Well, not really, but some of the best philosophers are formal philosophers, and I am friends (at least Facebook friends) with some of them, like Hartmann at Munich and Kotzen at UNC-Chapel Hill. On the other hand, as many readers have remarked to me (and even some insiders have noted), formal philosophers (esp. formal epistemologists) have been getting some bad press, starting with last year's Synthese scandal (including their defenders), this year's photo scandal, the embarrassing Glymour screed, not to mention generally juvenile on-line behavior by formal philosophers like Helzner and Wheeler. As formal philosopher Franz Huber at Konstanz recently wrote to me:
[F]ormal/mathematical philosophy is having extremely bad press on your influental blog and elsewhere these days, and justifiedly so. However, most formal/mathematical philosophers are not sexist at all, and many of us care a lot about gender and minority issues, as, I am glad I may report, has been noticed elsewhere. I would be extremely grateful if you could link to these posts in order to counterbalance the bad press our field has justifiedly had in the past. This would not only soften the bad impact some recent events certainly have had, but also help prevent that efforts by others to make our displine an open and frienldy one have not been in vain.
I am happy to do so.
UPDATE: Apparently in response to the preceding, Helzner posted this. I can't figure out whether he and Wheeler are too stupid or too lazy to realize that disclosing the reputational data would violate the terms on which the evaluators agreed to complete the surveys (did they even bother to read the description of the methodology, one wonders?). Of course, it may be neither stupidity nor laziness, just more of their usual malevolence. Some readers also asked for examples of juvenile mischief by Helzner and Wheeler. This was certainly the prime example I had in mind, which confirmed that I'm dealing here with assholes, but one can add to that Helzner's pseudonymous harassment of me over at the New Apps Blog (where I posted under my own name), a trick I thought had gone out in middle school. I do wish these boys would grow up, but I'm not optimistic.
3/13 UPDATE: Wheeler tries to take his and Helzner's crusade to Certain Doubts, and the smackdown in the comment from Jonathan Kvanvig (Baylor) is short and sweet (and accurate).
3/14 UPDATE:
3/14 UPDATE: A brief note I sent to Professor Gelman, but which I decided I ought to simply post, since it supplies some relevant context to the preceding, especially my characterization of Helzner as "juvenile":
Dear Professor Gelman,
I see that Professor Helzner has now enlisted you into the discussion about confidentiality and rankings. There is a lot of context here, which I’ll just summarize briefly: (1) Helzner did his PhD at Carnegie-Mellon, which is not highly ranked in the surveys we do (at www.philosophicalgourmet.com), though it is outstanding in a couple of specialties (also captured in the rankings); (2) CMU folks, and Helzner in particular, have had a grievance about this for quite some time; (3) for a period of time, Helzner would pseudonymously harass me in the comments section of other philosophy blogs where I would participate under my own name (I think that counts as ‘juvenile,’ don’t you?); (4) Helzner has posted gratuitously insulting comments about me on his own blog since last fall.
Over 300 philosophers participated in the most recent surveys, with an assurance of various kinds of confidentiality. In the past, I have released--anonymized to the extent possible but also with a written agreement about confidentiality—the raw data to a sociologist who studies the philosophy profession (Kieran Healy at Duke), and he has written about the results, and has found them to be robust along many different dimensions. All this is in the public domain, though Professor Helzner professes ignorance of it. I have an agreement to give Professor Healy the most recent data as well, as soon as we can retain an RA to assist in the anonymization.
Best wishes,
Brian Leiter
Readers can consult www.philosophicalgourmet.com to see the extent of the transprency of the methodology, and the data, including the reporting of mean, median and in some cases modal scores, and complete lists of evaluators in every specialty. Alas, evaluators would not participate if the confidentiality of their evaluations were not preserved. I have shared the underlying data with serious researchers like Professor Healy, but will obviously not share it with those who have no scholarly interest in the topic, but only an axe to grind.
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