I see this could be a long and heated discussion. And I don't particularly want it to be heated, though I don't mind if it's long. But a reply that begins "What absolute nonsense" could easily devolve into that, and sounds more like a knee-jerk response than a considered one.

In any case, while I agree that Arman Hovhannisyan's prose leaves something to be desired (making allowance for the fact that online posts are usually more error-prone than work submitted to journals) I also agree with him that Gary Merrill has missed the point. Neither Arman's comment nor mine suggested that we are seeking to be annointed by anyone. Additionally, Arman is quite right that in the single most widely recognized cultural expression of such annointment, anyone with a Ph.D. has received the benediction of the "philosophical community". If one wants to argue that journal publication is a more important measure of someone's work one is free to do that, but if the point is that one who does not get published has not been properly "recognized" the argument threatens to become circular.

For my part, I was not complaining that I could not get published. I do not know, really, if I can get published or not. I have submitted perhaps three articles which were rejected by major journals, I am not ready to concede that I will never publish them in some form. So it is not time to reduce the issue to a "sour grapes" exercise. Furthermore, I can think of at least one case in which I received some criticism that was not only appropriate, but led me to substantially revise my article. So I do not discount peer review as an inherently corrupt institution. One article I have published in a journal speaks more to the problem: it sat there for a year, with frequent promises to "get to it", until I finally threatened to pull it, and mentioned that by the way, in the meantime it had won an essay prize in business ethics, By coincidence it was only a few days later that I was notified it had been accepted. Blind review indeed.

So leaving aside the red herrings about sour grapes, let me state in less allegorical language the point of my original comment.

First and foremost, the term "scholasticism" suggests a discipline that has settled into rigid formulas, narrowing their view of both what constitutes significant subject matter, what the limits of rational debate are, and what methods of argument are acceptable within those limits. As I read through various stultifying, formulaic and trivial academic debates on, say, the latest defense against the latest critique of the latest version of some trendy epistemological theory, it seems clear to me that philosophy has become nothing more than a career for many people in the profession; and to promote that career they simply learn the rules of the game and follow them. Yes, you too can write this sort of article: "According to theory T, knowledge is zzzzz. X'ists think that zzzzz is yyyyyy. Phil Esophagus has argued that yyyyy is incoherent because it is either a or b or c, each of which is inconsistent with Major Assumption A. However, b is not inconsistent with A if you introduce caveat C. Therefore it is possible that yyyyy is not incoherent and X'ism is correct." Go ahead, fill in the blanks, get into a major journal, get promoted to Associate Professor. That's what I mean by "scholasticism" - narrow, tired, straightjacketed formulas that characterize vast swaths of philosophical publication over the last 30 years at least.

I do not claim that every article in every major philosophical journal is trite academic rubbish. But just as Hobbes said that a state of war is not an endless series of skirmishes but a known general tendency to engage in them, so scholasticism can be an apt general description of a state of the community even if there is still quite a bit of work of value that gets published. In some cases, having made their names through books that are not as restircted by stylistic mandates, well-known philosophers can get articles into journals in ways that avoid the constraints applied to less well-known people. (My advice: better not refer to the folk of "folk psychology" as "Grannie" if you happen not to be Jerry Fodor.) There may be other ways. But if you are going to tell me that the situation I have described is not typical in many areas then we just see things differently.

Second point: while the beknighted institution of "blind" peer review that you describe is ideally a model of fairness, in practice it is also an engine of conservatism, not to mention an opportunity to be degraded and humiliated. The judgments of reviewers are often capricious, uninformed, and hostile; and everyone I know who has ever submitted an article to a professional journal has said more or less the same thing to me, so I think Gary underplays the problem by a large margin. Everyone in academia (not just philosophy) has an ax to grind for their pet beliefs and theories, and the chance of getting even an objective review depends on your managing, by luck, to avoid reviewers who are downright hostile to your point of view before they read a word of your paper. Then there are those who want to prove how smart they are by constructing ingenious counterexamples to what you say - the kinds of counterexamples that could have prevented anything from ever being published. And the ones who do not read carefully enough to understand the scope or nuances of your position and react against something you have not said. Let's not forget the reviews who suggest you missed a vital reference, in a collection they happen to have co-edited or a journal on which they appear on the masthead. The list goes on.

Moreover, "half-blind review" is a better way of describing what actually takes place. When the editorial staffer goes running into the managing editor with the news "we just received a submission from... (pick Major Name)" they may be told "well, send it out for review but make a note of it"; read: we have to keep our profile high so we need to have at least one Major Name in the next issue". If the "blind" reviewer is actually an expert in his/her field and receives anything from a major author in that field the odds are pretty good that (a) they know who it is, either from the style or because they are defending their own theory, and (b) they treat it with far more respect than that of an equally good submission by an unknown. (Which is not to say that well-known philosophers don't get rejection letters. So do well-known fiction writers when they submit work to literary journals, which are not always blind reviewed. It is merely a tendency, not an absoluite.)

Maybe in Gary's past philosophy publishing days (1981 and before, as far as I can tell) things were different. Back then, for example, you could actually publish something informed by a Wittgensteinian perspective, or a Marxist perspective, or whatever, and be accorded the same respect as a Quinian or a Rawlsian. So-called "blind" review is deeply informed by philosophical fashion, which has no objective intellectual merit but merely indicates which philosophers and theories are winning the beauty contest these days. Let's not forget straightforward cronyism either: journal editors giving favored treatment to colleagues, acquaintances, etc. In addition to my experiences of rejection, which include examples of most of the interactions I've mentioned above, I have had the other type of experience too, usually at a conference after delivering a paper: "Submit that to my journal." So that it will be blind reviewed? I doubt it.

Now, before Gary and every journal editor and reviewer on this forum gets ready to jump out of their skin, let me make a few apologies.

(1) The problem I identified was "scholasticism", which is essentially conservatism and the adoption of intellectual blinders. This is a general cultural issue and is not, in my view, a conspiracy or an indication of intellectual dishonesty. People can be honest, intelligent and well-meaning and yet reflect a long-term intellectual descent into hardening of the categories and a sort of cultural forgetting (no, I'm not a Nietzschian, it's just a convenient term).

(2) It is not my intention to suggest that the peer review system be abolished. On the contrary, the content of my comments should suggest that what is required is something like training for reviewers: not the list of guidelines journals typically send out, but a more serious, professional certification in reviewing, including examinations which can weed out inappropriate candidates. Having published or taught a course in a particular area does not, unfortunately, guarantee competence, and actually tends to conflict with objectivity. (Have you ever taken a course with a major philosopher in her own area of expertise? If so, very likely you have had this experience: you are assigned an article to read; you think you have understood the point; then you go to class and hear her give a summation of the article which sounds like she had read a completely different work. Perspective, interest, telos: they can strongly determine what you see in what you read.) Mandatory training can help people recognize their own weaknesses and prejudices, inculcate a sense of moral responsibility in reviewing, and provide actual methods of assessment which minimize prejudicial tendencies.

(3) I do not think philosophy is any different from the sciences or other humanities in the ways I have described. We are what we are: human beings with egos, ambitions, moral weaknesses, intellectual limitations and (perhaps most of all) limited time. Scholasticism is partly the result of war-weariness: we are tired of fighting certain intellectual battles and narrow our horizons to disallow talk of a certain sort, to make sure arguments are surveyable by harried professors who have no time to re-read Hegel or discern novelties, subtleties or nonlinear methods as they carry out their reviewing responsibilities between 20 other obligations.

Journals are necessary; reviewers are necessary; hiring committees, examining committees, tenure committees, and many other academic institutions are necessary, unless anarchy is a satisfactory model for academic management. But academic disciplines go through periods of intellectual expansion and consolidation. The 1960's and 70's was a period of expansion; perhaps the 1910's and 20's were similar. Today we are stuck in a reactionary loop, where cognitive science, naturalization progrms and other quasi-scientific discussions tend to dominate debate in many areas. There are plenty of other signs of calcification too. One may mention, say, Hegel, (late) Wittgenstein, Foucault, Dewey, Nietzsche or Sartre as a source of intellectual authority only if one is either writing in a clearly continental or historical idiom, or one has already had one's intellectual virtues vetted in more properly analytic contexts. This is not the problem itself; it is a sign, a warning notice on the door that says "these are the limits of the path you may walk". That is not the death of philosophy or academia or any such thing. It is a challenge, and it may, as I said earlier, take a while to overcome.