On Civility and Anonymous Posts; Leiter vs the APA

Abusive speech directed at philosophers is not limited to responses by the public to published op-eds. A look at some of the anonymous philosophy blogs also reveals a host of examples of abusive speech by philosophers directed against other philosophers. Disagreement is fine and is not the issue. But bullying and ad hominem harassment of philosophers by other philosophers undermines civil disagreement and discourse and has no place in our community. Attacks that focus on a philosopher’s race, gender, or other status are unacceptable and in violation of the APA Statement on Nondiscrimination. We call upon any member who has engaged in such behaviors in the past to cease and desist.--The American Philosophical Association [HT Daily Nous]

 

Here is the statement, which now puts the APA on record as participating in the inflation of "bullying" phenomenon and, much more seriously, conflating the criminal threats and racist abuse to which Prof. Yancy was subjected with "uncivil" but lawful speech (the APA even uses, bizarrely, the language of "cease and desist"!).   Apparently some people at the APA learned nothing from the University of Illinois's crusade on behalf of "civility."  There were reasons to be skeptical that an APA statement would have much impact on racist sociopaths of the kind who were harassing Prof. Yancy, but now the APA has gone and done something much more outrageous and unprofessional.  The APA has no business regulating lawful "uncivil" speech, or legislating what counts as "civility," let alone calling on people to "cease and desist" from it....Brian Leiter

My former colleagues at NewAPPS, Ed Kazarian and Leigh Johnson (here and here), taught me to be suspicious of appeals to "civility" (recall). I am not against civility as such. Civility is, in fact, a fragile public good that can be extremely important to an academic community; it is to be cherished in practice. But those that appeal to it, and invoke it in polemicized context, tend to use it as a means to silence and regulate unwelcome speech. Civility is, thus, a norm that is best not invoked or preached, but perfectly fine to practice. (I feel the same way about Kantian ethics; great to live by, not so swell to preach.)

So, I agree with Brian Leiter that while correctly expressing "solidarity" with Prof. Yancy -- and I am glad it did so --, the APA mistakenly also took a swipe at "anonymous philosophy blogs," where it finds "examples of abusive speech by philosophers directed against other philosophers." As it happens I am aware of the existence of such blogs only because Brian Leiter sometimes quotes and links to them in ways I find annoying: that is, he sometimes appeals to anonymous others to frame a claim or to add insult to injury (etc.); this includes instances to make fun of me (recall here). As an amusing aside (well I think it's funny), at the time when Brian launched my ballooning career, he objected to me calling the dispute between Sally Haslanger and him a "dust-up" (he thought it a minor disagreement). Given the tumult that followed my qualification seems understated with the benefit of hindsight.

It is pretty clear that anonymity gives people cover to be really hurtful and worse, and provides cover for views that have no known moral defense. Rather than helping to constitute liberty or to facilitate the process of moral and (other) factual discovery that is vital to a functioning democracy anonymity primarily facilitates the reinforcement of negative affect. We keep it around because anonymity can also be a vital cover for those that have reason to fear those more powerful than them. 

The argument against anonymity  in a scholarly community is stronger. Scholarly communities rely on many layers of trust to keep functioning as an intellectual community. Recent epistemology has caught up with history and philosophy of science and now acknowledges that trust plays a vital role in lots of knowledge producing practices. There is a rich literature on epistemic virtues. I believe these philosophical insights entail that public claims ought to be traced back to individuals or, at least, recognizable intellectual personae. (This is one reason I tend not to allow anonymous posting.) But, as we all recognize,  philosophy is also a professional community with a zero-sum job market and other markers of status and success. In so far as professional philosophy is also necessarily political, it makes sense that there are anonymous blogs to allow the weak or disenchanted a safe place to vent or even explore not so popular but potentially vital views. What has made Brian Leiter's citations and strategic quoting of anonymous blog posts sometimes annoying is that for a long time he was not among the weak professionally.

So, there: Brian Leiter preaches correctly on this issue, despite the wrongness of his practice. Leaving aside Leiter, the APA should just have ignored the anonymous philosophy blogs. But what do I know?--I am just a balloonist. 

 

Comments

[Hilde Lindemann]

Nope. Bullying is always a bad thing, because it involves the strong picking on the weak. And the string picking on the strong isn't much better--it's a form of nastiness that has no place among decent people. The APA is quite right to protest this sort of behavior, and to call on its members to cut it out. Trolls can go gnaw on their shin bones elsewhere.

[Eric Schliesser]

Yes, bullying is bad. (I don't deny that.) But it's not clear that the anonymous commentators are the strong, and the APA is not the sort of organization that ought to settle that.

[Kathryn Pogin]

Eric, can you say more about why you think it matters if the anonymous commentators are the strong? It seems like what's relevant for the purposes of determining whether or not it's bullying is that to engage in sustained, personal, and sometimes egregiously vicious, attacks from a position of anonymity online thereby places the target in a position of relative vulnerability.

[Schliesser, Eric]

Yes, the weak can (try to) bully, too, Kathryn, and if they succeed it is very bad. I am not here denying that anonymous bullying takes place in the blogosphere.