My Honest Views II
My Honest Views II
I see that my innocuous post “My Honest Views” has rubbed some people up the wrong way. I confess I find this very amusing. Clearly, my little poem was meant as partly tongue-in-cheek and set to trap the unwary reader (I made a large catch). I notice that people don’t seem to object to the truth of my remarks, only to the person they think is making them—all about my “arrogance” etc. Who cares if I am arrogant—what skin is it off your nose? I confess too that I had been reading a lot of (and about) Nabokov lately, whose scathing views on hallowed writers were notorious and sometimes excoriated (but always bracing and largely correct). Also, I like to try out new literary forms of philosophical discourse designed to challenge and provoke. But let’s get boringly factual and prosaically pedestrian (there will be no backing down, I’m afraid). Everyone thought that David Lewis’s views on possible worlds were bonkers, as he explicitly recognized (those “incredulous stares” were genuinely incredulous). Now I don’t mind the consideration of bonkers views in philosophy and I thought his views on the ontology of possible worlds were well worth thinking about (I wrote about them seriously). But come on, really, they were completely bonkers. As to Quine, all the crack logicians (I’m thinking of Saul Kripke in particular) thought Quine was a pretty amateurish mathematical logician (Quine’s theorem anyone?). Outside of that he confined himself to a very narrow strip of philosophy and seemed to have little interest in, or knowledge of, other strips. He wasn’t what you might call a generalist. And his philosophical views were pretty out there and not exactly lucidly defended (I reviewed him once and also wrote about his attack on the analytic-synthetic distinction). Quine basically thought that most traditional philosophy was rubbish, and he said as much (see “Epistemology Naturalized”). He was an unreconstructed positivist and behaviorist. Hardly anyone agreed with him. Now consider Strawson, my dear teacher and friend: a very able and significant philosopher, but baffled by tracts of the subject. When I first met him as a student, he asked me how advanced my formal logic was; I said not very. He smiled broadly and said “Good!” He found that subject difficult (don’t we all?). I don’t believe he ever mastered Tarski’s theory of truth—all the rage in Oxford at the time. I don’t think he had much of a grip on large parts of the philosophy of language and mind, let alone existentialism. Fine, understandable; but a fact. He was no philosophical polymath. Dummett, for his part, knew very little about large areas of contemporary philosophy; I remember him being quite baffled when I brought up Jerry Fodor. And yes, Jerry Fodor: brilliant man, fast as a speeding bullet and just as deadly, but completely deaf to most of philosophy, which he thought was a total waste of time and shouldn’t even be taught. He was a psychologist without a lab. Academics are apt to be narrow, and can be pretty clueless outside of their specializations. And so with the other philosophers I concisely characterized. I’m not seeing the problem that my critics are so up in arms about; they just don’t like me saying it. I wasn’t writing an academic reference for these chaps after all, just giving my own sincere thoughts about them. You got a problem with that? Free speech and all that muck. I even gave an unflattering description of myself in the comments following my post. We all have our blind spots, our philosophical scotomas.[1]
[1] In case you think I am getting soft in my old age, let me add that the comments I have seen have been absolutely ridiculous (and so depressingly American). Why-oh-why do people insist on being so plain dumb? Is thought really that difficult?
I saw some of it. It was all very stupid and based on completely missing the semi-playful or ironic nature of the post. Also, the response is clearly motivated by insecurity. These people would like to continue to feel very smug for occupying an academic post despite the fact that they are objectively extremely mediocre. Your choice words about the leading lights of the discipline reminded them of their meagre abilities. The guy who sent out your blog post made his name in philosophy by writing on the philosophically trivial, culturally salient topic of “moral grandstanding” (the same concept as “virtue signaling” just with a different name).
Perceptive: these people are truly pathetic, but nasty too. Mediocre is the half of it.
It was actually quite good piece, or a very good piece. Even celebrated professors should not be beyond criticism, and there is a difference between this blog and an academic journal.
Even Searle, whom I’m a big fan of, once admitted he doesn’t know any (or much) Aristotle.
It’s more what professionals talk about behind closed doors. I don’t think Searle was much into the history of philosophy, but he did know some science.
on a slightly different note, I just read an exchange you had with Patricia Churchland, in the NYRoB a decade or so ago.
I don’t know much about her, except that she is well referenced in the books I’ve read about Mind. But it’s a great debate…
I’m glad you liked it; I never found her much use philosophically.