Trust and Its Absence Among Philosophers

The dissemination and discussion of interesting new ideas will only be discouraged if members of an audience are allowed to pre-publish participants' ideas, since everyone will be inhibited from trying out ideas in public. The free exchange of ideas in our discipline depends on mutual trust. Speakers assume that they are speaking to the present audience in their own voice -- not to the entire world through a reporter. If that assumption no longer holds, all of us will say only what are willing to have permanently recorded for the whole world to read. That's not an environment for the discussion of interesting new ideas.--David Velleman at Leiterreports.

Our profession faces a number of really grave ethical challenges, from the treatment of women, to the treatment of adjuncts and per-course faculty, to the concentration of wealth, power, and access, in a handful of institutions. That someone reported on Martha Nussbaum's speech doesn't strike me as one of them.--Daniel A Kaufman at Leiterreports.

In his initial contribution, which was the occasion of Leiter's original post, Velleman, who is one of our most interesting moral psychologists and who has been of great service to the profession in developing Philosopher's Imprint, suggests that "The live-blogging of Martha Nussbaum's Locke lectures would be a good occasion for a discussion of the professional ethics of this practice." From Velleman's original and subsequent remarks (see this one, especially), it's clear that Velleman believes such live-blogging is unethical. The only ethical argument I encountered in Velleman's subsequent comments on the thread is this one: "what you're not entitled to do with author's ideas is to publish them before the author has a chance to." Now, that's not quite right; what you are not allowed to do is publish another's ideas and pass them off as your own or publish another's ideas without proper attribution or publish another's ideas without making clear in what context they are uttered, etc. If an author has expressly requested that one does not circulate or quote a text or lecture, then we ought to respect the wishes of the author all other things being equal.* But I don't see what's wrong with reporting on another's ideas is, if done generously (and with skill). After all, what's horrifying about most student notes on one's courses is not that they circulate, but that they so often misrepresent (see also Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa).

Velleman's principled concerns apply in the case that occassioned them; at Oxford's official John Locke lectures webpage we learn that: "The manuscript supporting these lectures is available to people both in and outside Oxford. Anyone may access and read the manuscript, but must not forward it, publish it, or otherwise reproduce or distribute it. Citation from the manuscript is forbidden, unless you have express permission from Professor Nussbaum." [HT Dhananjay Jagannathan] So, Velleman is right to raise the issue. Reporting or blogging on another (without citation, but with attribution) goes against the spirit of Nussbaum's request. 

But as Dan Kaufman points out, Martha Nussbaum+ has actively courted celebrity (and from my vantage-point justly achieved); she is a public figure (not just in philosophy) and so it is a bit silly to treat her public lectures as private conversations. This is especially so because she has no right to hold the rest of scholarship hostage until she decides to publish her lectures. For, as Bill Wringe (with an apt nod to Kripke) notes "any work in the same area will almost certainly now be deemed unpublishable if it does not reference them." Given that she is famous and her lectures will circulate, Wringe's concern is a real one. So, in this instance, I am inclined to agree with Kaufman, Wringe, and others. Either way, the ethical question has become moot because "Professor Nussbaum has kindly given her blessing" to the blogger (and Velleman agrees).

Velleman also raises prudential considerations. He worries that people will be inhibited from trying out ideas on each other if these are prematurely reported. Unfortunately, Velleman does not explain what the root of his concern is. He might be concerned that pre-publication by others denies authors the possibility of receiving credit for their ideas. But it seems that's not what he has in mind. Rather, he seems to think that most professional philosophers prefer to have a period in which they can try out ideas in front and with the aid of their peers (lectures, drafts) without there being a permanent record of these trials. Unfortunately, Velleman does not explain why one would wish for such record-free experimenting.

I suspect, however, that the reason for Velleman's stance is that in such experiments, we sometimes make mistakes or blunders--even Homer nods, after all. Few of us like to look like a fool in front of people whose respect and admiration we desire and whose good favor we require for professional advancement. Of course, in a safe environment one would feel secure to make mistakes in one's experiments; if one's thoughts are likely to be ridiculed or used against you to undermine your reputation, one better be very cautious about what one puts forward as an experiment or in print. (This can hit home, say, when I see my PhD students struggling with their confidence; I then wonder how I failed at making them feel secure.) This is what Velleman probably has in mind with his claim that, "The free exchange of ideas in our discipline depends on mutual trust." So Velleman's comment reveals, in fact, a deep mistrust about what happens to people's reputations in the profession if we are shown to make mistakes or are thought confused, sloppy, etc. 

Now, just recently I had asserted that in "our profession arguments, including moral arguments, are treated as disembodied from moral character and lived experience." So, it would seem that I disagree with what I take to be Velleman's implied assumption that we need a trusting environment to develop ideas before we own them publicly, where we expect no mercy. However, there is no paradox here. There is, in fact, a kind of imperfect score-keeping in the profession where mistakes are tracked (and, sadly, it often seems that the more junior you are, the more purported blunders are held against you [bad first impressions, etc.], while it's very hard to have genuine contributions be recognized especially if you lack the right sort of mentors). Luckily, for most of us the discipline is very dispersed, and a change of place can allow us to start with a fresh slate. Of course, if  you are reasonably senior, one may well have the feeling that lots of folk are keeping track of you. We may well need some such delusions to stay motivated in what is otherwise a very lonely enterprise. (For the sad reality is that given that time is a very scarce resource, the vast majority of work written by even senior members of the profession has relatively few readers outside their core circle of admirers.)

So, our words are owned by us and there is very imperfect score-keeping of this by the discipline (although it may feel overbearing to some of us). But what we do not do is judge your claims in light of our evaluation of your character, even if we sometimes informally impugn your character for making philosophical mistakes.**

"The free exchange of ideas in our discipline depends on mutual trust."

There is no doubt that trust greases the machinery of the discipline (letters of recommendation, referee reports, even hiring decisions); we rely on judgments of others to guide us in some such decision. When I learned that somebody I admired, Martin Stone, had been a serial plagiarist, I realized how much I had trusted the judgments of others (that had introduced us, given him a job).  But in reflecting on the way trust operates in the discipline, I decided that I had been too trusting (collaborating, sending students to him, etc.) and that we needed more transparency not less; many of our most important, professional judgments are done in secret and the decisions that follow from them are often not owned by us, but, rather, displaced onto committees. But, while algorithms can be disembodied in some sense, judgments cannot; judgments need to be traced back to a person, her situation, and her character. For, trust presupposes some such judgment of character. So, oddly, while professionally we tend to treat arguments (mistakenly, I now think; recall also) without regard to individual character, we assume that the process that produces such an argument is full of trustworthy characters (and so that we can score-keep and focus on the form and content of the argument, and) so that the "exchange" of ideas is possible, and this is what Velleman appears to be defending. That is, we make tacit judgments about the character of the philosophical community.*** But, just because the exchange is friction-less (Velleman's "free"), it doesn't follow that there aren't hidden costs: one person's security in her freedom can come at the expense of another person's exclusion.++    

Of course, it does not follow from my impressions that everything needs to be transparent; perhaps, we ought to be allowed -- like the alchemists -- to assay our ideas and concepts with a few like-minded before we let them sail. In an age where the NSA monitors all, this might be too much to wish for.

 

+Disclosure: she was once my teacher. 

*Such moral requests may well be trumped by aesthetic/literary/political judgments. Brod was wrong to publish Kafka, unless he understood that Kafka really intended the opposite of his request; while I wouldn't want Brod as my friend, I am still grateful to him as a reader.

**One bit of evidence for this is that professional disagreement often is turned into moralized, personal conflict.

***While lots of decision-theorists assume following Aumann that if there is a relatively free market in ideas there won't be any reason to disagree, Merel Lefevere and I argue that the composition of ideas within a community also matters to our evaluation of the ideas produced by it.

++The economist-philosopher, MA Khan, has written very perceptively on these themes here.

Comments

[Christopher P. Long]

Nicely put, Eric.

My sense is that much of the controversy associated with the question of live-tweeting and live-blogging in Philosophy is rooted in a deep discomfort among professional philosophers with being public. By "being public" I mean not simply appearing in public - an instance of which I consider giving a public lecture to be, but more importantly engaging in substantive philosophical dialogue with publics of various shapes and sizes. We are all learning the habits of public communication in a digital age, and with that learning comes, of course, opportunities to fail.

If philosophers are uncomfortable with being public, we are even more uncomfortable with the public display of our own human fallibility. You have identified the stakes of that fallibility for our more junior colleagues well in your post. Relinquishing a "gotcha" approach to argumentation and scholarship would go some distance in mitigating the cost of PDF (Public Display of Fallibility).

I am struck, however, that the whole controversy seems to be blind to a live-tweeting or -blogging culture that embraces the provisional nature of the ideas shared through social media. Those of us who use Twitter and other social media for academic engagement don't regularly mistake the live-tweeted or -blogged content of a conference participant for the fully worked out published idea of a speaker. Rather, when live-tweeting and -blogging is done well, it amplifies ideas, establishes connections, and enriches the ongoing work of those engaged with the online community.

One of the reasons we are working on the Public Philosophy Journal (http://publicphilosophyjournal.org/ ) is to help cultivate the habits of online public scholarship in philosophy by looking to the open web for conversations where issues of philosophical concern intersect with those of public concern. The project is made much more daunting, but also, I hope, more relevant and valuable by the fact that we professional philosophers are often uncomfortable sharing our work-in-progress in and with the public.

I appreciate your post as an example of how that can be done well.

[Eric Schliesser]

Thank you for your kind words, Christopher.
I like your focus on the ways that digital media can enrich philosophy. (Obviously, I am not an impartial bystander when I say that.) I have been following the Public Philosophy Journal with interest; it's good that folk like you are experimenting with formats, perhaps, even experimenting as a way of doing philosophy (with many kinds of publics and publicity).