O FIM DA FILOSOFIA

Teresa Marques, uma filósofa de Lisboa que em breve emigrará para Barcelona (e que eu não conheço), pôs a circular esta informação na Internet, através do Facebook:

""This will be hard to understand by English speaking academics, but it's an important sign that all should be aware of (and possibly worry about), specially in Europe.

(1) The European Science Foundation has been, in their own words, "focusing on the responsible winding down of its traditional research instruments and the transfer of policy activities to Science Europe." Instead, ESF will now be dedicated to "science management" and to "quality peer review". It is unclear, from their site, whether it will continue to exist after 2015.

(2) Since Miguel Seabra took office at FCT, there were drastic cuts to the number of PhD grants, post-doctoral fellowships, and 5 year research contracts (in spite of, allegedly, the funds available at FCT being the same or having increased). In the humanities, the cuts in number of grants and fellowships were around 65%. This overturns a continued investment in science and research in Portugal in the past 20 years (or more), that had brought the number of Phd's in Portugal close to that of Germany, and drastically increased the number of Portuguese international publications, number of citations and patents. As an illustration, there were *5* grants for PhDs in philosophy in the *whole country*. Miguel Seabra is the new president of Science Europe, a distinct organization that seems to be dedicated to lobbying for science in the European Union (you can check their website online).

(3) Now, it's the turn of the research centres, units and groups to be evaluated by FCT, and for the new 'turn in funding policies' to affect research centres as a whole. Seabra, on his way out, got ESF to do the review of the national research institutions. The results, and the new policies employed, are appalling. For instance, the Centre for Nuclear Physics of the University of Lisbon will have no funding *at all*. The Philosophy Centre of the University of Lisbon, CFUL, was evaluated as 'good' but will only receive a base funding of 5000 euros per year. (unless our rebuttal is successful, which we doubt given their recent attitude).

(4) CFUL, among other things, hosts the research group LanCog, and publishes Disputatio. That amount of money can't keep the journal running, let alone maintain the basic infrastructure of the Centre. I quickly checked our recent publications from 2013, and we have over 60 recent or forthcoming publications, of which nearly 30 are in 'A' journals (the remaining include also articles in volumes edited with OUP or Springer). As far as I know, this is a unique result in the whole country and in the history of philosophy in Portugal (not just the number, but also the venues where we are publishing). The classification of 'good' with this ridiculous funding won't allow us to get new PhD students or to support adequately postdocs and senior researchers, or to maintain any normal activity.

(5) These are the reviewers in the Humanities panel that reviewed CFUL and the remaining Philosophy research institutions in Portugal (all this information is on FCT's website). It does not take much effort to verify that there are members of CFUL that have more and better publications in philosophy than the few philosophers on this panel (who seem to be, for the large part, people dedicated to administration and bureaucracy rather than research, and hence don't seem to offer adequate *peer review*):

Susan Bassnett, University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom

Nicholas Canny, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland

Peter Michael Cronin, Dublin City University, Ireland

Gerhard Jaritz, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary

Janis Jefferies, University of London, United Kingdom

Janusz Krzysztof Kozlowski, Jagellonian University, Kraków, Poland

Svend Erik Larsen, University of Aarhus, Denmark

Pasqualina Perrig-Chiello, University of Bern, Switzerland

Riccardo Pozzo, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Rome, Italy

David Robey (Chair), University of Oxford, United Kingdom

Matti Sintonen, University of Helsinki, Finland

Martin Stokhof, Universiteit van Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Ann Thomson, European University Institute, Florence, Italy

Koenraad Van Balen, KU Leuven, Belgium

Peter Weinreich, University of Ulster, Newtownabbey, United Kingdom

Milena Žic Fuchs, University of Zagreb, Croatia

(6) Details about the results overall are now available in the national press, for instance here (you can use Google translate to check it):

http://www.ionline.pt/artigos/portugal/quarto-das-unidades-investigacao-candidatas-fundos-fica-sem-financiamento/pag/2

or here:

http://www.publico.pt/ciencia/noticia/carlos-fiolhais-acusa-governo-de-liquidar-a-ciencia-em-portugal-1661103

(7) This is worrying, not just for the future of philosophy in Portugal (other Philosophy institutions in Portugal will get no funding at all, others will have virtually no funding, like CFUL, and only 3 were deemed good enough to pass on to the next stage.) This is worrying for you, European philosophers and academics, if your country's funding authorities decide to rely on ESF to review your research. This must be the plan to save ESF from extinction. So maybe you should start to worry now.

Um quarto das unidades de investigação candidatas a fundos fica sem financiamento"