How Much Should Time on Campus Matter?

If “productivity” depends on grant getting, then humanities professors are always going to be considered dodgers, freeloaders, lazy butts, or whatever other term you want to use. There are very, very few grants available in the humanities. If I get a book contract, am I supposed to pay for the electricity in my university office out of my royalties?

This is yet another way to beat up on faculty. These are the times that try teachers’ souls.

I suspect that in total this debate has taken the common turn into extremism that seems to be the bane of Amerian civilization.  I’d like to think that this is a new development, but I’m an American historian, and thus know that we are a people that create heroes out of statesmen, or at least remember our heroes as statesmen, in large part because we are so easily drawn to defending the margins of the debate.

I was sad to see all the trolls work over Ms. Gossin.  Good grief.  Go get a class and teach!

Here’s what I’m perceiving in all this debate.  There are many fine faculty who play their role in delivering on the core mission of the university pretty effectively (particularly inside of a medieval organizational structure).  We wish everyone did as well as they do.  I’d say that’s 80% of all faculty (ft and contingent, tenured and not).  There are lots of different roles to play and we are foolish to think that every faculty member should be a great contributor to each and every faculty role (teaching, service, research, governance, and integration) at all points in their career.  Folks who would argue that need to go back and get a liberal arts education.  That’s just foolish.

That said, there are bad apples.  People who are unwilling to roll up their sleeves, pitch in and help out around the department and university when there is a job that needs to be done and we need them; pompous asses who lord their inflated, though evidently terribly fragile egos over any and everyone trapped in room with them; and people for whom the only part of the professorate they continue to find appealing is a tenured paycheck.

I think this is a result of the culture of the university in some disciplines that promote solo performance.  That happens largely in teaching in most areas of the university.  I would contend that integrative and collaborative teaching positively increases productivity, morale and learning outcomes for those willing to work at it (after the second or third time of doing it as a co-learner with students).  Having the support of colleagues in the classroom can yield high quality results similar to what we’ve come to expect from high performing science research labs and for the same reasons. One person isn’t expected to be responsible for every task simultaneously.

The critics may think that carpet bombing the professorate will get results.  They don’t remember that carpet bombing Vietnam didn’t win the war for the Americans.  What it will do in the professorate is drive the curmudgeons to greater levels of cynicism and non-performance and the folks who want to work hard at a meaningful job out to some other.

Revisiting the standards of performance for a quality professorate as an element of revisiting our social contract is a good thing, but thinking that one is doing that while engaging in a rhetorical game filled with such logical fallacies as over-generalization, ad hominem and straw-manning won’t accomplish that goal either.

There is a fundamental problem in talking about professorial productivity, to wit that the professoriate emphasizes a number of activities that much of the public does not value.  People primarily support higher education with tax and tuition dollars because they want their kids to get undergraduate degrees (and maybe a professional master’s).  To the extent they support research it is either for economic development or medical advances.  We may care about our research in the humanities and social sciences, but much of the public doesn’t.  And despite many protestations to the contrary in Chronicle blogs, the jury is out on the extent to which engaging in publishable research is necessary for quality teaching.  This is not about the intrinsic value of what we do, it is about whether or not we are doing what people are willing to pay us to do.   If not, they have every right to decide not to support us.

As an administrator, I am often called upon to justify the work of academic staff. My response is that they teach and research, helping to build Australia’s social, intellectual and economic fabric.

The difficulty comes when showing people around campus and you could fire a cannon down a corridor and hit not a soul. While I am comfortable that the vast majority (yes there are a few ‘bad apples’) are ‘doing what they do’ as an academic, it is much more difficult for the broader public to take that on faith.

A second but very significant point is defining the workplace. Academics “working from home” fall under the university’s worker compensation schemes which provide for compensation in relation to workplace injury. If someone fall down the stairs on campus, responsibility is much more clear than if that same person were to fall down stairs at home.

Do Republican politicians count time spent obstructing legislation and blocking appointments as part of their “output,” or are they only productive when they pass legislation and approve appointments? 

 I’m not even going to play this stupid game, and let the idiots set the rules.  I spend enough time doing my job to get it done, and get it done well.    In the course of that, I like to spend about 30 hours per week on campus.

Dude, you lost me at “what you put in the mind of a student.” This is such an antiquated, and inaccurate, understanding of teaching and learning that almost anything that follows ought to be disregarded. Second, the idea that education, REAL education, can be improved by importing business models and thinking into education is woefully misguided at best and nefarious at worst. The human mind and life are not ‘products’ to be marketed and consumed, unless you want to develop a totalitarian society/world. The simple fact of humanity is that each of us, as his/her own person, is unique and unpredictable and that education gives us a means to provide tolerable and peaceful forms of life through which to live and thrive together. The business models being espoused everywhere undermine any attempts at educating people to be something other than grist for some economic mill, and commoditizes one of the last refuges for pure inquiry and thought.

facing challenges is not unique, but facing unique challenges is by definition unique (even if it’s not unique to just one group)…failure to recognize and argue for this uniqueness makes it easier to unneccesarily group differences under a general, broad umbrella.

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Of course you are right to point out the utter inanity of this list. At the same time, virtually everyone in the higher ed community (except admissions officers and presidents) tends to downplay the extent to which precisely this thinking drives college choice in the prestige category. Consumers reason that selectivity and yield are valid measures of value. If institution A is more selective than institution B that means that it is more desirable and will therefore be a better investment. It’s okay to scoff, but institutions in the prestige category ignore this mindset at their peril. Indeed, many of them game the system to increase these two metrics.

I’m not blaming counselors per se. I’m saying that public education is rapidly changing and there is a much larger emphasis on student achievement in the “common core.” many educational professionals (many of whom are members of teachers unions) who are not going to be scrutinized by the new evaluation system either have to help students achieve, or risk having their positions go away or face the wrath of those who are being scrutinized. It’s occuring now. Counselors can no longer spend the majority of their time doing social/emotional counseling. There is a place for it, but they must also change their paradigm to play larger role in helping students succeed academically. It’s not just counselors. You won’t see elementary music teachers pull students out for ilesons any longer. Kids won’t sign up for art classes at the secondary level because they’re needing AIS. It’s a totally different ball game. Effective counselors will adapt. Obstructors are in for a rude awakening.

Mc Queary is under pressure from both sides and he must come out as being objective in order to survive  and not fall victim as the rest of those who stood idle and did nothing. So, he uses safe words like “I thought” in order to  cushion his testimony. No matter how you say it, no grown man should be showering with boys , no exceptions. I hope you don’t buy, ” I was just horsing around” statement. Mike also adds, “some kind of sexual intercourse was going on”. Did he see something else that he is not saying? How many types of sexual intercourses are there? What would you have done if your son was showering with the coach? Would you join them and play the hokey pokey?

 I don’t have any hard data but it seems like quite a stretch to turn this into a racist or feminist issue. Virtually all of the churlish public behavior has been generated by extremists on both sides toward the other side. As an example, Limbaugh’s attack on Fluke would constitute perhaps 1% of his monthly quota of meanspirited behavior, most of it directed at president Obama and other Democrats and liberals, only a few of whom are female. Ditto for the many examples that come to mind in Congress. I don’t doubt that closet racism accounts for some of the whacko emails that are distributed against Obama but the ideologues are going after the ideology, not the race. You need only look back on the shamefully impolite way many CHE posters behaved with respect to president Bush to see an example on the other side.

An excellent discourse.  We all need to be reminded of this.  Thank you.

Based on the information presented in this article, Deacon is guilty of nothing, neither plagiarism nor sloppy scholarship. It is inevitable that people considering the same questions, looking at the same kinds of data, are going to generate similar ideas. On a subject like “mind,” no one is going to have read everything and there are bound to be overlaps. That is a pitfall of scholarship, not a moral failure. Nor is there any duty to vet one’s every thought through Google to see if somewhat has thought it before. The duty is to search the literature and to read widely, give credit when you rely on someone else’s work, do your analysis, and write what you find.

I further note that Deacon’s citations stop in 2005 except for references to his own work  (which seems strange for a book published at the end of 2011) and that Deacon and Juarrero were both keynotes at a 2007 conference in Cancun where Deacon was observed attending Juarrero’s talk.

Senior academics have a responsibility to properly cite the works of others and to be aware of the efforts of others whose research and writing addresses their own.  The example Deacon sets is that negligence, sloppiness, and perhaps deliberate ignorance are proper scholarship.  UC Berkeley should be ashamed of setting such an example.

For a picture of Deacon and Juarrero sitting together at a conference in Cancun see
http://isce.edu/speakers-at-ctns-stars-mtg-jan-2007.jpg

There are numerous phrases and concepts reference in that spreadsheet that Terry Deacon and I spoke about in numerous conversations we had on this topic the most recent of which having been well prior to the publications of Juarrero’s book.  At most, this is different people thinking (somewhat) along the same lines and Terry not knowing about the literature that Juarrero seems to think is so important that everyone should know about it. 

So to me, the evidence strongly suggests that these allegations are wrong and even absurd. On top of that, for what it is worth, I’m sure that Terry Deacon simply would not rip off ideas like that.  

it is “a detailed spreadsheet of apparent similarities between the structure of the arguments in the two books and the examples used to make those arguments.”  It is NOT a list of “quotes”.  In the aggregate the similarities of argument demand recognition. See the McGinn piece http://emergence.org/NYRBARTICLE.pdf     Only the commenter ipso-facto has used the “p” word.

“…a conference in Cancun“. Gotta love it. 

 munibond:  I am wondering what your investment in this article is (or, more accurately, your stake in the various pieces of literature and/or ideas); up to this point you have contributed nearly 40% of the posts.

Thanks.  Since I have not read any of the books I cannot speak to the alleged overlap.  But your supposed communication with him addressing the lack of citation(s) certainly makes his originality of thought suspect.  At the same time, the force behind your aggression toward this issue is revealed by the proximity you have with the other(s) involved, thereby making your perspective a little less objective.

munibond:  Your colleagues are lucky to have such an ardent supporter in their corner.  Are they posting on here under a pseudonym advocating for themselves as vociferously as you?  Or are they under some kind of gag order so as to not muddy up a legal battle over intellectual property?  In any case, please forgive my quibbling over your semantics, but I don’t think it’s your place to “right a wrong” done to one of your colleagues.  The only person capable of correcting a wrong is the wrongdoer.  Instead, you seem to be advocating that the wrong BE corrected (if in fact a wrong had been committed) and are trying to do so through raising awareness; applying political, social, and professional pressure to admit to something YOU see as a wrong.

Regardless, I think the title of this post is intriguing, which is why I read it in the first place.  I think it is possible that two (or more) people who either lived on each side of the earth or were next door neighbors, could make similar observations.  I could document the first rays of the morning and write copious notes about its progression until the final light-wave disappears.  You could do the same.  We then could write a paper and the logic and progression could eerily resemble each other.  If our lexicon had significant overlap, it would seem that we would use the same diction to describe what we had observed.  And BAM! our works would read like a bad deja vu.

Now back to the case at hand.  I think it is possible that the alleged intellectual thievery could have just happened; that Deacon never read their books and his logic flowed parallel to theirs.  If this is the case, then I don’t see where he is under any obligation to acknowledge their work(s).  Even, as you assert, if he held conversations with them doesn’t exactly obligate him to cite when and where he conversed with them.  I know I don’t reference every little conversation I’ve had with people in everything I write.  That requirement would be asinine.

But from what I understand you’re saying, Deacon shared more than just simple conversations with them, going so far as to have copies of their books open in front of him as he wrote his book (my words, not yours;).  If that is the case, that is shameful.  Yet if he didn’t, then I find no foul-play on his part and instead the wrongdoing falls upon you for your caustic criticisms.  Either way, I have no personal capital in how this turns out.  Good luck to all parties involved…

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Suppedisne?

The character and honesty of perhaps the next president is of great relevance, far more than the petty stakes brought up in this blog.The answer to your question would be “lying,” that is the connection
between my comment and the blog. I didn’t realize this fluff forum had
a “dress code” requiring relevancy. Do you read these comments often? I did not find the blog of much
interest in the first place, it is an academic pissing contest of no
relevance outside the egos of those involved.

Interesting….you decry ad hominem attacks but then engage in the same acts yourself. So I guess you have a self-inflicted rhetorical wound, sounds painful. Is there a latin phrase for that?

And you respond to people asking why they have contributed 40% of the posts (you calculated?) and that is meant to be a “substantive comment” on the topic at hand? Ignoratio Elenchi, yourself, you will be using it a lot in the CHE.

Sorry but I don’t care much about the mutual  arguments over what seems to be pretty much inconsequential matters but I love the name of your institute for the “Study of Coherence and Emergence”.   How are emergence and coherence linked to human experience?  Or do they just pertain to botany?  Please forgive my ignorance, I’m just a mere semiotician looking at signs as standing for something…. 

Well, this is a difficult one. To begin with it seems that most of the comments come from people who are either  totally uninformed or deeply partisan. I’m not an expert in the field, but I have read both and Deacon’s and Juarerro’s books and I have no axe to grind (honest!). 

Part of problem, I think, comes from the promotional jacket of Incomplete Nature, which promises – as they all seem to these days – a revolutionary and original synthesis of ideas etc etc. and a bunch of testimonials from respected academics in complexity, such as Stuart Kauffman . But here’s the problem: it’s not. Really. That’s not to say it isn’t a really good synthesis, because it is. It collects a lot of ideas from complexity theory, and from other places as well (ahem, I think the ideas of Mary Midgely were also apparent early in the piece, but they weren’t credited either) and brings them together as a beautifully presented argument.

If you read one book after the other, which I did, then it is pretty clear to me that one of them is a tentative, difficult to read exploration into uncharted waters which breaks new ground, while the other is a reflective overview of those same ideas. 

I hate to say this, because Deacon’s thought, his writing, and his erudition all shine forth in his prose, and his book is a far more considered and balanced piece of work than the one it resembles so much. It fleshes out Juarerro’s ideas, extends them, and places them into a wider context. But, at its core, this is not an original book at all. Take away Midgely and Juarerro (and perhaps others I’m not aware of) and there isn’t much left that hasn’t been said many times before by various philosophers. 

It could be a coincidence of course, but the sheer – and almost brutal  - originality of Juarerro’s ideas indicates that this is unlikely to be the case.

So Incomplete Nature is a pop science book, a really good one, that should have made its sources of inspiration clearer, giving credit where it is due. 

Without having read any of these books, can I ask if any of them cite Douglas Hofstader’s work on how mind emerges from matter? I will quote a brief Wikipedia entry below. I mention this because of two things: (1.) In some fields, I have been reading widely enough for so long that I may myself no longer remember when or if I first thought of an idea, as opposed to running across it somewhere in the work of someone else — there can be a genuine failure to recall the source of an idea [And are there really any new ideas?]. (2.) Is it Carl Becker who spoke of “climates of opinion” in history? I seem to recall my late father talking about that growing up, and this debate over originality and authorship could reflect a climate of opinion in related fields where instant Internet information makes the spread of ideas becoming memes. It may not excuse an incomplete literature search, but given the editorial delays between submitting a MS and getting the book out, there may be an explanation for that as well. :
“I Am a Strange Loop is a 2007 book by Douglas Hofstadter, examining in depth the concept of a strange loop originally developed in his 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach.

“
In the end, we are self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages that are little miracles of self-reference.
”

Some ideas only become possible when a larger structure is available to support them. This concept was first proposed (as far as I know) in the twenties by Vygotsky as Theory Scaffolding. Since then, it’s been adapted to biology and culture with the Adjacent Possible hypothesis, which came about when people noticed how many inventions  and discoveries appeared simultaneously from independent researchers around the world. Basically, according to this theory, as soon as the pre-requisites exist, biological and conceptual innovations (such as flight or differential calculus) spontaneously emerge from the recombination of previous structures or ideas. Ironically, this is concept deeply related to complexity theory, which is the concern of Deacon’s book (and Hoefstaeder’s too). 

While this nicely explains how scientific progress is really dependent on the academic community and not just the trail blazers, it doesn’t, in my opinion, get Deacon off the hook. When it coes to really new concepts, it seems to me that something really special happens, over and above the inevitable recombination of old ideas. Sometimes our conceptual understanding becomes static and unable to proceed, and only someone who can innovate in a truly idiosyncratic manner is able to show the way forward. Hofstaeder certainly did this in GEB, Juarerro did it again in Dynamics in Action. While their ideas are related, they are both truly original (and that goes for Strange Loops too). Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Terence Deacon.

I return to my original suggestion (made in January) of how to make this “mess” better:

Berkeley needs to hold a symposium where Deacon, Juarrero, and  Thompson (and perhaps Graves and Murphy) are all given opportunities to present and then they have a roundtable

the event would be a very fruitful discussion of commonalities and differences and a properly cited academic monograph can result

we all would be much better off from the resulting dialogue and learning and this “mess” can go down as “an unfortunate but seemingly necessary” step along the research path

so Berkeley when can we have such an event?

Right after a session on the obvious plagiarism in Martin Luther King’s dissertation.

I’ve preferred to allow a close reading of the two books and the spreadsheet to speak for themselves, but since speakersbenefit lays out this challenge, I’ll be the first to answer it. Two books I should have been aware of when I wrote Dynamics in Action: Robert Rosen’s Anticipatory Systems and especially Scott Kelso’s Dynamic Patterns. Mea culpa again to Scott (I told him as much in person in Antwerp many years ago).

Jerry Fodor chimes in via the London Review of Books see http://emergence.org/Fodor-Deacon-LRB.pdf

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“My reference to you being a typical drone is not a personal attack.”

Yes, and war is peace and freedom is slavery. Good luck in the coming Rompocalypse.

Plagiarism is no excuse when all you have to do is be honest.  However, how many times have individuals come up with words that they honestly thought were really their own?  No one is perfect.

Watch out straw men, Jerry is on the attack again!

Deacon seems to think it is personal rather than a matter of academic integrity.  His inability or unwillingness to actually discuss what he believes to be differences between his work and that of Juarrero and Thompson unfortunately speaks volumes.  I am sure the academic community would welcome such a discussion (Juarrero says X, I say Y, Thompson says Z, I say A).  Instead we get the following:

On 5/22/12 4:48 AM, “deacon@berkeley.edu” wrote:
> Dear colleagues,>> You are one of hundreds who have received emails about me and my work> from Michael Lissack. I have compiled this long list of emails from only one> of his many broadcast emails to anyone he believes might be susceptible to> his game of slander. I do not know if you have received other defaming emails> from him, but if you have, you have probably guessed that he has> decided to do everything he can to defame me to you my many colleagues> throughout the world and to use his ill-gotten millions to both attack my> scholarship and my character in a very public and vicious way.>> As for the reviews of my book that he selects to broadcast, I do not mind> that some  people consider my new book threatening enough to want to critique> it. Indeed, such intellectual heat suggests to me that I have struck a> nerve. I think that it is becoming obvious that they do protest too much.> And this I hope will get people to read it and judge for themselves. I> have no doubt that my work will stand the test of time, for its> originality, scholarship, and significance. So I welcome serious> comparison and criticism.>> But I write for another reason.> Mr. Lissack is engaging in a ruthless campaign of character assassination.> If this is the first email you have received from him, it almost certainly> won’t be the last. Now that he has your email on his list I have little> doubt that he will continue to send you whatever he can find to defame me> in your eyes. Besides sending emails to hundreds of recipients like yourself> that he hopes will innocently spread his accusations without checking, he> has influenced the publication of scathing reviews and has spread rumors> of scandal to many sites and journal editors. He is savvy and without> scruples and he has very deep pockets.>> Those of you who know me will see this for what it is – a form of> intellectual slander – and I hope will not let it pass. But for those who> don’t know me I urge you to not let this kind of thing go unchallenged. If> we let the likes of people like Lissack succeed in infiltrating the world> of scholarship with this kind of personal vendetta masquerading as> intellectual dispute it will open the door to a very ugly future. Will> careful analysis and serious debate over ideas be replaced by character> attacks, scandalous inuendos, and disinformation in an effort to discredit> the work of others? We have come to accept this dishonesty in our> politics. I hope that we will reject it in the the pursuit of knowledge.> You don’t have to know me or know my work to stand against this. This use> of the electronic media to spread disinformation and invent scandal in> order to destroy one’s opponents is a growing danger that we dare not> ignore. I am the target today, but … Please do not be complicit by your> silence.>> Thank you.> Sincerely, Terry Deacon>

Sure, sometimes great minds think alike with respect to exciting, new ideas. Newton and Leibniz on the calculus, and Darwin and Wallace on natural selection. Note, though, that Darwin DID refer to Wallace in The Origin of Species. Darwin came up with the crucial ideas first BUT once he knew that someone else had arrived at a similar set of notions, he publicly acknowledged as much. Let’s suppose that Professor Deacon was not much influenced by others in formulating the main ideas in his new book. Still, once it was brought to his attention that others had written along similar lines, he ought to have acknowledged that fact and explained how his own views, while resembling these other theories in some respects, differed from them, too.

Deacon posted the following at:
http://joyuscrynoid.hubpages.com/hub/DeaconIncompleteNature-Review.

Terrence Deacon 17 hours agoDear Joyous Crynoid,Though I generally avoid interacting in blog forums, I feel the need to do so here. You have done an excellent job of reviewing my book. One of the best that I’ve read so far. Thank you for working so hard to accurately summarize my reasoning and to make the effort to try to understand the motivations behind this approach. And I also appreciate your divulging your own theoretical bias as well. I think that the interesting contrasts and parallels you draw are illuminating, even though they are unlikely to alter our divergent metaphysical commitments.But I am mostly writing because I wish you had applied same level of careful analysis to the highly charged claims and pseudo-evidence sent to you by Lissack and Juarrero before including it at the end of your review. I wish you had actually read her book and done the comparison for yourself rather than just accepting it a face value. Unfortunately, by following up your careful and detailed review by merely parroting their claims and passing on their suggested URLs without a similarly careful comparison I feel that you have done me and your readers a disservice.Though I had not read her book prior to finishing my book, I have been reading her work since. She has indeed done excellent work synthesizing Kant, dynamical systems theory, and issues of consciousness. It is now clear that she recognized some of these connections well before me. But it will not take a very detailed reading to notice that our assumptions, arguments, and purposes are ultimately quite different. I don’t harbor the illusion that my ideas have never been entertained before by others. Indeed, I suspect that intellectual synchronicity is the rule not the exception, though the stronger claims of identity are easy to refute if one reads the books.Having done such a careful job explaining exactly how my analysis demonstrates the inadequacy of the dynamical systems approach, you wii easily be able to recognize a critical difference. Juarrero ultimately believes that dynamical systems thinking is sufficient. Her work relies heavily on ideas that are quite opposite from those that are at the heart of my work — Ideas like Wholes being more that the sum of their parts, wholes constraining their parts, top-down causality, and her assumption that autocatalysis (=autopoiesis) exemplifies the basic logic behind life and mind. Thus the morphodynamic / teleodynamic distinction which is so central to my theory is not even recognized in her work. So whereas I argue that we need to go beyond the dynamical systems paradigm if we are to make progress toward understanding the distinctiveness of life and mind, she does not.There are, of course, a great many other problems that I struggle with that are not discussed in her book, and many philosophical issues that concern her but do not interest me. Perhaps some of the differences in focus can be traced to the difference between a scientific and a philosophical approach, and even our difference in philosophical commitments are likely relevant — her’s with Kant, mine with Peirce.I have no problem admitting that there are a large number of thinkers pursuing similar paths that I have overlooked in my preparations (some of which you also identify). At some point one needs to decide when to stop reading and get something down on paper. The relevant literature is vast when you consider the scope of my book — from emergence theory to thermodynamics to systems theory to origins of life and DNA to work to reformulating information theory to grounding semiotics to speculating about the nature of mind — and I believe that my citations and references reflect a serious effort to do this vast sweep of topics justice. Inevitably I did not read or cite many relevant books and papers that a more encyclopedic work might have. Since the publication of the book I have been been trying to follow up on these many suggestions of parallel theories and competing paradigms, and I am indeed finding this to be a rich field, though sadly more in philosophy than in the sciences. I notice for example that recently many quite notable philosophers of science have struggled with the comparison between Kant’s notion of self-organization and the modern dynamical systems view — as does Juarrero — however the majority seem to have also overlooked her work as I have. So I agree that her work deserves better attention than it has received.Despite this effort to attack my academic integrity, I will treat Juarrero’s work with the intellectual respect it deserves. For example, I have recently submitted a paper (already accepted for publication) in which I explore some of the similarities and differences between our theories as well as discussing how both approaches compare with a few others whose work was not discussed in my book (e.g. Thompson). Perhaps this reflects my naive trust in the old ideal of published intellectual discourse, focused on ideas, pursued in academic venues.In the mean time I reiterate my request: please take the time do the comparison yourself, and with the same care that you have exhibited in this review of my book. Yes there are similarities, but I am certain that with similar attention to detail your appraisal of the independence and originality of my work will not suffer by such a comparison. And it may even provide an interesting subject for a future blog ;-)Thank you.Sincerely, Terry Deacon

The latest to and from Berkeley.

Professor Broughton
 
We are indeed alleging the intentional misappropriation of the writings of others.  While my email to Prof. Deacon of Jan 27 suggested that the word plagiarism was too strong (where I take plagiarism in its literal sense to be the use of exact langauge) the idea chains and overlaps with Juarrero Thompson etc are too strong to have been mere coincidence.
 
My January 27th email was written in attempt to arrive at an acceptable compromise.  Professor Deacon has rejected that compromise.  My investigations subsequent to January 27th lead me to the inescapable conclusion that Deacons’ actions were either intentional or grossly negligent.  To claim originality and uniqueness in the face of overwhelming evidence that neither is the case is simply DISHONEST.  If it is your (and thus the University’s) policy to consider violations of intellectual honesty to not include continual repetition of claims of originality which are incorrect and fail to make proper attribution then it is a sad day for academic integrity.  Integrity includes apologizing for negligence.
 
We at ISCE are firmly of the belief that Terrence Deacon has violated any reasonable standard of academic integrity and has INTENTIONALLY misappropriated the works of others which he has then claimed as his own without attribution.  Your Code of Conduct includes the following standards which we believe Professor Deacon has violated “Professors make every reasonable effort to foster honest academic conduct. They accept the obligation to exercise critical self-discipline and judgment in using, extending, and transmitting knowledge. They practice intellectual honesty.”
We are of the opinion Terrence Deacon has NOT been intellectually honest.  The University may desire to avoid dealing with this issue for political and budgetary reasons.  That quite frankly is its own violation of intellectual honesty
 
Once again I implore you to actually read the works in question.  The overlap and appropriation will be obvious (as they were to Thompson, McGinn, Fodor, Juarrero and James Coffman).
 
please acknowledge receipt of the above and please confirm that you understand that indeed we are formally accusing Terrence Deacon of intentional misappropriation.
 
as one of my research fellows stated “In my estimation, Terrence Deacon, whom I have never met, is a liar and a thief who stole from the work of others, including me, thinking that    he could get away with it.  Now that he has been caught, he is playing the victim, frantically backpedaling in a desperate effort to save his reputation.”
 
please note further that your tentative decision below may be of legal standing as far as UC Berkeley goes but that we will continue to do what we can to get this matter of academic integrity addressed, the University can play whatever role it likes in that effort, but the effort will continue until the matter has been corrected with or without the University’s cooperation
 
I feel a need to copy this note rather broadly.

On Sun, May 27, 2012 at 3:38 PM, Janet Broughton wrote:

Dear Mr. Lissack,

This responds to your various communications regarding Professor Terrence Deacon and his book /Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter./After careful review of the material you provided, I have concluded that the information available to me does not warrant appointment of an Investigative Officer under our campus faculty disciplinary procedures.The conduct you have alleged would not constitute a violation of the University of California’s Faculty Code of Conduct.

The Code defines unacceptable conduct in the realm of scholarship to include “[v]iolations of canons of intellectual honesty, such as research misconduct and/or intentional misappropriation of the writings, research, and findings of others.”UC Berkeley policy defines “research misconduct” as “fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism.” You have not alleged fabrication or falsification; thus an allegation of either plagiarism or intentional misappropriation of writings, research, or findings of others would be required to constitute a basis for appointment of an Investigative Officer.In the communications you have sent me, however, you have expressly disclaimed making allegations of plagiarism or intentional misappropriation.For example, in your January 27, 2012 e-mail to Professor Deacon you wrote that “use of ‘plagiarism’ was much too strong a word.I regret the pain which my use of the word must have caused you.The way forward here is NOT to evoke that word.”In the same email, you stated: “I do believe (and have from the beginning) that you have not done anything here with nefarious intent.”

You have proposed that Professor Deacon should publicly acknowledge certain contributions of other scholars and should participate in seminars with those scholars.Please be aware that if Professor Deacon should decline to take these steps, this would not subject him to disciplinary action.

Finally, your May 22, 2012 email states that the Institute for Study of Coherence and Emergence “is making this complaint as the copyright holder.”In your May 23 email you state that “we at ISCE believe this to be a matter of ethics and integrity more than a matter of law.”My understanding is thus that ISCE is not raising a legal claim of copyright infringement.If I am wrong about that, please let me know, and I will ask the University’s lawyers to respond.

Sincerely yours,

Janet BroughtonVice Provost for the Faculty