First of all, I apologize to those who read Aporia because of their interest in skepticism—I’ve got a few new posts on skepticism in the pipeline which I haven’t been able to post yet. But there are things that make me feel dismayed. Also, right now I should be working on a few book reviews and papers, but thinking, reading, and writing about the Synthese affair makes it difficult to focus on other things. So I hope this will be my last post on this affair.
An argument to which I referred in my previous post seems to be gaining force: it is not advisable for (young) scholars to submit their papers to Synthese anymore because of the new bad reputation of the journal. I cannot find any serious basis for this argument because nothing in the Synthese affair implies that any one of the papers published in the journal isn’t of high quality. Also, as I have said many times, there was no censorship, that is, no part of any paper was changed or removed once it was accepted for publication. So, if anyone asked me what to do, I’d just say: “Go ahead and submit your paper to Synthese.” Unfortunately, I don’t have anything I could submit to them. It seems to me that the argument in question is not reflecting a fact but rather trying to boycott the journal by making scholars feel afraid of having their papers published in Synthese. I don’t know how things work in the States (or Canada), but I hope that no department will pay attention to such an argument. Well... unless Sarah Palin is the department chair.
I think that right now there are two issues that should be distinguished: the behavior of the Synthese editors and the “political” behavior of those scholars who are trying to boycott the journal. Our business should be philosophy, not the manifestation or the concentration of power.
I totally agree. I have taken a look at the people driving the Synthese boycott and they are very political driven. They seem to focus on Fox New's reporting of the day, rather than fundamentals in philosophy.
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