In 1982, Bruce Le Catt wrote a response to a paper in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy critiquing an earlier article about prosthetic vision.
But Le Catt was no ordinary author. No, he was a cat, the beloved pet of David Lewis, a world-class philosopher who just happened to be the author of the article about which Bruce Le Catt was commenting.
Lewis’ inside joke wasn’t lost on those who knew him, and the benign deception seems to have been common knowledge in the field since the Le Catt paper appeared in 1982 (which also happens to be the year Cats began its run on Broadway). The paper has been cited four times since it was published, according to Clarivate Analytics. But 25 years later, the journal has finally decided to put an end to the gag.
The joyless notice states plainly:
The Australasian Association of Philosophy would like to clarify that ‘Bruce Le Catt’, was a pseudonym used by the author David Lewis, to discuss some work published under his own name.
Pets have made appearances before as authors and co-authors. Polly Matzinger, an immunologist, has used her dog to make a point about the use of the third person in science publishing. And in 1975, F.D.C. Willard (otherwise known as Chester the cat) beat Bruce Le Catt to the masthead by seven years when his owner, Jack Hetherington, included him in an article for Physical Review Letters.
The correction was prompted by Michael Dougherty, chair of the philosophy department at Ohio Dominican University, in Columbus. Dougherty, who says he is writing a book about research integrity in his field, contacted the journal in early July about the fake name:
In the article, David Lewis apparently uses the pseudonym to critique work published under his own name in the journal two years earlier. The online version of the article in question on the Taylor and Francis website does not indicate the true authorship of the article. Occasionally, but not always, the pseudonymously-published article is attributed to Prof. Lewis by others publishing on the topic discussed. Not all philosophers are aware of the identity between Lewis and Le Catt, and it is conceivable that many younger members of the profession could read the 1982 article without knowing that Lewis is providing a critique of his own work.
I am writing to request a correction of the scholarly record. Would you kindly publish a brief corrigendum to the article in question, both in the pages of the journal and tethered electronically to the online version of the article, that declares the true authorship of the article? In doing so, Australasian Journal of Philosophy would be following the best practices for maintaining publishing and research integrity.
Thank you for considering my request for a correction of the scholarly record.
Lewis, who died in 2001, was an architect of the theory of modal realism, a branch of philosophy which holds that all possible worlds are as real as the actual world.
In that sense, Lewis’ ruse comports nicely — if ironically — with his outlook: After all, are not the worldviews of a man and a man’s cat both worldviews? Or, as Hippolyte Taine said:
I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.
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I agree cats can’t provide PEER review, they are above us after all.
How about puurrr reviews?
My Siamese happily provides pee review when not satisfied.
superior even is Geim’s H.A.M.S. ter, Tisha http://www.improbable.com/2013/10/15/geims-surprises-about-1-materials-and-2-a-historic-hamster/
If not peer review, then perhaps purr review
And you can always recycle the articles, shred them into kitty litter.
Vaguely related, I used Richard Johns’ How to Swim with Sharks for a review of recommendations regarding workplace aggression. One of the reviewers was insistent that the work was by “Voltaire Cousteau” and was about sharks . . . not human aggression (very funny to read). RJ’s in his 80s now, I wish he’d set the record straight.
I’m trying to imagine the satisfaction of dying with the knowledge that you published an article under the pseudonym of your cat and still no-one at the journal seems the wiser…
“a branch of philosophy which holds that all possible worlds are as real as the actual world” Good grief! Was he doing acid?
The mathematician Doron Zeilberger (Rutgers) has published many papers with co-author Shalosh B. Ekhad, and Ekhad even has a single-author paper in The Mathematical Intelligencer, 21(3), 64-70, 1999, https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF03025418
Ekhad is not a cat but a pseudonym for the personal computer of Zeilberger:
http://sites.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/ekhad/ekhad.html
I know I’m a year late to this, but I have to respond to a couple of things.
In response to the question “Good grief! Was he doing acid?,” the answer is an emphatic “no.” Modal Realism is, from an everyday practical standpoint, a very boring view with no observable consequences. The view was proposed in order to make sense of the logic (and in particular the semantics for the S5 axiomatic system) of possibility and necessity. As such, it is, from a practical standpoint, no more weird (and Lewis would say less weird) than mathematical claims like “the number three exists,” or “there is no highest prime.” It’s important whether these things are true, but it won’t affect our empirical observations at all.
On that note, I will also respond to the original author’s question, “are not the worldviews of a man and a man’s cat both worldviews?” The answer is, “I don’t know…maybe? But it has exactly nothing to do with modal realism.”
Maybe I should let these misunderstandings slide, but it worries me a little bit when people confuse seriously good philosophy (and there’s no more seriously good philosopher than Lewis!) with hippy-dippy BS and pseudo-scientific garbage. At heart, Lewis was (like so many good philosophers) like a mathematician who wanted to know *why* one plus one equals two. That’s an oversimplification of philosophy, but I prefer the oversimplification to the misunderstandings.