Agnes Callard: "Philosophers Shouldn't Sign Petitions"

This seems wrong.
   And that even though I'm not a fan of most petitions and open letters by philosophers. In my experience, they're more likely to be driven by left-wing politics than by philosophy. (Though I also think it's clear that a fair bit of left-wing philosophers' philosophy is driven by left-wing politics, too, so... In fact, it's pretty common on the left to accept as a principle that politics should drive philosophy (and science; and all scholarship, as I understand it). That is: on much of the intellectual left, political bias isn't a bug, it's a feature. Or, to be more accurate: an ideal.) (Boy, that's a long convoluted parenthetical... Blogging means never having to edit...)
   I don't know professor Callard, but, contemporary philosophy being what it is, I'm a bit skeptical when she says that she'd be against the petition in question even if it were on the other side of the issue. (That is, if it aimed to restrict allegedly "hurtful" speech rather than protect free speech and inquiry.) Her arguments basically force one to hypothesize that she's actually writing to defend the other side of the argument. But that's a hypothesis, and ought to at least be bracketed--or, better probably, not even mentioned. But I mentioned it.
   The petition itself is right on target, incidentally. And props to the signatories. They'll be dogpiled, undoubted. And most philosophers will sit back and watch.
   The petition says, basically: stop suppressing discussion of these issues with your weird, hysterical social pressure. Let open discussion proceed unimpeded. Callard seems to respond: Aha! You are politicizing philosophy by saying it shouldn't be politicized! That's bullshit of a fairly common variety, of course. So I don't think we have to spend any time on that
   Her more prominent argument seems to be: Don't rely on the authority of your position/name to give epistemic weight to your argument; just make the argument. Well...sort of yes...but...  Anyone who puts his name to his comments makes it possible for others to weigh his reputation, position, etc. more heavily than his arguments.* In fact, it's the other side in this debate that is trying to make who you are determinative of whether you are permitted to speak on the issue. (I argue, ad hominem...)
   Here's what seems like the meat of the issue: it's perfectly o.k. for someone with special knowledge of some issue to say: Look, at the end of the day, here's my view of the matter... Contra Callard's apparently suggestion, this in no way precludes argument, nor does it circumvent it, nor any such thing. It's a fallible, bottom-line summary of the state of certain arguments--allegedly, anyway--by someone who's thought through them carefully--allegedly, anyway. It's no replacement for argument. It's more like a supplement--or the best we can get under certain kinds of space-and-time constraints.
   And that's true even though most of these sorts of things are just half-baked lefty philosophers doing their thing. What's bad isn't petitions, nor summary judgments. It's that so many of both coming out of philosophy and the APA are bad and stupid. But not, to repeat: the petition Callard is talking about. That petition is right on target.
   Furthermore, such a petition is basically fighting fire with fire. Well, not exactly. It's better than that. It's not arguing against a philosophical position so much as it's arguing against the now-routine hysterical screeching and accusation-making of the illiberal, progressive left. It really is saying something like: Let's let philosophy proceed normally. I'm probably too cynical by this point, but it does strike me as notable that one side is using illicit, threatening, nonrational methods to shut down all criticism of their view, the other side politely posts a petition decrying this...and Callard writes against the latter rather than the former. That fact doesn't settle anything...but it's not nothing. Petitions may be subject to certain weak objections...but the shrieking and dogpiling and "politics of personal destruction"...that wasn't worth criticizing? The philosophers' answer is commonly: I can discuss any problem; I don't have to discuss the worst relevant problem. True enough. Still...one wonders...
 
Finally, and on a rather different note, a wee quiz!:
Suppose side A wants to discuss an issue rationally, and side B does its best to shout down and intimidate side A into silence, even resorting to scurrilous accusations against A, and to producing laughable arguments to the effect that A is committing violence by so much as speaking.
Question: Which side is it that knows, deep (or maybe not all that deep) down that it has the losing case?


*I'd normally have written 'their' instead of 'his'...in fact that's how I first wrote it. But I changed it because I'm pathologically contrarian.