In-house reviewing has to stop

Brian Leiter, of Leiter Reports: A Group Blog, has an excellent post on the kind of cronyism that goes on at philosophy journals. I think Leiter has done the profession a service by exposing the seriousness of the issue and the impact it has on the people in the profession. You can view the post by clicking here.

Similarly, there's a post at Certain Doubts (somewhat) defending the practice of in-house reviews. It can be viewed by clicking here. Check'em out; I'll have more on this later.

Friedrich Nietzsche's MySpace.com site

It is good to know that even dead people can have a myspace.com account. Visit Friedrich Nietzsche's myspace.com website here. Among his friends are Charles Darwin, Jim Morrison, and Robert E. Lee (I think; or is it Ulysses S. Grant?).

The story is Utah...

I've returned to Utah to find the mountains still rising above the lake.

The past few weeks have been hectic. In addition to preparing for teaching my classes, I've been preparing three chapters of my dissertation and my dissertation prospectus for committee review. I've had to sacrifice blogging time for completing the administrative tasks of the dissertation.

If all goes well, I'll be posting more news about my dissertation soon. I'd like to run some arguments here. In fact, I might even post a chapter or two - after they have been revised.

In talking with friends and family, I find that they know next to nothing about Ogden. Heck, I didn't know anything about Ogden until I started snooping around town.

Here are some facts about Ogden, UT. Ogden is about midway between Salt Lake City and Logan. The Ogden and surrounding communities is known as "Top of Utah" because - well - it is in the northern part of the state. Ogden has approximately 80,000 residents.

Ogden has a rich past. First, the legendary jazz musician, Red Nichols, was born and raised in Ogden. Second, the city of Ogden was boasted the hub of the transcontinental railroad, especially Ogden's Union Station, for many years after its completion in 1869. The city of Ogden played a crucial role in the railroad industry. Next, Ogden is the birthplace of the Osmonds, Alan, Wayne, Merrill, Jimmy, Jay, Donny and Marie. Theirs was a Cinderella story: let me jog your memory a bit - the Osmonds were ax-ed by Lawrence Welk (well that's not exactly true - he just refused to see the group) but picked up by Andy Williams for his variety show and Jerry Lewis who also had a variety show at the time. Eventually, in the late 70s, the Donny and Marie variety show aired weekly for two years.

Finally - and last but not least - Ogden, Utah was used in the 1985 Chevy Chase movie classic, Fletch. "The story is Utah."

Who said Utah does not have a colorful (and vibrant) past?

What kinds of results should we expect from philosophy?

An argument against conceptual analysis suggests it has failed because the results of philosophical investigations have not issued a large body of results. A consequence of engaging in scientific experimentation is that it has resulted in a large body of results. Results, no matter whether they are correct or not, are more impressive than no results. Results reflect the adequacy of the methods one uses. So, scientific methods are better than philosophical methods.

The problem with this argument is that we don't know whether the results are good ones. If the results are incorrect or they fail to help us along in our endeavors, then the method scientists use fails too.

Suppose that two experiments investigating similar phenomena result in contradictory conclusions. Contradictory results occur sometimes in research involving alcohol or coffee. Some experiments say that a glass of wine a day - at best - helps the health of one's heart - or at worst cannot harm one's cardiovascular health. Other experiments say that consuming any kind of alcoholic beverage will harm one's health. If two experiments investigating similar phenomena result in contradictory results, then it seems wise to worry about the methods one uses to find those results. The problem lies in the experiment. So, a method that results in a large body of results is not always the one we ought to follow.

Update: Consumed by projects

I've not stopped posting blogs; I've just slowed down for a few days. Meantime, I've been writing and working on a few projects I'd suspended.

First, I'm finalizing a draft of the first and second chapter of my dissertation. The first one is devoted to motivating my project. I never thought much of my topic until I started talking about it with other people - ordinary people, people without philosophy degrees. They find it most interesting. I've written the chapter with them in mind, not philosophers. You may ask, "why, when it's a dissertation?" I say it's important to remember that our mission is to assist others to become better thinkers. If we are to help them, then we must make it interesting for them too. Abandoning their interests is to abandon our mission of helping people become better reasoners. The second chapter works out a few ways of defending the philosophical methodology of experimental philosophy. I try to take on staunch defenders of conceptual analysis. I've used Morris Lazerowitz (spelling? Well, I'll correct it in the morning.) essay on conceptual analysis as a paradigm for defending experimental philosophy from its detractors.

Second, I've been working on building my ultimate personal computer. I abandoned this project in 2000, when I became a graduate student, i.e., poor. It's a pretty huge undertaking because I have to catch up with technological advances.

Finally, I'm moving back to Utah. It's exciting, but it's been nice travelling around the U.S. all summer. I'll miss being always on the move.

Stillborn

Today I received word (again) that my essay was not accepted for publication. After having worked on the essay for two years, I'm pretty upset. The journal editors did not even bother to write brief comments to me; obviously, it was that bad. The essay went through several drafts, all for nought, and many of my professors thought highly of the essay.

My other essay, one I wrote in almost 4 hours in the fall of 2001, was accepted for publication. I'm glad about that, but very few people have thought much about the essay. They have criticized it saying it isn't worth the paper it's written on. The topic of the essay is a paradox; some professors have suggested to me that writing on paradoxes is unmotivated and is boring.

Why is it that the well received essay was not published and the not-so-well received essay was published? The state of the profession is queer.

I'm pretty sure that I'll not try to publish the well-received paper again. It'll be thrown into the ever increasing trash heap.

[Excuse the post-dating, but I didn't know if I wanted to publish my original thoughts on the blog. I revised them (quite thoroughly).]

Dworkin's Arguments for Academic Freedom

For the first time in a long time, I didn't bring a computer with me while I was away from home. So, now I'm trying to catch up on some blogs and writing in my own blog. Luckily, airplane rides provide ample time to catch up on some reading.

Yesterday I read Dworkin's argument for academic freedom. I haven't had a chance to think about the connections it has with the Churchill debate or the Nielsen debate, so I don't want to apply what I've learned from Dworkin to either one. I just want to talk about one of the two arguments Dworkin raises.

His first argument is merely a form of cost-benefit analysis for academic freedom. Yield to academic freedom only when the need to do so is "great and evident." We must bear in mind that censorship in any form is the enemy. Dworkin calls this the argument of policy, and I don't have much beef with him here.

The second argument is not easy to follow. Dworkin calls it an argument of principle. Let me try to reconstruct it. Pluralistic peoples have a right to be free from statements or displays of discrimination. The statements or displays of discrimination are determined by the pluralistic peoples. These displays are permanent features of the community. Therefore, compromises in academic freedom are permanent structural features of any just community.

The argument of principle recognizes a difference between limits and compromise. People are limited when it comes to the freedom of speech. For example, one cannot enter a crowded theater and yell, "Fire!" Even the courts would recognize that one has transgressed the boundaries of free speech in this case. When would academician transgress this boundary? Would the academic researcher transgress this boundary if he used some form of deception on her students?

Intellectual curiosity calls for boundary transgression. Drawing limits in the intellectual research exercise are arbitrary. Arbitrary boundaries are difficult to sustain in light of the fact that the culture of independence depends on these boundaries not to be present for academic freedom to work. These limits imply that the boundaries are much more solid than the culture of independence should tolerate. So, academic freedom cannot help but transgress the boundaries and the limits of society.

The problem with this response to Dworkin's argument is that it means that academic freedom is unlimited. There is no way we can argue against academic freedom. This is absurd. Academics cannot exploit their students in research or in the classroom. In this case, the professor has taken academic freedom too far. The difficult task of correcting these two arguments is finding a compromise between these two positions. Once we have reached a compromise, we will have a better understanding of academic freedom.