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So what *do* philosophers believe?

Brian Leiter

MOVING TO FRONT FROM DECEMBER 10 TO ENCOURAGE MORE COMMENTS FROM READERS

The results of the survey organized by Chalmers & Bourget are now available.  Chalmers comments on them here.  The results can be searched in a variety of ways–by the "target faculty" (i.e., faculty at 99 leading PhD-granting programs), by graduate student responses, even undergraduate students.  I'm just going to canvass a few results that caught my attention.  Following the "coarse" results (as they call them), I will lump together those who "accept" a certain view and those who "lean" towards it.

To start, it's not a surprise that with 931 responses from target faculty, 72.8% are atheists, and only 14.6% theists.  (That correlates nicely, one suspects, with the 13.7% who are libertarians about free will!)   On the other hand, when the survey includes another 900 or so philosophers who weren't among the target faculty, the percentage of atheists drops slightly to 69.7% and the number of theists increases to 16.3%.   With 829 graduate students responding, a full 20.8% are theists, while 63.5% are atheists.  (And, perhaps unsurprisingly, among graduate students, 19.3% are libertarians about free will!)

Perhaps more notable given journalistic portrayals of the humanities as hotbeds of moral relativism and skepticism is that 56.3% of target faculty are moral realists, while only 27.7% are anti-realists–and among those who work in normative ethics, nearly two-thirds (62.5%) are moral realists!  (The rest hold some mix of opinions, which you can see by choosing the fine-grained results on the survey page.)  Journalists take note:  more than half of philosophers at PhD-granting programs believe there are objective moral truths!  (An odd sidenote:  nearly two-thirds of philosophers are cognitivists, which means, I suppose, that there are more error theorists about moral judgment out there than one might have supposed.  Also striking is that there are many more moral anti-realists–35.1%–among graduate students!)

In the meta-philosophy category, not quite half (49.8%) consider themselves naturalists, while a quarter (25.8%) self-identify as non-naturalists (among those with an AOS of meta-ethics, only 44.1% are naturalists!).  I think this is rather compelling evidence that, contrary to a lot of philosophical rhetoric, we aren't all naturalists now!  (How depressing!)  But I begin to wonder what kinds of naturalists these folks are when it turns out that 71.1% of respondents think there is a priori knowledge, and nearly two-thirds (64.8%) accept the analytic-synthetic distinction (maybe just in the thin sense Putnam identified years ago?). 

Anyway, that's just a taste.  Readers are invited to post their thoughts on the results or additional interesting results in the comments section.  Please submit your comment only once, they may take awhile to appear.

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45 responses to “So what *do* philosophers believe?”

  1. Jorgen Hansen

    One item which I found very interesting (but not surprising, of course), is that (among Target Faculty) Philosophers of Religion show 57.4% in favor of Libertarian Free Will and 72.3% in favor of Theism, whereas (Target Faculty) from all areas combined show 13.7% in favor of Libertarian Free Will and only 14.6% in favor of Theism. Contrasting Philosophers of Religion with Philosophers of Cognitive Science show probably one of the biggest gaps across the board, too, as the latter show only 3.5% in favor of Lib. FW and only 5.3% in favor of Theism.

    Anyway, I'll enjoy looking over these results in multiple variations.

    Reply
  2. Christopher Hitchcock

    One clear finding from the Meta-survey: Philosophers consistently under-estimate the popularity of "Other".

    Reply
  3. Sam TH

    It seems remarkable that there are only 24% who self-describe as consequentialists, but 68% switch in the trolley problem.

    Reply
  4. anon

    why conflate anti-realism with relativism? you can be an anti-realist and an objectivist…or at least inter-subjectivist and thus reject relativism. no?

    Reply
  5. graduate student

    Be careful, Sam. Most non-consequentialist views have ample theoretical resources (beginning, of course, with the Doctrine of Double Effect) that purport to justify switching. Some believe these resources don't succeed in this (and, perhaps strangely, see this more as a reason to give up switching than to give up non-consequentialism) but, as the survey confirms, most are more optimistic.

    (I wonder whether such a strong association with switching and consequentialism is so widespread!)

    Reply
  6. Justin Capes

    Sam,

    I'm not quite sure why you find the results you mention remarkable? There are a number of ethical theories consistent with switching. For instance, many ethical intuitionists hold that if X is a good state of affairs, we have a prima facie duty (or, if you prefer, a moral reason) to bring it about that X. Thus, if in a Trolley case there are no conflicting considerations, many intuitionists, would go for switching.

    On another note, Brian noted that the percentage of theists is roughly the same as the number of libertarians about free will. Coincidence? Probably not. But what explains the correlation? I wonder. Could it be that theists are more friendly to the idea of genuine agent/substance causation?

    Reply
  7. Brian Leiter

    Anon 1:32 pm: there are perhaps nuances of distinctions that may not be wholly relevant for purposes of correcting a journalistic misunderstanding of at least philosophy.

    Reply
  8. luosha

    I wonder if something like this would be applicable to the metasurvey findings…
    http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/306/5695/462?etoc

    Reply
  9. Roderick T. Long

    I find the correlation between theism and libertarian free will a bit puzzling, since in my experience while theists tend to be libertarians, libertarians don't especially tend to be theists; yet this study suggests that there are *more* theists than libertarians, which doesn't fit well with that observation.

    Reply
  10. Jeff H

    I was a little surprised to see over 50% (albeit just barely) in favour of classical logic. Perhaps some respondents read the other possible answers as requiring more radical departures from classical logic than I did, but it has long seemed to me that the inadequacy of the material conditional and the falsehood of the explosion principle, in particular, were so obvious as not to require much argument. But maybe others thought that, say, you needed to think there were more than two truth-values to go non-classical. (I happen to think that's also true – or at least, not false! – but I can easily believe *that* is a minority view.)

    I was also initially surprised to see so many "Other" responses to that particular question. I mean, on the face of it, either classical logic is true or it isn't, and if you think it isn't, then unless you think there's no correct logic at all (surely an extreme minority view), you must think some sort of non-classical logic is right. Then I realized this argument itself presupposed classical logic and had a little laugh at my own expense.

    Reply
  11. Stephen Nayak-Young

    I, like our host, also wondered how so many self-described "naturalists" could, apparently, believe in an analytic-synthetic distinction and a priori knowledge. I guess "naturalism," like other terms/concepts, doesn't have a non-negotiable set of necessary and sufficient conditions attached to it, so there's no telling what "naturalists" are bound to accept or reject.

    Perhaps we could conclude, based on these data, that most philosophers aren't Quinean or Rosenbergian "disenchanted" naturalists. More's the pity.

    Reply
  12. Eddy Nahmias

    In addition to theists being more amenable to the metaphysics of agent causation, as Justin suggests, isn't it also likely that theists favor libertarianism because that conception of free will appears to be more useful in solving the problem of evil (and perhaps also in justifying eternal reward and damnation)?

    Reply
  13. Alejandro

    In response to Roderick, my conjecture is that the theists who aren't libertarians are possibly Calvinists.

    Reply
  14. Jeremy Goodman

    Epistemologists vs target group:

    Internalism: 36.8% vs 26.4%
    Externalism: 35% vs 42.7%
    Difference: +1.8% vs -16.3%:
    18.1% discrepancy

    Invariantism: 49.3% vs 31.1%
    Contextualism: 29.3% vs 40%
    Difference: +20% vs -8.9%
    28.9% discrepancy

    I was surprised by the target group's responses to these two questions.

    Reply
  15. John Dupre

    So there are good predictors of being a theist libertarian (e.g. being a philosopher of religion) and of being an atheist determinist (e.g. being a philosopher of cognitve science). Is there any evidence of a causal or rational connection between the paired positions? (I haven't tried to check this with the survey, so I'm really asking.) As an atheist libertarian I hope not, or at least that it's only causal (thereby also providing a tiny bit of evidence against determinism).

    Reply
  16. Roderick T. Long

    So maybe Calvinist theists outnumber atheist libertarians.

    Reply
  17. Joshua Shepherd

    I posted something very similar over at the garden of forking paths, but since the topic is here too:

    It is interesting that two of the areas which reverse the atheism trend – phil of religion and medieval – see a significant upswing in libertarians as well, while areas which get above average atheist or leaning atheist votes – phil of biology, cog sci, and decision theory, for example – also have far fewer libertarians. One also sees a divergence from average in these groups on naturalism in metaphilosophy, and physicalism in mind (and one sees the more theistic areas go in more often for a further fact view of personal identity).

    But here we are dealing with debates the details of which might not be mastered by every survey respondent (although I suspect Justin Capes is onto something). We are also dealing with somewhat vague correlations and data which speaks only to group tendencies. The assumptions and theoretical pre-dispositions/interests which draw some to certain sub-areas probably bear significantly on this issue.

    Reply
  18. Greg Frost-Arnold

    Re: Jeff H on the classical logic question:

    I think that since (at latest) Carnap's Logical Syntax of Language, logical pluralism(s) and logical contextualism(s) have carried some weight amongst philosophers of logic. (For example, to a first approximation: quantum logic is the right logic for reasoning about quantum situations, while paraconsistent logic is the right kind of logic when reasoning about inconsistent situations, etc. But there is no one logic that is right for all situations.)

    And Greg Restall and JC Beall have recently been defending a new version of logical pluralism that has garnered a lot of attention in the literature.

    Thus, since 'pluralism' or 'contextualism' were not options on the survey, I think at least some of the 'other' responses may have been the response of choice for the pluralist/ relativist. (I know at least one was.)

    Reply
  19. djc

    Some relevant data regarding interactions among coarse-grained responses (these aren't yet available on the website).

    Among target faculty, there are 65 who favor both libertarianism and theism, making up 50.8% of the 128 who favor libertarianism and 47.8% of the 136 who favor theism. There are 51 who favor both libertarianism and atheism, making up 39.8% of the 128 who favor libertarianism and 7.6% of the 678 who favor atheism. There are also 46 who favor compatibilism and theism and 11 who favor no-free-will and theism, making up 33.8% and 8.1% of the 136 theists respectively.

    Of the 464 target faculty who favor naturalism, 291 (63.1%) favor a priori knowledge while 126 (27.2%) favor rejecting it. Of the same 464, 268 (57.8%) favor an analytic-synthetic distinction and 161 (34.7%) favor rejecting it.

    Reply
  20. Fredrik Haraldsen

    With respect to the classical logic question:

    I am not at all surprised about that result, and I don't think it is due to logical pluralism (I am projecting here, I admit):

    I suspect most people are unconcerned with explosion – it might have seemed surprising when one first realized it, but I suspect it is generally considered unproblematic given that there are no true contradictions anyway.

    With respect to conditionals, I suspect most of us agree that the material conditional is insufficient to model all uses of conditionals in natural language. But then again, classical first-order logic is unable to model the collective 'and' of 'Jack and Jill and James and Joyce lifted a piano' or the apparent first-order existential quantifier of 'some critics admire only one another'. The fact that we need more resources to formalize certain things precisely (modal logic, second-order logic etc) – even when it involves what at first glance look like standard first-order truth-functional connectives – does not appear, I suspect, to be a reason to reject classical logic.

    I am not sure to what degree philosophers are swayed by pluralism either. It is pretty obvious that you need different, non-classical logics to model certain things, e.g. syntactic composition or fictional discourse, but it is less obvious that these logics involve truth per se (quantum logic is different, but a relatively unfamiliar topic for most, I guess).

    I am not saying that these considerations have merit in the end, but it seems obvious that the move from classical to more restricted logics require rather good arguments (which avoid the suspicion that adjudicating between logics itself require a logic which might very well be classical). I think, in sort, that the considerations that would lead one to see problems for classical logic need to be more subtle than the shortcomings of the conditional or explosion.

    Reply
  21. Darrell Rowbottom

    I wonder how often we'll find significant differences by comparing results for those with a relevant AOS and those without. Might we discover that the more one thinks about some issue, the more one's views are liable to diverge from the mainstream?

    Or will we discover instead that there is often parity, which might even suggest — although hardly show(!) — that people spend a lot of time trying to defend what they first thought? (I was quite surprised that the differences on the scientific realism question weren't as great as I expected, although I haven't looked very carefully at the fine-grained ones.)

    Reply
  22. Darrell Rowbottom

    (P.S. Obviously we'd need to assume that one is no more likely to have a peculiar AOS if one has a particular view on the relevant question… This clearly isn't always the case, e.g. one may reasonably expect more philosophers of religion to be theists than atheists in the first instance.)

    Reply
  23. Jeff H

    Darrel, you can filter the results by specialty right now. Some of the above comments already reflect this. This should at least approximate what you want. (I haven't played with this option that much, but what I've seen of it suggests you might be onto something when you suspect specialists are less likely to hold the majority view.)

    Reply
  24. Darrell Rowbottom

    I spotted that, thanks, Jeff; I did have a look at the scientific realism question for 'General Philosophy of Science' AOS versus 'All' (which is what I meant by 'the differences on the scientific realism question' in my first comment), but don't have the time to do a thorough analysis over all questions at the moment (due to other commitments).

    I was hoping, though, to encourage someone else to do so! There could be a fascinating paper in this…

    (Personally, what I'd like to see is divergence from the mainstream at least as often as convergence, for cases where mere interest in the area doesn't increase the probability of answering one way or the other. That is, on the assumption we'll be wrong roughly as much as we'll be right before serious investigation. All too often though, I fear, philosophers spend their lives defending the position they thought was right very early on. I hope I'm wrong. And even if I'm not, I suppose some people might think that this is a perfectly reasonable _philosophical_ method. Discuss!)

    Reply
  25. djc

    For more discussion of the Survey data, see the discussion forum at http://philpapers.org/bbs/threads.pl?fId=246. There's some analysis of effects of specialization: e.g. decision theorists are much more likely to be two-boxers, philosophers of mathematics to be Platonists, philosophers of science to be Humeans and metaphysicians to be non-Humeans. There's also some analysis of faculty vs graduate student effects: most often, majority views among target faculty have reduced majorities among graduate students (with non-target faculty in between), and five minority views among target faculty have majority support among graduate students (nominalism, aesthetic subjectivism, one-boxing, virtue ethics, and Fregeanism). There's also some information on champion performers in the Metasurvey (congratulations to Alex Byrne and Eric Schwitzgebel), pointers to relevant discussion elsewhere on the web, and various other things.

    Reply
  26. Laurence B McCullough

    It is not clear that this survey meets accepted methods. There is no report of how the survey was prepared and whether it was analyzed for face validity, including being piloted. No sampling strategy is described. No response rate is reported. There is no comparison of demographics of respondents vs. population of academic philosophers and graduate students to make a judgment about the representativeness of the respondents. In short, no generalization from what appears to be a convenience sample, albeit a large one, is justified. All comments should be restricted to the form, "The respondents answered …" such and so on various items. Until these methodologic concerns are clearly and adequately addressed, we should not take the view that this survey tells us what philosophers in the US believe, but only what the respondents answered to the survey items.

    Reply
  27. Brian Leiter

    I'm a bit puzzled by Professor McCullough's comments, esp. since some of these matters are addressed and Professor Chalmers has indicated that more information will be released. But the survey reports results from nearly 900 faculty at 99 PhD programs (from the PGR). My guess is that's about 35-40% of the faculty in those programs. There may be some area skew in the response pool, as I think I saw Chalmers himself noting somewhere.

    Reply
  28. djc

    Much of the information that Laurence B McCullough is after is available at the following two pages, linked from the main survey results page:

    http://philpapers.org/surveys/ofaq.html
    http://philpapers.org/surveys/resultsthoughts.html

    As indicated in those documents, the results give best guidance where the "target faculty" population of faculty members in 99 leading departments is concerned. In that case, we emailed almost the entire population (1974 people, all except a handful for which no email address was available) and had a 47% response rate. No doubt there was selection bias among the respondents, but as indicated in the documents above, we will investigate demographic variation between respondents and nonrespondents. For non-target faculty, graduate students, and others, we relied on advertising the Survey via PhilPapers and websites such as this one, so the sampling issues are less straightforwardly analyzable. If we publish the results, we will probably rely mainly on target faculty results for these reasons. I note again that what we've released so far is simply some preliminary data, not a journal publication, and shouldn't be taken as a definitive analysis. And yes, strictly speaking one should report results in the more cautious mode that we use in the reports on the survey website, but I take it that in informal discussions such as this one, readers know what is meant.

    Reply
  29. Kelly James Clark

    Faculty: 72.8% are atheists, and only 14.6% theists.
    Graduate Students: 20.8% are theists, while 63.5% are atheists.
    Does this evidence a bias among the surveyed faculty against hiring theists?
    Just askin'.

    Reply
  30. Craig Duncan

    On the "bias against hiring theists" question:

    There are far too many variables in play to draw any such conclusion.

    For one thing, graduate students are younger than faculty. Perhaps there are more theists among young philosophers than old. My sense is that there is more activity in the philosophy of religion these days than there was 20 or 30 years ago, which might entice more theists into the study of philosophy these days. Also, it wouldn't surprise me if faculty who came of age in the 1960s were less theistic than the current cohort of graduate students, who have come of age during a time of, shall we say, more assertive religion.

    Another possibility: I haven't read the results of the survey in detail, but there is some evidence that theistic philosophers are (unsurprisingly) especially concentrated in the areas of the philosophy of religion and medieval philosophy. Despite the uptick in activity in the philosophy of religion I just noted, this area and medieval philosophy still remain niche areas in the field. I suspect there are fewer jobs advertised in these areas than less-niche areas of philosophy, which may account make it harder for such specialists to find jobs.

    These are two alternative factors that could help explain the different rates of theism between faculty and grad students. Doubtless there are more such factors. A conclusion of bias is unwarranted.

    Reply
  31. djc

    Faculty: 57.1% are non-Humeans, and only 24.7% Humeans.
    Graduate students: 32.4% are Humeans, while 42.5% are non-Humeans.
    Does this evidence a bias among the surveyed faculty against hiring Humeans?

    Reply
  32. F.A. Muller

    What moved the enqueteurs to ignore almost entirely universities on the European continent?

    Reply
  33. Kelly James Clark

    If, instead of "theists", it had been, for example, "women", would you have at least considered bias? I doubt Humeans/non-Humeans is an especially troubled class.
    And since anecdotal evidence is allowed, have any of you heard any stories of any departments who rejected a candidate on religious grounds (one needn't have said anything religiously negative out loud at any official meeting; it could have been said behind closed doors, or over a drink, or just in passing).

    Reply
  34. Rebecca

    Kelly: No I have not heard such stories, but I know for a fact that plenty of religious colleges reject atheist candidates on religious grounds. Since there are plenty of religious colleges and no explicitly atheist colleges, if anything the hiring disadvantage would seem to cut the other way, all else being equal, which it never is.

    Maybe grad students tend to grow out of their theism over time? 🙂

    Seriously, though, a 6-10% difference is surely not statistically significant in this kind of survey, which, while fun and interesting, is not (and was never put forward as) a model of methodological rigor. Let's not go jumping to wild speculations, shall we? In the mean time I am going to point out to our current search committee that we really ought to be prioritizing Humeans on affirmative action grounds…

    Reply
  35. Kelly James Clark

    There's actually a 30% decline from grad school to professors (but a 6.2 point difference).
    But "amen" to the Humeans.

    Reply
  36. Kelly James Clark

    OK, let me say some of what I'd hoped others would raise.

    I know of at least five cases where the top candidate at a major US university was denied a job when the personnel committee found out the candidate was a theist. I know of three of those cases because people on the personnel committee, who weren't happy with the decision, told me. I believe the other two because well-placed people told me. I know of junior faculty who are afraid to let members of their department know that they are theists for fear they won't get tenure.

    I don't think the only issue here is whether or not someone can get a job. The issue is whether or not any program anywhere is biased against theists.

    Keith DeRose has raised the issue of bias against theists in another blog and he references a discussion in still another blog that merits attention.
    (http://prosblogion.ektopos.com/archives/2008/10/specialization.html#comment-102606

    Reply
  37. Brian Leiter

    In this context, it would probably be wise to also review an earlier thread on the subject, on which Keith DeRose, Fritz Warfield, Michael Rea, and others commented:
    http://crookedtimber.org/2003/07/17/kicking-against-the-brights/

    I will just repost here what I said on that occasion, since Professor Clark's anecdotes, if accurate, hardly establish pernicious discrimination:

    With Keith, I think it’s clearly the case that theists have an advantage because of the significant number of jobs where religious belief is a requirement. With Fritz and Michael, I think that it’s also clearly the case that theists are at a disadvantage at most top departments—certainly the vast majority in the top 50. But with Keith, I wonder whether this amounts to pernicious discrimination or something else. Consider: postmodernists (dare I note Straussians as well?) are basically unhirable at top 50 departments as well. Their position is thought to be philosophically indefensible, and so they are excluded from serious consideration. We don’t, I take it, regard this as pernicious discrimination because we think it is well within the rights of a good philosophy department to decide that postmodernism is sophomoric bullshit, and anyone who takes it seriously couldn’t be employable. Is the situation the same with theism, i.e., should we regard the bias against theistic candidates at top 50 departments as a case of a philosophical judgment about the merits of a position? My guess is: sometimes yes, sometimes no. The situation with philospohical theists is clearly different from that with postmodernists in several respects—most obviously, that there are talented philosophers (by every other criterion of talent we ordinarily employ) who are also theists (several are posting on this discussion!) and yet one suspects that those theists are also at a disdvantage because of their theism. Yet couldn’t a philosophy department decide, “X is very clever on the problem of four-dimensionalism, but his theistically-inspired views about evolution raise real questions about his philosophical judgment.” How would that be different from, “X has a wonderful set of papers on the foundations of quantum mechanics, but the fact that he takes eliminative materialism seriously raises real questions about his philosophical judgment?” There are various philosophical positions disfavored among top departments; is it objectionable that theism is one of them? I took that to be one of the questions Keith DeRose was raising. Of course, theism is importantly different from other views in another way: namely, that it is not just a philosophical position but a central part of an individual’s moral and personal identity. In a free society (I think we still live in one, for the time being at least), individuals ought not to suffer discrimination because of their deepest identifications, including religious ones. I suppose I end up with Keith in thinking this is a difficult question.

    Reply
  38. Kelly James Clark

    Of course, six to ten anecdotes don't establish pernicious discrimination. But if my anecdotes had involved homosexuals, would you have at least considered the possibility of pernicious discrimination?

    I would have thought that under the U. S. constitution judgments that postmodernists were not competent (in any area) were OK, but that discrimination against people on religious grounds (who are in every other respect excellent) was not.

    Reply
  39. Brian Leiter

    Professor Clark, you seem to have missed my point. Even if we completely credit your anecdotes, it's not clear they involve pernicious discrimination. Philosophy departments reject candidates all the time because of their philosophical views. Theism is a philosophical view. The only consideration that makes it a harder case, as I noted, is that it may be more closely tied up with aspects of identity than some other philosophical views, for which candidates are rejected.

    A constitutional prohibition might apply in the case of state universities, but I was talking about morally pernicious discrimination, not simply that which had legal standing.

    Reply
  40. Mark van Roojen

    Brian,

    I think Professor Clark is (at least obliquely) raising the issue of whether some categories are at least presumptively suspect within the moral realm, even when they invoke the same sorts of considerations as might legitimately be used in other contexts.

    I'm someone whose views are reflexively atheist, and I do think there are issues about whether we have reason to bracket certain first order judgements of reasonableness, even from a moral/political point of view not just a legal point of view. It will, it seems to me, be a long argument either way. But at least some of the legal arguments for suspect categories will have moral analogues.

    FWIW . . .

    Reply
  41. Kelly James Clark

    No, I got your point. But I found your comparison with postmodernism tendentious. I take it that judgments about competence are quite different in the case of theism as opposed to postmodernism. In the case of postmodernism, people are often judged (rightly) to have little competence. In the case of theism, people are often remarkably competent in, say, metaphysics or epistemology. Not to extend competence, at least, to their theistic views seems peculiar. And I suspect that anti-religious bias, which I believe is fairly widespread, moves the judgment of incompetence as much or more than assessment of arguments.

    Suppose, substituting equals for equals, your example concerned homosexuality. I suspect you would consider it morally pernicious if it could be demonstrated that there was a pattern of discrimination against people b/c of their pro-homosexual views (or practices). In fact, that seems precisely the case recently made that Christian colleges were biased (in a morally pernicious manner).

    I think similar cases could probably be made for bias against political conservatives. Or biases against feminism (that adversely affects women).

    Reply
  42. Brian Leiter

    Homosexuality, or heterosexuality, is not a set of beliefs that might be evaluated as philosophical views for their reasonableness, or that bear on one's qualifications to teach philosophy or engage in philosophical research. Theism is. Hence it is an inapt analogy. As my original comment made clear, I don't disagree with the other points Professor Clark makes.

    Suppose having finished Mackie's "The Miracle of Theism," one concludes that theism is an irrational belief to hold, and one likely to have the pernicious effect to boot of settling in advance the philosophical conclusions that ought to be reached, and so seriously impair a candidate's ability to do philosophical work, notwithstanding high technical skill in other respects. How is this pernicious discrimination? That was the question. Discrimination against candidates based on sexual orientation does not illuminate what the answer might be to this question.

    Reply
  43. Kelly James Clark

    Before one rejected a candidate on the grounds Professor Leiter suggests, one surely would want to know what reasons the person had for his or her beliefs.

    Suppose one read Bas Van Fraassen's "Scientific Image" and concluded that scientific realism was irrational. That would be poor grounds, indeed, to reject a philosopher of science who was a realist. We don't usually think it appropriate simply to dismiss a philosopher's views based on our estimation of the conclusion. And it would especially bad form if the philosopher were clearly outstanding in areas x, y and z (and was recognized to be so).

    When did philosophers become such unsympathetic listeners to the Other? Philosophers have held and continue to hold notoriously odd beliefs. One might think, perusing the history of philosophy, the odder the better. At any rate, I try to instill in the students that I teach charitable understandings of other people's views and not to dismiss people's views out of hand. I think it makes one both a bad philosopher and a not so good person.

    Reply
  44. Brian Leiter

    No one was suggesting that any conclusions should be rejected 'out of hand.' Certainly Mackie does not so reject theism. Since Professor Clark was with me on rejecting postmodernism–a kind of philosophical conclusion, isnt it?–then surely it is possible that an anti-realist about unobservable entities in scientific theories might meet a similar fate. Is that morally reprehensible discrimination? That seems to me a stretch. It might be a bad way to make hiring decisions, but everyone knows that certain conclusions are deemed beyond the pale and influence hiring and interview decisions all the time. Of course, theism may be importantly different–for the reasons noted above–in being a core part of personal and moral identity.

    But now that this thread has been hijacked for an orthogonal discussion based on silly evidence–some more grad students are theists than are philosophers in PhD-granting programs–I think it's time to end this particular conversation. Maybe I'll run a separate thread on it after the holidays.

    Reply
  45. Kelly James Clark

    Sorry, I thought injustice not so silly. And the evidence is vastly more pervasive than the initial statistics that generated the discussion (which evidence Professor Leiter conceded), and vastly more than the anecdotes that I raised.

    I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, given the admitted widespread dismissal of theism as irrational (and probably worse), that philosophers who could discuss in this forum at length and with great passion other forms of bias, have been completely silent about this form of bias.

    I'm happy to stop the conversation now and hope that it will reopen in the future.

    I'm grateful to Professor Leiter for his thoughtful replies and willingness to engage the issue.

    Reply

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