[Over time I plan to phase out this blog at typepad. This post was first published at digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber at <digressionsimpressions.substack.com>]
At Leiterreports (here; here; here) and DailyNous another 'philosophy controversy' is playing out. I am sure most of my readers know that it was triggered by an autobiographical essay in Quillette accusing OUP, widely regarded as the leading press in English language professional philosophy [humble-brag: that's where I publish my stuff], of irregular editorial practices with a monograph and handbook chapter on one of the central topics in the contemporary culture wars. (The author has already found new homes for both works.) As has become clear, the handling editor was Peter M., who is widely regarded as the most prestigious philosophy editor within the field. (No, I work with the other Peter, O.) The author of the autobiographical essay is a senior professor at MIT, Alex Byrne.
Nearly all the people crying 'foul' now are people that happily participate in a system that is opaque, riddled with systematic conflicts of interests, editorial unaccountability, and that usually apparently does not cause them any friction. For, when I read Byrne's essay in Quillette, I was stunned by his surprise that he received 'bizarre' referee reports that do not substantiate their claims and that are uncivil. And that, after a life-time in the profession, he sincerely claims "a reviewer is expected to give reasons for her verdict." The tone of referees has been a widely discussed problem in professional philosophy (including in a thoughtful piece unrelated to culture wars in TLS by Tim Crane not so long ago.)
I was bemused to read in Byrne (and some commentators in the blogosphere) that "publication is practically guaranteed" for a handbook article. Twice in the last decade a handbook chapter drafted by me was rejected: once with the suggestion that one of the co-editors could rewrite it with me (I pulled that article and it became chapter 1 of my monograph), and once because my work was not deemed up to par and the editors decided there was too little time for me to improve it. While that stung, for all I know the editors were right about that latter call because another version of that paper was rejected in another special issue. (I can't hate the essay because it was my successful job-talk paper.) I certainly agree with Byrne that receiving editorial word via Twitter is seriously odd; it's probably still marginally better than the time the Monist canceled a special issue with one of my accepted papers without informing me! (We eventually published the paper in Metaphilosophy, where it was published after a year and half (including a mysterious delay because of an editorial mix-up.)) Yes, I did publish a subsequent paper with the Monist. None of my experiences are newsworthy because they are so common and they do not involve the culture wars (although some of my anonymous referees single out my blogging for special ire).
More than a decade ago, I was galvanized into blogging because of a massive plagiarism scandal involving a senior scholar that I sometimes collaborated with that exposed lackadaisical refereeing and publishing practices in an adjoining field. Recently that very same field was rocked by a second major plagiarism scandal (involving a more junior scholar), and dropped the ball in its response in lots of ways. In fact, shortly after NewAPPS was founded several controversies involving Synthese unfolded (we had a 'Synthese Affair' tab): one triggered by a special issue on intelligent design involving editorial improprieties that even made it to the New York Times and one involving inappropriate pictures on a course website by one of the very editors involved in that scandal. A few years later another special issue by Synthese exploded into the news when its guest editor suggested that logical pluralism and homosexuality are linked. This produced a moratorium on special issues at Synthese.
As an aside [feel free to skip to the next paragraph], after the moratorium ended, I co-edited a special issue for Synthese. My very own contribution to that special issue did not make it through the revamped referee process. So, I can attest that Synthese has learned its lesson. (It's chapter 13 of my 2017 OUP monograph now.)
I don't mean to leave you with the feeling that professional philosophy has a Synthese problem, or that this journal was/is especially badly managed, or that controversy always only involves then-culture-war issues. Some of the purportedly best journals in professional philosophy, Nous and PPR went through a phase when they had to put moratoria on submissions for extended periods, in part because they had been edited by the same highly respected editor, who also edited Philosophical Issues. In that very same period, another highly respected long-time editor of Philosophical Studies resigned after 25 years because he was unhappy about how a fellow editor handled a paper critical of a paper (by Byrne) thar he had published in the same journal. (Okay that also involved culture war issues.) After the resignation, stories surfaced that this very editor did not always practice double-anonymous reviewing when it suited him.
Even when proper refereeing procedures are followed a journal can screw up post publication. By the time the 'transracialism controversy' (which also made the New York Times) had played out, the editorial team, many of the associate editors, and many of the governing board had resigned or been nudged out from the feminist journal Hypatia. (I wrote lots of earnest, widely read blog posts about this case none of them made it into the wikipedia entry.)
The previous paragraphs hint at the proverbial tip of the ice-berg. For much of the post WWII period, analytic philosophy has been characterized by a concerted effort at journal capture and then these journals were subsequently run in a clubby fashion that disproportionally served the interests of people in the network of these journals, which have absurdly low acceptance rates, in a discipline that is characterized by incredibly steep economic and prestige hierarchies. It is, in fact, not uncommon to receive incredibly uncivil referee reports, which, if they do materialize, often are slow in coming. At many journals editors de facto farm out the decision by effectively giving a single, sometimes idiotic referee veto power.
It's not just journals. When I was still very junior a highly respected editor at one of the other leading philosophy presses forced a paper out of the volume I co-edited because one of his/her/their referees was incensed over a footnote in one of the papers (never published) that re-litigated a conference dispute (between the referee and the chapter’s author) decades earlier. The referee revealed himself to me and wisely recused himself, but the editor felt loyalty to the referee and insisted that the chapter be withdrawn. (The author refused to submit a different paper.) I thought it very odd that the editor (with no expertise in the field) took sides in a professional dispute. It didn't stop me from working with this editor again, of course. And when I look into my soul, I recall times that as an editor I was involved in decisions that may have seemed badly motivated to some of the rejected authors.
If we step back from the details of any controversy, such controversy is only to be expected: academic philosophers are humans not sages, who have few reliable measures to navigate a very scarce job environment and informational overload while norms of quality and professional conduct are constantly contestable (and, more slowly, shifting). While there are a lot of truth-guided and earnest people in the profession, whenever we get a glimpse under the hood of how confidential consequential decisions (e.g., publication, admission, appointments) are really made irregularities seem to proliferate. (That is compatible with the vast majority of decisions being defensible on intrinsic and/or procedural grounds.)
Moreover, in each controversy, a very senior figure will gravely and shamelessly intone that other scholars are afraid to speak up because they fear for their careers. It somehow never registers that the structural, cultural, intellectual, and economic conditions that generate such -- let's stipulate -- real fear (sometimes even co-produced by said senior figure) also existed in some shape or another in the lost golden age they cherish, but that then they were on the right side of history in which the people in their network could count on obliging editors, referees, and appointment committees (just ask continental philosophers, or anyone working in other margins of the field).
In our collective behavior we reveal that professional philosophy is, in part, a (modest-in-the-long-term-scheme-of-things) spoils system because during each controversy we go through the same charade sincerely felt debates and sophisticated and laughable arguments (including by world class experts on argument, the working of evidence, inductive risk, deliberative democracy, and ethics, etc.), but we never really risk changing the system and incentives -- our role in a wider political economy of credentialing and knowledge production -- that produce these kinds of controversies (and the many less noticed irregularities that they hint at) so frequently.
The predictability, frequency, and manner of these controversies makes me suspect that such controversies serve a social function. It would be nice if they represented the birth-pangs of a new, healthier intellectual age. But I doubt they are truth-functional because they are characterized by what Mill called ‘vituperative’' speech; I used to think the function was still epistemic: to signal a shift in norm, practice, or attitudes. I increasingly suspect they recur because they drive people without a taste for cruelty and combat away from the discipline (and thereby reduce competition over jobs and prestige, and rid ourselves of sources of dissent) and help entrench the same type of enduring professional hierarchy, even if the tokens at the top move around a bit.
- This first appeared at: <On the controversy in the philosophical blogosphere. (substack.com)> a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
In Web of Science, the median (and average) age of literature cited in publications plummets after each world war.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.20744
During WWII, less was published and less recent material was available to be cited. But after WWII, the amount of recent material available for citation exploded, and the median age of items in reference lists plunged to 4.5 years around 1955. Since then, as reference lists have lengthened, the median age of cited items has steadily increased in Web of Science.
So, philosophy reviewers have bad manners, editors have agendas, and this can serve a social function of exclusion and hierarchy maintenance, especially at top journals. (Not only in philosophy!) But there are wider trends too.
Posted by: Aaron Lercher | 04/21/2023 at 09:38 PM