Speaker 1: I guess, I guess to give the audience maybe a
Speaker 1: little preview. I was thinking that you should call this episode.
Speaker 1: Eric almost quit because we made him read this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was really vociferously against this article. These three articles?
Speaker 2: Did you read all three?
Speaker 1: Guys? I read two? What's the third one? Was there? He?
Speaker 1: Did he make a third one? Or was there like
Speaker 1: a rejoinder?
Speaker 2: The third one is a picture of Bodriard and Boudeard's
Speaker 2: of course not mentioned, but it says why clarity matters?
Speaker 1: I think I think I read that one, so I
Speaker 1: must I must have not read the middle one.
Speaker 2: There's three. There's Derrida face, hegel face, bodyard face.
Speaker 1: Okay, I think I read two of the three.
Speaker 3: How continental philosophers argue? Is continental philosophy unclear because subject
Speaker 3: material is hard? And then the blue sky wave of arguing?
Speaker 3: Those are the three O.
Speaker 1: The skyway of arguing. I thought there was only two
Speaker 1: that was about this.
Speaker 3: I thought the sky one is from the seventeenth, is
Speaker 3: from three days ago.
Speaker 1: But is that one about this or is that about
Speaker 1: something else?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's about this. It's just more Twitter reaction. He's
Speaker 3: just pointing out how people were being mean to him.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, I'm telling him we can't read. It's being
Speaker 3: taking snipes out him.
Speaker 2: And to be clear, you're missing the bodyard one though,
Speaker 2: because the bodyard one is November fourteenth called why Clarity Matters,
Speaker 2: and it's also on I have the superior the superiority
Speaker 2: of So you probably didn't read the Hagel one that Victor.
Speaker 1: Well, I read the first one. Yeah, anyway, it doesn't
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: I think, Uh, let's explain what we're talking about, because
Speaker 2: not everyone's going to be on Philosophy Twitter as as
Speaker 2: we are. So I I will say, in hindsight, I
Speaker 2: regret this.
Speaker 3: This is substack too. This is not even Twitter, but
Speaker 3: it was on Twitter.
Speaker 1: The reactions were on Twitter spill over.
Speaker 2: So look, the reason recovering this is because it was
Speaker 2: on Philosophy Twitter, which Eric's not on.
Speaker 3: No, I don't understand what's happening.
Speaker 2: I was more interested. This is news, right, because news
Speaker 2: and events don't really come from Philosophy Twitter. It's only
Speaker 2: like once every two years or so there's a big
Speaker 2: blow up this. The tweet about this article got half
Speaker 2: a million views, So yeah, it breached containment. It was
Speaker 2: in the wider population and because we're a philosophy podcast,
Speaker 2: it would be we'd be remiss to not cover the
Speaker 2: one bit of news that came out of philosophy Twitter
Speaker 2: and philosophy sub steck And.
Speaker 3: Would we be remiss, Well, I think, I like, but
Speaker 3: to add to that, right, I think we'd be smart
Speaker 3: not to touch this.
Speaker 1: And went viral on Twitter, like not actually because it
Speaker 1: was good, but I would say it made it went
Speaker 1: viral because people were dunking on it so hard, like
Speaker 1: I don't know that, like after a bunch of dunks,
Speaker 1: and like a lot of people, even you know, even
Speaker 1: a lot of analytic philosophers on Twitter, we're dunking on this, right,
Speaker 1: So it's so it's not like it's like even analytic,
Speaker 1: and like one of my favorite responses was kind of
Speaker 1: which I don't know this. This could lead into conversations
Speaker 1: about like what was there even like a grain of
Speaker 1: truth to what he was talking about. I mean that
Speaker 1: maybe that'll be interesting because I think there is and
Speaker 1: I feel like we've all acknowledged that there is a
Speaker 1: grain of truth, but it's like a tiny grain and
Speaker 1: how bad his argument was. But I remember someone I
Speaker 1: think I think I shared it in the.
Speaker 2: Group oh, oh my god, Oh gross.
Speaker 1: Did you pull did you pull liquid? Did you pull
Speaker 1: liquid on your vape?
Speaker 2: No, it's not. This is a This is a w
Speaker 2: D forty straw.
Speaker 1: Holy shit, w forty in your mouth.
Speaker 2: That is so disgusting, dude, that shit's poisoned.
Speaker 3: Eh oh actually yeah, water displacement.
Speaker 1: You should probably rinse your mouth out because that shit's
Speaker 1: poison You should continue.
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna go.
Speaker 3: Okay, so so done that in the pregame.
Speaker 1: So I think the reactions to this, and like even
Speaker 1: analytic philosophers, I mean, one of my favorite responses was
Speaker 1: like from this guy, Enzo Rossi, who's a political theorist
Speaker 1: kind of analytic, but he's sort of a Marxist too,
Speaker 1: but like I guess, like an analytic Marxist. That's a
Speaker 1: kind of an aside. But he was like posting this
Speaker 1: article how continental philosophers argue, and he was like, how
Speaker 1: to go go viral? Make a basically correct and well
Speaker 1: known point very badly. All the holdouts invested in denying
Speaker 1: the almost obvious will come out of the woodwork and
Speaker 1: pretend that your bad argument is representative of the camp
Speaker 1: they oppose. So like what I think that's kind of
Speaker 1: like getting to which is sort of how I felt,
Speaker 1: is like clearly like like a lot of critical continental
Speaker 1: what people call continental philosophy and you know, has a
Speaker 1: clarity problem. We talked about it a lot when we
Speaker 1: were doing.
Speaker 3: Our arc on Lacan.
Speaker 1: I mean we were talking about how, like look at
Speaker 1: how Bruce Fink is putting these like super difficult ideas
Speaker 1: into like clear form. And I believe we might have
Speaker 1: even all agreed that Lacan might have just been a
Speaker 1: snobby French prick for like writing that way right, so
Speaker 1: like there is like an obvious grain of truth here,
Speaker 1: but he argued it in this article so badly that,
Speaker 1: as Enzo ROSSI I think is correctly pointing out here,
Speaker 1: it almost like allows people who want to deny that
Speaker 1: there is like a problem of clarity and condinal philosophy
Speaker 1: to be like see how stupid like the like that
Speaker 1: like nothing to see here, like there is no problem.
Speaker 1: Look at how badly this guy's arguing it. Like that's
Speaker 1: kind of that's sort of how I felt, because it
Speaker 1: was atrocious, like all the articles, and I want to
Speaker 1: point out that it's written by this guy, this this
Speaker 1: substacker who's like twenty two or twenty one, and when
Speaker 1: you look at his photo, I mean, I hate to
Speaker 1: like say it's just the ultimate stereotype, but he was
Speaker 1: just like I've been to I haven't been to philosophy
Speaker 1: conferences in a while. I mostly go to political theory
Speaker 1: conferences or political science ones now, but I have been
Speaker 1: to analytic philosophy conferences, and he just looks like right
Speaker 1: off that assembly line, he's like and like.
Speaker 2: Right, he's a gonna as shure this is effective altruism
Speaker 2: on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, He's got effective altruism, he's like, and and
Speaker 1: he just like looks like one of those guys who'd
Speaker 1: be in the audience and be like, excuse me, I
Speaker 1: feel like I detect a reductio in your argument. Like
Speaker 1: it's just like he is like the most So I
Speaker 1: don't know. That was like my initial reaction. I have
Speaker 1: like quite a bit to say too about like his
Speaker 1: substantive argument, and like how silly it is and how
Speaker 1: I feel like he even commits some of the errors
Speaker 1: that he accuses continental philosophers of committing, which I thought
Speaker 1: was kind of funny.
Speaker 3: But anyway, well, now I feel like I'm just hopping
Speaker 3: on a dunk train. Well, he is young, this young
Speaker 3: kid blogger who's written these articles that it basically just rehashing,
Speaker 3: like a so call square type of argument about continent,
Speaker 3: the phibiostophors not being clear, like Judith Butler, like dary Da,
Speaker 3: Like we were complaining about Lacan. It's it's easy to
Speaker 3: read tons of LACAN and then start complaining about how
Speaker 3: difficult it is to read. But he's just saying how
Speaker 3: continental philosophers argue, argue in quotation marks. And then the
Speaker 3: opening line is like an analogy about dogs wearing sweaters.
Speaker 3: Is continental philosophers making arguments? And it's like, oh my god, Okay,
Speaker 3: so this is just going to be a trolling shit piece.
Speaker 3: This is a ship post. Its rage based, not it's
Speaker 3: just someone complaining. It's someone complaining. And what do you
Speaker 3: do when you complain about something? When a student in
Speaker 3: the classroom is acting out and being negative, it's because
Speaker 3: they want attention. That is exactly what it is. This
Speaker 3: is a young, twenty one year old person whose brain
Speaker 3: is still developing, who is wanting attention and is complaining
Speaker 3: about something.
Speaker 2: Now, look, I know you. You are a fan of
Speaker 2: repurposing Internet terms to mean whatever you want them to
Speaker 2: mean like gooning for example. Now that was repurposing going,
Speaker 2: and you're also repurposing rage bait because for it to
Speaker 2: be rage bait, there has to be self awareness up
Speaker 2: on the part of the poster.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I ship posting rage baiting.
Speaker 1: I didn't say, but I think he's sincere.
Speaker 2: I think you're ascribing intention where there's no evidence that
Speaker 2: the intention exists. Okay, I want to say what he's
Speaker 2: right about, which is that Judith Butler's a very annoying writer. Yeah, clarity.
Speaker 2: Clarity is not her problem though, similar with Hegel because
Speaker 2: he he he focuses on those two specifically, and yeah,
Speaker 2: they are. They are annoying writers. Always Dreda though lumped
Speaker 2: in there. It's just like, why is there its picture?
Speaker 1: It did even quote Dereda? I think he did. He
Speaker 1: did at one point, but also did you guys find it? Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I felt like a cup with a
Speaker 1: couple of the quotes, like even the Butler quotes. I
Speaker 1: feel like I was like I read it and I
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, I'm pretty sure I know what she's
Speaker 1: talking about. Like, yeah, I was like, understand what she's
Speaker 1: saying here.
Speaker 3: Pretty sure he's getting it completely wrong. As difficult as
Speaker 3: they are, he wasn't even interpreted the quotes to say
Speaker 3: what his criticism of them was saying.
Speaker 2: Well, he also picked like the easiest passage from Hegel's
Speaker 2: like the beginning of phenomenology of Spirit, which is, you know,
Speaker 2: there's there's much harder choices that you could have you
Speaker 2: could have made if you're going to sell Should we
Speaker 2: should we?
Speaker 1: Should we try? Like let's let's see like this first
Speaker 1: quote that he takes from Butler and how continental philosophers
Speaker 1: quote unquote argue like I thought, like I don't know,
Speaker 1: let's see, can we can we understand what she says here?
Speaker 1: She says the move from a structuralist account in which
Speaker 1: capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways,
Speaker 1: to a view of hegemony in which power relations are
Speaker 1: subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of
Speaker 1: temporality into the into the thinking of of structure, and
Speaker 1: marked a shift from a form of Althasurian theory that
Speaker 1: takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which
Speaker 1: the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a
Speaker 1: renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with contingent sites
Speaker 1: and strategies of the rearticulation of power. Now wordy as fuck,
Speaker 1: and I would even say somewhat obnoxious.
Speaker 3: But like that this one sentence.
Speaker 1: And I was pretty sure, like out of and also
Speaker 1: very out of context, but I was pretty sure she
Speaker 1: was just describing like two different ways of thinking about
Speaker 1: power as like either contingent or determined. Am I wrong
Speaker 1: about that?
Speaker 2: Or no? No, no, it's not hard at all. I
Speaker 2: shouldn't say it's not hard at all. There's a lot
Speaker 2: of there's a lot of words in here, but it's
Speaker 2: if you know the words, then you know. What she's
Speaker 2: saying is that we're moving from a structuralist account like
Speaker 2: all who's there, to something more contingent, shifting over time
Speaker 2: the temporal.
Speaker 3: The temporal part is because structuralism can't account for temporal
Speaker 3: change and thus contingency, because everything that happens in a
Speaker 3: structuralist account is already determined by its position in the structure. Yeah, hegemony,
Speaker 3: which I'm I'm thinking is coming from Graham, Shey Graham.
Speaker 3: She's the famous Italian Marxist who comes up with the
Speaker 3: notion of agemony. Yeah, so people are moving more to
Speaker 3: a Gramcian than an altha Serian account, which Althazarian is
Speaker 3: associated with a structuralist account. Not structuralist, I guess in
Speaker 3: the Sosarean sense, but structural in the sense that alphaser
Speaker 3: has the arguments about ideological and repressive state apparatuss.
Speaker 2: That's what that means. But I recognized this sense, and
Speaker 2: I didn't see anyone point this out, but we read
Speaker 2: this sense on the podcast before, oh really pre pre
Speaker 2: episode fifty, I want to say, but it was in
Speaker 2: the context of this This sentence won the Worst Sentence award.
Speaker 2: Do you remember that.
Speaker 1: Was the one I just read.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was the Philosophy and Literature Journal in it
Speaker 2: was like late nineties, like nineties ninety eight or ninety
Speaker 2: nine gave this sentence the worst Sentence award of that year.
Speaker 2: And I think a post colonial, post colonial guy or
Speaker 2: girl got the second one, like Spivak. I think got
Speaker 2: this got surprized too, or baba or.
Speaker 1: Something that's so funny Homie baba, Homie baba.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I've found that there's a nineteen ninety nine Guardian article.
Speaker 3: In the Guardian about the world's worst writing. Each year,
Speaker 3: Philosophy and Literature, an academic journal runs a bad Writing
Speaker 3: contest to celebrate the most stylistically lamentable passages founded scholarly
Speaker 3: books and articles. The only condition is that the entries
Speaker 3: be non ironic. Deliberate parody cannot be allowed in a
Speaker 3: field where unintended self parody is So. Yeah, so Judah
Speaker 3: the Butler wins first prize, Homie Baba wins second, and
Speaker 3: someone called Steve Lozine wins third prize. I don't know
Speaker 3: that is, but yeah, so's he's he's pinched that sentence
Speaker 3: from a previous awards ceremony.
Speaker 1: And he claims that he just opened it up to
Speaker 1: a random page too, right after the quote. He's like,
Speaker 1: to avoid accusations of cherry picking, I opened up a
Speaker 1: random page from Butler's gender Trouble.
Speaker 3: Oh no, that's for the next one. On look on, No,
Speaker 3: this first one was was very carefully cherry picked, actually
Speaker 3: out of the Guardian. If if he's looking at the
Speaker 3: same thing, yeah, to fun, he probably just like googled
Speaker 3: like bad Judith Butler, or maybe maybe he was. He's
Speaker 3: using chat GPT in this, so he probably like chat
Speaker 3: GPT like bad Judith Butler sentence, and then it picked
Speaker 3: up probably just.
Speaker 2: Searched our typed bad Continental philosophy.
Speaker 3: Want to try it? You can give it a shot.
Speaker 3: See like you just in bad Judith Butler sentence.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna do. Uh what is the most unclear sentence
Speaker 2: from Continental?
Speaker 3: I got the Guardian article again when I typed that
Speaker 3: bad Judith Butler sentence. Second second one is world's worst
Speaker 3: writing Guardian.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, what it gives the other quote that
Speaker 2: he used, It gives Hegel phenomenology of spirit.
Speaker 1: Oh really?
Speaker 2: But then runner up is Hidigger.
Speaker 3: So this guy's right posts like most undergrads write an
Speaker 3: essay that's due tomorrow, it's.
Speaker 1: Heidigger's being in time even Okay, read me that, because
Speaker 1: I'll bet you I'll be able to understand what it is.
Speaker 1: I feel like I know that book pretty well.
Speaker 2: Chad Gpt didn't give much. It just says the nothing nothing's.
Speaker 1: Oh that's all it gave.
Speaker 2: And then then it gives Then it gives Lacan the
Speaker 2: Lizen Gaitari so all famously difficult. No he did he
Speaker 2: cherry picked the Worst Sentence Awards sentence and then said,
Speaker 2: oh look this is representative of things that make no
Speaker 2: sense to me.
Speaker 1: Which, by the way, we were able to make sense
Speaker 1: of that worst sentence at least somewhat. Like, I think
Speaker 1: we all agree it's a bad sentence, So like, I
Speaker 1: don't think any of us would be like, yeah, Butler
Speaker 1: needed to write that way in her defense, she was
Speaker 1: using the jargon of two different disciplines and saying these
Speaker 1: are what the disciplines say.
Speaker 2: She's not even jargoning for her own sake necessarily there.
Speaker 1: Mmmm, that's interesting. Yeah, yeah, so I was gonna say that. Like,
Speaker 1: so he basically starts the first article by just having
Speaker 1: a bunch of these quotes and then like doesn't really
Speaker 1: make like he just makes a really like stud He's like,
Speaker 1: I can't understand these these are just gibberish, and then he.
Speaker 3: Goes on, therefore they are not arguing.
Speaker 1: Therefore they're not arguing. And but then he goes on
Speaker 1: to kind of give an account of a few different
Speaker 1: ways in which he thinks continental philosophers tend to argue.
Speaker 2: And continental philosophers is Butler. He mentions Darredel once in
Speaker 2: the beginning, and every single quotation is Butler.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I also felt like, well, he doesn't talk
Speaker 1: about any of the existentialist or phenomenologists who I think
Speaker 1: are difficult, but you know, I think fair fairly clear,
Speaker 1: Like I don't know, I think Mary L. Ponti is
Speaker 1: like fairly clear. I think I think others. I think
Speaker 1: Heidiger is difficult. But the funny thing about Heidegger is
Speaker 1: like he's he's one of these weird cases where like
Speaker 1: I did feel persuaded that he needed to write the
Speaker 1: way that he did for what he was trying to do,
Speaker 1: Like I understood, like it made sense to me. Maybe
Speaker 1: with some of the later French stuff, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I might be like slightly more sympathetic, but he kind
Speaker 1: of but then he kind of makes these broad generalizations
Speaker 1: about like where he'll give like the I think the
Speaker 1: first one he talks about is like a bit through
Speaker 1: is like maybe a third of the way through the
Speaker 1: article he says. You know, one way kanin a philosophers
Speaker 1: argue is by brazenly asserting that A is not B,
Speaker 1: where B is the obvious thing everyone would expect it
Speaker 1: to be, but instead C, where C is some random
Speaker 1: thing that makes no sense. They act as if they've
Speaker 1: established by this that A is C and anyone who
Speaker 1: thinks it's b is naive even though they've been given
Speaker 1: no argument for it, and the assertion is barely intelligible.
Speaker 1: For example, to be to be human is not purely biological,
Speaker 1: but instead always made coherent and legible through the social
Speaker 1: arrangement in which one partakes to partake in being and
Speaker 1: having ones being partaken by the other. But like, it
Speaker 1: also kind of makes sense to be honest, like.
Speaker 2: That's what Jijik does all like all the time.
Speaker 1: But what was like infuriating about the article is like
Speaker 1: he just makes such generalizations and like lacks a lot
Speaker 1: of specificity. He like has a few examples, but then
Speaker 1: doesn't go back to the examples and be like, see
Speaker 1: these examples I gave you are doing the thing that
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. He just kind of like leaves the
Speaker 1: examples to stand on their own and then goes on
Speaker 1: to talk about patterns and then goes on to talk
Speaker 1: about patterns that like I did recognize, right, So, like
Speaker 1: I was kind of like you said, pills, Like Jijik
Speaker 1: does that all the time, and I think that others
Speaker 1: do that all the time. But what was kind of
Speaker 1: funny in the example that he like made up was
Speaker 1: that it made sense. I mean, isn't that sentence just
Speaker 1: saying like like reducing human beings to biology is like
Speaker 1: making a mistake, which seems right. But I guess he's complained,
Speaker 1: is like, that's not making an argument. I guess I.
Speaker 3: Don't know why is that A is not B but
Speaker 3: instead C. That that infuriates him that some people do that,
Speaker 3: Like what what is what? I don't understand, Well, it's
Speaker 3: an argument, he says, like, that's that is so legit.
Speaker 3: People do that all the time. And then the Butler example, this.
Speaker 2: Is egregious that he thinks that this is continental. He claims,
Speaker 2: this is a continental method of argument. This is literally
Speaker 2: the structure of science to say that A is not B,
Speaker 2: the common sense response that most people think it's actually C.
Speaker 2: This other thing that people don't know about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 3: That's that's a basic essay structure. You're taught like, that's
Speaker 3: an introductory strategy when you're introducing your thesis. Your thesis
Speaker 3: of your article is C. Everyone expects you know A
Speaker 3: to B B, but I'm going to argue that it's
Speaker 3: actually not so B, it's actually C. Like that is
Speaker 3: a very traditional way of introducing her argument in an essay,
Speaker 3: yet he somehow hates it when Judith Butler does it
Speaker 3: and Judith Butler doesn't even do it. Here, gender is
Speaker 3: not to culture as sex is to nature. Butler is
Speaker 3: saying A is not to B as C is two D.
Speaker 3: Actually gender is put before as a gender is the
Speaker 3: discourse through which sex is like constructed as not constructed
Speaker 3: as pre discursive. It is put into a prediscursive neutral space.
Speaker 3: It's such an easy quote like that. He couldn't have
Speaker 3: chosen an easier quote to understand and not fit what
Speaker 3: he's saying it's doing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like it's almost like it comes from this
Speaker 1: sort of analytic impatience that I think, like some specially
Speaker 1: young like kind of late like lazy, I would say,
Speaker 1: like not willing to do the work if it's not
Speaker 1: structured in exactly the way that I want impatience because
Speaker 1: I think, I mean, there might be cases where this
Speaker 1: is not true, but at least in my experience of
Speaker 1: reading quite a lot of and maybe sometimes it doesn't happen,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, like they'll make that claim
Speaker 1: and then like you keep reading and then it becomes clear,
Speaker 1: like what the argument for that is usually like usually
Speaker 1: it's just like he's like, you made a claim, like
Speaker 1: you have to put like if this, you have to
Speaker 1: give it to me in an argumentative structure, like immediately,
Speaker 1: because like I just don't believe him that now.
Speaker 3: Look, I think it's fair to say he's right.
Speaker 2: It happens like Jijik's like, oh, we think the dads
Speaker 2: now are so good because they don't beat their kids,
Speaker 2: But in fact, the dads now are have a much
Speaker 2: more repressive ideology because you're forced to obey without coercion. Exactly,
Speaker 2: there's nothing continental about this. This is a basic form
Speaker 2: of argumentation that you learn in grade twelve.
Speaker 3: I love the very next, extremely traditional essay writing strategy
Speaker 3: that he does not like when you Butler does it
Speaker 3: is for a B and then acting like you've established
Speaker 3: B as in for Beauvoir, the feminine is not something
Speaker 3: that operates blah blah blah. Judith Butler is describing the
Speaker 3: view of another person for A as in for Beauvoir,
Speaker 3: B this is the case. And then he's like, Judith
Speaker 3: Butler's now treating B like it's true, and then goes
Speaker 3: on to another quote where she says something else Beauvar believes.
Speaker 3: For Beauvoir, women are the negative of men. Blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: For Irigorai I had the particular dialectic, blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: This is not an argument. No, she's not arguing. She's
Speaker 3: describing the views of other philosophers for a B, for
Speaker 3: C Rigorai D. She's not even saying. She's not acting
Speaker 3: like those are established facts.
Speaker 1: Now, she's not even saying that she necessarily agrees with them.
Speaker 1: She's just describing these different views.
Speaker 3: He just has no idea what is going on in
Speaker 3: the text here, and it's annoying him, and he's think
Speaker 3: he's thinks he's figured it out for AB, but it
Speaker 3: doesn't make it true. If you weirdly reflyy phrase a
Speaker 3: believed B as for a B, what are you talking about?
Speaker 3: That's what she's saying, She's Judith Butler is saying, before
Speaker 3: believe this, and both Arre believe that, and a rigor
Speaker 3: I believe that. And then you haven't quoted enough to
Speaker 3: see what she's actually got where she's going with this.
Speaker 3: You've just given us that and that's it, and you're
Speaker 3: upset about it. And really that's the thing you're supposed
Speaker 3: to do in your writing is what does this other
Speaker 3: person believe? What does this other person believe? These are
Speaker 3: other people who have talked about the same thing I
Speaker 3: am talking about. But he doesn't like it when you
Speaker 3: do that.
Speaker 2: Okay, great, Now, so that we are not accused of
Speaker 2: a straw man fallacy. What he is saying, what he's
Speaker 2: describing is just a garden variety appeal to authority fallacy. Now,
Speaker 2: I think we've established that based on this context. That
Speaker 2: is not what Judith Butler has done here.
Speaker 1: But do.
Speaker 2: Has a continental philosopher at some point done an appeal
Speaker 2: to authority fallacy? I think they probably have. Are continental
Speaker 2: philosophers the only discipline that is guilty of ever having
Speaker 2: done a appeal to authority fallacy? No, like this is
Speaker 2: not particular at all. It's not the case in this example,
Speaker 2: and it's not the case generally. Has it happened Probably
Speaker 2: does it happen more in continental philosophy than in some
Speaker 2: other discipline. I don't know. He doesn't know. Even if
Speaker 2: it's possible to prove that he has not done this.
Speaker 3: It's not even an appeal to authority and the count
Speaker 3: what he's presented is just someone describing someone else's views.
Speaker 3: If I said, Chopski believe that deep Grammars structured the language,
Speaker 3: Am I saying that's true? No, I'm just saying Chopski
Speaker 3: believed it.
Speaker 2: That is what's happening here. But I'm saying, even if
Speaker 2: this were to happen, even if, like I'm sure we
Speaker 2: do this on the podcast constantly is refer by name
Speaker 2: to someone who made an argument without re establishing the
Speaker 2: argument itself, or just referencing the argument that was made
Speaker 2: because in this context we agree with that it doesn't
Speaker 2: stand to be proven. But every single discipline does this,
Speaker 2: every single discipline, including analytic philosophy.
Speaker 3: If you do it and like, well, the best example
Speaker 3: of people who do this are the Scholastics, because they say,
Speaker 3: Aristotle believe this, therefore it is true, like an appeal
Speaker 3: to authority was literally a canonical method of Scholastic philosophy.
Speaker 3: Here it is in the Bible, therefore it must be true,
Speaker 3: and we have to go buy this here, here it is.
Speaker 1: And Marxists do it when they talk about Marx for
Speaker 1: sure though.
Speaker 2: That yeah, that just goes, That just goes for anyone
Speaker 2: in a group who's named by someone else's names. That's
Speaker 2: like Kantian, Freudian, Keenesian. If you're in that group, you're
Speaker 2: in that group because you agree with the name of
Speaker 2: the master.
Speaker 3: Everyone people do it and until they figure out it's wrong,
Speaker 3: until they figured out something Freud said just doesn't match facts,
Speaker 3: until they figure out something Mark said just doesn't match
Speaker 3: the facts or needs to be updated, or until they
Speaker 3: realize something in the Bible doesn't match the facts that
Speaker 3: natural science is uncovering.
Speaker 2: And we don't need to belabor the point. I think
Speaker 2: the point is this is in no way particular to
Speaker 2: continental philosophy. And more to the point, it didn't happen
Speaker 2: in the example that he gave.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it did not. The example for this thing
Speaker 3: that he doesn't like, for ab is just Butler describing
Speaker 3: Beauvoir's view of something. And that's it.
Speaker 1: It's pretty funny, it's true. That's how poorly he's understanding
Speaker 1: these arguments. Is like the example he gives isn't even
Speaker 1: doing the thing, which the thing he's just also complaining
Speaker 1: about everyone does. Although I do wonder pills. There is
Speaker 1: like a weird corner of analytic philosophy that's like almost
Speaker 1: like ahistoric that just like doesn't like to talk about
Speaker 1: any like what anybody said, and it's just only making arguments,
Speaker 1: like is only like like arguments all the way down.
Speaker 1: It's like almost like formal. And I wonder if like
Speaker 1: that little corner of analytic philosophy maybe actually like doesn't
Speaker 1: do that right, like doesn't just like ever appeal to
Speaker 1: a figure. It'll just be like arguments all the way down.
Speaker 3: I can't I can't imagine that even being possible, Like
Speaker 3: arguing like you are the first person to speak words
Speaker 3: in this language, is not possible, Like that is the
Speaker 3: definition of speaking into a void.
Speaker 1: No, no, but that's not what I mean.
Speaker 3: I don't mean it just can't do it. There are
Speaker 3: arguments that have been made before you, and you're either
Speaker 3: citing them or not citing them. But you can't just
Speaker 3: come in with no assumptions.
Speaker 2: That's what he's saying.
Speaker 3: He's saying, not be mathematics.
Speaker 1: Well, I think, I think. I think for example, like
Speaker 1: sometimes in sometimes in applied ethics, like these weird like
Speaker 1: ethical arguments where they'll like try to argue like it'll
Speaker 1: be like all thought experiments like so I remember I
Speaker 1: read one that was defending like violence to protect animals, right,
Speaker 1: And it's like it didn't like talk about what anyone
Speaker 1: else like it. It referenced quickly, like arguments that they
Speaker 1: thought were wrong, right, that he thought were wrong, and
Speaker 1: then just basically said, like, you know, if we imagine
Speaker 1: we see puppies being like tortured in a basement, like
Speaker 1: we none of us would think that it would be
Speaker 1: bad to go in and maybe use force to stop it.
Speaker 1: And then he says, well, why wouldn't that apply to
Speaker 1: like factory farming, and like, you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: that that's really you know, it's like this weird. It's
Speaker 1: like all thought experiments and then like kind of propositional logic.
Speaker 2: I think it's like I think it's any of the
Speaker 2: areas of analytic philosophy that are really dependent on modal logic,
Speaker 2: and a lot of them just use it for fun
Speaker 2: to do these thought experiments.
Speaker 1: It's just like very narrow. It's just like very narrow
Speaker 1: and weird. It's like a very narrow thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like the examples I can think of in analytic
Speaker 2: philosophy that are heavily dependent on modal logic are epistemology.
Speaker 2: So they'll say in this kind of world if you
Speaker 2: had known this, could you know this? Would this count
Speaker 2: as knowledge in this world? Or the other one is
Speaker 2: religion or like, I don't know what they call it, theology?
Speaker 2: Is it theology where you say, if this is the world,
Speaker 2: could God have created this world if he had these
Speaker 2: specific attributes? Can you deduce that by this world this
Speaker 2: kind of God exists? But I think you're right that
Speaker 2: much less than other disciplines, they don't refer to the
Speaker 2: ideas of other people so much as the arguments of
Speaker 2: other people, And a lot of the times these arguments
Speaker 2: can be like laid out formally with symbolic logic saying,
Speaker 2: if this is the type of world that exists, then
Speaker 2: we would expect this to happen. So I think you're
Speaker 2: right about that perhaps it's less dependent on shorthand referencing masters. However,
Speaker 2: I think even there, as with any other discourse, an
Speaker 2: appeal to authority is permitted by the in group if
Speaker 2: the in group is who you're speaking to.
Speaker 1: It's also kind of interesting how at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the article, I believe it's the first one he starts
Speaker 1: mentioning like who's included in continental and it's kind of funny,
Speaker 1: like he include Hegel and like I get, but like this,
Speaker 1: this is puzzling to me that Kant because like Kant
Speaker 1: is no clearer like than Hegel, like I just like,
Speaker 1: but but yet analytic philosophers like kind of see him
Speaker 1: as as like they kind of they like to adopt
Speaker 1: him and pretend that like Kant is is somehow analytic.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And like obviously I know that there's some historical reasons
Speaker 1: and some lineage reasons about like why there's like a
Speaker 1: line from Hegel to like all these other to like
Speaker 1: you know, people who are associated with continental philosophy, like
Speaker 1: you know, especially by Kojev. Right, Kojev kind of ends
Speaker 1: up influencing like all of French philosophy by his reading
Speaker 1: of Hegel.
Speaker 3: But it was just kind of weird to me, like
Speaker 3: continental analytic divides.
Speaker 1: Well, yes, exactly, and so is Nietzsche. H And it's
Speaker 1: it's just bizarre that he's so dismissive that he wants
Speaker 1: to include when there's also so many analytic philosophers who
Speaker 1: will draw on Hegel and Nietzsche, for example, And they're
Speaker 1: definitely a bunch of people who drew on Hegel, including
Speaker 1: John Rawls. You know, it's just weird.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's also like Richard Rorty, and there's even like
Speaker 2: a I think I don't know if it's University of Pittsburgh,
Speaker 2: but there's something called the Pittsburgh School, which is just
Speaker 2: analytics studying Hegel or Hegelian analytics. So this guy is
Speaker 2: not only an idiot when it comes to continental philosophy,
Speaker 2: he's an idiot when it comes to analytic philosophy too.
Speaker 3: It's it's funny that he reaches back because in his
Speaker 3: later article Blue Skyway of Arguing, he says, if one
Speaker 3: said that analytic philosophy was nonsense, analytic philosophers wouldn't need
Speaker 3: to exhort the person to read nor insult them. That
Speaker 3: he's referring to the responses he's gotten saying he can't
Speaker 3: read and they're insulting him. They would simply describe the
Speaker 3: clear successes inventing the field of anthropics, the simulation argument,
Speaker 3: infinite ethics, the drowning child argument, many arguments for veganism,
Speaker 3: population ethics, and so on. That continentals are unwilling to do.
Speaker 3: That is suspicious. So continental philosophers have no inventions like
Speaker 3: that to put.
Speaker 2: To their name. Ye wait att the philosophy, adam of
Speaker 2: the philosophy is so influential because everyone's a vegan for
Speaker 2: rational reasons now and I don't even know but the
Speaker 2: drowning child argument, I don't even know what that is.
Speaker 2: But you know what I do know what it is?
Speaker 2: Ideology alienation. How often have you heard the terms ideology
Speaker 2: and alienation this year? Or or or unconscious or fucking
Speaker 2: authenticity and bad faith like for tight Marx, Schopenhauer, Freud,
Speaker 2: start Hider, half of literary studies, half of film studies, hermineutics.
Speaker 2: We can take hermidutics too, Like Jesus, this is embarrassing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: logical arguments for veganism and the drowning baby argument, I
Speaker 2: hear those. I hear those every day.
Speaker 3: No existentialism like massively popular and drill drove a whole
Speaker 3: type of psychology no phenomenology either, which is driving cognitive
Speaker 3: science and many other fields across the humanities and social sciences.
Speaker 1: Wow, the analytics are finally catching on and realizing that
Speaker 1: Mary le Ponti had smart things to say after decades
Speaker 1: of ignoring him in all of cognitive science.
Speaker 2: And a plasticity. All the arguments and you're.
Speaker 3: Getting a little dangerous going back to Hagel too. So
Speaker 3: do you include Leibnitz in there? Do we not now
Speaker 3: have calculus? We can't say calculus. Do we include Descartes
Speaker 3: as a continental philosopher? Now you can't say friend, Cartiesian fields,
Speaker 3: mathematics and all the scientific work he did.
Speaker 2: Dude, the fucking term worldview, Velton shannk worldview is from
Speaker 2: continental philosophy.
Speaker 1: It's a very it's a very sloppy line drawing by him,
Speaker 1: very sloppy.
Speaker 3: It's funny, it's fun to think about.
Speaker 2: We've all marked philosophy essays, and I was trying to think, like,
Speaker 2: what would I give this if this or if this
Speaker 2: was a first class, I would not fail it because
Speaker 2: it's so obviously someone who's not familiar with the discipline,
Speaker 2: because the thesis is continental philosophy is blood. The second
Speaker 2: I saw that, I would probably return the paper to
Speaker 2: the student and be like, this is a three page paper.
Speaker 2: You can't have anything that says continental philosophy because there's
Speaker 2: no way to prove an argument about continental philosophy in
Speaker 2: three pages.
Speaker 1: Exactly. It's too general, the scope is too broad.
Speaker 2: If you want to make an essay this long. You
Speaker 2: can restrict it to maybe one author, maybe Judith, but
Speaker 2: Judith Butler just one book, because you're only quoting one
Speaker 2: book anyway. So say, in Gender Trouble, Judith Butler makes
Speaker 2: these three errors. That's a solid five page essay. All
Speaker 2: of continental philosophy does. This is just It's like an
Speaker 2: immediate fail in an upper year philosophy course.
Speaker 1: I agree, I agree.
Speaker 2: I received this paper, I wouldn't. I would try to
Speaker 2: interpret it. I would try to interpret it with the
Speaker 2: alternative thesis of Judith Butler and Gender Trouble argues like this.
Speaker 2: But even based on those arguments, which are all the
Speaker 2: ones we've read so far, are actually just incorrect. So
Speaker 2: if I had received this paper from a student, even
Speaker 2: having had graciously interpreted a different thesis so that they
Speaker 2: might be able to pass the assignment based on the
Speaker 2: argument alone, I would still fail it.
Speaker 3: And then the second and then the second paragraph ends
Speaker 3: with a quote. It's not there's no It ends with
Speaker 3: a quote from Michael Humor. By the way, who is
Speaker 3: I did check he is cited not with his own page,
Speaker 3: but he is in the Stanford Encyclopedia. He's also a libertarian,
Speaker 3: an archo capitalist. So that's the caliber of person you don't.
Speaker 3: You don't argue against somebody and then cite someone who
Speaker 3: is already biased against them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I mean every every philosopher is gonna have biases.
Speaker 2: Well, surprised, surprise, he put Barrita as the cover of
Speaker 2: this thing. And then and his one argument against Derrida
Speaker 2: is that Searle didn't like him, despite the fact that
Speaker 2: the two of them had a back and forth conflict
Speaker 2: in which Derda absolutely dumpsterreed Cearle.
Speaker 1: And Serle also like cele read limited ink. Searle was
Speaker 1: also like good friends with Fucot and and and was
Speaker 1: also friendly with Bordieux. And there's that like famous recording
Speaker 1: of him talking about how which we've covered on this podcast,
Speaker 1: actually how searl like had Fuco in in California like
Speaker 1: giving talks and and and and Searle for some reason,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure why I spoke French like super well,
Speaker 1: like was like and uh and he and he was
Speaker 1: like talking to to Fucau and he was like you
Speaker 1: know why, like why do you write so unclear? Like
Speaker 1: now you're giving your presentation and you're saying everything clear
Speaker 1: as day like I would but then it's put in
Speaker 1: your books. It's like why is it? And and and
Speaker 1: supposedly Fuco was like, well, in France, people will think
Speaker 1: your childish and naive if you write too clearly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the anecdotes are always fun. But I mean to
Speaker 2: quote Searle against Derrida as if Searle had the authority
Speaker 2: on that relationship, that's bad faith. If we want to
Speaker 2: continue with the continental affect, it's bad faith. Considering Dreda
Speaker 2: responded to Cerle's criticism at length book length, and Searle
Speaker 2: just didn't respond. And I can rehash this. Actually it's
Speaker 2: relevant because it's the first analytic versus continental debate, and
Speaker 2: it's probably the one that's done at the highest level
Speaker 2: of scholars in the field. They got in an argument
Speaker 2: over J. L. Austin, analytic philosopher, and Searle said Derrida
Speaker 2: did a low level critique or something like that, and
Speaker 2: then that's when he cited Fuco saying that Derreida is
Speaker 2: an obscurentist terrorist. Darida wanted to respond, but Cearle, like
Speaker 2: a bitch, refused to give permission to reprint his critique
Speaker 2: of Darida. So then Darida wrote limit inc, Which cites
Speaker 2: Searle's entire article to get around the fact that Searle
Speaker 2: refused to have his article published. And then in that
Speaker 2: in Limited Ink, Dereda claims that in his there are
Speaker 2: interpretations of jl Austin that he Darida is far closer
Speaker 2: to j al Austin's argument like his true heir, while
Speaker 2: Searle is closer to Searle's own caricature of continental philosophy.
Speaker 2: And I don't think Sarrel ever responded to that. And
Speaker 2: then this is back to the article if we want
Speaker 2: to get to the next highest level debate of analytic
Speaker 2: versus continental. Darida also got roped in it's referenced by
Speaker 2: little Bulldog here yea, it's the so call hoax or
Speaker 2: the so call affair in which Darida was referenced and
Speaker 2: asked a question about it, and he responded and darias like,
Speaker 2: why is my face on the cover of this thing
Speaker 2: when you didn't you didn't attack a single one of
Speaker 2: my arguments. I'm not even mentioned in it. And then
Speaker 2: they I think they apologized or retracted, But the same thing.
Speaker 2: I thought it was so funny that the same thing
Speaker 2: happened here where he put Darida's face on it and
Speaker 2: just dropped in a single quotation and then included a
Speaker 2: chat GPT quotation about how Darida believes in cats or something.
Speaker 2: It's just like Darita said to so called Rigwat, like,
Speaker 2: you can't expect me to respond to this seriously when
Speaker 2: it's done so unseeriously.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's kind of how I feel about this exactly,
Speaker 1: although it's funny. Just moving on to like his other
Speaker 1: accusation against continental philosophy.
Speaker 2: Y oh, I love this one.
Speaker 1: This one, this one I feel like does happen all
Speaker 1: the time, So like I do, I do sort of,
Speaker 1: And he says another favorite argument is X. If you rephrase,
Speaker 1: it can be made to sound vaguely conservative or vaguely
Speaker 1: like the sort of thing that a person who believes
Speaker 1: we can know some things are objectively the case would
Speaker 1: think is not x. Nintal philosophers will rephrase their opponent's
Speaker 1: arguments uncharitably note that the rephrase statements sound like the
Speaker 1: sort of thing that all their continental friends would sneer at,
Speaker 1: and then act like they've refuted it.
Speaker 2: Oh, sorry, you skip the you skip my favorite one?
Speaker 1: Oh did I I thought we talked about that one,
Speaker 1: the one oh, the word is oh, sorry, the word association.
Speaker 1: You're right, that one is.
Speaker 2: Really we can we can come back to that one
Speaker 2: and do this one first. Although this is it's just
Speaker 2: a complicated way of saying a straw man argument, and
Speaker 2: to say that continental philosophy in particular is more especially guilty,
Speaker 2: like obviously it happens, But to say it's exclusive or
Speaker 2: more particular to continental philosophy than any other type of discourse,
Speaker 2: it's just like like A, it's unprovable. It's unprovable even
Speaker 2: on its own terms. But B he uses he uses
Speaker 2: chat shept as his evidence for the argument when it's
Speaker 2: like completely not exclusive. A straw man policy is the
Speaker 2: most common type of no.
Speaker 1: Nothing here is exactly. I was about to say that
Speaker 1: that happens, but I do kind of think like so
Speaker 1: I will say, like, you know, my you know, I
Speaker 1: spent my dissertation a lot of the time engaging with
Speaker 1: people with some continental democratic thinkers philosophers, and I do
Speaker 1: feel like this was kind of like common. I mean
Speaker 1: the way that I think like this tremendous amount of
Speaker 1: straw manning of genrels of just like oh, he's like
Speaker 1: someone who believes that we can abstract from all knowledge,
Speaker 1: and it's like, no, he doesn't think that, Like that
Speaker 1: was said by so many continental thinkers, And I agree
Speaker 1: with Pills, it's not a problem solely of continental philosophy.
Speaker 1: But I will say that, like, maybe what I am
Speaker 1: slightly sympathetic to is analytic philosophy might be kind of
Speaker 1: because of it's the way that it does its method
Speaker 1: is like particularly good at protecting against straw Manning. I
Speaker 1: think like straw Manning and analytic philosophy is like, well,
Speaker 1: unless they're talking about continental philosophers, I guess, because they're
Speaker 1: definitely straw man But I guess, like when it comes
Speaker 1: to like each other or like certain kinds of arguments,
Speaker 1: like I think there is some kind of so this one,
Speaker 1: I guess just like I felt myself most agreeing with it.
Speaker 1: Maybe I also agreed with with the one that we're
Speaker 1: about to talk to the third one.
Speaker 3: But if he found an example of that, that would
Speaker 3: have been awesome. But then I was really disappointed to
Speaker 3: see that that's where the chat GBT generated quote went.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I get that he's trying to be funny,
Speaker 2: but like, while you're talking about someone else, straw matting positions.
Speaker 2: You get chat GPT to write like dereta to prove
Speaker 2: that Darida does this. That's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: It's yes, that's so bad. Man, find a real example, dude,
Speaker 1: Like what are you doing here? There are tons, there
Speaker 1: are tons of examples.
Speaker 3: Because that that is a good that is actually a
Speaker 3: really like you know, you feel that temptation like this,
Speaker 3: I'm a value this claim, like almost esthetically because I'm
Speaker 3: saying X. Does it sound like something a conservative would say? Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna agree with it. Like that, that is
Speaker 3: actually an interesting temptation to warn people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, less exactly.
Speaker 3: Against But it's disappointing that he couldn't find an actual
Speaker 3: quote to go along with that.
Speaker 1: And then after that, which which suggests he's lazy, which
Speaker 1: suggests he's lazy because he's not willing to actually go
Speaker 1: in and find an example.
Speaker 3: I mean, he could have just used chat GBT and
Speaker 3: said find me and then but and then he calls
Speaker 3: it a Martin Bailey argument, which I'm like, well, that's
Speaker 3: not the same thing. A Morton Bailey is like using
Speaker 3: a more obvious claim to hide a more ridiculous claim.
Speaker 3: That's not the same thing as.
Speaker 2: Like he first, at first he describes a straw man fallacy,
Speaker 2: then calls it a Martin Bailey like, is there anything
Speaker 2: Is there anything more discritic that a twenty year old
Speaker 2: will actually dork, not actually knowing the differences between informal fallacies.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm not interested in the Morton Bailey thing
Speaker 3: at all. I don't think that's I don't think that's
Speaker 3: a logical fallacy. I think that's an informal weird thing
Speaker 3: people do.
Speaker 2: I don't know it can be an informal fallacy. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think what you're saying is a lot of the
Speaker 2: times people do this is just in an informal setting,
Speaker 2: in an argument.
Speaker 3: That's true, that's just that's just slimy argument.
Speaker 2: Well, slimy argument or informal fallacy, whatever you want to
Speaker 2: call it. He says, Continental philosophers will rephrase their opponent's
Speaker 2: arguments uncharitably, so it sounds like the sort of things
Speaker 2: that their continental friends will sneer at and then act
Speaker 2: like they've refuted them, which describes a straw man slimy argument,
Speaker 2: not a Moutton Bailey slivey argument. But the more egregious
Speaker 2: point here is not that he doesn't know the differences
Speaker 2: between the informal fallacies. It's that he used chat GPT
Speaker 2: as an example of how continental philosophers do this. I
Speaker 2: don't know that Heidegger ever rephrased his opponent's argument to
Speaker 2: make them sound more conservative and then dismiss them. But
Speaker 2: how about this, how about this in the spirit of charity?
Speaker 2: Can we help him out? Can you think of any
Speaker 2: other examples?
Speaker 1: Think, I think Heart and Egriy kind of did that.
Speaker 2: Gonna say this is like a ninety This seems like
Speaker 2: a post nineties thing.
Speaker 1: B Maybe Butler might have done some Maybe she did
Speaker 1: some straw manning about like when she talked about gender essentialism,
Speaker 1: Like I don't know, there might be Like I'm suspecting
Speaker 1: I could be wrong about.
Speaker 3: This philosophy, though, you do have to be like, if
Speaker 3: you're gonna say that this is a bad move, then
Speaker 3: you have to be very clear about where you're straw
Speaker 3: manning your opponent and where you're just rephrasing what they're
Speaker 3: saying or dropping what they're saying into a different context
Speaker 3: that brings out a different dimension that you didn't before.
Speaker 3: Like one of the most famous versions of this is
Speaker 3: what Kant does with Hume right, it started a revolution
Speaker 3: in philosophy, and nobody accuses Kant of straw manning Hume.
Speaker 3: Everyone accuses Kant of putting Hume in an entirely different
Speaker 3: light or bringing out an implication that Hume himself didn't
Speaker 3: like work out, depending on how you want to look
Speaker 3: at it with CONT's transcendental turn right, So you have
Speaker 3: to draw the line very carefully between like, okay, rephrasing
Speaker 3: X to sound conservative to get people not to like this,
Speaker 3: and rephrasing X to bring out a very different dimension
Speaker 3: of it that is like truly there if you look
Speaker 3: at it like in this different way. I don't know,
Speaker 3: it's tough, but again it can be a very legitimate move.
Speaker 3: But also it can be yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: You have to be very careful that you're not just
Speaker 3: sort of possible during saying like, you know, X sounds
Speaker 3: too much like a positivist claim, or X sound too
Speaker 3: much like what like, I don't like liberals, so okay,
Speaker 3: it sounds too much like a little.
Speaker 1: Liberal or like dualism, or oh, dualism, this is dualism.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say. Descartes is only ever mentioned negatively
Speaker 2: for this.
Speaker 3: You know, like systems theory for exempt Like Luhman got
Speaker 3: that treatment right with systems theory, like, oh, you're talking
Speaker 3: about systems in cybernetics, you must be down for like
Speaker 3: the control society like Deluz was talking about. Like no, no,
Speaker 3: he's not. That's not what systems theory is. But like
Speaker 3: that's what X sounds like if you rephrase it.
Speaker 2: It is pretty rich. Even though he doesn't know what
Speaker 2: a straw man is. To see him complaining about people
Speaker 2: straw manning in an article that is just a straw man.
Speaker 2: Because he says continental philosophers will rephrase their opponent's arguments uncharitably,
Speaker 2: note that the rephrase statement sounds like the sort of
Speaker 2: thing that all their continental friends steer at and then
Speaker 2: act like they've refuted them. He just gave the ultimate
Speaker 2: undermining of his own article. Yeah, you just say analytic
Speaker 2: philosophers will rephrase their opponents arguments unsharably. I shouldn't say
Speaker 2: analytic philosophers, because no offense to analytic philosophers. Idiots will
Speaker 2: rephrase their opponent's arguments unsharably. Noted that the rephrase statement
Speaker 2: sounds like the sort of things that their idiot friends
Speaker 2: sneer at and then act like they've refuted.
Speaker 3: Them axe grindee bloggers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he literally is doing that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The comment is like the comment on the first one,
Speaker 3: powerful stuff, I'm sure, like, indicating that he doesn't know
Speaker 3: he's sure. Yeah, if only, if only he knew?
Speaker 2: Okay. The third method of argument is word association.
Speaker 1: Quote.
Speaker 2: Continental philosophers will start by making some vague statement about
Speaker 2: a thing. Then they will chain it together with other
Speaker 2: words that sound vaguely familiar, as if they've made a
Speaker 2: compelling argument. Now, this one stood out to me because
Speaker 2: he used the word chain. We talked about signifying chains
Speaker 2: just last week. And it doesn't actually come from continental
Speaker 2: philosophy necessarily. It's a psychoanalysis and structural anthropology structuralists anthropology.
Speaker 2: But anyway, distinctions don't matter. For example, quote, I think
Speaker 2: this is probably Butler. Again, I don't know. I probably Butler,
Speaker 2: but maybe he doesn't actually say so, it says quote
Speaker 2: for Darida, everything is always juxtaposed against its opposite being,
Speaker 2: being against non being, the masculine against the feminine. Femininity
Speaker 2: is always defined in relation to masculinity, the opposite, the unequal,
Speaker 2: the empty space against which masculinity is compared the feminine
Speaker 2: juxtaposed against the masculine other. The feminine is constructed through negation,
Speaker 2: rendered coherent and intelligible through social relations, yet always exceeding
Speaker 2: any notion which would have enabled her to be intelligible.
Speaker 2: This sounds like Irrigare to me. It could be Butler too.
Speaker 2: Hold hold on, I'm I don't know if this is true.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna have to grab this book and look at it.
Speaker 2: It's a.
Speaker 3: A I just told me. This quote is from the
Speaker 3: book Goddess as Nature Towards a Green Feminist Theology nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety three by Judith Deutsche corn Blot. Okay, this can't
Speaker 3: this can't be right. I'm going to get this book
Speaker 3: and check it out.
Speaker 1: Well, then he has this example, But I don't know,
Speaker 1: what do you think about this? Pills You said this
Speaker 1: one was your favorite.
Speaker 2: So wait, I'm actually trying to find this source of
Speaker 2: this quote too. Could he just make this up?
Speaker 1: Maybe chatchy might It might have been chatchyt He he
Speaker 1: seemed he couldn't be bothered to actually go and find
Speaker 1: the many incomprehensible quotes that do exist in some continental philosophy.
Speaker 1: Which is which is kind of funny, like it's so lazy.
Speaker 2: This sounds like being a Rigoro, I would say. But anyway,
Speaker 2: this again, this example wherever he got it from, doesn't
Speaker 2: do what he just said it does, right, Yeah, Like
Speaker 2: if you if you go to some if you go
Speaker 2: to Hidiger, remember Heidegger's say das ding, Yeah, where he
Speaker 2: says the thing is the gathering and it comes from
Speaker 2: this word, which means like they have a parliament in
Speaker 2: Iceland or some shit whatever whatever Heidegger is doing. That
Speaker 2: fits this much better than than this one.
Speaker 1: I had that same thought. Actually, But the.
Speaker 2: Question is this word game or associated words? Is this
Speaker 2: used as an argument ever? Like it resembles things that happen,
Speaker 2: but they are supplementary to the point they indicate the
Speaker 2: point that is trying to be made. Like if you
Speaker 2: think about who's playing word games. I mean Hidiger fits
Speaker 2: the mold the most because he goes on at at
Speaker 2: length about etymology. Dereda does some metamologies. Likes his etymologies
Speaker 2: to create like networks that exist when when you say
Speaker 2: one term, it implies kind of the field of terms
Speaker 2: around it. Basic structuralist argument. La Con does a bit
Speaker 2: of this, but even Heidigger's are the best example of it.
Speaker 2: When Heidigger goes on about the thing and how the
Speaker 2: thing has all these other associations with it, nothing is
Speaker 2: proved by that on its own, because his point has
Speaker 2: to do with, you know, in the case of the thing,
Speaker 2: our originary terms, we're closer to the being of beings,
Speaker 2: or the original disclosure of the being of beings, that
Speaker 2: are other terms like object. He doesn't like the term object,
Speaker 2: that's why he chooses the word thing. But that's obviously
Speaker 2: not what the argument is. The argument is that we
Speaker 2: use the term object in philosophy and it has too
Speaker 2: much baggage, it's too singular, too separate from anything else,
Speaker 2: and the word thing is better at just describing what's
Speaker 2: actually out there.
Speaker 3: And then, of course the Butler quote is again an
Speaker 3: extended passage of Butler talking about someone else's view on things,
Speaker 3: i e. Rigori, not Butler talking about her own view
Speaker 3: of things. So again this is annoying the way this
Speaker 3: is constructed. On the contrary, the female sex eludes the
Speaker 3: very requirements of representation, for she is neither other, nor
Speaker 3: the lack no, nor the lack those categories remaining relative
Speaker 3: to the sartrean subject imminent to that for logo centric scheme.
Speaker 2: He mentioned this in the next article too. He reads,
Speaker 2: I think it's the same quote, but he says, all
Speaker 2: this strikes me as extremely confused. Women are not unrepresentable.
Speaker 2: There is a word for women. The sentence X is
Speaker 2: unrepresentable is self defeating. For to write it, one must
Speaker 2: link whistically represent the thing that they are claiming cannot
Speaker 2: be represented. Like, dude, you are so close, You're so
Speaker 2: close to understanding the point here. But you can see
Speaker 2: there is the positivest view of language. Well, if if
Speaker 2: there's a word for it, then the signified is real
Speaker 2: solid point to right there. But you just he mentions
Speaker 2: linear algebra? What about zero? Does zero represent something? What
Speaker 2: don't you say? Nothing? Is nothing? Something? Or is nothing?
Speaker 2: A word?
Speaker 3: I love always saying it like, haha, gotcha, Butler, gotcha,
Speaker 3: you did.
Speaker 2: The one thing Butler never thought of in thirty years
Speaker 2: of education was that she was using the word woman.
Speaker 2: Thank god we have him to point this out.
Speaker 3: Did you just say that?
Speaker 2: Hah, gotcha.
Speaker 1: It's such a twenty year old man. This, this is
Speaker 1: a real twenty This is a real twenty year old
Speaker 1: You just like learned how to you learned how to
Speaker 1: kind of use his brain.
Speaker 2: We do just live in a world of just the
Speaker 2: peak unearned confidence. It's shocking. Yeah, Continental philosophy just forgot
Speaker 2: to consider that there's words for things. That's why, that's
Speaker 2: why we're in this predicament. Which, by the way, I
Speaker 2: shouldn't have to say this, but it's not a continental argument.
Speaker 2: This is like a pre modern This is that dark
Speaker 2: ages argument to debate about what the meaning of words is.
Speaker 1: It's kind of amazing though that he used chatchypetis so
Speaker 1: much like, dude, you couldn't be bothered. Like it's still
Speaker 1: kind of shocking, Like he when he talks about his
Speaker 1: last example, which like I kind of recognize maybe, he says, finally,
Speaker 1: a last method of arguing is to have some scare
Speaker 1: word that is both poorly defined and not argued against.
Speaker 1: Then one will treat the fact that something is associated
Speaker 1: with the scare word as giving it bad karma. And
Speaker 1: then he's like an example from chat ChiPT and then
Speaker 1: he just like why not find an example, like like
Speaker 1: I'm sure what, Like I kind of know what you're
Speaker 1: talking about. I mean, he's the example. He says, He's like,
Speaker 1: what we witness in the Panini is not merely a
Speaker 1: culinary artifact, but a culmination of the neoliberal projects ontological violence.
Speaker 1: The Panini and its sleek comprehension compression story between the
Speaker 1: indifferent jaws of the press, reveals the logic of flattening
Speaker 1: that defines our epoch, the erasure of texture, the homogenization
Speaker 1: of taste, the disciplining of the mouth into docile consumption.
Speaker 1: It's kind of funny, actually.
Speaker 2: Like this, Chagypt, this is impressive.
Speaker 1: Chatjipt did a good job here. It is in every
Speaker 1: sense the neoliberal sandwich, one that privatizes the act of
Speaker 1: nourishment into a transactional event between the subject and the commodity.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's pretty funny. I gotta say, like, that's
Speaker 1: it's pretty good.
Speaker 2: He did this in his title. I assume it's being ironic,
Speaker 2: but he said, how how continental philosophers argue in square
Speaker 2: in scare? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Eric mentioned that this one.
Speaker 2: You know what, this one though, I'm tired, it's been
Speaker 2: an hour. I'm just gonna concede this one. They do
Speaker 2: be doing that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they do, definitely that. I kind of want
Speaker 1: to read the second paragraph of his CHPT example, because
Speaker 1: it's actually it continues to be funny about the Panini.
Speaker 1: He's like to ask whether the Panini tastes good is
Speaker 1: already to capitulate to the neoliberal subjectivity for taste here
Speaker 1: is no longer sensuous discernment, but a marketized metric of pleasure.
Speaker 1: The problem is not that the Panini is bad. It
Speaker 1: is that the Panini is neoliberal, and in being neoliberal,
Speaker 1: it participates in the grand conspiracy of flattening of time
Speaker 1: into productivity, of affect, into branding, of being into having
Speaker 1: and like so that I mean, it's it's pretty good.
Speaker 1: Like I got to say that to chat GPT impressive
Speaker 1: and you know, it's funny, Like, yes, it sounds over
Speaker 1: the top, but like I think I was, like I
Speaker 1: was just at a conference in Chicago and I was
Speaker 1: like watching a paper and the guy was just unironically
Speaker 1: talking like it's so funny to me when when people
Speaker 1: start talking about like the clock and how clock is
Speaker 1: like a neoliberal product ject or whatever, and how like
Speaker 1: like before the clockman, like we didn't you know, we
Speaker 1: experienced like real time, and like there's a sense in
Speaker 1: which that's true. But It's just it can be framed
Speaker 1: in such kind of like like I don't know, nefarious
Speaker 1: kind of like sinister ways that are like you know.
Speaker 2: The clock that was invented by medieval monks for their prayer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess so, I'd love to clock time.
Speaker 3: I'd love to know what the what the command he
Speaker 3: gave to chat GBT to generate that, But a text
Speaker 3: was like make a make a scary sounding passage out
Speaker 3: of involving a panini. That sounds kind of postmodern.
Speaker 2: It is the best part of the essay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd love to I'd love to put that back
Speaker 3: into AI and be like, yo, can you like break
Speaker 3: this down and tell me I just put it back in?
Speaker 2: It says.
Speaker 3: The provided text is an academic or philosophical critique that
Speaker 3: uses the everyday object of a panini as a metaphor
Speaker 3: for the social, economic, and political philosophies of neoliberalism, the
Speaker 3: passage as an example of applying postmodern or critical theory
Speaker 3: to culture and consumption. The author is using highly theoretical
Speaker 3: language to argue the following points. Oh my god, there's
Speaker 3: so long neoliberalism's impact on culture blah blah blah. The
Speaker 3: panini as a metaphor for flattening blah blah blah, consumption
Speaker 3: as a transaction blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: Like, is that like maybe that passage is true, Like
Speaker 1: maybe the pie does signify some kind of neoliberal Yeah.
Speaker 3: Like, to him, this is like scare word bongering, poorly
Speaker 3: defined and not argued against. But then chat GPT kind
Speaker 3: of just blows him up with this nicely structured Panini metaphor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he dismisses it outright as if there could be
Speaker 2: no insight there because it was written by chat GBT
Speaker 2: as a parody. But this is actually an ad hominem argument.
Speaker 2: There could be an insight there. You haven't. You haven't.
Speaker 2: You can't dismiss it outright as a fallacious.
Speaker 1: There's an insight. Yeah, there might be an insight. I
Speaker 1: mean it's funny though, I do feel like like I
Speaker 1: recognize this argument, and recently because I read this article
Speaker 1: not long ago about that term surveillance capitalism. Do you
Speaker 1: guys know that one surveillance capitalism?
Speaker 3: I read that and it's and.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a response to it, saying like in
Speaker 1: defense of surveillance capitalism, and the author basically accuses like
Speaker 1: people no, it's a it's a yeah yeah, so she so.
Speaker 1: And basically this articles kind of accuses Zubob of doing
Speaker 1: what this guy's accusing like like basically being like what
Speaker 1: is really surveillance and like you're associating what like targeted
Speaker 1: ads as like surveillance, Like is that really surveillance, Like
Speaker 1: it's not really surveillance, it's just like annoying anyway. He
Speaker 1: made an argument that was partly persuasive partly not, but
Speaker 1: like I do think that the so, so, I guess
Speaker 1: the point is like I do think that, Like I mean,
Speaker 1: I think about it more as what I like to
Speaker 1: think of as a kind of like hyperbolic Fucodianism or
Speaker 1: something where it's like you describe some social phenomenon in
Speaker 1: like such hyperbolically like sinister ways that it makes it
Speaker 1: sound like this deep dark structure when it's like okay,
Speaker 1: like it's like okay, just get ad blocker, like I
Speaker 1: don't know, like use of VPN like like like it's
Speaker 1: and it's like and it's like, oh, surveillance capitalism taking
Speaker 1: over everything. But it's like if you look at the economy,
Speaker 1: it's like Internet related like revenue is like is like
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think I think it might be
Speaker 1: maybe it's more now with AI. But at least back
Speaker 1: when this was written, it was it was like, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, six percent or seven percent or something
Speaker 1: of like all.
Speaker 2: The I thought that book sucked.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't think it was that good. Yeah.
Speaker 3: He then says the emperor in many cases has no clothes. Okay,
Speaker 3: another fucking cliche. And that and this is a shame
Speaker 3: in part because I agree with a lot of these
Speaker 3: left wing conclusions. I just wish people didn't argue for
Speaker 3: them so badly. And and yeah one could one could
Speaker 3: complain the same of this guy.
Speaker 1: I mean, anytime you go viral for something like this,
Speaker 1: I think you're going to get a lot of responses
Speaker 1: from people who are going to do a bad job
Speaker 1: of responding to it. All I can say to that is, look,
Speaker 1: we spent the time we read it. If he's listening,
Speaker 1: like we think you did a bad job, but we
Speaker 1: read it carefully.
Speaker 3: But it is funny, like how annoyed he got.
Speaker 2: And look, this is a twenty year old guy. Yeah exactly,
Speaker 2: We've all been a twenty year old guy. But if
Speaker 2: he hadn't doubled down three extra times. I don't know
Speaker 2: if we'd be doing this episode like he was.
Speaker 3: He was wondering why this person wasn't debating him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so here's so so here he tried.
Speaker 2: He tried to get a Hegelian scholar to debate him, right,
Speaker 2: And she's like, she's like, why don't you grow up
Speaker 2: a bit?
Speaker 3: Maybe later, like I have, Well, I have three publications,
Speaker 3: so I'm a scholar too. I thought that too, Oh Holley,
Speaker 3: Oh my god, and.
Speaker 1: Like so he so just to like exactly, and I
Speaker 1: was gonna say, like, you know later in the article here, I.
Speaker 3: Think I looked them up. They are decent publications, but
Speaker 3: it's on like ethics, not not egal.
Speaker 1: No, He's like, no, he's he says later in the article,
Speaker 1: I think you know now, I have no doubt that
Speaker 1: somewhere in continental philosophy there are people, there are some
Speaker 1: arguments that aren't completely terrible. Most likely some people have
Speaker 1: given arguments for some things at some point, but the
Speaker 1: field is mostly bogus, right.
Speaker 3: And then so many seams and sums and I'm sure
Speaker 3: is like, oh my god.
Speaker 1: And then he goes on to talk about the Socle
Speaker 1: affair that they apparently gave pretty decisive evidence, so you know,
Speaker 1: it's funny. I also feel like the other thing is
Speaker 1: like that I the other feeling that I had toward
Speaker 1: the end of this is like, I feel like you're
Speaker 1: just talking about like very narrow like, as you said, pills,
Speaker 1: almost like post nineties, like kind of post structuralist and
Speaker 1: like postmodern. I don't think that he deserved I mean,
Speaker 1: the problem is, like you're on social media, you're gonna
Speaker 1: get a lot of stupid responses from people who like, seriously,
Speaker 1: don't try to read it, but look, we read it.
Speaker 1: But then you're also kind of asking for it when
Speaker 1: you write it so obnoxiously and obviously part of the
Speaker 1: reason it went so viral is because he wrote it
Speaker 1: so arrogantly and obnoxiously, Like he says at one point here,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be so outrageous of continental philosophy was part
Speaker 1: of the literature department, but it's not. It's part of philosophy.
Speaker 1: If you explain to someone that you are interested in philosophy,
Speaker 1: they will think you are one of those guys that
Speaker 1: you like people like Dereda rather than abhor them. It
Speaker 1: would be rather like if astronomy and astrology were located
Speaker 1: in one department.
Speaker 3: Which, as far as I know, it got its foothold
Speaker 3: in all the literature departments, Like you had the Yale
Speaker 3: School of Deconstruction and you had all the literary theorists.
Speaker 2: We covered Dreda's essay White Mythology, which was all about clarity,
Speaker 2: specifically the word clarity and what it's a asociated with,
Speaker 2: and we spent three episodes on that, and that anticipates
Speaker 2: everything this guy says perfectly because he he consciously makes
Speaker 2: this split between analytic and continental and then puts things
Speaker 2: underneath them. So under analytic is astronomy, under continental is astrology.
Speaker 2: He compares them literally, he says analytic is clear water
Speaker 2: and continental is sludge.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or style stylistically.
Speaker 2: Like tar all the clarity Unclarity says, Analytic is being
Speaker 2: awake and Continental is dreaming, and then straight up just
Speaker 2: says good and bad, like almost almost moral descriptions. Here,
Speaker 2: of course it's good and bad, but he creates this
Speaker 2: entire world of opposites. Yeah, exactly, But like Darida said,
Speaker 2: they're based on metaphors. So if you can listen to
Speaker 2: this paragraph, this is the paragraph I deconstructed, it would
Speaker 2: be surprising if the people with deep wisdom we're unable
Speaker 2: to write clearly nor communicate their insights and words with
Speaker 2: fewer than seven syllables. Oh, now that's offensive too. I
Speaker 2: guess clear writing and clear thinking tend to go together.
Speaker 2: And in light of the completely bogus methods of argumentation,
Speaker 2: the prospects for continental philosophy housing deep insights strikes me
Speaker 2: as rather dim. If you have serious things to say,
Speaker 2: you do not need to play word games. The jargon
Speaker 2: exists not to express arguments, but to cover up their absence.
Speaker 2: So I don't know if you want to play that
Speaker 2: back or whatever, but you can trust me. I broke
Speaker 2: it down. There's thirteen metaphors in this like not dead metaphors,
Speaker 2: like explicit metaphors. And of the thirteen metaphors, nine of
Speaker 2: them are visual. So he talks about clarity, insight, light, dim,
Speaker 2: and so out of thirteen, nine are visual. Just in
Speaker 2: case there are analytics listening. I'm not saying here's a word,
Speaker 2: and here's the history of these associative words words. But
Speaker 2: we made the argument, or Darida made the argument that
Speaker 2: took us three episodes to go through, that language is metaphoric,
Speaker 2: and the problem is he makes this split between poetic
Speaker 2: or literature departments and the philosophy department. This stuff belongs
Speaker 2: to the literature department, not the philosophy department, because the
Speaker 2: philosophy department deals with truth and clarity. But this is
Speaker 2: all metaphoric. He also goes on again about borrowing terms
Speaker 2: from other languages, which like, that's kind of what language is,
Speaker 2: borrowing words from other language. That's the process of evolution.
Speaker 2: So he's saying, at strictly this point in time, my
Speaker 2: feelings about what things are literature and philosophy, which are
Speaker 2: poetic and which are true, My feelings about them are
Speaker 2: what decide what they are. These things that I don't understand,
Speaker 2: they are sludge. These things that I do understand because
Speaker 2: they're they're very prosaic and quote unquote literal. I'm doing
Speaker 2: the thing quote unquote literal. There are metaphors too, And
Speaker 2: everything that he says is this seems dim, dark, sluedgy
Speaker 2: to me, whereas this other thing seems clear and enlightening.
Speaker 2: But there's no basis, there's no underlying basis for why
Speaker 2: he's splitting up all these terms and then continental and
Speaker 2: analytic into those two categories. He's making the two categories.
Speaker 2: But it's completely an arbitrary distinction that's not based on logic.
Speaker 2: There's no argument to back them up, at least here.
Speaker 2: I've never heard an argument to back them up. But
Speaker 2: in the end, this entire thing is based on his preferences,
Speaker 2: and the whole time he's arguing saying this has the
Speaker 2: compulsion of reason behind it. This has the compulsion of
Speaker 2: logical argumentation. There is not a sing I don't think
Speaker 2: there's a single syllogism that he makes in here. This
Speaker 2: is just his feelings. And now I will just defend
Speaker 2: him on the case that maybe he didn't intend people
Speaker 2: to read this. Maybe he thought that his analytics friends
Speaker 2: who already agreed with him would read it. That is
Speaker 2: contradicted by the fact that he doubled down on it.
Speaker 2: But there's no basis for the distinction that he makes
Speaker 2: except for his arbitrary dislike of one type of writing
Speaker 2: versus another type. There's no defense of one being more true,
Speaker 2: or even of his system being clearer than the alternatives.
Speaker 2: He's completely failed to demonstrate that. As we've been over
Speaker 2: so his system of classification, his system of what is
Speaker 2: good in the world and what is bad it doesn't
Speaker 2: have any argumentative basis here. The disagreement is esthetic emotive
Speaker 2: based on the I'm gonna say signifiers, based on these
Speaker 2: signifiers that he has strung together. You know, clarity, good clarity,
Speaker 2: true things. I don't understand, bad things. I don't understand mud.
Speaker 2: It's systems of binaries. But it's a fantasy world that
Speaker 2: he's created. And yeah, this belongs in the fiction department.
Speaker 2: If there is going to be a distinction made there.
Speaker 1: I like that. That's good.
Speaker 3: I'd have loved to see some actual comparisons, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: put some put some lines from analytic philosophy in there
Speaker 3: that you love so much.
Speaker 2: There's analytic philosophers who say this about analytic philosophy too,
Speaker 2: Like Dennett says, analytic philosophy these days is just playing
Speaker 2: schmess was his term, which is just playing these stupid
Speaker 2: language games. Language games itself comes from an analytic philosopher, Vickenstein,
Speaker 2: who said this is this is bullshit what we're doing.
Speaker 2: We're just playing these stupid games with language and never
Speaker 2: realizing what language actually is. Like, logic does not stand
Speaker 2: on its own. It's a disciplinary structure, it's a methodology.
Speaker 2: And yeah, continental writing has a different methodology than that,
Speaker 2: but you're not going to realize that at twenty one
Speaker 2: years old.
Speaker 1: Frankly so, I liked what ben Burgess wrote about this
Speaker 1: because he was responding to it, and he said, you know,
Speaker 1: there are, however, other flaws that arise that are much
Speaker 1: less likely to come up in more continental settings. Analytic philosophers,
Speaker 1: or at least some kinds of analytic philosophers, can spend
Speaker 1: an awful lot of time going down very deep rabbit
Speaker 1: holes that lead nowhere, making distinctions within distinctions on issues
Speaker 1: that might not have ever been worth anyone's time in
Speaker 1: the first place. Some of this probably stems from science envy.
Speaker 1: In the sciences, it can be normal to put tremendous
Speaker 1: effort into establishing some very small result that will later
Speaker 1: be published in a scientific journal. Mirroring this, analytical philosophers
Speaker 1: put a lot of work into journal articles dedicated to
Speaker 1: establishing very small, narrow points. The problem is that in
Speaker 1: the sciences, the small results add up to something, and
Speaker 1: I'm just not convinced that philosophy works that way. And
Speaker 1: I think that that's also like a fair thing.
Speaker 3: Like yeah, and he anticipates what I always want to
Speaker 3: say when I encounter this kind of thing, is like,
Speaker 3: go read like an article of dense physics. Go read
Speaker 3: something a theoretical book. So if you understand that in
Speaker 3: one shot, and he does try to anticipate this, you know,
Speaker 3: he says, I do actually read writings in many other fields,
Speaker 3: and I never have the complaints I do in reading
Speaker 3: Continental philosophy. He says, complaints of grotesque unclarity and conceptual confusion.
Speaker 3: While there are many things I do not understand mathematical formalisms, say,
Speaker 3: in no other domain do I encounter the kind of
Speaker 3: meandering obscurantist illogic that I see in continental philosophy. I
Speaker 3: do not think this is a defense. He's getting defensive here.
Speaker 3: I do not think the problem is therefore my inability
Speaker 3: to read. It is there inability to write. He's getting
Speaker 3: defensive about being accused of being illiterate there. But I mean,
Speaker 3: look at that claim. In no other domain do I
Speaker 3: encounter the kind of meanderings blah blah blah obscuritist illogic.
Speaker 3: I find that hard to believe. There are plenty of
Speaker 3: things out there to read that are extremely difficult. It
Speaker 3: just depends on what your assumptions about the thing you're reading.
Speaker 3: Are I'm not going to go read like Einstein's original
Speaker 3: works on relativity, because I probably won't understand them, but
Speaker 3: I'll make this assumption that, well, there's some like deep clarity,
Speaker 3: there's the metaphors again underlying all of it, and that
Speaker 3: it's saying something true. And then I'm going to go
Speaker 3: out and read a text by dary Da and think
Speaker 3: that there's some deep confusion and that what it's really
Speaker 3: saying is just not true, irrelevant, neither here nor there.
Speaker 3: And I'm just gonna make those assumptions before I read
Speaker 3: these texts, and then that's it done and done, which
Speaker 3: is what he's basically doing. He would read Einstein and
Speaker 3: be like, well, I don't understand it, but I know
Speaker 3: it's true. He reads dry Da, well, I don't understand it,
Speaker 3: but I know it's all false.
Speaker 2: That's just feelings.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, it's just bogus.
Speaker 2: The things that I like, I feel like they must
Speaker 2: be true. The things that I don't like, I feel
Speaker 2: like they must be false.
Speaker 1: Bogus.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, which is which is actually the opposite of
Speaker 3: Darida's method, which is close attention to what is on
Speaker 3: the page.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like like Daycartes, daycart is only brought up in
Speaker 2: the negative. I guess Einstein is too. If you call
Speaker 2: someone an Einstein, it's guaranteed to be an insult. But
Speaker 2: Darida Dreida, for some reason, has got just such a
Speaker 2: shitty end of the stick, only brought up in the negative,
Speaker 2: only brought up as an obscurantist by only people who
Speaker 2: have never read any of his work. And I realize
Speaker 2: that's a a conventional response, But how can you be
Speaker 2: allowed to criticize something that you either have not read
Speaker 2: or read and said I don't understand this, therefore it's bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I believe that. I haven't taken the time, but
Speaker 1: I believe it.
Speaker 2: Okay, so are if we're done, I will just use
Speaker 2: one of his own lines to refute his whole project.
Speaker 3: Here, Okay, Yeah, let's have it.
Speaker 2: Okay, So this is what the one thing he doesn't like,
Speaker 2: And see if you can see how this is exactly
Speaker 2: what he's doing. When the word one is fixating on
Speaker 2: is specific, it is generally not too difficult to talk
Speaker 2: one out of one's confusion. Do people still write like
Speaker 2: this using one the third person? If a person thinks
Speaker 2: that infinity isn't confusing because it's a concept or the soroties.
Speaker 2: I don't know what that is. The soroties paradox is
Speaker 2: easy because it's vague. When something is a heap, you
Speaker 2: can explain why that doesn't work. But if one is
Speaker 2: using vague terms and thinking unclearly, then it will be
Speaker 2: impossible to talk them out of their view.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: They always have the muddled concept to fall back on. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they can always say something amorphous and act like the
Speaker 2: problem goes away. End quote.
Speaker 1: I mean that's exactly what he's doing. Yeah, I would
Speaker 1: with Yeah.
Speaker 2: He even defended his use, like I'm saying that that
Speaker 2: his term continental philosophy ultimately just describes things he doesn't like.
Speaker 2: It has no other it has no other reference. And
Speaker 2: he says, he says, oh, I got pushback for using
Speaker 2: the term continental philosophy when some people have informed me, actually,
Speaker 2: there's good continental philosophy. And then he doubles down and says,
Speaker 2: in this article, I'll continue using the phrase continental philosophy,
Speaker 2: even though there might be some good kinds. I'm talking
Speaker 2: fairly generally about the field, but I don't intend to
Speaker 2: speak universally. I'll continue using the term because there isn't
Speaker 2: a better one to refer to what I have in mind.
Speaker 2: But note I'm not being precise or totally I'm not
Speaker 2: being totally precise. Now, this is an absolutely insane admission.
Speaker 2: It is insane because he's saying, I'm using my language
Speaker 2: to refer to this thing in my head which is
Speaker 2: called continental philosophy because there's no better term for it.
Speaker 2: It's something he doesn't like. He clearly has no experience
Speaker 2: with what everyone else calls continental philosophy, but the thing
Speaker 2: that he doesn't like, he's going to keep calling that
Speaker 2: even though it's not precise. He's saying, I know this
Speaker 2: term is wrong, but I'm continuing to use it because
Speaker 2: it corresponds to the thing I have in my head
Speaker 2: that I don't like. So it's literally he just admits, Hey,
Speaker 2: I'm arguing about something that is my feelings, about something
Speaker 2: that exists inside my mind that I'm calling continental philosophy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he makes a very specific claim like continental philosophy
Speaker 3: is bad and they don't make arguments. But I'm using
Speaker 3: all these terms vaguely and imprecisely. So if you so,
Speaker 3: if you accuse me of being wrong based on what
Speaker 3: I'm actually saying, then I'll just say, well, I meant
Speaker 3: something else anyway, or like, you know.
Speaker 2: Oh, you can't attack me because I'm only being in
Speaker 2: imprecise for this particular article. Hey look, he actually doesn't
Speaker 2: know what a Martin Bailey is exactly.
Speaker 3: Oh great, so you get to choose like when Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: so you're upset about Morton Bailey arguments. But you can
Speaker 3: just go between being precise and specific and vague and
Speaker 3: not very specific, and that's okay when you when you
Speaker 3: get attacked, it's like, oh okay, you can just like
Speaker 3: retreat into your vague, your vague cloud of I'm not
Speaker 3: using these words very precisely, but I'm gonna keep using
Speaker 3: them anyway. I love I love how by the third article,
Speaker 3: he's basically just asking people to fight him. At this point,
Speaker 3: if you repeatedly suggest that a person is irredeemably idiotic
Speaker 3: and then and then debate them, either you win the
Speaker 3: debate resoundingly, you do okay and sort of hold your own,
Speaker 3: you get trounced. Three, you get trounced. I suspect, in fact,
Speaker 3: many people recognize if they accepted the debate offer, there's
Speaker 3: a reasonable chance that things would have gone the third way,
Speaker 3: as in, he's going to trounce you, bitch, don't don't
Speaker 3: debate this guy.
Speaker 1: Well, if he wants to debate me, I'll debate him.
Speaker 2: Why why did this one pop off? Like, I'm sure
Speaker 2: there's hundreds of articles per year written in the same
Speaker 2: cadence by the same type of guy. Is this is this? Like?
Speaker 2: It's it popped off because it's so stupid and it's
Speaker 2: such a poor lesson.
Speaker 1: I think I think that's why. I genuinely think that
Speaker 1: that's the reason. Why is because I think I don't
Speaker 1: know how many followers he has on sub stuck, but
Speaker 1: I imagine like t K some.
Speaker 2: Now I don't know how much.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was like but it was probably at least
Speaker 1: it was probably over like it was probably like a
Speaker 1: couple of thousand at least, right like, so he probably
Speaker 1: had an audience, and then he came out with this
Speaker 1: drivel and then I think that people were just genuinely like, wow,
Speaker 1: this is so bad and just wanted to make fun
Speaker 1: of it, just bored on Twitter, like I think I
Speaker 1: think that's why because he had like some kind of
Speaker 1: a smallish medium mish audience on substack, and it was
Speaker 1: so bad. So I think those two things combined caused
Speaker 1: it to go viral.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that was your original question posting this pills
Speaker 3: is like why this why? Why did this one go?
Speaker 3: Why did this one pop off? Like yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Well, how many people still write about this too? Right?
Speaker 1: Like this is such a I mean, in a way,
Speaker 1: it is such a boring old question that we've also
Speaker 1: covered on the Pillpod at least once, maybe twice, we've
Speaker 1: talked about continental versus analytic but I think maybe twice.
Speaker 2: The thing about like good and or like I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe not good seasoned seasoned analytic philosophers or seasoned continental philosophers.
Speaker 2: They at least have a begrudging respect for the good
Speaker 2: people on the other side.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's true, that's true.
Speaker 2: I disparage analytic philosop feet almost entirely because of my preferences,
Speaker 2: and slightly because I don't think it understands its method
Speaker 2: in terms of semiotics. But if you actually but I've
Speaker 2: brought this up to analytic philosophers and they say, yeah,
Speaker 2: but that's not what we're doing. Like they don't care,
Speaker 2: they don't care about what language is in terms of
Speaker 2: using their arguments because they believe that logic is something
Speaker 2: different than what I believe it is. And they know
Speaker 2: that they're not stupid. They go, yeah, but that's not
Speaker 2: our game. We're playing this game. We're playing Schmess. And
Speaker 2: over there, some of them are good at playing Schmeiss,
Speaker 2: some of them are exceptional at playing Schmess, and some
Speaker 2: are not very good at playing Schmess, just like over
Speaker 2: here on the continental side, there are some people who
Speaker 2: are good at it and some people who are not
Speaker 2: good at it. And yeah, it's true that ours might
Speaker 2: have more in common with literature, or at least the
Speaker 2: figurative dimension of language, because the things that we say
Speaker 2: are up for debate are themselves meaning an interpretation and
Speaker 2: to figure out and our interpretation of meaning. You cannot
Speaker 2: always write in a strictly conventional style because of another
Speaker 2: part of our discipline is being distrusting of conventions and
Speaker 2: where they come from and what they're supposed to be doing.
Speaker 2: So sometimes to get around a convention that you or
Speaker 2: see everyone else going around in circles within, you need
Speaker 2: to bend and fuck with your medium a little bit,
Speaker 2: and you got to bend language and shift concepts to
Speaker 2: see what happens and they will call us some clear
Speaker 2: for that. But they are both games. There are good
Speaker 2: players and bad players. They're not the same game. This
Speaker 2: is confusion. They're not actually the same game. They're different games.
Speaker 2: But it takes a real idiot to say, oh, everyone
Speaker 2: over there, they're all idiots.
Speaker 1: And it's also really interesting. There's like very notable examples
Speaker 1: of analytic philosophers and vice versa who like take some
Speaker 1: continental arguments seriously and translate them and say that there's
Speaker 1: real insight, Like right away, I can kind of think of, well,
Speaker 1: Richard Rody say it's like a good example of someone.
Speaker 1: But then also like I feel like Donald Davidson, who's
Speaker 1: like huge and analytic philosophy of language. I think there's
Speaker 1: people I don't know if he did this.
Speaker 3: Roy loved him too, I already loved him, and like
Speaker 3: I feel like doing is rewriting scraps of Davidson.
Speaker 1: He said. And there's actually a really interesting I've heard
Speaker 1: but have not engaged myself. There are some people who
Speaker 1: have offered persuasive accounts that say that that there's actually
Speaker 1: a lot of overlap between Davidson and Derek about like
Speaker 1: their views of language. That like if you go and
Speaker 1: read like Davidson like that. There's that he's giving an
Speaker 1: account that is at least in some ways compatible with
Speaker 1: what Dereda says. I don't know how true that is,
Speaker 1: but that's what I've heard.
Speaker 2: That's what I wrote my master's thesis on.
Speaker 1: Oh maybe maybe I forgot, but like.
Speaker 2: That, it was a while ago. It was a while
Speaker 2: ago since I read this, so I can't actually recall
Speaker 2: exactly what his theory of language is. But the paper
Speaker 2: in general was on metaph metaphor as not being a
Speaker 2: unit of language, but rather it's like a principle or
Speaker 2: a tendency, like a fundamental function of what language does
Speaker 2: is use metaphors at its boundaries to generate itself, to
Speaker 2: basically expand. Now I don't remember exactly what Donald Davidson's
Speaker 2: view of language was. I'm sure it wasn't that far.
Speaker 2: I'm sure it wasn't like all the way that I
Speaker 2: was going with it, which is structuralist, you know, Jakobsen
Speaker 2: all that. But I think that he had a wide
Speaker 2: scope to use a visual metaphor of the position of
Speaker 2: metaphor in language, much more than you'd expect from an
Speaker 2: analytic philosopher. Or at least most of them, because most
Speaker 2: of them actually say similar to things to what this
Speaker 2: guy is saying, Like analytic philosophy is a place for clarity.
Speaker 2: Metaphor is just saying what you want to say, accept
Speaker 2: more complicatedly, when you could just be straightforward and say ASB.
Speaker 2: Instead you're saying as to B, A, C. S. TOD,
Speaker 2: necessarily complicating something rather than creating anything. And my point,
Speaker 2: and I think Donald Davidson's point was that no, metaphor
Speaker 2: is not just a more complicated way of saying something
Speaker 2: more simple, it's actually generative. It's actually creating something.
Speaker 3: And then yeah, and then there's those big crossing moments,
Speaker 3: and then there's like you know, like someone like vicken
Speaker 3: Stein too, who crosses over kind of right, starts off
Speaker 3: with his first text, very logical positivism, then philosophical investigations,
Speaker 3: much more pragmatist, to say the least. And then and
Speaker 3: then Leotard picks that up and runs with that, and
Speaker 3: then you get postmodernism out of what Leotard's talking about
Speaker 3: using language games as a method basically using the language
Speaker 3: game's methodology. So you have these massive crossover moments, and
Speaker 3: then I frequently amatined, like, where would you put Luman?
Speaker 3: Does he even give a shit? Where would you put
Speaker 3: Charles Sanders purse? If the divide existed when he was around,
Speaker 3: you probably couldn't. Let's use his game and get chat
Speaker 3: GBT to answer why did this article pop off when
Speaker 3: so many other articles are probably written in a similar
Speaker 3: tenor because it tapped into long standing intense rivalries between
Speaker 3: analytic and continental traditions in academic philosophy. Several key factors
Speaker 3: provocative generalizations I like this one. Yeah, the article made sweeping,
Speaker 3: often humorous, or critical generalizations about the methods and styles
Speaker 3: of an entire branch of philosophy. Well, while many such
Speaker 3: articles are written, this one resonated widely due to its sharp,
Speaker 3: unequivocal tone, juxtapositions of academic cultures. That's a long one.
Speaker 1: I mean that first one I think strikes me is right. Basically,
Speaker 1: it's bad and provocative.
Speaker 2: Well, you know what we have said about twenty year
Speaker 2: old since the day we started this podcast. Yeah, twenty
Speaker 2: year olds have just discovered a little bit of knowledge,
Speaker 2: but they're too stupid to actually realize how stupid they are,
Speaker 2: especially men, especially boys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you are thinking you have the growing apparatus
Speaker 1: of an adult brain, but like stupidity of a child's
Speaker 1: kind of and you don't realize it.
Speaker 2: Yes, they have the lattice work of intelligence, but the
Speaker 2: vines of wisdom have not yet grown on it.
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly.
Speaker 2: There's a metaphor for you, hot off the press and an.
Speaker 3: Aberrant interest, because you know, twenty year olds maybe aren't
Speaker 3: usually interested in getting involved in like analytic continental philosophy
Speaker 3: blog a sphere debates, but he apparently was interested in
Speaker 3: uh directing his youthful frontal lobes still developing man energy
Speaker 3: into into ship posting continental philosophers. So so there you go.
Speaker 1: And I said earlier that I would debate him. I
Speaker 1: don't know that I would actually debate him, but I
Speaker 1: do I would talk to him. I'm curious, like, do
Speaker 1: you seriously think that this is like a good article?
Speaker 1: Like that's like like it's like, explain to me, like
Speaker 1: what you think is good about this?
Speaker 2: Like I like, well he does as of three days ago,
Speaker 2: he's still doubling down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like explain to me, like yeah, like that's I'm
Speaker 1: like more curious, but yeah, I mean I'm sure sure
Speaker 1: that could turn into debate.
Speaker 3: But like, I want to is this a hill that
Speaker 3: you're just trying to die on? Or is this all
Speaker 3: just kind of a joke in a game?
Speaker 2: You didn't answer this? Guys, would you have failed this
Speaker 2: if it were like a fourth Yeah, I mean, of course,
Speaker 2: would you fail it if it were like second year?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean it's hard to imagine how someone could
Speaker 1: have written this, but like I guess I'm imagining like
Speaker 1: if the assignment was, like you know, maybe maybe the
Speaker 1: class was something like the history of philosophy or something
Speaker 1: like a kind of a kind of survey course comparing
Speaker 1: And actually I took a class like this in graduate
Speaker 1: school that kind of talked about the divide between analytic
Speaker 1: and continental. Yeah, And in that case, I'm like thinking,
Speaker 1: I feel like it might have been someone who wrote
Speaker 1: I remember we read this like one of those very
Speaker 1: short introduction books from Oxford University Press, and there's like
Speaker 1: one there was like a very short introduction to continental philosophy,
Speaker 1: and yeah, like if those were the readings and I
Speaker 1: don't really remember that much about this class, and then
Speaker 1: like he just submitted this, yeah, that would be a fail.
Speaker 1: That would be a fail for sure. I'd be like yeah,
Speaker 1: you didn't actually engage with the text in a way
Speaker 1: that was like charitable or like put in much effort.
Speaker 1: I mean using chat sheep yeah, fail for sure. What
Speaker 1: do you mean there's chat cheep key quotes that.
Speaker 3: Are like yes, yeah, and it's not Yeah, it's not
Speaker 3: balanced and exactly what you say, Like, you can't make
Speaker 3: an argument about continental philosophers or continental you just can't.
Speaker 3: It doesn't you don't do that. It doesn't make It's
Speaker 3: not because it's.
Speaker 2: Not you know that if a book has continental philosophy
Speaker 2: in the title, it has to be like a minimum
Speaker 2: five hundred pages. That's a tome.
Speaker 3: It's not because it's incoherent or that you can't say
Speaker 3: anything true about continental philosophy in general. It's just that
Speaker 3: you cannot write an argumentative paper. It's like it's like
Speaker 3: those papers you get that start like since the beginning
Speaker 3: of time or mankind has always you know, the next
Speaker 3: thing after that is going to be dog shit if
Speaker 3: it's introducing an argument, you know, unless you're gonna say,
Speaker 3: since the beginning of time, man has always had two legs. Okay, well,
Speaker 3: I guess.
Speaker 2: I guess that's true, not strictly, but I did this once.
Speaker 2: I did this in undergrad where I submitted a paper
Speaker 2: and I think it was about German idealism and I said,
Speaker 2: German idealism is seeking or assumes a sort of university
Speaker 2: in language, and the the prof thankfully like gave it
Speaker 2: back to me and said, if you if I if
Speaker 2: I mark this right now. This was like third year.
Speaker 2: I said, if I mark this right now, it's like
Speaker 2: it's a fail because what you are calling German idealism
Speaker 2: is actually just two books from two guys, and you
Speaker 2: don't know what you're talking about. And here's a list
Speaker 2: of all the people who don't do the thing that
Speaker 2: you're saying. So this was a very learning experience I'm
Speaker 2: grateful for when that I hope that this little fellows
Speaker 2: mister Bulldog will have as well, because it knocked me
Speaker 2: on my ass in the stage of my twenty year
Speaker 2: old mind where I thought I was the king shit
Speaker 2: I thought I was, I was coming up. I was
Speaker 2: gonna knock down, knockdown fucking Hegel and Schleiermacher in one
Speaker 2: blow in an undergraduate essay.
Speaker 1: And it is unfortunate that that like it happened on
Speaker 1: Twitter because it mean because like I'm sympathetic to him
Speaker 1: getting like a lot of unfair attacks calling him an idiot,
Speaker 1: because it's just less like to have that effect, right,
Speaker 1: it's less likely to have the effect that you're talking
Speaker 1: about pills because he probably gets so many IM planning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's probably idiots who are calling him an idiot,
Speaker 2: and they may be right, but they're idiots too. But
Speaker 2: when a prop says it to you, then you're like,
Speaker 2: oh shit, I I really achieve that. And I was
Speaker 2: so excited about bringing my German idealism paper into philosophy class,
Speaker 2: only to have someone who I respected and who I
Speaker 2: knew knew more than me tell me to sit my
Speaker 2: ass down and shut up. This is the cure to
Speaker 2: honor in confidence in mail twenty year old.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he quote tweeted a bunch of those idiots, right,
Speaker 1: I remember, I think he quotes you to people who
Speaker 1: he like challenged them, and then they admitted, well, I
Speaker 1: didn't actually read it. I just like looked at the
Speaker 1: title and like saw other people talking about it, and
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, of course, when you have idiots like
Speaker 1: that doing that, then you're not going to learn the lesson, right.
Speaker 3: And then he takes these people who are calling him
Speaker 3: an idiot and calling him illiterate as like representatives of
Speaker 3: Continental Philosophy, when they are just other idiots on the Internet.
Speaker 3: That's what the Internet is, is just a place full
Speaker 3: of idiots who are yelling about things. And yeah, it's
Speaker 3: kind of harsh, it's it is kind of I do sympathize.
Speaker 3: I agree. I like having him get into this. I mean,
Speaker 3: it looks like he's just in the forest right now.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm sure he's fine whatever, but it just
Speaker 3: looks like he's he's learning some weird lessons.
Speaker 2: He seems just happy as a piggage ship. He's not.
Speaker 2: He does he's he's he's not learning the less time.
Speaker 1: He's loving it. He's fucking yeah, he's loving it owning
Speaker 1: the idiots who are responding to him.
Speaker 3: There's no remorse in this, Like most most kids are
Speaker 3: out there playing like Fortnite or something, swearing at each other.
Speaker 3: But but he's like starting ship on Twitter with Continental Philosophy.
Speaker 2: But evidently he didn't read the comment because on every
Speaker 2: single one of his articles there's just tons of comments.
Speaker 2: Most of them are sat like engaging in good faith,
Speaker 2: saying well, I think you're throwing the baby out with
Speaker 2: the bathwater, like very very patient responses, but none of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he did get a lot of those.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are a lot, and yet none of them
Speaker 2: have been incorporated into his follow up works except for
Speaker 2: him saying, oh, I know people have said that I'm
Speaker 2: using the term continental philosophy wrong, but I'm actually gonna
Speaker 2: just keep saying that because that's what I mean.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you can tell you he's really focusing on
Speaker 3: the negative comments here, which is kind of telling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like the stupid comments, like the ones that he's
Speaker 1: he can easily like be like these people are idiots,
Speaker 1: but kind of ignores the good ones, which you're right,
Speaker 1: pills there. There's a lot of people I think who
Speaker 1: responded and were trying to respond in good faith. I
Speaker 1: think that's true, but he kind of ignored.
Speaker 2: Those a mistake one good faith on the internet.
Speaker 3: And these are reasons why I do suspect his motives
Speaker 3: a little bit, saying you're like, yeah, this was meant
Speaker 3: to stir shit, get a reaction, repost those reactions as
Speaker 3: like evidence for his original argument, which is exactly the
Speaker 3: process he went through. Like some of this this also
Speaker 3: as as as heartbreaking as it seems if you cast
Speaker 3: this as like a as like the story Pills is
Speaker 3: saying about kind of finding out in the wrong way
Speaker 3: that you don't know everything. He's also seems like he's
Speaker 3: trying to this is the designed outcome, is just starting
Speaker 3: all this shit and getting attention. Like I said in
Speaker 3: the beginning.
Speaker 2: Well you have a very conspiratorial mind here, Eric, because
Speaker 2: I'm going to say, never attribute to malice that which
Speaker 2: can be explained by stupidity. Yeah, you know what, Maybe
Speaker 2: I feel it because I was this guy. I was like,
Speaker 2: I'm in I'm in philosophy three h five, I am
Speaker 2: going to defeat German idealism, and before I got my
Speaker 2: ass handed to me by a sympathetic professor who probably
Speaker 2: was the same when he was twenty All right.
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly, I'll have our phase exactly. Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 1: I think that's a good point.
Speaker 3: When you put it that way, it's hard to argue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, well we did it.
Speaker 1: That was fun, Eric, Eric, are you glad we did it? It
Speaker 1: wasn't that bad, right, wasn't it a fun discussion?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I'll admit I'll admit it. But the should
Speaker 3: I go through here? I do want to read something nice?
Speaker 2: But why don't you pick the next one? I want
Speaker 2: to read something nice and like in the Chatty's posting,
Speaker 2: Horkheimer like, oh.
Speaker 1: The day before, by the way, listeners, the day before
Speaker 1: we're supposed to record.
Speaker 2: He's like, he's like, this article sucks.
Speaker 1: I don't want to do it.
Speaker 2: I don't want to read this. Let's read Horkheimer. Not
Speaker 2: that Horkheimer is that hard.
Speaker 1: Day before.
Speaker 2: We should give Frankfurt school to this guy. It's easy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, the early, the clear days when they made arguments.
Speaker 3: All right, yeah, cheers, Yeah, I'm still here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, guys, thanks for listening.