You Don’t Need a Title to be a Thinker
There’s a fallacy I call the Titleist Fallacy. (It’s not about golf.) It goes something like this:
If S does not have a Ph.D. in a given subject, then S has nothing reasonable to say about that subject and should remain silent with respect to it.
Example:
Jones: The government is too powerful. I’m opposed to big government.
Smith: You don’t have a Ph.D. in government or in political philosophy. So, you can’t discuss the topic intelligently and should remain silent.
Jones: You just committed the titleist fallacy!
In sum, though title possession is consistent with good thinking, having a title is neither necessary nor sufficient for being a good thinker. To paraphrase Ragnar Lothbrok from Vikings:
You don’t need a title to be a thinker.