Democracy and divided government, the adversarial system of justice, are designed around an understanding and acceptance of implicit bias.  Attempts to solve it, -the search for a cure- gives an academic gloss to moralizing authoritarianism.  Technocratic academic institutionalism.

note taking
comment at Leiter's.  In moderation. We'll see if it show up.

It didn't.
In her piece for Salon, Jennifer Saul writes: "Philosophy’s seamy underside has been a big part of my life for some time now." But if philosophy is what professors of philosophy claim for it, it can't possibly have a "seamy underside". If it did, their philosophy would have to account for its existence, and it doesn't.  All of them pathologically unable to separate the field from the institution. "Philosophy's seamy underside" or the academy's? "Christianity's seamy underside" or the Church's?  Does biology have a "seamy underside"?  Physics?
So ridiculously unphilosophical. My comment, sloppy and on the fly.

Saul: "Moreover, reflecting approvingly on one’s own objectivity (as philosophers are wont to do)"

Another victory for perspectivism.

How can philosophy be claimed to be "technical" or to parallel the sciences when self-awareness (and that's what's called for here), cannot be taught? And the liberal PC reeducation programs that result from these fiascos are just creepy.

There will always in the future be another fiasco about another set of assumptions: heterosexual feminists were once horrified of lesbians; most leftists were sexist, or still are; racism was ubiquitous; anti-semitism was common, and the Palestinian experience is still discounted, for obvious, predictable, reasons but now, slowly, less and less.

How can you model this inevitable semi-awareness?

The point of technical knowledge is that it's text without subtext, and technicians have no need for second-order curiosity and the sense of irony that results. First-order curiosity is to be curious about a subject. Second-order curiosity is to be curious about why you're so interested in that subject.

"I love formal logic."
"Why do I love formal logic [and not something else]?

And desire is not logical.

McGinn's self-blindness is well documented, going back a long way. The categories he employs still follow the categories of his Catholic upbringing, though he calls himself an atheist; he thinks he's a good novelist, and people have given up trying to explain why he isn't.

We don't need a reeducation system to correct our thoughtcrimes, we need an education system that focuses on what we are more than on the tools we use. The sciences are tools nothing more, and tools by definition are amoral. But they don't remove our obligation to face moral or ethical questions. McGinn replaced God and the Church with technocracy and instrumental reason, but the same logic held: "To the pure all things are pure." He kept the authoritarianism too. Faith in gods or reason renders irony unnecessary, and the result always tragic, or comic, depending on your point of view.

Bigotry is not "technical" and is not just an "error" to be "fixed". Thinking otherwise limits not only your understanding of others but of yourselves.

A test for your sense of logic and political philosophy: "Liberal Zionism is an oxymoron."
Logically it can't be anything else (Likudniks are right about that). But would you ever try make the case in polite conversation among philosophers? If not, why not?
The logic of the now technical post-humanist academy says that only others live in glass houses. In fact we all do.