Arlo said:
..., appeals to authority are helpful to act against reinventing the wheel
every ten seconds. And in the finite amount of time we exist we can make it
further if we at least have the advantage of continuing the dialogue
(evolution?). ... Appeals to authority are fine (IMO) when they are used to
align one with, or bring light upon, what others have said before. ...,
everything that is said is said in response to what has been said before, and
in anticipation of what others may then say in response to you. Appeals to
authority are one way to "mark" one's place in that historical dialogue (when
used with care).
dmb says:
Well, if we're talking about academic standards I'm not so sure that
"authority" is the right word. Charles Pierce, for example, distinguished
beliefs based on evidence from beliefs based on authority and tenacity. As he
conceived it, beliefs based on authority were traditional and religious
beliefs. There's certainly some ambiguity in the way we use the word. When we
say we want to "contact the authorities" we usually mean law enforcement. But
of course political authorities have no business enforcing philosophical
positions. In the philosophical world, a person with "authority" does not
derive any power from laws or guns. Obviously, that kind of "authority" is
closer to "author". And that really just means that he or she is taking part in
the dialogue.
The difference between these uses of the word, in the MOQ, would be the
difference between social and intellectual values. You know, beliefs based on
authority would be beliefs justified by such notions as, "the bible says so",
"the President says so", "tradition says so" and the like. The second kind of
"authority" is social in the sense that it is institutional and all that BUT
gaining the status of "expert" is almost entirely a function of getting
published and being read, which brings us back to that historical dialogue.
Last Monday night during class, I learned that the academic journals will
publish a good article regardless of whether or not the author has a Ph.D.
"It's a true meritocracy", Hildebrand said in response to the question. If you
listen to the conversation and can not only follow what's being debated or
discussed, but also coherently express an opinion about it, you're welcomed
into the conversation. Like Sam Harris said, however, if he shows up at a
string theory conference and says the whole thing is bunk nobody is going to
pay much attention. He's not a physicist, let alone a string theorist and so it
is only reasonable to ignore his uninformed opinion. He does not have the
authority because, in that case, he is not even able to understand the historic
dialogue, let alone contribute to it. Insofar as this preserves static
intellectual quality, these academic standards are a good thing. But then there
is the code of art.
That, I think, is where the philosophy/philosophology distinction comes in.
Quite a lot of what goes on in the academic world is the discussion and
development of more creative, original thinkers. Methods and approaches and
schools of thought form around these innovators. I guess that's how fresh
insights get preserved and developed. Further, this relatively static business
of being intellectually competent is not the opposite of creativity and
originality. It is the pre-requisite. Poincare couldn't have come up with a new
hypothesis without first learning and mastering mathematics, for example. Or
think of the megalomaniacal Phaedrus at the University of Chicago. His epic
plan was to instigate a dialectical revolution and undo the whole Aristotelean
premise of that institution, to undo 25 centuries of philosophy by
reestablishing the dignity of the Sophists. He'd given up by the time Sarah
asked him if he was teaching Quality, but years and years of thinking and
reading and
wondering still lay dormant in his mind.
I mean, intellectual freedom and creativity does not happen in a vacuum.
Ignorance will kill creativity real fast. It's not a virtue. But sometimes I
get the impression that the code of art is invoked to express anti-intellectual
attitudes, to suggest that book learnin' will spoil things. But actually it's
about pushing the envelope. It's about adding to the dialogue, opening up a new
space. Unless you're some kind of mad genius, that will always mean getting up
to speed on what's been said. Otherwise, who's gonna listen? Who's gonna
understand? Who's gonna care?
As I think about these things I can't help but think about what's in the
background culturally and politically. There is very strident anti-intellectual
element in conservatism. They tend to hate any kind of "expert", academic types
most of all. They feel, in fact, that most colleges and universities are
radical leftists institutions. Not to mention the religious right's attitude
toward guys like Darwin, Marx and Freud. I think it's just like Pirsig
describes in Lila, in these attitudes we're seeing the anti-intellectual
reassertion of social levels values. I think it's important not to confuse that
with the code of art, which is not anti-intellectual. It's just about the
limits of intellect and the source of creativity being beyond intellect, not
below it.
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