there are many ways of doing philosophy – and of doing other things altogether – that I don’t know from the inside

John Emerson wrote:

The opposite of “AP” is not “CP”, it’s “not-AP”. “Not-AP” is a residual class made up of everything not accepted by AP.

A fairly elementary logical point, but AP people fuck it up all the time in arguments of this type.

You got me, John. I concede the point: I thought that all philosophy was AP or CP.

I still see no reason to think that you understand AP sufficiently well to be justified in your criticisms (I didn’t say you needed to be an expert). You seem to read nothing but disaffected critics of AP; that’s not a good basis for your criticisms.

It’s just not true that no discipline can be judged except by experts within that discipline. Putnam makes very harsh criticisms of the whole history of academic ethics which are completely intelligible to someone such as myself who has only a moderate technical knowledge. Furthermore, Putnam’s critique relies in part on extra-AP knowledge that I have that most APs do not have.

You are assuming that I am a CP advocate, which I am really not. The opposite of “AP” is not “CP”, it’s “not-AP”. “Not-AP” is a residual class made up of everything not accepted by AP.

A fairly elementary logical point, but AP people fuck it up all the time in arguments of this type.

As for the bullshit question, AP has standardized the bullshit by stipulation. Talk to Putnam about this.

One further comment. You regret the hegemony that AP has on hiring practices in North America. One reason for this hegemony might be the fact that the criteria for quality in AP are clearer than in CP. It’s just much easier to sort out the poseurs from those with at least some substance. It takes much more effort to make the same distinctions in CP. When it’s a matter of hiring junior faculty, and therefore making the decision on the basis of rather limited information, you can raise the probability of hiring someone who is intellectually competent by hiring a decent analytic over someone who seems a decent continental.

It seems characteristic of analytic philosophers to worry about anyone ever reading the wrong book.

You’re right that it’s not unreasonable for people to be able to criticise without having to establish their credentials. I was asking, politely, because (as I explained the first time I asked John; this is the second time he’s ignored the request) life is short and I need to know that an investment of time is worth making. My reading time is precious to me, and each book I read has opportunity costs associated with it. John told all and sundry to go read some criticisms of AP that I have never heard of. I wanted to know whether John’s recommendation is something I should take seriously. Since John (and you, for that matter) seem to have little sense of what AP actually is, I think I’ll pass.

If you look back at what I’ve been saying, I was pleased to find that even one analytic philosopher, Dennett, could be dug up to say something nice about Rorty. To me that spoke well for Dennett. I wasn’t claiming that Dennett agreed with Rorty about everything, and still less that Rorty was in dire need of Dennett’s good opinion.

My main point was that no other analytic philosopher could apparently be found to say anything nice about Rorty, so that everyone else quoted by Slate was a non-philosopher. To me this speaks ill of analytic philosophy, though of course maybe Slate was just lazy.

I think that it’s a fair conclusion that anyone who agrees with Rorty should get out of philosophy.

Both right” is a quote.

1)You were insinuating that Dennett was not in fact critical of Rorty on the main aspect of his philosophical work under discussion in this thread; namely Rorty’s style of relativism.
2)Your evidence was that Dennett said “Quine saw philosophy as continuous with science, and Rorty saw philosophy as continuous with art. I think they were both right.”
3)Yet what we learn from you in your comments is the vague and suggestive paraphrase that “Dennett’s conclusion is that Quine and Rorty were both right”
4)Other people reading here thought you made a genuine mistake in your interpretation of what Dennett was saying as opposed to being just disingenuous
5)These other people went the effort to point out what Dennett thinks on the issue at stake and how one could more subtly think about the “both right” comment.
6)Instead of acknowledging that your interpretation was wrong or that you were being disingenuous you simply claimed that you never insinuated that Dennett was supportive of Rorty’s main argumentative/philosophical approach.
7)This adds up to not much fun.

I happen to know that you are almost always disingenuous or lazy when you make arguments here so I did not make the effort. Yet at the same time I do not think anybody owes you the effort anymore either.

“Both right” is a quote. On the other hand, Quine and Rorty both can’t both be right, since they said very different things! How can this be?

The problem obviously was with Dennett, not me. Or maybe the problem was with someone who doesn’t know how to read. Figure out what Dennett meant when he said “both right”, granted that he leans toward Quine in the debate, and get back to me.

“Dennett’s conclusion is that Quine and Rorty were both right,”

“I wasn’t claiming that Dennett endorsed Rorty’s conclusions,”

and other incoherent things.

It’s probably just coincidental that Dennett has an unusual willingness to write for a general audience.

“But there is one point over which he and I do not
agree at all—not yet—and that concerns his attempt over the years to show that philosophers’

debates about Truth and Reality really do erase the gulf, really do license a slide into some form
of relativism. In the end, Rorty tells us, it is all just “conversations,” and there are only political
or historical or aesthetic grounds for taking one role or another in an ongoing conversation.”