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A BBC item highlights the obvious fact that this has all broken down. Some people in the article complain that 'dear' sounds too familiar, others that it is too formal. The fact that twenty-somethings don't just think of it as just right for starting a letter suggests that they didn't get the unit on correspondence that I got in third grade.
There are bigger problems, though. I very rarely write physical letters anymore, but the unit in third grade failed to cover e-mail. (How shortsighted!)
Since most e-mail is shorter than physical mail would be anyway, one get often get away with a casual "So and so," But how to close the missive?
Just "-P.D." is enough, but isn't obviously right when mailing undergrads. I am fine with them calling me P.D., but they may be uncomfortable with it. I have concluded that the better thing, for a short e-mail, is just not to begin with any address or end with any explicit sign off. Better just to write my sentence or two of content and let the program fill in my generic sig.
For letters of recommendation, the only physical correspondence that I really write anymore, it won't do to drop the niceties. But the "Dear sir" thing? It is sexist and so sounds entirely wrong on formal correspondence. Alas, I can't think of anything better. "To whom it may concern" sounds like a sales circular addressed to Resident.
And what are kids in third grade now being taught?
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There was a glitch in the configuration of my blog which made it impossible to post comments. Said glitch should be fixed now.
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A number of people have sent me the link to the Journal of Universal Rejection, which has such high standards that it rejects all submissions regardless of quality. As a progressive response to complaints about other journals, it responds to submissions very quickly and even allows simultaneous submissions.
Yet, as documented by Snider (1994), there is always a more extreme version of every extreme thing.
An inevitable next step after JUR is the Journal of Preemptive Rejection, which does not accept submissions nor solicit contributions. Its rejection letter is written as an open letter to the world. "You and your present work do not fit our present editorial needs, and it would not be pessimism to conclude that you will never write anything that could."
Beyond JPR, we have the Journal of Solipsist Studies. Rather than reject anything, it has an editorial policy which denies the metaphysical possibility of submissions; a fortiori, rejection is impossible. Here there are echoes of the Solipsist Web Ring, although they are echoes that no one hears.
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My paper with Christy Mag Uidhir has finally appeared in Metaphilosophy.
Unfortunately, it's already one of those papers that I think about and cringe. Not for the paper altogether, but for one vocabulary failure. (Although it's a co-authored paper, the glitch that makes me cringe is totally my fault.)
In the paper, I use the word 'phenetic' to describe species concepts which distinguish species in terms of the characteristics of individual organisms. This reflects the dictionary definition of the word. The OED definition of 'phenetic', for example, begins: "Designating or relating to the classification of organisms on the basis of their observed similarities and differences..."
However, biologists and philosophers of biology use the word more narrowly to distinguish a specific movement: people who self-identified as employing a phenetic approach and who distinguished species just by doing statistical analyses of observable features. Reading the paper with this narrower reading in mind, the descriptions of species concept pluralism are just wrong.
My usage in the paper resulted partly from my being less familiar with the literature when writing it than I am now. The paper has been forthcoming for a long time.
Yet my usage also resulted from needing a word for the broader, dictionary sense of 'phenetic'. There are a whole range of character-based approaches which distinguish species in terms of features of individual organisms, including both pheneticists (in the narrow sense) and contemporary pattern cladists. These character-based approaches contrast with biological species approaches (which consider reproductive relations rather than characters of individuals), ecological approaches (which consider environmental relations), and evolutionary approaches (which consider historical relations).
As far as I can tell, there is no single word for 'character-based approaches' either in the biological or the philosophical literature. So the fact that I glommed onto 'phenetic' is not entirely vicious. (Boneheaded? Yeah, but not vicious.)
Moreover, this is really incidental to the paper. It could be rewritten in terms of 'character-based approaches' rather than 'phenetics'. The argument that Christy and I make about ART would go through regardless, and the paper is ultimately about ART.
I regret letting a paper out into the world with such an infelicity, however, and I hope that readers who notice it will be forgiving. And when I think about it, I'll cringe.
LATER: John Wilkins tried to write a comment, was thwarted by a glitch in my blog, and went to the trouble of contacting me by other channels. He writes: "I've done that myself, but that doesn't stop me from taking advantage of your mistake here." He went to great lengths to let me know that he was excoriating my article, and I appreciate that.
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One thing that commentators on Descartes fret about is who the "I" is who narrates the meditations. One natural interpretation is that it is a rhetorical device to draw the reader into the project of doubting everything. When I read the Meditations, I am supposed to recognize that I myself - at that instant - might be dreaming. In reading, the "I" is not Descartes but rather me the reader.
Reading the Meditations again, I began to wonder how different it would be if it had been written as a dialogue instead. The place of the reader would then sometimes be given in the second person:
Surely [says Socrates, Philonous, or whoever is the dialogue's voice of wisdom] you must admit that there is no sign by which you can tell you are not dreaming this whole conversation.
Struth! [replies the dialogue's rube] Indeed it is so. The fact that I am speaking as if in stage play suggests that it may truly be a dream.
I am not sure if any philosophical substance would be lost in this alternate-universe version of the Meditations. The text would be somewhat longer, however, because the dialogue would include pleasantries among its characters at the start of each Meditation:
I have done as you suggested and imagined a demon hell-bent on deceiving me. Quite frankly, it made for rather a grim breakfast. Perhaps today you can convince me of the existence of bacon.
You are too hasty. The probable existence of bacon is still days away.
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