Thursday, August 29, 2024

Is Being Conscious Like "Having the Lights Turned On"?

Andrew Y. Lee has written an introductory piece of philosophy, intended for students, celebrating the metaphor of consciousness as a light, illuminating objects in a room. Indeed, this is a common way of speaking, and I have used it myself in published work: If an animal isn't conscious then, I've suggested, "all is dark inside, or rather, not even dark" (Schwitzgebel 2015, sec 7.2).

I've been asked to write a reaction to Lee's piece. On reflection, I've become convinced that the metaphor suggests five theses about consciousness, any or all of which might be doubted. I don't think Lee's piece is circulating yet [update: it is!], but I figured I'd share my thoughts anyway.

[image source]

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1. Metaphors Invite Ways of Thinking.

Metaphors invite ways of thinking. If philosophical disagreements are battles, only one side can win. If memory is a storehouse, recollection requires search and retrieval. If memory is instead a matter of shaping future responses, search and retrieval needn’t be involved. We can of course decline such cognitive invitations. We can describe north as “up” even if it’s lower elevation. But if too many implications are misleading, the metaphor or analogy is inapt.

So, is consciousness like having “the lights turned on”? Let’s more thoroughly consider what patterns of thought are invited by this way of speaking.

2. Consciousness Is Determinately Present or Determinately Absent.

As Lee notes, lights are normally either determinately on or determinately off. A dim light is just as “on” as a bright light. Even a flickering light is determinately on or off at any particular moment. Photons are being emitted, or they are not. It requires some creative energy to imagine intermediate cases.

Consequently, the “lights on” metaphor invites the thought that every entity at every moment is either determinately conscious or determinately nonconscious, rather than somewhere between. Maybe in dreamless sleep, you are not at all conscious, while in waking life, you are 100% conscious. On such a view, any “half conscious” state – for example, a drowsy, confused awakening – is determinately a conscious state, just one in which you’re not fully attuned to your situation, and the “unconsciousness” of the dreamer is a misnomer, since dreaming determinately involves experiential states. Also on such a view, entities whose consciousness is disputable, for example garden snails, must be either lights-on or lights-off, either determinately but perhaps dimly conscious or not at all conscious.

If (as I've argued) some states or entities of interest are neither determinately conscious nor determinately nonconscious – states or entities somehow in an in-betweenish, intermediate condition (even if that’s difficult to imagine) – then the light metaphor becomes inapt.

3. Conscious and Nonconscious Cognition Are Similar.

When you flick the lights, the furniture does not change. The table, the rug, and the pile of laundry become easier to see, but apart from absorbing and reflecting more photons, they remain basically the same. If the illuminated objects are parts of your own mind (as Lee's usage suggests), then they too shouldn't radically change when the lights flick on.

On some theories of consciousness, we should expect conscious and nonconscious cognition to be similar. Suppose that nonconscious cognition becomes conscious by being targeted by some higher-order self-representational process or by being broadcast across the mind. If so, it’s natural to suppose that elevation to consciousness doesn’t radically alter the contents of a previously nonconscious process. A representational content like red in this part of the visual field right now seemingly needn’t change when targeted by a higher-order representation (that is, a representation of the fact that I am representing red in this part of the visual field right now) or when shared across the mind (“hey, action-guiding and long-term memory centers, please notice that there’s red in this part of the visual field right now”).

An alternative family of views suggests that conscious and nonconscious processes are intrinsically dissimilar. On “recurrence” theories of consciousness, for example, conscious processes involve feedback loops of recurrent processing that differ structurally from non-conscious feed-forward processes. In a different vein, some psychologists distinguish nonconscious “System 1” cognition, which is fast, intuitive, and requires no attentional effort, from slower, step-by-step, effortful, and conscious “System 2” cognition. Consider: What is eight times seven? If “56” effortlessly pops to mind, that’s System 1. If you laboriously add eight seven times or consciously employ a mnemonic like “5-6-7-8, fifty-six is seven times eight”, that’s System 2. System 1 and System 2 processes or outputs might not convert seamlessly one into the other.

If, in general, the structure of nonconscious thought differs from that of conscious thought, the conscious light metaphor risks misleading us. Furniture doesn’t normally change shape when you flick the light-switch.

4. Consciousness Involves Knowledge.

Why do we care about lights? Mostly because they help us see. Illuminated objects are more readily known than those in the dark. Cross-culturally, light is associated with knowledge and understanding. The light metaphor connects consciousness and knowledge. If “the lights are on” in a dog, or a snail, or a comatose person, they know what’s going on. If the lights are off, they are, so to speak, mere reactive machines.

If the contents of the room are the contents of your mind, illumination suggests self-knowledge. Your mental states, though being illuminated, become knowable within the perspective of the room. But I think I also hear a reading of “the lights being on” that doesn’t require the entity to understand its own mind. Maybe a “lights on” garden snail needn’t have anything as sophisticated as explicit self-representations of its own mental states. The illuminated furniture might then be analogous to external objects or events of which the snail is consciously aware. (This could also potentially help with the issue described in the previous section, since external objects don’t normally change by virtue of our thinking about them.)

5. Subjectivity and Phenomenal Character Are Distinct.

A light source is one thing, an illuminated object quite another. Analogously, perhaps, we should distinguish consciousness itself (Lee calls this “subjectivity”) from the objects or contents of consciousness (Lee calls this “phenomenal character”). The light metaphor suggests that the source of illumination and the object illuminated are distinct, and that the light source is causally responsible for the object's illumination. Maybe, for example, we can turn attention to our own thoughts, and this turning of attention is the distinct and separate cause of the illumination of the thoughts.

Could the objects instead be self-luminous? Imagine not a light source amid reflective objects but rather a room of glowing objects. If there are processes that are intrinsically conscious by virtue of their own internal structure rather than by virtue of some relational feature like being a target of attention, then the most natural, vanilla interpretation of the light-and-room metaphor misleads, though adapting the metaphor to glowing objects might work.

6. Conscious Entities Come in Discrete, Unified Bundles.

Let’s keep playing with the metaphor. In the vanilla case, every conscious subject has one light, illuminating one room. But maybe we can imagine a series of linked caverns, progressively dimmer and less directly illuminated. Maybe we can imagine multiple lightbulbs in different recesses or partly shaded by room dividers, with partly overlapping spheres of illumination.

Philosophers and consciousness scientists typically treat conscious subjects as unified and discrete. If you are (consciously) enjoying a sip of coffee, thinking about your dog, and hearing car horns in the distance, then one conscious subject is having those experiences conjointly, and no one else is having those very same experiences. Someone else could potentially have exactly similar experiences, just like someone could have a car exactly similar to your own – but they wouldn't thereby have your car or your experiences. Your light illuminates your experience of coffee with your experience of thinking about your dog with your experience of car horns. Someone else’s light illuminates a wholly disjoint set of (possibly very similar) mental furniture.

But maybe minds needn’t in general work that way. Could your coffee-sipping experience be unified with your dog thoughts, and your dog thoughts with your horn-hearing, with no unified experience of all three together? Could conjoined twins whose brains overlap (yes, there are real cases of this) share some experiences while not sharing others, illuminating from both sides some objects in a hallway between two rooms? Standard animal biology makes overlapping brains rare, but if it’s ever possible to create consciousness in artificial systems, overlap might become the norm. Efficiency might require systems to share some (conscious?) cognitive centers. Conscious subjects might then overlap, defying separation into discrete bundles. Creative effort would then be needed to adapt the metaphor of lights and rooms.

7. Working With or Against the Metaphor.

To treat consciousness metaphorically as a matter of “the lights being on” invites, but does not compel, a picture of consciousness on which (1.) entities are generally, at any particular moment, either determinately conscious or determinately nonconscious; (2.) conscious cognition and nonconscious cognition are fundamentally similar; (3.) consciousness is intimately linked to knowledge; (4.) consciousness involves a relationship between an object and some distinct thought or process that makes the object conscious; and (5.) conscious subjects are generally unified and discrete rather than disunified or overlapping. If 1-5 are all correct, the light and room metaphor works well. Employing it greases the path to correct thinking.

If any of 1-5 are not correct, we can cancel that aspect of the metaphor. Just as we cancel the implication of higher elevation when we employ the “north is up” metaphor, we can cancel the implication of determinacy. We can specify that consciousness is like a light, except that it is commonly indeterminate whether it is off or on. Indeed, some cancelations are straightforward, if the conclusion would be obviously false. It hardly needs to be said that minds don’t contain literal sofas.

Alternatively, we can modify or enrich the metaphor. We might say that consciousness is like a light in a room, except that unlike in a typical room, every object glows with self-illumination. We can treat the illuminated objects as outward things instead of mental processes, altering theses 2-4. But too much modification destroys the metaphor. Incomprehensibility ensues if we attempt the idea that consciousness is like a light illuminating a room, except that the objects are self-illuminating, and often neither determinately off nor on, and there’s no relationship between illumination and knowledge, and there’s no discrete number of light sources or rooms, and objects are radically different when they are illuminated than when they are dark. Better, if so, to say that consciousness is not like a light illuminating a room.

Toying with the metaphor can open a flood of questions with a brainstorming character. If objects are normally illuminated on one side but not another, do conscious states likewise have an unconscious side? Can the room have dark corners? Could different types of light illuminate different types of object? Could there be mirrors or a transparent wall between two different rooms? Could some objects come and go while others are always present but only sometimes illuminated? Some questions will carry the metaphor too far, being nonsensical or misleading when extended to the case of consciousness, but the exact boundaries of fruitful extension can’t be known in advance of the attempt. 

Monday, August 26, 2024

Top Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazines 2024

Since 2014, I've compiled an annual ranking of science fiction and fantasy magazines, based on prominent awards nominations and "best of" placements over the previous ten years.  If you're curious what magazines tend to be viewed by insiders as elite, check the top of the list.  If you're curious to discover reputable magazines that aren't as widely known (or aren't as widely known specifically for their science fiction and fantasy), check the bottom of the list.

Below is my list for 2024. (For previous lists, see here.)

[Update, 1:34 pm: This post originally contained Dall-E output for "the cover of an amazingly wonderful science fiction magazine", but several people in the SF community have convinced me to rethink my use of AI art for this purpose, so I've removed the art for now while I give the issue more thought.]

Method and Caveats:

(1.) Only magazines are included (online or in print), not anthologies, standalones, or series.

(2.) I gave each magazine one point for each story nominated for a Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, or World Fantasy Award in the past ten years; one point for each story appearance in any of the Dozois, Horton, Strahan, Clarke, Adams, or Tidhar "best of" anthologies; and half a point for each story appearing in the short story or novelette category of the annual Locus Recommended list.

(2a.) Methodological notes for 2022-2024: There's been some disruption among SF best of anthologies recently, with Horton, Strahan, and Clarke all having delays and/or cessations. (Dozois died a few years ago.) Partly for this reason, and partly to compensate for the "American" focus of the Adams anthology, I've added Tidhar's World SF anthology series, though Tidhar doesn't draw exclusively from the previous year's publications.

(3.) I am not attempting to include the horror / dark fantasy genre, except as it appears incidentally on the list.

(4.) Prose only, not poetry.

(5.) I'm not attempting to correct for frequency of publication or length of table of contents.

(6.) I'm also not correcting for a magazine's only having published during part of the ten-year period. Reputations of defunct magazines slowly fade, and sometimes they are restarted. Reputations of new magazines take time to build.

(7.) I take the list down to 1.5 points.

(8.) I welcome corrections.

(9.) I confess some ambivalence about rankings of this sort. They reinforce the prestige hierarchy, and they compress complex differences into a single scale. However, the prestige of a magazine is a socially real phenomenon worth tracking, especially for the sake of outsiders and newcomers who might not otherwise know what magazines are well regarded by insiders when considering, for example, where to submit.


Results:

1. Tor.com / Reactor (186 points) 

2. Clarkesworld (181.5) 

3. Uncanny (149)

4. Lightspeed (129) 

5. Asimov's (127) 

6. Fantasy & Science Fiction (109) 

7. Beneath Ceaseless Skies (59.5) 

8. Analog (47) 

9. Strange Horizons (incl Samovar) (43)

10t. Apex (36.5) 

10t. Nightmare (36.5) 

12. Slate / Future Tense (22) 

13t. FIYAH (19.5) (started 2017) 

13. Interzone (19.5) 

15. Fireside (18.5) (ceased 2022)

16. Fantasy Magazine (17.5) (off and on during the period, ceased 2023) 

17. Subterranean (17) (ceased short fiction 2014) 

18. The Dark (15) 

19. The New Yorker (9) 

20. Sunday Morning Transport (8.5) (started 2022)

21t. Future Science Fiction Digest (7) (started 2018, ceased or sporadic starting 2023) 

21t. Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet (7)

23t. Diabolical Plots (6.5)

23t. The Deadlands (6.5) (started 2021)

25t. Conjunctions (6) 

25t. McSweeney's (6) 

25t. Sirenia Digest (6) 

28t. GigaNotoSaurus (5.5) 

28t. khōréō (5.5) (started 2021)

28t. Omni (5.5) (classic popular science magazine, relaunched 2017-2020) 

28t. Terraform (Vice) (5.5) (ceased 2023)

32. Shimmer (5) (ceased 2018) 

33. Tin House (4.5) (ceased short fiction 2019) 

34t. Boston Review (4) 

34t. Galaxy's Edge (4) (ceased 2023?)

34t. Omenana (4)

34t. Wired (4)

38t. B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog (3.5) (ceased 2019)

38t. Paris Review (3.5) 

40t. Anathema (3) (ran 2017-2022)

40t. Black Static (3) (ceased fiction 2023)

40t. Daily Science Fiction (3) (ceased 2023)

40t. Kaleidotrope (3) 

40t. Science Fiction World (3)

45t. Beloit Fiction Journal (2.5) 

45t. Buzzfeed (2.5) 

45t. Matter (2.5) 

48t. Augur (2) (started 2018)

*48t. Baffling (2) (started 2020)

48t. Flash Fiction Online (2)

48t. Mothership Zeta (2) (ran 2015-2017) 

48t. Podcastle (2)

*48t. Shortwave (2) (started 2022)

*54t. e-flux journal (1.5)

*54t. Escape Pod (1.5)

*54t. Fusion Fragment (1.5) (started 2020)

54t. MIT Technology Review (1.5) 

54t. New York Times (1.5) 

54t. Reckoning (1.5) (started 2017)

54t. Translunar Travelers Lounge (1.5) (started 2019)

[* indicates new to the list this year]

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Comments:

(1.) Beloit Fiction Journal,  Boston Review, Conjunctions, e-flux Journal, Matter, McSweeney's, The New Yorker, Paris Review, Reckoning, and Tin House are literary magazines that occasionally publish science fiction or fantasy. Buzzfeed, Slate and Vice are popular magazines, and MIT Technology Review, Omni, and Wired are popular science magazines, which publish a bit of science fiction on the side. The New York Times is a well-known newspaper that ran a series of "Op-Eds from the Future" from 2019-2020.  The remaining magazines focus on the science fiction and fantasy (SF) genre. All publish in English, except Science Fiction World, which is the leading science fiction magazine in China.

(2.) It's also interesting to consider a three-year window. Here are those results, down to six points:

1. Uncanny (55)  
2. Clarkesworld (42) 
3. Tor / Reactor (31.5) 
4t. F&SF (22.5)
4t. Lightspeed (22.5) 
6. Apex (16.5) 
7. Strange Horizons (15.5) 
8. Asimov's (14)
9. Fantasy Magazine (12) 
10. Beneath Ceaseless Skies (11) 
11. FIYAH (9.5)
12. Nightmare (9) 
13. Sunday Morning Transport (8.5) 
14t. The Dark (6.5)
14t. The Deadlands (6.5) 

(3.) Over the past decade, the classic "big three" print magazines -- Asimov's, F&SF, and Analog -- have slowly been displaced in influence by the leading free online magazines, Tor / Reactor, Clarkesworld, Uncanny, and Lightspeed (all founded 2006-2014).  In 2014, Asimov's and F&SF led the rankings by a wide margin (Analog had already slipped a bit, as reflected in its #5 ranking then). This year for the first time, the leading free online magazines are #1-#4, while the former big three sit at #5, #6, and #8.  Presumably, a large part of the explanation is that there are more readers of free online fiction than of paid magazines, which is attractive to authors and probably also helps with voter attention for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards.

(4.) Other lists: The SFWA qualifying markets list is a list of "pro" science fiction and fantasy venues based on pay rates and track records of strong circulation. Ralan.com was a regularly updated list of markets that unfortunately ceased in 2023. Submission Grinder is a terrific resource for authors, with detailed information on magazine pay rates, submission windows, and turnaround times.

(5.) My academic philosophy readers might also be interested in the following magazines that specialize specifically in philosophical fiction and/or fiction by academic writers: AcademFic, After Dinner Conversation, and Sci Phi Journal.

Monday, August 19, 2024

An Argument for Physical Laws Too Small-Scale and Too Large-Scale for Us to Detect

The universe might be infinitely large. As Jacob Barandes and I have argued (Ch 7 of The Weirdness of the World; free draft version here), infinitude seems the most straightforward extension of current mainstream physics and cosmology. A finite universe would presumably require either an edge, which produces complexities for which there is no evidence, or the right kind of curvature, contra evidence that the universe is approximately flat at large scales.

If the universe is infinitely large, then it is at least conceivable that there are conscious entities compared to whom we are arbitrarily small. Here's how I express the idea in the conclusion of Weirdness:

I stroll through my suburban neighborhood in heavy rain. Gushing runoff strikes a fallen branch, and droplets leap a foot in the air. I imagine, inside one of those droplets, creatures so tiny that the universe they see through their telescopes is a trillionth of the radius of a proton, while a nanosecond encompasses 10^30 lifetimes. What could they know of us, from deep inside that arcing droplet? If the cosmos is infinite, we might know as little as they do about the unimaginably vast structures that embed us.

At sufficiently small scales, the effects of gravity are virtually undetectable. Compared to the strong nuclear force, the "weak" nuclear force, and electromagnetism, gravity is about 10^29 to 10^38 (approximately a trillion trillion trillion) times weaker. It has virtually no influence over what happens at subatomic scales. However, it accumulates over long distances, making its influence detectable at larger scales.

If there were entities as small as the ones I imagined in my droplet, it's plausible that they would be too small to detect the influence of gravity, even if they had technological tools as good as our own, scaled to their size. Correspondingly, if there are entities vastly larger than us, we might imagine them knowing of a force vastly weaker than gravity but which accumulates detectably over distances much larger than the mere tiny, minuscule, virtually negligible 93 billion light years that we can observe.

Of course we have no direct evidence that such a force exists. But neither do we have evidence against the possibility. Whether it's reasonable to guess that such a force exists depends on what we should assume as the null hypothesis or default presupposition.

In one way of thinking, the default presupposition should be that there is no such force. According to Occam's Razor, we should not multiply entities beyond necessity. If forces are "entities" in the relevant sense, this suggests that without positive evidence of an extremely weak, extremely long distance force, we should assume there is no such force.

On the other hand, Copernican or anti-specialness principles hold that we should default toward assuming that we aren't in a special position in the universe (such as its exact center), pending contrary evidence. Considered in a certain way, we would be oddly special if we were just the right size to observe all the forces of nature. If there are entities vastly vastly bigger, they presumably would not be able to observe the strong nuclear force with equipment of the caliber we have (scaled to their size). If there are entities vastly vastly smaller, they presumably couldn't observe gravity. Why should we be so special as to see every force there is? Better to assume that we are not so special, and thus that there are forces that operate on scales we cannot (as a practical matter) observe.

[Dall-E rendition of tiny scientists inside a molecule floating through space]

Consider a scale of force-strength ranging from arbitrarily close to zero to positive infinitude, scaled so that gravity counts as force-strength = 1, the weak nuclear force as 10^29, electromagnetism as 10^36, and the strong nuclear force as 10^38. Even just on a finite scale from 10^-1000000000000000 to 10^1000000000000000, this would be a remarkable clustering near the middle. If the force-strengths we could potentially detect with our equipment are in the range from, say, 10^-15 to 10^60, then that is the space of possible force-strengths that we have sampled in. If we find forces scattered at values 1, 29, 36, and 38 in the range -15 to +60, then it's not an unreasonable guess that these four values constitute a random distribution within our detection capacities and that if we could sample from a wider range we would find other forces that we cannot currently detect.

(I don't have a good sense of realistically what force-strengths we could potentially detect. The larger the scale -- say from 10^-1000 to 10^1000 -- the less that 1, 29, 36, and 38 look like a random sample, and the more reason we would have to think that something ensures that force-strengths stay within a magnitude not far from 1.  If it seems odd that there would be forces too strong for us to detect, consider that on our scale and speed, an entity held together by a very strong, fast-acting force that diminishes very sharply with distance might look to us like an unbreakable fundamental particle.)

The case for entities vastly larger than us seems stronger than the case for entities vastly smaller than us. If the universe is infinite, then there will be structures arbitrarily vastly larger than us, and unless something ensures that those structures are flat and bland, some of those structures will be complex and possibly even support the evolution of intelligence through natural selection.

But now we can again apply the Copernican Principle. If we accept -- look, I know I'm already far out on a limb here, but humor me -- that there are infinitely many complex structures vastly larger than us in an unending upward scaling (the first set of vastly larger entities being vastly smaller than the next set of vastly larger entities and so on), it would be strangely un-Copernican if we just happened to be the smallest scale intelligent entities.

ETA 09:32, Aug 21:

The following concern has arisen several times in discussion, so I'll add it here:

Concern: Isn't the speed of light a constraint that would make extremely large entities incoherent, since it would take so long for a signal to go from one end of the entity to the other?

Response: Assuming the speed of light as a constraint, vast entities would have to be extremely slow-paced (from our perspective). But since we have literal infinitude to play with, that shouldn't matter. They might seem static to us, if we could detect them, just as we might seem static to the entities in my water droplet who experience 10^30 lifetimes in a nanosecond.

Monday, August 12, 2024

Women Constitute 12% and People of Color 3% of the Most-Cited Contemporary Authors in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Last week, I posted a list of the 376 most-cited contemporary authors (born 1900 or later) in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Citation in the SEP is, I think, a better measure of influence in what I call "mainstream Anglophone philosophy" than more standard bibliometric measures, like Google Scholar and Web of Science.

In previous work, my collaborators and I have generally found that within U.S. academic philosophy, the higher in rank or prestige the target group, the less racial and gender diversity. Accordingly, one might expect people at very highest levels of prestige in mainstream Anglophone philosophy overwhelmingly to be non-Hispanic White men.

I attempted to code the gender (woman, man, nonbinary) of every philosopher in the SEP most-cited 376, based on a combination of personal and professional knowledge, information from the web, and gender-typicality of their name and photos. On similar grounds, I attempted to code every author on this list as either Hispanic/Latino or non-Hispanic/Latino and, among the non-Hispanic authors, White or non-White (using race/ethnicity categories as standardly defined in the U.S.). This is an imperfect exercise, and it wouldn't surprise me if I've made some mistakes. I hope you'll correct me if you notice any errors (raw data here), and please accept my apologies in advance![1]

I also guessed birth year. In the majority of cases, I found birthyear information on Wikipedia or another easily available source. Otherwise, I estimated based on year of Bachelor's degree (estimating 22 years old), year of PhD (estimating 29 years old), or year of first solo-authored publication (also estimating 29 years old). This enables some generational comparisons. Again, I welcome corrections.

Overall, among the 376 philosophers, I count 44 women (12%) and one non-binary person (#223, Judith Butler). I count only eleven (3%) who are Hispanic and/or non-White. Only one of the 376 is a woman of color (#260, Linda Martín Alcoff), and 321 (85%) are non-Hispanic White men.

Here it is as a pie chart:

[click to enlarge and clarify]

The gender skew is even more extreme if we consider the top 100 (actually the top 102, accounting for ties): six women (6%) and 97% non-Hispanic White. The highest ranked person of color is Jaegwon Kim at #59.

As you might expect, the skew is larger in the older generations (born before 1946) than in the younger generations. Over the past several decades, there has tended to be a slow reduction in gender and racial disparity in U.S. academic philosophy (see, e.g., here and here). However, the generational disparity reduction in the SEP is fairly small.

I analyzed generational trends in two ways: First, I binned philosophers by estimated birthyear into one of four generations: "Greatest" (1900-1924), "Silent" (1925-1945), "Boomer" (1946-1964), and "Generation X" (1965-1979). (One "Millenial" was [update Aug 14] Two older Millennials were binned with the Gen-Xers.) Second, I looked at correlations between the demographic categories and birthyear.

Gender analysis by generation:
Greatest: 40/44 men (91%)
Silent: 133/145 (92%)
Boomer: 116/136 (85%)
Gen X: 42/51 (82%)

Expressed as a correlation of gender (man = 1, woman or nonbinary = 0) with birthyear: r = -.10, p = .046. This negative correlation indicates that as birthyear increases (i.e., the philosopher is younger), the philosopher is less likely to be a man. However, the size of the effect is small and barely crosses the conventional p < .05 threshold of statistical significance. The nine highest-ranked Gen-Xers are all White men. No Gen X women rank among the top 200.

Among the eleven philosophers who are Hispanic/Latino or non-White, none are Greatest, five are Silent, four are Boomers, and two are Gen X. Statistical analysis is of limited value with such small numbers, but for what it's worth, status in this category does directionally correlate with birthyear, with a very small effect size and no statistical significance (r = -.06, p = .25).

ETA 10:46 a.m.:

To see if there's a relationship between gender and rank on the list, I took the natural log of the ranks (since the difference between rank 1 and rank 11 is much more meaningful than between rank 301 and 311) and calculated its correlation with gender (1 = man, 0 = woman or nonbinary): r = -.12, p = .016. The negative relationship of course indicates that men are likely to be higher ranked (i.e., closer to rank 1). As before, race/ethnicity numbers are probably too small for meaningful statistical analysis, but for completeness the result is a virtually flat r = -.02, p = .77.

----------------------------------

In an independent analysis, Liam Kofi Bright counts nine non-White philosophers on this list, exactly matching my analysis except omitting two (not non-White?) Latino philosophers (Sosa and Bueno). This supports my sense of how the philosophers on this list are racially perceived by others in the field. (One complication: Bueno identifies as Brazilian, and there's a lot of confusion about whether Brazilian counts as "Hispanic" in the U.S. context.)

Wednesday, August 07, 2024

The 376 Most-Cited Contemporary Authors in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Time for my five-year update of the most-cited authors in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy! (Past analyses: 2010, 2014, 2019.)

Image of a young David K. Lewis [source]

Method

* Only authors born 1900 or later are included.

* Each author is only counted once per headline entry (subentries are excluded). In 2010, I found that this generated more plausible results than counting authors multiple times per entry.

* As in 2019, but unlike 2014 and 2010, I include co-authors. Due to the unsystematic formatting of SEP references, this was a somewhat noisy process. To capture last authors, I searched for "and" or "&" in each bibliographic line, if appearing before a "19", "20", "forthcoming", or "in press", then pulled the text immediately after. To capture second authors that were not last authors, I searched for a second comma before such a date-preceding "and" or "&", then pulled the text after that. I omitted co-authors in position three or higher unless they were last author. Fortunately for the analysis, co-authorship is relatively uncommon in philosophy compared to the sciences, constituting by my estimate less than 10% of the bibliographic lines.

* Also as in 2019 but unlike 2014, I included editors, but only if their name appears before the date in the bibliographical line. Putting the editor at the front of the bibliographical line highlights the editor's role or the edited collection as a whole.

* After computerized search and sort, I hand-coded the data, in some cases correcting misspellings and merging authors (e.g., Ruth Barcan = Ruth Marcus), more often separating authors with similar names (e.g., various A. Goldmans and J. Cohens), in a process that involved some guesswork and pattern recognition. Inconsistent syntax and imperfect redundancy removal procedures also created some error, though nothing large or systematic that I noticed. Bear in mind that with about 208,000 bibliographic entries, perfection is not possible! I estimate coding error of up to about +/- 2 entries.

* To find the equivalent score of an author not included on this list, you can search the SEP site and count the number of hits, subtracting appearances in subentries and appearances other than first, second, or last headline editor or author in a bibliographic line (near the beginning of the entry, before the date). I also welcome thoughtful corrections that apply this method.

This list generates a rough measure of current influence in what I call "mainstream Anglophone philosophy" (a sociological category I have defined and discussed, e.g., here and here). For example, the top five -- Lewis, Quine, Putnam, Rawls, and Kripke -- are the same (in a different order) as the top five in Brian Leiter's poll results concerning the best Anglophone philosophers since 1957. Better-known bibliographic metrics, like Google Scholar and Web of Science do not as accurately measure this particular sociological phenomenon. See my 2021 discussion of ranking philosophy rankings.

The list captures, if anything, a moment in one particular academic philosophical culture. For example, despite Michel Foucault's huge global academic influence, mainstream Anglophone philosophers rarely cite him, and on this list he ranks #187.

Further caveats:

* Philosophers who work on topics that are underrepresented in the Stanford Encyclopedia relative to their visibility in mainstream Anglophone philosophy will appear lower on the list than their eminence would suggest.

* Authors who have a transformative impact in one area will probably be underrepresented or underranked relative to authors who make significant but less transformative contributions to several topics.

* Editors of the Stanford Encyclopedia might be somewhat overrepresented, since they might tend to disproportionately solicit entries on topics to which they have contributed and authors might feel some pressure to cite them in their entries.

* Given a large bias toward citing recent work, philosophers whose main contributions were before 1960 are probably substantially underrated on this list relative to their influence in mainstream Anglophone philosophy.

* Yes, I'm on this list (in a tie for #232). I find this somewhat embarrassing, since I think this method substantially overrates me (see the 2nd and 4th caveats). If you could withhold congratulations and comparisons, I'd appreciate it!

As I did in 2019, I will follow up later with some demographic analyses. Thanks to UCR comp lit and philosophy student Jordan Jackson for his help with the computer code.

[Updated Aug. 9, to remove two authors born before 1900 and to correct one misspelling.]

1. Lewis, David K. (cited in 307 different main entries)
2. Quine, Willard van Orman (213)
3. Putnam, Hilary (190)
4. Rawls, John (168)
5. Kripke, Saul A. (159)
6. Williamson, Timothy (152)
7. Davidson, Donald (151)
8. Williams, Bernard (146)
9. Nussbaum, Martha C. (140)
10. Nagel, Thomas (137)
11. Nozick, Robert (135)
12. Jackson, Frank (130)
13. Searle, John R. (120)
14. Chalmers, David J. (117)
14. Van Fraassen, Bas C. (117)
16. Harman, Gilbert H. (116)
16. Strawson, Peter F. (116)
18. Fodor, Jerry A. (115)
19. Fine, Kit (112)
19. Parfit, Derek (112)
19. Stalnaker, Robert C. (112)
22. Dennett, Daniel C. (110)
22. Dummett, Michael A. E. (110)
24. Kitcher, Philip (109)
24. Pettit, Philip (109)
26. Armstrong, David M. (106)
26. Chisholm, Roderick M. (106)
28. Van Inwagen, Peter (102)
29. Dworkin, Ronald (101)
29. Scanlon, Thomas M. (101)
29. Sober, Elliott (101)
32. Hawthorne, John (97)
33. McDowell, John H. (96)
34. Popper, Karl R. (94)
35. Goodman, Nelson (90)
35. Hacking, Ian (90)
37. Raz, Joseph (89)
38. Geach, Peter T. (88)
38. Goldman, Alvin I. (88)
40. Anderson, Elizabeth S. (83)
40. Bennett, Jonathan (83)
42. Hintikka, Jaakko (82)
43. Adams, Robert Merrihew (81)
43. Plantinga, Alvin C. (81)
45. Anscombe, G. E. M. (80)
45. Korsgaard, Christine M. (80)
45. Mackie, John L. (80)
45. Schaffer, Jonathan (80)
45. Tarski, Alfred (80)
45. Wright, Crispin (80)
51. Priest, Graham (79)
52. Dretske, Fred I. (78)
53. Alston, William P. (77)
53. Burge, Tyler (77)
55. Ayer, Alfred J. (76)
55. Gibbard, Allan (76)
55. Gödel, Kurt (76)
58. Horgan, Terence E. (75)
59. Kim, Jaegwon (73)
59. Stich, Stephen P. (73)
61. Kaplan, David (72)
61. Thomson, Judith Jarvis (72)
63. Field, Hartry H. (71)
63. Kuhn, Thomas S. (71)
63. Lycan, William G. (71)
63. Rescher, Nicholas (71)
63. Sellars, Wilfrid (71)
63. Singer, Peter (71)
69. Blackburn, Simon (70)
69. Evans, Gareth (70)
69. Hempel, Carl G. (70)
69. Zalta, Edward N. (70)
73. Frankfurt, Harry G. (69)
73. Ramsey, Frank P. (69)
73. Rosen, Gideon (69)
73. Sosa, Ernest (69)
73. Woodward, James (69)
78. Earman, John (68)
78. Perry, John (68)
78. Sider, Theodore (68)
78. Smith, Michael (68)
78. Waldron, Jeremy (68)
83. Feinberg, Joel (67)
83. Sen, Amartya K. (67)
83. Swinburne, Richard G. (67)
83. Wiggins, David (67)
87. Barnes, Jonathan (66)
87. Lowe, E. J. (66)
87. Skyrms, Brian (66)
87. Velleman, J. David (66)
91. Annas, Julia (65)
91. MacIntyre, Alasdair (65)
91. Shoemaker, Sydney S. (65)
94. Darwall, Stephen L. (64)
94. Grice, H. Paul (64)
94. Ryle, Gilbert (64)
94. Shapiro, Stewart (64)
98. Nichols, Shaun (63)
98. Prior, Arthur N. (63)
98. Soames, Scott (63)
98. Taylor, Charles (63)
98. Yablo, Stephen (63)
103. Church, Alonzo (62)
103. Habermas, Jürgen (62)
103. Young, Iris Marion (62)
106. Block, Ned (61)
106. Jeffrey, Richard C. (61)
108. Friedman, Michael (60)
108. Hare, Richard M. (60)
108. Peacocke, Christopher (60)
111. Brink, David O. (59)
111. Burgess, John P. (59)
111. Cartwright, Nancy (59)
111. Sorabji, Richard (59)
115. Austin, J. L. (57)
115. Smart, J. J. C. (57)
115. van Benthem, Johan F. (57)
118. Arneson, Richard J. (56)
118. Foot, Philippa (56)
118. Kenny, Anthony (56)
118. Miller, David (56)
118. Papineau, David (56)
123. Dupré, John (55)
123. Irwin, Terence H. (55)
123. Simons, Peter M. (55)
126. Audi, Robert (54)
126. Dancy, Jonathan (54)
126. McGinn, Colin (54)
129. Churchland, Paul M. (53)
129. Devitt, Michael (53)
129. Godfrey-Smith, Peter (53)
129. Hart, H. L. A. (53)
129. Parsons, Terence (53)
134. Belnap, Nuel D. (52)
134. Carruthers, Peter (52)
134. Chomsky, Noam (52)
134. Tye, Michael (52)
138. Buchanan, Allen E. (51)
138. Clark, Andy (51)
138. Glymour, Clark (51)
138. Rorty, Richard (51)
138. Sedley, David N. (51)
138. Stanley, Jason (51)
138. Wolterstorff, Nicholas (51)
145. Griffiths, Paul E. (50)
145. LePore, Ernest (50)
145. Montague, Richard (50)
145. Schofield, Malcolm (50)
145. von Neumann, John (50)
150. Barwise, Jon (49)
150. Brandom, Robert B. (49)
150. Haslanger, Sally (49)
150. Johnston, Mark (49)
150. Railton, Peter (49)
150. Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter (49)
156. Appiah, Kwame Anthony (48)
156. Boolos, George (48)
156. Enoch, David (48)
156. Millikan, Ruth Garrett (48)
156. Prinz, Jesse J. (48)
156. Salmon, Wesley C. (48)
156. Sartre, Jean-Paul (48)
156. Strawson, Galen (48)
156. Stump, Eleonore (48)
165. Cooper, John M. (47)
165. Horwich, Paul (47)
165. Kretzmann, Norman (47)
165. Longino, Helen E. (47)
165. Mancosu, Paolo (47)
165. Sterelny, Kim (47)
165. Weatherson, Brian (47)
165. Wood, Allen W. (47)
173. Feferman, Solomon (46)
173. Hale, Bob (46)
173. Kahneman, Daniel (46)
173. Levy, Neil (46)
173. Norton, John D. (46)
173. Sandel, Michael J. (46)
173. Suppes, Patrick (46)
180. Guyer, Paul (45)
180. Maudlin, Tim (45)
180. Mellor, D. Hugh (45)
180. Okin, Susan Moller (45)
180. Read, Stephen L. (45)
180. Salmón, Nathan U. (45)
180. Van Cleve, James (45)
187. Beiser, Frederick C. (44)
187. Burnyeat, Myles F. (44)
187. Cohen, Gerald A. (44)
187. Foucault, Michel (44)
187. Hurka, Thomas (44)
187. McLaughlin, Brian P. (44)
187. Mele, Alfred R. (44)
187. O'Neill, Onora (44)
187. Unger, Peter (44)
196. Broome, John (43)
196. Davies, Martin (43)
196. Elster, Jon (43)
196. Hull, David L. (43)
196. Lehrer, Keith (43)
196. Scheffler, Samuel (43)
196. Walzer, Michael (43)
203. Boghossian, Paul A. (42)
203. Craver, Carl F. (42)
203. Finnis, John (42)
203. Gauthier, David P. (42)
203. Goodin, Robert E. (42)
203. Kriegel, Uriah (42)
203. Laudan, Larry (42)
203. List, Christian (42)
203. Loewer, Barry (42)
203. Nolan, Daniel (42)
203. Slote, Michael A. (42)
203. Sunstein, Cass R. (42)
203. Thomasson, Amie L. (42)
203. Zagzebski, Linda Trinkaus (42)
217. Byrne, Alex (41)
217. Fricker, Miranda (41)
217. Kymlicka, Will (41)
217. Long, A. A. (41)
217. Schiffer, Stephen (41)
217. Smith, Barry (at Buffalo) (41)
223. Bach, Kent (40)
223. Barry, Brian (40)
223. Butler, Judith (40)
223. Garber, Daniel (40)
223. Heil, John (40)
223. Huemer, Michael (40)
223. Machery, Edouard (40)
223. Merricks, Trenton (40)
223. Restall, Greg (40)
232. Bealer, George (39)
232. Bechtel, William (39)
232. Colyvan, Mark (39)
232. Crisp, Roger (39)
232. Feldman, Fred (39)
232. Gabbay, Dov M. (39)
232. Gärdenfors, Peter (39)
232. Hampton, Jean (39)
232. McMahan, Jeff (39)
232. Nagel, Ernest (39)
232. Schwitzgebel, Eric (39)
232. Wolf, Susan (39)
244. Bird, Alexander (38)
244. Bueno, Otávio (38)
244. Crane, Tim (38)
244. Gendler, Tamar Szabó (38)
244. Hájek, Alan (38)
244. Ladyman, James (38)
244. Pasnau, Robert (38)
251. Feldman, Richard (37)
251. Halpern, Joseph Y. (37)
251. Kagan, Shelly (37)
251. Lange, Marc (37)
251. Pearl, Judea (37)
251. Pollock, John L. (37)
251. Rosenberg, Alex (37)
251. Schroeder, Mark (37)
251. Wedgwood, Ralph (37)
260. Alcoff, Linda Martín (36)
260. Baker, Lynne Rudder (36)
260. Bonjour, Laurence (36)
260. Brandt, Richard B. (36)
260. Conee, Earl (36)
260. Feyerabend, Paul K. (36)
260. Lewontin, Richard C. (36)
260. Linsky, Bernard (36)
260. Lloyd, Elisabeth A. (36)
260. Marcus, Ruth Barcan (36)
260. Sperber, Dan (36)
260. Teller, Paul (36)
272. Adamson, Peter (35)
272. Beall, J. C. (35)
272. Boyd, Richard (35)
272. Bratman, Michael E. (35)
272. Callender, Craig (35)
272. Cresswell, Max J. (35)
272. Hitchcock, Christopher R. (35)
272. Hurley, Susan L. (35)
272. Kittay, Eva Feder (35)
272. Matthen, Mohan (35)
272. Okasha, Samir (35)
272. Parsons, Charles (35)
272. Sainsbury, R. Mark (35)
272. Scott, Dana S. (35)
272. Sorensen, Roy A. (35)
287. Benacerraf, Paul (34)
287. Benhabib, Seyla (34)
287. Brogaard, Berit (34)
287. Cohen, Joshua (34)
287. Currie, Greg (34)
287. Darden, Lindley (34)
287. Flanagan, Owen (34)
287. Kahn, Charles H. (34)
287. Kamm, Frances M. (34)
287. Kleene, Stephen C. (34)
287. Mulligan, Kevin (34)
287. Paul, Laurie A. (34)
287. Pereboom, Derk (34)
287. Pogge, Thomas W. (34)
287. Recanati, François (34)
287. Shafer-Landau, Russ (34)
287. Thagard, Paul (34)
287. Watson, Gary (34)
305. Baier, Annette C. (33)
305. Barnes, Elizabeth (33)
305. Black, Max (33)
305. Gallagher, Shaun (33)
305. Giere, Ronald N. (33)
305. Gould, Stephen Jay (33)
305. Griffin, James (33)
305. Kneale, William (33)
305. Price, Huw (33)
305. Pritchard, Duncan (33)
305. Thomason, Richmond H. (33)
305. Turing, Alan M. (33)
305. Tversky, Amos (33)
305. Wimsatt, William C. (33)
319. Adams, Marilyn McCord (32)
319. Beebee, Helen C. (32)
319. Bennett, Karen (32)
319. Craig, William Lane (32)
319. Ebbesen, Sten (32)
319. Frede, Michael (32)
319. Hatfield, Gary (32)
319. Kreisel, Georg (32)
319. Langton, Rae (32)
319. Levinson, Jerrold (32)
319. Machamer, Peter (32)
319. Pateman, Carole (32)
319. Penrose, Roger (32)
319. Rey, Georges (32)
319. Varzi, Achille C. (32)
319. Zimmerman, Dean W. (32)
335. Allison, Henry E. (31)
335. Ashworth, E. Jennifer (31)
335. Berlin, Isaiah (31)
335. Cappelen, Herman (31)
335. Copp, David (31)
335. Daniels, Norman (31)
335. Hartmann, Stephan (31)
335. Hellman, Geoffrey Paul (31)
335. Hooker, Brad (31)
335. Kornblith, Hilary (31)
335. Kvanvig, Jonathan L. (31)
335. Leitgeb, Hannes (31)
335. MacFarlane, John (31)
335. MacKinnon, Catharine A. (31)
335. McDaniel, Kris (31)
335. Mills, Charles W. (31)
335. Oppy, Graham (31)
335. Rea, Michael (31)
335. Sarkar, Sahotra (31)
335. Savulescu, Julian (31)
335. Sylvan, Richard (31)
335. Vlastos, Gregory (31)
357. Bayne, Tim (30)
357. Butterfield, Jeremy (30)
357. Cameron, Ross P. (30)
357. Dawkins, Richard (30)
357. Egan, Andy (30)
357. Fischer, John Martin (30)
357. Gaus, Gerald F. (30)
357. Hill, Thomas E., Jr. (30)
357. Hodges, Wilfrid (30)
357. Hornsby, Jennifer (30)
357. Howson, Colin (30)
357. Joyce, Richard (30)
357. Kneale, Martha (30)
357. Levi, Isaac (30)
357. Maynard Smith, John (30)
357. Nadler, Steven (30)
357. Scruton, Roger (30)
357. Siegel, Susanna (30)
357. Von Wright, Georg Henrik (30)
357. Weisberg, Michael (30)

Sunday, August 04, 2024

The Problem with Calling Trump and Vance Weird

[my op-ed in today's LA Times]

Democratic politicians and pundits have recently begun throwing this insult at Republican presidential contender Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance: “weird.” As a scholar who has made my academic career in part by celebrating weirdness, I object. Trump and Vance don’t deserve the compliment.

The weird should be understood as whatever is strikingly contrary to the ordinary, predictable and readily understood. It is a contrast with the normal. Consider blades of grass. Although no two are exactly the same, their variation keeps to certain limits. But here’s a blade that splits into three halfway up, with each finger curling around in a loop. Why would it do that? Now that’s a weird blade of grass!

Recently, my family and I visited Hayao Miyazaki’s Ni-Tele Really Big Clock in Tokyo. What a weird object: It looms from the side of a skyscraper, featuring mannequins and giant bird claws. When noon strikes, one claw opens to reveal a smiling sun, a fish tail bangs a gong and a bell-headed mannequin enacts a goofy dance. Nature also offers plenty of weirdness, such as the miraculously thin, Seussian piles of stone in Utah’s Bryce Canyon, the surreal mineral-deposit terraces of Pamukkale in Turkey and gloriously bizarre fish and fungi around the world.

[Hayao Miyazaki’s Ni-Tele Really Big Clock in Tokyo]

The Democrats are getting mileage from calling Trump and Vance “weird.” The word has been used enough by allies of Vice President Kamala Harris and her presidential campaign to receive substantial news coverage as a political strategyeven praise for its success. The resonance of this strategy reflects a widespread misunderstanding of who deserves to be called weird. The term should conjure the guy who rides through Berkeley on a unicycle, wearing a top hat; the business school standout who drops out to live on an organic seed farm; the middle school kid who plasters their bedroom with posters of squids and snails, ignoring pop culture in favor of a deep fascination with mollusk biology. Each is, in their own way, a wonder of nature, and the world is richer for having them.

Trump’s and Vance’s behavior, on the other hand, reflects something more troubling. Their views toward women and reproductive rights, for example — demeaning the former and opposing the latter — are inappropriate and deservedly in the minority. But those views, unfortunately, are not rare enough to be truly weird. In fact, in contemporary America, Trump and Vance are normal, predictable and readily understood. They are ordinary, self-serving politicians, conforming to the demands of those who have rewarded their behavior.

And even if these perspectives were more unusual, that would not be the source of these politicians’ badness. Yes, some unusual things are bad, such as serial killings. And Trump does have his head-scratching moments — consider the frequent references to fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter on the campaign trail. But things and people are not bad because they are weird. It seriously misrepresents the nature of Trump’s and Vance’s departure from liberal values to treat weirdness as their headline flaw.

What is it to be liberal? It is to tolerate, or even to celebrate, others with different values and practices. Liberal parents permit their children to make choices other than their own. Liberal societies are pluralistic and egalitarian, not requiring citizens to adhere to mainstream culture and religion.

There are always some gardeners who would prefer to mow down the weird blade of grass, and some people are similarly made uncomfortable by others they regard as weird. These are the people for whom “weird” is a choice insult. In the conformist hellscape of middle school (or at least of some middle schools), bands of lookalike kids who prize their normality — even more, their being perceived as normal — taunt the kids who don’t easily fit in, such as the mollusk lover. I was insulted as “weird” in school myself. But I grew to embrace my own weirdness and weirdness in general. I realized that to use “weird” as an insult is implicitly to accept a conformist worldview — a worldview that devalues rather than appreciates difference and novelty.

Our Democratic politicians and pundits are, and should be, better than that. The Democrats pride themselves on being the party of diversity, on accepting people with a wide range of worldviews, cultures, sexual orientations, life experiences and interests, on making room for nonconformists and those outside the mainstream.

Using “weird” as a term of mockery, as though that’s the best descriptor of Trump and Vance, may be politically advantageous right now. But it denigrates the truly weird. Instead, call Trump and Vance liars, authoritarians, conscienceless political shape-shifters and wrong on policy. Those are ample, and more appropriate, reasons to vote against them.