A propos last Thursday's post, a PhD student in another discipline writes:
[Y]ou have rightly indicated that a cursory reading of the "unpublished manuscript" should make clear that its author is not Soble. But independent of this -- I am not a philosopher, but is it not highly irregular to attribute a weak position to someone on the basis of unpublished work, and then criticize that position in print? It's one thing if one is praising the position or using it as the basis of one's own argument, but unpublished work often remains unpublished precisely because it is recognized by its author as weak, underdeveloped, flawed, etc. At the very least, if one really wanted to publicly use such a position as a foil, one could contact the person in question and ask if they still hold that [weak] position.
Again, not a philosopher, but this use in print of unpublished, unsigned work--without even confirming its authorship!-- as a foil seems as least as significant a violation of professional norms and principles of charitable interpretation than a too-hasty reading, because it is *not* just a mistake of carelessness.
This is definitely not normal in philosophy, and I am grateful to this reader for flagging this other breach of norms of responsible scholarship.
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