tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8708273719674528189.post4309251256074502227..comments2024-03-22T00:20:38.510-07:00Comments on Adam Riggio writes: To Me Good Philosophy Writing Is Thematic Density, Composing, 16/08/2013Adam Riggiohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14606510835439580828noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8708273719674528189.post-61920265642008448732013-08-16T06:09:35.958-07:002013-08-16T06:09:35.958-07:00That's basically the centre of both paradoxes ...That's basically the centre of both paradoxes (really it's one paradox considered from two different perspectives). The first innovators in environmental activism were scientists, like Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson. Philosophers wrote books and articles that systematized and helped to publicize the issues these early scientists were concerned about, while most of the rest of the scientific and industrial fields ignored the early warnings. The first paradox is that philosophers still write as if they're trying to wake people up when the movement has already taken off and significant sections of the professions that once scoffed at environmentalist have now incorporated environmentalist norms.<br /><br />The second paradox is that environmental philosophers consider themselves activists, but their language disconnects them from the activist community. Philosophers argue, refine, and dissemble with this recurring sense of terrible urgency that something must be done, but activists get shit done. And they largely don't need the conceptual refinement of philosophers because, as I say in the chapter, you can have different justifications for your beliefs, or even different beliefs, but those conceptually divergent systems can lead you to similar enough actions that the divergence doesn't really matter. Philosophers are left mapping divergences that don't matter.<br /><br />And that's the larger problem philosophy faces as well: the perception of our irrelevance. Many people in other disciplines don't understand why philosophers concentrate in such large numbers on the problems they do. When I tell J & A my closest sociologist friends about the premises of most debates in epistemology, their mouths drop open because many ideas about the public nature of knowledge that the social sciences have long accepted are still controversial minority views in philosophy. <br /><br />Some of my edits to chapter three added some later research I had done for my social history of philosophy project, Michèle Lamont's empirical investigation into why philosophy received so few grants from multi-disciplinary peer review panels. And it's because no other discipline understands philosophy's technical languages or the relevance of philosophical problems. Philosophy has become socially isolated from other humanities and social science disciplines, and our language has therefore become insular. Even worse, Lamont discovered a widespread attitude in philosophy of "So much the worse for them!" <br /><br />Philosophers (at least in North America where she did her research) arrogantly dismiss other disciplines as not "rigorous" enough, or otherwise behave as if nothing of real importance happens in literature studies or social science. And they don't seem to associate this attitude with the widespread disrespect and lack of interest philosophy is coming to receive from potential students, university administrations, industry, an general culture.Adam Riggiohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14606510835439580828noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8708273719674528189.post-90203741457792011672013-08-16T05:18:57.017-07:002013-08-16T05:18:57.017-07:00Let me say how much I enjoy your frank discussion ...Let me say how much I enjoy your frank discussion of ego in the intellectual career -- you are like Kanye in his first album blowing the lid off of (in this case, not Kanye's) our posturing as ego-less altruists. <br /><br />There's definitely a continuum in the balance between speciality interest and broad appeal. I certainly have no idea of the right balance, but like you would like my book to be read.<br /><br />One issue that occurred to me in your specific example is the role of legitimation and co-optation in social movements posed by disciplinary philosophy. It seems that on one hand philosophy is legitimated by engaging with topical issues and it legitimates in turn the pursuit of those issues by middle-class, respectable people. I know that I (for one) have an automatic skepticism toward activists who talk in terms that are entirely foreign to and incompatible with philosophical analysis. But in the process of translating and redefining and then ultimately nitpicking activist notions into philosophical discourse, there's also a co-opting of the presuppositional framework that undermines the standing of the original activists. It seems to me that one of the original things that you're pointing out is that the sort of argument I'm making here way over-emphasizes the efficacy of philosophy, which is really quite weak on the side of feeding information and shaping presuppositions in the activist community. <br /><br />So what's it all for? What does the philosophical chatter matter for the environmentalist movement? Just a gloss of legitimacy and then business as usual or is there some deeper enriching (or impoverishing), some fundamental transformation unfolding through philosophical work? Very provocative stuff and I can see how you landed on this issue as a leverage point.Tom Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04942888225118081569noreply@blogger.com