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    Supplemental discussion thread for the “Please do NOT revise your tone” post

    We got the following request at comment 102 on the other thread. It seems worthwhile, so we're opening this for narrowly focused discussion of the substantive — as opposed to illustrative — points of the "Please do NOT revise your tone" post:

    As someone who might have something to say about Leigh and Edward's post, it might be useful to have a kind of reboot thread more narrowly focused on their ideas and suggestions. I signed the petition for a code of ethics so I'm thinking as carefully as I can about what [they] took such time and care to craft. If I think I can contribute usefully to that, I guess I'd prefer it to be a different thread than this discussion, as lively and productive as it may be. 

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    20 responses to “Supplemental discussion thread for the “Please do NOT revise your tone” post”

    1. David Wallace Avatar
      David Wallace

      There’s a purely pragmatic aspect of this issue that didn’t get discussed in the previous thread. Personally, I like participating in conversations where everyone is usually polite and civil and where there’s a norm in favour of cooling things down when they get overheated. I don’t particularly like participating in conversations where I feel there’s a risk I’ll be attacked (as opposed to civilly criticised) and where that attack is going to be deemed acceptable according to the norms of the conversation.
      Is that my problem? Absolutely. Ought you to feel sympathy for me? Not so much: I’m a citizen of the 21st century West in a nice secure job; my being offended or upset in an internet conversation really doesn’t make it up there on the scale of Wrongs to Care About. But as a practical matter, I’m just not going to participate in discussion spaces with that second set of conversational norms. On the assumption that my position isn’t particularly unusual, lots of other people aren’t too.
      That might be acceptable. It might even be desirable. It depends on what kinds of conversations you’re trying to curate and what kind of contributors you do – and don’t – want. But it should be recognised as a consequence. It’s easy to have these discussions as if the pool of participants in the conversation is fixed, but it isn’t.

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    2. Ammon Allred Avatar
      Ammon Allred

      Ok, but let’s stay focused on the kinds of conversations that occasioned this: should those of us who are comfortable in the discipline (whatever that means) be okay with the idea that we’ll only participate in conversations where we remain comfortable, or in conversations that we choose to engage in, when what is under discussion is the failure of our discipline to be sufficiently welcoming of diverse practitioners? Granting for the sake of argument that concerns about “tone” and “collegiality” can shut down conversations about harassment and discrimination in the profession, what norms in your view would keep those conversations open?
      In short, how would you propose solving the pragmatic problem you bring up here? Or are you suggesting they may be insoluble?
      (These are not rhetorical questions, I mean them genuinely).

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    3. Mark Lance Avatar
      Mark Lance

      This is really important. It seems to me to be pretty trivial to say that there are lots of uncomfortable conversations that we have a duty to stay in and lots that we ought to leave. If the discomfort is being caused by people challenging our power or behavior in ways designed to improve things, we need to stay however unpleasant it is. If someone is just being a jerk, then it is a waste of time to participate. I think a few things about this distinction:
      No crafting of the legislative rule is going to help much. This is fundamentally a matter of judgment and it is rather silly to think we can formulate an explicit rule that will draw this distinction well.
      It is really easy to deceive yourself – on either end. That is, it is easy for one who is made uncomfortable for good reasons to think that someone is just being a jerk – that’s part of the point of the OP. But it is also easy for someone who has legitimate grievances to just let any jerky impulses run wild on the grounds that they have an aggrieved status. (Everyone has jerky impulses. Sometimes the political is just personal.)
      In the end, I think we need to cultivate social virtues – that is skillful and productive habits of engaging with one another, including in ways that help us all grow and change and recognize undeserved privilege. And a big point of the original post is that laying down rules will very rarely get us much progress towards this. (fwiw, I have a paper intervening in a different but closely related issue, that discusses this in more detail. It is called “fetishizing process” and is on my academia.edu page. It is written for activists not professional philosophers, but I take that to be the relevant context of discourse here, even among professional philosophers.)

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    4. Adriel Trott Avatar
      Adriel Trott

      I agree with Mark and the initial OP that no crafting of legislative rules will help, especially since it is precisely these kinds of rules that have been invoked to silence those who are ‘punching up’ so to speak. Since I work on Aristotle’s political theory, I find that a helpful way to think about this problem which I take to be in Aristotelian terms, how do we achieve the end – the good, justice, living well – for the community? If we take the communal activity to be precisely considering together both how to get to the end and what constitutes the end, then it seems like no law is going to finish that project for us. (We can argue over whether that really is our communal activity, but I would say as philosophers in a community, we share an investment in the thriving of that community. We may disagree about what would constitute that thriving, but we agree that we want the good of the community and thus justice in the community, and what we think constitutes the good and justice is a live question that we continue to dispute, but come to general agreements about and that those agreements are susceptible to change.) We will continue to have to ask whether the law or rule achieves the end we have ourselves (say, inclusion in the field or attentiveness to involving diverse practitioners) AND whether what we are saying constitutes that inclusion or attentiveness actually does achieve it. (Again, there may be disagreement on this point, but people seem to at least pay lip service to the idea that the field is open to all ‘meritorious’ comers – and the dispute is often over what makes one meritorious – that ideas should be heard on their merits and colleagues judged on their contributions, I’m open to other configurations of this end, but I do think we agree we want justice and inclusion, but disagree over what constitutes that and what gets us there, though we do come to tentative agreement at times.) 
      There is a real danger in the view that the rules will save us, not only because of the long history of the coopting of rules for inclusion by the powerful, but also because it supposes that we can ever achieve some moment where we won’t have to worry about the state of the feild anymore. I think that fantasy is the same fantasy that prompted the social contract theorists to want to set up some separate body to do the work of political life so that people could pursue their individual projects. It turns out that this model by attempting to institute justice once and for all becomes blind to its own failures to achieve its end because it ceases to consider whether it does in new times and different circumstances. This is not a reason to throw up our hands and say nothing can be done, but rather reason to pitch our tents and be in this work for the long haul. To whit, I think there is a growing sense of excitement that this conversation is being thrown wide open while it had been lurking in dark corners for some time. I think this is all good for philosophy, and I hope these conversations do not go away, and with Ed and Leigh, that we do not revise our tone.

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    5. Becko Copenhaver Avatar
      Becko Copenhaver

      I’m curious about how these ideas bear on whether the APA should formulate and adopt a code of ethics. I think the OP gives good reasons for not including collegiality as part of a code of ethics. In addition, it would be possible to craft a code of ethics that, like the code of ethics for the American Psychological Association, is not a set of enforceable rules but rather aspirational goals we use to guide our practices – particularly our practices as teachers. The sorts of practices to which we aspire as people who voluntarily agree to be teachers don’t seem to me to be in the same category as collegiality. Failures to practice by those ideals seem to me to be a kind of professional failure rather than a failure of collegiality. So, would folks who have (justified) reservations about the possibility of a code of ethics were it to cover collegiality or were it to be a set of rules and penalties, welcome the idea of a code of ethics more like the one described here?

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    6. Leigh M. Johnson Avatar
      Leigh M. Johnson

      I’ve stayed out of the conversation since the OP, though I’ve followed it closely, and so I’ll take this opportunity to thank everyone who has contributed thoughtfully to this (and the previous) thread. There is too much to respond to at this juncture, so I’ll just note a few contributions that have resonated with me:
      1. Josh Miller’s comments (at #27 and passim in the previous thread) with regard to the problem of “punching down” and the merit of an “asymmetric set of norms” are particularly insightful. To reiterate (part of) Ed’s and my original point: real, material and status differences between colleagues in our field regularly permit the abuse of collegiality- and/or tone-policing by those for whom the norms of collegiality are already protective. Where material asymmetries exist, as they no doubt do in our field, “symmetrical” rules of engagement are counterproductive, if not also outright unjust.
      2. Jack Samuel’s comment (#109 in previous thread) effectively redoubles Miller’s criticism of “punching down” in my view and, what is more, offers a persuasive account of why “punching up” may not be as objectionable as it is so often cast.
      3. Mark Lance’s comment above (#3 in this thread) and the “Fetishizing Process” article he wrote/references provide an excellent frame for distinguishing between the sorts of practices that establish, on the one hand, any community as a community of shared interests and, on the other hand, the legislative or legislatable processes/procedures that protect and maintain the integrity of that community and its interests (or, more directly to the point of our OP, punish violators of such).
      4. I want to refocus attention on Robin James’ (at #25 in the previous thread) and Adriel Trott’s (#4 above) reminders that indulging the “fantasy” of a “level playing field” is its own kind of offense, with consequences far more pernicious than punching up, if only because comments like theirs (and many others’ throughout this discussion, to be fair) are most proximate to the real substance of our OP. And, to that end, I’d also note that the conversation on both of these threads– in my view, a surprisingly productive one as blog-comment threads go– has nevertheless suffered a noticeable paucity of contributions from underrepresented groups.
      Finally, in re Ed’s and my suggestion in the OP that the “Petition to the APA for a Professional Code of Conduct for Philosophers” is an ill-advised strategy: I think the conversations herein are a case in point for our claim. No matter how vague and un-objectionably one formulates such a Code of Conduct– “accord everyone the same respect” or “don’t be an asshole” or “don’t punch down” being the most un-objectionable proposals so far– these are, quite simply, non-enforceable codes. Or, to whatever extent they may be enforceable, they are (and will be) enforced only by and for the benefit of those for whom such Codes of Conduct are effectively superfluous.
      Like everyone else, we suspect, we also wish that our colleagues engaged each other with both sensitivity and resepct, didn’t act like assholes and didn’t punch down. But codifying that behavior, as opposed to practicing it and expecting others to practice it (to use Mark Lance’s distinction), means that we’re making violations of the Code punishable. I, for one, am deeply suspicious of the likelihood that the already-punished will not also be further punished, only now “officially,” once a Code like that is more or less legislated.

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    7. Mark Lance Avatar
      Mark Lance

      Thanks for the kind words Leigh. On th possible apa code, I assumed it would say much more spcific things about much more specific behaviors: things like ‘don’t have sex withyour students.’ If the goal was to legislate tone and discourse, that would be a very bad idea.

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    8. Leigh M. Johnson Avatar
      Leigh M. Johnson

      Well, if the proposed “Code for Conduct for Philosophers” is meant to primarily say things like “don’t have sex with your students” then it’s an even worse idea than I originally thought. Because, the law.

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    9. Mark Lance Avatar
      Mark Lance

      I dont understand what you mean? Are you saying that such rules would be illegal, or thatthe law already prohibits it? Neither is true. I am genuinely confused.

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    10. Ed Kazarian Avatar
      Ed Kazarian

      To add to what has already been developed in this second thread, I want to say that I like the turn to virtue suggested explicitly by Mark and implicitly by Adriel’s appeal to Aristotle above. I think this is important as an alternative to any ‘legislative’ approach and that it has a couple of specific advantages.
      First, shifting to virtue entails the recognition that what is needed is the actual production of the conditions in which collegial engagement becomes an enacted norm (in a phrase I hope Mark, in particular, will approve of) — with the stipulation, I think at least latent in what Adriel wrote, that these sorts of conditions are not merely or primarily individual or individualizing, but material and social. It was these material and social, or in other words systemic, issues that we were particularly trying to call attention to. In virtue terms, what’s involved here would thus look like the process of habituation that Aristotle discusses in the Nic Ethics, we collectively cultivate over time in a process of successive approximation and constant reformulation the habit or tendency of engaging with one another in ways that we agree to be collegial, but also with the understanding that as we do so, and as we become better at including more folks in that collective practice, our sense of collegial will almost certainly evolve. There is, then, no abstract norm that can be articulated here outside the process of producing an enacted norm. Further, if we do start articulating ‘rules’ that function something like the models of ‘how the virtuous person acts’ in the Ethics, we have to recognize, again following Adriel (above and in a paper of hers on the Politics), that these rules only work insofar as we work through them together in a mutual critical engagement with how and how completely they are contributing to the good we seek. This makes any given formulation or static snapshot of such rules eminently defeasable and always returns our focus back to the concrete process of engagement to produce a better community, etc.
      Second, I think a virtue model is at least potentially compatible with a point that comes out of a Deleuzian model of conditioning, namely we should not think of conditions as if they are going to resemble the conditioned. If the eventual outcome we’re looking for is an inclusive, collegial philosophical community, it’s difficult to imagine that how we get there — especially given the all that is wrong with the community as it stands — is going to involve ways of speaking, acting, and relating to one another that will immediately look like the ones we hope to have once we are there. There’s a lot of stuff that has to be worked out, and the process of that, especially if it is to involve a transition from an unjust to a more just community, is almost surely going to look different from any model of justice we currently have or would like to envision.

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    11. Bharath Vallabha Avatar
      Bharath Vallabha

      I think it is helpful to see resisting tone policing as a form of civil disobedience. Here is what I mean. Suppose A is a tenured or tenure track professor. This means A’s professional duties are of three kinds: 1) Research, 2) Teaching and 3) Service (to the profession and to the college). Now suppose B is someone lower in the hierarchy than A, and B feels some concerns she has are generally not addressed in (1)-(3) as normally practiced.
      How can B raise her concerns to A in a professional way? To say that B should be “civil” is to say that she should express the concern in a way that fits the vocabulary, practices and schedules of (1)-(3). But this is exactly what B feels is not able to happen. So to get a foothold, she might raise her voice, or express frustration with the profession, or imply that if it weren’t for A’s position in the profession, A might better understand B’s concerns. To get heard, then, B has to resort to a conversational move which is not normal in (1)-(3).
      Because B broke normal conversational norms, it is natural for A to feel offended, angry, hurt, etc. But when A asks herself why B behaved in that way, A has a choice. First option: A can think it is because B has not properly understood (1)-(3)—since B is A’s junior—in which case, A will assume the right thing for A to do is to just set B straight. And A might do this by telling B that B is being “unprofessional” or “taking it all too personally” or “crossing a professional boundary”, etc. Second option: A can think that B does understand (1)-(3), but that B is breaking the norm on purpose and for a reason. So what B is doing is not simply a mistake, but is a form of civil disobedience she has to resort to in order to get heard. The way to engage with B then is to talk to B about whether that is what she intended and if so, whether the civil disobedience in this case is merited.
      There is of course no way to tell in the abstract whether in a given instance the first or the second option holds. To give up on the first option in general is to give up on the ideas of education and research, since education and research require setting people straight in a professional way. To give up on the second option in general is to have no way of being reflective on the professional norms themselves. The only way to tell in a given instance which option holds is to have the tough conversations. Getting offended or hurt is not a justification for not having such conversations. Those feelings are the first stages towards conversations which can be difficult but also ultimately empowering for all.

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    12. Becko Copenhaver Avatar
      Becko Copenhaver

      My question was the same as Mark’s. I was envisioning the possible code not as expressing shared norms about collegiality – you have fully convinced me that this is not a good idea. I was envisioning the possible code as expressing out recognition that our professional (not collegial) role as teachers requires us to refrain from behaviors that undermine that role. Leigh, you appeal to the law to say that this is an even worse idea. I’d like to hear more about that – can you expand?

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    13. ajkreider Avatar
      ajkreider

      I think David’s questions concerning what one is looking to get out of conversations matters a lot here. What are people looking to do in a blog comment section or a committee meeting? If the goal is to get consensus about a policy issue, or to present alternative or under-considered ways of looking at things, what benefit is there to “raising one’s voice”, impugning motives, criticizing the profession, personal insults, whatever? Has anyone ever thought, upon being yelled at or insulted, “Ah, I see by your yelling at me that you are in a superior epistemic position, and I now concur with what you are saying.” Or, “I wasn’t sure that you were sincerely putting forth that view until you insulted me. Now it’s clear you really mean it.”
      It may well be that getting consensus and the like isn’t the goal in many such cases. Perhaps one just wants to get something off one’s chest, or perhaps one wants to drive away or drown out positions unfriendly to one’s own – or those that are harmful to the discussion and it’s participants. In these cases, other conversational tactics may be appropriate.
      Any code that attempts to deal with both kinds of cases seems fraught. And it’s probably the case that many that start out as the former wind up as the latter. Perhaps there are virtues that allow one to easily exist in both settings, though I fear I lack them.

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    14. BLS Nelson Avatar
      BLS Nelson

      I’d like to echo this sentiment, and the accompanying question.

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    15. Marijo Cook Avatar
      Marijo Cook

      I imagine that what Leigh means by “the law” is that teachers are already required to refrain from sexually harassing female students and/or contributing to a culture of rape on campus under the provisions of Title IX which are currently being used to challenge these practices at many universities in the United States. A professional code would be redundant if it merely reiterated the laws that the professors must follow anyway.

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    16. Graduate Student Avatar
      Graduate Student

      Even if the professional code merely copied the language of the law, it does not seem that it would be redundant to me. The profession might want to take action in addition to the legal system, the profession might want to take steps which the legal system does not provide, and the profession need not merely accept the various procedural hoops that the legal system accepts. Many of the professional sports leagues, after all, proscribe certain behaviors that are also criminal. If they can find a way to make such rules not merely redundant, so can we.

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    17. Ed Kazarian Avatar
      Ed Kazarian

      I can’t speak for Leigh’s intention in her comments, but I will say that what you cite is definitely something we’re both concerned about.
      I’d add, speaking for myself now, that it’s difficult for me to imagine that the profession as currently constituted would do any better than the institutions we already have at enforcing such rules in ways that didn’t disproportionately impact members of out-groups. Indeed, there’s every reason to think we’d do considerably worse, given how badly we’re doing in terms of diverse inclusiveness. The same concern would apply to any code that substantially extended the range of sanctioned forms of conduct.
      In other words, there doesn’t seem to be any good reason to expect philosophy to police itself more successfully and more equitably than legal and university authorities have so far policed it. If anything, we can expect it to do worse.

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    18. BLS Nelson Avatar
      BLS Nelson

      Hello everyone, and Ed. Thank you for your thoughts and for the earnest discussion.
      I can’t speak for those who wrote the petition, so I’ll just make a few points on my own, because they speak to some of the worries that have been expressed above.
      It seems to me that the point of a Code would be part of the profession’s attempt to make itself better. For that reason, it would not be apposite to point out that the profession “currently constituted” would have no truck in “policing” it, for two reasons. First, because the current constitution of the profession is what requires change; second, because the point of a code may not be to enforce compliance of the rule (“policing”), but rather to develop acceptance of it.
      Of course, some might object that rules of acceptance are superfluous. I see no merits in that argument. It requires a penny-pinching attitude towards the normativity of rules to regard rules as superfluous unless they were accompanied by procedures for enforcement.

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    19. LK McPherson Avatar
      LK McPherson

      A trend might be emerging that’s worth taking note of: privileged-group philosophers who predict, if not tacitly threaten, withdrawal of their sympathies or support on behalf of marginalized members of the profession. Such predictions seem to come after a privileged-group philosopher feels unfairly or uncivilly “attacked” for making public comments that, tone-deaf or even offensive though they might have been, are supposed to warrant a very measured and charitable response.
      In the current thread, one philosopher characterizes this phenomenon as “a purely pragmatic aspect” of “participating in conversations”–apparently indifferent to the fact that an attitude whereby he’s “just not going to participate” whenever “conversational norms” aren’t to his type of people’s liking represents a typical mode of privilege flexing itself. Oh, well: nothing much will be lost when these philosophers hardly deviated from their typical ways of being in the first place.
      Withdrawal predictions are more concerning when a privileged-group philosopher has made significant efforts to improve the profession’s gender climate, for example. Sometimes intemperate “cyber-rhetoric” that is “alienating a lot of [these] philosophers whose help will be needed in [the] future” (Leiter Reports, 3/17/14) could have real consequence. But this version of the phenomenon seems puzzling insofar as their help is motivated by principled consideration of what is right and good.
      Johnson and Kazarian write, “And so, to those attempting to police these standards of collegiality, we want to say: Thanks, but no thanks.” Their reasons in support of this stance are clearly correct, as is already being demonstrated prior to any formal “code of conduct” for philosophers.

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    20. David Wallace Avatar
      David Wallace

      “his type of people”?
      Okay, I think that’s a fairly reasonable point for me to give a performative demonstration of the undesired behaviour in question.

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