I understand why the campaigners at the GCC have embraced implicit bias; the existence of implicit bias is a scientifically robust empirical result. It also allows one to avoid moral finger-pointing about past behavior; the 'culprits' of implicit bias can reasonably claim not to have intended the patterns of exclusion that are exhibited. It is, thus, no surprise that the patterns of exclusion in the Healy 500, are being interpreted by our friends at Feministphilosophers as further evidence for implicit bias and lazy citation habits in the profession. But we should not be blind to the fact that the Healy data (here and here) on citation and co-citation practices in the H4 ("Nous, the Journal of Philosophy, the Philosophical Review, and Mind), also reveal quite a few intentional patterns of exclusion: no Judith Butler, no Habermas, no Foucault, no Deleuze, no Derrida, etc. Okay, that is to be expected; but also, no Martha Nussbaum, Charles Taylor, G.A. Cohen, no Anthony Appiah, or Alisdair MacIntyre--all of whom wrote influential, widely read, widely cited books in the period under discussion. Given that H4 are supposed to be general interest journals, it is worth noting how poorly represented various areas of philosophy -- aesthetics, history, applied ethics, feminism, critical race theory, etc. -- are in the citation patterns of H4. This should not elicit surprise. Not all of the excluded areas are, of course, equally welcoming to women and other minorities, so I am not suggesting that the explicit patterns of exclusion map onto the exclusion of women, but some might.
One of the most important nuggets in the Healy data is that philosophy papers cite on average fifteen items. This reveals that in the DNA of our collective research practice we just learn to ignore what others say, except if they are high status boys. Perhaps this pattern is more extreme in the H4 because these really are incrowd/in-house journals and until recently they were edited in that fashion, too. Now claims like these are often hard to prove, and initially I thought about writing a satirical post about the B-list of men (no, not Rawls and Lewis) that are well entrenched in the Healy 500, yet no Ruth Barcan Marcus. But rather than making enemies out of everybody in the discipline, the point may be made more suitably (and more paradoxically) by the the Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford University, John Hawthorne.
For the record, except that we share a fondness for José Benardete, Hawthorne and I have no shared philosophical passions. (In fact, our first public exchange revealed quite a bit -- to use a polite description - mutual incomprehension.) Now, sociologically Hawthorne is interesting; he came out of a relatively non-prestigious department and his first few jobs were not high status. In fact, not only did he publish his way to prominence he did so with a high number of co-authors. (I am not claiming these are the only sources of his prominence.) Despite the enormous number of his publications, Hawthorne has only one work in the Healy 500 (that exception to the rule is an influential node in Healy's diagram). In fact, before 2003 (when he got hired at Rutgers), Hawthorne barely gets cited anywhere. Yet, even though Hawthorne's citations have exploded in recent years, the H4 are slow to catch up. Now, it's possible, of course, that Hawtorne's work doesn't deserve to be cited in the work that gets published in the H4--there are days, of course, where I may be caught thinking that. But, a more plausible explanation is, -- I have already noted -- that H4 may be publishing cutting edge research (by stipulation), the citations in h4 reflect the cutting edge outside the elite with considerable lag.
This suggests, I suspect, that at the elite level, philosophy referees do not demand engagement with relevant literature outside a charmed circle--probably because it's not being read anyway.
Okay, and now you can all tell me that I am all wrong and don't know what I am talking about.:)
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