Number 87 : July 1997 |
As usual, we start off by welcoming new members to the SIG, so .... welcome to :-
Thanks to all of you who’ve contributed to this issue of Commensal. Apologies for the slight delay in the production of C87. Further apologies to those of you who’ve written to me some weeks back and have had to await C87 to receive a reply. I some cases, what you wrote wasn’t explicitly marked "for publication". If you write to me and definitely don’t want me to print what you’ve said, please be very explicit about it. Otherwise, while I will always try not to set anyone up for ridicule by printing tentative thoughts that aren’t marked "for publication", anything I think will be of general interest may find it’s way into Commensal.
Now for some navel-gazing. I let what I’ve got to say below lie fallow for a couple of weeks, wondering whether or not to delete it; but I never could decide on a prudent course of action and have left it in.
I’d been trying to encourage a particular former contributor to rejoin the SIG, and got the following response :-
Thanks for your Commensals. I don't reckon I'll be joining you; the standard of contributions is very low, as it always was. Contributors seem to have no feel for philosophy at all. Sorry!
Well ... a more succinctly damning poke in the eye would be hard to dream up ! Why am I discouraging you all by printing such slanderous statements, you might well ask ? The reason is, that I think this is a philosophically interesting assertion that raises important issues about the present state and future prospects of the SIG, asks us to define why the SIG exists, and also asks wider questions, such as why people join Mensa in the first place ?
Interestingly, the above remark ties in nicely with another letter (from a new member, Rosemary Clarke) which pulls somewhat in the opposite direction. It appears later in this issue of Commensal.
To me, there are a several useful responses to this provocative statement. Firstly, we must evaluate whether the allegations are correct and, if true, does it matter; secondly, determine what we can learn from them; thirdly, form a plan of action. It would be tidy to tackle these responses in sequence, but I’ll jumble them up.
Let me say first of all that it’s easy to get carried away by a desire for quality. Here’s a quick, if boring, anecdote. Some ten years back, some friends and I set up a bi-monthly theological magazine (I was committed to such things in those days). We proceeded along the lines of Commensal - ie. soliciting articles and printing what we got. In the early days some of the contributions were, I judged, excruciatingly bad from an intellectual viewpoint; so bad that I felt embarrassed trying to give the magazine away to sympathisers, let alone trying to sell it (by advertising, I hasten to add, not accosting people on street corners !). So, to monitor the quality, I produced spreadsheets that assigned my "quality rating" to each article, multiplied these ratings by the lengths of the articles & summed these products over all articles to give a weighted average quality rating for the magazine. I then checked that the quality rating rose thereafter - which it usually did, mainly because I did my best to ensure that increasing numbers of articles were written either by me or by people I approved of ! Whether there was a real improvement in quality is debatable - no doubt more erudite theologians would have cringed at my offerings as well. Also, some of the less erudite complained that they couldn’t understand what I was saying, and didn’t it take the joy out of it all anyway ! Besides, in the end I got chucked out for being a heretic.
So, on reflection, the robust response to the "quality carpers" is to encourage them to join in and improve things or else join another SIG. Otherwise, just leave them to carry on moaning on the sidelines about "What’s Mensa ever done for us ?".
Still, we want to learn from criticism. Most importantly, we want to have things both ways. We do want the quality of Commensal to improve, in the sense that we want the average standard of submission to be more logically rigorous and philosophically sophisticated. However, we still want people of whatever level of philosophical sophistication to be able to have a say, because that’s what we’re here for. Anyone wanting top class philosophical thought fed to them should subscribe to a professional journal or read a book.
Where can things go wrong ? Well, we don’t want to end up in a free for all, where anyone can have any ill-considered rant they feel like. Nor do we want to end up discussing issues ad nauseam that have already been clarified "in the literature". One thing we all have to watch out for is what all Hi-Q societies run the risk of - becoming a haven for cranks who think that, because someone’s just told them they’re a bit clever, they can therefore solve some of the major conundrums of science or philosophy on a wet Sunday afternoon. We can’t. I doubt we have anything whatever to offer the wider world of philosophy - we’re simply trying to help one another out by sharing knowledge, thought & experience; and hoping to have a bit of fun as well.
So, are we at least guilty as charged ? Well, I doubt whether anything we’ve produced to date would get into a refereed philosophical journal - but then we’re not professional philosophers. However, I don’t think we’ve had anything utterly cringe-worthy either; so don’t be put off ! There can be an expectation, especially for new members of Mensa, that the society is full of hyper-intelligent super-knowledgeable types. Maybe there are some, but most of us joined because we have some sort of intellectual gap in our lives, maybe caused by academic bungles, bad decisions or lack of opportunity in the past. I won’t dwell on the twits who join to bolster their self-esteem and stick membership certificates on their walls. At least they keep the average cost of membership down. But, the question arises as to how intelligent and knowledgeable one has to be to make a truly original contribution to a subject. This is a non-trivial calculation - maybe someone could write a paper on this and explain why geniuses, like buses, tend to turn up in bunches. Enough to say, few people are remembered a century after their deaths. Also, we might ask whether any of these people, or even their lesser brethren, would have had any incentive to join Mensa.
So, the advantage of our group is not as a hot-bed of razor-sharp minds about to make the next philosophical breakthrough, but as a bunch of people from different backgrounds - some with no knowledge of philosophy - who can ask questions & learn from and stimulate one another. As part of the stimulation process, it is important, after a brief thrash on any subject, that we go away and learn from what has already been written. This is particularly the case with metaphysical questions that realistically have to be based on scientific knowledge. Sadly, it is difficult to find a Hi-Q journal without an article by some maniac arguing against Einstein. I hope this sort of thing won’t happen here. If you’ve done post-doctoral research on the subject you’ll be publishing your ideas in the academic literature. If you can’t get your ideas published it’s probably because they’re wacky. If you haven’t done post-doctoral research, you probably don’t understand the question.
I’d be grateful for your thoughts on these matters, though, as I said initially, it is a bit of navel-gazing and ultimately a distraction from the job in hand; so I don’t want this one to run and run. However, if any of you have strong views, want to complain, etc ... do write in !
Before I forget, we need book reviewers ! I came across a promising book, germane to some of our current threads, entitled Time, Change and Freedom - introduction to metaphysics. It’s by Quentin Smith and L. Nathan Oaklander (1995, ISBN 0-415-10249-9, Routledge). It’s written in the form of a number of dialogues, which makes it easy reading, but also has a couple of narrative appendices on time in special relativity & in current cosmological theories. The dialogues cover such issues as the beginning & ending of time, the relational & substantival theories of time, personal identity and time and freedom, determinism & responsibility. I’m afraid I’ve only read one of the dialogues as yet - I’m very much encouraged to read more, but it’s hitherto been crowded out by other material. Would anyone like to review the book ? My copy is borrowed from the local library, so you’d need to obtain a copy for yourself.
Back to administrative matters .... this issue, as other recent ones, is printed in 12-pt. That way, it makes the issue look more substantial but, more importantly, makes it easier to read. As the SIG grows (if I haven’t just killed it off with the above remarks) and we get more material, there will be a temptation to squash more on to each page - ie. adopting 11-pt & then 10-pt. This may be very difficult to read for some of our members. So, if anyone has strong opinions on this issue, please make them known to me now (I don’t intend to fill up Commensal with loads of waffle on this, but will summarise any feedback).
Finally, the closing date for submissions to the September 1997 edition of Commensal is 15th August.
Best wishes,
Theo