As much as I would love to say that I pursue inquiry for its own sake, I am just as susceptible to the allure of ego-gratification as the next person. As such, I was somewhat excited when the Philosophers’ Carnival first chose one of my posts for its monthly list.
However, three chosen posts later, my attitude is decidedly more ambivalent. I am travelling in Eastern Europe at the moment, and was just able to check my email for the first time in a while. I saw that a haughty, aggressive and basically unhelpful comment from “anonymous” had appeared on one of my posts. This was followed by another comment which was puzzlingly aggressive in a similar way.
My immediate hunch was that someone had selected the post for the Philosopher’s Carnival, and sure enough, this was so. This kind of experience is the source of my newfound ambivalence: in a very short period of time, I have found that a large portion of the comments generated from the Carnival are unhelpful at best, downright abusive at worst.
I want to make something completely clear: I have absolutely no problem with being told that I am wrong. I warmly accept invitations to read further material, to clarify my arguments, to reconsider my assumptions. Indeed, it seems odd to practise philosophy without having these kinds of attitudes. They are essential to the intellectual humility that strikes me as entirely appropriate to the discipline.
Because of the Philosopher’s Carnival, I have been called a “fucking idiot about metaethics” and a “philosophical amateur”, amongst other things. More commonly, certain commenters have descended into this space to inform me that I am wrong without really telling me why.
These people are misguided in two fundamental ways. Their first mistake is basically cognitive: they make the entirely unwarranted assumption that a blog should be held to the standards of research and rigor that are found in academic journals. This is ridiculous, for reasons that should be obvious to anyone who thinks about the issue for 5 seconds. A blog is a space for contemplation, a place to hone one’s writing, to record one’s development. Many of us have professional careers, and it is ridiculous to expect that our blog posts be as cautiously crafted as our professional work. They will often be philosophically incomplete, and this alone cannot be a reason to attack or insult the blogger.
This leads to the second mistake, which is more motivational in character. If you find an error or a gap in a blogger’s knowledge, you have every right to inform them of what you see. However, it is entirely inappropriate to do so in a scornful or angry fashion. Anyone with even minimal experience in the field knows that in classrooms and seminars this attitude is pure poison. Of all the ways one can destroy a philosophical conversation, attempting to induce feelings of shame, guilt or anger in one’s interlocutor must surely be the most effective. The commenters in question on this blog (and, more importantly, on other blogs) know all of this. They are intelligent and educated, probably participants in positive philosophical discussions in their own “real” lives. Yet, the aggressive, angry, I-know-more-than-you comments appear, and I cannot stress enough that they indicate a troubling lack of attention to (1) the facts about what a blog is, and (2) the appropriate kinds of attitudes to take towards philosophy.
A philosophy blog post is, more often than not, an invitation to conversation, a heuristic attempt to push a few ideas out of the nest and see if they will fly. If the Philosopher’s Carnival is to have any lasting benefit, I would suggest that its readers pause every now and again to remind themselves of this.
3 comments:
I'm sorry to hear of your bad experiences with the Carnival. I've hosted it a couple times, and submitted posts a few times as well, and have generally had a positive experience- e.g., I've gotten some interesting, constructive comments.
Because the Carnival garners a wide audience (from being linked to by a number of well-read philosophy blogs), it's a good opportunity to get attention-- though unfortunately, as you've discovered, sometimes it's not the kind of attention one would prefer.
Very sorry to hear about your bad experiences. It's a shame not only for the reasons you cite, but also because I have consistently found your blog entries to be thoughtful and original. Even when I have disagreed, you've always forced me to re-examine assumptions I had always taken for granted (I have in mind especially your post regarding the possibility of moral education through art from around Christmas).
I myself long ago made my own blog open to private readers only. In part this was because I have said some things, especially some political things, in the past that were not nearly as well thought as I'd have liked, but which I would prefer not to delete because I think of my blog mostly in terms of chronicling my own progress. These posts, however, I would prefer to keep away from prying eyes. But the other reason is that, because a blog is, as you say, a place to try out ideas that are not always complete, much of what I say represents only the initial attempts to work ideas out. But, as your experience with the Carnival suggests, sometimes people don't seem to understand this, and I simply lack the patience to deal with the abusive comments that result.
Anyhow, sorry to hear about your experience with the Carnival. Hopefully you keep churning out the thoughtful posts in spite of the haters.
Thanks, guys, and of course publishing things online requires a certain acceptance that anything goes. We have to take the good with the bad, and just hope that those who want to construct vibrant online philosophical communities start to outnumber the people with more questionable motivations.
Post a Comment