Moratorium and New Editors at Mind
Thomas Baldwin (York), the current editor of Mind, writes that the journal will cease accepting new submissions for several months, starting in July, so as to ease the transfer of the editorship to Adrian Moore (Oxford) and Lucy O’Brien (UCL):
At the end of September 2015 the editorship of Mind will move from Thomas Baldwin (York) to Adrian Moore (Oxford) and Lucy O’Brien (UCL). In order to ensure that this change is straightforward, the York editorial team are working to ensure that only a small number of papers are in the process of being considered for publication at the time of the changeover. However it will be difficult to achieve this goal while new papers continue to be submitted, especially because submissions to Mind have recently increased by 30%. As a result we have decided to introduce a four-month moratorium on the acceptance of new submissions from July 1 2015 until 31 October 2015.
“the York editorial team are working to ensure that only a small number of papers are in the process of being considered for publication at the time of the changeover”
Translation: The York editorial team will draw one paper out of a large hat, auto-reject the rest, and then reject the one they drew from a hat after a period of 12 months.
So Mind moves from York to London. We can probably expect the journal to continue to favour stuffy articles from a distinctively Moorean-Russellian perspective. (I don’t think Mind ever published a single article by John Dewey).
We can probably expect the journal to continue to favour stuffy articles from a distinctively Moorean-Russellian perspective.
Maybe. But given the quite positive things that one of the new editors, A.W. Moore, had to say about Deleuze, for example, in his big book on the history of metaphysics, I don’t think this is a forgone conclusion, nor something that can just be assumed. Perhaps it’s better to wait and see rather than rush to judgment.
One worry about Mind, in its previous incarnations at least, is that there is a certain shameless preferential treatment for the famous stars. No where is this a better case in point than a disgraceful incident which occurred in 1877. An individual had the audacity to submit to Mind a short (for lack of a better term) rambling diary entry talking about the author’s own child burping and suckling and such. For example, consider this scintillating entry from day seven of the journal:
“On the seventh day, I touched the naked sole of his foot with a bit of paper, and he jerked it away, curling at the same time his toes, like a much older child when tickled”
Such self-indulgent musings have no business in a serious philosophy journal such as Mind. Rather than to reject the submission, this silly little piece was ACCEPTED BY MIND. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the author of the submission was Charles Darwin. http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=1&itemID=F1779&viewtype=text
Down with the oligarchy,
Is there any evidence that Darwin’s piece is unusual or deficient in the standard of scholarship then, in a forum like Mind? A quick search reveals Mind was initially devoted to foundations of psychology as a natural science: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_(journal)
Perhaps someone who knows a bit more about the history of late-nineteenth, early-20th c. Anglophone academic philosophy — when some departments went under the mandate of ‘psychology and philosophy’ — can weigh in on this. I believe MIT is a department like this?
Although I think Carmen San Dougo is wrong about Mind and John Dewey (surely they published at least one article by Dewey, if not, then this is of course a scandal, and just another instance of English old guard snubbing the American pragmatists) San Dougo is right that geographically speaking it’s a bit incestuous for Mind to continue to be passed around in Blighty like the Queen’s jewels. This might sound unserious, but for the sake of both geographic and socioeconomic inclusiveness, is there a reason that Mind could not have been moved to, for example, the University of Phoenix online–a truly inclusive university which is not constricted either by geographical incestuousness or socioeconomic exclusion. Obviously, Mind would need to be ‘online only’ if moved to the University of Phoenix (and the cover issue would probably have to be stamped with the Phoenix bird), but we should ultimately embrace this kind of progressive change.
AnonGrad: it is not entirely beyond the bounds of possibility that the post you’re commenting on is not meant seriously.
Mind published 7 articles by Dewey between 1886 and 1906.
The suggestion that Mind be relocated to the University of Phoenix online is preposterous. Mind has a very long and rich pedigree and to cheapen and soil it (e.g. by putting the University of Phoenix decal on the online issue of Mind) is to at the same time disrespect the impressive editorial lineage of Mind which includes George Edward Moore, Gilbert Ryle, Simon Blackburn and Mark Sainsbury.
AnonGrad: Evidence? Yes, there is evidence that the Darwin submission of 1877 was a disgraceful farce rather than anything that could be called serious scholarship.
Let me draw your attention to a ‘sentence’ just a few passages further:
“Once, when he [Darwin’s damn baby he keeps talking about] was 66 days old, I happened to sneeze, and he started violently, frowned, looked frightened, and cried rather badly (Darwin, 1877)”
Of course sneezing will frighten a damn baby child. How is this scholarship? Charles simply wanted to talk about his baby, it seems, and in a rambly way that would not even be worthy of a Facebook update in 1877 if indeed there was such a thing. (How would you feel if someone updated their Facebook and said “I sneezed and my baby was frightened” you’d think: and why r u telling us this???)
Regarding ‘Down with the oligarchy’s’ crusade against Mind having published the crappy Darwin article about Darwin’s baby in 1877 (and that this represents a more general trend of favouring the elite/famous). I want to suggest a different way of thinking about this. Compare Charles Darwin with Charles Dickens. If Dickens wrote a crappy little short story, it is STILL A DICKENS, is it not? Would the Paris Review or what not turn its nose up to an authentic Dickens? I don’t think so. Likewise, when Picasso does one of his lazy ‘etchings’, even when it’s obviously not his best, they’re still displayed in Museums in very nice frames. There is obviously a precedent here for publishing even the laziest drivel (such as Darwin’s incomprehensible blather about his baby burping and spitting in Mind) so long as the author is of important enough a stature. So my guess is that when Mind received the glorified nursery rhyme by Darwin in 1877, the editor thought, “It’s horrible, but it’s still an authentic Darwin!’ and that makes the editor of mind in 1877, which was George Croon Robertson at that time, no more indiscretionate than any contemporary gatekeeper of the arts.
In respnose to David Devonshire, who seems to imply, at least to my mind, that there is a long turn-around time for submissions to Mind, the Editorial Administrator has recently made this comment following the moratorium announcement:
‘Please note that the current average turnaround time for submissions to Mind, from submission to verdict, is around 50 days — having been around 42 days for submissions made through ScholarOne since the journal adopted that system.’
http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind1506&L=philos-l&T=0&P=35232
Contrary to what Morag Birk Larssen is suggestion here, the baby burp scholarship that appeared in Mind in 1877 is truly a disgrace and a stain on the journal. There is now a petition requesting Mind to redact this article, which is a farce and an insult to serious scholarship. I encourage readers to sign. http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/redact-baby-burp-article-from-mind
Perhaps we should also relocate Charles Brandshorne to the University of Phoenix. He seems to have the sort of permanent, natural gravitas and seriousness that UoP desperately craves.
I can’t decide whether to support the petition calling for the redaction of the Darwin article, since the petition doesn’t clarify which words in particular should be redacted.
Yes, whomever drafted the petition has a typo (redacted/retracted). But I also question the spirit of the petition. True, Darwin was just talking about his baby in a way that seems ridiculous. But since we’re philosophers here not psychologists, how do we know that observing a baby and talking about its burp patterns isn’t psychology? I’ve always thought that psychology was a muddled soft science–it wouldn’t surprise me at all if, by psychological standards, talking about your baby’s burps does count as psychology scholarship. And since Mind was a psychology journal as well at the end of the 19th century, maybe we should hold our judgment.
While I hate to admit it, I think Charles Brandshorne’s pompous remarks actually have a grain of truth to them. I have always resented ‘Mind’ and its association with the old guard of philosophy–if Mind were a person, for example, Mind would be a rich, white, English male who lived in the Mayfair area of London, was educated at Oxbridge and says ‘as it were’ three times per sentence. HOWEVER, be that as it may Charles Brandshorne is surely right that such a dramatic move as to relocate Mind to the University of Phoenix online would cheapen Mind beyond recognition. We need something in between. Mind doesn’t need to be passed around (as Jaded R&R puts it) Blighty like the Queen’s jewels, but it wouldn’t hurt for Mind to go somewhere with a more diverse socioeconomic status and to embrace a bit more geographical diversity. Just not somewhere as crappy as the University of Phoenix online, which is an abomination.
In case anyone isn’t in on the zany joke, this took place when psychology and philosophy were not distinguished. The context, as Darwin explains in the article, is the nature/nurture issue. Darwin had been curious about human instincts, so kept a diary of his child’s development. Then, in 1877, he saw that his findings were helpful to the discussion taking place in Mind.
Perhaps ‘down with the oligarchy’ is a bitter descendant of Lamarck?
If the journal ‘Mind’ were a car, Mind would be a Cadillac couple Deville which smelled of calf leather and a cigar ashtray, with air conditioning on full blast and the windows rolled up and BBC3 on the radio. Meanwhile, J Phil would be a vintage Jag which only drives to town ostentatiously three times a year for all to see and, then quickly put away. Nous and PPR would be a pair of twin Alfa Romeos which are in the shop for repairs from October to April each year. Synthese would be a racy looking convertible (possibly paid for on bad credit) with a few cheerleaders in the seats, Bioethics would be a hybrid and David Publishing’s ‘Philosophy Study’ would be rusty dodge Dart, the catch being, that you have to pay to test drive it (though this isn’t made explicit up front).
I guess the charitable thing is to assume the petition is a joke? But, in any event, below is to a link to a piece that supplies some historical commentary on Darwin’s piece, which was among the first infant psychology studies of its kind in English and led to a flurry of others in Mind. (As Darwin notes, his sketch was occasioned by Mind’s publishing a translation of Taine’s observational study of language acquisition.)
Lorch and Hallal, “Darwin’s ‘Natural Science of Babies”:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09647040903504823