Reflections on the Papineau Case

I would like at this time - various personal factors having propitiously come into alignment - to commit to writing some reflections occasioned by the recent case of Papineau's error (covered on this website but, alas, not others).

I have many feelings about this. For one, how could so great a man as Papineau - and let's face it, he is a man - ignore what must come to him as important news about an error he has committed in writing, for a top academic journal at that? It must be that he does not yet know about it. Far be it from me to enlist my dear readers as mercenaries. Please do not bother him. But it does bother me nonetheless.

Another issue raised by the whole brouhaha is that copy editing has fallen to a barbarous level.

(For background, at this point I think I should inform any readers who are just tuning in that Papineau's error consisted in writing 'Let me put me cards on the table' (my emphasis) when he should have written, presumably (we have no way of knowing for certain what his intentions were - unless of course he decides to break his silence), 'Let me put my cards on the table' (again, my emphasis; far be it from me to suggest that he ought to have emphasised that the proverbial cards were his). Images of the error have been supplied in other posts. It would be tiresome for me to go and copy them and then paste them into the present post, so I ask the reader to look up the relevant posts and view the images for himself or, indeed, herself, for I welcome my woman readers as well as the men and boys.)

The above parenthetical remark having been made, let me explain why the failure of copy-editing is especially telling of our age. Note that the offending word is, despite its having no business being used in that context, nevertheless a proper word. This is a very important point. It is important because a standard spell checking piece of software would be unable to detect this error.

But an error it is, and an error it remains (there has still been no correction, despite another correction to the paper having been issued - see a previous post for my reflections on this matter).

This shows in sharp relief how it is not enough to use computers. We living, breathing scholars of the humanities are able to see the problem with Papineau's output, and it is glaring, despite the offending word being a perfectly good word in its own right ('though, admittedly, not in the context in which it appears there).

This has now spawned many further reflections on the use and misuse of computers, but this post has grown far beyond the tentative bounds I set for it in my mind's eye when I sat down to write. This is a thread I may take up on another occasion, but the Papineau affair is a sprawling beast, and there may be more important aspects of it to discuss. Stay tuned - I know there are other issues in the profession and with out intellectual culture at the moment, but I will in all honestly probably be pursuing this matter almost exclusively for the foreseeable future.

Synthese

pp 1–22| Cite as

The disvalue of knowledge Export more entries in formatted text to add them to this list.

Papineau, David (forthcoming). The disvalue of knowledge. Synthese:1-22.

• Authors
• Authors and affiliations

• David Papineau

1. 1.
2. 2.

Open Access

Epistemic Rationality

First Online: 04 October 2019

• 50Shares
 
• 1.7kDownloads

Edit this record  Mark as duplicate  Export citation  Find it on Scholar  Request removal from index  Revision history
	Entry exported in new window.

Update on the Papineau Saga: Correction Made, But Error Is Still There

Hi All,

You may remember the last post in which I pointed out an error in a paper by David Papineau. Now I have to write again with an update. I was browsing PhilPapers and I saw, to my delight, that a Correction to this paper has been issued:

Almost dripping with excitement, I proceeded straight to the correction. 'I wonder if this came about as a result of my previous post about the error', I was thinking.

I clicked through and saw that the error is not described - it just says that the original article has been corrected. So, I went and looked again and the original article. But, to my dismay, the error I noticed and reported in my previous post was still present!

It would be hard to discover what error was corrected. I do not possess a copy of the original paper, and so can not compare it in detail to the new version in order to see what has changed, thus disclosing what the error was. (If anyone is able to help with this, please leave a comment in the comments or email me.)

In any case, the original error is very much still there. I hope that Springer will allow another correction to be made, once this comes to their attention.

I should say: this is a very interesting, provocative paper. It would be a shame if it were forever marred by this error.

As I write this, it occurs to me that David Papineau is quite an eminent writer. Perhaps there will be a book of his collected papers some day, and in that case, perhaps the error will finally be corrected there. In that case, we would not need to worry about whether Springer will permit a second correction to the Synthese version: it is enough for me if a book comes out in which the error is corrected.

I hope this soon comes to everyone's attention. I will write again on this blog if I see or hear any further developments!

Synthese

pp 1–22| Cite as

The disvalue of knowledge

• Authors
• Authors and affiliations

• David Papineau

1. 1.
2. 2.

Open Access

Epistemic Rationality

First Online: 04 October 2019

An Error By David Papineau in a Recent Paper in Synthese

I am here, reinstating the Pilos, to call attention to an error in a paper by David Papineau. I've got you David Papineau. You are guilty of an error here. 

There was also an error where a paper was referred to in Author Date format but there was no entry for it in the bibliography. There was another error in the text as well, which I won't mention.
Papineau, David (forthcoming). The disvalue of knowledge. Synthese:1-22.

New Initiative: Let's Write a Second Dissertation (Online!)

I was coming home from a conference at a small state school with my son and we were amusing ourselves by discussing what I would do if I had to write a second dissertation, and at first I was saying to Finn 'Yeah right! I'd rather read The Critique of Judgement in the original German - again!' But then I began to think 'Hey, there could be something in this'. I floated the idea on Twitter in the Fall and it just blew up. Grad students everywhere said 'This could really help us', and I though it could be a cool way to both help people navigate the profession and also maybe create some new research ideas.

So, enough background. Here's the plan:

- Every week one of us will post a new Chapter to a second dissertation (which can't be on the same topic as your real one!) and then we can all critique it together in the comments. Then we will go through and make corrections, playing something like the role of an examination or defense.

- Remember to cite approapriate sources, and show independence of mind.

- Try to pick a topic that engages with current debates and will actually change people's lives.

- Logic is fine but don't get lost in the woods!

- I will pick a winner once everyone's Second Dissertations are finished and we will send them all to Oxford University Press, but the winner will get a second Doctorate from me personally.

Have at it, use the Author-Date format, and use plenty of subheadings. (I don't want us to be sitting there going 'Where are we? What was the current point anymore?') I have a feeling this is going to be really fun. Some ideas for topics sorted into two Categories:

Modern: Embodied cognition, data visualisation, bioethics, Twitter, immigration, metaethics, AI, and self-driving cars.

Traditional: Malebranch, Spinoza, Graham Harman, Plotinus, and Isiah Berlin.

I'm starting mine tonight! Already have about a thousand words, and pretty good ones too.