Barry Lam (UC Riverside) wrote recently about the practice of “calling dibs.”
In case you’re unfamiliar with the practice, Lam describes it and provides some examples:
Calling “dibs” is a very pervasive social phenomenon. In Boston, Chicago, and other snowy regions, you have dibs on a parking spot you dug out during a blizzard. You have dibs on items you put in your shopping cart at the supermarket before you pay for them. You have dibs when you have items placed on layaway at a store. If you put your sweater down on a chair at Starbucks and then get in line, you have dibs on the seat. Children have dibs on the driver’s seat when they “call shotgun.” Dibs is a cool little sublegal, informal practice of making a claim to some property you do not own and you do not otherwise have a right to use, but by merely doing some kind of conventional gesture, you thereby generate some kind of norm of exclusion; now other people have some kind of standing obligation not to interfere with your use of the item. Dibs is staking a property claim without thereby having the claim. Having dibs is being in an in-between state between having and not having a property right, and dibs is something no one believes ought to be elevated to the status of law and legal enforcement. Someone is definitely doing something wrong by taking items out of your shopping cart, but they aren’t stealing from you, nor from the store. Neither is parking in the spot you dug out, or moving your sweater to take your Starbucks seat. But they are definitely violating a norm.
He then goes on to suggest some philosophy of dibs:
Calling dibs and having dibs looks to me like a classic phenomenon admitting of conceptual analysis. Its the kind of phenomenon that admits of boundaries we all deploy without thinking about. We intuitively know when someone successfully calls dibs and when they have not (the felicity conditions on a speech act, as J.L. Austin named it). Relative to a community, we intuitively know the kind of things we are allowed to call dibs on, and things we aren’t. We all know where dibs end and ownership begins, and we instinctively have a sense about when dibs run out over time.
The rest of his piece, here, explores the concept, and is worth checking out. It got me wondering about dibs in philosophy.
I think there is a practice in philosophy of calling dibs. To see this, consider the following scenario:
You give a talk in which you lay out a novel argument. Soon afterwards, before you are able to get your idea published in an academic venue, someone who was in the audience for that talk—let’s call him Bogartistotle—writes an article about your argument in which he explains it, critiques it, and strengthens it, and he gets the article published. Bogartistotle credits you with the argument, but his article preempts yours, rendering your unpublished manuscript otiose.
Not everyone will agree with this (of course), but it seems that Bogartistotle acted improperly, and that the concept of calling dibs can help explain why. Your giving of the talk was your calling dibs on its argument. That calling of dibs on the argument entitles you to some forbearance by others in publishing work about your argument. Which others? At least those who were at the talk, including Bogartistotle. As with other dibs, the claims philosophy dibs generate are not indefinitely normative; after some time, absent further dibs-calling activity, they expire. If Bogartistotle had instead written and published his article five years after your talk, during which time you had not written or worked on it further, that wouldn’t have seemed improper: your dibs died. But he didn’t wait. And that’s not quite right.
It’s not quite right, but it is also not like other wrongs in the vicinity. Bogartistotle didn’t steal your idea in any strong sense, or distort the intellectual record, as a plagiarist does. After all, he explicitly credits you with the argument he is writing about. And though some people might disapprove of what Bogartistotle did once they learn of it, as with other dibs-violations, there is no institution entitled to take corrective or punitive action against him for it.
Furthermore, like other dibs, there is some vagueness about the dibs called when giving a talk. Whom do calling these dibs generate claims against? I said “at least” those in the audience of the talk, but who else? There’s also vagueness about the duration of dibs. And there’s vagueness about the discount rate of its entitlements (i.e., over time, do the dibs get gradually less demanding in what they ask of others, or are their demands about the same throughout their existence until they expire?). I’m not sure of the feasibility or desirability of clearing these vaguenesses up. (Though see this attempt at laying out shotgun rules, as well as this account of a disagreement over dibs.)
Some might say that a referee would be unlikely to recommend Bogartistotle’s article (as I described it) for publication, or that an editor would be unlikely to accept it for publication. If that’s so, it would probably in part be explained by the referee or editor’s sense that the article is a kind of dibs-violation with which they do not wish to be complicit.
So I think presenting a novel idea or argument in a talk is a type of calling dibs we have in philosophy. There are probably others; feel free to share them, or other informal norms in the profession that are not too distant from calling dibs. Discussion welcome.
I Call dibs on thinking radical empiricism is what phenomenology should be.
Intellectual dibs in the space of an economy of publication sounds just like the kind of thing we need to have stronger norms about. Bogaristotle took your parking spot, albeit with a sign thanking you for digging it out. Sounds to me like editors of journals who publish papers that violate dibs norms should give authors who have dibs a right of publication.
How would they know? It seems it could be pretty complicated.
They cited the unpublished thing, for one.
Do you think “the space of an economy of publication” is a commons? Or something else?
If I’m understanding your original post — and please correct me if I’m not — dibs operate in a commons as a “parallel practice of property rights,” as you put it. And the lesson I take you to bring out is that formalizing dibs-norms governing a certain space makes possible (if it doesn’t just encourage) the transformation of that space from a commons into a space of monetizable assets.
So — and again assuming I’ve understood you — if publishing journal articles is a commons hosting a “parallel practice of property rights,” then maybe we would want “stronger norms,” but we wouldn’t want formalized norms, would we, lest we turn ideas into assets?
Or do you think ideas have already been assetized?
Do my questions make sense?
The set of thoughts, the set of truths, the set of musical arrangements, all of these things we can all think of the commons. The whole idea of intellectual property exists to encourage and reward bringing those things to the attention of other people. That whole economy is already formalized to a large extent, rights, royalties, etc. So ideas are already assetized. Some of it is not monetary, for instance, in academia we have this idea of “credit” which we pay to someone in citations and prestige and letters of recommendation touting their achievements and lines we allow them on their CV, etc. I count publishing in a journal as having a property right to the thing you publish. What Justin is talking about is the informal practice parallel to this practice whereby, before an idea is the property of anyone, A does something (delivers a paper with an idea in it) and this counts, or should as having dibs on the idea. So if B comes around and assetizes it before A does, B has violated dibs.
Thanks so much for the clarification!
I’ve had my dibs taken. It’s not cool.
From *The Perfect Theory*, by Pedro G. Ferreira:
“During Einstein’s short visit to Göttingen in June of 1915, Einstein lectured and Hilbert took notes. They discussed and argued back and forth about the details. Einstein was strong on the physics and Hilbert on the mathematics. But they didn’t make any progress. Einstein, still wary of mathematics and still shaky in his understanding of Riemannian geometry, found it difficult to completely understand Hilbert’s detailed, technical points….
“On November 25, 1915, Einstein presented his new equations to the Prussian Academy of Sciences in a short three-page paper. His new law of gravity was radically different from what anyone had ever proposed before. In essence, Einstein argued that what we perceive as gravity is nothing more than objects moving in the geometry of spacetime. Massive objects affect the geometry, curving space and time. Einstein had finally arrived at his truly general theory of relativity.
“But Einstein was not alone. Hilbert had been mulling over Einstein’s Göttingen lectures and had, without Einstein realizing, made his own attempts at coming up with new gravitational equations. Completely independently, Hilbert had come up with exactly the same gravitational law. On the twentieth of November, five days before Einstein’s presentation to the academy in Berlin, Hilbert presented his own results to the Royal Society of Sciences in Göttingen. It seemed as if Hilbert had scooped Einstein.
“During the weeks following the announcements, relations between Hilbert and Einstein were strained. Hilbert wrote to Einstein claiming he didn’t remember the bit in one of his lectures in which Einstein had discussed his attempts at building the gravitational equations, and by Christmas, Einstein was satisfied that there hadn’t been any foul play. As Einstein said, in a letter to Hilbert, to begin with “there has been between us something like a bad feeling,” but he had come to terms with what had happened, so much so that “I once more think of you in unclouded friendship. . . .” They would indeed remain friends and colleagues, for Hilbert stepped back from claiming any credit for Einstein’s magnum opus. In fact, until he died, Hilbert always referred to the equations that both he and Einstein had stumbled upon as “Einstein’s equations.” ”
Even though it might have marked him as even greater, I suppose it’s a bit easier for someone of Hlibert’s status to step away from an idea.
(That said, I think the basic idea is too loose and too context-dependent to be of general use, so think it’s not worth anything more than something to ask one’s self about when deciding what to do. That’s not nothing, but it’s a lot less than a general norm.)
Calling dibs seem like, as Wittgenstein put it, “something that we know when no one asks us, but no longer know when we are supposed to explain it.”
Which is what Augustine says about time!
ChatGPT just told me it has dibs on a thought experiment I asked it to create. 😵💫
The fun thing about this is that there is a well known guy in law who constantly stole students’ and other people’s dibs. I will decline to say or deny who it is, but if you know, you know, and if you don’t know, maybe someone else will tell you in person. It’s someone you’ve all read.
should we also take into account the amount of effort you put into calling the dib? for example, digging out a parking spot after blizzard takes a lot of work, while putting a sweater on a chair doesn’t. If you give a talk on a relatively rough and uncrafted philosophical argument, would it as “dibby” as a talk on a more sophisticated one?
What’s the time-limit attached to this sort of dibs? When you dig out a parking spot, it’s not yours forever (pace Locke). When the snow is gone, or even arguably when it is significantly diminished, the spot returns to the commons. If your talk was five years ago and you’ve never gotten around to writing the article, are you still entitled to complain if Bogartistotle writes theirs? Three years ago? One? Does it matter if, say, you’re tenured and Bogartistotle’s clock is ticking, or they’re on the job market?
I write in the original post that one of the problems with all property rights, and informal staking of claims, is that expiration time is always left vague. There are legal conventions wrt to property but even those change when states decide to change trust and probate laws. With dibs, its all over the place.
I think the reality of philosophical “dibs” is often more complicated than the discussion here suggests. Here is a modification of the example: Suppose that Bogaristotle is already working on the topic of your paper, and is already close to something resembling the strengthened argument they end up presenting in their paper (maybe your talk helps them put some of the pieces together, maybe not). They then show up at your talk and see you present a weaker version of a similar argument. Should Bogaristotle give up their line of research just because you happened to be invited to this conference and thus had the chance to present your work first? I don’t think they have any such duty. It seems that the best thing Bogaristotle could do in these circumstances is to do exactly what they do in the example – continue with their research but frame their discussion in terms of your work – that way they get to continue their research and you receive some credit for the original idea. Maybe it would be good for them to communicate with you about it – perhaps email to see what stage the paper is at and hold off if it is near publication so they can cite the published piece (although I don’t think they have any obligation to hold off if their tenure/job market clock is ticking). Maybe it would also be good for them to share their work with you. But if they do these things they are taking a risk, and I’m not sure it is a risk they are obligated to take.
This sort of case doesn’t strike me as particularly unusual, and I’d guess that in many cases of philosophical “dibs” violations something in the vague ballpark of the above is going on. It is pretty common, after all, for people working on the same topic at the same time to gravitate toward similar ideas.
Humphrey,
The type of case you describe is the sort of thing that happened with Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace with respect to the theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin discovered that Wallace was advancing a similar theory in a paper that was to be presented at a conference and took action to ensure his own claim as well.
Of course I can’t think now of where, but I’m confident I’ve seen footnotes that say, in so many words: “So-and-so has developed similar ideas to mine, but we’ve worked independently of one another.” I suppose it would be safer to check this with the other person–on the other hand, if you knew that person would try unfairly to dib it, checking might backfire.
Only half joking: Can people *stop* calling dibs by putting shoving every little half baked idea into a footnote of your book or a digressive sentence in a paper? Either write a paper on it or let someone else have the idea. It’s like a person who goes to the pool very early and lays down towels on 20 chairs in case he wants to sit at one of them later
I’d be interested in hearing others’ thoughts about this. I generally think of these as anti-dibs. At least I sometimes leave breadcrumbs for others to follow if they wish. There are a lot of problems to work on and I don’t expect to do follow up on every thread that comes out of a paper, but I would be happy to have others develop the ideas further. Insofar as we think paper publishing is to aid in a collective enterprise, it seems worthwhile to have indications for future directions. I also enjoy reading and have gotten useful ideas from such suggestions before.
Do you expect people to cite you as the originator of the idea? I would feel uncomfortable not citing you if I saw it published in your paper. Unfortunately but realistically that makes my own paper far less publishable, since it isn’t “novel” anymore.
It might be good intellectual hygiene to cite the originator, but insofar as it is merely only the level of a ‘dibs’ or ‘anti-dibs’ I don’t think an expectation is fair. I am biased though, because I have a horrible memory and would violate an such norm (and surely have done so). That said, I personally am quite liberal with citation, see the very long reference lists to my generally long papers.
It might be worth comparing this to the practice of named conjectures in mathematics (e.g. the Poincaré conjecture). Ideas are cheap, so I don’t think the norm here should be too strong, but obviously other disciplines seem to think that sometimes a mere idea can be worthy of authorial recognition (of course there are complicating factors, like the fame of the author etc.). No one in math is offended or has some right violated by someone making conjectures or someone else following up on them.