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Ignorance, Arrogance, and Competence

May 29, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer 8 Comments

It's been a while since we had a post using some of our negative feedback to reflect on our project and methods.

On the US iTunes store, one reviewer who had admittedly only listened to our two recent Wittgenstein episodes and nothing else, said that we were "A) woefully ignorant of the material at hand and B) too arrogant to even begin to acknowledge that they might just be missing the real significance of the work under consideration."

I'm less interested in rebutting this particular dude (if one of you that hasn't yet given us an iTunes review wants to jump on and do that, feel free) than getting at the ideological assumptions and questions lurking here.

First, there's the question of who should speak on what topics. I'm not talking about the issue of free speech; of course ignorant people are and should be legally free to blab about whatever they want, but should they? Now, it so happened that we had Philosophy Bro on the show, who I think does count as an "expert" in that he's a current professional who teaches and and writes about Wittgenstein, but we didn't bring him on because we felt like we needed an expert on this topic, and frankly I don't think his being there made things go any more smoothly than they otherwise would have. Why? Because analytic philosophy (which is really what we're doing on the show) is about reading a text and trying to figure out what it says. That's all. If you've got some insight into the author's other works and life and the secondary literature (all of which was evidence at various times in our discussions), all the better, but really, all you need to make something out of difficult texts is practice, and if you get stuck, go do some Internet background reading or grab a secondary source. As with the similar dismissal of Flanagan's ignorance of Buddhism, this charge of "ignorance" is really just that we didn't hit on the interpretation of the text favored by this particular guy. Of course, we may well miss things of value that our listeners are aware of, which is exactly what this forum we've provided is meant to correct for.

Moreover, if you've already plumbed the secrets of the text, why bother listening to us talk about it? We can provide a refresher, I suppose, and maybe some new perspectives that will be helpful, but I'm detecting a different need, comparable to what Schleiermacher saw as the value of a religious tradition. This dude has discovered something he thinks is profound in Wittgenstein and wants to hear someone else communicate a version of that. He's discovered an avenue for spiritual growth and wants a push in that direction. To translate this into my usual idiom, if I'm way into Elvis Costello, I'm not going to appreciate a review of his new album that doesn't betray a deep knowledge of his past work and what I think made it great. So much of the fascination around Wittgenstein in particular is not in his evident achievements of contributing to formal logic (i.e. truth tables) and motivating examination of the logic of ordinary language, but in this supposed mysticism that only comes through in glimpses through his major works.

To move to the second point, analytic philosophy is often accused of arrogance, in that it acknowledges that only the parts of a work that an audience can make sense of will have any value whatsoever. Yes, a work might be difficult, and patience is a virtue, but if you ultimately can't make anything significant of it, then there's been a failure of communication, and as in all cases, both the reader and the writer are responsible. If you have five readers who've worked hard to decode the work and have pulled in additional voices through secondary sources to help out and still don't find the profundities, then the blame shifts further toward the writer. I think we acknowledged in our discussion the open-ended character of this particular text enough; we were not just pulling out some tidbits and saying you can chuck the rest.

As I know I've expressed on the podcast, I do think that genius is largely a myth. Yes, W. was a super smart guy who penetrated deeply into some things, which is why we bother to read him, but as he himself admits in his introduction, the Investigations is a sloppy book, and his inability to go back in and whittle it down is hardly a virtue. Not all good books have to be highly polished, and in fact there's something really valuable in sifting through raw thoughts of this sort, but if you think that every last dropping of someone like Wittgenstein is more worth your time and meditation than the well-honed products of lesser known but also very sharp folks like Flanagan, MacIntyre, and 100,000 other men and women you'll never hear about, then I think our celebrity-worshiping culture has warped your perspective.

On the other hand, once you've made a connection to a figure that you think is on to something, then going further into his scraps deepens that personal connection, so you can see more the line of his thought, just like I might dive into Elvis Costello B-sides and early works and whatever I can get my hands on. That's a legitimate way to proceed, but it doesn't imply that you have to put the guy on a pedestal.

Since I do this podcast, I'm in favor of our methods: Non-experts should not let some misguided reverence keep them from publicly grappling tough texts, and given that it's fun to do so, it's not necessary to appear penitent and tentative and meek during the whole process. Were the Internet flooded with other, more expertly informed and astute groups doing what we do, then perhaps what we post would lack value, but until that time comes, we will keep on pluggin'.

-Mark Linsenmayer

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Filed Under: Misc. Philosophical Musings Tagged With: arrogance, genius, listener feedback, Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosophy blog

Comments

  1. Orwell says

    May 29, 2012 at 11:36 am

    (Applause)

    Maybe the reviewer mistook acknowledging humor for being reductive? There’s a big difference between being fatuous and being witty, and the podcast is always on the right side.

    Also I’d go further – I don’t believe in intelligence, let alone genius. Beyond a certain capacity there is no measurable or comparable way to judge ‘intellect’. I don’t consider a broad vocabulary, an aptitude for rubix cube or an ability to memorize playing cards anything smarter than the abilities of a homing pigeon or a spider spinning a web. Who’s ‘smarter’, Einstein or Wittgenstein? Was one a ‘genius’ or just ‘divinely inspired’?

    “OOOOooooo that’s really smarrrrt!”
    “Dan Dennett is the devil”
    “Lucy Lawless is our demographic”
    – now that’s genius.

    Reply
  2. Emil Lime says

    May 29, 2012 at 12:05 pm

    What you are doing is quite difficult and I’ve not heard anything like it anywhere else. A recent survey of what is available with regards to philosophy shows me a great deal of variety. There are podcasts that are essentially academic papers read on air. There are extremely honest and erudite monologists like Jeremy Sherman, but here to for there is nothing like this philosophy salon anywhere and there is no place that I’ve seen smarter comments and better written explanations. This is an exciting development in analysis caused by the new topology of communication. I am essentially an artist a writer and musician and am glad to hear people who’s interests coincide with mine. I’ve not enjoyed every bit of your bravado. I would like to hear a little more respect for the art world and the poetry world and the world of cinema, those being catalysts that cause epiphanies, just as analysis of philosophy does. But philosophy is something that all of us must do at some level just to move our consciousness forward or upward depending on whether you think there is such a direction. You’ve made me reconsider Hegel in light of your discussion of Danto. I think I heard one of you say it changed your mind.

    Reply
    • Seth Paskin says

      May 29, 2012 at 3:17 pm

      That was me. I’d love to do more on other forms of creative expression. Limited time and resources…
      –seth

      Reply
  3. Ryan says

    May 29, 2012 at 1:04 pm

    One of the most important philosophical notions to me is that knowledge always begins from on top the shoulders of others who came before you. You are only as intelligent as your community has managed to successfully foster you to be. A similar idea is that in the modern age any particular individual’s breadth of knowledge can’t nearly match those of the naturalist philosophers in antiquity, who commonly addressed and reassembled every branch of knowledge available to man at that time. Given the accumulated mountain of knowledge shared by mankind today, we each sit atop our own small peaks built up by lifelong personal habits, and there are potentially deep chasms that divide us from others given any certain topic.

    Reply
  4. Randall Miron says

    May 29, 2012 at 2:39 pm

    Mark,

    You are wrong about the Investigations being a sloppy book. Read the intro again. In fact the book took W a long time to put into its final form, so it should be considered highly polished. The thoughts expressed in it not “raw”. The idea that it ought to have been made more “cooked” shows, I think, a misunderstanding of Wittgenstein’s aim. Anyway, big issue. A point you made in the podcast, which I enjoyed but also found frustrating, that W thought fuzzy borders weren’t borders is actually an idea of Frege’s that W criticizes. There are borderline cases; W calls them intermediate cases and he thinks it’s important to find and invent them in teasing out the limits of concepts. So much more I could say. Wish I had been able to participate in the discussion directly. Phil Bro was helpful, as were you often in clarifying W’s aims. Thanks.

    Reply
  5. Randall Miron says

    May 29, 2012 at 6:08 pm

    Regarding Wittgenstein and games. If someone happened to find an iron clad definition of “game” (one that couldn’t be ‘gamesaid’; semi-amusing pun) that wouldn’t really refute W because all he is arguing in general is that we have no grounds for assuming that there MUST be something common to all things we call by the same name. It would refur=te his claim that if you look you won’t find anything common to them all. I assume he looked very hard for that something (those somethings). I was surprised that Wes was ready to argue that rules are the essence of games. Glad he realized that wouldn’t do. They might have been a necessary condition, but probably not; but they aren’t sufficient since so many other things involve rules. Phil Bro made that clear. If one thinks games have an essence, I’d have thought that someone would have found it by now and refuted Ludwig on this point. Please give it a go Wes; you never know. I’m enjoying the podcasts a bunch. One has to read the material, though, or one won’t be able to judge the relative merits of the participants’ takes on the texts. I saw this more clearly when I listened to the Witt stuff because I am very well read in Witt and the literature (which isn’t to say I’m some expert or devotee) and could have jumped in in many places in the conversation to “clarify, raise an objection or some of the other shit that constitutes philosophical discussion. Thanks for the pleasure of listening to you all.

    Reply
  6. rinky says

    May 30, 2012 at 5:15 am

    Couple of points here.

    First, I can see both the strengths and the weaknesses of your format. It’s an entertaining way to approach what could often seem to be a forbidding subject matter. But, the freewheeling & flippancy doesn’t always produce cogent analysis & profound insights. You guys are obviously set on the format by now, and fair play to you – but not everyone is going to love it as much as you do.

    Brings me to my second point. When he gets a criticism, the bigger man takes it on the chin. Maybe there’s some useful feedback for you in that criticism, maybe it’s way off target – but either way, just learn whatever you need to & then let it go. Don’t indulge the feeling that you need to justify yourself – it comes over as defensive & whiny.

    I’m still here as a subscriber, either way. Keep up the work.
    –R.

    Reply
  7. swallerstein says

    May 30, 2012 at 7:34 am

    There’s a lot of resentful, envious, competitive people around who will try to put down anything which functions (with the normal amount of defects of anything which functions in the real world) and your excellent podcasts undoubtedly attract many of them.

    As Cervantes says (not an exact quote), if the dogs are barking, it means that we’re advancing. I can find the quote if you want it, it’s from Quijote.

    Reply

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