So I think it’s actually pretty legitimate for Metz to bring up incidences like this
but also
This is not to say that I think Scott should be “canceled” for these views or whatever, not at all
which seems like a double standard. E.g. assume the consequence of the NYT article had actually lead to Scott’s cancellation. Which wasn’t an implausible thing for Metz to expect.
(On a historical analogy, Scott’s case seems quite analogous to the historical case of Baruch Spinoza. Spinoza could be (and was) accused of employing a similar strategy to get, with his pantheist philosophy, the highly taboo topic of atheism into the mainstream philosophical discourse. If so, the strategy was successful.)
I mean it’s epistemically legitimate for him to bring them up. They are in fact evidence that Scott holds hereditarian views.
Now, regarding the “overall” legitimacy of calling attention to someone’s controversial views, it probably does have a chilling effect, and threatens Scott’s livelihood which I don’t like. But I think that continuing to be mad at Metz for his sloppy inference doesn’t really make sense here. Sure, maybe at the time it was tactically smart to feign outrage that Metz would dare to imply Scott was a hereditarian, but now that we have direct documentation of Scott admitting exactly that, it’s just silly. If you’re still worried about Scott getting canceled (seems unlikely at this stage tbh) it’s better to just move on and stop drawing attention to the issue by bringing it up over and over.
Beliefs can only be epistemically legitimate, actions can only be morally legitimate. To “bring something up” is an action, not a belief. My point is that this action wasn’t legitimate, at least not in this heavily abridged form.
If you mean by “statement” an action (a physical utterance) then I disagree. If you mean an abstract object, a proposition, for which someone could have more or less evidence, or reason to believe, then I agree.
On the one hand you say
but also
which seems like a double standard. E.g. assume the consequence of the NYT article had actually lead to Scott’s cancellation. Which wasn’t an implausible thing for Metz to expect.
(On a historical analogy, Scott’s case seems quite analogous to the historical case of Baruch Spinoza. Spinoza could be (and was) accused of employing a similar strategy to get, with his pantheist philosophy, the highly taboo topic of atheism into the mainstream philosophical discourse. If so, the strategy was successful.)
I mean it’s epistemically legitimate for him to bring them up. They are in fact evidence that Scott holds hereditarian views.
Now, regarding the “overall” legitimacy of calling attention to someone’s controversial views, it probably does have a chilling effect, and threatens Scott’s livelihood which I don’t like. But I think that continuing to be mad at Metz for his sloppy inference doesn’t really make sense here. Sure, maybe at the time it was tactically smart to feign outrage that Metz would dare to imply Scott was a hereditarian, but now that we have direct documentation of Scott admitting exactly that, it’s just silly. If you’re still worried about Scott getting canceled (seems unlikely at this stage tbh) it’s better to just move on and stop drawing attention to the issue by bringing it up over and over.
Beliefs can only be epistemically legitimate, actions can only be morally legitimate. To “bring something up” is an action, not a belief. My point is that this action wasn’t legitimate, at least not in this heavily abridged form.
Statements can be epistemically legit or not. Statements have content, they aren’t just levers for influencing the world.
If you mean by “statement” an action (a physical utterance) then I disagree. If you mean an abstract object, a proposition, for which someone could have more or less evidence, or reason to believe, then I agree.