While I criticize particular academic approaches and features of academia pretty often, I only very rarely rant against my fellow academics, because they are, like planet Earth, mostly harmless; even the most prima-donna-like of us (and there are always a few candidates for that position in the academic yearbook) are in the vast majority of cases just engaging in arrogant silliness, or unacceptably discourteous behavior, because, believe it or not, they really and truly don't know any better. Because they were bright, and in some cases prodigiously so, nobody ever bothered to sit them down and teach them how to be intellectual adults, so they go through life still trying to remain tantrum-ridden prodigy-children. And when others, much more well-behaved, say things that sound dimwitted, you can often find, if you are patient, that one of three things has happened:
(1) They know what they are talking about but expressed themselves badly;
(2) They know what they are talking about, and expressed themselves just fine, but you misunderstood;
(3) They don't know what they are talking about, but their misstep was due to an honest mistake such as any of us might have made for any number of reasons and therefore, for reciprocity's sake, should be at most gently corrected and nothing more.
But there are absurdities that try one's patience in the extreme, and I recently came across one that put me in a state where for a moment I felt that I either wanted to find and strangle the other person in exasperation or strangle myself in despair, or both simultaneously. I will not name names, or anything like that, but the type of event it exemplifies is one I've run across more than once before, and it is a type of event that just has to stop, so here's a purely hypothetical, purely fictionalized scenario that blends features from a number of cases I've come across.
Suppose you were reading a journal article by an analytic philosopher, who we'll call, picking two names from books currently on my desk that have nothing to do with this, Norman Anton. And Dr. Anton does analytic philosophy of consciousness, let's say, and what is more, as a rule it's work that is respected. Dr. Anton is no fool. In this article, Dr. Anton considers an argument by Leibniz (let's say) that's relevant to his overall argument, but is, if sound, a problem for that argument. And Dr. Anton zeroes in on one of the premises of the argument, and in particular, on a particular expression in those premises that is obscure (and that most people would regard as obscure).
All well and good. If you're a reasonable person, though, and you were in this state, here's what you would do. You would start by looking to see if Leibniz uses this obscure expression elsewhere, and in particular whether he actually explains it elsewhere. And if he does, you'd start there and examine the different parts of his explanation. If he doesn't explain it in itself, but he does still use it in several other arguments, you would examine those arguments to see how Leibniz uses the obscure expression in other contexts, and see what data that gives you. If it's something of a hapax legoumena as far as Leibniz is concerned, you would look into the question of whether Leibniz might be responding to, or building on, someone else, and that the root of the obscure expression (and therefore any explanation) is found in them. And if none of this turned up anything, you would check to see if it was used by contemporaries, even if Leibniz probably did not know them, in order to see if it might have been a common, or at least widely known, phrase in Leibniz's time. Depending on particulars, this might be a pretty involved investigation, but it also might be a very short and easy one.
But does Dr. Anton do any of this? Not in the least. He sits there and makes several guesses as to what the meaning would be, using (if he uses any evidence at all) only a shred or two of the evidence provided by the immediate context, and then rejects the premise if it is interpreted in any of these purely speculative ways. On the basis of these interpretations, which are clearly not well-researched and sound suspiciously like they may be just off the top of his head, Dr. Anton rejects the argument as unsound.- This clearly is not a case of making a speculative start on further research, which everyone does; Leibniz is held to be somehow refuted in the course of this procedure. Take that, Leibniz! Serves you right for not making your premise clearer, even if you did write a treatise elsewhere in your corpus explaining what it meant!
Dr. Anton is fictional. If this were a dentist's office, he would be the Goofus character in the waiting room magazines. But he is based on several cases where, after careful consideration, I ruled out (1), (2), and (3) above, and one or two where it was in any case pretty clear from the very beginning that the 'Dr. Anton' in question had not researched the argument because his speculations were provably anachronistic. But as I recently came across another example of it, here is a public service announcement for all analytic philosophers, from your friendly neighborhood Historian of Philosophy.
****
Dear Colleagues,
I am well aware that many of you are not usually guilty of this fault, but in order to eliminate it entirely I ask that in the future you take under consideration your colleagues, those of us who do History of Philosophy. Most of us spend long hours and sometimes months and years attempting to build a proper evidential case for or against this or that thesis on even relatively minor aspects of the philosophical work we study. Please, please, please do not treat our work as trivial by acting as if you can deal with problems that take us a long time to research by simply guessing off the top of your head. Please try to take seriously the fact that, whatever might be the case in what you do, in this sort of work we really do try to use a thing called 'evidence'. Please try to remember that this evidence does not just fall from the sky into your brain. And please try to remember that your guesses and speculations, however much they might at times be a good stimulus for further research, simply do not count as evidence.
As long as you keep these things in mind, feel free to join with us in the exploration of our shared philosophy legacy. Clear violations of these conditions, however, may result in circumstances conducive to a strike.
Thank you for your time and patience,
The Global Union of Exasperated Historians of Philosophy (GLUEHOP), Local 307
