At Daily Nous, Justin writes in praise of the outsider perspective. He quotes William Lycan:
An outsider to a small subliterature is more likely than is an insider to make an interesting or even important contribution to it. And the same for an outsider to a whole problematic within an area of philosophy. And possibly the same for an outsider to a whole area.
This resonates with me. As a philosopher of science, I ended up with a research program in the philosophy of music because my perspective on problems cast an interested light on questions beyond science. That said, here are some cautionary remarks about the outsider perspective— running roughly in order from the least serious to the most fundamental.
First, coming in from the outside can be hard work. One has to read and understand enough both to engage the inside and to utilize the outside. When I’ve used philosophy of biology as a wrench to tighten up the ontology of music, I had to dig into both areas.
Second, Lycan adds, “I can think of many examples, and I’m sure you can too.” But this is partly just selection bias. The outsider perspective can yield valuable insights, but it can also be blundering epistemic trespass. Many outsiders don’t put in the work, just expecting some new domain of problems to give way to their familiar toolkit.
Third, it simply isn’t possible for everyone to be an outsider all the time. The outsider perspective is only possible because there is an inside. Moreover, most productive puzzle solving is from the inside of a shared perspective. The outsider perspective is valuable precisely when the resources of the shared paradigm have been thoroughly exploited.1