Suppose that instead of one shepherd boy, there are a few dozen. They are tired of the villagers dismissing their complaints about less threatening creatures like stray dogs and coyotes. One of them proposes a plan: they will start using the word “wolf” to refer to all menacing animals. They agree and the new usage catches on. For a while, the villagers are indeed more responsive to their complaints. The plan backfires, however, when a real wolf arrives and cries of “Wolf!” fail to trigger the alarm they once did.

The above variation on the classic fable of the boy who cried wolf is by Spencer Case, who recently earned his PhD in philosophy from the University of Colorado. He uses the story in an article at Quillette to illustrate what he calls “concept inflation.”

Concept inflation occurs, Case says, “when speakers loosen the usage of an emotionally impactful word in order to manipulate an audience.” He thinks that certain uses of terms like “violence,” “gaslighting,” “racism,” and “sexism” are often deployed in concept-inflating ways:

Most dictionary definitions of “violence” mention physical harm or force. Academics, ignoring common usage, speak of “administrative violence,” “data violence,” “epistemic violence” and other heretofore unknown forms of violence. Philosopher Kristie Dotson defines the last of these as follows: “Epistemic violence in testimony is a refusal, intentional or unintentional, of an audience to communicatively reciprocate a linguistic exchange owing to pernicious ignorance.”

What Dotson calls “epistemic violence” isn’t violence according to ordinary usage or the dictionary. If intellectuals can commandeer the word “violence,” then presumably they can do the same with stronger words. So why not call epistemic violence “epistemic rape”? Indeed, why not “epistemic genocide”? After all, genocide is destroying a people in whole or in part, and part of destroying a people is destroying its voice. Maybe that can be done through subtle acts of silencing. This is absurd, of course, but there’s no principled way to stop moves like this if we accept coinages like “epistemic violence.”

What’s bad about concept inflation, according to Case? One thing is that it makes certain terms less effective:

When speakers expand the reference of a word in order to attach its associations to new things, they dilute the associations of the original word. Just as printing too much paper currency diminishes the value of the currency, concept inflation degrades the rhetorical effect of inflated words and phrases.

Another is that it’s like lying:

Immanuel Kant observed that lying couldn’t be effective in a world where everybody lied, since no one would be believed. Just as lying is parasitic on a truth norm, concept inflation is parasitic on norms of usage.

It’s also overly provocative: it’s “a strategy for activating disproportionate or unreasonable moral responses.”

Case thinks we shouldn’t engage in concept inflation, and should call people on it when they do it. If you see something, say something. Case writes:

We all have the responsibility to be good stewards of the languages we speak. We shape it when we decide to accept or reject new coinages or expressions… When we allow sloppy language to proliferate—for example, when we use the word “literally” to mean “metaphorically”—we degrade language and make it harder for everyone to communicate. This is analogous to polluting a common resource like the water or air. If some way of using a word seems fishy, then take your own reaction seriously and make your concern known. 

What should we make of concept inflation? Certainly the meanings of words change over time, and such changes may be good or bad in various ways. I’m not sure that concept inflation is bad in the ways Case identifies, though.

I’ve heard the phrase “epistemic violence” hundreds of times. Has this “degraded the rhetorical effect” of the word “violence” for me? I don’t think so. When I first heard it, I did have questions; like Case, I tend to associate “violence” with physical aggression. But then I was reminded of all of the ways in which we already use “violence” metaphorically, to describe coughing fits, brush strokes, turns, color clashes, etc. No one objects to using “violence” in these descriptions, even though these are not instances of physical aggression. The use of “violence” in these contexts does not seem to render it meaningless when it’s deployed in more traditional ways.

It may be worth observing that the metaphorical and hyperbolic uses of only certain terms end up coming in for criticism along these lines. Consider the phrase “attack on free speech.” It has been used to describe, among other things, requests to address people politely, criticisms of people’s speech, blog comment moderation, withdrawals of invitations to speak, and the like. These phenomenon do not exemplify the primary definitions of “attack,” which tend to include references to aggression, physical force, injury, even weapons. Yet I don’t recall anyone raising concerns about concept inflation when hearing about “attacks” on free speech. We seem to have been able to cope just fine with whatever loss of “rhetorical effect” the word “attack” has suffered through its metaphorical and hyperbolic use. Why worry about “violence” then?

(We’ve seen this kind of pattern before: structurally similar phenomena receiving either dismissive or approving labeling depending on whether it serves the interests of the less or more powerful.)

Let’s go back to Case’s fable. Why are the shepherd boys crying wolf? “They are tired of the villagers dismissing their complaints about less threatening creatures like stray dogs and coyotes.” Maybe dogs and coyotes are less dangerous than wolves, but they could pose serious problems for the boys nonetheless, and no one’s paying attention to these problems. The boys have been led to believe that the only way they are going to get help is by crying wolf.

This aspect of the story doesn’t get much attention from Case, but I think it’s crucial. Case thinks that concept inflation is bad and that the way to counter it is to take care with our language. How about taking care with people? If the other villagers had been listening to the shepherd boys and had been understanding of their problem, the boys would not have had to resort to crying wolf. But they were unheard, and crying wolf reasonably seemed like their best option. Likewise, those Case accuses of concept inflation might also be unheard: they don’t believe they are being listened to, or that their problems are being taken sufficiently seriously. And so perhaps they are reasonably drawn to bring attention to their problems with more dramatic turns of phrase.

This suggests that if one is opposed to concept inflation, a way of combating it is by listening to people and taking their concerns seriously.

If one cares about there being a culture of robust, quality, disagreement, an element of that is being vigilant about restrictions on and pressures against speaking up. But another that’s just as important is being careful to actually hear what others are saying.

To label an instance of speech “political correctness” is to brand it an ignorable complaint of the oversensitive. To label an instance of speech “virtue signaling” or “moral grandstanding” is to accuse it of being made in self-serving bad faith. To label an instance of speech “concept inflation” is to call it a kind of harmful lying. These are all labels that tell us to dismiss what is being said, rather than try to understand it or engage with its substance.

We already pretty good at not listening to others, to not taking seriously experiences different from our own, to not hearing what would disturb our complacency. If we care about ideas—and if we care about people—we should be wary of means that make it easier for us to dismiss them.

photo of “Head On” by Cai Guo Qiang

(Note: Dr. Case sent me a link to his Quillete article earlier this month and we discussed it in a series of emails which covered some of the aforementioned points. At the end of that exchange, he voiced his preference for a critical post about his article rather than none.)

The post Crying “Crying Wolf” appeared first on Daily Nous.

On Friday, 22nd February 2019, the long-time enemy of Fascism and Zionism Tony Greenstein put up a very ominous piece about a particularly revolting development in Israeli politics. Benjamin Netanyahu, or, as I’ve heard one Jewish professor described him, ‘That bastard Netanyahu’, has invited the extremist party Otzma Yehudit to join his coalition by urging the far right party Jewish Homeland-National Union to merge with them. Netanyahu has made this cynical maneuvre in order to fend off defeat from the Resilience and Yesh Atid parties.

This has dismayed and disgusted liberal Zionists, as Otzma Yehudit, whose name means ‘Jewish Power’, is the descendant of Meir Kahane’s Kach. In 1984 Kahane entered the cabinet with a programme that Michael Aarenau, a journo for The Times of Israel, reported that some Likud members were comparing to the Nazis’ infamous Nuremberg race laws. Kahane demanded

– Revocation of non-Jewish citizenship.

– Expulsion of non-Jews from Jerusalem and eventually Israel.

– The eventual imposition of slavery on Arabs and other non-Jews.

– Prohibition of contact between Jews and Arabs, including sexual relations.

– Segregated beaches.

– Prohibition of non-Jews living in Jewish neighborhoods.

– Forced dissolution of all intermarriages.

Greenstein notes that this comes straight from the Nazi laws, but also codifies what was already common practice in Israel. Kahane was banned from sitting in 1988 when it looked like his wretched party would get somewhere between 4 to 8 seats. And before then, when Kahane entered the chamber, the other 119 Knesset members would walk out. Greenstein states that you can tell just how extreme the party is from the behaviour of its leader, Michael Ben Ari. Ben Ari was a member of the Knesset for the National Union from 2009 to 2013. In that time, he started a pogrom against Black African refugees in South Tel Aviv. He also tore up a copy of the New Testament a Christian missionary had sent him and threw it in the bin. Now imagine the outrage that would quite rightly occur if a Christian leader tore up a copy of the Talmud! Ben Ari’s also a bloodthirsty thug, who hold non-Jewish and left-wing Jewish life in absolute contempt. When he was told in 2010 that six Palestinians had died for every Israeli, he declared that 500 should be killed instead for every soldier. As for the Gazans, he said that there were no innocents in Gaza, and they all should be mown down. He also described human rights organizations and left-wing Jews as ‘germs’ to be eradicated.

Greenstein then shows that Ben Ari only stated openly what other Israeli leaders were saying in private. The article also discusses the dismay and horror expressed by liberal Zionist organisations, Like the Forward newspaper. He makes the case that Otzma Yehudit, which wants to abandon democracy in Israel for a theocratic state, is only bringing to the fore the conflict between democracy and the idea of a Jewish state. You can have one, but not the other. If Israel’s a Jewish state, then consequently it abandons democracy as non-Jews cannot have the same rights as Jewish Israelis.

It’s very clear that the term ‘judaeonazi’ – a term coined by an Israeli professor and philosopher – aptly describes these thugs. This is the type of party and racial-theocratic bigot Netanyahu and his coalition represents. And by extension, it’s the type of Israeli Nazis that the Board of Deputies of British Jews and Chief Rabbi represent when they attack Jeremy Corbyn as an anti-Semite, simply for supporting the right of the Palestinians to stay in their ancestral homes and live without fear as equal citizens.

It is these thugs that Joan Ryan, the chair of Labour Friends of Israel, John Mann and  Tom Watson are defending when they make these accusation of anti-Semitism. But this is being ignored by the political-media establishment, who simply want to use it to force Corbyn out.

But it’ll be interesting to see how the Israel lobby, Labour Friends of Israel, the Jewish Labour Movement, formerly Paole Zion, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the rest of the Israel lobby try to spin all this when the pogroms and lynchings start, and when non-Jews, including Christians, are expelled from Israel.

If this is reported at all. Remember, according to the media, any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic.

See: https://azvsas.blogspot.com/2019/02/netanyahu-invites-neo-nazi-otzma.html

Some academic publishers offer authors of monographs an “open access” option. For a fee, the publisher will make a version of the text available online, free to anyone.

Nicholas Shea (University of London) recently published his book, Representation in Cognitive Science, with Oxford University Press, and chose open access (you can view it here).

He writes:

I recently published an open access book with OUP, using grant money to pay for the substantial open access fee. This isn’t something OUP has done much in philosophy, and it’s certainly an experiment for me, so I want to make up my mind about whether it’s a good use of funds.

Given that the book would be on Oxford Scholarship Online (OSO) anyway, the biggest advantage is for people whose universities don’t subscribe to OSO, e.g. in resource-poor settings. There’s also an advantage to having a portable pdf that you can read when you’re offline.

The cost approximates to four open access journal articles, so getting an eight-chapter monograph sounds like a reasonable value. On the other hand the money could instead pay for a conference or a couple of workshops. And it’s a route that’s only open if the author can find some research funds to pay the fee—which of course is more expensive if taking advantage of the reputational and editorial benefits of a major publisher like OUP.

So there are arguments either way and I’m trying to see what people in the profession think. 

Readers, what do you think about the value of choosing and paying for open access publishing? And if you have ideas for/experience with obtaining funds for the express purpose of paying open access fees, please share them. Thanks.

Daniel Lai, “Thinker Under Tree”

Related: “What Is the Best Type of Open Access for Philosophy and Other Humanities Disciplines?“, “Open Access Philosophy Textbooks“

The post Publishing Your Philosophy Book with Open Access appeared first on Daily Nous.

What, another Mini-Heap so soon? 

1. Online, “I want… to be boring to argue with… That way, the only people who will do it are the ones who sincerely care about the argument”— Regina Rini (York) on arguing on the Internet
2. An important lesson for academics: saying no— Kevin Timpe (Calvin) shares some advice
3. “As a professor who regularly teaches East Asian philosophies, I die a little inside every time we experience a cultural phenomenon with a veneer of ‘wisdom from the East’ on it.”— Amy Olberding (Oklahoma) on Marie Kondo, tidying, plain sense, joy-sparking, and usefulness
4. If there are epistemic facts, does that imply there are moral facts?— Spencer Case (Colorado) says yes. David Enoch (Hebrew University) and others discuss.
5. Mary Whiton Calkins studied philosophy and psychology under William James and was the first woman president of the APA— there’s now an effort underway to get her the PhD she appears to have earned but which Harvard refused her
6. The high price of justice is an injustice — three posts from Michael Huemer (Colorado) on the subject
7. Wrestling with the Stoics — a discussion with philosophy PhD student and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu competitor Michael Tremblay (Queen’s) and others

Mini-Heap posts appear when 7 or so new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, the ever-growing collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers.

The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thanks!

COMMENTS POLICY

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