[MD] The Level of Intellectual Quality

[david buchanan]

dmb said:
...This doesn't mean they're right or that other scholars won't disagree but it does mean that it has been evaluated by their peers in the profession. Disagreement drives the whole process, in fact. James described one of his critics, a very famous a well respected figure, as "malevolent and stupid" and another he described as having the "intelligence of an inorganic body". It's fun to watch.


Steve replied:


The name calling surprises me. In fact, one thing to admire about James was the way he understood his oponents positions and was able to articulate the best forms of their arguments before arguing against them instead of mischaracterizing and dismissing the worst forms of their arguments. He even found better arguments against himself than his oponents could sometimes even think of. In other words, I think he exemplified that philosophical virtue of charity as well as anyone I've read. His mode of philsophical discourse is a model that all of us here would do well to emulate.



dmb says:
I know what you mean. The other day I was looking at journal articles published online by the William James society. Some of the articles are written by doctoral students and in some cases that means the author is in his or her early to mid-twenties. And man does it show. I saw at least one that was shockingly snarky. I mean, compared to the posts around here it was downright wise and regal but compared to other journal articles, his snarkiness was quite jarring. Even though it offered some support for my case and even though its hostility was aimed against my opponents, I had to scratch it off my bibliography. It was just too childish to be taken seriously. It was unprofessional.

James was not only a professional. He was also a Victorian, at least in terms of the context of his life. There is no way he could have gotten away with calling Bertrand Russell names in public. In public he absolutely HAD to conduct himself like a gentleman. His era was very buttoned up and totally dominated by stiff and brittle social level values. But he told his friends what he really thought. I'd guess the only thing that's changed is the context. We're not quite so buttoned up but there is still some distance between our raw passions and the formalities of publishing but they're not as far away from each other as they used to be. But this isn't just because we live in the era of talk radio and overheated bloggers. It is also because the notion of disinterested observation and objective analysis has come to be seen as a pretense, as an unrealistic standard and even as an impossibility. The notion of calm, cool, bloodless deliberation is just philosophy's version of the so-called value-free sciences. Pirsig and James both think there is no way to take human values out of the equation. They both insist that feeling and rationality are equally important in the overall cognitive process. 

This integration of the affective domain into our ways of thinking doesn't give us permission to be abusive jerks, of course. But it has become perfectly normal to admit that you're coming from somewhere and that you're bringing certain personal feelings and attitudes to the table. In fact, the failure to do so can be criticized as a sign of a scholar's lack of self awareness. At the very least, it is widely recognized that the scientific, objective approach usually works in the physics department but it's less likely to be appropriate in the humanities. One of the recurring themes in the thesis class I'm taking is this notion that a scholar needs to do some self-examination and think seriously about what feelings, attitudes and assumptions he or she's bringing to the table. We can't peel off our attitudes and the examination of the examiner is a very tricky business. But you have to try to take an honest look at yourself and gain some awareness of what you're bringing to the subject matter. To me, this seems quite true.

If you're interested enough in a question or issue to write a thesis or journal article or even to make a case by posting here, that more or less proves that you have a personal interest in it, more or less proves that you feel something of value is at stake in it. And why should we pretend otherwise? We should care and we should admit that we care and we should think about why we care. I think it's reasonable to expect a certain amount of heat when people debate things they care about. I'd even say it's a good sign. But only up to a point. What goes beyond that point, exactly, is open to debate. As I see it, James and Pirsig have reframed things in a way that defies the common sense notions about the difference between passion and reason. Instead of using reason to squelch the passions, it's more like we admit that reasonableness is something we value passionately. We admit that reason is a form of passion, admit that truth is a species of the good, that facts are values.

Thanks.

dmb







 		 	   		  
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