Oooh, bob bob, named names. I will be sure not to buy a used dictum from those guys.

} It seems to recreate the original split between philosophy and psychology 100-150 years ago, when restless empiricists increasingly found themselves at odds with their colleagues in philosophy departments. Most of the original psychology departments were founded by exiled philosophy professors. It will be insteresting to see where the experimenal philosophers end up.

That's intriguing. I like hearing about secret histories. I guess it's not that secret, but if you're not in that world you wouldn't have ready access to How Changing Modes of Philosohical Inquiry Affected Academic Departments.

Hmmm, now I'm in the mood for a juicy academic farce. I think I'll go dig up Small World again.

Leiter is pretty infamous, so I asked Bob to break away from Guitar Hero long enough to explain him.

Dude, you don't spend enough time around academics.

That is by design.

Though I'd totally pay to see a real academic slapfight (with non-metaphorical slapping).

I have to say bob bob, that after reading Leiter's blog he comes off as extremely axe-grindy. That was some serious academic hair-pulling and slapfighting there. (Leiter's attempt to link Derrida and Reaganism seemed pretty specious, though.)

I agree that the Reaganism thing was a reach. No point in dwelling on that, though: let's get to Leiter.

Oh, what to say about Brian Leiter? Well, Leiter is a careerist par excellence. He got his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, and was known to be extremely snarky even back then. I've heard that he created a ranking of all the other graduate students in the program, though I'll have to ask around for confirmation of that. What I know for sure, though, is that he runs the "Philosophical Gourmet Report"--a site that ranks the US, UK, and Australasian Ph.D.-granting philosophy programs. It's not a bad site, but it started out, from what I gather, as a one-man operation (carried out by Leiter, of course) at the University of Michigan where Leiter, in addition to ranking his fellow grad students, ranked graduate programs. It changed from one man's spread sheet to a more public venture in 1996, when he unleashed his rankings on the world (with, at this point, the input of lots of his friends). When it first started, it not only ranked graduate programs, it also trafficked in gossip--who's going where, who got an offer from where, whom to avoid because he's old and about to retire, etc. Most egregiously, it publicized offers that grad students were getting from departments. This was bad, because this cost people jobs--university X would have offered a job to candidate A, but because X reads that A has an offer from Y as well, they pull the offer from A (who, as it turns out, wanted to go to X more than Y). In one case, this led to both X and Y rescinding A's offers, because A didn't know that his offers had been publicized, and so he told Y that he didn't have an offer from X, even though he did. Bad news for A. Anyway, Leiter removed that portion of his blog.

Leiter's done many more embarrassing things, but I don't know that there's any need to ... oh, what the hell: (1) he was in an argument with a libertarian philosopher on a blog, so in response to an argument this philosopher made, Leiter OUTED him, even though his philosopher's sexuality was entirely irrelevant to the proceedings. (2) He doesn't like anonymous posting, so he encouraged people to try to reveal the identity of an assistant professor whose views he didn't approve of (and who was arguing with Leiter), even though this professor remained anonymous so as not to hurt his chances of getting tenure. (3) A law student at Harvard favorably reviewed a book a book that said that, although intelligent design was probably false, it was not unconstitutional to teach it. When Leiter heard of this review, he encouraged all his law professors to do what they could to destroy this law student's career. (4) A grad student was arguing with Leiter on a blog, so Leiter sent him an email telling him that he and some of his philosophy friends would confront him at the next conference he went to (presumably to verbally tear him down). (5) He goes on and on about his greatness on his blog, plugs his own work all the time, etc. (6) I've heard he's very nice in person.

Oh, I should say, despite his bluster, Leiter's a very good scholar of Nietzsche and jurisprudence.

I've heard he's very nice in person.

Typical. I'm sure Mussolini's mom thought he was aces too.

Should probably point out that Leiter is the most prominent philosophy blogger, since he gossips and publishes the rankings, so gossip about Leiter is also significant to the field.

I've been curious about this field of "experimental philosophy" because it sounds a lot like social or cognitive psychology to me, though more careful in its premises.

I don't know too much about experimental philosophy, but I think it was undertaken at least partially in order to avoid philosophers' relying on their own hunches about what everyone else's hunches are. So for example, before experimental philosophy, philosophers would be happy to say things like, "here's why people find universal causal determinism to be a threat to free will", and then they'd say something. But experimental philosophers started to ask people whether they thought determinism was a threat to free will. They'd take surveys of their own students, they'd send their graduate students out with paper, pen, and clipboard asking passersby what they thought, etc. They'd also spend time in conversation with psychologists about experimental design and they would come up with situations meant to elicit people's opinions, one way or the other, about some topic like free will. They would also survey the man on the street for his opinions about the nature of knowledge, and they'd look at what psychology has to tell us about the naturalness of moral categories. These three areas--especially free will and morality--seem (to me) to be the main foci of experimental philosophy.

Oh, I should say, despite his bluster, Leiter's a very good scholar of Nietzsche and jurisprudence.

He's a prick! Perhaps this accounts for his obsession with hierarchy. How can he be a nice guy and so vindictive? Are you just saying he's well mannered and charming at cocktail parties?

Are you just saying he's well mannered and charming at cocktail parties?

Well, there's that, but he's also supposed to be extremely friendly to graduate students in person and he really supports his own graduate students (though I suppose there may be selfish reasons at work here). Also, I hear that he's quite shy in person, and loathe to start arguments.