COLLOQUY

THE QUESTION

RESPONSES

BACKGROUND

If there is a debate between Irfan Khawaja and David Elmore, this seems to be it.

Mr. Elmore errs in an ad hominem assumption of bad motives (envy) and, perhaps, in assuming only an academic outsider can win the intellectual battle in philosophy.

Mr. Khawaja errs in focusing only on these aspects of Mr. Elmore's points rather than dealing with the criticisms he leveled about irrationalism and skepticism in the history of philosophy, especially in modern times.

While Elmore may be intemperate and not have an insider's knowledge of late 90's philosophy departments, Khawaja has some issues he still needs to address in a more focused manner:

Even if a young Objectivist academic is "taken seriously", are not the philosophy departments in fundamental epistemological disagreement with a non-skeptic, reason-can-know-reality, certain-things-are-axiomatic approach? Is every young Objectivist academic taken seriously, or is it the luck of the draw?

Will they publish your papers and give you tenure when you try to do "system building" rather than linguistic analysis?

As your career advances, will you have an influence when you deny at root their starting points and do not use a methodology they can recognize and which seems bizarre?

Will you have to adopt their tools, their linguistic analysis (or whatever is the more current one at the time), their compartmentalization, and run the risk of becoming a tunnel-visioned, rationalistic thinker, focusing on narrow topics out-of-context?

Can people who question the validity of concepts genuinely take seriously a giant hierarchical pyramid of concepts and propositional certainties like Objectivism (or any important subargument within Objectivism)? If so, how will that work?

How do you pursue truth when you have discarded the tools of truth? Invent new ones?

These would seem to be dilemmas that faces those who place primary hope in the "academic route" to change a culture.

I'm still waiting for a clear explanation of whether the establishment "insiders" in any significant number go beyond being willing to pay serious and respectful attention, and show signs or actually being open to change, including philosophical methodology overhaul.

I've asked many Objectivist academics this question and am still waiting for a full and clear explanation of either: a) how you change a philosophical establishment which has gone far downhill in ability to use the tools of reason, or: b) why the academy has really not gone this far downhill and, not being an academic, I am not aware of the positives.

These are not the exact points Elmore made, but there is a connection.

Is "trashing" the history of philosophy the same thing as legitimate criticism of extremely bad, irrational trends--and their logical implications, Mr. Khawaja?

( By the way it is not necessary to be a teacher in an academic department if one has been through them as a repeated student and spoken with the professors widely in the course of one's graduate and undergraduate education to have some knowledge of their premises and methodologies. This is an "insider" fallacy which Mr. Khawaja seems to make in his criticism of Mr. Elmore: Only the active practitioners can criticize.)

-- Philip Coates, Brown B.A, Michigan M.S. (posted 4/27, 10:50 a.m., E.D.T.)

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