Date: Mon, 27 May 1996 20:55:13 -0700
Subject: Re: SOKAL CONT. (APOLOGY)


On 24 May, Jerry wrote:

"The tacit assumption here is that academics and scholarly journals behave
normally in an ethical manner. "

One cannot commit the fallacy of the positive proving the normative.  The is 
does not imply the ought.  Whether or not Social Text--or any other academic 
journal--made its judgement ethically, Sokol still had an ethical obligation in 
this case.  All academics have an obligation to offer only good faith works for 
publication.

This does not, however, mean that Sokol acted unethically.  Ethical obligations, 
at least if we consider them in the form of blanket propositions, may conflict. 
 There is, for example, a general ethical obligation to refrain from killing.  
If one has the capacity, however, to prevent the murder of an innocent person 
but only by taking the life of the would-be murderer, few would condemn such an 
act.  Sokol's case may (I have yet to make up my mind whether he actually does) 
fit into this category.  (Incidentally, it is cases like this that lead me away 
>from considering ethics as a series of abstract propositions.)

Yours &c.,
Jeff Johnson
"Amicus Socrates, amicus Plato, sed
 magis amica veritas" --Aristotle



     --- from list marxism2-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---