There’s been a couple of things that’ve appeared on the net over the last few days that have revivified something that’s been niggling away at the back of my mind for quite a long time now: the status of bioethics as an academic discipline.

First there was Brian Leiter’s blog post.  Commenting on the oddness that has been overtaking the American Journal of Bioethics for the last couple of weeks (Not been keeping up?  Christian Munthe and Carl’s posts on the Fear and Loathing in Bioethics give a pretty good account), he points out that “[b]ioethics already has a fairly dim reputation in academic philosophy” – and he’s right: it does, even without the alleged strangeness at the AJoB.

And then there’s this interview with Hilde Lindemann in 3:AM Magazine, with this eye-catching passage:

A few years ago I was at a metaethics workshop, and over breakfast a male colleague and I made a game of ranking the different specialties in philosophy according to how prestigious they were – a ranking with a precise inverse correlation to gender. Here’s the list we came up with:

Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Language, and Metaphysics: The alpha-dominant philosophy, done by Real Men

Epistemology and Philosophy of Science: Done by manly enough men

Metaethics: Done by men who aren’t entirely secure in their masculinity

Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy: Done by girls

Bioethics: Done by stupid girls

Feminist philosophy, of course, is not philosophy at all.

The status of bioethics isn’t the primary concern of the interview, but it’s what jumped out at me; and – speaking as someone whose PhD was in metaethics in a very mind-and-language department, and who subsequently got work in bioethics - the ranking seems to be about right.  (I was warned at the start of my career that setting out down a bioethics path would make it hard to get a job in a “proper” philosophy department in future – a prediction that I think has something to it.  David Hunter’s recent move to a proper philosophy department is the exception that proves the rule, notwithstanding that his previous job was with a very good bioethics place.)

Bioethics employs philosophers, and makes use of philosophy; but it’s not enormously highly regarded as a discipline by philosophers.  Why should that be?  Does it matter?

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