Fun and Games from Mind & Language; or, What Arguments with Stakes Look Like

To misquote Henry Kissinger: "In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the stakes at issue—that is why academic politics are so bitter."^[1]  Academic politics, absolutely, but the same doesn't obtain in academic publications (at least not in the humanities).  Stop me if you think that you've heard this one before.^[2]

I understandably relish the rare opportunities to watch as knives slide from their sheaths in preparation for battle.  None of this "Building X upon the contradictory theories of Y and Z by resolving an irrelevant debate between A and B on the important but unrelated matter of C to demonstrate the significance of D in the context of E to the mutually exclusive discourses of F and G without falling into the easily avoidable trap set by G and H that I and J mistakenly attribute to K but which is actually based on the misinterpretation of L by M in his slavish devotion to N's conception of an O mediated by the P that Q insisted to R was all that maintained S's theory of T in light of the contributions of U and V to the marginalized discipline of W" stuff. 

As entertaining as it may be to watch such material collapse under the weight of its own absurdity, it lacks the visceral pleasure afforded by an old-fashioned academic knifing.  To wit:

Jerry Fodor steps into the circle:

When [adaptationist explanations of the evolution of heritable traits] work it's because they provide plausible historical narratives, not because they cite covering laws. In particular, pace Darwinists, adaptationism doesn't articulate the mechanisms of the selection of heritable phenotypic traits; it couldn't because there aren't any mechanisms of the selection of heritable phenotypic traits (as such). All there are is the many, many different ways in which various creatures manage to flourish in the many, many environmental situations in which the do so. Diamond remarks that Darwin didn't just present 'a well-thought-out theory of evolution. Most importantly, he also proposed a theory of causation, the theory of natural selection.' Well, if I'm right, that's exactly what Darwin didn't do; a 'theory of causation' is exactly what the theory of natural selection isn't.

Well, if he's right, I'm a scientist.  If he's right, we all ought to write totally informally like all the time.  Furthermore, if he's right, well, Daniel Dennett must be wrong:

As often before, Jerry Fodor makes my life easier, this time by (1) figuring out a persuasive reductio ad absurdum argument for my views, (2) absolving me of any suspicion that I'm creating a straw man by resolutely embracing the absurd conclusion, and (3) providing along the way some vivid lessons in How Not to Do Philosophy. The only work left for me to do is (a) draw attention to these useful pedagogical aids, (b) point out the absurdity of Jerry's expressed position and (c) remind you that I told you so.

[...]

Now this really is absurd. Silly absurd. Preposterous. It is conclusions like this, built upon such comically slender stilts, that give philosophy a bad name among many scientists. Fodor's argument really does follow from his premises, though, so far as I can see, so I am prepared to treat it as a classic reductio. A useful reductio, as we all learned in our first logic course, has just one bad premise that eventually sticks out like a sore thumb, but in this case we have an embarrassment of riches: four premises, all of them false.

[...]

Fodor assumes that there is no middle ground, no room for any sort of gradualism, between, say, the considered goal of an adult philosopher and the utterly intentionless behavior of, say, a paramecium.

[...]

As I said at the outset, Fodor's paper is a gold mine of Cautionary Tales with which to scare the very dickens out of the young. Look what happens, boys and girls, when you try to shoehorn all your arguments into the form of constructive dilemmas, as if you were doing proofs in geometry or number theory, where hard edges abound. Look what happens, boys and girls, when you can't be bothered to look at the actual science and instead make up all your examples. You can have a jolly time making fun of the words you put in your imaginary explainers' mouths, but at the end of the day, you have to return to the real world, empty handed.

Well now, I don't think Fodor's right.

---

[1] To calm Justin's nerves, I'll repeat this phrase as I first heard it: "When the knives come out, the stakes low." 

[2] If you 1) haven't but 2) lack the time to read it, I'll present the short version: People in the humanities don't really argue anymore.  They take perfunctory jabs at acceptable targets then build their castles in the air.  Why can they do this?  Because the stakes are so low.  They know that unless Charlotte Allen shows up, the greater world will greet their work with palpable indifference.  If Charlotte Allen does show up, they can safely ignore her because her work doesn't merit a response.  (They're right on the last count.)  The result is an intellectual culture consisting of a million unrelated conversations trumpeting their own import with such gusto they never notice the din they inhabit.  They may complain about how few people read their work but fail to acknowledge their complicity in the culture they actively work to maintain. 

Comments

[John Emerson]

I think that Fodor is wrong about what Darwin and "Darwinians" say about the role of natural selection in evolution. He may be right about Dennett, though.

[SEK]

About the reverse-engineering footnote?

[John Emerson]

Dennett is a Panglossian, as Gould would say. But not all Darwinians are Panglossians.

[JPool]

Yeah, the vehemence of Dennett's response is pretty impressive, especially given that he's only mentioned sidelong in a footnote. I hate reading analytic philophy and couldn't bring myself to read every word of either of their pieces, but as far as I can tell, Dennett's response boils down to, "Well there are weak forms of intentionalism, idiot." That's all fine and well, but the more direct and meaningful response to Fodor (says me) would be to point out that adaptation is a metaphor and any talk that natural selection "desires x" is a gramatical convenience for "describes the conditions and structures that tend to produce x."

I think that Emerson is right about Dennett, but I'm not sure that Fodor is. The problem with EP folks is not that they think that species agentively wanted to adapt to their environment. Rather, it's that they think that a) all characteristics represent an adaptational advantage (the Panglossian thing), and b) they can come up with a scientifc explanation/meaningful story about why that would have been so. If Fodor had elaborated his reverse engineering point, maybe this is part of what he meant. But even here he goes long-way round with the proof -- seeking to disprove the necessity of reverse engineering, rather than raising problems with it as an epistemology.

[j.s.nelson]

Daniel Dennett's views on evolution probably aren't the best, but I'm so glad he said that about Fodor! Jerry Fodor has never, so far as I'm aware, been right about anything in his entire life.
Every couple of weeks I have to read something Fodor, and to a lesser extent folks like Searle, have written, and I think to myself these are the big names in my field and my work is going to be interpreted by people who take this shit seriously.