Kripke Speaks

In Naming and Necessity, Kripke famously proposed against descriptivism that the reference of proper names was fixed by a causal-historical process. He asked his readers to imagine that the incompleteness of arithmetic was not proved by the man originally called “Gödel,” but by someone called “Schmidt.” Readers were then invited to share the intuition that contemporary speakers of English refer to the man originally called “Gödel” and not to the man originally called “Schmidt” when they use the word “Gödel,” although they associate “Gödel” with the description “the man who invented the incompleteness of arithmetic.”

In a well-known article, Edouard Machery, Ron Mallon, Shaun Nichols, and Steve Stich (2004) have provided some evidence that East Asians and Americans tend to have different intuitions about the Gödel case and have argued that this finding casts some doubt on the use of intuitions to establish theories of reference (this is an early example of the Rutgers plan).

Many people have replied to this article, including, e.g., Kirk Ludwig and Genoveva Marti. Recently, Michael Devitt joined the fray with a very interesting article posted on this blog.

But Kripke remained silent. Until recently.

During the Q&A period of his lecture at the inauguration of the Kripke Center, Kripke was asked what he thought of Machery et al.’s study. He delivered a fatal blow to their argument. Judge by yourself: The full sound clip can be found there and a shorter sound clip with one of the punchlines can be found there.

Because the recording is poor, I add a transcript of some highlights of his answer:

“Are they claiming that students in Honk-Kong agree with what I denounced? It is very difficult for me to take this seriously [laughs] (…) People used to feel superior to Orientals [sic]; now, they don’t, maybe they should again [laughs] (…) There must be some validity in testing people’s intuitions, I think (…) if we find really that some culture believe that… I wouldn’t know what to say; I hope they were not too influenced by philosophers [laughs] (…) this case seems to me to be intuitively such a clear one that it is hard for me to imagine that it should be experimentally overthrown. (…). All right, I don’t know what to do with this (…) Some things seem to be too preposterous … there must be some sort of confusion in them (…).”

Comments

[E. L.]

Hi!
Sadly, the audio is very bad... Is there a translation somewhere? I'm very interested in what Kripke has to say!
regards,

[E. L.]

Sorry! I meant a "transcription"...

[Outis]

Well, I'm convinced. And since this ratio Kripkei will generalize to pretty much all experimental philosophy (as long as you substitute in different groups to feel superior to), I guess I should delete X-Phi from my RSS aggregator.

[Wesley Buckwalter]

EL, maybe you were right to ask for the translation.

[E. L.]

Hi

>

So it seems... I thought all his mumbling and hesitation were leading somewhere, and blamed my poor English for failing to understand. It seems there's nothing to understand in the first place.

[Joe O.]

Yes, E.L. and for anyone who hasn't had their coffee yet, the anonymous poster was speaking ironically.

[David Velleman]

Do you have Professor Kripke's permission to broadcast this recording? The ambushing of conference participants with cameras and recorders, and the posting of their words and images on the Internet without permission, threatens the spontaneity of academic conferences and should be discouraged.

[Kevin Schutte]

I encountered this form of argument many times from Nathan Salmon at UCSB. I hadn't realized he had gotten it from his mentor Kripke. Here's the structure of the "argument":

P, you say?

Obviously ~P.

Therefore, ~P.

Therefore, you're wrong.

[tnadelhoffer]

David,

I am doubtful that the person who posted this has Kripke's permission--but as the person chose not to identify him/herself, I can't very well ask whether my suspicion is correct. And while I admittedly thought twice about leaving the post up, I decided not to censor--especially given that Kripke's comments really are indefensible and distasteful. That being said, I obviously disagree with what you say. For while I agree that the wide-scale posting of conference talks without the authors' permission would be problematic, I am unsure that this generalizes to include every instance of such postings. In this case, I am perfectly happy to say that people should put the breaks on their spontaneity if the kinds of things they say spontaneously are racist, sexist, or odious in other ways unbefitting an academic conference. Human beings are not rugs after all. As such, whole groups of people shouldn't be the brunt of someone's stupid jokes as if they were mere items to be walked upon in an effort to make a lazy response to a substantive criticism of one's position. If Kripke were to find out about this post and feel a tinge of embarrassment (which I doubly doubt), then it would only offset some of the embarrassment any Asians attending his talk must have surely felt when he opted to take a stab at being a xenophobic stand-up comedian rather than making a genuine effort to respond to the audience member's question.

[Timmy]

Yeah it seems the question here isn't whether someone should have permission to post this, but why Kripke is responding with racial humor instead of addressing a simple methodological question.

[Steven Gross]

It doesn't take much charity to (very loosely!) paraphrase Kripke's remarks, at least as transcribed above, as follows: "I haven't read that work and don't know what to make of it off the top of my head. On the one hand, there must be some validity in testing people's intuitions. On the other hand, I find these results so surprising that my immediate reaction is to suspect the experiment."

Seems like a not particularly unreasonable off the cuff remark about something one hasn't gone into yet. Indeed, it's the kind of thing one hears scientists say all the time about new results. I can't imagine anyone would think it's intended as an argument or a rebuttal.

[David Velleman]

I don't understand why the objections to broadcasting a bootleg recording should be defeated when the content of the recording is potentially embarrassing to the subject. It seems to me that the objections are especially strong in such a case. Your indignation at Kripke's remarks does not justify you in violating his rights.

How many of us can be confident that an outtake from spontaneous remarks we have made on some occasion would not sound discreditable in some way? I would be very surprised if my own comments at philosophical conferences could not be mined for embarrassing material.

But my point is more general. Academic blogs are threatening the spontaneity of academic conferences. Bloggers regularly publish reports of the papers and discussions they have heard at conferences, which they then go on to analyze and criticize. Conference participants who thought that they were discussing their work-in-progress with a small audience, or airing tentative thoughts on an ephemeral occasion, suddenly find that their ideas have been set down, archived, and disseminated to the entire world -- and not even in their own words. And then they find snapshots of themselves as well, not stored in someone's personal photo album, but published for all the world to see. (The only time a picture of me has appeared in a major newspaper, it was a picture that I had never seen before -- plucked by the newspaper from a conference site on the Web.)

Most undergraduates know that they need their professor's permission before recording his or her lectures. And they know that even if such permission is forthcoming, it does not cover dissemination of the lecture on the Internet. Why don't faculty members accord the same courtesy to their colleagues?

[Mark Couch]

I think David Velleman is right. The fear that one's spoken words may be recorded can have the effect of preventing people from freely stating their views. When I was an undergraduate, my political philosophy professor prevented any students from recording or otherwise taping the lecture, since he wanted the environment to be open and free for candid discussion. If somebody wanted to openly defend communism or anarchy, for that matter, then they should feel free to do so. His concern was that if people were being recorded this might prevent them from stating their views out of fear that their remarks could be subject to publication without their consent. This seems to me to be an entirely reasonable concern, and one that philosophers especially should be sensitive to given the kinds of controversial issues that we often discuss.

[a different anonymous]

The key part that is missing from Prof. Gross's paraphrase is "People used to feel superior to Orientals [sic]; now, they don’t, maybe they should again [laughs]". I don't think anyone was particularly objecting to any of the other parts of what Kripke was saying.

Velleman's discussion here seems to cut in both directions. There's one expressed worry about recordings, and another that we might call a worry about bloggy gossip. Given that gossip is always going to happen and always has happened, then it's not necessarily a bad thing if people have to back up their gossip assertions with recordings. Velleman complains about cases in which someone's "ideas have been set down, archived, and disseminated to the entire world -- and not even in their own words". But if a recording is involved, then that "not in their own words" worry would be rather lessened.

Moreover, when the gossip happens out in the open on blogs, then the subject of the gossip is much, much more likely to hear about it, and to able to respond as well. For example, on this very blog recently there was a case of someone making some spectacularly bizarre assertions about John Doris, and because it was happening out in the open, Doris not only was able to find out about it, but to respond in the same forum.

Regarding Mark Couch's observation, though, I would agree that classrooms are different in this regard. I'm not sure that they count as public in quite the same way that professional conferences do or should, for starters, but even putting that aside I definitely see the worries about chilling effects in the classroom as having greater merit.

[tnadelhoffer]

David and Mark,

Are you suggesting that flippantly claiming that perhaps we should go back the days when we viewed "Orientals" as inferior to the enlightened Westerners is on par with defending substantive but controversial views within philosophy? Anarchism is certainly controversial in a principally different way than Xenophobia. So, while I may agree that the philosophical content of one's talk might be privileged I am unsure why all of one's remarks ought to be off-limits when it comes to the blogosphere. There is simply no place within philosophy--in department meetings, at conferences, in academic journals, in student lounges--for claims like "perhaps we should go back to treating Blacks like chattel" or "perhaps we should go back to oppressing women," and the like. I see no reason not to criticize someone for making these kinds of claim in a very public way as both a shaming sanction and a deterrent for other would-be prejudiced hack comedians within philosophy. There is nevertheless a place for controversial philosophical views such as anarchism and the like. It seems to me you are conflating apples with oranges.

[Steven Gross]

To "a different anonymous":

Actually, what sparked my post was the one three before mine. It does object to what it takes to be an argument, or rebuttal, from Kripke. (And I sensed, perhaps incorrectly, that others also were responding to this aspect of Kripke's remarks in this way.)

I omitted the remark you quote because it's irrelevant to the point the earlier post was making. For what it's worth, I typed up my post while others were posting about the remark you quote, resulting in my post being interleaved with them (which certainly foregrounded my omitting it).

Steven

[John]

While this isn't an argument per se, I think it could be pointed out that Prof. Velleman's position against the publishing of these Kripke comments is similar to President Bush's position against allowing testimony from his advisers in Congress in an important and bad way. There are obvious problems with the analogy but at least one important similarity.

Both of these right-to-privacy defenses, Bush-Rove and Velleman-Kripke, rest on the idea that somehow accountability will stymie open thinking and spontaneity. The bootleg here seems like a particularly bad context in which to make such arguments (as does justifying torture). This is because what has been exposed is not off-the-cuff thinking or originality but instead insipid, vicious racism. It's hard to swallow the idea that somehow being responsible for what you say and do makes us less free to have intelligent discourse!

[David Velleman]

Kripke's offhand remark about feeling superior to other cultures was a harmless joke of the sort that can offend only those in the grip of political correctness. It's precisely the sort of remark that goes unnoticed in person but sounds ominous when recorded and replayed out of context. Politicians learn not to make such quips, but philosophers of language are not subject to the same discipline -- thank god.

Comparing me to George W. Bush is ludicrous. Philosophers speaking at conferences are not elected officials conducting the public's business. And Bush is not claiming a right of privacy or intellectual property against bootleg recordings; he's claiming executive privilege against a Congressional subpoena. Sheesh.

The accuracy of a recording does disarm my aside about bloggers who paraphrase conference discussions, but it doesn't touch any of my other arguments.

[David Velleman]

One more point. The point that blog reports can be challenged or corrected by their subjects seems to imply (a) that the only objection to such reports would be their inaccuracy and (b) that conference participants can police the Internet for misrepresentations of their views. To (a), I reply that even an accurate report of someone's remarks in a conference discussion, if disseminated and archived on the Internet, is a violation of the understandings on which we participate in conferences. To (b) I reply that participating in a conference should not entail a responsibility for cleaning up misunderstandings published without the speaker's permission.

Those who describe blogging as "gossip" clearly misunderstand the nature of the Internet. Gossip is passed orally from one person to another, or to a small group. It isn't permanently recorded, and it isn't made available at a stroke to billions of potential readers -- full-text searchable, no less. Blogging isn't gossip; it's a form of publication.

The point is that presenting or discussing a paper at a conference is NOT a form of publication, and the shared understanding of its NOT being publication is essential to the activity. We present work at conferences precisely when it is not ready for wider dissemination or permanent recording. When it's ready to be permanently recorded and widely disseminated, we publish it -- and then we don't present it at conferences any more.

[David Sobel]

Thomas,

I am finding this an interesting discussion between you and Velleman. I do think there are contexts in which it could be appropriate to out someone by producing a video of their inappropriate behavior, even inappropriate behavior at a conference. But it seems to me that you were highlighting the philosophical content of Kripke's remarks, not their offensive nature, as being the story here. However, as an outing of Kripke as a racist this video leaves much to be desired.

It is perhaps worth a general discussion what the appropriate rules for citing and videotaping (and publicizing) people's remarks (without permission) should be. I suspect most will strongly agree with Velleman about the inappropriateness of sharing video of a teaching performance without permission. Perhaps it is thought that this is a more private situation because all were not invited to the lecture whereas not infrequently all are invited to a talk. But there are non-public talks as well. So it would seem that to maintain this as the key distinction in play here, one would have to know that the lecture was public.

[Mark Couch]

My concern is with the possible chilling effect that I think the recording of people's talks, lectures, etc. would have on free discussion. I am not defending the content of Kripke's remarks nor do I feel that I need to to make this point. The issue it seems to me is not whether it is appropriate to call people out on their distasteful remarks, which is usually a good thing. The original post concerned "full clips" of people's talks that are being published without their consent. Whether the subject is distasteful comments or the issue of anarchism does not mean the recordings won't have a chilling effect more generally.

[John]

But Prof. Velleman you never respond to the point I made that the salient similarity is that both your positions (you and Bush, that is) "rest on the idea that somehow accountability will stymie open thinking and spontaneity." You should be able to respond to that while appreciating that there are significant differences in the situations.

I suppose if you don't take Kripke's comments to be racist, which you don't, the comparison won't be very apt. As an experiment- I think you should discuss Kripke's "joke" with some of your Asian colleagues and see if they too are enraptured in the spell of political correctness.

[a different anonymous]

I do wonder how much of this is just a matter of some people finding Kripke's joke offensive, and others not. One good way to test such a joke is to swap in other groups, and see if one's evaluations still hold. For example, if the experiments had found gender differences, the joke would have been "People used to feel superior to broads, now they don't, maybe they should again."
(why aren't there ever any gender differences in experimental philosophy, anyway?)

Or, if one found differences along religious lines in something like an ultimatum game experiment: "People used to feel that yids were money-grubbers, now they don't, maybe they should again."

These sure seem offensive to me.

[Brian]

I am mostly in agreement with David Velleman about the bad effect that blogging conferences or talks will have on people's willingness to explore lines of thought etc. But in this case I think it is relevant that the Kripke conference was very much a public event, which anyone could attend, and which was, indeed, advertised by CUNY to the 'public' on my blog, among other places. So the 'privacy' claims in this instance seem to me less sturdy than they would be in the case of a departmental seminar or workshop, or something like the NYU conferences at La Pietra and so on.

[Ron Mallon]

Surely David Velleman is right in his general point that wide and immediate promulgation of conference papers and remarks may have a dampening effect on what occurs at conferences, and the practice of blogging conferences therefore has its costs. (I recently attended a small conference where private discussion on the second day was highlighted with banter about the dressing down that one of the previous days talks received on a blog the previous evening). I am not so sure, however, that it is all things considered bad.
Blogging conferences allows a wider audience than those with the resources to actually attend conferences to find out what went on there. In this case, because there's a specific bit of relevance to people interested in experimental philosophy, it allowed people to learn about that. (As one of the authors of the paper he was asked above, I was interested to see the philosophical content of the remarks, and I suppose what is posted here is more true to what was said than a second hand report from a conference attendee). As noted above, most conferences are, after all, public - far more public than classes. Blogs also allow an idea or mistake to be discussed and answered (unlike chain emails, for example, and better than, e.g., gossip in the bar after the conference). Still, changes in technology bring the need for new norms (or the extensions of old ones), and some explicit discussion is needed.

My own sense is that people ought to (and sometimes even do!) interpret blogging and conference remarks (including off-the-cuff remarks like those reported here) with considerable charity, and with an understanding that good philosophy (and good humor) is hard to do, even for very smart people, and especially so on the fly.
I'm not entirely happy with that general response (in part because I'm quite sympathetic to the general point Velleman is making). My response suggests a different normative fix: we should exercise considerable charity in interpreting conference remarks (including ones that are widely promulgated). Of course, people are not always courteous. But it's not the promulgation of a publicly presented idea that deserves censure, but the failure to exercise appropriate charity in evaluating its originator.

Slightly off the mark of Velleman's comments, it seems to me that the ubiquity of recording technology means that we all have to act as if we are being recorded all the time anyway (we certainly can't always rely on everyone being courteous in not recording). In such an environment, we'd better get used to considerable charity in interpreting others remarks as we may need it ourselves at some point.

A quick remark to "a different anonymous"'s parenthetical question about gender differences - my recollection (and this is only a recollection) is that we looked for gender differences in doing some of the initial experimental philosophy stuff on diversity in intuitions, but (given the probes we used), we didn't find any.