system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
If philosophers really determine their position by evaluating the best available arguments and evidence, why do so many defend the same position for their entire career and so few change camps?

Many career academics start research at the age of 22-24 get their PhD at the age of 26-27 or so and publish until they're 60+, so they easily observe 3+ decades of development in philosophy and science.

If they really just evaluate the currently best available evidence, wouldn't we expect many more cases of prominent defenders abandoning their position in the light of better evidence? Like, there are 5 prominent defenders of position A, 5 of position B, 5 of position C, and none of them thinks the available evidence presented to them over 3-4 decades changes anything, they just happened to get it right all along? How plausible is this? Say between 1980 and 2010 they just didn't see anything that prompted them to change their take on the human mind, mathematics, science, logic, or whatever topic they philosophize about?

And aren't there all sorts of other forces at work? For example the fact that being an expert on position A for 2 decades is a pleasant position to be in, the psychology of admitting defeat, the fact that putting something to rest isn't great for maybe the PhD students of that person or their department, if those want to research this? Does anyone actually believe all that's going on is evaluating evidence?
gpt
I know what you mean. Philosophers are known for a general position, even if there's refinement of what they believe over time. You have "idealists", or "scientific realists", or "Humeans".

One non-philosophical reason is probably to do with modern academia as it is. You're not gonna get published if you flip flop between positions. You'll lose credibility, in fact, because readers will think your position is just your flavour of the week. Someone who is a staunch defender of a philosophy fits much better in the modern system of journals and constant competition for promotion in a university. Philosophers are incentivised to maintain their positions in a world run by branding.

Philosophically/psychologically, people are maybe just not very open to completely overhauling their positions. It takes a tremendous amount of mental energy to accept that the foundations of the world as you previously knew them may be wrong, and to start from scratch. Wittgenstein did something like this (and lost a lot of Cambridge friends over it).

Eventually we all settle upon something, even if that something is very close to a "nothing".