Dan, Certainly I'm aware that such bias exists. What I'm not clear on is how the opt-out (or even opt-in) function really serves to counteract such bias generally (even if it helps one or two individuals avoid it, though even that I'm not convinced of), especially given the sorts of things T.M. mentions regarding what we might call "bias revenge." What's more, we should keep in mind the extent to which the information you're worried about is available elsewhere online. Someone's first initial and last name (plus knowing they are a philosopher) can get me pretty far on Google if they haven't made a concerted effort to minimize their web presence. The upshot is that I'm not convinced that, either generally or in nearly any specific case, the potential harms of having one's name on this list would outweigh the benefits (either to one or to the profession) of having it be non-optional. and thus (hopefully) more complete. This is not to say, however, that it isn't a good idea to limit information listed to the sort of "CV-type" information you mention. Of course, given Googleability, that might end up being merely expressive of our view that other information is irrelevant, rather than instrumental in actually preventing bias, but that can still be important (and may even counteract bias when we take a longer view). If the information were thus limited, though, it seems even less clear to me that we would have any reason to make it optional (in or out).

I'm not entirely sure what to think about this, but let me play devil's advocate for a moment, at least: Why exactly is it good to have an opt-out option, or any subject control of this at all? I'm fairly certain I can't opt out when someone creates a Wikipedia page about me, why should I be able to when it comes to the Big Book of Philosophers? Might not the most neutral version of this database be one where seeing someone's information tells you nothing about what they think of the database or the information about them listed there, even the minimal information that they either chose not to opt-out or never found out about the database? And, on the side of this, what are some legitimate reasons a person would have for opting out, reasons that are strong enough to outweigh the benefits of having this be a complete database?

Neal Stephenson's Anathem. The central characters are scientist/mathematician/philosophers on an Earth-like world in which all of the intellectuals sequestered themselves in monastery-like communities thousands of years ago. Parts of it read like a bizarre intro text with all the names changed. N.B.: It's over 900 pages long. Also, though they're not as overtly philosophical, Stephenson's philosophical background is evident in a number of his other books. Also, many of them are really good.

Accolades, exclamation points, etc.

I think I was reading the "you" as "one," which is why I wanted the "It depends." If the "you" is actually ME, then "I'm not sure." Either way, this is obviously a small point; I suspect non-philosophers won't have the same difficulty answering this kind of question. I can't wait to see the results!

Warning for those who haven't taken the survey yet: This comment has substantive content. I really wanted an "I'm not sure" or "It depends" option, at least for the first question. Suppose I care about environmental issues to a great extent. The expressive value of making the relevant sacrifices might outweigh the reasons provided by the negative effects on my family. (As a rough analogue: You might think it is permissible to vote for a democrat in an overwhelmingly red state even if you knew that your family would be ostracized.)

Victor, 'S is desirable' might imply 'S has many good properties and few bad properties and hence is to be desired over many available alternatives'. That might be right, though I might want to distinguish between desiring that 'S obtains rather than T' and desiring that 'S obtains'. And I might think that the former is desirable, but not the latter. I also suspect this is getting into subtleties our language isn't used to dealing with. You're right that I'm inclined to contrast the inter- and intrapersonal. I suppose I'm disinclined to desire tragedies and I think that a situation in which someone ends up worse off is a tragedy, at least in one sense, even if it was, in another sense, good because of how it helped others. On the other hand, I'm less inclined to think that it's a tragedy at all if I undergo some negative experience for the sake of a (more) positive one (though I suppose that there's some cosmic sense in which I might bemoan the need to take the bad with the good).

Victor, Ugh, I just wrote a long response and the site deleted it. Hopefully I can recreate... Nice point. I agree with you that what you suggested can't be the right explanation (though I admit I found it appealing). I'm just spit-balling here, but suppose I think: It is inappropriate to desire any state of affairs in which someone ends up worse off, or which is partly constituted by an independent state of affairs in which someone ends up worse off. Let me explain. In the Betty case you offer, my intuitions shift depending on whether the tragedy in question is a necessary means to the joy. Suppose that it is. In that case, the state of affairs 'Betty suffers at t1 so as to experience great joy at t2-6' seems desirable. After all, I take it that this state of affairs was a net gain in well-being for her. Suppose, though, that the suffering was unnecessary. In that case, it seems to me that the state of affairs in question is actually constituted by two independent states of affairs: 'Betty suffers at t1' and 'Betty experiences joy at t2-6'. And I think that the undesirability of the former makes the whole state of affairs undesirable. After all, how can it be appropriate for me to desire that Betty suffer and then experience joy if I know it is possible for her to experience the joy without the suffering? Similar points go for her life as a whole. One further thing. You write: "It is not inapt to take pleasure in a person’s life as a whole where that life has tragedy in it." I agree, but I wonder if this is because we can take pleasure retrospectively as well. Certainly, I think I can take pleasure in the life Betty had, if I know that it was a life full of joy, with a few setbacks. After all, it was a pretty great life! But (similar to before) I think it would be inappropriate for me to desire that she have such a life if I believed it possible for her life to be at least as good without those setbacks.

Victor, Yes! That's very much what I was thinking. Sorry if my own expressions of it lacked clarity. As to (B) vs. (C): I think that I'm more inclined towards (B), though there's a sense in which I want to accommodate both. This is just the stuff about intensionality. I think that a desire for 'saving five lives' is different from a desire for 'saving five lives in circumstances C', even if both desires are somehow "in reference to" C. If C is such that saving the five requires my mother's death (and I know this) then it might be appropriate for me to have the former desire, but not the latter. Or so I'm tempted to think, anyway. As to your final suggestion: That might well be right. But it sounds a bit like just saying that it's appropriate to desire good things, unless they have undesirable features. This will only be interesting if it's not true of everything. But I think it might be; I'm inclined to think that desirability is fairly permissive. It's okay for me to desire anything I like, so long as it doesn't have undesirable features. (It's an interesting question whether this is true for other attitudes. Are things amusing "by default" and only cease to be so if they have unamusing features?) Jamie, I think that whether that works or not will depend on what we understand a preference to be. If preferring something is, say, just being disposed to pursue it over other options, then that sounds fine to me. But if preference involves any sort of positive affective state, then I think this will have the same sorts of problems I was trying to raise for desirability.

Victor, No worries! We're outside mine, too, but it's fun to think through this. I think the sticking point is here: It is not apt to take pleasure in your mother's death, but it is apt to take pleasure in the complete state of affairs where your mother dies but five are saved. I'm just not convinced this is true. I think it might well be inappropriate to take pleasure in any state of affairs in which my mother dies. It's like your example of going to the dentist—makes sense to pursue, but perhaps not to desire.

Victor, It's the blind leading the blind here; this isn't my usual area, either. But I'll give it a go. I take it that when I say that a state of affairs, under some description, is intrinsically good, what I mean is just that the state of affairs is good and that the description appeals to that state's intrinsically good-making features (or some of them, anyway). Thus, It is intrinsically good that in circumstances C, five lives are saved. really means It is good that, in circumstances C, five lives are saved, and this is due (at least in part) to the intrinsic goodness of the saving of lives. Similarly, when we say that It is instrumentally good that in circumstances C, my mother dies. this really means It is good that, in circumstances C, my mother dies, because her death is instrumental in the saving of lives, which is intrinsically good. Since intrinsic/instrumental seems to modify the feature being described, not the state of affairs itself, I don't think this threatens the idea that goodness is extensional. Whether the state of affairs is good doesn't depend on whether the features described are intrinsically or instrumentally good (or on anything else about how the state is described, for that matter). (You might just see this as a more evidence that we should be equating desirability with intrinsic goodness, but as I've already said, I'm not convinced even of that, though for reasons that have nothing to do with this intensionality stuff.) As to the side-effect stuff: I think I would just deny (3). Certainly, the state of affairs 'one is killed' is not good, all else being equal. But all else is not equal; once I recognize (3) as a redescription of what happened in a trolley problem, I realize that the one being killed is good. (Or I would, if I shared that intuition about the trolley problem.) This is precisely why I included 'In circumstances C' in my description of the mother case, because without it, it sounds like I'm saying, sans context, that the state of affairs 'my mother dies' is good!

Christian, I think this is orthogonal to the issue I'm raising. My point is that it might not be appropriate for me to desire any child's death at all, regardless of what child's death it would be appropriate for me to pursue (if any), given the circumstances. Victor, Consider: In circumstances C, five lives are saved. In circumstances C, five lives are saved at the cost of my mother's life. In circumstances C, my mother dies. (1)-(3) concern the same state of affairs. It is a good state of affairs (we are supposing). Because goodness is extensional, (1)-(3) are all good. But because desire is intensional, it seems possible that it is appropriate for me to desire (1) and (2), but not (3). In other words, I take it that if a state of affairs is good, it is good under all descriptions. But it may be appropriate to desire it only under certain descriptions (or perhaps even under none at all!). I think this is a (though not the only, or even necessarily the primary) reason to worry about identifying goodness with desirability.

I hope I'm not missing anything here; I'm having trouble keeping the order straight, as some responses came in while I was working on my last comment... Victor, If it is right to do it, it is not in appropriate to do it. If it is not inappropriate to do it, it is not inappropriate to desire to do it. I don't see why this should be the case. A desire is not just a motivation; it involves other things, like perhaps the pleasure that Brad alludes to (though I find Jussi's worries about that particular way of cashing it out compelling). It seems to me perfectly possible that there are things I should be motivated to do yet that I should not desire. Of course, you can use desire in a more limited way if you wish, just to mean a motivation. But I think that's misleading. For one thing, it makes the idea that motivation requires desires vacuous. Jussi, Thanks for the link to the article. I was looking for the wrong one! It doesn't follow from my view that a valuable thing because of its nature would inappropriate to desire for normal agents. My point was only that your view seems to allow for the possibility of some X, such that X is desirable but it would be inappropriate for normal (or even idealized!) agents to desire X. The death of a villain might be intrinsically good, yet I think it might be inappropriate for any agent to desire it. Yet, if we understand the desirable as what the I.S. would prefer, the death of a villain would indeed be desirable. Just to be clear: I am not objecting to the idea that we can understand intrinsic goodness in terms of what it would be fitting for the I.S. to prefer. I'm just objecting to the idea that we should use this to characterize what it is for something to be desirable, for the reasons already indicated.

Jussi, I just tried to read your relevant piece but the links through my school were broken, so I'll have to wing this. (It sounds like your view is quite different from Christian's; his idealization is an agent, not just a spectator.) Anyway, your view seems to imply that it is possible that something is desirable, yet is the sort of thing it would be inappropriate for any and all agents to desire. First, that just sounds odd to me. Second, it doesn't seem to fit with how we think about fitting-attitudes terms in general (amusing, etc.). (Just to be clear, I do think that something could be amusing, yet everyone could have reason not to be amused by it. Just add a dash of Evil Demon. But this is not like that. The point here is that it seems like something might be desirable in your sense yet be the sort of thing that, due to its very nature, it is inappropriate to desire.) Brad, The focus on intrinsic value might fix the worry; I'm not totally sure. For instance, I'm not confident that the I.S. should take pleasure in the death of a villain, even if the death of a villain is intrinsically good. (I suppose a lot of this will come down to what we mean by an intrinsic good.) You might be right about the God thing, though (here's my own bit of armchair speculation) I do wonder whether this itself is an outgrowth of a Humean line of thought (though, obviously, not historically starting with Hume). After all, I can wonder the same things about God as I did the I.S. It is not entirely obvious to me that God takes pleasure in everything that's good. Casting Satan into Hell might have been good, even intrinsically so, but God might well have mourned the necessity.

Victor, That sounds right to me. If it can be wrong to promote the good, then it is hard to see why it would always be appropriate to desire the good. That being said, I didn't mean to be relying on anything controversial about non-consequentialist thinking or agent-relative duties in voicing my concerns. My point was that it might not be appropriate for the impartial spectator to desire my mother's death, even if killing her to save the five is the right thing to do.

Here are some different things we might mean when we say that an attitude A is fitting for object O (this is not necessarily exhaustive): It is possible for one to bear A towards O. It is appropriate for one to bear A towards O. One has a reason to bear A towards O. (5,6) Each of the above, replacing "one" with "an impartial spectator." When I posted, I was thinking in terms of (2) and (3). Of course, as Eric B. suggests, we could consider something closer to (1). Surely, though, if it turns out that there are things that might be good but that can't be objects of desire at all, then we should worry about the identity of 'good' and 'desirable'. But let's set that aside. My assumption was that when most people say that the good is the desirable, they mean either that good things are such that it is appropriate (i.e., not a mistake, as such) to desire them, or (stronger) that good things are such that one always has a reason to desire them. I have typically been inclined towards the former ((2)) reading of fittingness in general, but I know that many people think that fittingness involves reasons (cf., various Jacobson & D'Arms pieces). I didn't address this distinction in my original post because I'm worried about the weaker version, and I assumed if my worries were legitimate, they would be at least as legitimate with respect to the stronger version. Now, as Douglas points out, we might instead understand things as in (4-6), thinking in terms of an impartial spectator. (I haven't read the relevant piece by Jussi, but I suspect I know the rough line—Christian Coons has something about this, too, from RoME this past year—so I assume that we're talking about either (5) or (6), and thus I'll stick with the weaker (5).) On this line, it would be appropriate for the impartial spectator, though perhaps not for me, to desire my mother's death. (Victor, I think making this move would take care of your case, since we're now talking about someone who would, by definition, be concerned with the impersonal good.) This brings us to the issue of what we mean by 'desire'. If all we mean is something like a minimal preference for or motivation towards the object, then the identity sounds at least initially plausible. It certainly seems that it would be appropriate for an impartial spectator to be motivated to pursue my mother's death in the case described. (Actually, I would have thought this identity was uncontroversial, perhaps with Eric W.'s emendation, but Brad's argument seems to pose a threat even to this reading. There might be a way to deal with this, though, perhaps by making 'the good' there disjunctive or something.) Sometimes, though, when we talk about desire we are talking about a particular attitude, perhaps something like the 'taking pleasure in the contemplation of' Brad suggests. If we understand 'fitting of desire' in this way, I think it may well be a mistake to identity the good with the desirable. It is not at all clear to me that it would be appropriate even for the impartial spectator to feel positive about my mother's death. At this point, we might just note the ambiguity and move on. Where 'desirable' means 'appropriate to promote' or something like that, it may well be a conceptual truth that the good is the desirable (again assuming we can deal with Brad's worry). Where 'desirable' means fitting of actual desire, the same is not true. I'm not entirely happy with this, though. 'Desirable' is one among a number of fitting-attitude terms like 'fearsome', 'amusing', etc. My understanding is that such terms are generally taken to regard when it is appropriate to have an attitude that we are all familiar with—fear, amusement, etc. It thus makes sense that desirability would concern when it is appropriate to actually feel desire (whether for us or for the impartial spectator). If that's the natural way of thinking about desirability, then why the ambiguity, why the alternative sense on which it is identical to goodness? My inclination is to think that we should regard this not as an equally good alternative meaning, but as a mistake produced by the kind of Humean thinking I mentioned above. It is natural to think that if it is appropriate to be motivated towards something, and that motivation requires desire, then it would be appropriate to desire it. Natural but, I think, mistaken.

Lewis, You're not the first to suggest this. In fact, I've already changed the Author Instructions to include a request for a (tentative) word count.

Douglas, Let me start by saying that I agree that if referees have been led to expect, either implicitly or explicitly, that their comments are going to be confidential, then it would be a problem if someone posted them on the blog I was proposing (or anywhere else). For this reason and others, I've decided to abandon that project. I didn't think about this that much when I started thinking about the blog because the (limited number of) times I've refereed, I didn't really pay any attention to what they said about confidentiality, as I was working under the assumption that, regardless, I wouldn't say anything I wouldn't want others to see. That being said, setting the practical stuff aside, let me say a bit about the broader issue of whether referees should be led to expect such confidentiality. When I referee, I take it that I am acting as a nameless representative of Journal X. It is important, for a variety of reasons, that I personally remain anonymous. What I write, however, assuming it is accepted and passed on by the editors, is essentially the journal's official review of an author's work. What the author is sent is not like a personal email, in my view, but rather an official evaluation from an entity in power. Because the journal is in a position of power, I think that they have a responsibility to make those evaluations fair and reasonable. And I think that those with less power (the authors) should reasonably expect a high degree of transparency in the system so as to prevent abuses of that power. This analogy is imperfect, but I tend to think of the relationship here as somewhat similar to my relationship with my students. I would not publish their papers online; that would be unethical. But if I discovered that one of my students was publishing my feedback online, I might be annoyed by the student's tone or something, but I would not think they were doing anything wrong. This is because, again, I think that given my position of power my students have a right to demand maximal transparency. As to accountability: I agree that the referee is accountable only to the editor. But this is taken care of, it seems to me, by anonymity. Such anonymity is important, aside from the other benefits of blind review, partly because the referee may not be in a position of power. If, say, a graduate student writes a review that reflects poorly on the journal, if that student's name were to be known it might hurt them disproportionately. But, again, this seems to me only a reason to maintain anonymity. I can't see how it's a reason to maintain confidentiality with respect to the text of the review itself. Aside from the benefit to authors, the policy of maintaining transparency in the publication process seems to me to benefit the profession as a whole. A journal like Ethics could easily coast along for years on their reputation with ghastly editorial policies if, say, they were to send submissions from not-well-known philosophers to lazy referees who toss things out after reading the abstract, and this were to remain unknown to the general public. (I'm not saying Ethics does this, just to be clear; I'm just offering an example.) So, at the end of the day, it seems that both individual authors and the profession at large are better served by transparency. And I'm really not sure what the downside is. Honestly, I can't imagine its upsetting me that a review I wrote was publicized, especially if my name were not attached to it. Indeed, I think it should give me pause if I ever do write something in a review that I wouldn't want the public seeing.

Lewis, I think that's a fair point, but my plan was to let authors decide on their own whether or not to remain anonymous. Many likely will, for the reasons you just cited. But some authors may wish to reveal themselves, perhaps in order to discuss their work in more detail with particular commentors, or whatever. That being said, I think that the best way to avoid problems is for me to make anonymity "opt out." So, by default, all postings will be anonymous; authors will have to specify a desire to have their name revealed. I will also need to set up a system whereby those who remain anonymous can respond to comments anonymously.

Thanks for the links, Brad! That's a great idea. And kudos to you for putting that stuff together. I knew the people who knew this stuff liked sharing it! I think I'm perhaps even more convinced by these selective reading concerns than by Doug's. I wanted this project to have potential, but I think it would be hard to keep it from devolving into just an outlet for people who are disappointed at being rejected to blow off (unhelpful) steam. So, that being said, I think I'll can the SNAFU blog. It sounds like the Venues project has more potential. Obviously, more feedback on that issue is welcome from others. I'll probably start working on it in the next week or so.

Douglas, Thanks. I've been sort of going back and forth on this point myself. On the one hand, I agree that it would be unethical for editors/referees to make the similar blog you propose. On the other, I'm not entirely sure the analogy holds. First, when I send something to a journal, my expectation is that it's only going to be seen by the editors and the referees. But when I referee, I sort of assume that people are going to share what I say with others, and I take my words (if not myself, given anonymity) to have a kind of public accountability. This is increased significantly by the fact that while many, many people know what I work on, such that if a paper of mine were posted somewhere and complained about, it would be easy to discover that I had written it, almost no one knows what papers I referee, and thus I wouldn't worry as much about personal embarrassment. Perhaps I'm unusual in these regards, but I definitely don't think of what I write as private correspondence with the authors (or even the authors and editors). More importantly, perhaps, when I referee I do not put the same sort of pride/emotional stock in what I write as when I write a paper. If I found one of my papers out there being complained about, I would feel betrayed and hurt and perhaps even disinclined to keep working on it (or other things!). If I found one of my referee comments out there, I would feel either shame or annoyance (depending on how accurate the relevant criticism of me was), but it wouldn't have nearly the same impact on me. Anyway, again, perhaps I'm unusual in these regards. And perhaps the mere fact that some people are like you (minimally, presumably, you) is reason enough not to press on. But if others want to weigh in I'm certainly curious how many share this view.

W and Martin, Thanks for the suggestions. I understand the appeal of a colorless map, but given the length of most of the arrows, I'm not sure anything other than color will do the trick. However, I was careful to be consistent with "yes" going to the left and "no" going to the right, so the map should still be readable even when printed without color (obviously you'll also lose the semantic/metaphysical distinctions, but that's not the end of the world). I've also taken the suggestion of putting quasi-realism between realism and anti-realism. And I think trying to label the views, as opposed to just the questions, as semantic/metaphysical was a mistake. I've edited accordingly there, too.