Over at Brian Leiter's popular philosophy blog, a link was posted to a video of Jason Stanley and Carlin Romano, both presenting at a recent Harvard symposium on the topic of progress in philosophy and philosophy's relation to other disciplines. Patient readers with a free hour can watch the video. Romano's speech has been derided in most of the comments Leiter has approved, and for the most part justly: Romano makes several egregious errors and leavens his address with a vicious scorn for professional philosophy. However, some of the responses commit blunders of their own, or illustrate the self-absorbed myopia and narrowness Romano was criticizing.
For example, one commenter (Sandy Goldberg) partly defended one of Romano's points, saying that "I do worry that we philosophers, too, can be very arrogant, especially when dealing with non-philosophers who themselves have strong (often negative) opinions about philosophy." To this, Leiter rejoined: "It's hard to know what would count as an example of [that]: if people have negative and ignorant opinions about philosophy, what is the right critical response that is not "arrogant.""
I wrote this answer to Leiter's question: "The right critical response is politely pointing out or giving reasons why the opinions are mistaken, without an exaggerated sense of self-importance or superiority."
Though I signed my comment and provided my email (and someone did a Google search on my name and college an hour or two later), Leiter didn't post my comment or reply to it (or change his comment). Yet another example of a well-known professional philosopher reasoning badly.
(Previous posts about philosophers reasoning badly:)
Robert Kirk shifting the burden of proof
Andrew Brook and Don Ross offering a circular definition
James Rachels denying the antecedent
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