FROM METAPHYSICS TO LANGUAGE PHILOSOPHY
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genuine inquirer to figure things out, help sham and fake inquirers to sup–
press unfavorable evidence or awkward arguments more effectively, or to
devise more impressively obscure formulations.
Genuine inquirers may come to false conclusions or be led astray by
misleading evidence or arguments. But an honest inquirer will not suppress
unfavorable evidence or awkward arguments, nor disguise his failure with
affected obscurity; so, even when he fails, he will not impede others' efforts.
Of course, real human beings do not conform neatly to the three types
I have distinguished; their motives are mixed, and they are capable of many
degrees and kinds of self-deception. That is why it matters whether the
environment in which it is conducted is hospitable to good, honest intel–
lectual work.
The environment will be hospitable to genuine inquiry insofar as
incentives and rewards favor those whose work is creative, careful, honest
and thorough; insofar as journals, conferences, etc., make important work
readily available to others in the area; in ofar as channels of mutual scruti–
ny are open, and succes ful building on others' work is encouraged. The
environment will encourage sham and fake reasoning insofar as incentives
and rewards encourage people to disguise rather than tackle problems with
their approach; to go for the flashy, the fashionable, and the impressively
obscure over the deep, the difficul t, and the painfully clear; insofar as the
availability of the best and most significant work is hindered rather than
enabled by journals and conferences bloated with the trivial, the faddish,
and the carelessly or deliberately unclear; insofar as mutual scrutiny is
impeded by fad, fashion, obfuscation, and fear of offending the influential.
Looking at this list, I don't see how the conclusion can be avoided that
the environment in which academic work is presently conducted is an
inhospitable one. It is a preposterous environment, in the special sense
Jacques Barzun gives that word: valuing knowledge, putting the last first
and the first last, we
"preposterize
the idea and say ... everyone shall pro–
duce written research in order to live, and it shall be decreed a knowledge
explosion."
Barzun exaggerates, but not much. Everybody aspiring to the tenure–
track, to promotion, a raise, a better job, or, of course, academic stardom,
had
better produce written, published research. And it
is
pretty much taken
for granted that this explosion of publications is a good thing, that it rep–
resents a significant contribution to knowledge.
Yet much of what is published is, at best, trivial stuff, putting one in
mind of that observation: "Rubbish is rubbish, but the history of rubbish
is scholarship." Seriously, though: few if any of us will have a truly origi–
nal.idea every few years, let alone every few months; genuinely important
philosophical work usually takes years of frustration and failure, and a great
philosopher may not produce his best work until middle-age or later. So
