In the year 2024, 140 years after Frege’s Grundlagen, almost 100 years after Carnap’s Aufbau, and 85 years after Stebbing’s Thinking, in what state do we find the research produced in academic analytic philosophy? As I’ve said before, I think things are better than they’ve been for eighty years or so. There is still a great deal to do to rectify access to the discipline and improve its culture—though again things have improved significantly in these respects thanks to the initiatives of
On "referee-proofing", my concern is less the addition of boring epicycles (though I would often prefer greater selectivity here), and more the incentive to *entirely remove interesting content* so as to provide a smaller "target" to referees. As I wrote here - https://rychappell.substack.com/p/evaluating-philosophy -
"Given current norms, we all know that it can make a paper “more publishable” (i.e. referee-proof) to *remove interesting ideas* from it, because more content just creates more of a target for referees to object to. This is messed up. Good-seeking standards instead recognize that adding relevant valuable content is (typically) a good thing. Our evaluative standards should reflect this fact."
I enjoyed this piece. and I think you do an excellent job of making the case for the value of a kind of philosophy. FWIW I think dissatisfaction with philosophy of the sort described here is often best understood as the expression of a desire to do something else, something the value of which is not best explained by analogy to the way in which the natural sciences slowly and patiently assemble bits of knowledge.
I wonder if you genuinely think that any of these ideas, however okay or even good, are comparable to the great ideas we know from people like Quine and Putnam and Sellars? I wonder if we can find comparable ideas anywhere in contemporary philosophy? Let's not go back to the mighty dead, but only to the great philosophy that was produced a few decades ago and is long gone.
On "referee-proofing", my concern is less the addition of boring epicycles (though I would often prefer greater selectivity here), and more the incentive to *entirely remove interesting content* so as to provide a smaller "target" to referees. As I wrote here - https://rychappell.substack.com/p/evaluating-philosophy -
"Given current norms, we all know that it can make a paper “more publishable” (i.e. referee-proof) to *remove interesting ideas* from it, because more content just creates more of a target for referees to object to. This is messed up. Good-seeking standards instead recognize that adding relevant valuable content is (typically) a good thing. Our evaluative standards should reflect this fact."
I enjoyed this piece. and I think you do an excellent job of making the case for the value of a kind of philosophy. FWIW I think dissatisfaction with philosophy of the sort described here is often best understood as the expression of a desire to do something else, something the value of which is not best explained by analogy to the way in which the natural sciences slowly and patiently assemble bits of knowledge.
I wonder if you genuinely think that any of these ideas, however okay or even good, are comparable to the great ideas we know from people like Quine and Putnam and Sellars? I wonder if we can find comparable ideas anywhere in contemporary philosophy? Let's not go back to the mighty dead, but only to the great philosophy that was produced a few decades ago and is long gone.