Digressions&Impressions

On Writing in the Wake of Deaththreats (Say When Jordan Peterson Comes to Town)

As the Dutch news is now reporting, this week several of my colleagues in my department and faculty have received anonymous death threats and antisemitic hostility because they politely protested a student group's invitation to Jordan Peterson (here's an English version). (One of the targets, Polly Pallister-Wilkens, shared some of the threats on twitter.) For those of you who care about such matters: there was no suggestion to rescind the invitation or to prevent the student group from hosting him. One public letter did propose adding a critical speaker/respondent to the event. (In his measured response, Peterson called his critics,‘cowards, denouncers and totalitarian wannabes’.) I did not sign any of the letters because I do not wish to contribute to Peterson's branding strategy, which clearly relies on courting and escalating such controversy.

Unlike such events Stateside, the event was organized by a non-partisan student group, which has a strong preference for captains of industry, celebrity academics [sic], and political insiders. The regular series started during the financial crisis with a sense of urgency, but the interviews have generally become utterly anodyne, and the main benefit it provides, I think, is a networking opportunity for the students involved. Because it is so regular, and devoid of irony, the series gives a nice window into the public thinking of the social elites of Holland (and Europe). One day a historical sociologist will find it very useful record.

That criticism of a Peterson-event would lead to threats ought not surprise anybody who has a twitter account. Predictably, the cheerleaders of Peterson in the Dutch press ignore the death threats and attack my colleagues for being critics of free speech (etc.) [and routinely conflate free speech and the various (note the plural) academic missions of the university (something I have blogged a bit about, recall , say, here, here, here. here, here, and here.)] I use 'predictably' because Peterson is not the first to produce death threats in his wake. Other colleagues in my department, most of us are rather old-fashioned Weberian social scientists (with expertise on populism, migration, refugees, political trust, elections, communication, gender, etc.), have  received threatening e-mails when certain right-wing Dutch websites report on them.  

A few years ago I signed a letter protesting Dutch policy change on refugees. Readers of an extreme-right site then nominated all us for a list of traitors. (In  our case, the proposed punishment was not death but a one-way ticket to an insane asylum, after the revolution.) 

My first taste in such matters occurred much longer ago, in 2010, when I tried to publish a (road-to-serfdom inspired) piece about the rise of Geert Wilders, in which I claimed he was a consequence of the corruption of the rule of law among Dutch political elites. No Dutch mainstream outlet was willing to take the piece. I then self-published it at NewAPPS, An entrepreneurial friend then advertised a Dutch version on Google, and the piece went viral in the then still somewhat underground world of alt/extreme right websites.* For a few weeks I got anonymous emails with loads of threats and antisemitic slogans. Most were too vague to really concern me. Because we had a newborn child I decided to keep quiet. We did not need more stress. 

One letter was different. It was articulate and signed by a real person, who introduced himself as a business owner. I responded to his letter, and we had a surprisingly amicable correspondence about my argument and Dutch politics. That exchange  petered out.

Either way, public interventions on certain topics can lead to anonymous harassment or intimidation. This is true even in professional philosophy (recall this post).** It is no surprise that awareness of this mechanism leads to anticipatory forms of self-censorship and second-guessing. Did I not sign because because I do not wish to contribute to Peterson's branding strategy or did I want to stay below the radar of local hotheads? Mill wrote that "unmeasured vituperation employed on the side of the prevailing opinion, really does deter people from professing contrary opinions," but I think he missed that unmeasured vituperation will create a prevailing opinion because it deters people from professing contrary opinions.

In my environment, grant agencies and university presidents want public impact. But they do nothing to protect their employees against the intimidation or help them navigate law enforcement issues. (I'd love to hear otherwise.) So, there is much room for despair. Left to our own devices, we respond by caring for each other and acknowledging to each other that this side of the job exists. 

My own response to these developments has been to study how to be a public thinker (even wrote a book about it), to ignore most anonymous commentary, and to become more strategic about my public interventions. I have already shared (recall) my general strategy on public philosophy, and I would reiterate how important is to plan one's public interventions with some worst-case advance planning. But the reality of being in an environment, a culture really, of permanent harassment directed at academics who do not conform to the routine vitriol directed against refugees, immigrants, and Muslims (etc.), and who defend rule of law against authoritarianism meant that I speak less to a wider public (fewer editorials, fewer public events, etc.) and aim to communicate more directly with decision-makers, opinion-makers, or educations (like you).+  I tell myself this also fits my academic personality better.

I admire my courageous colleagues who keep serving the public publicly. Perhaps, my prudence is adaptive, or base cowardice. 

 

 

On Public Philosophy and Transgender Rights Campaign

During the past year professional philosophers have struggled with controversies pertaining to transgender issues (recall the Tuvel/Hypatia affaire here and here; and again involving language in journal articles [recall my piece on the open letter to the editors of PPR at Dailynous here;] the debate between Talia Mae Bettcher and Kathleen Stock;[1] the language of the APA philosophy blog [see Leiterreports]), etc. These debates have intersected with wider society and have even led to campaigns to to have faculty removed from their positions in the UK. While I am no friend of calls for civility in debate (recall this post among many), the way this debate is conducted is unedifying and I have already expressed despair that even the philosophers party to the debate seem to be unable to recognize explicitly each other's vulnerabilities. 

I start this post with two preliminary comments. First, as regular readers know, I support so-called public philosophy (recall; which comes in many varieties [see here]) and philosophical activism (which comes in many flavors and in support of many different kinds of causes) of society and the profession. I have long admired the service philosophy of Kristie Dotson (recall), Hugo Bedau's activism against the death penalty, and John Corvino's work on same-sex marriage. (I am sure readers can add to this list their own favorites.)* Such cause/ideal-promoting political activism is both self-justifying and a useful means of discovery of truth. While philosophy can benefit from a measure of distance, cool reflection, and impartiality, it's also the case that engagement with the messy details of lived experience and the arguments generated by political conflict can also be a useful constraint on and source of creativity for philosophical discovery of the nature and properties of an ideal. 

However, I have  long thought that it seems unwise, or at least imprudent, when philosophers qua being philosophers support active politicians and political parties. (That's compatible with doing so qua being citizens of a particular polity). It seems best if one's pursuit of truth and the good is not sullied by and subject to the many tactical compromises and fatal injustices that accompany political life pursued by imperfect beings like us. I rarely see philosophical excellence in support of a politician or party,+ and much that I find cringe-worthy.

Second, transgender people are subject to bigotry, discrimination, harassment, and violence. This is well documented in the UK and US. The evidence also suggests that many transgender victims are also (intersectionally) members of other historically discriminated minority groups, I assume here that the violence occurs in virtue of their being transgender, and that belonging to it means one belongs to (all other things being equal) a vulnerable category of people. So,

• I wholeheartedly support the campaign for transgender rights and protection under the law.***

Regular readers know (recall this post on MLK Jr.) that I also think that human imperfection, self-interest, and bigotry often undermine enforcement of the law and can even make the most beautifully written laws a tool of oppression. What's needed is, thus, also sufficient popular support or opinion and the right dispositions in favor of such rights. Political campaigns are, therefore, crucial to generate such support.** Of course, there is something of a paradox lurking here, because where such support exists the right would not be necessary.

One important feature of new rights is that the costs and (new) down-side risks of these need not be distributed evenly on the population. That's of special concern if these fall on other vulnerable groups. I understand the present campaign against trans rights, which includes some high profile self-described feminist philosophers -- where not informed by or leaning on bigotry -- as aiming to articulate some such risks to vulnerable women, especially those in prisons and among the homeless. I think such concerns eminently reasonable, but that's because there is a reasonable fear of violence and degradation within prisons and fear of violence against the homeless (see here). But rather than fighting transgender rights, the proper response to such concerns for the very vulnerable is, I would think, to join the coalition for thoroughgoing prison reform and better/more resources and conditions for the homeless.++ 

So my preliminaries have turned into a blog post, which was prompted by my momentary reconsideration of my stance on public philosophy.+++ It's true that there is no reason to believe that philosophical activism will always be beneficial. And I am reminded of the fact that even in the pre-internet age (which, let's stipulate, can make any bad thing worse), there was and never is a golden age of civility (as those of us old enough to recall philosophical debates over abortion, LGBTQ rights, or if one pays attention to debates over Zionism/BDS, etc.)---I have often remarked upon the fact that as a discipline we have an all-too-human fondness for philosophical debates as blood-sports and the delicious take-down.

It's a familiar fact that the pursuit of a worthy cause can turn into fanaticism and unpleasant and vindictive (moral) righteousness. And it is known that friends of worthy causes will find it difficult to condemn the excesses because they do not wish to be seen as undermining the worthy cause. For, it's also all-too-common that critics of the worthy cause will use such excesses as a tactic to undermine a cause, and shift debate away from consideration of the underlying evils. Savvy intellectuals recognize the temptation they may benefit from escalation and from hyping an otherwise unworthy critic, inviting abuse from their anonymous followers, with the cycle being renewed etc. And so it can often happen that wisdom is pushed aside or found crouching unnoticed in the margins of the arresting debates. 

In light of such facts people of good will may prefer to retreat to the ivory tower, and pursue their worthy work in undisturbed quiet. Others will note that these facts are part of the eternal return of life's carnival, and will will them...one tweet at a time eternally.  

 

 

We Need More Philosophy Blogs (yeah!); Or why Philosophy papers feel so long

Most of the problems they discuss would be significantly remedied under a simple proposal: there should be many more short articles/letters/notes, of 2000 words or less, published in philosophy journals, either in existing journals or in new ones dedicated to short pieces, and we should have a disciplinary norm not to besmirch short pieces.

...

The main thing to consider is the (intrinsic) reason for publication in the first place: to advance our understanding of an issue. My contention...is that there are many worthwhile insights that can be expressed rather briefly. We spend a great deal of time perfecting long pieces, or adding background information that most readers will understand anyway. The marginal increase in overall enlightenment that arises from the additional time philosophers use to perfect long articles (and for readers to read them) is in many cases less than what could be achieved by using our time in other ways (such as writing additional short pieces). There will always be a central place for longer pieces, but the publication of more short pieces may increase the overall quality of scholarship as more ideas are shared early on, allowing authors to adjust their views in response to early feedback and to find potential collaborators at early stages, and the discipline can move faster in worthwhile directions.

Some other benefits of this proposal:

(1) It should be much easier for referees and editors to review short pieces, thus significantly shortening turn-around times and making it easier on referees.

(2) Authors could spend less time per paper, thus reducing the risk wasting time on work that turns out not to be published.

(3) More papers could be published in the same amount of journal space, increasing acceptance rates. I have no objection to the existence of a number of top journals having super-low acceptance rates for long papers. But this practice leads to the problem that there are many highly reputable ideas that are not seeing the light of day in highly reputable journals.

(4) With many ideas published in shorter pieces, there may end up being fewer longer pieces submitted to journals, improving the review process at those places. Ideally, the writing of longer pieces would be reserved for ideas that the author has deemed worth the extra time to perfect in long form, perhaps because the idea has already been partly vetted in a short publication. (Journals that publish short pieces should permit authors to use ideas published in them as springboards for longer works.)

(5) This practice would be more inclusive. The publication of short pieces would help those at small institutions and lacking in personal connections more easily have their ideas be more broadly known and the resulting responses could help them improve upon their developing ideas. And philosophers with outside time limitations (e.g., from family or health issues) may find it much easier to compose shorter pieces in the hopes that later they can expand upon the ideas.

(6) We already spend a great deal of time philosophizing in ways that never get published, and there is a lot of value in those efforts that sometimes gets lost. We have informal conversations with philosophy friends, and give commentary at conferences. Many of these ideas have no chance of being published as full, independent papers, but deserve to be shared more broadly than with just those in the conference room. More generally, philosophy is often done dialogically, but dialogues typically happen behind closed doors. By encouraging the publication of short pieces, we can open up otherwise exclusive conversations to more participants.

One might object that this is just a proposal that there be more philosophy blogs. I welcome this comparison! Perhaps what I am proposing can be accomplished by a proliferation of blind peer-reviewed blogs. Not only would this increase quality and prestige of such posts, but blind review would democratize access to authoring posts in blogs.--"A Plea for More Short Journal Publications" by Avram Hiller@DailyNous

Regular readers know, I hope, by now that I believe the profession needs to experiment with a lot more different publication and reviewing formats that do better justice to what professional philosophy is, and could be. This is especially so if you think -- as I emphatically do not -- optimistically that philosophy is intrinsically about arguments and learning which premises to reject (see Stoljaer's very interesting book). We could become a lot more creative about how we organize discussion about, say, disputed premises or different interpretations of what may be the same premise. In the digital age, web-based publication with embedded links should facilitate such discussion. Right now, for example, we have  to read through whole works on dualism while we all know the philosophical action may be (fill in your favorite claim) at the level of the nature of physicalism, or the nature of experience, or the nature of a property, or a zombie, etc. Hiller is, thus, correct that our present journal format does not promote what he calls dialogical publication.* 

So, I welcome Hiller's attempts to promote discussion of an alternative to the status quo. I won't deny that I was, of course, pleased by the casual domestication (and praise) of blogs, which until recently were treated as entertainment and not philosophy, as exemplary philosophy.** (Of course, this was done on a blog and not, say, in the pages of Mind.) But not unlike some of his commentators at Dailynous, I think a blog + "blind [I prefer masked] review" = Analysis. (I am not against Analysis II, More Analysis, Junior Analysis, Epistemological Analysis, Property Analysis, etc.) 

Hiller suggests that many papers are made longer because we add "background information that most readers will understand anyway." I doubt this is the main reason why papers feel so long and so arduous to referee and read. First, I am convinced the main reason why average (so not yours, my dear above average reader) philosophy papers fits this category is that they are not especially well written; they lack personality. (Some other time more about that.)

The lack of personality is connected to the most important reason why this problem exists at all: our papers are written defensively. By this I mean two things: first, as I am confident has been noted by others before, philosophy papers are written defensively against every possible half-baked and willful misreading one can imagine. Perversely, philosophers only extend interpretive charity to disciplinary princes. Second, rather than doing a thorough literature review, we wait for referee 2 to foist objections on us--this then leads to papers that seem strangely out of balance given the stated aims. But, perhaps, maybe there is less of a risk of this in Analysis-length articles.  

I was about to press 'publish' on this (non-peer-refereed blog [although I do get a lot of post publication review!]) when I realized that I had left the core claim unchallenged.  This is (recall) "The marginal increase in overall enlightenment that arises from the additional time philosophers use to perfect long articles (and for readers to read them) is in many cases less than what could be achieved by using our time in other ways (such as writing additional short pieces)." I am pretty sure this rests on a misunderstanding on the nature of a short piece. Perhaps an analogy will help: writing a Haiku is much harder than writing ahh a sonnet. For, the shorter you go the dissonances and  imperfections are much more salient.+ The same is true for a masterfully crafted blog post as opposed to a journal article.

In a journal article you can circle around a point and folk may well get what you intended to say. In a blog post people may completely miss what you wanted to say. For example, I sometimes (recall these two points) explain my dislike of the Clintons by mentioning the execution of Ricky Ray Rector in the middle of a presidential campaign.  What I never said before, I will say now: for me this is not just a blatant case of opportunistically using the death penalty for political gain, it's also a racialized case of signalling willingness of being tough on African-American criminals. For, it is obvious  to anybody who lived through  Dukakis and the famous 'Willie' Horton ad, that this was Bill Clinton's attempt to prevent being tarred with the same brush. The point here today is not that I am right about this, but in previous blog posts I did not spell this out and so was not understood. And note I am still compressing my reasoning here and inviting you to fill in my steps; so blogging is always an invitation at misinterpretation. 

The previous point is, I think, tacitly understood by all who hold an Analysis publication in high regard; to get to the heart of the matter with the right balance of succinctness and clarity is a great demonstration of a certain sort of philosophical skill. 

Let me add another thought (I hope you catch my distinction):  to seem to get to the heart of the matter with the right balance of succinctness and clarity is also often characteristic of philosophical jerks, but that's for another post.

 

 

On Stickers, Nametags, visitors, and (ahh) Identity

I was at an academic conference last week, somewhere in America, where we were invited by our hosts to place a 'preferred pronoun' sticker on our nametags. "If you could pick one of those up during the next break, we'd appreciate it." The options were, 'He', 'She', 'They', 'Ask Me', and one with a blank space for a write-in. Coming from my adoptive France, I had heard of this new practice in my country of origin, but somehow I had convinced myself that it was mostly mythical. Yet there were the stickers, and there were all my fellow participants, wearing them with straight faces. 

I did not pick one up. As is my practice at these events, I do not even wear the nametag that has been provided for me, so there would have been nothing to put the sticker on. But if there had been any direct and explicit pressure on me to wear one, rather than just a general announcement, I would have been constrained to explicitly refuse to do what was being asked of me. I would have been a conscientious objector. 

In the future I will avoid meetings at which I know in advance, or I have a reasonable expectation, that there will be such stickers. I am strongly opposed to this convention, I think it is ridiculous and offensive, and I am only thankful that, for now, it is only a convention and not a compulsion. But the line is not so clear. It is not a compulsion for me to wear a sticker, because I am privileged and basically indifferent as to whether I ever get invited to an academic event again. The quality of my life is enhanced by not going to academic events, and reduced by going to them. If I can't go because social pressure would require me to wear a sticker, well, tant mieux. But this is not the case for younger scholars who are precariously employed. It is in part for their sake that I feel the need to make explicit my opposition to this practice. 

The reasons for this opposition are simple. If to be cisgender is to be such that your gender identity as you experience it matches with the gender identity you are assigned at birth, then I am not cisgender. What it would be like to feel at home with your assigned gender identity is something I cannot even imagine, but I take it that whoever is at home in this way is an utter dullard, an unthinking fool, and definitely someone to avoid. I for my part cringe whenever I am called a 'man'. Even 'person' and 'human' seem rather too confining for my sense of the true nature of my being, but I usually let these slide. 

At the same time, I take it that if we are, as Heidegger said, geworfene Entwürfe, 'thrown projects', then the fact that members of my society find it reasonable to call me a 'man' is part of my Geworfenheit, and not something it is within my conception of my life project to change. I do not feel like a man, but I also do not feel I have it in me to bring about, by my will and by my presentation of self in everyday life, any other social fact as to what sort of being I am. In other words, whatever my preferred pronouns might have been in some imaginary Rawlsian original position, I do not feel I have a reasonable expectation of others that they use them in my non-imaginary present position.

The fact that I do not feel this way is something very deep about my identity: the mismatch between what it is I feel I am, and what it is I feel I can expect others to recognise me as being. This mismatch is philosophically interesting to me, and it is also an unhealing wound at the core of my identity. Again, I suspect that anyone who does not perceive this wound in them, in some way or other, is an uninteresting, unthinking person.  

I expect to be called 'he', because it is into he-ness that I have been thrown, but no, I insist, I do not 'prefer' to be called 'he'. I have a strong preference, in fact, that I not be expected to expect others to use my preferred pronouns, and it is a violation of my own sense of who I am to be called upon to state my preferences in this matter as if they were, to me, some kind of easy and painless and wholly worked out fact. 

There will always be unthinking and uninteresting people in the world. But let us not enforce this way of being by bullshit new social conventions or, worse still, by oppressive new bureaucratic demands.--- Justin Erik Halldór Smith "My Preferred Pronouns?" {HT Jessica Collins}

On Friday, I went to Kings College (London) [herafter KCL] to attend a fascinating talk by Emily Thomas (Durham) on the novelist-activist, philosopher, May Sinclair. It was the second time within a week that I had to be at KCL. Due to increased security, it's become quite difficult to enter a KCL building. In some buildings all doors are locked/opened with a employee pass. Earlier in the week, in a in a different building, I got stranded on a floor between the elevators and the doors to the offices (where the seminar room was). After knocking fruitlessly on a glass door, I was saved by a helpful KCL security guard -- who was doing a rounds, checking for fire because the smoke detectors were not operative --, who let me into the floor, and then escorted me to the WC not because he deemed me a security threat, or so he said, but because without a pass I would be locked in the bathroom. I was told that the security exists because of terrorism and to prevent theft of computers and electronics;* while I found the latter plausible, I have a sneaky suspicion the main purpose of the measures is to keep street people from using facilities/premises. Anyway, on Friday i was given a big visitor sticker. This sticker lets me into the main building of KCL and allows KCL security guards to identify me (since I a lack a proper badge) on a particular date. The sticker does not open any doors.

Here I was on a university campus -- which I consider my natural habitus by now -- and told I do not quite belong (a visitor is meant to leave, after all). I knew I was being overly sensitive, but Friday had been one of those days where I awoke more tired than I had felt before I went to bed. All morning I had minor mishaps, and was disgruntled. The cause was not mysterious: I had vivid dreams about my dad, including an incredibly realistic re-experience of his last moments (which I witnessed) with me holding his hand. 

As an aside, my first romance and her mom taught me some principles of dream interpretation. In their approach, all characters in a dream are you (I mean the person dreaming) and represent different features of or wishes for you. Spatial features and narrative of the dream are then used to provide structure to the interpretation. If I followed their approach,  then I could see that in the dream I was identifying myself with my dad's death looking on at how he/I have passed. 

The single strangest thing about mourning is that from one moment to the next loss can feel pungently and suddenly real, and simultaneously surreal. Death slips through my fingers.  

I had a forty-five minutes to kill before the talk, and so I decided to re-read Seneca Letter 33, which, I had decided, I was going to use in Friday's Digression. It's an interesting letter because Seneca here -- as elsewhere (recall) -- is a strikingly modern thinker, who treats progress as something to be discovered by individual thinkers. I was amused that one of the rhetorical tricks of the letter was an attack on historians (like me) who merely retrace steps on familiar paths (via vetere), and who are kept around as a source of stale maxims or insights to be memorized, but who can't guide folks onto the path of wisdom which needs to be carved out at each place and moment in time. While I was heading the seminar room for Emily's lecture I noticed the visitor sticker again, and I thought of my dad's youth and the Jude/Jood badges he had to wear.

That afternoon, I was struggling with my Digression.  I wanted to do justice to Seneca, but reflection on my dream was interfering. The words I was writing were my familiar blog persona, but not quite true to my feelings. I wanted to be distracted by facebook where I noticed a critical discussion about Justin's post (which I have quoted above). I read Justin's piece, and I was impressed how he could make Heidegger's insight into the human condition seem so natural (as opposed to pretentious) and link it with his own vulnerability. In our culture, how many men would admit to themselves, let alone to others, I do not feel like a man. Of course, I recognize sometimes it's easier to say something to unknown strangers -- I am a blogger, after all -- than to oneself (or other intimates).

Justin is such a good and funny ('straight faces') writer that his rage became palpable. I wondered if the rage was directed at the hosts or, more psycho-analytically, was directed at self. (The previous sentence  may be more informative about me than Justin.)+ You may wonder why I call him enraged. It's an interpretation, of course, but when I reread his piece, I noticed he actually never manages to state the reasons for why the practice he is objecting to is "ridiculous and offensive." Since Justin is a terrific philosopher, and one of our best public writers who is ordinarily in complete rhetorical control of his toolkit, the oversight makes me think it is a genuine mistake caused by intense passion.

Let me give an example of Justin's art. Notice how the  first sentence we are immediately put in a familiar place,  "somewhere in America," that is at the same time not anywhere defined. Justin is engaged in a distopian rhetoric here (where the mythical is made to feel very real and scary).++ It turns out that adopting a national identity ("my adoptive France") is much easier than a preferred gender. That's a striking claim because in our time, for many others (refugees, migrants, etc.) obtaining a French identity is literally a dangerous enterprise. I say this not to trivialize Justin's point, but to emphasize it. Personal identity, the true nature of one's being, are existential matters, often beyond choice and (despite some metaphysicians' assertions) no trivial matter at all. 

Okay, let me return. Justin makes many interesting and pertinent observations -- that transcend (ahh) his own struggle with identity, but the closest he comes to stating an objection to the  convention is this: "it is a violation of my own sense of who I am to be called upon to state my preferences in this matter as if they were, to me, some kind of easy and painless and wholly worked out fact." But whatever the convention is -- to what degree it is objectionable -- it is really not obvious that it presupposes (for its intelligibility or its normal functioning) that stating such a preferences in this matter would be either "easy and painless" and/or "wholly worked out fact." Given that two of the options are, (i) 'Ask Me', and (ii) a blank space for a write-in, it strikes me that the conference hosts don't need to be thought to make any such assumptions.

I do not mean to deny that Justin is right that a convention of public tagging/stickers will be felt to be compulsory to many. And he is also right that senior luminaries will find ways to escape the ways in which the convention is meant to stick (see what I did there?). But if the convention is worth having or not -- and at many conferences folk are often asked to wear name-tags, including tags that secure entry into the convention center [and we often have the option to adopt names and tags in a professional context] -- requires a more dispassionate analysis of the uses/abuses and benefits/costs of it than Justin offers. 

This is not the moment to contribute to such an analysis. After all, my post has gone on longer than Justin's original post (or Senecas's Letter 33 in Latin),** and I lack authority. Yet, in returning to his post today, after a week-end in the country, and reading the comments on it, I may better understand his reaction. He writes in follow up comments, "the insistence that I am 'cis', by people who do not know me and do not know what my inner life is like, [is experienced] as aggression." Identity attribution is always and, in our world, necessarily caught up in boundaries, and boundary policing. This means they run many dangerous risks; but as Justin signals (adoptive France) and his commentators remind him, identities, chosen and imposed, are also the clay, often the un-curable matter, with which our lives are formed and so also possible affirmations worth holding on to, sometimes, despite our intentions.

 

On Staying in Professional Philosophy while the activists are marching outside the Auditorium.

I will never forget sitting in our auditorium listening to a long talk about meta-ethics when, right outside the doors of the university, Black Lives Matter activists were marching (this was in St. Louis at the time of Ferguson). I could hear them chanting; the stark contrast between the esoteric subtleties of meta-ethics vs. the concrete realities of what would be considered “applied ethics” — a term usually uttered with slight contempt — made me deeply uncomfortable. How could I justify this exuberance of abstraction when there were so many real-world problems that needed the minds of intelligent people? I know, I know: the value of pure research, etc., etc. Rachel Williams."Why I left Philosophy,"  [HT Dailynous, I think, but can't find the link, so apologies if it was somebody else.]

If one wishes to improve professional philosophy, it makes sense to pay attention to those who leave the field. So it is worth paying attention to those who offer public testimonials about their departure. While there are also things Williams admires about professional philosophy and its members, Williams lists a number of reasons why continuing with professional philosophy seemed not worth the sacrifice(s) anymore. I want to talk a bit about the one quoted at the top of the post, but before I get to that I rephrase the others: 

• [A] There is a low probability of having one's written work read. 
• [B] There is s much written work to keep up with, that it is actually a lot of work (relative to pay-off) to satisfy referees's requests to read some relevant work Y.
• [C] Making B worse, much of the work that is published is unpleasant to read. [C*] This is because it is deliberately esoteric to ordinary people. 
• [D] Professional philosophy consists of high status citation/referee networks.
• [E] Philosophy is a hostile work environment toward graduate students, especially women. [E*] There is way too much brutality at conferences.
• [F] Outside top programs, finding a position in professional philosophy is a low probability event and the process is extremely unpleasant. [F*] This reduces the quality of life of PhD students in such programs.
• [G] Dropping out of professional philosophy is considered failure.
• [H[ Even extremely wealthy universities make a professional philosophy PhD unrewarding financially.
• [I] Contemporary professional philosophy is too abstracted from "pragmatic realities of human existence." [I*] There are social, professional biases against philosophers who work on questions with existential import (e.g., "race, gender, and bioethics."]
• [J] Philosophy is a waste of time because there are no decisive answers to our questions. 
• [K] Teaching critical theory to young minds is worthwhile, but this is devalued in the profession.

In what follows, I ignore [J] because I would argue there are good political reasons to favor keeping conversations going rather than trying to resolve them. 

I think [F-H, even E]** are connected, and they point to the essential cynicism of too many universities, which are run (in descending order) for the senior administrators, tenured faculty, the students, the staff, and then the graduate students. (In some state universities the cronies of the trustees should be inserted high on the list.) Sometimes, the local community benefits from nice facilities. It's pretty clear that in the current academic job-market, as long as the PhD is primarily viewed as a kind of union-card and not either a worthy goal in its own right or a sensible means toward other employment, then it is pretty alienating labor.* This is also the message of a book  like Matthew Crawford's “Shop Class as Soulcraft,”  which chronicles the journey from the nihilism of the academic PhD and the corporate office job, to life-enhancing and worthwhile craftsmanship (recall also this post).

In order to address [A] (&[C]), Williams has started a blog. Unsurprisingly, I think this makes sense. If one wants to be read by peers or , especially some wider public, then academic journals are rarely worth any effort. Professional philosophy has insanely low acceptance rates, still relatively slow publication  practices, and many journals are captured by informal networks (who when challenged will use the language of rigor, quality, etc.). Obviously, if you write because you want a professional position you try to find a way to work in the system.

It's undoubtedly true that in some places teaching is perhaps less valued than research success, but [K] did not resonate with me at all.  Nearly all permanent positions in professional philosophy involve non-trivial amounts of teaching (even if the working conditions vary greatly).  There are many different kind of joys (and diverging challenges) related to teaching, but if one is not receptive to any of these, that is, if one does not find teaching a worthy activity, then being in the profession may not be worth the effort (unless on belongs the relatively small group of folk who land research-intensive  positions.) It is undoubtedly true that serious professional conversation is dominated by research (informally and professionally) and not (recall) teaching; and it is undoubtedly the case that grant agencies mistakenly ignore the  impact of teaching on one's students. But I find teaching students basic reasoning and writing skills one of the few intrinsic goods of the profession, and it is a shame that as a profession we fail collectively to convey this to aspiring members of the guild. 

So, that leaves [I/I*] and the quoted passage. Let me start with a nitpicky comment (and so confirm one of Williams' points!): “applied ethics” is something different from being on the street being an activist. This is not to deny they can be connected, and in some people and philosophical traditions they may well be intrinsically connected. (And I agree a good number of professional philosophers have some contempt for applied ethics.) 

But it is by now a familiar fact that writing about oppression need not contribute to the undermining of oppression, and may even contribute to the stability of a system of oppression (by drawing would-be-talented activist/politicians into the life of academy). The previous sentence is compatible with some (let's say) service philosophy (recall Dotson) contributing, even successfully, to activism and other political attempts at fighting oppression. I believe there is a growing professional interest in work that tries to contribute to the philosophical diagnosis of various forms of oppression and injustice, and even provide means to undermine them. 

But having said that, I agree with Williams there is something awkward, sometimes even shameful, in being inside the auditorium while outside people are risking their well-being, even their lives to improve society for the vulnerable. In reading Williams, I was reminded that a few years ago Peter Railton delivered a Dewey lecture that attracted a lot of attention for its frank discussion of depression and mental illness in academic life. At the time, I noted that it also offered a stinging rebuke to those academics who prefer the auditorium over activism. In reflecting on his lecture, I wrote "everybody has the right to exit from activism, even ones that are merely symbolic or small gestures." Somewhat provocatively, I then appealed to Hobbes justify the claim, that "humanity's actions proceed from opinions, and the activity that shapes the content of these opinions is a philosophical task." This provoked important challenges by Mark Lance and Ruth Groff. In re-reading our exchange, I doubt they found my responses satisfying.

I have colleagues and friends (inside philosophy and a few more in political science), who in their research find ways to be scholar-activists (recall this post), and are even capable of flourishing. It is also important to remember that teaching others how to be activists, including intellectual-activists is an important task for universities (Mark Lance sensitized me to this), and that it is disheartening how unwilling university administrators (have  become or ) are to articulate this to critics of our students. But it is undeniable that scholar-activism is not an easy combination and I know many who struggle with (mental and physical) health because of it and lack of recognition by peers. 

This post has gone on too long, and not for the first time I am overcome with that uneasy feeling that those of us that stay and thrive in the profession are incapable of responding to the slamming doors and more subtle hints of those that leave and tell us that our self-image of rationality disguises from ourselves that we're like fiddling Nero with the flames of Rome burning creeping up on the ground we're standing. 

  

On Aftermath

The point was this darkness -- call it what you will -- this darkness and disorganisation were not mere negation, mere absence. They were both aftermath and prelude. The etymology of the word 'aftermath' is 'second mowing', a second crop of grass that is sown and reaped after the harvest is in. Civilisation, order, meaning, belief: these were not sunlit peaks to be reached by a steady climb. They were built and then they fell, were built and fell again or were destroyed. The darkness, the disorganisation that succeeded them had their own existence, their own integrity; were betrothed to civilisation, as sleep is betrothed to activity. In the life of compartments lies the possibility of unity, just as unity contains the prospect of atomisation. Better, in Mrs. Lewis's view, to live the compartmentalised, the disorganised life and feel the stark stirrings of creativity, than to dwell in civilised unity, racked by the impulse to destroy. (5)

[Clytemnestra] is seeking equality. Children will not be born from equality, not will it empires be  built or frontiers expanded, for the pure peace of equality begets nothing. It is all aftermath, predicated on the death of what was before. To beget requires the domination of one thing by the other, the domination of female form by male content; then, in order to nurture what has been begotten, the reverse. Clytemnestra wants no more begetting. She wants the peace of equality but to get it she will have  to use violence. To reach aftermath, first there has to be the event itself. (54-5)

The world Creon has inherited is a post-authority, post-familial world: it is aftermath, and Creon has the job of governing it. But how do you make people obey you, respect you, believe in you and in the reality you represent? Creon's idea is that you give  commands and then don't turn back on them, no matter what--a strategy the modern parent, presiding over chaos and unrule, occasionally adopts, only to find themselves insisting on a course of action long after its necessity and even its rationality have passed. (103)

Narrative is the aftermath of violent events. It is a means of reconciling yourself with the past. He says, the violence in the Odyssey is a story told afterwards, in a cave. (121)-Z

Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation by Rachel Cusk is greedily treated as a 'memoir' by reviewers (see here; here) and puff profiles. While understandable (the publisher's material encourages it), this focus is peculiar because it ignores the guidance of the title (which is akin to an essay or, to be self-referential, a blog post). This focus on it being a memoir is a bit unfortunate not just because it leads to mistakenly conflating Cusk's biography with narrated details. One example is Camilla Long's careless hatchet job ("the book is crammed with mad, flowery metaphors and hifalutin creative-writing experiments").

Unfortunately, these reviewers ignore the central narrative and structural puzzle of the novel (which reads as a series of lengthy autobiographical blog posts). This is odd because the narrative itself calls attention to the issue: "form...conceals truth, just as the body conceals the cancer that will destroy it. (55) The first seven chapters read as would-be-memoir of the aftermath of a divorce; while the first-person narrator makes no effort at fairness (and seems to think it is deeply ingrained but false move when applied to marriage), the narrative and narrated chronology seems fairly straightforward (with meditative reflections on Greek tragedy thrown in). It can't be fully straightforward because the first chapter has (fractal-like) the same title as the book. But the eight chapter "XYZ" is a series of very short vignettes involving three unnamed men (XYZ): one a therapist (Y), but the other two (X/Z) are undefined: are they hints of an affair that destroyed the narrator's marriage, are they post-marital flings, or are they mere possibilities? It's hard to say. Long is probably right that X is the divorced husband at a later date (see for some evidence here), but we can't be sure.

However, nearly all the reviews (except Long's) are silent on the final (ninth) chapter, which is told from the perspective of a Belgian (I think)* live-in nanny, who grew up in a (shall-we-say) unstable family environment and who witnesses the break-up of her host family in England. But that family is -- pace Long --  not the narrator's family. The book ends with the live-in nanny moving to another family in London (also not the one narrated in the  first seven chapters). Why do I think the nanny is, in some sense, a different story altogether? For two reasons: (i) the division of labor as seen by her in the home does not fit the division of  labor narrated in the first seven chapters; (ii) the emotional/physical collapse of the mom occurs in the nanny's perspective before the divorce and not after (as the narrator implies). Obviously, the two reasons are not decisive; part of the point of the first-person narrative is that the narrator is unreliable in some sense, unwilling to tell us the causes of the marriage's collapse nor quite capable of explaining her own dissolution. The problem is, if we treat the final chapter as the perspective of an impartial bystander, we're still stuck with imperfect access to the underlying facts; the live-in nanny's comprehension of English is so mediocre (she flunked her language test), that she is not a reliable witness. That is, the novel enacts the slipperiness of establishing the narratable 'facts.' 

I do not mean to suggest that it is not a memoir (I don't care); nor that it is not a meditation on feminism, the novel introduces the theme repeatedly at the start of the novel, and transformative experience;** nor that it is not an extended analysis of divorce from the vantage point of parents and children ("I have two homes...and I have  no home" (64-5)); nor that it does not raise complex questions about the ethics of writing about people known to the author.+ But here I want to close with a reflection on the title. I have to admit that when I first read 'aftermath,' I thought of it as saying, after numbers or after counted order, that is, (a species of) disordered meaninglessness. At times the novel affirms this thought: in reflecting on marriage, the narrator writes, "It is not to dismantle but to conserve it that strength is required, for it will come apart in an instant. It will come apart, that image, and what remains not a new or different image but a pile of pieces that mean nothing at all." (69)

But in the novel we are reminded of the etymology which refers to a seasonal moment after mowing. And the temporal framework is circular. Soon again there will be sowing and another harvest. As the narrator's teacher (Ms. Lewis) insists the aftermath is the unwanted -- by the propertied farmer -- grass after the harvest, which then needs to be mowed too in an eternal return. It is the yearly reminder of the denial that nature does nothing in vain; that from the perspective of man's estate of nature guarded by a benevolent divine there is, in fact, no sufficient reason for this presence and  subsequent activity. It is necessary, but pure waste.

Paradoxically, this perspective, the official story on  aftermath, is introduced by an authority figure (the teacher) who herself seems to advocate for a reversal of values (namely to treat aftermath as the site of freedom and creativity). That is to say, the novel articulates the battle between at least two takes on the nature of marriage, which throughout is treated not just as the ground of traditional political unity (peace by one name, institutionalized violence by the other), but itself also as a site of order, where in one conception one becomes complete in it, whereas in the other, one is annihilated by it. One is tempted into thinking that these are attributes of the same substance.++

Near the end of the book (with a nod to Plato),*** aftermath is equaled with the post-violence survival narrative. It's a backward looking. Reconciliation need not involve  truth. If we listen to its etymology, narrative reconciliation is a renewal (we tell again in order to give birth to something new that represents the old). It is tempting to see in aftermath a form of therapy (and throughout the novel we're invited to do so), but even so, I am more inclined to see it as a means to exert control. Why? Not just because the narrator tells us on the first page, in commenting on one of her daughter's love  of jigsaws and the other's building of silent card houses, that she sees these activities as 'attempts to exert control.' Aftermath is a way to control the narrative, not just about the failed marriage (and perhaps the causes of failure), but also to keep a sense of order while the narrator is presenting us with evidence of her engulfing  dissolution (anorexia, depression, numbness, alienation, etc.)--she seems close to being destroyed by a species of post traumatic stress.  From that perspective the whole narrative is an act of self-definition required by a state of emergency. This last thought is a bit fanciful, I admit, but on the opening page we are told that An argument is only an emergency of self-definition.

That is, we philosophers tend to tell ourselves that arguments are means to compel agreement; I am not the first to note the role of argument as a means of forcing the other into submission or silence. The novelist replies that argument is a means, an exceptional one, to self-definition. And, indeed, arguments never succeed at silencing others; but if we own arguments (as Socrates urged), they make explicit who we (ahh) come to be. To the novel's credit we are left unsure if that's a viable route.

 

 

 

 

Leading Philosophers Clueless about 'Public' Philosophy, Yet Wish to Control It

Does anybody remember the now unknown names of the Dijon academy that awarded the prize to Rousseau's first Discourse (and, later, his now less famous Letter on French Music)? History is unfair to the discerning judges, who launched the greatest career in public philosophy of the eighteenth century (which has quite a few contenders). Perhaps, if one believes in inductive risk, it is better this way because the train of Rousseau's ideas did not only have noble consequences and so one could judge the prize committee harshly. The point is that whatever the petty or elevated motives of the Academy were to institute their prize, or merely following European fashion, it translated its prestige into recognition of the essential task for philosophy: to give us systematic ideas and programs to live by or, at least, to challenge those we are currently accepting too easily. That means a willingness to take a chance on dangerous ideas.

Public philosophy (recall this post on my analysis)** is, ever since Socrates turned away from the heavens and to his contemporaries, the very justification of philosophy. Revelation agrees, Ye shall know them by their fruits. To forestall misunderstanding: this is not a rejection of professional philosophy and the intrinsic wonder-occasioned, often scholastic pursuit of puzzles and problems that characterizes so many of our professional activities. The by-products and sometimes even the intended results of attempted puzzle solving is to provide one of the main sources of fuel that drives innovation in public philosophy. (I do not share in the neurotic fear among my peers that we are not progressing; who cares as long as we're innovating and suppling the conceptual architecture of the public philosophy needed by humanity?)*

As an aside, such a consequentialist justification for the practice of philosophy is written into the DNA of analytic philosophy, especially those of us that embrace formal methods (recall here on Carnap vs Quine; here on Williamson; on Ernest Nagel). That's easy to see because analytic philosophy is substance-free: it's a sponge-like enterprise, characterized by if not topic neutral than generalist (that is empty-ish) methods and argumentative rigor.

Okay, so much for prelude.

The occasion for today's J'accuse is the simultaneous refusal by the Marc Sanders Foundation to award a cash prize ($4500) and publication in Philosopher's Imprint as its annual Public Philosophy Award because "no essay satisfied their standards," and the (personal) insistence of this year's committee member David Velleman, in remarks in a Dailynous thread that last year's prize, "Why Throwing 92 Heads in a Row is not Surprising," fully merited the award.+ Now, I really don't want to take a piss on a junior colleague, who writes well, has wide learning, and a keen interest in big issues. Let's encourage that (writing well, wide learning, etc)! I am happy that Philosopher's Imprint published his essay. But you ought to know something has gone wrong if you give a prize for this sentence, "Put less formally, the idea that seems to be at work in both of these formal treatments of surprise is that the surprisingness of a conjunction e1 & e2 must be a function of the surprisingness of e1, the surprisingness of e2 and the connection between them." The whole art if not beauty of public philosophy is that you can convey the most exacting and (sure) formal ideas without such clunky prose or ever having to introduce (this is a symptom/example) such notation!** The main problem of the winning piece (to repeat as public philosophy) is not that it tries to convey technical material somewhat less technically, the main problem is that it is hard to say what it ultimately wishes to convey. (It is something about 'surprise and belief;' about 'rational belief;' or about the difference  between the mathematics of surprise and the mathematics of probability?)  The piece has other, more stylistic problems: including the repeated use of italics to convey emphasis. (I am a sinner, too!) I could go on. You may think I hate the piece, I don't. Except for not sticking to one main issue, it conveys very nicely the kind of things we try to teach all the time: clean prose, relevance, underlying argumentative rigor, etc.++ But the virtues we teach are not the virtues of public philosophy. This is why I register my protest!

So, before I continue I should mention that this year's committee involved, Susan Wolf (UNC Chapel Hill), Ken Taylor (Stanford University and Philosophy Talk), Barry Maguire (Stanford University), David Velleman (NYU and Editor of Philosophers’ Imprint), and Brigid Hains (Editorial Director, Aeon Magazine). What they (the philosophers on the committee) have in common is that they have (a) high  institutional prestige; (b) are (at their best) excellent philosophical prose-stylists; and (c) have experience in (organizing) what I'll call philosophical outreach (philosophy cafe, philosophy talk, etc.) The more senior of these are influential in professional philosophy with distinguished positions and students all over the profession. However, none of them have  produced a single memorable instance of long form public philosophy which they define as "(minimum 3,000 words, maximum 10,000) with significant philosophical content or method written by someone with significant philosophical training primarily for an audience of non-academics." (Okay, that's a defeasible claim.) That's because writing stylish philosophical prose that we write for other philosophers is distinct from producing excellent public philosophy. (Dan Dennett and Martha Nussbaum may be the contemporay exceptions to the rule.)

Nor have the members of this committee shown themselves champions of long form philosophy before. (Of course, their conversion to the cause is to be welcomed. And they may think that this blog post attacking them is just evidence that all good deeds go punished.) Even so, their main qualifications seem to be prestige, the ability to recognize philosophical content produced by somebody with philosophical training, and editorial access to the Philosopher's Imprint. You may think I am being so unfair here. But remember the committee's talents were wasted because they launched no long form essay into the world this year and promote the wrong exemplar.

Who [the Fxxx] are you, Schliesser?

Well, I don't think I am disclosing anything confidential, but I had, in fact, been approached to submit to this year's contest by the committee. So at least somebody thinks I may have skill in the matter. (I declined cause I really need not produce more stuff.) More important, when I left NewAPPS in November 2013, I wrote in self-serving, but sincere, fashion: "I take great pride in the fact that we have revived the art of the philosophical essay; when I feel melancholic, I turn to the 'NewAPPS back-lists' of Bell, Des Chene, Matthen, Brogaard, and Cogburn." (Before you think I am only self-serving, notice I did not include Schliesser.) So, at least I have a track-record of saying  I care greatly about the fate of long-form philosophy (including opportunity costs, being the subject of anonymous mockery, etc.) I am not claiming my blogging buddies produced the best or only long form essays of the period. But it is indisputable that prior to NewAPPS, no group of philosophers was so devoted to producing long form philosophy since (haha) the Berlin Enlightenment. (Okay that was over the top.)

Yes, you could argue, more soberly, that Simon Critchley's The Stone and his more famous contributors reached a wider audience and were more influential leveraged by the authority of the New York Times. I won't argue you with you, except to note that because NewAPPS could ignore marketing (no advertising dollars) and the relevance of the news cycle, our essays were untainted by extrinsic factors. Either way, between Critchley's line up and the NewAPPS crowd I mentioned you could have an award committee that grasps the nature and substance of public philosophy by way of the long form essay. (Since those halcyon days, Helen de Cruz, Lisa Guenther, Eric Schwitzgebel, Omri Boehm, Amia Srinivasan, have been quite notable producers of public long form essays [apologies to the many i leave out].)

So here's my best case scenario suggestion, ask world class practitioners of the philosophical long form essay to be judges for the Sanders Public Philosophy Award.** Worst case scenario, this crowd may have slightly less prestige, on average, than the present committee (and undoubtedly quite a few will find it annoying that I have name-dropped them into this controversy). And just maybe this committee will allow itself the privilege to give the money and attention to somebody who has no professional philosophical training at all. Cause generous souls recognize that the way to protect philosophy's public future is not to run a disciplinary cartel.

Given that the present Sanders foundation is -- unlike the original and rather quirky (philosophy-wise) Marc Sanders -- risk averse and primarily giving money to inside-the-philosophical-beltway people/projects,** the suggestion to dramatically change the composition of the jury is silly. To be sure, the foundation can do whatever it wants with its money and has every right to ignore my unsolicited suggestions. But because it is shaping the future of philosophy along multiple dimensions (for my argument see here), we should judge it by its foreseeable effects. As is, this Prize should not be allowed to define how we think of the long form essay and/or public philosophy. 

You may grant my larger complaints and still think that the committee may well have  been right to award no prize this year. Shouldn't we trust our peers? As my regular readers now know, from the start of  my blogging career, I have been a critic of all behind-closed-doors-editorial decisions of our profession, so I am not a fan of such professional deference. But, as it happens, I have now read some of the contributions to this year's prize; I can't say they were the best of the crop. But they were prize-worthy.

Because I do not want to criticize only, let me offer a modest, second-best suggestion: it would be far more fruitful if the Public Philosophy Prize became an annual, retrospective award for published long form essays. (Apologies to the person who first suggested this to me!) That way, given that the discipline's gate-keepers are not trying to anoint the next Rousseau, they need not play too many other roles here (setting standards, judging what should be  published in a leading philosophical outlet, handing out cash prizes). Rather the committee could thereby express it sincere thanks, perhaps even on behalf of the rest of us, to the noble editors and curators who made hearing public philosophy's voice(s) possible. It could even republish the best piece in Philosopher's Imprint and so give it a professional seal of approval that (let's be practical) will count to tenure.

 

On Starting a (Philosophy) Blog

About three or four times a year I get asked for advice on how to start a philosophy blog. (My first thought is always, haven't they heard blogs died?) So, this post is meant for those who wish to start such a blog or who like, so to speak, a peak behind the curtains.  I have organized my notes along some topical headers, but obviously they interact with each other. (Also, this post on the nature and risks of being a public philosopher provides important background.)

• Audience

The only good reason to start a blog is because you wish an audience for your ideas and have a desire to see them discussed. (Sometimes you are nudged into it because some grant agency or department chair wants to see more outreach.) Journal articles are controlled by others (and in philosophy have insanely low acceptance rates), have very restrictive form, length, and content requirements, and even when you get through all the gate-keepers have limited audience size. Newspaper editorial pages have huge audience, but have very restrictive word and style limits. Even so, the first thing to reflect on is who are you, or do you imagine, writing for? You can pitch the blog to your academic peers in your area of specialization, your students, the profession at large, or the academy, or an even wider public.  That is, your intended audience will constrain not just the topics you will discuss as well the the manner in which you do so. Of course, they can become moving targets and change, but to develop a blog you need to have an intended audience in mind (even if only philosophers of the future.)

Every audience presupposes different background knowledge and are more or less forgiving of different kinds of (specialized) writing styles. I admire Bleeding Heart Libertarians because while they write for a non-academic, rather politicized (and large!) audience, they simultaneously are interesting and accessible to academics who do not share their shared background commitments. But I also admire Brian Weatherson, when he was still blogging actively; Brian's blog was generally rather technical and he did not compromise on this. But he writes clean, lively prose and made you see the point of the apparatus while you were sitting in on a seminar he was virtually having with his peers and graduate students.

The bad news is most blogs, even well written and designed ones, have small audience size. That is sometimes a matter of  bad luck [just as you publish a neat post on modality, a film clip of Timothy Williamson is shared on youtube, etc.] or bad marketing (you need to use social media, link to other blogs, that is, become a node in a lot of discussions), or an unwillingness to talk about sex scandals or share professional gossip. The main problem with most blogs is that they lack voice or what I call persona.

• Persona

The hardest problem is to figure out what persona you will project in order to connect with your audience given the ideas you want to discuss. I tend to suggest that you need to project and magnify a part of you that inspires a response in one's would be audience. (Of course, if you are Kierkegaard you can develop many different kinds of such personae.) For those of us, who are self-conscious teachers, we do something similar with our class room persona, which we use as a means to facilitate learning, to provoke reflection, or generate discussion. I know quite a few shy people, who qua blogger present a persona they would like to be in other parts of their life.

Now, it  is significant that if your blog takes off, this blog-persona has consequences how people will interpret and see you. So, you have to be willing to live with such consequences, even unintended consequences sometimes due to selective attention to only few utterances or posts. It surprised me, for example, albeit  it was an entirely foreseeable consequence, that I have come to be understood by some readers as a shrill social justice warrior (despite my skeptical sensibility).

• Form and Content

Most philosophy blogs are brief reads (250 words) or short reads (800-1200 words). It's not as if long reads (over 1500 words) are impossible, but life is short and few people are eager to pay attention to you for extended periods of time. Personally, I would love to see more use of graphics and video-moving content in philosophy blogs. While the best blogs  -- through the use of hyperlinks -- create an oeuvre, a system, a privileged set of conversation partners, or a pathway into different ways of thinking, by nature blogs are (recall here and here) ephemera. 

Some content restrictions and style structures follow from the blog provider you use. You should really research different kind of blog providers--not just their fee structures, but also their permissible templates, the capacity of the templates to do what you want to do with the blog, and the explicit restrictions of speech they impose. Some blog providers give you a discount but then plaster advertising on your otherwise clean house look.  This is a big decision because once you go with a particular provider you kind of lock yourself in, and when you switch you may have trouble to carry the archive of your past blogs with you. 

Academics are disciplined into forms of cautious and pedantic writing that are tedious to read. Like all non-disciplinary  writing any given individual blog post needs a hook--the first few sentences are key. On average, a blog needs to state its point or conclusion in the first paragraph. Luckily analytical philosophers are trained to state their thesis in the first sentence, and glorify polemics, so  the transition to blogging is not so difficult, provided -- and here our training pulls in the other direction -- one is not a perfectionist of a certain sort.  That is to say, analytic philosophers impose on ourselves a demand of disambiguation against any kind of uncharitable misreading. That makes for a great satirical blog post, but destroy whatever conatus (in the Spinozist, not the Hobbesian or Cartesian sense) a blog post may have. 

That is to say, most good blogs have in addition to a provider who delivers a range of container templates, they (the blogs) also have an implicit and regular template in which the content is articulated. The simplest one is three-fold: (i) hook [thesis/point]; (ii) argument/evidence; (iii) polemical restatement of the thesis. (For others, recall here and here.) Of course, over time one learns to play with different structures to present one's point.

• Frequency

The most important point about frequency is that it needs to be fairly regular--certainly while you are developing your blog and audience. The audience should want to expect one, even if they can't receive a new piece when they wish. But once a blog is established that's compatible with extended downtime. Schwitzgebel's The Splintered Mind and Helen de Cruz, who divides her blogging activities among different sites, allow quite a bit of down-time in between posts. But their pieces are received with great interest. 

Few academics have the time to do a daily post and it is really unnecessary to draw a regular audience. In fact, it may reduce one's audience because people really don't want to spend that much time with you (we academics are not that fascinating to others). The other, more frequent problem is that many blogs start with a gush of activity (often drawing on ideas and posts that motivated setting up the blog in the first place), and after a few weeks or months they run out of steam and die down. Some people really don't have a lot to say and become aware of this in a timely fashion. My only suggestion is to think about blogging as producing a series, some of these are open-ended and some a circumscribed.  Of course, it's okay if blogs die. 

• Comments Policy

One of the most important decisions that you'll make, which will influence your audience size, audience engagement, and your health is your comments policy. If you allow automatic (un-moderated) anonymous commenting you will probably have  larger, even loyal readership and more comments than otherwise would be possible. You will also allow your  blog ro be hijacked by, and in a certain sense you will be responsible for providing a platform for, some of the worst and unsavory ideas out there.  If you want to produce the end of times, go for it.

That leaves either moderated commenting of anonymous comments or moderated comments of owned comments. The former is extremely time-consuming, the latter reduces the number of comments significantly. If you want to be a forum for discussions you probably need to allow anonymous commenting because so many people worry about reputational costs of their comments, have legitimate concerns about being targeted by some lunatic or anonymous website, or concerns about employability or tenure-ability. Either way, write a good comments policy, so you can re-direct the aggrieved to it. 

• Time management

I hinted at the significance of time management. It is very easy to have one's blogging become all-consuming. Drafting a piece and moderating comments, not to mention an obsessive eye on readership numbers and flows, can be a time-sink. Obviously this is more true of very high profile blogs, and the odds of your blog becoming high profile are -- time and attention are  scarce goods -- low. Even so, it's good to set some rules for yourself about when you post and when you check comments (etc.). If you care about audience size you'll also learn when are good times to post a piece. Timing really matters.

Group blogs can be very time consuming because they require quite a bit of coordination behind the scenes. But they do allow taking quiet breaks from blogging without much disruption to the blog.

• Professional Risk

You have to think hard about this. Lots of peers think blogging is not serious and not philosophy. Almost certainly your blogging will not meet exacting professional standards of, say, an Analysis article. Alternatively, when you do get an audience, you run the risk that they know your blogging work better than your scholarly work.

A lot of people use their blogs to promote the scholarly views they have developed in print. That's a dissemination model of blogging. That's relatively low risk because you have already done the hard work and understand (presumably) the scholarly landscape. Of course, if you cut scholarly corners you are giving more visibility to your would-be-enemies/critics to hunt you down.

Alternatively you can use a blog to develop or discover a position. However, if you use a blog to develop new ideas or new interests, you run the risk of looking like an amateur or worse. 

Okay, this is just over 1800 words, so I have gone on too long. But maybe you found it helpful.

 

Mea Culpa (but for what exactly?)

Plimpton 322 is a remarkable artifact, and we have much to learn from it. When I taught math history, I loved opening the semester by having my students read a few papers about it to show how much scholarship has gone into understanding such a small document and how accomplished scholars can disagree about what it means. It demonstrates differences in the way different cultures have done mathematics and outstanding computational facility. It has raised questions about how ancient Mesopotamians approached calculation and geometry. But using it to sell a questionable pet theory won’t get us any closer to the answers.--Evelyn Lamb "Don't Fall for Babylonian Trigonometry Hype: Separating fact from speculation in math history." Scientific American. [HT Richard Zach & Wayne Myrvold]

One of the most dispiriting aspects of our public, intellectual culture* -- it may be  always like this* -- is the rarity of (ahh) genuine thought. I mean by this something like the following: as I have remarked before, nearly all would-be-contributions by academics and intellectuals to public debate are driven by constraints put on them by the media-logic and profitability demands of our media. These contributions must be news-responsive (and fairly rapid) and, thus, essentially reactive and opportunistic. They presuppose, thus, a kind of (sorry to sound Heideggerian) ready-ness by the would-contributor, who either recycles stances that were known prior to publication or markets the forthcoming fruits (a book, article) of past work. This creates the phenomenon  that any event gets slotted into known narratives. To put this simply: news is an occasion to pontificate, to market, to politicize, etc. and, thereby, amplifies the spectacle. 

What news is generally not is a clog on the train of zero-sum media impressions. That's a shame because we need crevices through which our insights grounded in disciplined thought can creep. I'd like to think of these Digressions as one of those pathways in the shadows; that's why I don't succumb to the lure of advertising on these pages so my decisions are not driven by the profit-motive, and remain independent.

For example, this week I published a number of posts (recall mine), two of them (here and here) by a guest contributor Daniel Hogendoorn, who is an expert of the public policy and science/technology of flood-management and who had done extensive research in Houston. These posts focused on how certain habits of governance combined with particular values and culture seem to undermine the very possibility of sustained effort at preventive flood measures in Houston. The readership of this blog consists almost entirely of other academics. I was a bit surprised to see that the (pleasant) responses we received (primarily on facebook and twitter) all focused on three rather familiar tropes: (i) climate change; (ii) President Trump's hostility to climate science (and his narcissism); (iii) what the best strategy is to respond to a disaster. I am the last to deny that once a disaster has happened (iii) is very important. And that in the scheme of things (i-ii) matter hugely. But as Hogendoorn argues, disaster response would be cheaper and more modest if prevention were taken serious and neither (i-ii) are really the source of Houston's present problems. (Again, it is possible that climate change  contributed to the extent of Harvey.)

But because governance is not a standard trope (and admittedly a boring topic when articulated by Mike Dukakis), and right now not salient as a policy solution (e..g, more markets, better families, less pollution, more racial awareness, more education, more surveillance powers to the state, less democracy, more conservatives in higher education, and, of course, less academic specialization, etc.) in our media-universe, it almost seems as if what Hogendoorn said can't be discussed on its own merits. While this exemplifies, I think, how ingrained our bad habits of thought are, it's especially curious because if one accepts that climate change is real, strengthening governance and preventive measures are going to be crucial to humanity's survival. Yes, it would be nice to prevent or slow down more climate change, but the collective, global actions problems facing these are, in certain respects, much larger than improving intermediate governance and prevention. (The previous sentence may be false; I have provided no evidence for it.)

C'ést la vie, of course. The wise and virtuous are a little knot of companions, after all. Today, I don't mention any of this to lament. Rather, it's time for a mea culpa to my readers.

Last week, I published a piece, "On the Ancient Wisdom of the Babylonians." It was prompted by media hype (by scientific standards) surrounding a new interpretation of a Babylonian clay-tablet, P322. Once alerted, I followed my standard procedure: I skipped the sensationalists reporting on it, and went straight to the underlying journal article. I read it through carefully. And then without delay, I gave in to temptation. I used the authors's framing (introduction and conclusion) as an occasion to develop my own views (on the history of philosophy/science, etc.). Now, to be sure, nearly all my blog posts have this character; I enjoy thinking with other people's minds, and enter into a dialogue with, as well as be disciplined by, them, and, thereby, figure out what I (ought to) think. This is why the vast majority of these Digressions have (lengthy) epigraphs and often consists of readings.

Now, because I know a reasonable amount about Babylonian science, I was careful not to rely on the most speculative claims about P322 (and I avoided recycling some of the mistakes surrounding the paper's claims). So, I stand by all that I did write last week in that post. (That, of course, is a speculative interpretation of the significance of certain enduring structures and patterns of philosophical thought.) But I let you down, my readers, by not engaging critically with the paper itself. Some of its problems (a strange and inconsistent use of 'exactitude' and 'accuracy') are easily spotted by anybody with modest philosophical training. Others consist in a kind of overselling. I should have flagged these problems in my piece.**And I apologize for this serious omission which contributed to the kind of general thoughtlessness in the public reception of P322.

Some of these problems may well be due to the 'pet theory' (about contemporary mathematics) that drives the interpretation of P322. Luckily, Lamb does an excellent job debunking most of the questionable claims in the media. Having said that, while I understand Lamb's annoyance at many inflated and a few of the clearly erroneous claims about the superiority of Babylonian trig over modern versions, I don't think Lamb, in turn, really tries to do justice to reconstruction and argument of the paper itself (to be found in  sections 5 and 6 of the paper); rather she seems to be targeting the claims of the instruction video (which probably is the source of all the media hyperbole). The paper, however, generously refers to other scholars, and, if one ignores some of the flaws highlighted by Lamb, also offers a very useful introduction to what is distinctive about Babylonian mathematical practice and the would-be-purpose of P322. (That would make a useful essay post day.) That video, while starting off cautiously, does make many wrongheaded claims and Lamb is right to mock them.

 

 

 

On Philosophy as (moral) Improver (of Others); or on the Art of Wisdom [with some stuff on the Hypatia affaire]

[O]ne must not talk to a man unless he is willing to listen. That is why it is often doubted whether Diogenes and the other Cynics, who employed an undiscriminating freedom of speech and offered advice to any who came in their way, ought to have pursued such a plan.....This very thing [giving unsolicited advice]...is, I believe, exactly what a great-souled man ought not to do; his influence is weakened; it has too little effect upon those whom it might have set right if it had not grown so stale. The archer ought not to hit the mark only sometimes; be ought to miss it only sometimes. That which takes effect by chance is not an art; wisdom is an art [Sapientia ars est]; it should have a definite aim, choosing only those who will make progress, but withdrawing from those whom it has come to regard as hopeless, -yet not abandoning them too soon, and just when the case is becoming hopeless trying drastic remedies....

As to our friend Marcellinus, I have not yet lost hope.  He can still be saved, but the helping hand must be offered soon.  There is indeed danger that be may pull his helper down; for there is in him a native character of great vigour, though it is already inclining to wickedness.  Nevertheless I shall brave this danger and be bold enough to show him his faults. --Seneca, Letter 29.

A philosopher needs to be willing to restrain her tongue. Not everyman will benefit from her wisdom; and not every moment is apt. So, a ruling philosophical virtue is the exercise of self-command. Now, in context it is clear that Seneca presents philosophy as a kind of cure or therapy/exercise for a particular individual (whose soul is, thereby, saved). The analogy with medicine (and religion) is deliberate. But the improvement (flourishing/mental health, etc.) is also intended to be moral (in the modern sense). In fact, the cure can be dangerous to student and philosophical-healer:  Seneca makes clear that one of the medicines involves showing another his depravity [pravum]. Seneca recognizes that not everybody welcomes being shown a mirror in which one's moral flaws are made visible. (He also has sobering things to say about the expected reactions to such mirroring.)*

While few professional philosophers understand their own mission in these ways, more than a few understand that they may be called to speak truth to power, challenge the status quo, or show the theoretical path toward an improved, more just (happier, more egalitarian, etc.) world. We are often invited to engage with the public and I work in a system of higher education where public dissemination (and valorization) of one's research is expected. During the past years, many of us have been reminded that there are many social agents and forces, which try to silence and intimidate professors [fill in your favorite examples here].

It is not controversial that to be silenced is bad. And self-censorship out fear of external intimidation is bad, too. (I leave aside here if one is blameworthy if one self-censors out of fear.) What interests me here is that Seneca also advocates a worthy self-censorship. I think we can discern in his text two reasons for worthy self-censorship: (i) if one judges that one's words will not have desirable effects on one's audience; (ii) if one judges that the impotency of one's words, even if truth-apt, reduce one's credibility in the future. Both (i-ii) are instances of prudence (mixed in, as it happens, with some paternalism in (i).)

I was reminded of the Feministphilosophers response to the Hypatia affaire. After noting that it is difficult to take a stand as a group blog and noting possible source of conflict of interest among some of its members.  They write that:

3. Some of us do not feel that online discussion of this issue is doing any good for anyone.  A variety of carefully thought-out positions have already been articulated, and we do not feel that we would have anything useful to add.  Much of the online discussion has only served to cause more pain to people on all sides who are trying their best to do what is right.  We do not want to add to this.  In short, even though we are a blog, we don’t think that online discussion is always useful.  In this case, we think further online discussion is counterproductive, and we’re not going to contribute to it.

I have to admit that at first I was a bit surprised by the post: anything more than 'no comment' invites further discussion (and a blog can simply skip the topic). As a former NewAPPSer I sympathized with the trickiness of formulating a "blog view" in light of individual diversity. But I also thought that the Hypatia case raised many interesting and pertinent questions about philosophical methodology and sociology not just for feminist philosophers, but for us all. It makes a huge intellectual difference if one understands the affair as a question about the nature of responsible speech (recall), or about refereeing practices in socially engaged philosophy (recall), or about who has the authority to speak on behalf or in place of others (recall). But I recognize that others think the affair is fundamentally about proper journal processes, including (as the winners of the internal power struggle at Hypatia state) "adherence to guidelines issued by COPE guidelines"; or about how well meaning scholarship can cause unintentional harm; or about how to publish in a field of scholarship where one may come to think that (quoting Richard Moran) "much of it is just plain awful" and so one has "every right to ignore work, even whole areas of work."**(Add your own take here.) More important, perhaps, the Hypatia affair raises interesting questions for feminism about its relationship to (the intersections of) trans-gender and trans-racial (etc.) issues.

So, at the time, I was greatly disappointed by this stance because I felt important issues would go unexplored. I think the members of the blog would have added to the  discussion, perhaps even elevated it. But in subsequent debates we would have learned more. That is, I would have viewed -- and here I show my un-selfconscious liberalism -- the ensuing conversations and debates as a discovery mechanism.

But, of course, Feministphilosophers is not saying that there is nothing of interest to be discovered here; rather they do not wish to host the conversation about it (online). They appeal directly to a no-harm principle (avoid adding pain). But they also invoke a version of Seneca's (i) when they claim online discussion of this issue is not doing any good for anyone. So Seneca's position is not merely hypothetical today. And, in reflecting on Feministphilosophers' decision, I think it is clear that from their own perspective they were engaged in worthy-self-censorship. (And by showing restraint the conversation about Hypatia did die down.)

One may claim that a blog goes against the spirit of Seneca's position. For in the very same letter he inveighs against catering to the crowd. "It takes trickery to win popular approval; and you must needs make yourself like unto themselves." In fact, he goes further by claiming (somewhat interestingly in light of his own experiences as a successful playwright), and by quoting Epicurus (but he is clear this is true for all schools), that a sage does not really understand what moves the crowd [quae probat populus ego nescio].+ For a blog is read or at least always runs the risk of being read by many not by a particular individual.

But so are Seneca's Letters. They are formally addressed to Lucilius, but we have already seen (recall letter 21) that he explicitly writes for others (including posterity too). And so, obliquely, Seneca raises here the question when he exercises worthy self-censorship in his presentation of his authorial persona, who dispenses self-regulation and medicines of the mind to others. And not for the first time when I read Seneca's Letters, I feel I have entered a dizzying hall of mirrors.