experience of pain and so on when I You know Eat an ice cream. I have a certain subjective experience of sweetness and so basically the argument is like it didn't have to be this way it could have been that We had just a subjective experience Continuously of black and white fuzzy static the whole time and our nervous systems would have still done all the same thing
Max Baker-Hytch (25:48.576)
things they actually do.
And the fact that there is what they call this psychophysical harmony, the fact that there seems to be a kind of appropriateness of the way in which our subjective states fit with the objective goings on, the things that are happening to our bodies, again, in a way that didn't have to be the case for our nervous systems to do exactly what they actually do. They argue that that is much more to be expected on the
Again, you'll have thought of lots of objections to that just while I'm describing it and the authors of this argument have thought of those objections. So if you want to go deeper with that, just Google the argument from Psycho-Physical Harmony. But so yeah, there are some new and interesting arguments for God's existence on the table. There are of course, against God's existence that are evolving as well. And those are mostly kind of different forms
the problem of evil but also an area that I work on quite a bit, versions of the problem of divine hiddenness. I think those, yeah, I mean those would be some of the things that are kind of cutting edge in philosophy of religion these days.
Polymath World (27:09.965)
Very good. That's very interesting. I have lots of questions about that, but this isn't the place to address that. So I'll just Google it.
Max Baker-Hytch (27:18.258)
Yeah, I mean I should just say any questions to do with like evolutionary selection benefits the authors have absolutely Thought of all of those and anyway, yeah. Hmm. Yeah Yeah
Polymath World (27:26.893)
sure yeah it's their job they have to tell us about your recent book God and the problem of evidential ambiguity
Max Baker-Hytch (27:36.981)
Okay, yeah, I...
I'll, yeah, here. Okay, here it is. Yeah, so, yes, it's in the series Cambridge Elements, The Problems of God with Cambridge University Press. So it's a fairly short book. It's under 100 pages. But yeah, so basically, that book is trying to get to grips with
Polymath World (27:41.763)
I have a copy on my shelf, I forgot to it before. There it is.
Max Baker-Hytch (28:06.954)
something that interests me a lot, it's slightly related to the problem of divine hiddenness, the problem of why isn't God more obvious, but I see it as a little bit different from that. because, yeah, so I call it the problem of evidential ambiguity, and it's basically the problem that...
When we come to questions about, you know, sort of, yeah, ultimate reality, whatever you want to call it, sort of what it is that is foundational to reality. When we come to those sorts of questions, we seem to be faced with the problem that there's a lot of different views on the table.
I mean, and actually, the reason I talk about it in terms of evidential ambiguity rather than the question of why isn't God more obvious is because talking about it in terms of evidential ambiguity widens it out a bit. So it's not just about God or not God, because actually in terms of, you know, views of reality that are not theistic, there's a lot more options than just atheistic naturalism, right? So that, and that's actually something else I should have said.
in answer to your previous question, there's a lot more views now that are being developed that are neither theism, that they're not a traditional personal god, but nor are they atheistic materialism. They're some kind of third option, so like pan-psychism, the idea that all matter is conscious in some sense. Anyway, so...
Yeah, so the thought is that anyway when we're trying to figure out our way in with respect to these ultimate questions We realize that there's a lot of disagreement there's a lot of views on the table. There's a lot of evidence to be considered and it's even if someone has Good reasons for their position It seems clear that there there isn't just like a
Max Baker-Hytch (30:19.384)
slam dunk case for the truth of any one view. And so yeah, that's what I call the problem of evidential ambiguity. And so the book is about how do we firstly, how do we make sense of what evidential ambiguity is, and what senses is our world evidentially ambiguous, that's kind of the first half. And the second half is sort of trying to get to the grips with the question, well, how do we go about trying to form beliefs about ultimate reality in this in this sort of evidential
ambiguous situation that we find ourselves in.
Polymath World (30:53.449)
It's an excellent book. I really enjoyed it. I found it very clear and accessible. Now, like my own research is obviously in philosophy of science, but I have had the opportunity to publish a little bit in epistemology and philosophy of mind because there's some crossover. I'd love to pick your brain for a moment on issues of belief and how that touches on the intersection of those three that I've just mentioned.
Max Baker-Hytch (30:55.222)
Hmm
Max Baker-Hytch (31:17.506)
Mm-hmm.
Polymath World (31:22.079)
We should just say for the audience that epistemology is the philosophy of knowledge and how we know and how we know what we know. People obviously hold false beliefs and they hold onto them in the face of falsifiable evidence. I mean we're in something of a golden era right now of conspiracy theory and people clinging onto things which are demonstrably false like
Max Baker-Hytch (31:22.827)
yet.
Max Baker-Hytch (31:27.436)
Yeah.
Polymath World (31:51.715)
the earth is not flat, the moon landing wasn't a hoax, the holocaust happened, but people still... there seems to be this sort of revolution of false beliefs. Why does this happen and what can we do to help people towards objectivity? Which is, I suppose, the golden end of the quest.
Max Baker-Hytch (32:04.77)
Yeah.
Max Baker-Hytch (32:17.39)
Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of it is explained by interpersonal dynamics and the decline of trust in traditional sources of epistemic authority. So like, you know, 50 years ago, I suppose like,
the chief medical officer in Britain would have been a figure trusted by the vast majority of the population. But for whatever reason, and how you tell that story is probably gonna be quite linked to where you stand on political issues, but for whatever reason, trust in traditional sources of expertise has been significantly eroded over the last couple of decades.
I think social media also has now generated all these alternative sources of of alleged authority right or alleged expertise and yeah anyone can kind of pose as a guru on a topic if they have a YouTube channel and they gain enough followers
And so, yeah, I think you've got a situation where, I mean, and some of the reasons I should say, you know, that perhaps there's been a decline in traditional sources of authority, that probably is the fault of our leaders in some respects. But I think, yeah, the rise of social media, that's sort of almost beyond any individual's control. so, and that has created a kind of democratization of information.
which certainly has some good aspects, but it also clearly has some very negative aspects. And so what you get then is kind of, you know, epistemic echo chambers where people are only exposed to people with the same kinds of beliefs and alleged experts who reaffirm those beliefs over and over again. And they are increasingly sort of just not even having the same conversation.
Max Baker-Hytch (34:30.544)
people who are being exposed to more traditional sources of information and so it's yeah I so that's I think that's roughly what's going on I I really don't know I'm afraid what the solution to it is
Polymath World (34:45.699)
Well, would part of the solution be more young people, well, people of all ages studying philosophy?
Max Baker-Hytch (34:53.71)
Yeah, yes I think so. I think studying, yeah especially epistemology, yeah I mean...
It's interesting that so there's a there's a paper actually, by Kevin Dorst, a philosopher at MIT, very brilliant young epistemologist, who I know a little bit and called rational polarization. And so he argues that part of the difficulty here actually is that we're tempted to say that that the people who are believing the conspiracy theories are being irrational.
in the way that they handle information, but actually on a number of mainstream models of how you're supposed to update on evidence, given your prior probabilities, it's actually not so clear that they are being irrational in that sense. Even that, right, even if we want to say they're coming to false conclusions in the end. So it's not quite so easy to exactly put your finger on, on
what's going wrong, even if we want to say, gosh, where they've ended up is completely wacky. It's not totally easy at each stage, at each sort of micro step to say you're being kind of epistemically irresponsible at that point right there. So yeah, it is quite a subtle issue, I think, that needs a lot more thought. And I will say as well, I think it doesn't help at all to...
you know, castigate people who end up in, you know, alternative communities, alternative, if you like, epistemic sub communities where these conspiracy theories take hold. I think when they feel castigated and demonized by more mainstream, you know, representatives of more mainstream institutions, I think that just pushes them even further away. And so I think we want to try and avoid doing that if possible.
Polymath World (36:52.757)
Yes, yeah definitely. I did talk with Alex Carter and Stephen Law a little bit about this. Is it perhaps as much a meaning problem? I mean, I could think of a couple of religions that I won't name right now for the sake of not being trolled, that you can provide very clear historical evidence.
and textual evidence that their beliefs are false. Like what they believe happened in the world did not happen and what they believe about the universe is not true. What they believe about history is demonstrably false and yet they will cling to them and sometimes they'll double down when presented with falsifiable evidence. Is this the...
Max Baker-Hytch (37:40.813)
Yeah.
Yeah, that's true. mean, to be fair, and you won't disagree with this, certainly, people in Christianity, to which you and I both belong, there are certainly communities of Christians who do that as well, when it comes to thinking that the earth is 6000 years old, all of that kind of thing. it's not, yeah, it's not unique to any one religion, I don't think. But it's not unique to religion either, because as you know, that yeah, there are
Polymath World (37:56.268)
certainly.
Polymath World (38:00.907)
They do troll me.
Max Baker-Hytch (38:11.696)
communities of people who deny that the Holocaust happened, are anti-vax, who may not be religious at all. So it's not, yeah, it's definitely not unique to religion either. So yeah, don't, yeah, I mean, I think it's all the sorts of dynamics I mentioned and probably others besides.
But yeah, I think that, I mean, in my experience, you know, if there's going to be any progress here in terms of...
you know, convincing people to let go of really wacky beliefs. I think it's through gently and gradually building up trust, interpersonal trust, because I think that's what it comes down to. That's what's missing and that's why these communities get sort of more and more alienated, as it were. So, yeah, I think that has to happen at a kind of grassroots level as well.
well.
Polymath World (39:18.551)
Yes, yeah definitely. Just one last question for you. A lot of philosophy students don't realize this, but if you want to go study philosophy at university it's not that simple. You sort of have to find the right university that has the right flavor of philosophy. you know, as a scientist I prefer the more analytical, logical sort of stuff to do with epistemologies. I'm very happy there. But a lot of universities will be
Max Baker-Hytch (39:44.813)
Yeah.
Polymath World (39:47.779)
continental philosophy, is a very, different creature. You know, if you want to do philosophy of religion, Birmingham is another great university. You want to do philosophy of science, you can go to London School of Economics, you can go to Edinburgh, you can go to Bristol, you can go to Cambridge, certainly. Oxford is very much seen as the home of analytical philosophy. So why should people, why should prospective students choose
Max Baker-Hytch (39:56.523)
Mm-hmm.
Max Baker-Hytch (40:00.813)
Yeah.
Max Baker-Hytch (40:11.342)
Yeah.
Polymath World (40:16.779)
Analytical Philosophy and Oxford.
Max Baker-Hytch (40:20.386)
Well, yeah, so I mean, I should say, I think that actually that is a little bit less important at the undergraduate level in terms of you're not really like, really most philosophy undergraduate programs and that even includes Oxford will teach a mixture of analytic and continental philosophy. And I think that's appropriate.
Polymath World (40:39.415)
Right.
Max Baker-Hytch (40:42.924)
So yeah, it's true that Oxford will tilt more heavily towards analytic, but not entirely. And also it's worth knowing that at Oxford you have to do philosophy combined with another subject as an undergraduate. can't do Oxford's as a, you can't do philosophy as a single honours. At Cambridge you can, there's so-called tripos. So, and Cambridge is also gonna tilt quite heavily analytic as well.
But yeah, so my undergraduate was at Exeter, as I said, and that was really much more of a mix of analytic and continental. And I think I benefited from that, even though when I did master's and PhD and specialised, I did very much go down the analytic route. I think it is good to be exposed to quite a range of philosophical ways of thinking and methodologies when you're just kind of being introduced to the discipline at an early
stage.
Polymath World (41:44.301)
That's very good. Thank you so much. If people want to know more about you or they want to find your book or your research, where should they go?
Max Baker-Hytch (41:53.804)
Yeah, well, mean, the easiest thing is just to Google my name, Max Baker-Heitch, and then you'll find my faculty page. So if you want to look at...
Any of my papers you can find open access versions of those if you go to fillpapers.org so fillpapers.org and just then search for me. Then you'll find my profile on there and most of my papers are there available as PDFs that you can download.
Polymath World (42:27.469)
Are you working on another book at the moment?
Max Baker-Hytch (42:30.688)
Yes, two actually. Yeah.
Polymath World (42:35.563)
I understand. Yeah, you can't say anything about it yet. That's fine. Max, thank you. Thank you so much. It's always a pleasure. Great to chat to you today.
Max Baker-Hytch (42:43.308)
Thanks so much Sam, great to see you.