This is I think a really good comment. The animal consciousness stuff I think is a bit crazy. If Dennett thinks that as well . . . well, I never gave Dennett much deference.
I was exaggerating a bit when I said that no undergraduate would make that error.
I don’t think that Schwarz saying he might publish it is much news. I have a friend who is an undergraduate in his second year and he has 5 or 6 published philosophy papers—I’m also an undergraduate and I have one forthcoming.
Do we know what journal Eliezer was publishing in? I’d expect it not to get published in even a relatively mediocre journal, but I might be wrong.
I don’t know the journal Schwarz rejected it for, no. I f your friend has 5 or 6 publications as an undergrad then either they are a genius, or they are unusually talented and also very ruthless about identifying small, technical objections to things famous people have said, or they are publishing in extremely mediocre journals. The second and third things ares probably not what’s going on when Wolfgang gives an R&R to the Yudkowsky/Soares fdt paper. It is an attempt to give a big new fundamental theory, not a nitpick. And regardless of the particular journal Wolfgang was reviewing for, I don’t think (could be wrong though!), that the reason why it is easy to get published in the crappiest journals is because really sharp philosophers with multiple publications in top 5-10 journals drop their standards to a trivial level when reviewing for them. No doubt they drop their standards somewhat, but those journals probably have worse reviewers quite a lot of the time. (That’s only a guess though.)
More importantly, a bit of googling to me revealed that Soares, though not Yudkowsky, is a coauthor on a paper defending fdt in Journal of Philosophy. (With Ben Levinstein who is an actual philosophy prof.) That alone takes fdt well out of the crank zone in my view. J Phil is a clear top 10 journal, probably top 5. It probably rejects around 95% of the papers sent to it. Admittedly there’s a limit to how much credit Eliezer should get for a paper he didn’t write, but insofar as fdt is “his” idea (don’t know how much he developed it versus Soares and other MIRI people), this is the greenest of Philosophy green flags.
Though worth noting that the other author rejected it. It’s not clear how common it is for one reviewer to be willing to submit your paper after heavy revisions is.
Fair point that many rejected things probably received one “revise and resubmit”.
The link to your friend’s philpapers page I’d broken, but I googled him and I think mediocre journals is probably, mostly the right answer, mixed a bit with “your friend is very, talented” (Though to be clear even 5 mediocre pubs is impressive for a 2nd year undergrad, and I would predict your friend can go to a good grad school if he wants to. ) Philosophia is a generalist journal I never read a single paper in in the 15 or so years I was reading philosophy papers generally, which is a bad sign. I’d never heard of “Journal of Ayn Rand Studies” but I can think of at most 1 possible examples of a good journal dedicated to a single philosopher and my guess is most people competent to review philosophy paper either hate Rand or have never read her. (This is the one journal of the 4 that even an undergrad pub in might not mean much, beyond the selection effect of mostly only fairly talented students trying to publish in the first place.) I’d never heard of Journal of Value Inquiry either. But I did find a Leiter Reports poll ranking it 18th out of moral and political philosophy journals, do publishing in it is probably a non-trivial achievement. Never heard of History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, nor would I expected to have even if it was good. Your friend’s paper looks like a straightforward historical discussion of what Darwin himself said evolution implied about epistemology rather than a defence of an original philosophical view though.
In the UK, where I did all of my philosophy education bar a brief trip to Australia for a couple of months, Rand is not a significant presence in the wider culture in any way, so she wouldn’t naturally come up unless she already had credibility within academic philosophy. Though there were a lot of Americans around in Oxford obviously, and maybe they had read Rand.
This is I think a really good comment. The animal consciousness stuff I think is a bit crazy. If Dennett thinks that as well . . . well, I never gave Dennett much deference.
I was exaggerating a bit when I said that no undergraduate would make that error.
I don’t think that Schwarz saying he might publish it is much news. I have a friend who is an undergraduate in his second year and he has 5 or 6 published philosophy papers—I’m also an undergraduate and I have one forthcoming.
Do we know what journal Eliezer was publishing in? I’d expect it not to get published in even a relatively mediocre journal, but I might be wrong.
Thanks!
I don’t know the journal Schwarz rejected it for, no. I f your friend has 5 or 6 publications as an undergrad then either they are a genius, or they are unusually talented and also very ruthless about identifying small, technical objections to things famous people have said, or they are publishing in extremely mediocre journals. The second and third things ares probably not what’s going on when Wolfgang gives an R&R to the Yudkowsky/Soares fdt paper. It is an attempt to give a big new fundamental theory, not a nitpick. And regardless of the particular journal Wolfgang was reviewing for, I don’t think (could be wrong though!), that the reason why it is easy to get published in the crappiest journals is because really sharp philosophers with multiple publications in top 5-10 journals drop their standards to a trivial level when reviewing for them. No doubt they drop their standards somewhat, but those journals probably have worse reviewers quite a lot of the time. (That’s only a guess though.)
More importantly, a bit of googling to me revealed that Soares, though not Yudkowsky, is a coauthor on a paper defending fdt in Journal of Philosophy. (With Ben Levinstein who is an actual philosophy prof.) That alone takes fdt well out of the crank zone in my view. J Phil is a clear top 10 journal, probably top 5. It probably rejects around 95% of the papers sent to it. Admittedly there’s a limit to how much credit Eliezer should get for a paper he didn’t write, but insofar as fdt is “his” idea (don’t know how much he developed it versus Soares and other MIRI people), this is the greenest of Philosophy green flags.
Okay yeah, fair. Here’s my friends publication record https://philpeople.org/profiles/amos-wollen
Though worth noting that the other author rejected it. It’s not clear how common it is for one reviewer to be willing to submit your paper after heavy revisions is.
Fair point that many rejected things probably received one “revise and resubmit”.
The link to your friend’s philpapers page I’d broken, but I googled him and I think mediocre journals is probably, mostly the right answer, mixed a bit with “your friend is very, talented” (Though to be clear even 5 mediocre pubs is impressive for a 2nd year undergrad, and I would predict your friend can go to a good grad school if he wants to. ) Philosophia is a generalist journal I never read a single paper in in the 15 or so years I was reading philosophy papers generally, which is a bad sign. I’d never heard of “Journal of Ayn Rand Studies” but I can think of at most 1 possible examples of a good journal dedicated to a single philosopher and my guess is most people competent to review philosophy paper either hate Rand or have never read her. (This is the one journal of the 4 that even an undergrad pub in might not mean much, beyond the selection effect of mostly only fairly talented students trying to publish in the first place.) I’d never heard of Journal of Value Inquiry either. But I did find a Leiter Reports poll ranking it 18th out of moral and political philosophy journals, do publishing in it is probably a non-trivial achievement. Never heard of History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, nor would I expected to have even if it was good. Your friend’s paper looks like a straightforward historical discussion of what Darwin himself said evolution implied about epistemology rather than a defence of an original philosophical view though.
Philosophia has I think a publication rate decently below 50%.
I believe that to be true, and to be a very good sign of what kind of an ivory tower philosophy has become.
Or a sign that knowing about philosophy decreases support for Rand.
In the UK, where I did all of my philosophy education bar a brief trip to Australia for a couple of months, Rand is not a significant presence in the wider culture in any way, so she wouldn’t naturally come up unless she already had credibility within academic philosophy. Though there were a lot of Americans around in Oxford obviously, and maybe they had read Rand.
Fixed link