Two by Scott

That Mind review was great, as was McLemee’s piece—thanks. I especially liked the dig at OUP coming in the pages of Mind.

Re the McGinn review. I was a bit surprised to see that it has been out for a couple of years, which, of course, means that it predates the latest controversies over the man’s reputation. We know the part of the answer to one of the questions raised in Kerry McKenzie’s review, which is that the book appears to have received a positive report from the publisher’s reader, Galen Strawson (this is mentioned on the acknowledgements pages as viewable on Amazon). This isn’t to disparage Strawson, but he isn’t a philosopher of physics so why did OUP give him the job? Was it at McGinn’s suggestion? The other thing to wonder is why it has taken two years for a reviewer to give the book this kind of treatment. OK, reviews often take a while, but the NDPR review (the other one I can find) is not so much hostile as extremely dull: maybe the specialist can read between the lines, but as a non-specialist I couldn’t really tell.

Katie Roiphe had a very interesting story at Slate about the McGinn mess:
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/roiphe/2013/10/colin_mcginn_sexual_harassment_case_was_the_philosophy_prof_s_story_that.html

If we can read without reflexively dismissing the article for being Slate-pitch, the story was a lot richer than we were led to believe. And reading through, imo a decent description of what happened is that McGinn and the student were carrying on a sketchy flirtatious interaction. And the student’s boyfriend found out about it.

“This was a piece based on a selection of documents provided by McGinn to a journalist to convey a certain impression of the facts (favourable to him).”

– Well, not quite, it also gets the views of of this boyfriend, who the student seems to have authorized to speak for her to Roiphe. And I don’t see the new info as undermining the woman, but rather the boyfriend in question.
– Anyway I’d have thought getting a richer picture is worthwhile even if it makes a story murkier than necessary for social justice warrioring. Might even go with that empathy and epistemic humility stuff.
– Anyway, if you think comments at Crooked Timber shouldn’t give “publicity” to articles at Slate, both my comments can be deleted no doubt.

[I’ve moved all comments about the Roiphe article into moderation for now (including mine) until the post author (Henry) gets out of bed. ]

Well there’s some reason to think that the editor asks the author for a list of suitable people, and that the editor then chooses from that list. It isn’t like the refereeing process for journals, anyway.

In the case of McGinn, it would take a particularly switched-on editor to ask, not “who’s competent to judge whether Colin McGinn’s making sense?”, but “who’s competent to judge whether McGinn’s making sense in this field which he’s entering for the first time?”. And, who knows, maybe viewed as “McGinn extends his field of inquiry into metaphysics” it’s a worthwhile and interesting book – or if that’s too much of a stretch, maybe the proposal made it look like it had a reasonable chance of being worthwhile and interesting, for people who find McGinn’s work in general to be such.

Comment on the Roiphe piece withheld until the modgates are loosed.

A proper hearing, with rules of evidence etc., (which McGinn resigned rather than submit himself to)

The parenthesis here is a really important point. If I’m honest, that detail actually gained McGinn a bit of sympathy from me when I first read about it – who the hell would want to have their behaviour subjected to an official inquiry? But sympathy evaporated when I started reading comments from McGinn (and Ed Emory) to the effect of “sexual harassment? what sexual harassment? there were no allegations of sexual harassment” and so on and on. Evasive on more than one level – far more so than a self-respecting philosopher should permit himself, surely.

Also, what GiT said. I started looking a bit sidelong at Roiphe’s article when she mentioned that “I myself like a powerful, arrogant man”, emph added. Who likes arrogant anybodies? But this was the argument that really lost me:

People have quite sensibly pointed out that Colin was not sensitive enough to his own power, or at the very least not alert enough to dangerous subterranean power inequities, that he didn’t notice the building of hidden resentments and resistances, which seems fair. Though he says something that also seems fair: “Real power didn’t reside with me at all. With the mere fact that a female student goes to the authorities at all, it becomes sexual harassment.” It is true that a female student has the unspoken power to whisper two words and ruin an entire career.

Real power didn’t reside with me at all.??? I mean, good heavens. Firstly (in reply to Roiphe) there’s nothing very “subterranean” about the differential in power and status between any professor and any graduate student – and this particular pair’s relationship, on his account, seems to have been built on eroticising the power difference (or their denial of the power difference, which is the same thing at one remove). Secondly, the woman didn’t have and didn’t exert any power – she went to the authorities, who were empowered to act in certain ways to protect her and other students, precisely because her (their) own position was (and is) powerless and vulnerable relative to McGinn and others like him. And we can be sure that there are others like him. From August, Rebecca Kukla:

I have found it frustrating watching people gleefully vilify and demonize [McGinn]. Not because he wasn’t creepy and way out of bounds, but because the kind of remarkably inappropriate ‘banter’ he engaged in and his complete tone-deafness to the power dynamics that structure the performative force of that banter happen ALL THE TIME in philosophy, as far as I can tell. Through his pompous and narcissistic attempts at self-defense, McGinn made himself an easy target for ridicule. I worry that this has allowed us to write him off as a moral monster, rather than reflecting on just how pervasive this kind of behavior is. In fact, I think that McGinn’s clear belief that his inappropriate sexualized communication made him somehow a bold, hip, unconventional intellectual is implicitly shared by many men in the profession.

That this kind of ‘banter’ is common doesn’t make it harmless, by any means. It’s easy to be insouciant about boundary-busting when you do so from a position of power. But in fact, this idea that we philosophers are somehow above such trivialities as social boundaries comes at the cost of the discipline’s most vulnerable members (and potential members).

Slightly off topic, but do people normally know who their publisher’s readers are? I’ve sometimes been able to guess, but I’ve never been told and have never considered asking. Phil’s comment suggests the same, but others seem to assume it’s normal.

Slightly off topic, but do people normally know who their publisher’s readers are? I’ve sometimes been able to guess, but I’ve never been told and have never considered asking. Phil’s comment suggests the same, but others seem to assume it’s normal.

Occasionally one will find an author saying in acknowledgments that one or more of the publisher’s readers subsequently revealed their identity to the author, who proceeds to thank them by name. However, one does often find “I thank the anonymous readers for [etc]”.

Another thing, of course, is that sometimes the publisher’s readers are the same as the blurbers, since apparently they often give favorable soundbites as well as, presumably, constructive criticisms. So in the end it sometimes is not too hard for everyone to know who the publisher’s readers were.

‘. . . the ‘Lucky Charms’ theory of matter.’

Holy moley.

The Harper’s Article is behind a paywall, anyone have an accessible link?