Certain Doubts

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We are going to upgrade to the newest version of WP, starting at 2 today. It may take a couple hours if bugs develop, and it may also go so smoothly no one notices the event! I expect, though, that it will be less than an hour.

UPDATE: All done, it seems. If something doesn’t work, let me know.

From Tom Baldwin (editor, Mind)

As editor of Mind I have followed these postings with considerable dismay at the complaints about Mind’s performance. I should acknowledge at the start that things did go a bit wrong in 2006/7 when I had to complete some writing of my own in time for the 2008 RAE, and in the pressure of work I temporarily overlooked some submissions. Following that experience my editorial colleagues and I modified our system for processing submissions in 2007, and such mistakes are now much less likely to happen.

I will not attempt to explain in detail how we handle submissions to Mind (though there are no secrets about it). But, in brief, after a quick review of the prima facie suitability of the papers submitted (and most are suitable), we try to find external referees with appropriate expertise for them. That process takes time (a consideration which is not, so far as I can see, acknowledged in this series of comments). So even though we ask referees to report within two months, it is unusual for us to have a full set of reports available in less than three months, and it often takes longer. In thinking about this, it is important to recognise that, unlike many other journals, Mind does not impose a word limit, and some submissions are well over 10000 words; reading and commenting on these just does take a good deal of time. We do chase up referees whose reports are delayed; but in my experience it is very much more useful, both to the editors and ultimately to authors, to have a full report from an experienced referee, albeit a bit late, than a brief paragraph that comes in on time. I am currently considering the introduction of the quick ‘reject with no comment’ option for referees used by Nous. The advantage for authors of this option is that a (negative) verdict would come back to them promptly, hopefully within a month; the disadvantage is that the verdict would not be explained (at present most Mind authors receive substantive comments, often from two or more referees). The practical problem I foresee is that of deciding what to do where referees disagree (and they do often disagree). Nonetheless I would be interested to hear from contributors to this blog, – potential authors and referees alike – whether they would favour the introduction of this option.

I hope that these comments provide some reassurance concerning the commitment of Mind’s editorial team to dealing properly and promptly with submissions. Believe me, we do devote a great deal of time to it, including evenings and weekends (ask my wife about it!). There is still some space for papers submitted now to appear in 2010 and our procedures certainly allow for this possibility. When the data is available I will place some detailed information on the Mind website about the number of submissions to Mind and the acceptance rate during recent years.

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I’ve been thinking about the infamous burning armchair that has become the symbol of the X-phi movement. It’s a brilliant symbol, and a smashing PR success. Students get a kick out of it. Journalists love it. And it’s all in good fun.

Traditionalists need to counter with a PR hit of their own! But how?

[[Camera fades in.]] A lab coat hangs next to a clipboard prominently displaying a questionnaire, outside a lab door labeled ‘Nichols, Knobe & Associates’. The coat, and subsequently the lab, catch fire [[cue the background music]], and slowly burn to ashes. [[Camera pans out to reveal the destruction.]] Everything is black and charred … except for a regal armchair, which sits comfortably in the corner, utterly unscathed. [[Pan in slowly on the chair while fading to black.]]

The only complication I see arising from this PR battle is that, aside from assuming that their children will be poor if they go into philosophy, parents might also start thinking that they’ll become pyromaniacs too. Not exactly a winning combination.

(And yes, I know ‘Nichols, Knobe & Associates’ makes them sound like a law firm. But it rolls off the tounge nicely. Maybe we can come up with something better. ‘Department X’?)

There’s this journal. It’s very well respected — a top five journal by most measures. And there’s this paper of mine. I think it’s good. So I send it in to this journal. Then I wait for a decision. And wait … and wait … and wait …

So after a couple years without getting even an initial decision, I write the journal to pull the paper. Then I wait for a response … and wait … and wait.

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The Edinburgh Epistemology research group will be hosting the 2010 Episteme conference, on the topic: ‘Cognitive Ecology: The Role of the Concept of Knowledge in our Social Cognitive Ecology’. So far, confirmed speakers include Sandy Goldberg (Northwestern), Hilary Kornblith (UMass), Martin Kusch (Cambridge/Vienna) and Ram Neta (UNC, Chapel Hill), with more speakers to be confirmed soon. A rough conference webpage is available here.

There is also a call for papers, with more details posted on the conference webpage.

For those of you who haven’t seen this yet, the Stanford Encylopedia has a new entry of relevance both to epistemology and philosophy of mind:  The Disjunctive Theory of Perception.

The Philosophy Department at Northwestern is initiating a bi-weekly Brownbag Epistemology series (see here).

Building on the excellence of epistemology in the greater Chicagoland area and the Midwest more generally, this series will provide a regular venue for Chicago-area epistemologists to present their work in an informal way throughout the year.   (Of course, we also welcome participation by any epistemologists who are passing through the area.)

Questions about this series should be addressed to its current administrator, Matthew Mullins, at <m-mullins@u.northwestern.edu>.

Going to the conference in Geneva next week, and will talk about curiosity. In preparation, a minor sidepoint about it. The issue is what kind of motivational state curiosity is.

So, first, a partial list of motivational states. They include desires, needs, wishes, hopes, drives, instincts, fears, interests, etc. I don’t mean for the list to be complete, but just to convey some idea of the variety of motivational states. Relevant to my concerns is the different between motivational states with (roughly semantic) content and those without. So, for example, desires can be de dicto, de re, or de se, but all three types are states with content. In the case of de dicto desires, the content is propositional; in the case of de re desires, the content involves (at least) whatever is expressed by a predicative expression that correctly described the content of the desire with respect to the object in question; and in the case of de se desires, the same can be said as with de re desires, except of course that the object in question is oneself (conceived of as oneself).

Other motivational states don’t have content in this way (though they may have content in the way that, say, one’s genetic code has content). Among the content-less are needs, instincts, and interests.

The question is whether curiosity is essentially a contentful motivational state. I’m inclined to think that the answer is “no”, on grounds involving young children and animals: Curiosity is displayed so early in child development, for example, that I don’t see how it needs to involve mental content at all. So, I’m inclined to think of it as a motivational state that can have content but need not.

Thoughts on this most welcome!

The Third annual Midwest Epistemology Workshop will be held on the campus of St. Louis University in St. Louis, MO, Friday September 25 – Saturday September 26, 2009.  This year’s keynote speaker will be Duncan Pritchard (Edinburgh).   The list of other speakers and a tentative schedule can be found here.

For local arrangements, contact John Greco at <jgreco2@slu.edu>.  For general information about the MEW, feel free to contact me at <s-goldberg@northwestern.edu> or Al Casullo at <acasullo@unlserve.unl.edu>.

And don’t forget that the MEW is on facebook too.