Preposterism and Its Consequences (1998)
Susan Haack
Susan Haack, “Preposterism and Its Consequences”
Abstract: Haack describes this paper, written in 1996, as “in the nature of a lay sermon.”
The environment is inhospitable to good intellectual work, she argues, to the extent that incentives and rewards encourage people to choose trivial issues where results are more easily obtained, to disguise rather than tackle problems with their chosen approach, to go for the flashy, the fashionable, and the impressively obscure over the deep the difficult, and the painfully clear; insofar as the effective availability of the best and most significant work is hindered rather than enabled by journals and conferences bloated with the trivial, the faddy, and the carelessly or deliberately unclear; insofar as mutual scrutiny is impeded by fad, fashion, obfuscation, and fear of offending the influential.
Sadly, she continues, the environment in which academic philosophy is presently conducted is undeniably an inhospitable one: the “publish-or-perish” ethos and the culture of grants and research projects have encouraged sham and fake reasoning, and even a factitious despair of the possibility of honest inquiry.
In “Out of Step” (2013), Haack writes that, looking back, this paper now seems “distinctly too mild, the present situation much worse than I then foresaw.”
Abstract: Haack describes this paper, written in 1996, as “in the nature of a lay sermon.”
The environment is inhospitable to good intellectual work, she argues, to the extent that incentives and rewards encourage people to choose trivial issues where results are more easily obtained, to disguise rather than tackle problems with their chosen approach, to go for the flashy, the fashionable, and the impressively obscure over the deep the difficult, and the painfully clear; insofar as the effective availability of the best and most significant work is hindered rather than enabled by journals and conferences bloated with the trivial, the faddy, and the carelessly or deliberately unclear; insofar as mutual scrutiny is impeded by fad, fashion, obfuscation, and fear of offending the influential.
Sadly, she continues, the environment in which academic philosophy is presently conducted is undeniably an inhospitable one: the “publish-or-perish” ethos and the culture of grants and research projects have encouraged sham and fake reasoning, and even a factitious despair of the possibility of honest inquiry.
In “Out of Step” (2013), Haack writes that, looking back, this paper now seems “distinctly too mild, the present situation much worse than I then foresaw.”
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