Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2002 20:54:29 -0400
Subject: HAB: "Qualifications" for the listserve




malgosia askanas wrote:

> That's funny.  I am the listowner, and I didn't realize that one needed
> "qualifications" to write to this list, let alone that "that's the way it
> has to be"

It's all very simple: Habermasians believe in the "authority of the better
argument."  But  the
listserve is not collectively smart enough to tell better arguments from worse
ones, and so we need
gatekeepers, and that’s the purpose of credentials.

So perhaps a PhD from a major university should be required.  In Canada we have a
different
system: academics who are pithy and articulate enough to be pundits get invited
on a national
breakfast-hour television show called Canada AM.  For their efforts they are
given a... coffee
mug.

This makes life very easy for us: the true public intellectuals can be recognized
by the # of Canada
AM coffee mugs they own. Canadians posting to this list should therefore precede
their comments
with a notarized mug declaration, so that the rest of us will know whether to
keep reading.

I’m not sure if any other country’s intelligentsia has yet reached this point of
sophistication, so I’ll
let listserve members from more backward places like the US devise their own
credentials scheme.

Phil

[PhD, minor university; no coffee mugs]






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