Comments on: Leiter’s criticism of Solum

By: Tom T.

Tom T. — Thu, 13 Nov 2003 05:02:55 +0000

How is Solum different from any attendee at a public event? For that matter, how is Leiter different from any public figure claiming that he was quoted out of context? Certainly, if President Bush or one of his challengers tried to impose a requirement that a reporter could not report on one of his speeches unless the reporter confirmed that her interpretation of his remarks agreed with his own, he would leave himself open to considerable scorn. Of course, the converse can be true, too. If a reporter can be shown to have skewed her reporting because of ignorance or malice, then presumably the reporter would be subject to criticism. I don’t get the impression that such charges are being raised against Solum here, though.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Wed, 12 Nov 2003 18:32:33 +0000

I file this under the heading of dog bites man (or Leiter bites blogger). Why Leiter feels that somehow blogging is different from the general range of the ways academics represent the work of other academics, I really cannot say. A feeling that one has been misrepresented or misquoted is common, and does not always involve published works to which people wishing to evaluate the claim of misrepresentation may be directed. Moreover, I would argue that to a certain degree, academic prose now frequently is constructed so as to sustain multiple claims about what the central argument or point of a piece might be, and is festooned with numerous qualifiers designed to protect against various objections both trivial and non-trivial. Ferreting out what the author intends to be the central argument can in fact be a difficult enterprise for this reason, precisely because a certain amount of plausible deniability is often hardwired in, and certain objections preemptively fended off. In some cases, more genuinely, we only discover what our real central arguments are by testing a paper in a conference or workshop: we may be unconsciously undecided about some key points, and present our work in order to come to a decision. Moreover, I think audiences at a conference are perfectly justified after listening to a paper to say, “The central argument of the paper was X, but I find X a fairly banal argument; the most interesting thing it had to say was actually Y, which was more of a throwaway”. That can actually be a generative, useful response, even if it redirects the conversation (and the impression audiences have of the conversation) away from the author’s own intention. That’s why you have audiences at conferences, or why you should: to engender conversation, to see what others make of the work you present. Leiter seems to think that the purpose of a conference or workshop is the literal transmission of the exact words of an author, and that no interpretation, rethinking, responsiveness, or representation of the papers is warranted. In which case, why have conferences at all? We should just post papers as we complete them on websites and invite the whole world to read exactly what we wrote in exactly the form we wrote it in. That’s not what I take to be the meaningful, generative point of academic conversation. The point is, “What do we make of what was said, written or thought by another”? And if that’s the point, we can certainly protest when we think that someone has misrepresented the arguments of another, but that protest is wholly the normal, everyday business of academic knowledge production. No need to make a big production out of it, and especially no need to ask another academic to stop representing the work of others for fear that a misrepresentation might happen. If it happens, contest it. Simple enough. Leiter feels compelled for some reason to put a great gob of extra icing, sprinkles and candles on top of that rather matter-of-fact and ordinary point. We do not have a right to expect within an academic environment that each of us alone is qualified to represent what we individually have to say, nor a right to protest the representations of others as definitionally and intrinsically inappropriate by the mere fact that they are the representations of others. I can’t think of a faster way to kill off the entirety of academic discourse than that demand.

By: Kragen Sitaker

Kragen Sitaker — Wed, 12 Nov 2003 17:43:52 +0000

People who have not posted their papers on their home pages have no business complaining that someone else’s summary of their presentation is incomplete or inaccurate. The presentations are, after all, public, not private.

By: raj

raj — Wed, 12 Nov 2003 12:18:23 +0000

Um, perhaps the conference should publish a proceedings. It could do so on the internet—no paper, saving lots of money. That way, the presenters could have their papers published the way they want them published. That said, perhaps those objecting to Solum’s comments regarding certain presentations might consider whether their presentations were as clear as they thought they were. Assuming that Solum was trying to synopsize the presentations correctly, perhaps their presentations were not as clear as they might have been.

By: jdsm

jdsm — Wed, 12 Nov 2003 11:35:50 +0000

On balance I would have to agree with Micah. I can see how it must be frustrating if your views are misrepresented on the Internet and I’m sure Larry Solum didn’t intend to do so. However, the benefit of coverage like Solum’s to Joe Public outweighs the irritation to the speaker. I think we should also give Solum a break since the challenge of representing views in real time on topics as dense as these, is monumental.