Digressions&Impressions

On Scorekeeping in Professional Philosophy, and Other Credit Economies

Last week, two events occurred that are emblematic of the repeated structural gaslighting of disabled philosophers in which nondisabled philosophers engage and the continued exclusion of disabled philosophers of disability from the profession that almost all philosophers tacitly enforce and reward. One of these events took place in comments on the Daily Nous blog, involving philosophers who seem largely uninformed about ableism in philosophy and indeed uneducated about how power operates in the profession and society more broadly. The other event was the consequence of an event that I have written about before, namely, the recruitment for a position in Bioethics and Disability Studies in the philosophy department at Georgetown.

In the first case, the philosophers in question depoliticized and individualized a politically saturated situation, namely, the unacknowledged use of the insights of disabled philosophers of disability by nondisabled philosophers, appealing to dismissive remarks about political correctness and unexamined views about personal intentions in order to do so. In the second case, the position was awarded to a nondisabled philosopher even though numerous disabled philosophers of disability applied for the job, many of whom have much more knowledge about and experience of ableism and disability than the nondisabled philosopher who got hired.

Both events became part of the public discourse that circulated in philosophy on social media last week. Yet no nondisabled philosopher came forward to challenge the events and draw attention to the ways in which they reinforced the asymmetries of power that currently condition relations between disabled and nondisabled philosophers. ...

Indeed, my disabled philosopher colleagues and I feel betrayed once again.... betrayed by the philosophical community that continues to exploit and distort disabled people’s experiences and wisdom while denying us the authority and professional acknowledgement of that knowledge..--Shelley Tremain @Biopolitical Philosophy [HT Dailynous]

A tacit assumption, even existential commitment, I have long had is that professional philosophy  is characterized by reasonably accurate scorekeeping. We are a relatively small discipline, with even smaller sub-fields, that generally have overlapping workshops/conferences and referee poules. If anything, I tend to worry that professional philosophy is too clubby. So, a few years ago I was stunned to discover material in a handbook chapter that went over the very same correspondence (between A & B) that I had covered in a high profile journal in the field a few years before without mentioning. What made the case neat was that the other scholar worked with the archived papers of B, whereas I had worked with A. (Turns out A & B both kept copies of their own letters. Oh the vanity of academics!)

Because I was on friendly terms with the other scholar (cf. clubbiness), I wrote the other scholar that I was disappointed my piece was not cited. That passive aggressive remark was left unanswered. As the weeks past, I did wonder whether I should write the editor of the handbook and kvetch. But because I had missed deadline after deadline for that very same handbook -- recall I said things are a bit clubby in philosophy -- and then my hasty draft  (on a different topic than the correspondence between A&B) was rejected as inadequate (not entirely unfairly), I decided that I would probably regret pursuing this further. I console myself with the thought that the handbook paper is cited only by its author so far. Undoubtedly, I would be greatly pleased if a book-reviewer pointed out the author's oversight some day.

I was surprised the episode, and in particular the lack of acknowledgment after I noted the omission, stung me so badly; and not for the first time I reflected on the fragility of my professional ego. When Tremain's piece (quoted above) reminded me of my own episode, I tried reading Callard's famous essay ("Is Plagiarism all wrong?") as therapy; but that failed because her first key move, "many of us are prepared to debate the fine points of questions such as “Under what circumstances it is okay to torture someone?”, but only against a background of unquestioned agreement that representing other peoples’ ideas or phrasings as your own is, always and forever, evil" reminded me a bit of one my own thoughts,: "academics tend to treat sins against the profession/discipline far worse than society treats a whole range of awful crimes." When I went back to my essay to make this very point, I was confronted with the fact that the thought I happily attributed to myself wasn't even original with me (I cite a "journalist" as a source).

It is by no means original to recognize that the credit economy of philosophy, and any of the intellectual disciplines, functions, in addition to multiple epistemic roles, as a mechanism to facilitate career advancement and the distribution of jobs, prestige, and even research programs. (Go read Liam Kofi Bright and his co-authors.) And given the immense (and narrow) prestige hierarchy of philosophy, it is predictable that patterns of citation exclusion will impact the most vulnerable colleagues most along many dimensions.

So, there is really no ground for optimism in thinking that the profession, or those like ours, is especially good at scorekeeping for those who may need such accuracy most. (That's in fact compatible with the idea that the scorekeeping is reasonably decent for epistemic purposes.) If the victims of such patterns of exclusion are denied standing to claim their due, there is really no reason to expect change for the better. It is not my task to judge all the particular accusations in Tremain's piece (if only because she is critical of some of my friends as she has been critical of me in the past); but I hope this post helps amplify the structural inequities she diagnoses. 

I have long been pleased by the following thought from The Quran: "Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves." (13:11) I don't think this passage is an instance of victim-blaming (even if it can be abused in that fashion). Rather, it diagnoses that in  bad circumstances collective action (by a people) is needed. As many reformers have noted, we can't eliminate structural injustice merely by doing better individually. If it is too much to expect individuals to do better at scorekeeping given the incentive structure of the status quo, then it is long overdue we collectively change how we organize such scorekeeping or the rules of the game. I am open to suggestions.

 

 

A Tale of Three Papers and One Journal

[Trigger alert: this post is a peculiar academic form of #humblebrag.]

Recently, two of my papers appeared: "Evaluating Philosophy as Exploratory Research" co-authored with Rogier de Langhe in Metaphilosophy and "The Certainty, Modality, and Grounding of Newton’s Laws" co-authored with Zvi Biener in The Monist. (The latter paper has its origin, in part, in this Digression.) On the surface, the two papers have little in common (except that I am one of the co-authors). But they are also the external marks of the vicissitudes of academic publishing in recent professional philosophy. What follows is a tale of three papers and one journal, The Monist. The Monist is an unusual journal because all the issues are, I believe, essentially special issues focused on a particular theme or topic (or person).

The story begins with The Monist, Volume 3, Issue 4 edited by the great Newton Scholar , Niccolò Guicciardini. The issue was devoted to Philosophical History of Science. That issue was inspired by Guicciardini's encounter with the work (as he explains) of Howard Stein in 2007. As it happens Stein (recall for example this post) was one of my supervisors in graduate school. Stein's approach to the history and philosophy of physics is distinctive (and not well understood by critics and admirers, but about that some other time); I am pleased to see growing interest in his work (as evinced by this fest).* Several of the papers in The Monist volume were presented at a conference in Bergamo, Spring 2009, including one of my papers ("Newton's Challenge to Philosophy.")

The Bergamo conference was one of the most joyous intellectual experiences of my life: fantastic location, brilliant papers, biographical revelations (a true view behind the sciences, as it were), and terrific ambiance (including astounding food), all of this presided over by Guicciardini a first rate scholar and a magnanimous, gentle soul. Guicciardini is the leading scholar of Newton's mathematics and its reception. The Bergamo conference was not my first invited lecture, but it was the first time I shared an invited stage with many of the scholars I had admired as a graduate student on an all expenses paid ticket (etc.).  I treated it as a kind of coming out party [I did not know the term imposter syndrome yet] and rather than presenting a standard work in HPS scholarship, I decided to present a methodological paper inspired by and critical of Stein's  work on Newton. (I felt secure in taking this risk because my paper was invited to the special issue.) I felt my presentation was not a disaster--I got lots of critical questions throughout the workshop; at the time I fantasized about it as a breakthrough performance. Needless to say, I enjoyed the whole experience.

I was dumbfounded when my invited paper was rejected by The Monist. It never occurred to me that could happen to an invited paper there. Admittedly, the referee was very critical, but I could not see the point of many of the criticisms (which treated my paper not as a methodological manifesto but as a contribution to scholarship). It was impossible to address the referee's criticisms and still maintain the integrity of the paper.** I sent the paper to a then-new journal HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science. There it was sent out to a excellent, albeit very critical, referees who raised a whole bunch of challenges (and also fruitfully insisted I engage with some of Ernan McMullin's work). Responding to these referees generated major improvements to the paper. I am very proud of the  fact that Rose-Mary Sargent published it in the first issue of HOPOS. My only regret was that it appeared just after Ernan died, so I couldn't send it to him and elicit his reflections.

A few years later, by then I had become a prolific blogger, I got invited to contribute a special issue on 'Evaluating Philosophy' for, you guessed it, The Monist. I recruited Rogier to co-write it with me. Rogier was a post-doc and I figured it would help his career to have a 'top publication.'+ Moreover, I secretly hoped we would do some (agent-based) modeling in researching this paper (because Rogier had recruited me to join Complex Systems Institute in Ghent); due to time constraints that never happened, alas (and so I never became a formal philosopher. Rogier is the source behind the underlying model and if the model ever gets traction it should just be known as De Langhe-model. But I was pleased by our collaboration because (i) the model can be used to evaluate all kinds of research grant schemes and be made to apply to most scholarly disciplines [except the Arts and some of the Humanities]; (ii) within philosophy the model does not pick sides between analytic and continental philosophy (etc.); (iii) it gives the  technocrats what they want without completely destroying the underlying practice. 

As it happens, after we submitted our paper, I refereed at least one other paper for that special issue on 'Evaluating Philosophy.' But then silence. Eventually the editor of the special issue let me know that this issue of The Monist would be delayed due to lack of (high quality) submissions. Because Rogier needs publications to advance his career and we both wanted this paper to be discussed, we decided to submit the paper to another journal: Metaphilosophy. There our paper got caught up with their now well-publicized software problems.  After much prodding on our part, and interminable delay, we were encouraged "to resend it," and they'd be "happy to begin the review." After an extremely speedy review process -- I seriously doubt it went to external reviewers -- it was accepted and for good measure, the editors of Metaphilosophy added: "This piece should generate much interest." No other editor has ever said that to me.

By now the reader should not be surprised by how elated I am to be published in The Monist, finally! Third time is charm. (Thank you Zvi and the editors of Volume 100, Issue 3, Angela Breitenbach & Michela Massimi, for making this possible.) And the story is really about cosmic kharma because the editors and the referees for the issue on "Laws of Nature: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives," provided us with outstanding comments and, thereby, improved the final product.***

 

All tales have morals, so here are mine: (a) if you can, have multiple papers under review so you are not hostage to the meshuggas of our profession; (b) don't assume a publication before it has appeared in print, really, sure things are not sure. (My favorite evidence for this claim is when referees rejected my own contribution to a special issue of Synthese I edited--a paper that has already generated quite a few citations.) (c) Referees are the unsung heroes of the profession. (d)  And, for the record, I would be happy to submit a new paper 'Evaluating Philosophy' for that special issue of The Monist.

 

 

 

Prestige Bias, Excellence, and Demographics

Since I know nothing about her work, it may well be that Professor De Cruz is someone who has been a victim of pernicious "prestige" bias.  Pernicious prestige bias is when someone thinks that because someone got a PhD from Fancy Pants University they must be competent (or, the reverse).   That's bullshit and pernicious, of course, and the PGR upset that apple cart a long time ago.  But what most cyber-complainers call "prestige bias" is that hiring departments prefer candidates from well-regarded departments.  That's plainly true, but perhaps well-regarded departments are so-regarded because they are actually departments with very good faculty and very goods student?  Prof. De Cruz never fairly considers that possibility.  Non-pernicious prestige bias is simply a rational and time-saving heuristic for identifying candidates with excellent qualifications trained by excellent faculty, attributes that, in the PGR era, are well-tracked by what's now called "prestige."  As Prof. De Cruz notes, "prestige" bias is a feature of academic hiring in all disciplines; the difference in philosophy is that it no longer simply tracks "brand name" universities, but now reflects where the strongest clusters of philosophers and students actually are.  (In what other academic field does everyone know that two of the very best programs are at NYU and Rutgers?  There is none.)

"Excellence" doesn't, in reality, exclude any demographic groups, except the mediocre.--Brian Leiter.

Let's stipulate, for the sake of argument, that (i) "well-regarded departments are so-regarded because they are actually departments with very good faculty." Let's also stipulate (ii) "Non-pernicious prestige bias is simply a rational and time-saving heuristic for identifying candidates with excellent qualifications trained by excellent faculty." And, let's stipulate, (iii) more controversially, that the quality of (ii) "in the PGR era," is "well-tracked by what's now called "prestige"" in the PGR ecology.

So far so good. Now after (i) Brian also added (i*) "and very goods [sic] student [sic]." This is non-trivial and more controversial. It suggests that the best ranked departments are excellent at recruiting the very best students. Now, let's allow, again for the sake of argument, that the top PGR departments will get (thanks to influence of PGR) 'the best' applicant pools. But it also suggests that we are ultra-confident about relative judgments of quality as predictors of future quality when it comes to people (often in their early 20s) with BAs (and increasingly MAs); little is known about their ability to deal with adversity, to deal with rejection, what their work habits are, etc. I would love to see some data-driven evidence on how good recruitment metrics really are (beyond generic claims about GRE scores).

Anyway, my point is this: the PGR evaluators are not asked to rank departments' perceived ability in recruitment. I am not suggesting nobody has insight about this; undoubtedly graduate admissions officers at top departments have some knowledge about how at least some of their perceived competitors do. They are quite aware locally of the cascade of decisions that occur around April each year.

The reason why the nature of recruitment matters is that in obtaining Brian's favored conclusion -- (iv) "Excellence" doesn't, in reality, exclude any demographic groups, except the mediocre"  --  is that recruitment, too, depends on fallible heuristics. The heuristics may well do reasonable well as advertised, but that's compatible with them not catching everybody that's worthy of being caught. (It is, in fact, not unheard of, of folk coming out of lower ranked departments going on to very distinguished careers.) This matters because it is by no means obvious that those heuristics that drive recruitment won't screen out some demographics (e.g., due to tacit biases, uni-dimensional heuristics, network effects, etc.)--given that the total number of students recruited into top PhD programs annually is fairly small demographic mishaps can occur easily (especially if they all rely on similar heuristics). The PGR is simply not designed to help explore that issue.

It is undeniable (there is sociology of science research on this) that those with access to resources and willingness of others to help do well in the competitive environment of academia. Those that benefit from prestige get access to such resources and willingness. And [perhaps this is self-serving] those that flourish all tend to merit it. But it does not follow that we can counter-factually conclude that others who do no so benefit from these resources would not have flourished supposing they would have benefited from prestige. Undoubtedly, Prof. De Cruz -- who in addition to being a prolific blogger is, just for the record, a world class scholar in several areas of specialty -- is making more points than that, but she is also making that non-trivial point. I don't see why Brian Leiter can't acknowledge it.

Against Merit (I think)

[Perhaps today's post is the product of my belief that given my skill-set, I have manged to over-achieve in my professional career.--ES]

I used to embrace an article of faith that all hiring and appointments should be based on defeasible and broadly construed meritocratic principles that may be bent for some other important principles (overcoming past discrimination, ensuring diversity for various reasons, etc.) I still think this would improve the actual societies we live in. But recently I have come to wonder if an ideal society that is fully meritocratic (a so-called meritocracy) would be worth having.

Before I get to my concern let me offer four, important qualifications: first, a meritocracy is compatible with some (even considerable) chance if, for example, it is also a market based society. (As even Hayek and Frank Knight taught, market outcomes always involve some chance.) Second, by raising concerns about merit, I do not mean to advocate for nepotism or for willful incompetence in the actual world. I am here exploring a feature of far-off, counter-factual ideal theory. While I am unfamiliar with a political theory that is fully grounded in embrace of merit, lots of theories appeal to meritocratic principles along the way (see Rawls here).* Third, here I am ignoring the debates over the many flawed proxies for merit (IQ, race, religion, gender, etc.) that rightly cause concern among many people of good will over the very idea of objective merit. (I am stipulating for the sake of argument that merit can be established and that the criteria/proxies are multi-dimensional, context sensitive, and sensible, etc.) Fourth, meritocratic decision procedures or rules that settle athletic or sports competitions are fine.** So, I do not object to a boxing referee saying 'may the best man win' (unless, perhaps, we should urge the referee to use 'person' instead of 'man').

But while fair play and our sense of fairness are important commitments in support of justice, we should not confuse the way we envision an ideal society with the norms that regulate a boxing match. I think the analogy between a boxing match and a meritocracy is not accidental. We care about meritocratic principles in zero-sum contexts: that is, in circumstances where there are winners and losers. Obviously, we do not always describe patterns of merited outcome in terms of wins/losses (or rankings), but it is a fairly common temptation to do so.

In a meritocratic situation, other people's advancement would be entirely fair and one's (relative or absolute) disadvantage fair, too. But would an entire meritocratic society be worth having, that is, flourishing, happy, content, inspiring, and politically stable? I have started to question this. While undoubtedly there are more psychologically galling things in life -- Nietzsche famously called attention to being the object of pity --, it is surely very annoying to be told that one deserved to lose. It is worse, I think, if one is told repeatedly and frequently by a whole society's morality and shared commitments (I hesitate to call it 'ideology') that the systematic pattern of outcomes in which one always end up on the losing side is morally just and due to your cognitive, physical, psychological, aesthetic (etc.) flaws, especially, perhaps, if it all seems true.

Thus, I worry that a meritocracy does not generate widespread contentment, but rather widespread frustration and anger (if not self-loathing). If that's right (big if--it turns on one's moral and empirical psychology), then a meritocracy, even if fair, would not be worth having as such. Maybe the bad-making features of meritocracy can be contained or eliminated, but perhaps we should be cautious when we rely on appeals to merit when we are thinking of structures of ideal society or ideal principles to live by. 

 

 

Is (Professional) Philosophy a Moral Community?

If you have to ask the question (Is (Professional) Philosophy a Moral Community?), you know the answer. But for the obtuse: professional philosophy is not a moral community. I find most attempts of my successful peers to justify morally one's participation in many of the perks of this community comic.+ (After some time in the professional wilderness (recall here, here), and experiencing what it's like to be ignored at professional events, I like the perks, too.)

It would be a miracle if professional philosophy were a moral community. Because the incentives that govern professional philosophers -- its status economy is zero-sum; there are a scarce number of tenure-track jobs relative to the number of PhDs; there is an enduring, historical legacy of sexism/racism (etc.); it consists of factions that ruthlessly displace each other; the privilege at the professional top rests, in part, on exploited labor down the ladder; it relies on flawed metrics and rankings, etc. -- do not facilitate it acting as a moral community. Even among cases in the profession (let's stipulate) where professional success is fully merited, it does not follow it is not facilitated by luck and unfair privilege; I am not the first of the (relatively) lucky ones to recognize that among members of the present professional elite, nearly everybody has received supererogatory assistance from a well-placed, high status member of (the recent past's) professional elite who marshaled their most scarce resource (their time) and aimed it at some favored person (or group of people). 

For a lovely example of such supererogatory assistance, here is Michael Smith explaining how he set up an informal professional network:

They worked in similarish areas, but almost without exception, in their own work they talked about the work of established figures rather than each other’s. I thought that this was a pity....my hope was that it would expand the topics that they work on and the people whose work they talked about. I thought of it as helping shifting the focus away from the work of the older generation, and onto the work of the younger generation.--Michael Smith

In a lively thread at DailyNous (hurray, the philosophy blogosphere is alive again!), Smith explains here how he set up a new institution of "young ethicists" within philosophy in order to correct a bad, previous existing norm of the profession -- only talk about high status peers in your work (confirming my priors that in analytical philosophy citation is a form of status signaling), -- which, to be frank, (a) does not obviously advance professional philosophy, (b) skews citations to male privilege, (c) reinforces existing privilege in unfair fashion. (That is, (a-c) are part of the bad norm not Smith's attempt to correct it.) I have no doubt that Smith's actions in setting up this particular network improved the profession intellectually and morally, even if the the profession is not, thereby a full moral community (because the major institutions, incentives, and norms that prevent the discipline from being a moral community are not changed). The (modest) example is important because it shows both that there is not always a trade-off between a moral and an intellectual improvement of the profession as well as that improving the profession intellectually and morally is compatible with (unintentionally) reinforcing, even entrenching some of problematic moral features of the profession (including cliques).* 

There are two open questions, of course: (i) is professional success compatible with membership in a moral community? (ii) is professional philosophy compatible with true philosophy? On (i), if one assumes that professional status equals philosophical advancement and one is committed to the unity of the virtues then the issue is moot. Unfortunately, the history of philosophy offers considerable evidence against the idea that philosophical achievement is a guarantee of the unity of virtues (pick your favorite example: explore the racism/sexism (etc.) in Hume, Kant, Frege, Heidegger (recall, here, and more creatively here) or, closer to the present profession, any of the bullies that made a minor name for themselves in analytical philosophy (recall, and, say, here)). Building on Ruth Chang's observations, I have repeatedly called attention to the fact that the intellectual reflexes that are cultivated in the profession undermine our ability to function as a moral community because they undermine the proper functioning of the moral sentiments (recall, and see the important work by Eric Schwitzgebel).

My, perhaps self-serving, mid-life perspective is that professional philosophy can not become a moral community because the characters of universities and bureaucratic grant environments that host and fund professional philosophy are probably beyond salvation now. Despite some people's fondness for 'ought implies can,' it does not follow that we should now, thereby, view all attempts to improve the profession morally with suspicion or merely as another move in a Nietzschean game of will to power. (Often those that embrace such a will to power perspective of others fail to apply the perspective to themselves.) If anything, we need to hold our intellectual societies to the highest moral standards -- beacons on a hill -- especially when larger society is unwilling to nourish such standards.

Of course, even non-moral communities can have (non-moral) intrinsic goods or have some good consequences. On the latter: the profession hosts activities and people (my favorite examples: Corvino, Gruen, Guenther, Dotson) that aim to stop society's rot, even improve our world that help justify the existence of the rest of us. On the former, true philosophy is a self-justifying good.

On (ii): while I doubt that 'advancing the research frontier' (David Wallace) has anything to do with true philosophy -- because that frontier is an instrument of bureaucratic control and reward --, I share, if I interpret Wallace charitably, some of the sentiments behind his remarks; true philosophy is a vulnerable enterprise whose soil requires careful nourishment and that requires, in part, trust and encouragement of the sort that is often most easily and efficiently achieved among those who are (proverbially) on the same page of the like-prepared and like-minded. Of course, the danger of such nourishing is, as he recognizes, that it also recycles morally bad traits or patterns of exclusion unexamined or tolerated by the like-minded. That is to say, while some professional folk (the majority?) prefer climbing the same mountain with the herd of fellow travelers, and amply deserve their professional success as they scale the highest peak, the path toward a true philosophy -- one that create philosophical friendship among un-alikes -- is often a lonely one with steep ravines on all sides.

 

On the PGR Rankings in 17th century

As regular readers of D&I know, despite serious methodological misgivings, I defend the utility of PGR (on relatively narrow grounds), and participated in the PGR report. I am a product of the PGR ecology (see here for more on this terminology), but I am employed outside of it. I participated in 17th century, 18th century (prior to Kant), and philosophy of social science specialist rankings as well as with the generalist rankings. I wrote about my experiences here. The debate continues and hopefully more rankings are being developed; it is healthy that there is public debate.  

The rankings in one of the areas I helped evaluate, in "Early Modern Philosophy: 17th Century," are now available. It turns out there were eighteen evaluators: Roger Ariew, John Carriero, Andrew Chignell, Michael Della Rocca, Lisa Downing, Daniel Garber, Don Garrett, Michael Gill, Dan Kaufman, Michael LeBuffe, Martin Lin, Antonia LoLordo, Yitzhak Melamed, John Morrison, Alan Nelson, Eric Schliesser, Eric Watkins, Kenneth Winkler. Of these I am the only one employed outside the PGR (although Le Buffe works and lives the furthest average distance from everybody).

That there are only two females in this ranking is shocking given the large number of world class female scholars in the field (some of these are also implicitly highly ranked in the PGR). The lack of female participation may have also subtly skewed the results. For, a lot of the most exciting work in the area is in the recovery of female early modern philosophers (including, in the seventeenth century, Anne Conway, Margaret Cavendish, etc.). Few people active in that recovery, including some of the leading men, are actually in this particular pool of evaluators. That I have become somewhat active recently in that recovery enterprise means that I have also grown more familiar with the scholarship in the area; this helped me not just recognize some names that previously would have only caused vague recognition, but helped me evaluate their status with better judgment. Looking at the rankings I doubt that strength in this recovery project has gone rewarded.

In fact, the evaluator pool is tightly knit. Many I know personally: one (Garber) is my own supervisor (he also supervised Martin Lin [Garrett and Della Roca have a former student each in the pool]), and most of these rankers, I see at least once a year or every other year (some of which I kibbitz more regularly with on facebook). I was a bit surprised to see a non-tenured person, but I am not sure how unusual that is. The group is undoubtedly eminently qualified; even so, I admire Eric Watkins and Michael Gill (with whom I will be co-organizing Hume 2016 in Sydney!) greatly, but I don’t think of either as a seventeenth century person, although both have published in the area and are well connected in the discipline. The group seems reasonably balanced between so-called ‘contextualists’ and those more inclined toward varieties of ‘rational reconstruction.’

Having said that, while eminent, the group is unbalanced in various subtle ways: while early modernists tend to be fairly broad, working on more than one figure and more than one issue, the vast majority of this group works primarily on M&E related stuff rather than moral philosophy (Gill and LeBuffe are the main exceptions)—this  may have been normal a decade (or two) ago, but now looks idiosyncratic. There are no specialists on Bacon or, more surprising, Hobbes (yes, I know, a few of us have published papers on Bacon or Hobbes)—despite the fact that there has been an explosion of recent scholarship on Hobbes (and to some extent Bacon) and political philosophy more generally (yes, a few of us in this group have published papers on political theology); it also contains no Arnauld nor Malebranche experts (and is narrow on Newton). Apologies if I am missing somebody's expertise. (By ‘expert’ I mean regularly publishes papers and books in the area—a natural referee for work in the field. So, for example, I have published a paper or two on Berkeley, but I am no Berkeley expert in the way that Ken Winkler is!) Eyeballing it, there are five Descartes experts (Roger Ariew, John Carriero, Daniel Garber, Alan Nelson, Kaufman); depending on how you count, six to nine Spinoza experts: (Michael Della Rocca, Michael LeBuffe, Martin Lin, Yitzhak Melamed, John Morrison, Don Garrett, as well as Garber, Carriero, and Nelson, not counting Schliessser); and four Locke scholars (Lisa Downing, Antonia LoLordo (who, of course, is also a Gassendi scholar), Dan Kaufman, Kenneth Winkler)). Given his importance in the field, Leibniz is obviously under-represented (Garber is the only ‘big-Leibniz-name’ in the group, although a few others have published papers on or translations of Leibniz). Obviously, you can nitpick about some of this—a few of us teach regular graduate seminars in an area without publishing much in it (etc.).

Given the centrality to the field of about half of these evaluators (as editors, tenure and promotion referees, and workshop hosts), some of these imbalances don’t matter much in practice. The top-12 are all extremely fine departments with superb early modern scholars (although I would have expected Toronto to do better because they have quality and quantity). Even so, imbalances in the evaluation pool might explain some patterns of oversight. (No, no, I am not going to offer a list of overrated departments!) So, for example, while Sydney is ranked in philosophy of physics (can anybody explain why?), it is not ranked in 17th century at all while having four (!) early modernists on staff with strengths not just in HPS, but also feminism. At Bostun University there is deep strengths in seventeenth century moral and political philosophy (including Hobbes and Spinoza) and feminism; it is also not rewarded in the rankings. If I were at King’s I would be baffled that having quite a few very fine early modernists on staff does not pay off more in the PGR ranking.

On Participating in the PGR

Not long after I published this post, I was invited to participate in the PGR survey (funny how that goes). Despite the incisive, ongoing criticism, especially by Mitchell Aboulafia, Jessica Wilson, and John Protevi, I signed up as an evaluator in two of my areas of specialization (early modern and philosophy of social science). [To be clear: I recognize the truth of many of their criticisms some of which I share, but I also feel they never managed a fully adequate response to my own and Schwitzgebel's defense. Either way, I hope rankings will proliferate in the future.] Despite pre-existing misgivings, I also participated in the general evaluation. Because I was traveling and presenting, I ended up doing much of the survey in between other commitments. Here follow some first-personal reflections.

With hindsight I don't regret participating in the 17th and 18th century philosophy surveys. I host and attend a lot of workshops in the area, referee and review a lot, and still try to keep up with scholarship. Undoubtedly I did not immediately recognize some names that work in various sub-fields (e.g., Leibniz, where I don't try to keep up), or that I missed scholarship by people that themselves don't travel much, but often I could 'spot' the 'early modernist' easily in each list of names. I'll be curious to see who the other evaluators are and if my judgments track theirs. Undoubtedly, I have been influenced by various stereotypes and biases (a serious danger, of course, given how many of our judgments are shaped by personal contacts), including, of course, my own idiosyncratic qualitative judgments, but I found ranking easy. What did I rank? Well, some vague mixture of (a) quality of work; (b) personality; (c) sense/evidence of advising capability. One notable feature of my ranking practice -- and this shows my self-interest -- is that I was not afraid to give a '0' to departments that fall short of early modern coverage worthy of a PhD department. (This also includes some purportedly top departments that have a M&E/Ethics/science focus.)

I found evaluating 'philosophy of social science' much harder. It's a very diffuse area with lots of different niches and as I spent time on scoring, I became increasingly less confident that outside of philosophy of economics, I could recognize all the relevant names. When in doubt, I did go to department websites to check out people's areas of work. (I did not have  time to read new work, alas.) Much to my own surprise, when I was deciding on some of my final scores, I even checked the past PGR to see if others had also ranked a dept in philo social science. So, I ended up with serious misgivings about my participation despite the fact that I think it is a very important area of research and that I try to stay abreast on parts of the area. While I think the field important, I could not bring myself to insist that each department ought to have coverage in it; so rather than giving  a lot of 'O's, I left a lot of rankings blank. Anyway, I probably should not have participated in this part of the ranking.

Finally, on the department-wide scores: part of me still strongly thinks it is an extremely dubious exercise -- my knowledge of the give-or-take-1000+-names is superficial --, I also came to think that it was not so hard to distinguish between, say, the obviously understaffed or very narrow departments from the departments filled with reasonably well known and good even excellent people. What I found most difficult, in fact, was to rank the departments that I know really well (because of a recent visit or stay) and that have some terrific people but that are also uneven in various ways (coverage, quality of members, known-to-me-predators on faculty, etc.).

I close with two general thoughts, one about my perspective and another about the non-inclusion of continental heavy departments.

On T.H. Green’s Spinozism, Religiosity, and Integrity

For the truth of any practical idea the only possible evidence is its realisation—T.H. Green (1870) "The Witness of God" (16)

The event can only be approached through a series of fluctuating interpretations of it, behind which its original nature cannot be clearly ascertained.—T.H. Green "The Witness of God" (26)

A proposition which asserts divine causation for any phenomenon is not exactly false but turns out on strict analysis to be unmeaning T.H. Green (1878) "Faith" (78)

One advantage of jet-lag at an ungodly hour in Princeton is that I bumped into Paul Lodge, the eminent Leibniz scholar, at the local Starbucks – apparently the only place to get espresso at dawn -- with ample time to catch up and talk. While I would hesitate calling this first meeting pure chance (we were attending the same conference), the following day I was eager to check out Starbucks again to continue the conversation. For, I had sensed that Paul had embarked on his own journey to integrate the life of a professional philosopher and scholar, with the difficult attempt to live a life of integrity and a personal (to use an old-fashioned even much abused word) philosophy. I don't think I betray much of the privacy of our conversation, if I use this as acknowledgment to Paul that it's because of our two conversations, I have started reading T.H. Green.

I have to admit that previously I only knew Green through his long, critical introduction to Hume's Treatise in the old (Green/Grose) edition of the Treatise. Despite being my daily companion for several years, I do not recall ever reading Green's introduction carefully. So, all I knew of Green (a Whyte's Professor of Moral philosophy eventually) was that he was a politically active reformist and British Idealist, who died relatively young. I ordered quite a bit of his writings cheaply online, and they have been arriving in the mail since my meeting with Paul. As it happens a copy of the posthumously published Two Lay Sermons arrived first. When it suits me I have a providential streak, and so I start my study of Green not with his professional philosophy, but with his Sermons.

It would not be entirely unfair to call Green's Christianity in these Sermons a form of Spinozism. (Green himself notes the affinity: "Spinoza, who had more real hold on the idea, and better understood the spiritual import of the Christian resurrection than the dogmatic theologians, have been reckoned, and driven to reckon themselves, aliens from the Christians" "The Witness of God" (19)) Green's Christianity is focused on social justice, or what Spinoza calls "charity." Crucially, in Green, this is not just an embrace of the doctrine of works (although certainly he encourages good deeds), but also about the inner life that makes such charity possible ("faith" in Green's terms). As he writes, "It is not in the outward cast of a life, but in the way of living it, that the spirit of a man is shown" ("The Witness of God" (38)). So, Green's "spirit" is the means by which integration of the inner life and the way life is lived is achieved. The glue that holds inner and outer together is faith. As he writes:

Oh Alex...on PGR and validity (and all that)

Over at DailyNous there are two extremely eloquent guest posts on the PGR controversy; one is by Simon May, which is stirring reminder what philosophical nobility looks like. I happen to agree with most of it, although I am inclined to think that the statement that it is "impossible to overlook that so many women feature prominently amongst Prof. Leiter’s recent targets" is itself a consequence of selective perception. Lots of men are also among Prof. Leiter's targets; they have been for a  long time. It's just that these many other targets have been less popular than some of the recent female ones that were the tipping point. (Yes, I know it's more complex than that, but still.) I know that Prof. May is extremely careful not to attribute sexism to Prof. Leiter ("Once again, this is not a question about his moral character—there is no suggestion of implicit misogyny here. But character is beside the point.") Even so, the not-subtle-sub-text here is: 'he's targeting women.' But even if one thinks that Prof. Leiter's actions contribute greatly -- because of the popularity of his blog and the perceived power derived from his control over the PGR -- to 'climate' issues for women in philosophy (and I am not unsympathetic to that line of argument, although as always the situation is complicated because he has also done a lot more than 99.9% of the other men in the profession to make those issues visible in the profession),* it's not because there are also women among his targets. For, even if there had been no women, he would be contributing to the (in the apt phrase of May) "vices of sexism." (And I am self-aware enough to recognize that as a polemical blogger and particular kind of boy-philosopher I may also be contributing in that way.) Women and feminists have been among his targets -- and in ways that contribute to climate issues --, but they have not been targeted because they are women and feminists (unlike the continental feminists, Creationists, Randians, Straussians, etc.). I say all of this not because I have sympathy for Leiter's attempts to brand his critics a 'cyber mob' or admire his demagogic rhetoric ("smear campaign,") but because it matters that we draw the right lessons [separation of power, no monopoly rankings, adoption of best practices in our rankings, etc.] from this whole sordid affair.

The other post is by Alex Rosenberg, who is one of the most important philosophers of economics and, you know, when he is at his best somebody I look up to immensely. Rosenberg does not just defend the PGR (he's  in good company), rather, Rosenberg defends it come what may--not even deigning to acknolwedge the existence of known problems with the PGR:

About five years ago, Kieran Healy, a sociologist...subjected the PRG rankings to an analysis. The most striking finding of his analysis was that the rankings of the top 20 departments by philosophers from the top 20 departments was almost identical to the ranking of the top 20 departments by philosophers from the bottom 20 departments. Our discipline is more like mathematics in its social structure than it is like other humanities or social sciences. What’s more, Kieran’s findings revealed what sort of weightings philosophers give to the various subspecialties in their reputational rankings (alas, I learned, the philosophy of science is not in the top three—phil of mind, phil of language and metaphysics).

All this means that Brian Leiter has provided us with a reliable picture of our discipline, one we can use, to advise our students, our junior colleagues, and even to correct myths about our discipline cherished by our administrators.

Come on, Alex.

Really, Alex, you gotta be kidding me. 

It may well be that (a) there is a "reliable picture of our discipline" (more about that below), but (b) it does not follow that there exists “construct validity” (Rosenberg introduces this technical term in his  post), and (c) it does not follow that the methods cannot be improved, say, by (d) responding to constructive criticisms and (d*) systematically incorporating best practices.

Yes, but, we do need rankings.

Now that the future of PGR is hanging in the balance, some folk are thinking a future not just with multiple rankings (recall Weatherson and my response), but no philosophy rankings [HT Winsberg & Huebner on Facebook]. Several of my friends in the discipline have expressed surprise that I defend rankings in our future and that I have even expressed some desire to keep a modestly reformed PGR as one of the more important rankings in the discipline. I am not ignorant of the technical problems with the PGR -- and it is really astounding that in a discipline with so much knowledge about, and so often pays lip-service to, scientific method these problems have not caused more concerns -- and, given that I always insist that incentives matter, I am not sanguine about the perverse incentives PGR has generated in its own ecology, and the harm done to those on its margins and those excluded. For all I know, it has deformed the lives of some that thrive under it (I am not joking--it really deforms characters and moral sentiments). So, why defend it?

One defense might be that by generating competition for scarce talent along a whole range of sub-niches, it has elevated the salaries of people who would otherwise could never expect to rank as special (or distinguished, etc.). I have trotted out this defense, and I think it true. But I recognize that for the vast majority of folk this argument from self-interest will seem not very compelling, if only because they may have justified fear that these increases come at the expense of their salaries (or tenure, etc.). Given that I am stipulating a zero-sum environment, I don't have a good response to this concern (except to note that the expense may be felt by disciplines outside philosophy). (I thank Enzo Rossi for discussion.)

Rather, the most important thing to remember is that we live in an imperfect world, where scarcity matters and where, among the many constraints that influence our choices, judgments of quality need to have a place at the table,--or they will be simply ignored. The key virtue behind PGR is that it has given a wide enough group of very good professional philosophers a chance at shaping some disciplinary autonomy when it comes to judgments of quality. Rather than farming this judgment out to supposedly objective scientific metrics, or to outside news agencies, or more informal local judgments, the PGR gives a flawed and imperfect and often unfair, but decent snapshot of the evolving sensus communis. It's an imperfect proxy, but still a proxy that tracks perceptions of quality. To put the point differently: we will be ranked anyway by Deans, by grant agencies, by donors, etc. So, perhaps it's because I spent my time in a grant environment trying to track quality by silly metrics, but I am convinced it is better to have some disciplinary control over the rankings.

Does, my better a flawed autonomous disciplinary ranking than no ranking absolve us all from the complicity in the many petty (and a few larger) injustices and biases embedded in them and their application in the real world of hiring, tenuring, and graduate school choices? No, of course not. We -- that is, the inner core of a thousand to two-thousand professional philosophers that really benefit from the PGR (even if some never admit it) -- could have all done much more to encourage the systematic, ongoing adoption of known best practices into the PGR and more thoughtful ways to expand the PGR ecological reach in ways beneficial to more professional philosophers. The intellectual sparkle of even the most eminent of our humanitarian thinkers will be tainted and dimmed forever by their quiet acceptance of the PGR culture during the last decade(s); but even so, the embrace of the PGR is defensible.