Obituary for the Prosblogion - and what public philosophy might look like after FaceBook

After nearly 15 years, the Prosblogion, a philosophy of religion blog is no more (the link does not work). The blog's owner let me know yesterday that he had the blog expire. Posting had become less frequent, a fate similar to other group blogs. 15 years in blog terms is a long time. Let me tell you about what writing for the blog meant to me, why the blog is valuable, and why I think we will ditch FaceBook as a platform for philosophy in due course too. 

I wrote for the Prosblogion since about 2010, joining when the blog was already mature at about 8 years old. At the time I did not have a PhD in philosophy yet, but I was a postdoc in archaeology, working on a philosophy project and fascinated with philosophy. I was writing my second PhD thesis (in philosophy) while being a postdoc, and got the degree a year later. Being a postdoc outside the English-speaking world (at the University of Leuven), writing for blogs such as Prosblogion and NewApps was a wonderful way to be in touch with other members of the profession. For various reasons, I felt isolated and lonely in Leuven, and had no support network. Prosblogion gave a sense of community, mostly with other early-career philosophers (although there were frequently pieces by more seasoned academics on it as well).

Although the pieces I wrote did not find their way in my articles or dissertation, they were widely read (one of them even got a mention in the BBC, here, where I am the obligatory skeptical voice), and they played a huge role in my professional development and in my enduring interest in philosophy of religion. It was exciting to engage with other philosophers who wrote on the blog--on abstruse topics I knew and still know very little about, such as divine impassibility, free will, various cosmological arguments, Hell etc. 

Writing a piece for a group blog was intense: you could spend many hours crafting it, and many more hours commenting on people's comments (which easily went in the dozens). This had two very good features 

1. The discussion was open for everyone to see and to join in 
2. The discussion had a permanent record (until, of course, the blog is no longer maintained) and archive. Several peer-reviewed publications cite Prosblogion articles. 

Philosophy group blogs started to decline--perhaps around 2012 or 2013, and certainly around 2015 or so. I still engaged with the blogs, but the volume and quality of comments started to decrease. In the end, I wrote blogposts that perhaps had 2-3 comments, down from easily 40 or so comments during the peak years. I tried to reserve the trend for Prosblogion during 2015 and 2016, when I published a series of interviews with philosophers and their religious practices. I learned a lot from this series, especially about religious traditions I have little familiarity with such as Shia Islam, Mormonism, and Judaism. While these blogposts were widely read, they were not as widely commented upon and I noticed a decline in the writings of other blog members.

At some point, someone on the Rightly Considered blog (which to my knowledge does not exist anymore), a blog of pseudonymous right-wing bloggers, complained that the Prosblogion -- in their opinion once a great platform for philosophy of religion -- had become a playground for me to do my sociological projects. I wrote to the author I was happy to engage in criticism of my work, if they signed their name to what they wrote, but the author refused, so that was the end of the discussion. It did get me thinking that Prosblogion at that point was not a group blog anymore, as I was one of the only people regularly posting on it. I didn't want to be the only one regularly writing on the blog. I talked to the blog owner and several other bloggers to try to revive the blog. We invited people to write guest pieces. 

Alas, it did not help. So here we are with the end of Prosblogion. Single-author blogs such as Eric Schliesser's Digressions and Impressions and Eric Schwitzgebel's Splintered Mind are still going strong but it is fair to say group blogs are struggling and the ones that do well are doing so due to an extraordinary effort of the owners to solicit guest pieces, and regularly write pieces themselves.

FaceBook is often cited as the reason for why philosophy blogs are struggling: FaceBook posts have become the new medium for philosophical informal engagement, and there is only so much time people can spend doing philosophy outside of their more formal teaching and research. If this analysis is correct, it's becoming more and more clear that this has a number of undesirable features 

1. There is the known phenomenon of political polarisation which is undesirable, and which FaceBook amplifies. Interestingly, philosophers of religion have a newsfeed that looks a bit more balanced because there are quite some conservative philosophers of religion. Still, blogs are more transparent because the blog looks the same to everyone and the comments are there for everyone to see.
2. It has not been a secret that data firms like Cambridge Analytica use our profiles and friends' information to tailor political messages, and ultimately aim to influence democratic outcomes (in e.g., Nigeria, the UK and the US), but a series of revelations by whistleblowers show what a lucrative business it is, and how it was done. We don't know if Cambridge Analytica is that much more effective in targeting voters (I want to resist the idea that they would have some superpower to influence our voting decisions, we don't have any independent evidence of effectiveness), but it's worrisome. When you become the product, not the customer, you ought to be worried.
3. FaceBook is less transparent for other reasons, obviously there is the fact that you can't see the non-public posts of people you are not friends with. The posts are presented in a non-transparent fashion, don't leave a public record.
4. Epistemic authority on group blogs works differently. The nice thing about group blogs is that you have shared epistemic authority, and in the case of Prosblogion, there were productive graduate students who wrote blogposts that were widely read, widely commented upon, and enjoyed. It did not seem to matter much what your rank was, or how senior you were, or where you got your PhD from. What mattered was whether you wrote strong, enjoyable pieces that could kick off a productive discussion. On social media like FaceBook or Twitter, rank and prestige matter more. Likes seem to be more distributed in terms of people's social status. 
5. Disagreement seems to work differently on social media than it does on blogs. On Prosblogion I had many times people disagree with what I wrote. Usually these discussions were respectful and measured, focused on content and not the writer. On NewApps disagreements sometimes became very vehement and resulted in such acrimonious discussions that I left that blog, but this never happened on Prosblogion. On social media, I notice a tendency to nod in agreement. The dynamics are completely different. While I do not think adversariality is the always best model for philosophy, I think respectful and vigorous disagreement is a very good feature of the profession and a driver of philosophical progress. 

So where do we go from here? It's easy to predict (I think at least) that the philosophy FaceBook community will suffer the same fate as philosophy blogs, and will eventually decline until only a few of us are left and are posting pictures of cats only. The seeds of this decline are already sown. The use of FaceBook to meddle with elections has already damaged (seriously damaged although few people I know left) our trust in the platform. Moreover, the whole interface of FaceBook starts getting a tired and worn look, in my view, with for example always the same posts you keep on seeing but don't want to see. It's led me to use the platform less (which is a good thing of course, there is only so much time you can spend on these things). Young people are not signing up to FaceBook anymore, and if they do, use it mainly to plan events and the like. 

I wonder what the future will hold for informal philosophical engagement. I hope it will again be a transparent, open platform where one can engage in public disagreement. Maybe something like PhilPaper's social media feature--PhilPeople--will work. Or maybe a future hybrid of blogs and social media (Medium is already something like it, and with its payment model it does not run quite the risk of writers becoming a commercial product as FaceBook has become).

Or maybe philosophical engagement will become again something purely for conferences, workshops, and journals. This is undesirable for several reasons: conferences and workshops depend on how well people are networked, or how many resources they have to spend travelling. Journals are very untransparent in terms of who gets a platform, and especially in the top journals you get to see mostly white male philosophers from prestigious institutions. If we go back to those platforms alone, it will be a step backwards in terms of inclusiveness and diversity of the profession. We will see. 

Comments

[Alan White]

Helen, thank you for this, and for your many, many contributions on Prosblogion and other blogs. I completely agree about the value of group blogs. I was a contributor on Flickers of Freedom, and that gave this (maybe?) Excellent-Second-Class philosopher some access to really great First-Class-Philosophers. Now it's gone too of course. But such an access was so valuable to me, especially getting to know people in ways that I could not have otherwise.

[Helen De Cruz]

Hi Alan! I regret the demise of Flickers for Freedom too, and have enjoyed your interactions on several blogs for several years. I don't read blogs as much as I used to, because it's (no longer) where a lot of the action is in terms of informal philosophical engagement, and that is regrettable. I also think blogs did a good job of destroying the distinction between first- and second-rate philosophers (which curiously seemed to coincide with the prestige of their departments). I am curious about what will come next.

[SocraticGadfly]

It's not a group blog, but i occasionally write about philosophy of religion, and other philosophy, and other religion, here. (Oh, hello Alan.) http://wordsofsocraticgadfly.blogspot.com/

[Jesse Gentile]

Helen, it was good to meet you this week in Pasadena. Not all is lost. If you go to archive.org and type prosblogion.ektopos.com into their "WayBackMachine" you will see that the site has archived prosblogion many times over the years. This allows you to at least dig through prior blogs if you need to go back and find something. Many people are unaware of Archive.org and the millions (billions?) of pages they have archived. This is one of the only known was to access data on now-defunct websites. A little reflection and you'll realize how crucial of a service they are providing. Their interface is a bit funky (and its not fast because its accessing data archives but give it a second when you enter a search) Email me if you want further help understanding how it works, but as a double Phd I'm sure you've got it:) [ jessegentile ATSYMBOL fuller.edu ]

[Justin Caouette]

I, too, am curious what comes next.

One concern I have had about the gradual decline of blogging is the negative impact it will have for those who do not stay in the discipline. Blogging is a way for others to engage who may not be doing philosophy full-time anymore. One thing I always thought about on the market is that "at least I'll get my philoosphical-fill via the blogs if this all doesn't work out". Sadly, I don't think that's a viable option anymore.

[Anon]

Nice post, Helen. Sad indeed to see the Prosblogion go. One small correction:

I believe the full phrase used by the Rightly Considered author to describe your posts at Prosblogion was “silly sociological projects.”

[Helen De Cruz]

Indeed it was, but I did not see the added value of putting the acrimonious phrase in my obituary. You may be right. I think there is a place for all sorts of things in philosophy of religion (blogosphere and elsewhere), sociological and other stuff, and it was a pity the main bloggers stopped blogging on it. I had conversations with several of them after your remarks, but sadly, they said they did not have the time to write for Prosblogion anymore. And the guest posts weren't sustainable either. A pity.

[Robert Gressis]

I only wrote a few times for Prosblogion. I stopped writing because my posts seemed so much more half-baked than others' posts, many of which seemed to me to be ones that I would have happily tried to turn into a paper.

[Patrick Arnold]

Helen, really sad to see the blog go but I greatly appreciate your vast contributions over the years. Your accessible work has been a constant source of stimulation and enjoyment. I hope you carry your voice forward to new, better, and even more successful platforms.

[Z. E. Kendall]

Although I never wrote articles for Prosblogion, I did read some of them. If I recall right, the blog was the first time I read of Rutten's Modal-Epistemic Argument. Now, as of 2018, there are still at least a few noteworthy active philosophy blogs, Edward Feser's blog being one of those. It would be interesting to see more discussion by more philosophers on that blog.

Anyway, I think we currently live in a very opportune window for meta-level philosophy research, in large part due to the vast amount of resources available online, from what's on archive.org to previews from Google Books to JSTOR online and beyond. We shouldn't forget about the Special Divine Action project(s) either, or the 2014 Plantinga Conference viewable on YouTube (last time I checked), and so on.

Given that companies like IBM and Google have been developing ai that can navigate games like Go and do rudimentary-level debating, we might have only a short window of time to accomplish great feats in philosophy before the ai catch up and become better philosophers than us all.

To top that off, current projections for the USA anyway do not look particularly good for the 2030s and 2040s. So if a major project in philosophy is going to get done (and esp. if you live in the USA), carpe diem.

[Rob C]

You can access archives of Prosblogion through the Wayback Machine.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220701000000*/https://www.prosblogion.ektopos.com/