{"id":7369,"date":"2015-02-15T05:30:04","date_gmt":"2015-02-15T05:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2015\/02\/15\/denying-that-there-is-political-correctness\/"},"modified":"2015-02-15T05:30:04","modified_gmt":"2015-02-15T05:30:04","slug":"denying-that-there-is-political-correctness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2015\/02\/15\/denying-that-there-is-political-correctness\/","title":{"rendered":"Denying that There is Political Correctness . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

. . . is like a mafioso's denying that there is a mafia.  "Mafia?  What mafia?  There's no mafia.  We're just businessmen trying to do right by out families." Our mafioso might go on to explain that 'mafia' is really just an ethnic slur used to denigrate businessmen of Italian extraction.<\/span><\/p>\n

This an instance of a rhetorical pattern.  Can we tease out the pattern and present it in abstracto<\/em>?  Roughly the pattern is this: A person who is something denies that there is that something.<\/em>  A proponent of a view denies that there is any such view as the one he proposes.  A representative of an attitude denies that there is any such attitude as the one he represents.  An employer of a tactic denies that there is any such tactic as the one he employs.  A performer in a musical genre denies that there is any such genre as the one in which he performs.  (I'll have to check, but I seem to recall that Dylan in his folk phase in an interview denied the existence of folk music.)<\/span><\/p>\n

For instance, a person who is politically correct denies that there is political correctness.  Note that only the politically correct deny that there is political correctness, just as only mafiosi deny that there is a mafia.  Note also that the denial is not that there are politically correct people, but that the very concept of political correctness is misbegotten, or incoherent, or introduced only as a semantic bludgeon.  The idea is not that a person who is something denies that he is<\/em> that something, but that there is<\/em> that something.<\/span><\/p>\n

But we need more examples.  Some of the people who are proponents of scientism deny that there is scientism.  They may go on to reject the word as meaningless or impossible of application or merely emotive.  But of course there is such a thing as scientism.   Scientism, roughly, is the philosophical thesis that the only genuine knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge.  Not only is there that view; it has representatives.<\/span><\/p>\n

Suppose that some conservative denies that there is Islamophobia.  Then  I would have to object.  There are a few people who have an irrational fear of Islam and\/or of Muslims.  They are accurately labelled "Islamophobes.'  "Islamophobia' does pick out something real, a 'syndrome' of sorts.  <\/span><\/p>\n

But of course the vast majority of those who sound the alarm against radical Islam are not Islamophobes.  For their fear of radical Islam and its works is rational.<\/span><\/p>\n

Other examples that need discussing: white privilege, institutionalized racism, racial profiling. Could one reasonably believe in these three while denying that there is political correctness?<\/span><\/p>\n

I'd like to go on; maybe later.  But now I have to get ready for an 8 K trail run.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nRelated articles<\/legend>\n
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\"\"<\/a>Tenured Professor Loses Job over Blog Post<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Michael Walzer, "Islamism and the Left"<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Residual Politically Correctness Among Conservatives<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

. . . is like a mafioso's denying that there is a mafia.  "Mafia?  What mafia?  There's no mafia.  We're just businessmen trying to do right by out families." Our mafioso might go on to explain that 'mafia' is really just an ethnic slur used to denigrate businessmen of Italian extraction. This an instance of … Continue reading “Denying that There is Political Correctness . . .”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,163],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-matters","category-leftism-and-political-correctness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7369\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}