Things not to do at conferences

Have you done any of the following or had them done to you?

1. Changing your paper after receiving written versions of the comments, so that the comments no longer make sense (Eric Schliesser on this HERE).
2. If you are a senior European philosopher, instead of asking a question during the Q&A, just telling the junior speaker that only a fool would believe their premises.*
3. Not turning your comments in ahead of time, so the speaker cannot prepare a response, and then in your comments trying to eviscerate the speaker's paper (hypothetical imperative- if you are not going to turn your comments in on time, then either show interesting things that follow from the speaker's claims, or show that something interesting is left of the speaker's claims after your criticism, or opt out and don't deliver them).
4. Only attend your talk (this one and the next three are courtesy of Melissa Ridley Elmes, hat-tip Daily Nous).
5. Attend other talks but grandstand during the Q&As in a way that is not as bad as the senior-European-philosopher malfeseance, but still manifestly unhelpful to the presenter (see PrawfBlawg for good Q&A guidelines).
6. Go overtime on your paper so that other speakers are shorted.
7. Act radically different towards other scholars, depending upon where they currently are in the academic hierarchy.

I've done four out of the seven and had six out of the seven done to me. At this point in my career I think I only reliably sin against PrawfBlawg's advice about Q&As.

Some of my favorite philosophers reliably sin against PrawfBlawg's advice, but I don't think this undermines the relevant norms. In fact, this might be a case the of the famous Bob Dylan line (song covered at right)

I said, "You know they refused Jesus, too"
He said, "You're not Him."

Word!

[*I've seen this happen multiple times, but only in continental Europe! The expectation of deference to senior folk in some European academic ecosystems is something that American, British, Canadian, and Australian analytic philosophers simply don' t understand (I don't).**

The above question is the first one I received at the first conference I ever presented at. Weirdly, my paper had nothing to do with the great man's views, but the conference was during the World Cup and the chair of the session did a funny intro as if the famous dude's paper and mine were seperate football teams.

I was an instructor teaching eight classes a year for twenty-six thousand dollars. He was a much beloved developer of type theory for a substructural logic that will go unnamed. The most irritating thing is that when I winged about this to other European philosophers in the field of philosophy of logic, they invariably told me what a nice guy the man is. I wanted to say that nice people don't treat underemployed people below them in the academic hierarchy that way, but I've seen the same kind of thing enough times now in continental Europe that I think there's some kind of incommensurability I'm not getting. The norms are just so radically different that I don't really understand what's going on. What looks like abusive, boorish, a-holeness to Americans, Canadians, Brits, and Australians might in fact be the senior person being nice, given the cultural presuppositions. I'm not being sarcastic here, the cultures are so radically different on this score. . .

In any case, the argument I presented that day (showing that Brandomian and Dummettian inferentialism is inconsistent with Church's Thesis) has since been published in Synthese and Minds and Machines. In addition, Brandom himself (in this book) has recently suggested something very similar. I don't say this to pat myself on the back, just to encourage any other junior people who have been subjected to this kind of thing.***

**If Americans don't get the weird hangovers of the caste system in Europe, it's also true Europeans don't get Americans' love of firearms nor how we can be so culturally populist (thus our respone to senior scholars abusing their underlings) without being economically populist as well. Europeans are correct to not understand these facets of Americana. Americans make no damned sense.

***I would like to put in an encouraging song clip here, but the only one I could think of was Journey's "Don't Stop Believing," but I just can't for multiple reasons:

1. The song is now the theme song to Tony Soprano's assassination. As such, it would not be that helpful. . .
2. It's way too much in the guy-and-girl flee hometown and find meaning type genre that Rod Stewart, Bruce Springsteen, and John Mellancamp did with a lot more honesty. It's better when songs in this sub-sub-genre have some sense of nostalgia, loss, and hopelessness.
3. Bon Jovi did this kind of thing even less competently than Journey.
4. The melody in bridge to the chorus ("strangers waiting // up and down the boulevard // their shadows searching  in the night") does not do justice to the rest of the song.
5. The "midnight train" trope and "on and on and on" seem a little bit lazy to me. In the history of folk/blues/country/rock "midnight train" is not something to be fooled with.****
6. All the stuff about "night" reminds me of Ferdinand Celine and John Rechy, and it makes me sad that Jacques Brel didn't perform this song, with a bad translation into Flemish where the protagonists end up dying in the end. But: (1) such a song would be impossible, given when Brel died, and (2) it would hardly be encouraging for junior European scholars laboring under the aspects of the class system that the French Revolution failed to extirpate. This is so clear that it is almost a priori. See the video to right that I posted instead of Journey.*****
7. A very good friend that I otherwise respect told me about twenty years ago that the secret to a good date is playing Journey's Greatest Hits on your car cassette player. I found, and find, this almost inexpressibly disturbing, nauseating in fact.
8. What can I say? The song has a great melody. Its overall hair-rocky cheesiness and optimism render it a punchline for cranky gen-exers like the philosophersanonymous crew and myself. But let us not forget Joey Ramone schooling Anthony Bourdain on the fact that Abba and Billy Joel wrote great songs. Joey Ramone appreciates a good melody. Does this vitiate (1)-(7). Yes, probably. But it doesn't mean that it's a good song to think of when dealing with someone who thinks of dialectic like rams butting horns. Sadly, the Angry Samoans are probably much more helpful in these contexts.]

****Most prominent are Ledbelly's "Midnight Special" and Woody Guthrie's "Little Black Train," the latter of which I have included at right.

****Jacques Brel is a demi-god. There are stats for him in the 1st Edition Deities and Demigods, which had to be withdrawn because the Cthulu mythos violated copyright law. In recent additions of Dungeons and Dragons they quite sensibly refuse to provide stats for divine figures. To be fair, some people think this is a bad idea. But I will say this. If Jacque Brel runs towards you shouting "Lightning Bolt! Lightning Bolt!" just get out of the way!]