Logic and the Editor

Abstract

The implication of the first sentence is that, as editors, we might (should?) have done more to clean up our contributors’ acts. I find that suggestion more than a little surprising, considering how Stolzenberg focuses on the likelihood of misreading – even acknowledging the possibility that some of his own interpretations, in the review, result from misunderstandings. How then can he (or anyone) be sure that what he thinks is author X’s misreading, or a misuse of logic, isn’t in fact his misreading of X, or his own unconvincing logical argument? For example, Stolzenberg devotes a significant amount of energy to pointing out the logical flaws in the claim that relativism is selfcontradictory. That claim has also been attacked by others, perhaps most thoroughly by Barbara Herrnstein Smith (1997) in a recent book. I personally favour the Stolzenberg/Smith position, but obviously many – not only Bricmont and Sokal in Labinger and Collins (2001), but also the philosophers Stolzenberg mentions, Boghossian and Nagel – do not. Haven’t they seen these counterarguments? Surely they have. How then can they persist in their ‘faulty logic’? Incompetence? Carelessness? These would be very difficult accusations to sustain, it seems to me. And, of course, charges of faulty logic can be (and are) turned around and applied in the other direction, with much the same (lack of) impact. One reasoner’s faulty logic is another’s knockdown argument.