Here's an unconvincing argument form I often see in philosophy talks and papers:

"My target is view X. X, I will show, is committed to Y. Y is a controversial philosophical view, so it's better to reject X, so as to remain neutral on the controversial Y."

This is a bad argument

I mean, like, it's an interesting philosophical project to demonstrate that X is committed to Y, and you can make that argument if you like! But that's not an argument against X, it's an argument that Xists should be Yists too.

It's not like we didn't already know, in all the cases where this happens, that X is a controversial view. People don't bust out this argument form when everybody already thought X was obvious. (When that's so, this is usually a new argument for Y!)

So establishing the conclusion that X has controversial commitments is not at all surprising — X *itself* is a controversial commitment!

And I guess more generally, I think it's GOOD when philosophical views interact in interesting and substantive ways with other philosophical views.

The fact that your view is neutral on everything everyone else is interested in is not a philosophical virtue!

The contrary thought, which seems to run implicitly in a lot of philosophical work, is, I think, motivated by a mode of philosophy too fixated on winning arguments, or avoiding refutation. That can be a fun game but it's not where the interesting work is.

Some of our field motivates/valourizes views like this:

* they sound really implausible at first
* there's an argument for them
* they're really good at slipping out of commitments, so you can avoid every objection

I think philosophy should prioritize more interesting projects.

Postscript 1: I'm not subtweeting anything in particular at the moment, this is just an observation I've made a lot of times over the years. I don't think I'd care to name any names right now, but I think people within academic philosophy will probably recognize the phenomenon.

Postscript 2: If you're a student/underemployed academic I won't hold it against you if you leverage the current bad values I'm describing to help you publish and get a career going, but please make a point of doing cooler stuff once established.