Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Awaiting the English-language version

Does anyone know when the English-language translation of this interview with the President will be released?

UPDATE: These folks apparently got their hands on a translation, and have been kind enough to document the lies and inaccurate statements, one by one.

The Diary of Samuel Pepys...

...in "blog" form. A charming idea, and obviously a labor of love, since the site is full of helpful links explaining references and the like.

The Assault on Middle Eastern Studies

I must commend this American Conservative article on the right-wing assault on Middle Eastern Studies in universities. As the author correctly observes: "While academia is doubtless more left-leaning than many other professional environments, it is by no means the extremist left-wing monolith that the neocons claim. In reality, some institutions tend to be critical of U.S. policy and others not; some tend to support Arab positions, while others express sympathy for Israel. Some engage in 'leftist' post-colonial studies, others in quantitative survey work, and other still in 'rightist' political-culture studies. There is great diversity of perspectives, and the debate between them enriches academic inquiry and improves the general knowledge base. This is what has made the U.S. home to many of the finest academic institutions in the world."

Janet Jackson's Breast

I gather it appeared during the Super Bowl halftime show last week. This article sums up the whole brouhaha well:

"This is the message: A woman's bare breast is a horrific and disturbing thing, completely inappropriate for an afternoon of wholesome macho homoerotic skull-bashing NFL violence and endless hours of nauseating commercial crassness -- unless the woman is, you know, a cheerleader. Now rush off to bed kids, and read your Bibles while Mommy and Daddy pop some Zoloft and Levitra and crack a few Bud Lights and head off to the fetish dungeon to lick our new Ford GT. Got it.

"Yes, a woman's flesh is unspeakable evil. However, umpteen erectile-dysfunction commercials and crotch-biting pisswater Bud Light commercials and toxic-junk-food commercials and faux-macho truck commercials and the ad featuring two old people beating each other up over a bag of greasy potato chips, why, that's just tasteful, healthy capitalism."

And do read the final paragraph.

I would ask all Canadian and European readers not to laugh too hard at the U.S. on this one.

Berryman to British Columbia

Sylvia Berryman (PhD, Texas; AOS: ancient), currently an Assistant Professor at Ohio State University, has accepted a tenure-track job at the University of British Columbia, her undergraduate alma mater.

Indexicals, Children, and Kant

I was corresponding with a distinguished philosopher about the shared affection of our small children for indexicals and possessive pronouns (such as "me" and "mine"). My anecdote about my oldest, when he was 2:

Father: "I'm me, you're you."

Son: "No, I'm me, and you're you."

Father: No, I"m me, you're you."

Son: "No, no, no, I'm me, and you're you."

etc.

Debates about "me" and "you," this philosopher noted, soon give way to reflections on "me" and what's "mine." This philosopher observed: "Kant got it all wrong about the basic categories of conscious experience. Concepts of possession beat those of causality and substance any day." Indeed!

Risse on Left Libertarianism

I shall venture the opinion that this paper by philosopher Mathias Risse (who is also a very fine Nietzsche scholar!) shall prove to be an important contribution to the growing literature on left-libertarianism. From the abstract:

"Left-libertarian theories of justice hold that agents are self-owners and that natural resources are owned in some egalitarian manner. Unlike egalitarianism, left-libertarianism endorses full self-ownership, and thus places strict limits on what others may do to one's person without one's permission. Unlike right-libertarianism, it holds that natural resources may be privately appropriated only with the permission of, or with payments to, the members of society. Like right-libertarianism, left-libertarianism holds that the basic rights of individuals are ownership rights. However...[t]he set of reasons that support egalitarian ownership of natural resources stand in a deep tension with the set of reasons that would prompt one to endorse a right to self-ownership. In light of their underlying commitments, a defender of either of the views that left-libertarianism combines would actually have to reject the other....This paper, however, should not be understood in support of right-libertarianism: rather, it should be understood as capturing a general resistance to libertarian thought."

Reflections on Blogging After 6 Months and 100,000+ Visits

(1) The quality of discussion and commentary in the blogosphere is neither better nor worse than in the public culture generally. Just as in the public culture, you can locate alternative points of view that have intellectual substance, so too, you can do the same in the blogosphere. The blogosphere has not made any advance on this score over the mere fact of the Internet making it possible, e.g., to get to Znet or TomDispatch, with ease from your home or office computer.

(2) Although I started out posting very little on politics, the temptation to post on political and cultural matters is great, and I have largely succumbed. This seems to have correlated with a spike in readership as well--average weekday visits are topping 1200 per day over the last couple of weeks.

(3) The blog has proved an effective way to circulate ideas in which I'm actually invested intellectually--such as my views on American Legal Realism, or Dworkin, or Marx. I have been able to reach worthy readers whom I otherwise would have missed. I thank them for their interest in my ideas.

(4a) "The less they know the less they know it" (a finding of empirical psychology) and "You can't talk to the ignorant about lies, because they have no criteria" (Ezra Pound) are still the order of the day in the blogosphere generally. I've tried to adopt the policy of no longer linking to the hopeless cases, especially since the blogopaths among them seem to crave the attention.

Cassam from Oxford to UCL

Quassim Cassam (metaphysics, epistemology, Kant), currently at Oxford University, has accepted appointment as Professor of Philosophy at University College London, to begin January 1, 2005. (This is the post previously held by Paul Horwich, who is now at the City University of New York Graduate Center.) In addition to strengthening UCL's profile in general M&E (other UCL faculty include Tim Crane, Paul Snowdon, and Michael Martin), Cassam also joins Sebastian Gardner (Kant and post-Kantian Continental philosophy, aesthetics), making UCL one of the most attractive places to study Kant in the U.K.

Drake Law School NLG Under Attack

Story here. Long before the American Constitution Society (the soft liberal response to the conservative Federalist Society), the National Lawyers Guild was the place for lawyers on the left. I'll be following this story, which has potentially serious ramifications.

UPDATE: Here is the text of the subpoena and additional information:

Metaethics Workshop at Wisconsin

Details here. Terrific keynote speakers: Peter Railton and Michael Smith.

Solove to George Washington

Daniel Solove, a law professor at Seton Hall specializing in privacy law, criminal law, and computers and the law, has accepted an offer from the law school at George Washington University.

Lynch to U Conn

Michael Lynch (metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind and language), currently Chair of the Department at Connecticut College, has accepted a senior offer from the University of Connecticut at Storrs.

Our Man in Baghdad.

Thanks for the memories.

What was it Arundhati Roy said?

(And thanks to Jason Walta for the pointer.)

Replies to Hellie

I had activated comments on Hellie's reply to critics, but it began filling up with various irrelevant comments and just plain garbage; I'm retrieving here some of the better comments that seem to advance the issue.

First up (more to follow) Marcus Stanley, who begins by quoting Hellie:

"Here's the world as Marcus imagines it: 'We're going to destroy Social Security and distribute your property taxes to the colossally wealthy'; 'please sir may I have another'. Right, Marcus."

Stanley replies:

"Yes, if conservatives explicitly badmouth their own policies and act like cartoon villains then people will not like them. But they are not likely to do that; if they saw the world that way then they would be liberals. Try this framing instead: 'we are fighting for a tax system that rewards the entrepreneurs who actually create wealth, instead of punishing them. The progressive tax system is a form of class warfare on the people who really make this nation grow.' Then redistribute payroll taxes to the wealthy through income tax cuts. This kind of language has had surprising success. Do you really think that success is unrelated to the fact that people have a strong tendency to identify with valorized authority figures in a hierarchy (in this case, 'entrepreneurs' and the wealthy), even at the expense of their own direct interests? That identification then affects the way they think about and see the world. See de Tocqueville for the role of wealth in American ideological life.

"By the way, I do think that the Bush agenda in particular relies on direct dishonesty about some issues -- in particular fuzzing up the relationship between tax cuts for the rich, massive deficits, and retirement funding for the baby boom. This is Krugman's point. Bush more or less explicitly lied about this in 2000. But conservative ideology in general does not depend on this kind of direct lying; there are plenty of libertarians out there who will trash social security straightforwardly and directly. They would have a hard time winning an election directly, but their ideology has had a big effect on the discourse nonetheless."

The proliferation of Law & Philosophy Centers

It's encouraging to see the growing institutional support for interdisciplinary work in law and philosophy. Institutes/Centers/Programs are already well-established at Columbia, Texas, San Diego, Penn, and Illinois; the latest will be at the Rutgers University School of Law at Camden. The Board of Directors will include the three law faculty with jurisprudential and philosophical interests at Camden--Dennis Patterson, and two junior colleagues, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan and John Oberdiek--and two philosophers from the New Brunswick campus (which does not have a law school), Alvin Goldman and Douglas Husak.

The Institute will sponsor an inaugural conference May 25-26 on "Justifications and Excuses: Legal and Philosophical Perspectives," with papers by Ferzan and three distinguished senior criminal law theorists in law schools (Larry Alexander from San Diego, Michael Moore from Illinois, and Stephen Morse from Penn) and two philosophers from Rutgers-New Brunswick, Husak and Jeff McMahan. (Commentators will include my colleague Mitchell Berman, as well as philosopher Marcia Baron from Indiana, and law professors Anthony Dillof [Wayne State], Oberdiek, Paul Robinson [Penn], and Ken Simons [BU].)

How do I know all this? I was kindly invited to give the keynote address to mark the inauguration of the Institute and to talk about the status and importance of interdisciplinary work in law and philosophy. More on that in due course...

Hellie and His Critics: The Epistemology of Political Commentary Debate Continued

Cornell philosopher Benjamin Hellie has kindly prepared a detailed (and, in my view, decisive) response to the critics on the epistemology of political commentary.
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I begin with a rehearsal of the facts; more slowly this time as an aid to those in the audience who don't move "gangasrotagati" (Nietzsche)---that is, for the easily distracted, and those unlikely to correctly supply elided steps if not held by the hand.

Suppose the popular will determines policy (this is obviously a simplification, about which more follows at the end). Then a policy will be adopted just in case, according to the beliefs of the majority, the policy supports the genuine interests of the majority. It follows that if a policy counter to the genuine
interests of the majority is adopted, the majority are ignorant, or have false beliefs, about it.

Suppose that one argues in the public sphere that a certain policy should be adopted. What one is doing is attempting to influence the popular will in a way that will result in the adoption of the policy: that is, to convince the majority that the policy supports their genuine interests.

Suppose that the policy one advocates does not support the genuine interests of the majority. It follows that if one is to advocate successfully---that is, to convince the majority that the policy supports their genuine interests---one must either fail to assert certain important truths about the policy or assert falsehoods about the policy. If one's job or hobby is to find ways to do this, one will attempt to advocate successfully. If one is any good at one's job or hobby, one will regularly end up either failing to assert certain important truths, or asserting falsehoods. One's advocacy writings will be repeatedly marred by sophistry, assertion of falsehood, and misdirection. This would be evidence of slovenly, unreliable habits of thought such as tendencies to employ unreliable patterns of argument; be easily distracted; fail to probe the evidence deeply; and exploit unreliable sources of evidence.

If one is no good at one's job, one will find another line of work; thus, one would expect any seasoned pro in the business of advocating on behalf of policies that harm the interests of the majority to have these sorts of intellectual vices. The pros serve as models for amateurs; so one would expect the same vices in the amateurs.

Now consider right-wing policies: which, just for fun, I will take to be coextensive with the policies of the present Administration concerning taxation, entitlements, health care, the environment, science, and foreign affairs. (*) For all of these policies, there are obvious alternatives which obviously support the interests of the majority rather than harming them. Thus, those who support the
present Administration and its policies either for money or love are likely to have intellectual vices which make them unreliable. By contrast, this argument doesn't apply to those who support the obvious alternatives, since they can advocate on behalf of their policy prescriptions by merely speaking the truth.

The only empirical claims here are the initial supposition and (*): the rest is a priori. Since (*) is so obvious as to be no longer in need of dispute, I will say no more. The initial supposition is a considerable idealization: most policy-making in
the United States is determined by a corporate oligarchy. Still, there is some very indirect influence on policy-making by the popular will, so the argument is worth something. And surely my right-wing opponents wouldn't wish to scotch my argument on the grounds that the popular will has no influence on policy!

================================================

Now, on to the (least unimpressive) complaints brought against my arguments.

1. By far the most popular and least interesting complaint (Oman; Mirchandani; Stanley; Craig; Gressis; Reed; Buck) was the irrelevant red herring concerning whether right-wingers knowingly, in Lawson's morally-loaded terminology, "lie". As Leiter noted in his initial remarks on my For the Record (FtR) post (cf.
BigMacAttack, Wilson), it is irrelevant whether truths are concealed and untruths are asserted deliberately or due to carelessness; whether sophisms are presented deliberately or due to stupidity; whether the subject is changed deliberately or due to a short attention span. This is irrelevant because our topic is not the moral culpability of right-wing commentators, but their reliability. I don't care whether they are nice guys: what matters is that they not be taken seriously, but rather ignored or hooted off the dais. The thermostat in my oven is inaccurate. Whether it is morally culpable is of no interest. What is of interest is that if I want to bake something, I pay it no attention, but rather use a supplemental thermometer.

More Navel-Gazing

Topped 100,000 visits today, just in time for the 6th month anniversary of the blog (tomorrow). Thanks to all for dropping by.

Shameless Self-Promotion

Stride Magazine in the U.K. has a year-end round-up of the "Best of 2003" including this:

"Get real ­ this was a time for reading Freud and Nietzsche. Professor Brian Leiter from the University of Texas at Austin delivers the must-read of 2003 with his Nietzsche on Morality, a close look at Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887). Not only does this book re-affirm Nietzsche's devastating expose of the non-moral origins and function of 'morality', it also shows how Post-Modernists have misinterpreted Nietzsche ­ distorting his philosophy in the same way as they abuse science (as revealed by the Social Text scandal of 1996). Still, we all knew that 'post-modern philosophy' is just another trendy goulash didn't we? Is this Deconstruction? ­ You bet your life it is!

Best Non-Fiction of the Year
Brian Leiter Nietzsche on Morality
Rudiger Safranski Nietzsche A Philosophical Biography
Sigmund Freud An Outline of Psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud Beyond The Pleasure Principle and Other Writings"

I don't know anything about Stride Magazine, apart from their impeccable judgment on matters of Nietzsche scholarship. But I shall have to become a regular reader now!

And if you still haven't bought a copy, more reasons to do so are here.