Reading a friend’s blog recently, the following aside made me think about the purpose of philosophical blogging (and, of course, of this blog in particular):
I’ve been obsessing over a paper and all my free time has gone into writing that. What is that paper? Well, maybe one day I’ll talk about it on here, but I am keen to make it clear that what I write on here is distinct from my actual academic work, so you’ll only hear about it if I ever publish it. Sorry!
I get the impression that many academic philosophers use their blog as an online soapbox to get comments on ideas they’ve had, before shaping them for publication. In this sense, blogging functions as an extra route for feedback, in addition to (say) posting draft papers on faculty pages, or the more traditional methods of delivering talks or speaking at conferences.
As far as this blog goes, I stand on the side of the Last Positivist in distinguishing my use from such activities. For now, I’d rather stick to the more traditional methods, and make a clear distinction between my genuine academic writing and my online writing, at least until I’m a bit further in my career!
This, of course, raises the question, however, of exactly what the purpose of a philosophical blog is if not to disseminate and seek feedback on new ideas. Well, for me at least, one of the primary reasons that I write on this blog is for self-clarification. In keeping with the old adage that you understand an idea best when you’ve had to explain it to someone else, I find that writing this blog crystallises the sometimes nebulous understanding that I have of certain philosophers, ideas, and arguments.
In tandem, I hope that this blog can be of help to other people that have struggled with the same issues, perhaps providing a shortcut to understanding that wouldn’t be available if the original text was all that the reader had to rely on. I think this is especially true of some of the philosophers that I have posted about (or plan on writing a post on) whose writing style sometimes makes their ideas slightly opaque on first reading (e.g. Wittgenstein), or those for whom there is relatively little by way of secondary resources to help (e.g. Austin), or both (e.g. Travis).
This last point brings me to two other purposes of the blog. As I have made clear in the last few posts, there are many philosophers whose ideas I think are valuable but neglected. Their neglect online is also typically more noticeable than their neglect in publications (as a search for, e.g., Occasion Sensitivity will testify), and I hope that in some small way this blog might help to disseminate these ideas to more people than they might otherwise reach, simply by giving them voice in a place where (theoretically) anybody can listen. Even though I have no doubt that there are many others that could make the points more clearly, more accurately, or more succinctly than I, unless those people decide to start blogging, I’ll keep writing and do the best I can. In the mean time, I hope that at the very least some of these posts might inspire people to pick up a book or read an article that they otherwise would not, and get the ideas straight from the horse’s mouth (or should that be the cow’s mouth?).
The second point is that I get the impression that there are also a number of misunderstandings or false impressions surrounding many of the philosophers that I find interesting or worthwhile. Often these false impressions are too indeterminate to be the upshot of a genuine philosophical argument or the expression of genuine disagreement. For example, I think the claim that ordinary language philosophy has been discredited comes under this heading, since many philosophers that would assent to this claim either have a vague idea of what ordinary language philosophy is (typically something about ‘appeals to our ordinary uses of words’), or even vaguer ideas about why it’s discredited (typically something about ‘confusing meaning and use’, ‘conflating semantics and pragmatics’, or ‘committing the speech-act fallacy’).
Whilst there are philosophers attempting to make these sorts of false impressions philosophically precise in order to challenge them through philosophical publications, a blog seems like the perfect arena within which to challenge these ideas at the less-than-purely-philosophical level at which they are typically voiced, unearthing the quasi-sociological reasons for their ubiquitousness (see, e.g. “The Strange Death of Ordinary Language Philosophy” for an example)—something which might be out of place in a strictly philosophical publication.
Finally, of course, blogs are havens for navel-gazing, and this one is no exception. Whilst I don’t intend this blog to turn into a public journal any time soon, many of the posts will be quasi-autobiographical in nature—if only forming a sort of philosophical autobiography tracking my interests and beliefs as I try to climb the ladder of professional academic philosophy.
For whatever reason you are reading this blog, whether or not you know me, and whether or not you decide to return, I hope that you find some use for the ideas expressed here. In the wise words of the sage Wittgenstein:
For more than one reason what I write here will have points of contact with what other people are writing to-day.—If my remarks do not bear a stamp which marks them as mine,—I do not wish to lay any further claim to them as my property. I make them public with doubtful feelings.
Perhaps this [blog] will be understood only by someone who has himself already had the thoughts that are expressed in it—or at least similar thoughts… Its purpose would be achieved if it gave pleasure to one person who read and understood it.
CTRLtomDEL 