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