On Being Judged on Our Publications

As a graduate student at MIT in the early 1990s...I attended several of Dreben's classes. Sometimes I enjoyed them a lot, and sometimes I felt my time was being wasted. They weren't very well prepared (whatever blocked him from publishing presumably also blocked him from preparing for seminar). But he was an extremely entertaining speaker, and there were humorous rants about why this or that paragraph was nonsense. The worst element of the classes involved his playing up to his fan club, people who were there to feel like they were in a special in-group of agonizingly deep profoundity, where they could chuckle together at those silly fools who wasted their time working hard at philosophy. As a poster above said, he was at his best when interrupted from a monologue and forced to defend a particular interpretation against a textual objection. At least, that's when real progress could happen, and I learned a lot from those encounters.

...I met with him occasionally, and he was very encouraging and helpful, even though I was arguing for an interpretive line with which he strongly disagreed. In the end, he wrote a letter for me on the job market. Many philosophers would have problems writing in support of someone disagreeing rather radically with them. It shows a lot about his character that he did not.

So I learned very much from discussions with him, and he supported me professionally in my career, despite deep disagreements. But as I have become more senior in the profession, and better acquainted with the sociology of academia, I think I have a clearer sense about what Dreben was going through. Like numerous academics in every field, he had an incredibly hard time working. Judging from his career, I imagine he had a hard time sitting for long hours reading or writing. Since working is what we are paid to do, those of us who can't work develop elaborate reasons to placate our egos about our inability to produce it.

One commonly supplied reason for an inability to publish is that one's own work is so much more rigorous than everyone else, that it takes much longer to produce (people who publish are sloppy). Another commonly supplied reason is that one doesn't produce work because one is so much deeper and more profound than everyone else (people who publish are shallow). Almost every academic who suffers from an inability to publish thinks that s/he can't because of one of these two reasons.

I guess with these remarks I am finally coming around to seeing the value of a Wittgensteinean 'therapy' analysis of certain philosophical positions...--Jason Stanley commenting (2005) @Leiterreports

 

The brute fact is that a good portion of academics are unproductive. The fact that Wittgenstein was also unproductive at various times in his career is poor evidence that unproductiveness is a good guide to brilliance. Quine was really productive. Elizabeth Anscombe was really productive. Rawls at least published one of the most important works of the century during his lifetime. And hey, so did Wittgenstein.

...But in the end we all should be judged on what we actually produce. That's a really demanding standard, I realize. But it would be improper to judge my former teachers according to more relaxed standards than I judge other philosophers. I see no other way for academia to be a meritocracy. We admire Wittgenstein now because he actually did end up producing important work. He was admired during his lifetime because he wrote an incredibly important book early in his career.

Given the available evidence, the best hypothesis is that Dreben still gets talked about because he happened to be at Harvard when lots of other people were there who published lots of really important philosophy. Prestigious institutional affiliation can make up for a lot of old fashioned hard work.--Jason Stanley, commenting (2005)@Leiterreports

 

...Dreben has had a negative influence on philosophy, one that we still see today. It's difficult to have this view, since I liked the man, and learned a lot from him. So from my perspective, he clearly had a positive impact as well. But there is a certain kind of way of being in philosophy that I blame (rightly or wrongly) on his influence. That way of being involves not publishing much at all, and making a career by creating a cult of personality based on a myth of inexplicable depth. No doubt Wittgenstein had a cult of personality too. Indeed, I think we still see the terrible effects of this in philosophy. But Wittgenstein also gave us a substantial body of brilliant work, which more than makes up for the numerous Wittgenstein cult followers currently lurking around. In effect, Wittgenstein proved by his work that his was not a *myth* of depth.--Jason Stanley, Commenting (2005)@Leiterreports

Brian Leiter reminded us of an old thread on his blog in which Burton Dreben's role at Harvard (and BU) and, thereby, because it was the leading department for quite a time, on the profession is discussed. The exchange that follows is really interesting not just for who participated in it, but also for content, and it's a bit unfair that I focus only on Stanley's comments (and not on his critics in the exchange--some of whom anticipate my observations). To be sure, Stanley has changed his mind on quite a few 'sociological' issues during the last decade, and what follows is not directed at Stanley (ca 2016) today. I mention this explicitly, not just out of a sense of fairness, but also because the Stanley has been the subject of a recent (to use a word that gets overused) smear campaign in some right-leaning media outlets.

I share Stanley's dislike of the cults of personality, and the ways these feed into a larger (boywonder) culture. Stanley advocates a 'demanding' standard:

• In the end we all should be judged on what we actually produce.

In context, it's clear that Jason means by this our (scholarly) publications and their "influence" (measured, in part, by citations and impact on the field). So, let's rewrite the demanding standard as follows:

• In the end we all should be judged on our scholarly publications and the influence and impact of these on the field.

Leaving aside quibbles about measurement and impact outside the field,* the first thing to note is that this is not a demanding, but a narrow standard. It leaves out other sources of philosophical merit. Now in the exchange Stanley recognizes this last point, and he allows that it's possible that an "outstanding colleague who provided intelligent conversation, exemplary behavior, and terrific teaching should merit one tenure at a leading department."  Stanley is right to distinguish between criteria of tenure and in-the-end-criteria. It is not clear why  these other criteria do not enter into in-the-end-judgments.

• In the end we all should be judged on our scholarly publications and the influence and impact of these on the field not on other criteria that may merit tenure.

Given that by definition, this is not a tenure-criterion, it is worth asking what the point of this criterion is. One might think that it's a criterion for evaluating the legacy of a person (Alva Noe, while criticizing Stanley's position, suggests this). But it is a manifestly bad way of judging legacy, because one can shape a field or sub-set of it in lots of other ways (journal editing, conversation, teaching, shaping of questions, and, even, psychological warfare).

While Stanley insists this is not a criterion for tenure-ability, he does argue that it is a necessary means to for "academia to be a meritocracy." Indeed, we recognize, credit, and reward our peers not just by tenure. (Along the way, Stanley also notes that we get paid to work.) So, it is a criterion by which we judge and honor significance in order to ensure that the academy tends toward meritocracy.  Because of the emphasis on meritocracy within the academy, I think Stanley meant to convey the idea that the criterion should be used at any given moment during a career (except, perhaps, the early stages):

• At any given time during our professional career, we all should be judged on our scholarly publications and the  influence and impact of these on the field not on other criteria that may (also) merit tenure.

I do not think this is right. Not just for the reason that (i) not all influence and impact on the field is beneficial. But also because (ii) some of great influence and impact on a field can have awful impact on (bits of the rest of) society, and (iii) as others noted in criticizing Stanley, there is more to a professional philosophical life than publication. In fact, Stanley's criticism of Dreben's teaching help us think about it. There is a nearby possible world, perhaps, where Dreben was a more productive and influential scholar. In that world the cultish elements (let's stipulate Jason's perception of these are accurate) of his teaching would get a pass by Stanley's lights. But I don't think that's right. Dreben's activities as a teacher matter a great deal, and there is no reason to evaluate these in meritocratic fashion. (The measures and proxies may be tricky and not useful for tenure, etc.)

In addition, we need to ask a further question, how do Dreben's teaching practices cohere with, let's call it, his metaphilosophical views (say as published or articulated in public fashion).  Recall that a philosopher's philosophical integrity is the way(s) in which one's professional arguments, professional credit, and public utterances and comportment cohere. In light of this and our social obligations, we may rewrite the criterion as follows:

• At any given time during our professional career (except at the early stages), we all should be judged on our scholarly publications and teaching and the  influence and impact of these on the field (and not on other criteria that may (also) merit tenure), while avoiding harms to society, in light of our metaphilosophical views as long as these views are minimally conducive to making the profession meritocratic.

Now, obviously we may disagree about what counts as a scholarly publication (I have defended blogging, after all), but I have gone on long enough today.

 

*And concerns about anachronism in judging Dreben.

Comments

[Jason Stanley]

I am embarrassed by this post of mine from 2005. I cannot believe I seriously used the term "meritocracy"; this is before I read Michael Young's 1958 book, The Rise of the Meritocracy: 1870-2033, and discovered that the word "meritocracy" was introduced sarcastically. I was an idiot. Mea Culpa.

[Eric Schliesser]

Yes, I have my doubts about meritocracy, too: http://digressionsnimpressions.typepad.com/digressionsimpressions/2015/11/against-merit-i-think.html

[Graham White]

One objection to the "only publications count" position is this: that philosophy is worth doing because it provides a public good, and that public good cannot simply be publications, especially philosophy written in the modern manner (either analytic or european), because nobody reads this stuff apart from philosophers. Otherwise philosophy becomes a profession which exists purely for its own sake. There should be, at least, some positive influence of philosophy on the rest of human activity: either by percolation of philosophical ideas and methods outside the community (and how does this happen? nobody is very clear), or by simple personal contact. So, maybe Dreben's way has value (though I personally feel that, without the hard work of scholarship and writing, one's thinking is likely to become far too self-regarding).