From Arts and Letters Daily. Mark Goldblatt goes to the Modern Language Association, and the predictable happens: fish, barrel, gun.
I don't know which is sadder--that people who really want to do politics think that the way to do it is to get jobs as "cultural studies" professors, or their frantic need to throw their entire argument over the side rather than claim that they have "knowledge"--i.e., something to say.
Posted by DeLong at February 07, 2003 07:40 AM | TrackbackMark Goldblatt goes to the Modern Language Association: ...Black turtleneck sweater, black pants, close-cropped hair, and a black goatee. He finger-quoted "the war on terrorism" two times at the start of his talk, then declared that, even absent the gesture, the audience should assume finger-quotes each time the phrase came up. He thereupon launched into a paper in which he connected the language surrounding the war on terrorism with the writings of Theodor Adorno. (Adorno is a neo-Marxist philosopher whom no serious intellectual takes seriously . . . which explains why Susan Sontag once gushed, "A volume of Adorno's essays is equivalent to a whole shelf of books on literature.") Professor Turtleneck explained that Adorno's analysis of the lure of horoscopes among the masses had much to teach us about ordinary Americans who support their country's militaristic response to September 11. People who read horoscopes, according to Adorno, do so out of a "desire to feel oneself to be in the know." The war on terrorism, Professor Turtleneck insisted, is similarly buoyed by a "state of semi-erudition" ? so the necessary question for literature teachers becomes How do we critique this mindset and thus give peace a chance?...
As the session was winding down, I decided to ask a question. This is something I habitually do after such discussions; it's sadistic act, the academic equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel, and it speaks badly of my character. I directed my question to Professor Turtleneck ? though it could as well have been addressed to virtually anyone in the room. Recalling his notion of a "state of semi-erudition" that characterized those who support President Bush's war on terrorism, I pointed out that many of Bush's supporters would characterize the antiwar movement in much the same way. "As an epistemological matter," I asked, "how do you deal with the fact that each side sees the other as uninformed? You don't want to make the claim that your knowledge is somehow privileged, do you?"
There was an awkward, slightly panicky pause after I asked this.
Professor Turtleneck began his response by saying he'd cut a lot out of the paper he'd read and then segued into an utterly irrelevant tap dance about Adorno's own epistemological presuppositions. He was interrupted after a minute by a man sitting behind me, who called out, "You're not answering the question! You can't deny that you're making a claim to knowledge here!"
"I'm not denying that," Professor Turtleneck insisted. "I'm only saying that Adorno would say . . ."
As a liberal arts student at an Ivy League school, I can attest that the situation is often about as bad (and as comical) as Goldblatt portrays. The current obsession with relations of "power and domination" and the pressure on all of us to use such language and to "do theory" under such frameworks often produces classroom and conference situations so heavy with irony that few are able to take them seriously.
A case in point is a doctoral seminar in which I am a participant. In yesterday's session, we discussed the impact of various post-[insert one of: modern, structural, colonial, etc.]isms on writing history. The conclusion drawn by one of our readings was that more explicit "reflexivity" on the historian's politics, social location, race, class, gender, handedness, smoking preference, etc. should be deliberately woven into the history text itself, in order to expose the means of production of the historical narrative to the reader as a way of deliberately undermining the implicit authority claims of the historian-as-omniscient-narrator. None of us (the author of the reading, included) could really envision in any detail what a history that more fully embodied such an openly reflexive approach would look like, but this is beside the point. The point is that a few of my more astute and courageous colleagues correctly suggested that "hey, we're getting doctoral degrees in history from this university, and our identification of our alma mater somewhere on the jacket of our first book will be an authority claim that trumps whatever kind of reflexive authoring (and de-authorizing) techniques we use in writing it." (These were no one's exact words, but they convey the general idea.) In other words, there's almost no point in kidding yourself, when you're in a doctoral seminar at a prominent center of American "epistemic hegemony," that you're somehow encamped on the margins, waving the Jolly Roger and stickin' it to tha' man in the name of the world's dispossessed.
The whole point of being at a place like that and putting up with the insane workload, the politics, the chronic lack of money, etc. is to move yourself not toward the periphery, but further toward the center. But the irony of today's post-everything liberal arts establishment is that in order to move up in status, authority, social location, etc. you have to produce papers, essays, articles, books, and talks that "oppose," "deconstruct," "de-center," and "subvert," everything that you're actually trying to achieve professionally. In short, one's skill at critiquing power and subverting "systems of domination and oppression" is the very basis on which one is approved for advancement to positions of power in the dominant academic system.
Believe it or not, the irony is actually lost on very few within the guild. By the time you get to the doctoral level, you're usually smart enough and politically savvy enough to know that you're completely full of @#$%. But at that point, you have almost a decade of your life and nearly six figures in debt committed to this career path, so most opt to press on ahead and play the game.
Anyway, if anyone would like to read a witty and well-argued critique of post-modern chic from a confirmed leftist, then check out Marxist materialist literary critic Terry Eagleton's book _Postmodernism_. It's up there with Frederick Crews's classic, _Postmodern Pooh_.
Posted by: Jon Stokes on February 7, 2003 10:30 AMWhat is the point of this? The writer doesn't understand Adorno? (who btw, is taught in many, many, high level cultural studies and literature classes in Universities all over the world.) Adorno is indeed what is known in the discipline as a Marxist critic. This means a particular thing in the field of cultural studies and literary studies. Adorno is a world-renowned, widely taught scholar.
Now perhaps the writer doesn't hold any truck with the state of criticism today. That is a valid argument to make. I even agree to an extent. The fact remains though that one cannot possibly understand the state of criticism today if one refuses to take into account the influence of the Marxist school of critical studies. Citing Adorno's own epistemological presuppositions was precisely the answer to the question.
The author reveals his anti-intellectualism with the statement that no serious intellectual takes Adorno seriously. This is demonstrably untrue. Bashing Adorno because Sontag likes him is bizzarre, even if you hate Sontag. What does her opinion have to do with anything?
Don't get me wrong. I have a degree in English lit fom the University of Chicago, and I believe that the state of scholorly criticism has been trashed by po-mo buzzwordism. That said, I know enough not to trash an argument because of my lack of knowlege of a field or the manner of dress of the professor.
What was the author even doing there?
Posted by: biz on February 7, 2003 10:30 AMP.S. I think the post above mine makes great points about the problems in this field of study. I share all the concerns, which is why I have not pursued my literary studies any further. Still, the debates between Eagleton and Adorno are important, and one cannot comment on them intelligeently if one has not read both scholars.
Posted by: biz on February 7, 2003 10:43 AMI'm w/Biz on this. The idea that Adorno is some sort of fringe figure is laughable. Jurgen Habermas, reportedly, characterized him as the most powerful mind he'd encountered, Hannah Arendt tangled with him over the legacy of Walter Benjamin, Charles Rosen devoted a recent NY Review essay to his music criticism. If these people are not serious intellectuals, I have utterly no idea who might count. Is Susan Sontag not intellectually serious because the blog world has made her post-9/11 comments a figure of fun?
Goldblatt, in a characteristic right-wing gadfly move (Roger Kimball, say, is often guilty of this as well) manages to be breathtakingly sloppy as he writes in "passionate" defense of intellectual standards and objective truth. Sure, given his description, I would find the reported talks dismal too, but if he displays utter disregard for fact in the one area I know something about, why on earth should I trust the rest of his description?
Posted by: John on February 7, 2003 11:06 AMIsn't characterizing Adorno as a "powerful mind" some kind of authority claim? Isn't that a hegemonization of discourse by itself, and a marginalization of all that is non-Adorno?
:-)
Posted by: Brad DeLong on February 7, 2003 11:28 AMBiz--it is unfortunately a very common habit in media and journalism today: provide your seriousness credentials by showing how well you can use Marxism and the antiglobalization movement as your whipping boys. Goldblatt is not different. In fact, the image of anti-globalization in the media today is that of an ugly one-eyed dog with scars who is constantly kicked around by its sadistic masters. Right-wingers like Sullivan and Virginia Postrel do it, so do liberal economists like Krugman and DeLong. Which is of course really funny since any sensible Marxist could have told DeLong and Krugman that the Bush-Reagan administrations and their irresponsible policies are the natural consequence of the continued growth of the capitalist world economy. To be fair, sensible Marxists (Goldblatt's professor not included) will also point out that the world is better off with the Bush people than with old-style barbarians like Bin Laden or Saddam Hussein.
Similarly, the anti-globalization people consists mainly of people untrained in economic theory and they do often make serious errors, but even so their intuition many times provides a better guide to the world than economists' dogmas. Goldblatt may have been after fish, but in this case he shot a barrel of dead fish as opposed to live ones.
Posted by: andres on February 7, 2003 11:40 AMThis is complete bullshit, Brad, and I'm shocked that you're endorsing it. As far as we can tell, Goldblatt went along to a seminar he didn't understand, acted the prick, and it's all Derrida's fault. The idea that Adorno isn't taken seriously is as ridiculous as the idea that Susan Sontag isn't a prominent intellectual. The thesis of the paper being presented sounded incredibly interesting and insightful, and Goldblatt's question is stupid; it's clearly the case that both sides find the appeal of being in the know attractive, and it's a shame that the guy who wrote the paper didn't immediately acknowledge this (if he didn't; I have no confidence at all that this episode was reported accurately).
It's just not true that "knowledge claims" are not ever made by people in this field; they're just much more honest about the status of these claims, and how phony they are, which is something a lot of us could learn from. This anti-intellectualism is appalling and ignorant, and if you indulge in it yourself, you really have no basis for complaint when Mickey Kaus or Kevin Hassett do the same sort of thing to you.
Posted by: dsquared on February 7, 2003 11:42 AMYou beat me to it, dsquared. Oh, and your blasted comments don't work; literally nothing I post will take.
Guys in turtlenecks are funny, but guys who blather on about "Leftists" are less so. Cherry picking a few obviously hilarious quotes from the archives:
"On the one hand, Leftist intellectuals ? drenched by now in postmodern hogwash ? dismiss the suggestion that the world exists independently of our perceptions, and that knowledge claims can be measured objectively against it."
"The overwhelming majority of black voters, in other words, should see the Republican Party as a viable option to exercise their personal interests. They don't because they've been brainwashed, browbeaten and culturally cowed into believing that their natural constituency is made up not of other hardworking, taxpaying, law-abiding citizens but of a ragtag minority of sociopaths who superficially resemble them."
My favorite:
"For example, after caging a runaway circus lion, Bugs turns to the captive beast and says, "Iron bars do not a prison make . . . but they sure help, eh, doc?" This one-sentence demolition of postmodernism is the first and final riposte to a half century of Continental Thought which insists that reality is a construct of language."
Posted by: Jason McCullough on February 7, 2003 12:03 PMOK, D^2, I'll bite: how does one make a claim to knowledge if one declares knowledge to be non-existant?
Odd. The only statement Goldblatt claims is Adorno's -- 'People who read horoscopes, according to Adorno, do so out of a "desire to feel oneself to be in the know."' -- is AFAIK correct.
(Hell, even the ironic and humorous response to reading horoscopes fits.)
I am sure that the statement, 'People who read horoscopes, according to James Randi, do so out of a "desire to feel oneself to be in the know."' and its reflex denigration, would get a different response here.
Posted by: Carlos on February 7, 2003 12:51 PMI'm struck rereading the piece that at no point is the speaker actually reported to claim anything like the impossibility of objective knowledge--in fact, the only thing he's quoted as saying (in response to the second question) is that he IS making a claim to knowledge.
Is it just that we already know all MLA participants are wild-eyed relativists? At least the ones in turtlenecks and little glasses?
Or is the evidence that "panicky" pause when Goldblatt delivers his coup de grace? Isn't the pause as plausibly read as preparation for finding a tactful way to deal with the predictable irrelevant question from a hostile audience member? & if one objects that Goldblatt's question deserved direct engagement, I would argue that we have no way of telling, based on the description, whether the response was a direct engagement, because we're not told what it was, and Goldblatt inspires no confidence as a reporter.
Posted by: John on February 7, 2003 12:53 PMSo Goldblatt's offhand dismissal of Adorno was a bit over-the-top, but I think that a similar dismissal of Goldblatt's entire essay as the ignorant, anti-intellectual ranting of a Philistine is also a bit much. I didn't hear the talk that Goldblatt is referring to, but his question doesn't appear to me to be stupid at all. If you give Goldblatt the benefit of the doubt and separate for a moment what he (unwisely) appears to conflate--that is, criticisms of actual theorists whose work is usually placed under the very vague category of "post-modernism" and criticisms of a certain academic and professional climate for which "post-modernism" (as a collection of attitudes, as politics, as a style of dress and speech, etc.) is largely responsible--then you'll see that not only is criticism of the latter justified, but it's also being done by many at the very left of the left in the academy. Again, Eagleton's book is a good example. And in the Francophone world, Pierre Bourdieu's sociology of the French academy in _Homo Academicus_ has similar implications.
Goldblatt's question, especially in the context of the MLA meeting in which it was asked, exemplifies a criticism of the "po-mo" trend that has been levelled by post-colonialist and minority feminist (womanists and others) scholars in fields from sociology to theology. Specifically, the rich, elite, white, Ivy League Left's idea of "radical subversiveness" is the convening of conferences attended by the privileged and carefully selected few, and the presenting of papers so couched in jargon that they're deliberately accessible only to a select group of academic insiders. Such papers are rhetorically constructed as informed "political" critiques of Western power, domination, oppression, etc., but the prestige afforded the MLA and the very conditions that make the conference possible (the maintenance and perpetuation of the guild through progressively selective undergraduate and graduate programs, the funding and support that allow a scholar the luxury of writing a long paper on a CNN news ticker, etc.) all depend for their very existence on the benefits of Wester power, domination, oppression, etc. This is so undeniably and patently evident to those who're by and large /still/ excluded from such gatherings (minorities, two-thirds-worlders, etc.) that when a conference speaker presumes to lay bare the manipulation of the benighted masses by those in power... well, it would be high comedy if it weren't so tragic. You can profess humility all day long about the situatedness of your knowledge claims, but when you're doing this from a position of such privilege and presumed cultural authority, then people at both ends of the political spectrum have a right to laugh at you.
Finally, it's perfectly appropriate for Goldblatt to comment on the way people dress, because I've been in this particular graduate school for five years now and if there's one thing I know it's this: if a woman comes to seminar all dolled up, she has to fight an uphill battle to get anyone to take her seriously. The same, by the way, is true for anyone who shows up with a southern accent. You have to look and sound a certain way if you want to move up... that's how it is.
Posted by: Jon Stokes on February 7, 2003 01:16 PMSo Goldblatt's offhand dismissal of Adorno was a bit over-the-top, but I think that a similar dismissal of Goldblatt's entire essay as the ignorant, anti-intellectual ranting of a Philistine is also a bit much.
If someone uses the word "Leftist" in a non-joking fashion, inital capped and everything, it's probably ok to not take them seriously.
Posted by: Jason McCullough on February 7, 2003 01:41 PM"The same, by the way, is true for anyone who shows up with a southern accent. You have to look and sound a certain way if you want to move up... that's how it is. "
Yup, and this is why guys like Michael Lind and Dan Rather become such Liberal Uncle Toms. They know which side of the bread is buttered.
Jon Stokes’ honesty is refreshing. It’s about time somebody who attends Harvard University told the truth about this scandal ridden diploma mill. Wow, I’m making sure to copy this post.
Adorno was just an idiot. Is there any justice in this universe? Will there ever be a time when Liberals have to earn what they get?
Posted by: David Thomson on February 7, 2003 02:51 PMJust another plug for Adorno, independent of all po-mo debate. Goldblatt has egg on his face from that one. Either he didn't know any better or he didn't care.
Posted by: John Isbell on February 7, 2003 02:56 PMJust another plug for Adorno, independent of all po-mo debate. Goldblatt has egg on his face from that one. Either he didn't know any better or he didn't care.
Posted by: John Isbell on February 7, 2003 02:57 PM>>The thesis of the paper being presented sounded incredibly interesting and insightful, and Goldblatt's question is stupid; it's clearly the case that both sides find the appeal of being in the know attractive, and it's a shame that the guy who wrote the paper didn't immediately acknowledge this (if he didn't; I have no confidence at all that this episode was reported accurately). It's just not true that "knowledge claims" are not ever made by people in this field; they're just much more honest about the status of these claims<<
I'm perfectly happy with, "I'm right and you're wrong, and here's why." Indeed, I say this at least five times a day. The problem I have (besides the fact that there are many, many people who think that the critique of critical criticism is the way to do politics) is with the swift withdrawal by Mr. Turtleneck: Rather than responding to Goldblatt by saying that Adorno is smarter than Goldblatt, and has thought about it for longer, and that if Goldblatt wants to become smart he should listen to Adorno, Mr. Turtleneck caves.
I do *not* endorse Goldblatt's claim that Adorno is not worth taking seriously. I do assert Goldblatt's claim that nobody smart takes Adorno seriously is false. I further assert that Adorno is worth taking seriously. And I back this claim with my hierarchical hegemonic authority as a tenured Berkeley professor!
Posted by: Brad DeLong on February 7, 2003 03:07 PM>>OK, D^2, I'll bite: how does one make a claim to knowledge if one declares knowledge to be non-existant? <<
One does so with a bit of humility. For example, and to take one topical to this blog, if one wants to assert the claim "A rise in the supply of Treasury bonds leads to a rise in interest rates", then one is best advised to do so in a manner which leaves some space for the several sides of foolscap which would need to be covered in qualifications, assumptions and clarifications which one would need to make that claim in a precise manner (if such a thing could be achieved at all, which I doubt).
The game of radical scepticism has, though nobody seems to realise it, been pretty much played out in the two hundred odd years since Hume, and the position remains roughly as Hume left it. We cannot support the statement that Adorno has something to say worth listening to with anything more fundamental, but we cannot carry on without making such statements and there's an end on't. It is no kind of solution whatever to go around claiming that there *has* to be some grounds on which that statement can be judged to be definitely true or false and that anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot, and it is rather worse than a fourth-form debating society point to claim that someone is in some way a hypocrite for using language in the only way in which it can be used.
Posted by: dsquared on February 7, 2003 04:08 PM<
Well, I don’t think it’s really fair to tar the entire university with the po-mo brush, since Harvard is so balkanized. A case in point is the recent appointment of Larry Summers to the post of university President. A poster child for the post-modern left Summers is not. Also, you’re not going to find much of this kind of thing going on at the business school, the Kennedy school, etc. (at least, not to my knowledge). And in fact, crucial parts of my own department at my school (and other departments in the same field) are actually hidebound historicists who, however they try to posture, still do scholarship as if hermeneutics, critical theory, post-structuralism and post-modernism never happened. The particular seminar that I referenced is atypical for the field, but it’s part of a trend of trying to catch up to what’s going on in literature departments.
I myself am in the unfortunate position of having read just enough critical theory and literary theory produced by other scholars in other departments to have serious doubts about whether or not my own field should be moving wholesale in that direction, but on the other hand I’ve also been swayed enough by the stuff to realize that “business as usual” is no longer a viable option for us. So, I cling to the hope that it is possible to appropriate the criticisms of some postmodern theorists (do they offer any truly concrete constructive suggestions?) without also soaking up the more hypocritical features of postmodernism-as-academic-culture. The most egregious forms of this latter malady seem to be largely quarantined in literature departments, where the sickness has a kind of second-order impact on the rest of a university’s academic climate.
Posted by: Jon Stokes on February 7, 2003 06:34 PM>>The game of radical scepticism has, though nobody seems to realise it, been pretty much played out in the two hundred odd years since Hume, and the position remains roughly as Hume left it. We cannot support the statement that Adorno has something to say worth listening to with anything more fundamental, but we cannot carry on without making such statements and there's an end on't.<<
So is Adorno worth reading, or isn't he? Is Hume worth reading, or isn't he?
Posted by: Brad DeLong on February 7, 2003 08:13 PMSeems to me there's a world of difference between the skeptical view and the positive assertion the kind of nihilism that the MLA peddles.
Frankly, I'm surprised: I figured D^2 would be first in line to throw tomatoes at these yahoos. Now I have to go back and place a steep discount on everything he's ever said. (Sigh.) It's like when I found out about Steve Gould. Took me months to recover from that one...
Posted by: jimbo on February 7, 2003 08:30 PM>>"Goldblatt went along to a seminar he didn't understand, acted the prick, and it's all Derrida's fault."<<
Acted the prick? By asking a question? What do you call what you tend to do here, D2?
>>"The thesis of the paper being presented sounded incredibly interesting and insightful."<<
AHHHHHHHHHH! I geddit. You were being all ironic and stuff! ;-)
Posted by: Michael Harris on February 7, 2003 09:54 PMWhat the hell is everyone here talking about? Have you all gone mad?!!!
Posted by: Bobby on February 8, 2003 03:13 AM>> Adorno was just an idiot. Is there any justice in this universe? Will there ever be a time when Liberals have to earn what they get?
I thought Adorno was a Marxist, not a liberal.
Posted by: Iain J Coleman on February 8, 2003 04:06 AMJimbo, let me offer you some friendly advice, from someone who once thought as you appear to. Reconsider your thinking about "these yahoos." Reread the remarks here. Several people here have said things at least moderately favourable about contemporary criticism. Do any of them sound like crackpots?
I was once a guy who would have been first in line to throw tomatoes at the pomos too. But eventually, the people who were critical of the pomos started telling fibs about things I knew about, and I had to reconsider not only the critics, but my assessment of their targets.
I'm going to bet that you've learned to dismiss Stephen Gould from having read either Dawkins, Pinker or Dennett - possibly all of them. Go read Dawkins latest essay:
Genetics: why Prince Charles is so wrong
And then read this:
A year later, cloned cat is no copycat
This from Dennett:
The Mythical Threat of Genetic Determinism
And this:
UNRAVELING THE DNA MYTH: The spurious foundation of genetic engineering
Then go to my blog (the link should be there by my name) and tell me if your opinion of Gould has changed at all. If it has, you need to ask yourself if you can so easily dismiss D^2 or Adorno.
Well, I actually have read all of that stuff (except your blog - looks good, will read more when I get the chance) Doesn't really change my opinion. I happen to disagree with Dawkins on the GE front - I believe that he is rather simplistic in regards to the complications inherent in DNA, and the dangers of modifying it willy-nilly. What does this have to do with Gould?
And what does the cat have to do with anything? So the cat is not an identical copy - twins aren't either. So what? Does that mean that genes are meaningless, that there is no such thing as heridity?
My problems with Gould stem from his misrepresentations of evolutionary theory, not from anything he may or may not have said about DNA or genetic engineering. (I'm not really aware of any...)
Posted by: jimbo on February 8, 2003 07:51 AMBrad, I'm not sure that you're right to characterize what Mr. Turtleneck did as a swift withdrawal. Goldblatt went to a paper on Adorno and asked, "as an epistemological matter, how do you deal with the fact that...." Turtleneck then started talking about Adorno's epistemological criticisms. Goldblatt claims that this was irrelevant--but we only have his word for that. It sounds highly relevant to me. Since Goldblatt has shown he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about, I don't trust his characterization of the answer.
After all, in response to the guy behind Goldblatt, Turtleneck said that he was making a knowledge claim. Maybe his next sentence had the purport of "Adorno says that it's wise to make knowledge claims under these circumstances, so my position isn't incoherent." Again, perfectly relevant.
We just can't take Goldblatt's characterization of the exchange at face value, because Goldblatt has a chip on his shoulder and has already shown his ignorance about Adorno. Don't need any post-modern skepticism about knowledge to discount Goldblatt--just good old-fashioned assessment of his reliability as an informant. (Which, is my field in analytic philosophy, if anyone cares.)
Telling Goldblatt "Your question shows your ignorance" just isn't an option--if you don't know a questioner is a troll, you ought to be nice to him.
And Michael, asking a question isn't acting the prick; asking a question in bad faith, to someone who's presenting a paper, is.
OTOH, Brad is right that people who want to do politics shouldn't become cultural studies professors--you should do that if you want to study culture. Best not to have an inflated idea of how much you're fighting the power.
And Jon, this suggestion:
"it is possible to appropriate the criticisms of some postmodern theorists (do they offer any truly concrete constructive suggestions?) without also soaking up the more hypocritical features of postmodernism-as-academic-culture"
sounds wonderful--better than the reflexive dismissal of anything French that happens in some fields.
Jimbo, you've really read the Barry Commoner article before? I didn't think anyone still read him. He's one of the oldest environmentalists I know, and people have been hating him since at least a decade before I was born.
Anyway, my point was this:
In the first article Dawkins advances a - IMHO - highly ridiculous position of genetic determinism, one in which the effects of gene modification are as predictible as the effects of changing the code in a computer program. This is the most extreme form of genetic determinism I think I have ever seen in print.
In the cat story, we see that Dawkins is plain wrong. You see, everyone who has ever bred cats knows full well that cats inherit their colours. However, their genes do not accurately predict their colouration. This is what the cloned cats prove. Therefore, Dawkins is simply, plainly, utterly wrong about the nature of genes.
The Dennett article does in fact take a more reasonable position about genes. In fact, it takes a completely vaccuous one. However, Dennett attacks Gould - taking pot shots at the dead - by claiming that Gould's target, genetic determinism, is a straw man. Yet, you just saw Dawkins, a very prominent biologist, take a position that easily fits Gould's target. Therefore, this position is not a strawman and the attack on Gould is unmerited.
The Commoner article outlines exactly what mechnisms - with citations to peer reviewed journals - undermine the notion that genes fully specify inherited traits. The idea that genes fully specify all inheritied characteristics is the central dogma as I learned it and it is, explicitly, the position of Dawkins and Dennett in every single thing I have ever seen them write. It was the thing which Gould was most frequently attacked for not agreeing with.
I assumed that your problems with Gould were the result of his disagreement with genetic reductionism and the concomittant claims about adaptionism. However, I have a paper lying around somewhere explicitly laying out the value of Gould's population genetics in paleontology and I know virologists who make unhesitating use of the type of population genetics Gould championed instead of the individual genome centred vision of Dobzhansky and Maynard Smith (and Dawkins by extension.)
Now, my point is that if Gould had something important and useful to say, even if not everything he says is pure gold, he should be acknowledged as someone whose opinions deserve respect, rather than be the target of tomato bombs. You can not take smooth sounding critiques at face value, as the ruckus here over the effect of deficits on interest rates should make plain.
If your problems with Gould are the discovery that he was a man with particular opinions about his field, and therefore his essays could not be treated as the word of God, I advise you to think about whether that is a good reason to be discount what he says. It is crucially important to seek out the opposing opinions of every person who tells you something that sounds good to you but that you didn't already know before you decide whether or not you wish to be associated with that opinion. This certainly applies to D^2, it also applies to whoever has been telling you that Gould is a crock.
In exactly the same sense, I advise you to ask a broader array of people what they find of value in Adorno and in the whole post-modern litany that everyone seems to love to hate. Personally, I am not very familiar with Adorno, but I have found ideas of considerable value in the works of a number of writers who all "right minded intellectuals" think are just eurotrash with verbal diarrhea.
“I further assert that Adorno is worth taking seriously. And I back this claim with my hierarchical hegemonic authority as a tenured Berkeley professor!”
Peter Medawar perhaps said it best:
“A good deal of Teilhard (de Chardin) is nonsense, but on further reflection I can see it as dotty, euphoristic kind of nonsense, very greatly preferable to solemn long-faced Germanic nonsense. There is no real harm in it. But what, I wonder, was the origin of the philosophical self-destructive belief that obscurity makes a prima-facie case for profundity? --the origin, I mean, of the comically fallacious syllogism that runs 'Profound reasoning is difficult to understand; this work is difficult to understand; therefore this work is profound.'”
If Brad DeLong truly desires to defend Adorno, he will have to do so in a logical manner. Perhaps he can offer us some bits of wisdom that he learned from this so-called intellectual master. My guess is that Brad DeLong will hesitate to accept this challenge.
Posted by: David Thomson on February 8, 2003 01:53 PMDsquare has hurt my feelings. “This anti-intellectualism is appalling and ignorant, and if you (Brad DeLong) indulge in it yourself...,” declares our self described fat young man who hardly has a good word to say about anyone. Why didn’t he include me in his criticism? I’m proudly “anti-intellectual” and make no bones about it. My personal motto is to consider all people possessing a Ph.D. as jerks until proven otherwise. Richard Hofstadtder rightfully took to task those who are anti-intellectual for the wrong reasons. The red neck who believes "all that book learning is a waste of time” is to be pitied and marginalized. However, it is ludicrous to not also take the academic elite with a huge grain of salt. Often these folks are weirdoes who live in their own protected little dream world and “piled higher and deeper” is indeed an accurate description of their so-called scholarly background.
Posted by: David Thomson on February 8, 2003 05:41 PMWow, David. That's like posting "foxes rule" on alt.chickens.
Posted by: Matt Weiner on February 9, 2003 05:53 AMNo one is worth reading *because* they are hard to read. Some are worth reading *in spite of* the fact that they are hard to read. I have always thought Adorno falls into the second category. But I have not read all that much Adorno... because he is *very* hard to read.
Posted by: Brad DeLong on February 9, 2003 07:59 AM>> I'm going to bet that you've learned to dismiss Stephen Gould from having read either Dawkins, Pinker or Dennett - possibly all of them. <<
Some people learn to dismiss Gould by reading Krugman...
"Now it is not very hard to find out, if you spend a little while reading in evolution, that Gould is the John Kenneth Galbraith of his subject. That is, he is a wonderful writer who is bevolved by literary intellectuals and lionized by the media because he does not use algebra or difficult jargon. Unfortunately, it appears that he avoids these sins not because he has transcended his colleagues but because he does does not seem to understand what they have to say...
"His impressive literary and historical erudition makes his work seem profound to most readers, but informed readers eventually conclude that there's no there there."
http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/evolute.html