Stanley Fish: Dis-disinterested after all

March 15th, 2008 Posted in Of Interest

After 341 comments on Stanley Fish’s last column, he felt he had to intervene with the following:

Just two points in response to readers’ questions. I do read all the comments. And I do not use words like “objective” or “impartial” or “neutral” or “disinterested” to describe what I try to do in these columns. All I’m saying is that analyzing arguments is a different project than taking positions on ethical, moral or political issues. Neither is objective; both involve opinions; the opinions are, however, about different things, in one case about the best thing to do or think; in the other, about whether the case made for thinking or doing something hangs together. It would be quite possible for me, or anyone else, to fault the arguments made in behalf of a policy or agenda and still support it. I am insisting on the distinction, but no claim to objectivity is involved

That’s right, it’s the idea that he might be making a claim to “objectivity” that really gets to him. My response:

First, whether an argument “hangs together” has nothing to do with “objectivity” — it’s entirely a matter of logical coherence. The content of propositions isn’t relevant to the discussion.

Which leads me to a second point: since the content is irrelevant, why talk about political issues at all, unless your goal is to stir up the passions of readers? Why not choose subject matter that is entirely benign, and won’t distract readers from the critical thinking lesson at hand?

Finally, when you feel like you have to disclaim “objectivity” about arguments about arguments, I suspect that you don’t have a very advanced understanding of the difference between logical and factual truth. Certainly you could claim to have truth as to whether something hangs together without claiming objectivity. The former is a matter of a set of logical axioms, or in its older form the “law of contradiction,” and the latter is a matter of some relationship to the world (of empirical objects).

If I’m wrong about your understanding of that distinction, then I can imagine a response to this point that denies it, and perhaps invokes Quine or Rorty. These are sophisticated (and I think failed) attempts at relativism under another name (and it’s unfortunate that the chosen name is “pragmatism”), but I think readers would be interested in knowing that that’s really what your project is about — that you’re really recusing yourself not just from “objective” discussion but from any commitment whatsoever: not because you’re a skeptic who thinks that truth is elusive, but because you reject the concept of truth entirely (unless it is redefined as something benign, such as coherence).

On the other hand, wouldn’t it be refreshing just to come out and take a stand on something — just for the hell of it? You might feel reborn, like a Hobbit who has spent his youth in a hole, only to be called to far away adventures, the ruggedness of the outdoors — dragons, wars, the feel of cold steel in the palm …. Anyway, call that column “Credo”; it might turn into a New York Times headline, “Stanley Fish Takes a Stand!”

Otherwise, you’re just left writing a column where you try to flatter yourself as someone who is willing to let his mind travel into the forbidden realms of the politically incorrect, because the rules of “hangs together” don’t forbid it; who is more than a typical unreflective academic liberal; who challenges his politically passionate readers to challenge themselves, to take this journey with him ….

Really thin stuff.