Stanley Fish is confused about learning to reason

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In "Advocacy and Teaching" (New York Times, March 24), Professor Fish misunderstands the importance of advocacy for intellectual growth. He's correct that "Emily Brooker’s professor was wrong to enlist her in a political campaign," but he confuses a political sense of "public advocacy" with the curricular importance of advocacy, by his apparent complaining about "advocacy" itself.

Indeed, as he says, "a student assigned to study an issue must be equipped with the appropriate analytical skills," but that's for use in good reasoning, which standardly is used to make cases that take stands, i.e., advocate something. Fish occludes this purpose for building analytical skills.

Though it's surely useful that an "assignment is to give an account of the dispute about gay adoption rather than to come down on one side or the other," understanding each side of an issue requires seeing the claim to validity that each has as advocable stance.

One can't genuinely understand another's perspective apart from its claim to be worthwhile for advocacy, which involves doing one's best to "see" the case, achieved by taking on that perspective as best one can.

Of course, "academic performance and individual beliefs are independent variables," but analytical skills are only as good as the case-making they enable, which is independent of whether or not one actually subscribes to the well-made case. You'll never be persuasive about what you do believe, if you can't see the presumably good case for the stance you wish to change.

That said, I strongly subscribe to Professor Fish's objections to "intellectual diversity" conservatism.

Gary E. Davis
Berkeley

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philosophical practice as discursive reading

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I feel a sense of closure on my participation in the Yahoo! Habermas forum—participation which has been especially intense the past month, for my part in the site's posting span from #1719—#1787 (hence little posting here). It's been a remarkable month for me because I've shown now, to my satisfaction, an integrated sense of theory and practice through discursive readings and interactions that apply my sense of philosophy as integrative discursivity in terms of my sense of Habermas and development that may also exemplify how Critical Theory has normative investment in a telos that's essentially Open.

son light

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Frankly, I think that my characterization of Habermas' work as a philosophical anthropology can get rather profound.

But I want to again signal in such characterization that I'm in a post-Habermasian venture that nonetheless continues to honor his profound example (and prolificness that I never hoped to approach), as I've done for many years.

Not taking time soon to further detail an intimacy of involvement with his work (which I've done so much in the past, largely eliciting only frivolous response, but thanks anyway, folks; our relationship was a useful sounding board) just silently "expresses" influence by that engagement, which is ambitiously developing beyond his engagements, but will eventually return to further detailed appreciation of his example (if I don't die first) by kindred revision of his conceptions relative to that development which he in part enabled and inspired. (At least, I've mastered the Germanic sentence length.)

Perhaps, he was doing likewise in his readings: honoring the influence of mentors through explication of his entwined distance to their address (forever "Kantian," forever "Hegelian"—forever "Christian," even; certainly very "humanistic," very "evolutionary"—I said to him: "very 'Heideggerian' of you," and he didn't disagree).

So long, dear friend—until spring? I've got an incredibly heavy agenda ahead of me; in a phrase: a set of readings by which I expect to clarify a progressive integration of epistemology and ethics relative to cognitive anthropology—"progressive" inasmuch as the anticipated results entail a geopolitical ethics of development.

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neuroeconomic note

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Polar opposites. Two-dimensional representation of the relationships between 11 goal domains. Data are derived from a questionnaire about the importance of 57 different goals given to a sample of 1854 undergraduates from 15 different countries. Note the diametrically opposite placement of financial success and community. [Reprinted from F. M. E. Grouzet et al., J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 89, 800 (2005) in Science, Nov. 17, 2006.]

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Dec. 3, 5, and 9

The text above is the caption from the Science article indicated. One might also note the diametrically opposite placement of physical health and conformity. Valuing financial success distances a person from valuing community, and valuing conformity distances a person from valuing physical health, among other interesting aspects of that chart.

intimations on the existence of “Truth”

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Matt,

Your posting today suggests that you're working toward representation of your general philosophical position, expressed today inasmuch as anything brief can be fair to oneself. It's important to venture these kinds of things.

child’s point

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I’m very aware that the deaths and suffering of war turn commentary into intellectualism. To the suffering, commentary is wasted time, “academic” in the pejorative sense. “If you really care about all this, do something practical,” the voice says.

My response has to be: I am. I’ve worked for educational organizations that are dedicated to progressive practice my entire adult life. A devotion to progressive practice has to be oriented to the life that one can lead in the place that one can affect. It must (it will, with experience) grow to include a pragmatism about the actualization of ideals. In pursuit of that, and in the meantime of that pursuit, commentary is a kind of self-directed learning, an activist respite from the pursuit. So, one activism complements another.

toward a comprehensive comprehension going forward

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I should imagine (and post) a comprehensive sense of this blog project, which generally here is meant to complement Webpaged discussions that are developing. I can imagine an integrated sense of the early postings relative to a conceptual projection (comprehensive prospectus) of this project that now seems fairly definite (as my motto that "learning never ends" pertains to conceptuality, too—even especially).

Comprehensive conceptualization is prospective, relative to unmet others' profound influence, such that a retrospective interest (inevitably reconstructive) is destined to be so relative. Any sense of the past is at best led by its background futurity, itself at best evolving—so too, thereby (at best), any sense of developmentality, historicity, or historicality.