Sunday, September 20, 2015

September Timber

208 comments:

  1. Justice Whineberg is being such a snarky jackass in the comments: http://dailynous.com/2015/09/20/warning-this-post-is-about-trigger-warnings/

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    1. Aren't you embarrassed to be the kind of person who cares so much about whether Whineberg's being snarky that you'd actually post the same exact comment about it twice, over two hours apart? Get some help.

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    2. To be fair, 3.34, 2.02's identical comment on the previous thread was just over the 200 mark, beyond which comments are invisible unless one hits the 'load more' button. So I suspect that was his/her reason for reposting here.

      I can't help observing an irony in a comment of the sort that you made beginning with the words 'Aren't you embarrassed to be the kind of person who cares so much about...?'

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    3. Nothing new to see here, in my opinion -- just the same old brown-nosing of the SJWs, all to boost a stalled career.

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  2. "Let it be known: from now on I'm going to make it a condition of serving on committees and/or writing letters of recommendation that the recommendee have appropriately engaged with my relevant work. The current practices of scholarship in philosophy, at every level, are nothing short of egregious, and I, for one, am going to start taking further actions (or non-actions) beyond sending my notorious 'hey, you should have cited or credited or discussed me here, so please do so' emails. More generally: all y'all who think that it's OK to forever ignore my so-far-unrebutted criticisms of your foundational suppositions (e.g., of Hume's Dictum or Grounding or conceptions of fundamentality as that which doesn't depend on anything else) or my original or early-on contributions (pertaining to, e.g., the 1999 presentation and defense of a proper subset account of realization or my 1999 arguments for and account of a substantive notion of metaphysical dependence or my arguments for a positive conception of fundamentality or my arguments that metaphysical dependence doesn't have to be asymmetric, irreflexive, or transitive, and so on)... you are not doing the scholarly thing right, and without naming names I'm going to be talking about you in a forthcoming paper on barriers to philosophical progress."

    - Jessica Wilson, University of Toronto

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    1. Unhinged, but not singularly so.

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    2. Oh quicken this dull mass of mortal clay;
      Shine through the soul, and drive its clouds away!
      For thou must cite and in my (523 AD) find
      Arguments unrebutted since that time!

      -Boethius

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    3. I am vaguely reminded of this thing happening in the math world, which a math friend pointed me to

      http://www.oliviacaramello.com/Unification/InitiativeOfClarificationResults.html

      Not quite the same, perhaps deserving of its own thread, but this is the metablog and I'm enjoying my Sunday evening buzz so....

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    4. Sunday evening buzz ftw!

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  3. Well, it's sounds a bit obsessive, but maybe she has a point? Unlike several commenters on the FB thread underneath her comment, Wilson's work is good; she knows a lot of science; a lot of history; she writes clearly and competently; she doesn't bullshit. I find the metaphysics a bit dull, to be honest; but this is taste rather than content. She cites in a highly scholarly way which is admirable. Given her own citation tendencies, I suspect it's a genuine lack of reciprocation that she finds annoying. Given that her own work is very good, she might well have a point.

    What causes this? Simple: prestige networks and "in-crowds".

    People in academia who aren't properly "networked" are typically undervalued; their work is ignored; in egregious cases, copied without citation. Usually, they grit their teeth and ignore it.

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    1. Mine was copied without citation. I wasn't quite sure about what to do about it, didn't know who to ask right then, and I was super busy trying to keep up with teaching and applying to jobs, so I didn't do anything about it. That was a few years ago.

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    2. I work in a field not far from Wilson's. Her work is good. People should cite and interact with it. It is strange and oddly egomaniacal to make this a condition of serving on committees or writing letters. Way to stick it to The Man, Professor Wilson... er, rather, the youngest and most vulnerable members of the profession!

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    3. Wilson appears to be unhinged, as mentioned above. That said, her work is not bad and it is strangely not just possible but advisable to ignore critiques of your "research programs" these days.

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    4. I basically agree with 6:42.

      But I have to add, in light of 6:36, that Wilson is not suffering from lack of in-crowd connections! PhD from Cornell, job at Michigan, gigs at Arche and Eidyn and others, almost all recent publications invited by in-crowders...
      To me, that's what makes her demands (and that's what they are, literally demands) seem so, I dunno, entitled. That, and the fact that the people she's going to punish are the most vulnerable junior people.

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    5. One good rule about who is going to feel included or excluded, 2:15 - everybody is going to feel excluded when they look at someone closer to the inside than they are, and nobody is going to be very good at recognizing that they are particularly close to the inside relative to others. This is a fact of human nature, I think.

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    6. I suppose that's right, 2:18, just as the people who move to a big house in Scarsdale can't help but notice the bigger ones down the block.

      I didn't think 6:36 was making a point about who *feels* excluded, but one about what actually *being* excluded can cause. That's what I was responding to.

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  4. This blog contains without a doubt the most frank discussions about our profession. It is refreshing to see people converse without having to kowtow to the perpetual moral outrage of the new infantilists.

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    1. That's what happens when people are actually allowed to converse.

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  5. Where did the discussion about Kate Manne's many invited publications go!?

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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. We have deleted defamatory comments about Professor Manne, and are grateful to a reader for bringing them to our attention.

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    3. Huh, thanks. I posted some corrections, but I was just going to let the rest of it play itself out. For the record, I didn't flag those comments or any others as defamatory; I wasn't thinking of it along those lines. So yeah... thanks, this is a pleasant surprise.

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    4. With all due respect, mods, I think you made a bad call on this one. Truth is a defense against defamation in the United States. Part of what was said was demonstrably true. I quote:

      "One can look up Manne's CV, though, and the results are not encouraging. Of the six published papers, at least four are invited (BSPC papers appearing in PS are a borderline case, it seems to me). Of the five papers in preparation, four are invited."

      I may have missed other things happening in the thread, but this is a verifiable fact, and it should be discussed. Many young "stars" in philosophy are making it big through invited publications, and many of us find that kind of nepotism appalling and unjust.

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    5. Except neither true nor a verifiable fact. I have two non-invited things out at the moment, another conditionally accepted, and a fourth likely but by no means guaranteed. In addition to that, I have an R&R from JPhil after anonymous review, and a book under contract with OUP at the moment. I'm in my third year on the tenure track and, while I wish I was quicker at getting stuff out, I'm reasonably happy with my progress, thanks. Also, my NYT things were submitted cold, just like anyone's would be. Not sure why you would assume in a previous comment that they're invited... By all means discuss my dossier if you want to, but base it on accurate information please.

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    6. Congrats on the book contract with OUP, KM. I'll read it when it comes out.

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    7. Thanks! I'm excited and counting my blessings. Good luck to everyone else out there. :)

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    8. Kate: this is a really weird blog, and some ugly things happen here (as you've seen). But some really funny and insightful things happen too. People can even be nice from time to time. I hope you'll stick around to get a full picture of the place. It is unique in philosophy at the moment.

      Stay classy!

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    9. Thanks, I think I will take a little look around before I go. And I am all for unanxious dialogue and venting -- really. :)

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    10. So, Kate Manne, this paper was "blind" reviewed at JPhil after you publicly complained to all you well-connected friends on Facebook that it had been rejected elsewhere due to some sort of injustice?

      Why do we even pretend that at certain levels blind review exists?

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    11. That was a different paper, 5:28.

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    12. Like I said before, different paper. That one was on disagreement and testimonial injustice. And this paper is on misogyny and the desire to take women down.

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    13. ...this paper is on misogyny and the desire to take women down.

      A topic that would be, of course, totally irrelevant in these here parts...

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    14. Yes, we definitely treat women differently here than we treat, say, Weinberg, Leiter, Schliesser, etc.

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    15. For maximum effect, please refer to those miscreants with the usual titles, 6:01: "Justice Whineberg", "Sir Ranksalot", and "The Ghent Balloon".

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    16. Hi Kate, and thanks for your comments. Any thoughts on this response to your NYT piece?

      "She makes some good points contra this piece (though that piece was not primarily about "trigger warnings"), but elides the real issues which are: (1) PTSD is a clinical diagnosis, and no one I know has argued against (legally required) accomodations for someone with that medical condition; (2) instructors, with no clinical competence, making ad hoc judgments about what warnings *might* be necessary for students who *might* have PTSD is an invitation to both insufficient accomodation and unnecessary "warnings" that may have, as their consequence, precisely what the critics claim, namely, shutting down discussion. Prof. Manne is aware of the latter risk, but says only that, "Common sense should tell us that material that is merely offensive to certain people’s political or religious sensibilities wouldn’t merit a warning." Common sense is sometimes in short supply, alas (The Atlantic article is actually full of useful examples.)

      ADDENDUM: The AAUP statement is also useful, and see esp. its discussion of the Oberlin policy, which was distinctly lacking in "common sense."

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    17. @6:01: I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or not, but if not, then I certainly agree that women are treated differently here than the men you mentioned. Those men you mentioned are people who run public blogs under their own names. So making fun of them by using nicknames, or discussing their posts, is a whole different ball game from picking a woman who just got a new job somewhere, going over her CV, and declaring that she does not deserve her job/must have only got it because she's a woman/clearly has no real philosophical talent. This is something which happens pretty frequently here - I've seen it before, and it's happened twice in just the last few days.

      In any case, I don't think the argument "I sometimes do it to non-Xes too, so when I do it to Xes, it's not discriminatory" doesn't really fly. If you almost always call black waiters 'boy' you don't get to claim you're not racist because you occasionally call white waiters the same thing. If you frequently tell women to stop being so emotional when they are having an argument or a debate with you, and occasionally say the same thing to a man, it doesn't mean that you're not being sexist when you say it to the women.

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    18. Declaring that someone got a job (in part) because he is a man is a long-standing strategy of feminists. I don't mind it, so long as it's true. Similarly, I don't mind people saying that a woman got a job (in part) because she is a woman, so long as it is true. Trying to figure out whether these things are "sexist" or "reverse sexist" is a waste of time; what matters more is whether they are true.

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    19. I don't really have a problem with the general claim. But I do have a problem with picking on particular people, in particular people who have done nothing more public than simply get a good job in philosophy. And maybe you think it is a strategy of feminists, but I have never seen that kind of behaviour before - picking a particular man, combing his CV, arguing that he in particular did not deserve his job - on FP, for example, or anywhere else in philosophy. Maybe you have.

      The problem in these cases is that it is unlikely that anyone will have solid enough evidence to prove it in a particular case, and discussing and speculating on particular cases is damaging to the individual involved.

      I often think that if you're going to publicly speculate about whether someone deserves their job in philosophy, then you ought to post your CV so people can publicly speculate about whether you deserve yours.

      So the 'sexist' part isn't the raising of the general question - it's the fact that this (picking on particular people, combing through their CV's, speculation about whether they 'deserve' their job, etc) is one of the ways in which women get treated badly here in ways that men usually don't.

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    20. 6:42, my guess is that many of the people speculating don't have jobs in philosophy, and that's why they're unhappy. So the tu quoque strategy might not work so well. I agree in general, though.

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    21. "I have never seen that kind of behaviour before - picking a particular man, combing his CV, arguing that he in particular did not deserve his job - on FP, for example, or anywhere else in philosophy. Maybe you have. "

      There's a blog dedicated to spreading anonymous stories about philosophers, many of whom are men. I'll bet you've heard of it before: What is it like to be a woman in philosophy. Some of those stories have identifiable information and are of men getting jobs they didn't deserve because they were men. If anonymous internet hitjobs are wrong, then much of what's posted on that blog is wrong too.

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    22. 6:50, none of the posts on WIL actually use people's names, which is what happens here. As for ones with 'identifiable information' speculating that a particular man got a job he didn't deserve, I have never seen that either. Do you have any particular post in mind?

      In any case, I don't think that anonymous posts about things people witness are necessarily wrong - it's the naming of particular people and the pretty baseless speculation which is wrong. For example, there's a difference between saying "I have been on a hiring committee at a prestigious R1, and we included women on the shortlist in part because they were women," and someone who was not involved in the hiring process at all naming a particular person, going through her CV, and asserting that she in particular did not deserve her job.

      In any case, even if it were a 'strategy of feminists', then it doesn't mean that it's a strategy that people here should adopt. Regardless of who does it, it's a nasty thing to do.

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    23. In any case, I don't think that anonymous posts about things people witness are necessarily wrong - it's the naming of particular people and the pretty baseless speculation which is wrong.

      No, it's the distribution of false claims, using identifiable information, to incite mobs that is wrong.

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    24. I think that would also be wrong, 7:32. But you seem to be disagreeing that the naming of particular people and the pretty baseless speculation is wrong (by saying 'no, something else is wrong'). But surely they're both wrong.

      Put it this way - if you're trying to catch me out somehow because you're (for some reason) assuming that my argument depends on the claim that no one identifying as a feminist philosopher has ever done something similarly morally wrong to the naming of particular people and the baseless speculation that they don't deserve their job, this won't work as a strategy because my argument doesn't depend on that claim.

      As I said, I have never seen anything in particular on WIL or on FP that involves the naming of a particular man and speculation that he did not deserve his job. No one has, as if yet, provided an example. But even if it were a 'strategy of feminists,' then it doesn't mean that it's a strategy that people here should adopt. Regardless of who does it, it's a nasty thing to do.

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    25. How many women have been 'victims' of this particular strategy?
      On what basis are you claiming that they were targeted due to their gender?

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    26. As I said, I have seen it before, (though I should be clear: that was on earlier iterations of the blog). It has happened twice in the last few days.

      To be precise, the claim is not exactly that they were targeted due to their gender, but that there are no instances of men being treated in this particular way on this blog, and that the way men who are targets of criticism (those named above) are treated is relevantly different.

      Do you agree, in any case, that it is wrong to name particular people and engage in public speculation about whether or not they deserve their job in philosophy, in the manner that has occurred here over the past few days?

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    27. 8:34, please name a male full professor, anywhere in the world, with an h-index of 5.

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    28. "To be precise, the claim is not exactly that they were targeted due to their gender"

      You (I assume) at 5:51 claimed that kate's paper on misogyny and the desire to take women down would be relevent.

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    29. 8:49, I'm not going to do you research for you. And it wouldn't be relevant, anyway. Regardless of what you find, it is still a nasty thing to do to name a particular person, go through their CV, and speculate publicly that they do not deserve their job and therefore must have got it solely because of their gender.And I don't see why you keep demanding that I answer questions when you refuse to even try to answer mine. So far you've completely ignored two of my questions.

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    30. I'm not 5:51. My first post was at 6:25. I'm also 6:42, 7:04,7:47 and 8:34 and 8:59.

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    31. 8:59, can you name a male full professor with h-index of 5? It's obviously relevant.

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    32. 9:05, I'm done. There is no point having a conversation with you when you repeatedly ignore my questions and ignore my points. I explained above why I think it is not relevant, and what I think it is not relevant to, and why I am not going to do your research. Rather than responding to any of these points, you jut restate the question and simply assert that it's 'obviously relevant.' You're clearly not willing to engage in anything resembling a discussion, which I guess I should have realized when you kept refusing to answer any questions.

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    33. This is 8:17, 8:53 (and nobody else)

      My questions aren't that relevent if you aren't 5:51. My bad.

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    34. In defense of Magidor, she works in metaphysics. Assuming that Leitgeb was the runner up, I think one could justify the decision in favour of Magidor when one considers the fact that Leitgeb just does not work in metaphysics. He lists it as an interest but the bulk of his recent output is formal epistemology.

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    35. Agreed, 9:57. In addition I can attest to the fact that Leitgeb is a terrible lecturer both due to his inability to engage the audience with interesting lectures and due to his terrible accent. You can check his MOOC at Coursera, initially I was enthusiastic about it but I stopped after just one lecture because I just couldn't stand him. It was literally headache-inducing. So, I don't want this to sound too destructive so please take this as advice to Leitgeb to change his lectures and work on his accent and pronunciation.

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    36. 9:57 here. I have no problem with his accent nor do I find that he has to engage the audience (whatever that means, especially in a MOOC). As long as the material is interesting, the lecturer willing to explain some important but difficult details, everything is fine. But what I hate are lecturers with monotone voices, but Leitgeb does not seem to be one of them.

      What I would really like to know is whether the advertised Waynflete chair demands that one's focus is on metaphysics or whether it suffices to have it as an AOC. By the way, does anybody know whether Leitgeb was suggested by the search committee or if he applied himself. In the latter case I wonder why he would do so, especially after he had an department moulded after his taste.

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    37. 7:32, indeed, so please call out 5:28 for doing precisely that.

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    38. Has Hawthorne ever published anything good?

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    39. Short answer, 12:41, is yes.

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    40. I find his Knowledge and Lotteries better than Stanley's Knowledge and Practical Interest, but that is just me. I don't care about Lewisian style metaphysics, discussions about gunk (where did the whole debate go?) or composition.

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    41. One of my colleagues, who is a full prof (at a big, public, ranked in Leiter, etc.) has an h-index of just 6. And he had 5 when promoted. And most of his citations are self citations. Of course he's published in J Phil a couple of times and has a book with Oxford, and is quite brilliant, but he works against most of the main stream, popular approaches in his subfield. He is doing his own thing and doing it well. And he does philosophers' philosophy, as they say (so doesn't attract much interest outside of philosophy, which is where a lot of people get citations).

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    42. Has Jason Stanley ever published anything good?

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    43. Does h-index include self-citations?

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    44. Has Leitgeb published anything good?

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    45. FFS. Hannes is brilliant.

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    46. Munich is a good place for an Austrian megalomaniac.

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    47. This blog used to be worth it for shits & giggles but some of you guys will smear anyone and it makes me puke.

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    48. Leitgeb deserves to have lost the Oxford chair to a woman with worse credentials, he has been perpetuating pernicious feminism with his Summer Schools in Mathematical Philosophy for Female Students.

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    49. It should've been Linnebo.

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    50. "Yes, we definitely treat women differently here than we treat, say, Weinberg, Leiter, Schliesser, etc."

      I think that's right. It looks like the threads are filled with negative remarks about women in the profession and negative remarks about these three men and the kinds of negative remarks can differ significantly. There's some overlap, certainly, but I don't see a lot of discussion of whether specific men deserve the positions they're in, deserve their publications, etc. I find this surprising. I can think of a number of men in the profession who seem to benefit from their relationships to editors or seem to get into prestigious positions in spite of what seem to be incredibly weak CVs, but I don't see this kind of criticism happening around here often. Not that it should, mind you, but I don't see it happening.

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    51. With respect, 1:45, this is paranoia. Magidor is now Waynflete Professor at Oxford. But her publication level seems not to merit this; she beat several more highly qualified male candidates; and was selected by a committee headed by a feminist activist, Rae Langton. Expect criticism. The critics may be wrong, of course. But the critics are discussing gender discrimination.

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    52. 2:00, if you want to discuss this kind of discrimination, then what you should do is discuss overall trends, rather than specific cases. It is mean-spirited to discuss a specific case, especially when (as is the case here) your assertions are not well-founded. Here's why:
      1. She bet several more qualified male candidates
      How do you know that they are 'more qualified'? Do you have access to all the materials the hiring committee had access to? Did you sit in on the interview?
      2. She bet several more highly qualified male candidates
      How do you know this? Do you know who was offered the job and then turned it down? If so, how do you know this?
      3. Her publication record seems not to merit this
      Are you an expert in the area? Do you also have data on the publication levels of similar job holders? (And I don't mean just one example of a similar job-holder with a better publication record, but actual data).

      It is wrong to assert claims that damage people's reputations when you don't have the evidence to back it up, especially when it is so obvious that you could not have the evidence to back it up.. Engaging in mere speculation of this kind is mean spirited and unfair. What's more, there are better ways to prove your point than focusing on isolated cases - you could put together some data, with the names removed, and discuss overall trends.

      And 1:45's post is not 'paranoia'. It is an accurate observation

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    53. Who were the other contenders?


      If you know male philosophers whose record does not merit their current standing, then name them. Only the following discussion will show whether there really is a anti-female bias on this board.

      I name a couple: Joshua Knobe and Peter Singer.

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    54. 2:34, you have no evidence to support any of your claims.

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    55. 2:00, can you please post your CV and current position so metabloggers can discuss whether you deserve your post?

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    56. I'd say both Professors are more famous for stirring controversy rather than proposing serious and well-developed views. ANd I dare say that X-Phi is in worse standing in the philosophical community than feminist philosophy.

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    57. That's just not true, 2:48. Singer may be more famous amongst the genera public for controversy rather than serious views. But he not famous amongst philosophers for merely holding controversial views. He is famous for exactly what you describe: proposing serious and well-developed views.

      To be honest I assumed that 2:34's post must be some kind of joke. Both Knobe and Singer are amongst the most prolific and well-regarded ethicists of their respective generations. Singer is, I would say, probably the most influential applied ethicists currently living.

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    58. "Both Knobe and Singer are amongst the most prolific and well-regarded ethicists of their respective generations."

      Really? I don't think Knobe should be unemployed, but this is a bit much. I wouldn't rate him in my top 100 ethicists. What would put him near the top? He didn't invent polling (that actually did take place before Knobe started publishing his work) and the hilariously named 'Knobe effect' was discussed by Gil Harman ages ago in his discussions of the relationship between intention and intentional action.

      (Full disclosure. I think a lot of experimental philosophy isn't philosophy, especially if it's just discussions of polls, so I don't rate people who tend to publish this kind of stuff as philosophers. They might be good at something else, but I don't know what it is.)

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    59. I am 2:34 and 2:48.

      Look, Langton and Haslanger are also very influential but they get some serious flak here. I am no fan of any of those philosophers but you cannot protest against someone like Magidor purely on grounds that she isn't cited enough when on the same page Wilson's very reasonable complaint is discussed. What do you guys want, pedigree and fame? Langton and Haslanger have it, but you protest that their fame is built on feminist ideology. I agree to some extent but I find Knobe's and Singer's fame is equally unwarranted. The X-phi revolution is still pending and where would Singer be without his controversial views he even himself does ot follow? Effective altruism has also garnered more criticism than appraisal.


      As for citations and publications: Citations are almost a worthless metric in a discipline where things get rehashed time and time again and the discipline as a whole is more or less divided into small citation networks clustered around institutions. I does have an objective veneer to it, but take mathematics as an example, where the best work is not the most cited work, because most do not even grasp the basic idea behind it.

      Everyone agrees that too much bullshit gets published but then the applicant must have publications en masse. There is on this board constant moaning about cronyism when it comes to publishing expressing a general distrust about the fairness of the review process but then you demand the very fruits of this process to play the role of evidence i evaluating the merits of particular persons. What is it then?

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    60. Well,put it this way, 3:42: Maybe I was being a bit hyperbolic, but I can't think of many other ethicists *around Knobe's age* with as much output and who are similarly well-regarded (and I know many very prominent senior ethicists who think very highly of Knobe).

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    61. I think very highly of Knobe, too, but not of his work. Nice guy. Probably a decent professor. I just don't rate the work and I think it has spawned a lot of crap.

      Maybe I'm being unfair here, but I don't see the value in most of his research. Surveys are lazy and easy. The discussion of the surveys might contain some value, but the papers I've read strike me as incredibly sloppy and suggestive. Nothing of substance that I can see.

      Case in point, consider the totally unprincipled use of the side-effect effect to justify 'surprising' claims about the role that moral thinking plays in various cognitive tasks. I take it that this is his biggest claim to fame, but have you actually studied the way it is used? It's pretty clear from a number of studies (and from Harman's earlier discussion of it) that the effect has nothing to do with moral judgment per se. He knows it, but then without bothering to explain why, he'll use the presence of the side-effect effect to support hypotheses about the way that certain judgments are influenced by moral judgment. Hack work. He should know better. He should be trying to find ways to reliably distinguish the way that distinctively moral judgments influence non-moral judgments and other sorts of evaluative judgments exert this influence. His position in the profession is largely a function of his cheer leading and his role in creating work for the lazy and superficial.

      If I'm being unfair here (possible because I only know some of his work), I'm happy to be corrected. What work in ethics has he done that's good?

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    62. "on the same page Wilson's very reasonable complaint is discussed."

      lol, what? Wilson's self-serving complaints about citation injustice have been discussed before. If I recall, her own example was work somebody senior to her developed and presented first.

      But enough about that--let's not forget we also make fun of Brotevi and Oppressatio.

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    63. I thought Knobe's thesis was really good.

      I don't really think it's all that great to be having discussions about who does and doesn't 'deserve' their job in the first place, but one thing that I find pretty striking about this whole discussion in general though is that when people are discussing the men, there's actual discussion of their work going on, not just baseless speculation.

      "But enough about that--let's not forget we also make fun of Brotevi and Oppressatio."

      What's your point, 4:27? No one suggested that men are never made fun of here. The claim is that the kinds of men who are targeted (largely those who have a public presence on philosophy blogs) and the ways they are targeted are relevantly different.

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    64. When they act differently they are treated accordingly. Brotevi et al. don't whinge about how under-appreciated they are--though Oppressatio outdoes Wilson on this score, or at least he used to.

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    65. Almost everyone I know in professional philosophy has a similar response to the tide of 'feminist' poison in the profession. Most remain quiet; the majority are not even political. But they don't like the 'feminist' propaganda, the discrimination, the demands for privileges and general bullshit. It poisons people's work environment. They remain silent because they know they'll be whacked for not following the party line.

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    66. So, according to your logic, 4:58, because some women think that they are treated unfairly due to their gender, and point this out in the public sphere, it's OK to engage in baseless speculation about them just because you disagree with them - AND engage in baseless speculation about other, completely unrelated women, designed to damage their reputation? That's both nasty and bad reasoning.

      I really don't understand why people are so committed to the view that it's totally OK to pick on random women, and assert with no solid evidence that they don't deserve their job, and not just that they don't deserve it but that they must have gotten it because they were a woman. It's bad to assert things when you couldn't possibly have enough evidence to reasonably believe it is true. It is particularly bad to assert such things in order to damage someone's professional standing. And the fact that you happen to disagree with that person (or some different person altogether) about some issue doesn't mean it's OK to do these kinds of things.

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    67. Female candidate with h-index of 5 was hired into the Waynflete Professorship at Oxford, over more highly qualified males, by a committee led by a feminist, Rae Langton.

      Delete
    68. I've got a great idea, 5:08. Let's pick some random women with AOC's that have nothing to do with feminism (and try and undermine their professional reputations even though we don't have sufficient evidence for our claims at all! That'll show everyone that all those feminist claims about sexism are just bullshit propaganda!

      Delete
    69. 5:25 et al: you guys are pricks. It's not fun or funny anymore (not that it was in the first place). STFU.

      Delete
    70. 4:58 here. I find you (5:13) hard to follow and you might be confusing me with somebody else. I haven't made any claims that I don't have reasonable evidence for. Here are my claims again: Wilson has often made public statements that strike me as entitled whining. I think that's bad. Where is my error? She thinks she is a champion of neglected women. I think she comes off more as a selfish careerist. Again, my evidence are her public statements. She promises to use her position to undermine students' careers unless they kowtow. How do I know? Because she said so. That's...very bad--some would say, even nasty.

      Then you show up with some irrelevant stuff about gender. From my end you seem to think being a women gives people a free pass to act jerky. Meanwhile Wilson is doing a fine job damaging her standing all on her own.

      There, I've had my say.

      Delete
    71. 5:37, it looks like you just weren't following the discussion. What I said was clearly relevant if you had been. The whole discussion, up until your comment, was a discussion about whether men and women are treated in ways that are relevantly different here, and whether this treatment is fair. So the stuff about gender is clearly relevant, given that that is in part what the discussion was about. And nothing that I said implies that being a woman gives you a free pass to act jerky, as you put it.

      Delete
    72. 5:47, Am being unfair to Wilson? I'm sincerely open to changing my mind.

      Delete
    73. I also suggest we quantify further discussions using McGinn a unit of measurement. So, e.g. Wilson's ego is equivalent to 0.01 McGinns.

      Delete
    74. 5:52, I'm not clear why that is relevant. No one, as far as I'm aware, was suggesting here that it's not OK to criticize people's public statements. Even to criticize them in ways that are perhaps not so charitable. The discussion was about whether its OK to publicly assert about a particular person, when they evidence doesn't support it, that they don't deserve their job/only got it because they were a woman.

      So, if you want to talk about Wilson - criticize her public statements all you like. But don't publicly say things that you don't have evidence for that are clearly designed to deliberately undermine her professional standing. (Because that's not something you should do to anyone, regardless of whether or not you think they're a jerk, are entitled, think they're selfish careerists, etc).

      Delete
    75. Gotta hand it to you, 6:06, that unit will come in handy.

      Delete
    76. 6:16: I accept your surrender.

      6:19: Brotastic! Just lending a helping hand.

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    77. I love it, 6:06!

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    78. :"6:16: I accept your surrender."

      You trying to earn yourself some McGinns, 6:23?

      Delete
    79. The thing is, there's way more written on any given philosophical topic than one can engage with. "Doing the scholarly thing right" does not require you to engage with every single thing written on the topic you're discussing. You engage with what you find interesting, challenging, etc. An author's insistence that her/his work deserves your attention is hardly an argument that it deserves your attention.

      Delete
    80. The McGinn unit is a brilliant idea, but before it becomes the conventionally accepted unit, isn't there a little problem? It's as if Daniel Fahrenheit decided to stipulate that one Fahrenheit degree would be the temperature difference between the surface of the moon and the core of the sun. Sure, it's all arbitrary, but think about convenience.

      I suppose we could always measure things in microMcGinns.

      Delete
    81. "With respect, 1:45, this is paranoia. Magidor is now Waynflete Professor at Oxford. But her publication level seems not to merit this; she beat several more highly qualified male candidates"

      Let's grant 2:00 this just for the sake of argument. Then why do you think publication level is the only metric deciding one's level of qualification for the position?

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    82. Yeah why do people think publications are so important? Everybody knows that service and teaching evaluations count more.

      Delete
    83. I am not 2.00 but I am a senior British academic. Publication level is the primary, if not evidently the sole, qualification for positions in philosophy here

      Delete
  6. Replies
    1. The link doesn't work for me. Here is a link that should work:

      http://whimsyandwisdom.ghost.io/2015/09/20/dont-get-your-panties-in-a-bunch-the-dilemma-of-addressing-the-absence-of-women-in-the-philosophy-of-religion/

      Delete
    2. Right off the bat, implicit bias and stereotype threat. So I assume this will be a paper that engages with the critical psychological literature, right? Because it's not clear those are real or robust phenomena? ...Oh, she's just going to talk about her feelings. Great.

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    3. Calm down, 2:20. There's no need to get so emotional just because you wish someone had written a different kind of paper.

      Delete
    4. You mean because I wish they'd written the good kind?

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    5. If you didn't like her points, you could just say so. But dismissing the whole thing as a woman just talking about her feelings is a dick move. And I'm pretty sure you probably knew that already.

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    6. You're the one who said "a woman". But hey, whatever; maybe you can write a paper about how some tendentious psychological literature, with which you don't engage at all critically, means I was implying that.

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    7. You said "she's just going to talk about her feelings."

      So, if you don't like my phrasing, maybe explain how this wasn't an instance of you dismissing a paper by a woman as just talking about feelings. And I don't see why I need to rely on any literature, tendentious or otherwise - you weren't just implying that you were dismissing a paper written by a woman as just being about feelings. That's what you said - 'she' as a feminine pronoun.

      But hey, maybe you want to make some other completely irrelevant and baseless digs about what you think my critical thinking skills are and whether I'd be able to apply them in some domain that I haven't even addressed in this conversation. Or you could just tell me not to get so *upset* about things. I'm sure you're dying too.

      Delete
    8. You're the one who told me not to get so upset, at 4:15. I never told anybody not to get so upset.

      Delete
    9. I never said that you did, 6:39. Maybe you can write a paper about how some tendentious psychological literature, with which you don't engage at all critically...etc

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    10. I've fixed 2:20's claim. Here is the revised version: the author makes an argument largely based off of feelings and/or emotions.

      That seems an apt description for the artucle. I appreciate 2:20 pointing us towards that accurate observation. It will save time for thosebnot interested in those types of arguments.

      Delete
    11. Do you think that any argument that, as part of the argument, describes how certain actions make people feel is an argument 'based off feelings and emotions'?

      'Based off feelings and emotions' seems to imply more than that - that the argument itself is an argument from emotion, and/or not logical. (Not just that one part of the argument is a description of how certain things make people feel).

      But the argument in the paper is the first kind of argument, not the second kind. And I wouldn't call those 'arguments based off of feelings,' for the same reason that I wouldn't call a consequentialist argument that had a premise describing or asserting that some thing likely causes physical or emotional pain an argument 'largely based off of feelings and/or emotions'.

      Delete
    12. 6:36, you are right to point out that I was implying that the argument (or rather, collection of arguments) in the article was likely a poor argument. For, that was in fact what I was hoping to get across.

      Delete
    13. Well, but what you implied was that it was a particular kind of poor argument, and it just isn't. It's not an argument from emotion. Any more than consequentialist arguments are arguments from emotion. If you think it is a bad argument, just say so. There is no reason to (misleadingly) suggest that it's an argument just based off feelings. And when you're so obviously wrong about this *and* dismissing arguments by women as being about 'emotions' rather than logic is a familiar trope, it looks like you're just trying to push buttons for no good reason.

      Delete
    14. 6:39 and earlier here (nothing since). I don't know what an "argument from emotion" is. That's not what I was suggesting. Nor was I suggesting that feelings or emotions are morally unimportant. That's a ludicrous position that I don't hold. My objection was that the author eschews a critical discussion of a questionable psychological literature because that literature seems compatible with her own feelings. A more critical approach that still dealt with feelings would be fine. And a more general look at the feelings of women in the profession would at least be interesting - a survey or something like that. But this here is just Jezebel/Slate-style "everything you do is sexist; here are some rules on how not to hurt people with your privilege" nonsense. It is not so much that I see an argument from emotion but that I see no argument at all - just a lot of diary entries about how something affects the author "from the inside".

      Delete
    15. "My objection was that the author eschews a critical discussion of a questionable psychological literature because that literature seems compatible with her own feelings."

      You have no idea that that is why she has chosen not to engage in critical discussion of the literature. There are multiple other explanations. Like, the paper proceeds from an assumption - that the literature is largely correct - that you happen to disagree with. But that's fine - papers in philosophy proceed on the basis of empirical assumptions all the time. Or perhaps the author simply disagrees that the literature discussing implicit bias etc. is compelling enough to show that the literature on implicit bias etc. is as questionable as you assume.

      "And a more general look at the feelings of women in the profession would at least be interesting - a survey or something like that."
      This just seems like you wish she'd written a different kind of paper. But it doesn't follow that just because you wish that that they paper she has written is bad. It's reasonable to believe that even in the absence of an official survey, the author has a pretty good grasp on how women often feel when they receive the kinds of comments she mentions, given that she is one and presumably knows most of the women in her small sub-discipline.

      "this here is just Jezebel/Slate-style "everything you do is sexist; here are some rules on how not to hurt people with your privilege" nonsense."

      It seems like you in part just don't like the style. But as the author points out, it is deliberately written in what she calls 'blog' style. As for the latter, that's just not a fair description. The author gives some examples of things that she thinks don't help (and explains why) and then spends the rest of the paper explaining the kinds of things that she thinks do help. The vast majority of the paper is not about how things affect her in particular "from the inside" at all.

      As it stands, it seems like it is just not the kind of paper you want to read: it proceeds from certain assumptions, it is fairly casual in style, and it contains some personal observations rather than surveys. But there is a difference between 'I don't like the style" and "I disagree with the basic assumptions" and "this is a bad paper with no argument."

      Delete
    16. 6:07, the papers I don't like are the ones that I think are bad. Blog style is bad. Questionable empirical assumptions are bad. Generalizing from your experience is bad. Condescending to others about how they can be "allies" or whatever is bad. If your response is "Well, that's just, like, your opinion, man," I mean, I guess so. Have a good day, dude.

      Delete
    17. You think it's *objectively bad* to write in 'blog style'? Look, obviously there are some things that are *objectively* bad to do in a paper. But writing a different style because you are publishing in a different format (blog rather than journal) seems fine - and if you don't like a style, even though it is suited to the format, then this does seem like a matter of taste.

      And the rest of things you think are bad are not things that the author does. Yes, she talks about her experience. But you've got no reason to think she is generalizing only from her experience. And part of the paper is explicitly addressed to people who take themselves to be allies and want advice on how to do this. It's not condescending to give such people advice in those circumstances.

      So I'm not saying 'well, that's just your opinion, man". I'm saying that some of the things you don't like are clearly just matters of taste (so, have no bearing in whether the paper is in fact objectively bad) some of the claims you make about what makes something an objectively bad paper are mistaken, and some of the claims you make about what the author does in the paper are mistaken.

      Delete
  7. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  8. How many - or what percentage of - philosophers do we think are Donald Trump supporters? I'm asking for a rough estimate and maybe some of the reasoning that got you there - not names!

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    Replies
    1. This is a superbly interesting question, rather like how much the CIA spent in faking the lunar landing (the figure is 3.2 billion dollars) and what proportion of Norwegians have lost at least one tooth in the last five years (this is 2.37%).

      The proportion of philosophers who are Trump supporters is 6.2%. The reasoning is as follows. Of philosophers, 93.8% do not support Mr Trump. But 100-93.8 = 6.2. This is why the answer is 6.2%.

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    2. Those questions don't seem to have anything in common with my question.

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    3. I'm a philosopher who is also a huge, huge supporter of Trump.

      (For the GOP nomination, that is.)

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    4. I used to support candidates on the basis of their abstract principles. Then I got cynical and supported them on the basis of their policy proposals and positions. Then I got cynical again. Now I support candidates purely on the basis of their personalities. Donald Trump easily wins that contest, since he actually has a personality. So for now, I support Donald Trump, and I think it's terrific to have him in the race.

      Delete
    5. Note that he's even to the left of the likes of Clinton on several important issues, such as health care.

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    6. But no I wouldn't vote for a crazy plutocrat.

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    7. Speaking of Trump, my level of disgust with the way things have been going in the U.S. has risen to this:

      "OK, let's have it out. Let's decide once and for all how stupid the American public is. Let's have Trump as the Republican nominee, and Sanders as the Democratic nominee. Maybe Sanders could have the younger Elizabeth Warren as VP pray she should be willing. And let Ted Cruz or even Scott Walker be Trump's VP. And the let us see whether Americans are ready to go explicitly fascist. I throw up my hands. If the Republicans would put up Trump and such as his VP, and if they would be voted in, then finally, human beings who remain (the others being zombies or robots or apes or something) would know what to do. Finally we would KNOW."

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    8. What is fascist about Trump?

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    9. "Calling Trump a fascist is not enough. What is necessary are analyses in which the seeds of totalitarianism are made visible in Trump’s discourse and policy measures. "

      http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/18/donald-trump-and-the-ghosts-of-totalitarianism/

      "Trump may be bold in his willingness to flaunt his racism and make clear that money drives politics, but this is not new and should surprise no one who is historically and civically literate.

      ".... This is a discourse in which totalitarian images of the hero, fearless leader, and bold politicians get lost in the affective ... registers of what ... Arendt ... called “the ruin of our categories of thought and standards of judgment.

      "[W]hat is often missed in analysis of political and civic illiteracy as the new normal is the degree to which these new forms of illiteracy not only result in an unconscious flight from politics, but also produce a moral coma that supports modern systems of terror and authoritarianism. Civic illiteracy is about more than the glorification and manufacture of ignorance on an individual scale: it is producing a nation-wide crisis of agency, memory, and thinking itself.

      "How else to explain ... the mainstream media’s willingness to provide a platform for Donald Trump whose views express an unchecked hatred of immigrants, women, the welfare state, and any viable notion of the public good. ...

      "Trump is simply the most visible embodiment of a society that is not merely suspicious of critical thought but disdains it. Trump is the quintessential symbol of the merging of a war-like arrogance, a militant certainty, and as self-absorbed unworldliness in which he is removed from problems of the real world. The clueless Trump is far from a kind of clownish fiction some writers have described him to be. And while liberals ... have pointed to his appeal to racial resentment, a gladiatorial style, and his ability to combine a war-like discourse and elements of conservative fundamentalism with a flair for entertainment, this type of analysis regrettably shies away from talking about Trump’s presence on the political landscape as an indication and warning of the specter of totalitarianism confronting Americans in new forms.

      "...Trump’s often insulting, humiliating, misogynist, and racist remarks signify more than the rantings of an antediluvian, privileged white man who is both savvy in the world of public relations and delusional in the world of politics.... Unapologetic about the racist nature of his remarks, unreflective about an savage economic system that is destroying the planet and the lives of most of its inhabitants, and unaware of his own “criminal” participation in furthering a culture of fear and cruelty, he is typical of an expanding mass of pundits, anti-public intellectuals, and right-wing fundamentalists who live in a historical void and for whom emotion overtakes reason.

      "Clearly, the attack on reason, evidence, science, and critical thought has reached perilous proportions in the United States."

      "For Arendt [and the author thinks so too] the inability to think, to be thoughtful, and assume responsibility for one’s actions spoke not just to a regrettable type of civic and political illiteracy, but was crucial for creating the formative cultures that produced totalitarian regimes. Absent any residue of moral responsibility, political indignation, and collective resistance, crimes committed in a systemic way now emerge, in part, from a society in which thinking had become dangerous and non-thinking normalized."

      and so on.

      tl;dr: The clueless Trump is far from a kind of clownish fiction; his value system and form of expression is the essence of that of a totalitarian regime.

      Delete
    10. 10:55, could it be: He believes that might makes right and imagines no alternative?

      Delete
    11. 12:46 is that all you can come up with? Just some Giroux bullshit? Come on.

      "Trump’s often insulting, humiliating, misogynist, and racist remarks"

      Ahhh, the familiar leftist tactic of name-calling. Insulting, humiliating, yes, sometimes, but misogynist and racist? And if you bother to reply, please don't refer (at least, without an argument) to his attacks on Mexicans, Megyn Kelly, Fiorina. I have looked into those and they are neither misogynistic nor racist. And even if it were the case: why is it fascist to be racist or mysogynistic? Those are not the same. Or do you buy into Giroux's rewriting the definition of fascism? That's just too easy. Let's redefine fascism again and I can call my opponents 'fascists'.

      "Clearly, the attack on reason, evidence, science, and critical thought has reached perilous proportions in the United States."

      No idea where Trump does this. His relating vaccines to autism certainly wasn't an attack on reason, evidence or science. It was merely stupid, just dumb.

      12:48, why do you think Trump believes that? As far as I know he hasn't said or implied (implicated) such a claim.

      Delete
    12. You belong in a cabaret, 1:30. Put on your mustache, your top hat and/or your burlesque underwear.

      Delete
  9. Any views on the last South Park's take on the new PC?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't watch television. Sorry.

      Delete
  10. Is it true that philosophers have a tendency to feign naivety and puzzlement when interacting with one another?

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    Replies
    1. Not quite sure what you're getting at, sorry.

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    2. Hmm, I'm not sure what you mean 10:40. Can you say more?

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    3. Socrates: We must begin again from the beginning to examine what the pious is, since as far as I am concerned, I will not give up until I
      understand it. Do not scorn me, but applying your mind in every way, tell me the truth, now more than ever. Because you know it if anybody does and, like Proteus, you cannot be released until you tell me, because unless you knew clearly about the pious and impious there is no way you would ever have tried to pursue your aging father for murder on behalf of a hired laborer, but instead you would have been afraid before the gods, and ashamed before men, to run the risk of conducting this matter improperly.

      But as it is, I am sure that you think that you have clear knowledge of the pious and the impious. So tell me, great Euthyphro, and do not conceal what you think it is.

      Euthyphro: Well, some other time, then, Socrates, because I'm in a hurry to get somewhere and it's time for me to go.

      Socrates: What a thing to do, my friend! By leaving, you have cast me
      down from a great hope I had, that I would learn from you what is pious and what is not, and would free myself from Meletos' charge, by showing him that, thanks to Euthyphro, I had already become wise in religious matters and that I would no longer speak carelessly and innovate about these things due to ignorance, and in particular that I would live better for the rest of my life.

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    4. No, they are not always feigning. Sometimes they are thinking very carefully, making way fewer than normal unwarranted assumptions Some of the most careful thinking I have ever seen done however was by someone not actually professionally "trained" as a philosopher. And I have seen plenty of mean philosophers or ones in a bad mood who were feigning in the way you describe. It's a vice that is a special danger for people in this field.

      (10:49 and 10:52 were pretty funny though.)

      Delete
  11. I am PISSED about the Washington Post's coverage of the new surveys on sexual assault on campus. It cannot possibly be 1/5 women are sexually assaulted during college, I have run the numbers. Women do the sexual assaulting. This is more conspiratorial nonsense. Sexism is over, except against men in hiring.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Can't tell if parody.

      Delete
    2. Totes parody. Or satire? Or sarcasm?

      Delete
    3. Indeed it is conspiratorial hysteria. Criminological research and properly conducted surveys show that victimization rates, for females and males, for both IPV and sexual crimes & assault, may be similar (or different by at most a factor of 2). Discounting robust surveys on the basis of one's ideology is sexist prejudice. Online self-selection reports are problematic, for obvious reasons. It is innocent men that are being routinely punished and denied due process, and not innocent women. This is the result of hysteria. In academic philosophy, recent hiring data shows that, when they're hired into the same position, women have published about half what men have - that is indeed true. For example, women averaged 0.81 publications, while men averaged 1.45.

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    4. Well, if the surveys you cite are correct and rates are similar, it is not correct to say that "women do the sexual assaulting", is it?

      And even if you are correct in that the explanation for the hiring data is that men face sexism in hiring, this doesn't prove that sexism is otherwise 'over' as you assert.

      Delete
    5. Angry, poorly reasoned attempt at satire. Your ideology is falling apart and this is the best defense you can think of?

      Delete
    6. If its's satire, then surely the whole point is that it is poorly reasoned, 9:29.

      Delete
    7. The poor reasoning is coming from the proponents of the unhinged rape hysteria, who seem unable to deal with scientific evidence. The scientific evidence shows that both males and females engage in both IPV and in sexual crimes. The exact proportions are not known for sure, but for IPV it is likely they're similar.

      The true claim that women do engage in some crime does not logically imply the false claim that men don't. That is not how logical reasoning works.

      For sexual crimes, the rates of victimization of (and perpetration by) females and males may be very similar, when research is conducted correctly.

      However, there is in the US a trend of wild politically-driven hysteria, which ignores the scientific research, and replaces it with bonkers anti-male lunacy and demonization.

      Delete
    8. You didn't just claim that women do engage in some crime, though, 9:49. You claimed that "Women do *the* sexual assaulting". This does imply the claim that men don't. I understand logical reasoning just fine, thanks.

      Delete
    9. Wtf? No I did not. Where? What are you talking about?

      Delete
    10. As a man who comments here occasionally, and who's been sexually assaulted (unambiguously nonconsensual sexual contact) by women on a number of occasions, let me say that I have absolutely no reason to disbelieve that women are sexually assaulted more often than men, or that the 1 in 5 figure is inaccurate. Given my own experiences and those of close friends, I suspect people are under- rather than over-reporting.

      That women often victimize men doesn't mean that the reverse isn't even more often true. Denying either component doesn't help anybody.

      Delete
    11. Denying either component doesn't help anybody.

      The original comment, at 8:11, did precisely this. This was a 'feminist' trying to be satirical - that is, denying that there is perpetration by females. But there is, as the criminological research shows, victimization of, and perpetration by, both males and females. This is the point made at 9:49.

      Delete
    12. Sorry, 9:58. I'm 9:56 and I assumed that you were 8:11.

      Delete
  12. Which Groups Are Favored?
    April 20, 2015
    By
    Scott Jaschik

    Last week a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences stunned many with its conclusion that women are more likely than men to be hired for faculty positions in science, mathematics and technology. To many who are familiar with the widespread reports of bias against women in STEM, the findings just didn't make sense.

    This weekend another study was released at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association -- and this new study also found that men (and specifically white men) do not have the advantage that many assume they do in being hired in STEM fields. Women and black and Latino researchers instead have an advantage, the study found. It also found an apparent disadvantage for Asian researchers starting their careers.

    https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/04/20/new-research-which-groups-are-more-likely-be-hired-and-receive-tenure-stem

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It also found that black people and women (especially women with young children) have a disadvantage in obtaining tenure.

      Delete
    2. 9:31 you were quick to miss the point and focus on the details that don't challenge your preconceptions.

      Delete
    3. It is neither true that I missed the point nor that I focused on details that don't challenge my preconceptions. 9:26 raised an important point from the article, which I then read. But the point 9:26 raised was only part of the article, which as you can see from the link is about which groups are more likely to be hired *and receive tenure* and as I'm sure you realize it is important not to ignore evidence that doesn't for *your* narrative.

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  13. 9:12 do you think 100,000 women and men are lying in these surveys or just the women? Why would the men lie, too? Hysteria on their part? Theory?
    THE ONLY data is DOJ data. NO CRIMINOLOGIST WOULD EVER think there is a high or previous hidden sexual assault rate on campus.
    THE STUDENTS LIE. They can try surveying 100,000 students as many times as they WANT.

    And that is outrageous, that people would hire women with .81 publications when they could get 1.45. 1.45 publications is nothing to scoff at. Clearly that merits a hire over a .81. Every single stakeholder in the University knows this. If this would only be publicized further, so that students could choose the school that honors 1.45 publications over .81. The only SEXISM THAT EXISTS is against men in hiring. It stops and begins there. Thanks for being so clear.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Why don't you study the detailed scientific evidence, 9:56?

      Delete
    2. The evidence shows that it is black people who tend to face systemic discrimination in society; that it is lower socio-economic status individuals who face discrimination in society; and that it is men who face systemic gender discrimination.

      The bottom of the pile is a black, working-class, man.
      The top of the pile is a white, upper-class, woman.

      'Feminists' can shout as much as they like, but these are the facts.

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    3. Serious suggestion: if people (not necessarily 9:56) think that publication data is a reliable enough predictor of quality, why not simply do away with writing samples, interviews etc? We could simply rank candidates in order, based simply on no. of publications (we could weight for quality), citation indexes, and (in some cases) teaching survey scores. Then we list all the jobs. The top-ranked candidate gets to pick a job from the list first, then the second-ranked gets to pick, and so on down the line.

      Delete
    4. 9:56 is a 'feminist' trying to be satirical.

      Delete
    5. A better system, 11:04, would conjoin publication data with an anonymized writing sample. Or maybe an anonymized publication score (itself a function of quantity and quality of placement, say -- but presented just as a number, with no identifying information) alongside an anonymous writing sample. There is simply no replacement for actually reading a candidate's work, to get a feel for what they're like, how they think, what interests them. None. So any system in which I'm not reading candidates' writing strikes me as just terrible. People who suggest algorithmically ranking candidates by number of publications or whatnot have never, I suspect, been on a hiring committee.

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    6. Right, 11:10 - that's pretty much my point. That's why I think the conclusions many people seem to be drawing just from the publication data are usually too strong. It just isn't reliably the case that if Person A has one more publication than Person B, then Person A is better qualified for the job.

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    7. People who suggest algorithmically ranking candidates by number of publications or whatnot have never, I suspect, been on a hiring committee.

      No one has "suggested" this. I have been on about 10 hiring committees and seen some pretty severe injustices. Let's consider the empirical claim (and 11:22):

      (C) An algorithmic publication metric doesn't positively correlate with merit.

      Are you saying this is true? I am discussing statistical correlation, and not one-off judgments.

      Delete
    8. I'm not saying quite that, 11:41. I'm saying that the positive correlation isn't enough for us to reliably conclude, simply on the basis that Person A has one more publication than Person B, that Person A is therefore more qualified.

      This can be true even if it is also true that publications are an indicator of merit, if there are enough other factors that we need to take into account. To put it simply, if publications were the only indicator of merit that we cared about, then it would be the case not only that publications were an indicator of merit, but that we could reliably conclude merely on the basis that A had more publications than B that A was more qualified. But it is not.

      Similarly, teaching scores are an indicator of merit. But this doesn't mean that it's reliably the case that if A has better teaching scores than B that A is more qualified for a job than B, because there are so many other factors that hiring committees do (and should) consider.

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    9. No one has "suggested" that. Do you believe the empirical claim

      (C) An algorithmic publication metric doesn't positively correlate with merit

      is true or false?

      Delete
    10. 11:41, this conversation is getting a bit confusing - just to be clear, I'm 11:22 (and :51), but not 11:10. So I think one of your questions (about what people are suggesting) isn't addressed to me.

      But in terms of your (c), I have already answered that question.

      Delete
    11. So, to be clear: is (C) true?

      Delete
    12. (C) An algorithmic publication metric doesn't positively correlate with merit

      C is probably false (I interpret it as saying *no* algorithmic publication metric positively correlates with merit). If there is such a thing as "merit", then it is positively correlated with at least some algorithmic publication metric or other. But the correlation is not strong enough, I'd wager, to let any algorithmic publication metric play a controlling factor in interviewing, campus visits, or hiring. More information is better, and few sources of information (about a candidate's research, that is) are more useful than the research itself, the actual pieces of published writing.

      Delete
    13. Good, so, (C) is false: an algorithmic measure of publications (whether h-index, citation average, g-index, or whatever) does positively correlate with merit.

      You give no evidence that anyone has suggested anything about a "playing a controlling factor". The fact that X correlates with Y does not imply that there isn't some Z which also correlates with Y. In statistics, there always is. This is basic scientific method.

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    14. For such a suggestion, we need only look in this very thread, 1:22:

      Serious suggestion: if people (not necessarily 9:56) think that publication data is a reliable enough predictor of quality, why not simply do away with writing samples, interviews etc? We could simply rank candidates in order, based simply on no. of publications (we could weight for quality), citation indexes, and (in some cases) teaching survey scores. Then we list all the jobs. The top-ranked candidate gets to pick a job from the list first, then the second-ranked gets to pick, and so on down the line.

      I don't think anyone has actually advocated this kind of ranking (have they?), but someone did make a "serious suggestion" of it -- just a few posts above. Perhaps you missed this, though.

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    15. Excuse me, but does this quote not begin with "if"? This is not a suggestion of that the consequent be implemented. It is intended as a reductio of the "if" clause.

      Delete
    16. So, 1:22 is actually suggesting the exact opposite. Right?

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    17. 1:22, do you think that we can reliably conclude from the fact that A has 1 more publication than B that A is better qualified for a job?

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    18. That isn't quite clear to me. Which is why I called the consequent of what 1:22 said a "suggestion", rather than attributing to 1:22 an "actually advocated" view.

      Delete
    19. Eh? 1:22 is opposing the content of the "if" clause - "if people (not necessarily 9:56) think that publication data is a reliable enough predictor of quality ...". This is clear.

      And no, the consequent of a reductio is not a "suggestion". You don't seem to understand what a reductio is.

      Delete
  14. I for one am sympathetic to the position that there is sexism against women in, say, academic hiring 9:56 (I am not 9:12). But I am becoming less sympathetic as the data comes in and supports the converse position that there is sexism in their favor. So if the people convinced of the former position want to continue to receive the sympathetic ear of people like me, they need to begin to take the data seriously. And ridiculing the people who, it now begins to seem, are the actual targets of sexism is not helping your position win people who aren't already convinced by your (it seems empirically underinformed) political ideology.

    Just some thoughts from someone concerned by the abysmal state of the profession and interested in improving things.

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    1. I don't have any dog in this fight, and I find it very peculiar when people do. People think of themselves as on "team women" or "team men?" I thought most of us had loving relationships with members of the other team. To see hiring practices described as "sexism against men" because of the finding that women have .81 articles for a man's 2 (or whatever it is)- it's too quick. Too much. You'd never accept the argument that this constitutes "sexism" if it were just some other data point in women's "favor." I know you all know this. I imagine in your personal lives, it is hard to hide your feelings towards women.

      Delete
    2. That's an astute observation, 6:28. It certainly seems as though tribalism is in full effect in quite a few of these conversations.

      I've made a few remarks here about gender and hiring. I am a man. If I have an agenda, it is not to promote men in philosophy; I don't think I'm a member of "team man"! If I had an agenda, it would be to promote honesty about what we're often up to in hiring. I've been on hiring committees where we resolved, before reading any files, to hire a woman. This sort of thing happens all the time. It should be public knowledge. What I don't like is when colleagues put a thumb on the scale in favor of women candidates but then deny doing so. That strikes me as dishonest and harmful in the long run.

      As for those publication stats: because I favor transparency, I also like seeing reports of general statistical patterns that you note. They can helpfully illuminate questions about where (if any) thumbs are being put on scales in academic hiring. This stuff should all be common knowledge and available to, say, first year graduate students who are still trying to figure out whether they're in this gig for the long haul.

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    3. "You'd never accept the argument that this constitutes "sexism" if it were just some other data point in women's "favor." I know you all know this. I imagine in your personal lives, it is hard to hide your feelings towards women"

      What?

      Delete
  15. So what are you all doing for Hobbit Day?

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    Replies
    1. Schtupping a student while dressed up as a Hobbit. What about you?

      Delete
  16. Is this pretty much a reductio of the general cultural logic (the spirit if not the letter) of trigger warnings?

    "When the University of Michigan began soliciting responses to both the AAU survey and one of its own creation, some students said the language used in the survey's questions made them uncomfortable or even triggered dark memories of their assaults."

    https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/05/27/language-sexual-assault-surveys-criticized-students-triggering

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  17. Whineberg reports on the fire at UChicago with pics and details, and Leiter hasn't yet said a word about it. Daily Nous wins this round!

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    Replies
    1. Is it really newsworthy? I can't ever recall a post like that on LR.

      Delete
    2. I can't wait for the roundtable "Philosophers Reflect on Fire". I'm sure Tremain, Kukla, etc. will have a lot to say.

      Delete
  18. There's what seems a comedy thread at DN, discussing the Mentoring for Waynflettes Program. One up-and-coming waynflette says how "hard she's worked", despite all the special privileges and preferential treatment she gets. A commenter called "langdon" mentions the "unique challenges" faced by women - i.e., the challenge of getting preferential treatment over a man, under every conceivable circumstance.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Too bad your comment illustrates exactly one of the points made about women's intelligence and achievements being constantly questioned and doubted, 8:35. Way to undermine your own position while also being a total dick.

      Delete
    2. 8:46, do you have an objection to waynflettes being given "special privileges and preferential treatment"?

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    3. 8:35: That was me who wrote about how hard I've worked. Please tell me what the special privileges and preferential treatment I've gotten/am going to get are. Since you know me so well.

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    4. We hired a man once even though I think a lot of us thought within a few days of that decision that a female candidate was better on all the important dimensions (research profile, research trajectory, pedagogy).

      MIND> BLOWN!> Boom.

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    5. 10:31, out of (non-gender-related) curiosity what happened in those few days? Did you just make the decision too quickly?

      Delete
    6. @10:36, Can't share details online. PM me.

      Delete
  19. You tell us. Do you disagree with gender-segregated arrangements, giving special preferential treatment, on the basis of gender? Do you agree that gender-segregation is misogyny?

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    Replies
    1. That was a reply to 9:21. The special privileges and preferential treatment in hiring that you're "going to get" have been documented at length. For example, on average, you'll need only 0.81 publications to get hired. A male will need 1.45. That is preferential treatment.

      Delete
    2. That['s just not true, 9:38. In order to know what someone 'needs' to get hired in terms of publications, you'd need to know the probability that a woman with X pubs will get hired, and probability that a man with X pubs will get hired. (eg, what you need to know is 'what is the probability that a woman will be hired, given that she has 1 pub)

      But you don't know that. What you know is the probability that a woman who was hired had X publications, and the probability than a man who was hired had X publications (What is the probability that a woman had 1 publication, given that she was hired)

      Delete

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