This post is based on recent readings, often on or through Twitter, especially of
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Lilith Saintcrow on “Domestic abusers, white supremacists, and religious bigots”;
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C. S. Lewis on gulling the educated, and objectivity as a dubious value;
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Marilynne Robinson on consensus as concealing the objectively true;
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Neil deGrasse Tyson on objectivity as a good value;
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Plato on seeming wise, without being so;
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Mark Vernon on imagination in William Blake;
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whoever wrote an “Open Letter Concerning Transphobia in Philosophy,” signed by many professional philosophers;
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Kathleen Stock, the subject of the “Open Letter”;
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Agnes Callard on how philosophers shouldn’t be signing petitions;
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Rebecca Reilly-Cooper, on the incoherence of the notion of gender identity;
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Aaden Friday, on what’s wrong with Reilly-Cooper and other such women;
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Brian Earp, on declaring pronouns;
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John Steinbeck, on being a man;
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Christa Peterson, on what gender identity might be.
I have edited and augmented this essay since originally posting it on January 9, 2021; the current version is from January 19.
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