Introducing: The Bish

(Wanting to give credit where credit is due, I should say the following right out of the gate: I owe my conception of the BISH to Dr. Andrea Scarantino of Georgia State University.  The day I heard Dr. Scarantino lecture on the BISH I walked out of the classroom a better writer, not yet having even written anything. )

So, one of my goals for this blog has always been to have a place where I can post rough drafts of papers and open them up to peer scrutiny.  This is becoming all the more appropriate, as my group regular editors spreads out across the country, and as my twitter account approaches and exceeds 100 followers (you can follow me at www.twitter.com/raleighmiller) most of whom are philosophers.  That’s a lot of possible editors, and it doesn’t even include Ohio State University peers.  I’m hoping I can utilize these various social media to make sure that all my work is sincerely and thoroughly vetted.  I am always willing to provide this service to others, provided I have the time (and usually I make time).This post is intended to illustrate the kind of help I’m asking for when solicit peer editors, and the kind of help I intend to give when the same is solicited of me.  I’d like to introduce you to the BISH.

I will refer to the BISH is an “it”, rather than assigning a gender pronoun to it, since both “he” and “she” would be in some way culpable.  The Bish is a character.  It is the polar opposite of the ideal philosophical reader.  Imagine the ideal set of characteristics for a reader of philosophy, the person you want reading your papers.  The ideal reader has plenty of time on her hands; she has nothing to do and no where to go, so she can calmly and reflectively go over each of your sentences, parsing out their impenetrability and infallibly familiarizing herself with your prose.  The ideal reader is well acquainted with all of the relevant background literature on your topic, including that conferred by a generic philosophical education and as well as everything that one would pick up in a generic liberal arts education.  The ideal reader is sharp as a tack.  You argument could be so spotty that from “A” you conclude “Z”, and the ideal reader is well enough attuned to your thought process that she can fill in all of the pesky argumentative gaps that you didn’t bother to make explicit.  Finally, the ideal reader is charitable.  She will give you the benefit of the doubt, and will refrain from attributing implausible claims to you even when you seem prima facie committed to such claims.  She will interpret every argumentative move you make in the exact way that makes your argument valid, and she will withhold judgment on any spotty assumptions you make, taking them for granted as a starting point for appreciating your argumentative arc.

The Bish is the opposite of all these things.  While the ideal reader has an unencumbered schedule, the Bish is very busy.  The Bish has plenty to do, and isn’t particularly invested in reading your paper, so if your paper feels like a waste of time, the Bish will chuck it.  You need to get to the point, and you need to make your arguments swiftly and clearly.  If the Bish starts to get confused, and begins to feel like your paper is too much work with too little reward, the Bish will stop reading. (In this regard, I suspect that the Bish approximates many admissions, hiring, and journal review boards).  While the ideal reader is well acquainted with relevant background literature, the Bish is woefully ignorant.  You need to provide a clear explication of all and only the relevant information that a reader needs in order to appreciate the philosophical environment out of which your paper emerges.  You cannot assume that the Bish knows (or remembers) Putnam’s twin earth argument, Gettier’s knowledge argument, or Grice’s maxims of cooperation.  These must all be made explicit, or the Bish will get confused, and if the Bish gets confused, the bish will stop reading.  You don’t need to clarify modus ponens, but where the necessary preliminary knowledge goes much further than that, you need to be very careful. While the ideal reader is sharp as a tack, the Bish is only moderately smart.  You don’t need to talk to the Bish like a kindergartener, but you do need to hold the Bishes hand a little bit.  Make sure that your argumentative moves are slow, deliberate, methodical and clear, so that the Bish doesn’t need to work very hard to see what you’re up to and why you’re saying what you’re saying.  This, in particular, recommends sign posting, sometimes to an seemingly ridiculous extent.  Signposting allows the Bish, who is not smart enough to retain the previous 20 pages of argument perfectly, to become reoriented and to be able to encounter your argument in the proper context and follow it without undue effort.  Finally, while the ideal reader is charitable, the Bish is hostile.  Say that the Bish is a fifth year assistant professor that hasn’t published enough and is feeling the hot threatening breath of the tenure committee on the back of its neck.    If you leave your argument open to any objections, the Bish will enthusiastically pump out and publish a response, tearing you to shreds.  In order to save yourself from the bish’s hostility you need to make sure every argumentative i is dotted and all loose ends are tied.  You need to anticipate and engage with every objection you can think of, and ward off any potential misunderstanding.  So, while the ideal is reader is relaxed, informed, brilliant, and charitable, the Bish is busy, ignorant, smart and hostile.

When i’m reading something for the sake of understanding it, I strive to be the ideal reader (not that i’m anywhere near it).  However, when a colleague of mine sends a paper, and when she wants me to help her beef up her paper and make it as good as it can be, I shift characters.  I become a seething, relentless BISH.  Some of my more seasoned Bishes (this is how I affectionately refer to my staple peer editors) and I exchange drafts and return them to one another with the rudest, most inconsiderate comments, taking no prisoners, and pulling no punches.  It’s rare that I give a paper to a Bish and receive it back with fewer than 100 comments per 10 pages, and I often come out of that process having suffered a substantial blow to my pride.  But the papers that I’ve produced have been incalculably superior because of the efforts of my Bishes.  And I hope that I have provided a like service to them.

In general, I think that philosophical practice is too often characterizable as follows: we read like bishes and write our papers for ideal readers.  This leads to a gap in communication, and we too often end up arguing over nothing at all, arguments that could have been prevented if the writer had worked harder to prevent such misunderstandings, and the reader had worked a little harder to really grasp what the writer was doing.  As a general, contentless recommendation, I think we should strive to read like ideal readers and write for Bishes.  That seems like a recipe for productive philosophical discourse.

So when I peer edit, I do so as the Bish.   When I ask others to edit my work, I ask them to become the Bish.  If I can produce something that satisfies the Bish (as perpetually unsatisfied as the Bish is) then I know it’s ready for other (hopefully) more charitable readers.  So if you are ever so kind as to reader a paper I write and return it with comments, you now know what I’m asking of you, and that has been my goal in this post.

This entry was posted on 10. October 2009 at 17:59 and is filed under Twitter, Bish, Georgia State University, Papers, Grad School. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.