Catrina asked:

I do not wish to be disrespectful, but why do philosophers use so much jargon? Everything can be
explained in a way that the majority can understand; in plain easy to understand English so why use
words that don't make sense to most people? Doesn't this make philosophy elitist?

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Some philosophers are elitist and consequently ineffectual. They use jargon because they will not
take the time to clarify their meanings even to fellow philosophers, let alone to the average person.
They are the one's showing disrespect. The success of the Dummiesand Complete Idiot's Guide
series confirm your point that experts can express themselves in a way that interested nonexperts
can understand them.

There are times, however, when specialists properly resort to a technical vocabulary when speaking
only to and for each other, and they violate no ethics of discourse when they do so. This is certainly
true in fields other than philosophy. Ask your question again after substituting the words "physicians"
and "medicine" for "philosophers" and "philosophy" respectively. We should all be the poorer were
physicians, when consulting with each other about the human body and its maladies, to impose on
themselves the high transaction costs of translating their terminology and explaining their
methodology into the vernacular.

The great champion of grace and clarity in philosophical writing was Brand Blanshard. I give him the
last word:

"But on the great issues of philosophy many of men's hopes and fears do hang, and plain men feel
that their philosopher should be alive to this and show it. It is not that they want him to give up his
intellectual rigour and scrupulousness at least they do not think that it is; it is rather that when men
with hearts as well as heads are dealing with themes of human importance, they should not deal with
them as if nothing but their heads, and somewhat desiccated heads at that, were involved...

"I do not know why a biologist, presenting a paper on a technical point to colleagues, should not write
in a way as unintelligible as he pleases to those outside the circle, provided it is no obstacle to those
inside. But suppose that his subject is one of general interest, that the session is open to the public
and that he knows many of his audience will be drawn from that public. Should he then travel the
same high and unheeding road? ... He would not whisper a fascinating titbit of information to one
friend while another who is equally interested is present, but feels no hesitation in talking to an
audience in a language lost on half of them. The French, who have earned a right to speak on these
matters, have a saying in point: La clart est la politesse. In philosophical speaking and writing, one's
manners are connected very intimately with one's manner." (On Philosophical Style1954)

Anthony Flood

Suppose I wanted to express precisely the relationship between mass and energy. How should I do
that in English? Should I say, "energy equals mass multiplied by the speed of light squared"? The
problem is that "energy" is a word that, in English, can mean many things, but in physics, means
something very specific. The other words in that phrase suffer from the same ambiguity in English. So
a physicist uses the equation, "E=mc2". But that's jargon, right? So now what?

Philosophy is a very old and difficult area, much older than physics (which branched off from
philosophy perhaps around the time of Galileo, or perhaps a century or so earlier), with problems that
have been kicked around, analyzed in various ways, developed, elaborated, and so forth. A lackof
jargon, i.e., precision in expression, would merely indicate lack of progress in understanding and
analyzing problems.

Does it make learning and doing philosophy harder? Yes. But one can say the same about medicine,
mathematics, chemistry, and indeed all the disciplines which have achieved specialized knowledge,
techniques, and need means of expressing them precisely. One might consider, in fact, learning the
various disciplines the equivalent to learning their languages.

So when you say, "Everything can be explained in a way that the majority can understand; in plain
easy to understand English" would you include physics in that? Formal logic? Computer
programming? Electronics? Neurochemistry? Statistics? Cognitive science? Then why philosophy?

Steven Ravett Brown

Why do philosophers use so much jargon? Good question! One of the reasons I didn't go on to do
further study in philosophy, after taking a first degree in the subject, was the specialized, academic
nature of the subject as studied in universities. I have always been against the use of too much jargon
in philosophical writing, and try to make my own writing easy to understand.

Why is philosophy often hard to understand? Sometimes — particularly in the case of classic texts —
because it has been translated from the idiom of a foreign language.Other times we may suspect the
writer of hiding second-rate ideas behind large, impressive-sounding words!

On the other hand, I disagree with you when you say that everything can be explained in a way that
the majority can understand. There is always the danger that, in making a subject so simple that it's
possible for everyone to understand it, you may oversimplifyit — losing much of its original exactness
and depth. I remember a quote I once read, which advised that one should "make everything as
simple as possible, but not simpler". There is a place for technical terms within philosophy, just as
there is in many other areas of specialized study. Some examples: chromosome, zygote , enthalpy,
atomic mass , logarithm, dodecahedron, tempera, impressionism . Such words can often be used
with greater precision than ordinary, everyday language. Or they may provide a 'shorthand' way of
referring to commonly discussed ideas, which will be familiar to all those who have studied the
subject to a certain level — in which case they have a place when those experienced students are
writing for each other, but should be avoided in writing intended to be accessible to those with no
previous knowledge of the subject. This explains most of the jargon use in philosophical writing — it is
usually written with the assumption it will only be read by people familiar with the subject.

If you're looking for some jargon-free philosophy to read, I would recommend you try Philosophy Now
magazine ( http://www.philosophynow.org ), which has always impressed me by its relatively low
jargon content.

Katharine Hunt

Philosophers do use a lot of jargon, but so do those who have studied any field in any depth. Jargon
is just a specialized vocabulary for a particular subject. Why do specialists use jargon? Because by
using words with a specialized meaning, or by inventing terms to stand for particular ideas, they can
talk to each other in a way that saves time and increases precision. Rather than saying things that
can, as you say, be said in plain, easy to understand English, but which also need a lot of words to
capture the precise meaning, they use the jargon as shorthand.

So, jargon is an essential, and probably unavoidable, feature on any deep study. As such, there is
nothing wrong with it. It makes clear thinking about complex matters easier, for those who have been
initiated into its use. The last phrase is, of course, vital.

It leads to two observations. Firstly, jargon is only useful when talking to someone else who
understands it. Thus, anyone who is familiar with jargon ought to keep their audience in mind. If they
don't, then their audience won't understand them. So, when I write to this forum, I try to use plain,
easy to understand English as much as possible, even if it means I have to write a whole lot more to
get my ideas across. The 'crime' is not using jargon, but using it in the wrong place.

Secondly, much writing in any subject is written for other initiates. If one wishes to become more
knowledgeable about any subject, one must be initiated into the use of jargon. That, at least in an
important part, is what getting an education in a subject is about — learning how to use its vocabulary
accurately and well. Hence, when I write here, I introduce and try to explain some technical terms,
because I believe that readers of this forum are concerned to become more able to read philosophy.
But we cannot expect an initiate writing for other initiates to write in such a way that 'the majority' can
understand, for that is not their audience. If you wish to understand technical writing in any field, you
must become initiated.

Of course, I have over-simplified above. Some experts like to use jargon for its own sake, or to show
how clever they are, or to dress up poor ideas as good ones. This is a misuse of jargon, and we can
criticize such writing for being obscure.

Does this make philosophy (or any other specialist discipline) elitist? [Warning: the next sentence is
highly typical philosophical jargon]. It depends on what you mean by 'elitist'. If you mean
'exclusionary', I think not, because it is open to anyone to learn the jargon if they wish (and provided
they are able). If you mean 'confined to those who have put in the effort', then I guess it is, at least at
the level of specialized philosophical discussion. Yet there are many who try to make philosophy
open to the majority by interpreting it for a more general audience. These are people who try to
translate complex, technical ideas into plain, easy to understand English so that the majority can
understand.

Tim Sprod

Why so much jargon in philosophy? Well, as the Bible story says, Adam "named all the animals", and
the structure of the Hebrew language gives a clue as to how he would have done so: by taking basic
words with their basic meanings and mixing them together to form new words that effectively describe
the animal. The principle here is that language expands as knowledge expands. Jargon is nothing but
an expansion of language to accommodate increased knowledge.

But, would that everyone should be included in learning that knowledge in such a way that they do
not need to learn the jargon before learning the subject! People should not be expected to learn the
jargon as a sort of prerequisite for learning the subject. The jargon used while instructing them in the
subject should only be to the amount and kind of jargon which they can easily digest while learning
the subject. Expecting people to learn more jargon than subject is a very inefficient way to learn a
subject, and often simply shuts their minds down. This is much like trying to lift a weight up some
steps and the weight is much too heavy for one to lift high enough to place it even on the first step.
Jargon is no replacement for a good grounding in a subject. If you were well grounded in a subject,
then you could easily come up with jargon of your own — and that is precisely how we have jargon in
the first place.

There is, in fact, such a thing as an elitism which disdains, or is even malignant toward, the
"uninitiated", and this is bad. No good parent or other teacher treats their children this way, and, if all
parents and other teachers didtreat their children this way, then most children would reach adulthood
having developed the kind of non-comprehending response to so many common subjects which, in
the current world, some children have toward "higher math": the "eyes glazed over",
mental-numbness response in the face of the jargon.

Daniel Pech