Philosophy Publishing: Not So Sedate?

An odd controversy has popped up in what one might imagine is the sedate world of academic philosophy publishing.

In March Hypatia, a quarterly peer-reviewed journal of feminist philosophy, published an article by Prof. Rebecca Tuvel, "In Defense of Trans-Racialism." The gist of it was this: when someone changes his/her mind about racial self-identification, as seems to have been the case with Rachel Dolezal, then she is generally perceived by the public as a fraud. But when the change of self identification is about sexual identity, as with Kaitlyn Jenner, there has been at least some movement of late toward recognition of and respect for that decision. Why the difference? If both sorts of classification are socially constructed, that is if biology is not destiny in either case, then the search for a pertinent principled distinction is not an easy one.

So far so good. Philosophy is about pressing questions. The real controversy arose after the editors of Hypatia (or a majority of them) felt the pangs of buyer's remorse, or something akin, and retracted the article. Or, not "retracted" exactly, but apologized for its publication and denounced the article in terms that seem positively defamatory regarding Prof. Tuvel. Reminds one a bit of the way an Alexandrian mob reacted to the woman their journal is named after.

There are two ways in which one might reasonably react to Tuvel. Either she employs a false premise or she reasons fallaciously from her premises. Which of those is the basis for the apology? Well ... neither. But apparently their idea is that acceptance of transgender identity is a hard-won recent advance which should not be threatened by pressing it too far with logical reasoning. Or ... something.

If that's their problem, it's public relations, not philosophy. Here's more:

http://leiterreports.typepad.com/…/philosophers-speak-out-a…

And here is a link to the Tuvel article: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/hypa.12327/full

(At the top, that's Hypatia the astronomer.)

Comments

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a maj...

The Lyrics of "Live Like You Were Dying"

Back in 2004 Tim McGraw recorded the song "Live Like You were Dying." As a way of marking the one-decade anniversary of this song, I'd like to admit that a couple of the lines have confused me for years. I could use your help understanding them. In the first couple of verses, the song seems easy to follow. Two men are talking, and one tells the other about his diagnosis. The doctors have (recently? or a long time ago and mistakenly? that isn't clear) given him the news that he would die soon. "I spent most of the next days/Looking at the X-rays." Then we get a couple of lines about a man crossing items off of his bucket list. "I went sky diving, I went rocky mountain climbing, I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu." Then the speaker -- presumably still the old man -- shifts to the more characterological consequences of the news. As he was doing those things, he found he was loving deeper and speaking sweeter, and givin...

Five Lessons from the Allegory of the Cave

Please correct me if there are others. But it seems to be there are five lessons the reader is meant to draw from the story about the cave. First, Plato is working to devalue what we would call empiricism. He is saying that keeping track of the shadows on the cave wall, trying to make sense of what you see there, will NOT get you to wisdom. Second, Plato is contending that reality comes in levels. The shadows on the wall are illusions. The solid objects being passed around behind my back are more real than their shadows are. BUT … the world outside the the cave is more real than that — and the sun by which that world is illuminated is the top of the hierarchy. So there isn’t a binary choice of real/unreal. There are levels. Third, he equates realness with knowability. I only have opinions about the shadows. Could I turn around, I could have at least the glimmerings of knowledge. Could I get outside the cave, I would really Know. Fourth, the parable a...

Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Search This Blog