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“There is no greater threat to intellectual culture than the thought that when it really counts, when it actually matters to us, we philosophers give up on doing philosophy.” @AgnesCallard on petitions in #philosophy nytimes.com/2019/08/13/opi…
For all x, I’m always the last to hear x, so I’m sure this is old news to both of you reading this. As someone who has signed petitions (some of which I later regretted) my heart is with @AgnesCallard in this respect...
...at the end of the day, persuasion on the basis of reasons is the foundation of our discipline and the most respectful means to facilitate change and form the basis of community. Having said that...
...as Aristotle emphasizes in the Rhetoric, human psychology is such that articulating reasons for our views may sometimes have to come closer to the end of the day than to the beginning. Narrative and stories can make salient morally relevant aspects of cases...
...and having access to such features may be necessary to appreciate moral significance. Nevertheless, I think arguments must strive to capture and convey this significance as far as possible (semanticscholar.org/paper/Amenable…)
There are also times where what people are doing when they say x is different from the content of what is being said. In these cases, I think responding to the content of x can be inappropriate, since what is mainly at issue is what is being done in uttering x....
An example would be the speaker who wants to “debate” a salacious proposition, not primarily as a form of inquiry, but as a way of making the interlocutor uncomfortable—of taunting someone under cover of argument.
It can be difficult to know when an argument—an exchange of reasons—is put forth as a means of finding the truth and when it is put forth as a performative act of a different sort, one that seeks to accomplish some interpersonal goal other than finding the truth.
Suspicions of this kind appear to be heightened in some areas at the moment, and so some question whether, in the current environment, certain questions can be debated without having adverse illocutionary effects.
In this environment, I’m sympathetic to the idea that one thing we, as philosophers may need to take a stand on is precisely the importance of preserving a space in which honest interlocutors can seek to share reasons for the purpose of seeking the truth.
And taking such a stand might involve signing a petition—as a political statement about our commitment to the very thing @AgnesCallard wants us to preserve: the importance of engaging one another in respectful, reasoned inquiry.
The reason that taking such a stand might be necessary is that getting people to take one another seriously and to listen to each other’s reasons on their merits, is a political achievement and not necessarily the default state of affairs.
So I think philosophers have to be political in at least this sense: we have to engage our compatriots and take concrete steps to create and maintain social conditions in which people can reason with one another without so much suspicion that no one is willing to follow the...
...arguments wherever they may lead.
