Comments on: Kicking Against the Brights

By: Josh

Josh — Sat, 03 Jan 2004 04:33:14 +0000

Dan Dennett is doing some of the most important work in that which we call “the world.” This is not an understatement. As Matt Ridley has noted, the world changed in 1953, when Watson and Crick located DNA. Anyone who does not understand the profound philosophical impact of that discovery is simply ignorant. How many innocent prisoners have we freed with DNA evidence? Ask a fundamentalist about DNA. Ask a fundamentalist about antibodies, genes, virusses, immunology, or anything else relating to the physical world, and what do get? An empire of obsolete mythology. There has been a lot of talk here about “tolerance” and “respect” for different religions. We know what this is: it is a hopeful delay against the inevitable, which is the obvious realization that all of our world religions are incommensurate. They cannot possibly be true, not all of them at the same time! Oh, no, but that means we need to reconsider everything! The “respect” nonsense should have been destroyed forever by September 11th. It should have been ruined again by the Bush administration’s reaction to Septermber 11th. I think we should quit pussyfooting around with religion. As John Kennedy said, “We all care about our children’s future.” I dread the idea of a future in which all of our children are forced to endure more bronze age mythic terror. If we are going to trust our massive military strenght, including nuclear weaponry, to the bronze age God of battles, then we should expect many more September 11th-type tragedies. We should be surprised that it didn’t happen sooner. It is quite obvious that Rea must see himself as a night in shining armor, trotting out the Old Book for one last battle in the name of truth. However, he has seen too many movies, read too many prehistoric books. The Fallwells, the Bushes, the Husseins and the Bin-Ladens are the most dangerous entities on the planet—likeable to the AIDS virus. The Reas of the world, the seemably sane people who insist on perpetuating this nonsense, are almost more dangerous. At least the others are obvious idiots. People like Dawkins are Not overstepping their bounds at all when they say you would have to be stupid or insane to not believe in evolution. As Dennett says, “Arithematic is right.” Religious faith IS a mental illness, and it should be given no more respect than the AIDS virus. Both threaten the future of the human species.

By: JD

JD — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 02:25:02 +0000

pathos writes: “Every science class should teach the scientific method. Creationism would be a great example of demonstrating how something could be true, but is clearly not science.” …and much similar stuff in this vein, which would all be correct, if it were not a wholly inaccurate description of contemporary Creationism as a intellectual and political movement in America. This Creationism (which I will write with a big C, to distinguish it from generic creationism) is besotted with “creation science”, which is a monstrosity that makes a farce of the scientific method by doing exactly what he claims it does not: it subordinates science to religion. It bends and distorts both empirical evidence and the deductive method in order to “scientifically” prove that creationism was correct all along and that evolution is, scientifically speaking, a load of bollocks. Tactically speaking, Creationism seeks to exploit the cultural authority of science by donning some of its external clothing, and then to use that aura of authority to tear down the legitimacy of one of the greatest achievements in the history of science. You cannot understand the venom that non-theists have for creationism unless you understand this context.

By: Jimmy Doyle

Jimmy Doyle — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 19:09:23 +0000

I am amazed that it is the considered opinion of such well-informed people as Profs Leiter and DeRose that being an avowed theist is likely to be a disadvantage on the job market at some top departments. Discriminating against theists, consciously or not, strikes me as so obviously philosophically dogmatic that it can have no place in a genuinely top department. It is an attitude that amounts to thinking of the following as the poorer as philosophers for being theists, and of their theism as pro tanto evidence that they are bad philosophers: Anscombe, Donagan, Dummett, Smiley, Van Inwagen, Cargile, R M and M M Adams, Plantinga, van Fraassen, Vlastos, Geach, Denyer. I doubt that anyone is in much of a position to condescend intellectually to thinkers of this rank. A fortiori when it comes to such founders and/or close students of the modern scientific worldview which is now so widely held, by philosophers, obviously to exclude the plausibility or even the intelligibility of theism: Descartes, Malebranche, Leibniz, Locke, Berkely, Kant. Oh, and Newton. Newton!!

By: karen

karen — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 15:00:32 +0000

One difference between the question “Does X’s beliefs on descriptivism make him a bad philosopher?” and “Does X’s Christianity make him a bad philosopher?” is that most of the top schools explicitly refuse to discriminate on the basis of religion. In accordance with a standard interpretation of the first amendment or the universal declaration of human rights, we are committed to believing that what someone does in their spare time, or how they were raised, is off-limits. So the question “Does X’s religion make him a bad philosopher?” is much more like the questions “Does X’s lack of testicles make her a bad philosopher?” or “Does X’s being gay…” or “Does X’s being vegetarian…” We do expect that someone committed to the examined life will allow these beliefs to impact his or her other beliefs, but (1) the relationship is not one-to-one, and (2) we are committed to the idea that when contradictions arise, the person will think about them honestly and rigorously, not assert dogma in the classroom. And that commits the rest of us not to assert dogmatically that no gays, women, theists, etc. could be good philosophers. When my mother was a teenager looking for her first job, prospective employers would ask if, given her Jewish surname, she was willing to work on Saturdays. If she said yes, the employer said “someone with so little respect for religious tradition must be immoral, and a potential thief.” If she said no, the employer said “it wouldn’t be fair to my other employees to give you weekends off and make them work.” Is anyone in this conversation advocating that approach to hiring for academic jobs? (Either you don’t think about your religious beliefs or you impermissibly let them influence your work.) As a grad student, I dearly hope not! (and I don’t think you do) There is a world of difference between someone who tries to prohibit teaching evolution, for example, and the vast majority of people who are religious in their lives, but no less rigorous intellectually. Perhaps they are simply unwilling to give up trying to solve the ‘problem of evil’ and more power to them, provided their preferred solution isn’t e.g. burning books or demonizing people who propound arguments they cannot address. This is a difference that Dawkins and Dennett apparently have decided to deny. That’s too bad. Then again, it’s not the first time these two have made a hasty and deeply flawed analogy, tried to find a catchy word to describe it, and used it to promote themselves as authorities on science. (But if they do it in their spare time, and if their academic articles are interesting and new, that’s not any reason not to hire them.)

By: Jim Senderhauf

Jim Senderhauf — Wed, 23 Jul 2003 17:03:04 +0000

Per Mynga Futrell, co-founder of the term, an agnostic cannot truly be a Bright… See my correspondence and her comments… Mynga’s emails Be careful… they are misrepresenting a bit.. Jim Senderhauf

By: Keith DeRose

Keith DeRose — Mon, 21 Jul 2003 22:53:24 +0000

An additional couple of thoughts about theists vs. atheists in philosophy. (Sorry to those interested in the more general issue of the treatment of atheists in our society. Still, this may be of some interest even to them, since philosophy was suggested as an area where atheists have the upper hand, so it may be of interest to see how theists fare in such a realm. Anyway, this discussion has been going long enough that it may be mostly us boring academics still here anyway.) In a comment above, I opined that we theists are represented in top 40 philosophy depts at about the rate we deserve to be. (I repeat that this is a very highly subjective claim, almost impossible to argue for.) But as I thought about it, I realized that I was excluding Notre Dame in my thinking, though ND is by any reasonable standard a top 40 dept. (Indeed, significantly stronger things than that could be safely said, I think.) I was thinking in terms of top-40-non-religious depts. And when I throw ND into the mix, with all the many theists there, I find myself inclined to the opinion that theists are a bit OVER-represented in top 40 depts (by which I mean that there are more theists in top 40 depts than there should be if all the best philosophers got jobs in all the best depts). Again, that’s just my sense. I’d be interested to hear what others in the philosophy world think. Finally, an observation: Last academic year at Yale, we had two Christian grad students go on the market—and both had items on their CVs that would pretty clearly mark them as such. Well, I should say, only one of them really went all the way on the market. He ended up tenure-track at Cornell—a great job by almost any measure. The other was planning to go out on the market the following year, and he wasn’t quite far along enough, but decided to take a shot at one job he really wanted: Baylor. Now I don’t think that’s on anyone’s top 40, but it is a dept. that’s starting a PhD program, and has a 2-2 teaching load, and so is in many ways very good. And this student, being a Christian and being from that area, really wanted that job. And Baylor is a Christian university. I’m not sure whether being a Christian was an absolute requirement there (I think so), but it was certainly at least a big help. And it was also a help that this student, in addition to just being a Christian, also had well-developed views about how to integrate his Christian faith with his philosophy, how to teach philosophy at a Christian college, etc. Anyway, he is a very talented philosopher who might well have ended up in a top program anyway, but he ended up with a very good job where his Christian faith not only proved to be no hindrance, but was rather, at the very least, a great help (whether or not it was an absolute necessity, which, again, I just don’t know). All of this just by way of saying to Christians who might want to try being professional philosophers: I don’t think you have to be scared off by the thought that you won’t get a fair shake on the job market. Maybe being a Christian will count against you at some secular top depts, or other secular depts that are not so tip-top. But there are certainly lots of other secular depts, including some at the top of the heap, where it seems you will be given a very fair shot indeed. And there are also lots of jobs where being a Christian will actually help. How all this balances out is difficult to say, but I, for one, am still inclined to think that on the whole, being a Christian as opposed to an atheist is a net help on the philosophy job market. (I don’t know enough to really speak to the chances of non-Christian theists.)

By: mark huston

mark huston — Mon, 21 Jul 2003 21:40:15 +0000

As a philosopher who is entering the job market in the upcoming year, the Warfield, Derose, etc. discussion is of great interest. However, in many ways it fails to really touch on the initial topic as raised by Dennett. I take the issue of ‘brights’ (an admittedly ridiculous term) as being an issue about the general acceptance of atheists in society, and accordingly I have two comments. Anecdotally, if we move out of the rarefied air of the academy, anytime I have suggested being an atheist at places I have worked (e.g. a gas station, Wal-mart, among others), the least that has happened to me is that I have been looked at as if I am “crazy” (I won’t mention the worst). On a different note, two or three years ago New York magazine presented a story where voting habits of Americans were discussed. In the course of the story a study was cited which found that one of the primary factors that would keep a candidate from being voted into office is if that candidate were an admitted atheist. The study listed a number of potential factors (whether the candiate was a: woman, african-american, jewish, homosexual) and the lowest on the pole was atheist. It is these sorts of points that I believe have prompted the ‘bright’(ugh) movement, and that are worth considereing.

By: Brian Leiter

Brian Leiter — Mon, 21 Jul 2003 16:16:38 +0000

Perhaps I’m coming on the scene of this interesting discussion too late for anyone to notice…but as long as I’m here: Let me suggest that Michael Rea, Fritz Warfield, and Keith DeRose are all correct, and that their positions aren’t entirely incompatible. 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. Though I agree with Fritz and Michael that theists are at a disadvantage at most top departments.

By: Greg Restall

Greg Restall — Sun, 20 Jul 2003 12:10:15 +0000

The issues here are pretty complicated. It's hard to tell if being a theist, or being religious (not quite the same thing, of course) counts against you in the job market. My story might add a slightly different perspective, as it comes from Australia, where the profession is smaller, and the culture is less "Christian" -- the universities here are, apart from three outlying cases, all state, nonreligious, institutions. [Apologies for the length of the comment. I'm just doing my bit to ensure that crooked timber has a truly long discussion thread.] My most recent job interview was for my current position at the University of Melbourne. This was a tenured job, and a relatively senior one. I moved from Macquarie University, where I had a permanent position, so I was in a different kind of case to more junior candidates at entry-level positions. As is common practice at Melbourne, I was asked to teach a class while I was visiting for the interview. My AoS is philosophical and formal logic, so I took a strategic decision to teach a non-logic class, to assure the department that I was able to engage with other interests. The topic that came up in a slot for me to teach was on human nature -- so I decided to give a lecture on Freud on religious belief. (I do this material in my philosophy of religion classes.) This managed to get the issue of my religious belief on the table, quite explicitly, when in the question time after the class, a student asked me head-on if I believed in God, and I hopefully reassured the philosophers that I was not unhinged, not merely a logician, and also not happy to ignore or hide my own beliefs. As a result, the matter of my own religious position was raised in the interview, and in private discussion. Melbourne is an odd department, with probably the highest proportion of theists of one stripe or another outside the Australian Catholic University. However, it was also clear that a number of my current colleagues weren't happy with how I handled that lecture, and weren't happy with my position. I had no doubt that I wouldn't have got that reaction had I given exactly the same lecture, but made it clear that I was irreligious. I don't think the issue would have been raised if I hadn't raised it, because my own areas of active research are seen as pretty remote from religious issues. Does the fact that I was comfortable raising the issue of religion for discussion mean that I was confident that there was no discrimination on religious grounds? Probably not quite. I knew that it was an issue for some, so I would have rather had it made explicit for discussion and deliberation than leaving it under the surface. So, as fas as I have seen it, religious belief is often an issue in ways that irreligious committment is not an issue, but I cannot point to any examples on the Australian scene of where religious discrimination has cost someone a job in philosophy. (I can point to examples where people haven't got jobs because of prickly personalities and other ways of being terrible colleagues, but that's not the same thing, even in cases where religion is involved.)

By: michael rea

michael rea — Sat, 19 Jul 2003 04:03:14 +0000

Keith DeRose says “in agreeing that private Christian colleges giving preference to Christians in the hiring of faculty is importantly different from the (alleged) discrimination against theists at supposedly ‘neutral’ schools, I don’t mean to be automatically endorsing such discrimination against atheists at Christian colleges.” Right, me either. The issues here are hard. But just as I don’t unconditionally endorse it, I also don’t have any particular objection to it. (And, again, I would similarly have no objection to “atheist” schools, if there were such things, practicing the same sort of discrimiation).

By: Keith DeRose

Keith DeRose — Sat, 19 Jul 2003 03:46:20 +0000

I should quickly add that in agreeing that private Christian colleges giving preference to Christians in the hiring of faculty is importantly different from the (alleged) discrimination against theists at supposedly “neutral” schools, I don’t mean to be automatically endorsing such discrimination against atheists at Christian colleges. That’s a very tricky matter, with lots of competing concerns and values in play, and I haven’t sorted it all out in my own mind. An important point here is that private colleges in our country, I think, all get a lot of support from the government in various forms, and atheists might well wonder about such support from their tax dollars going to schools that explicitly discriminate against them.

By: Keith DeRose

Keith DeRose — Sat, 19 Jul 2003 03:07:31 +0000

I agree these are importantly different. Nevertheless, if it is the case that it works out to be an advantage on the philosophy job market to be a Christian, that would hardly fail to be “relevant” to your original point. Your complaint, Michael, was about “people being passed over for academic jobs or having trouble getting tenure specifically because of their religious beliefs or religious involvement” (with no mention, I might add, about whether this discrimination is part of an explicit policy). With this charge being made, it seems to me just a matter of presenting a balanced, fair picture to point out that we know that every year all throughout the country at many Christian colleges, many atheists are passed over for philosophy jobs for their lack of theistic faith.

By: Michael Rea

Michael Rea — Sat, 19 Jul 2003 01:05:58 +0000

I don’t think I agree with DeRose’s claim that being a theist is actually an advantage with respect to securing an academic job. But even if he is right, the point isn’t really relevant to the point I was trying to make. Religious schools that practice affirmative action for religious believers are privately funded and are required to admit their preference for religious believers in job advertisements. If there were privately funded “naturalist” schools that did the same and then proceeded to discriminate against religious believers, I’d have no objection. What’s objectionable is when schools with no explicit religious (or anti-religious) bias nevertheless discriminate on such bases.

By: J.H. Bogart

J.H. Bogart — Fri, 18 Jul 2003 22:56:14 +0000

I am one of those for whom “unnamed inside sources” is a confession of failure. It is “unsatisfying” because there is no reason for anyone here to believe it. Proving pervasive discrimination in a profession is not particularly difficult – there are a host of cases laying out the techniques. The absence of any citation to any such evidence (or indeed anything beyond ipse dixit) puts Rea in a fairly deep hole, or indicates a remarkably low evidentiary standard.

By: Seth Gordon

Seth Gordon — Fri, 18 Jul 2003 18:42:32 +0000

Does anyone have a catchy word to describe those of us who feel our gorges rise when we read words like “memosphere”? The most logical term would be “amemist”, but I don’t think I’ll ever get NYT op-ed space for advertising it.