Sokal's name raises my hackles. I don't believe his "hoax" was as informative as people like to imagine. The kind of postmodernism he was challenging is deliberately about exploring genuinely novel ideas that aren't easy to understand, and is thus easy prey for a deceptive credentialed person. He was tilting at a windmill of a tiny subset of people doing a different thing than he wanted them to be doing.
I still think he's missing the point of sociology. Sociology is not physics. It is an evolving field that is trying to describe the insane complexity of human relationships. It's no surprise that it doesn't have a fully solid epistemic grounding. Scientific revolutions occur because we spend time with one ontology and suddenly discover a new, better one -- which often comes with a rewriting of the epistemology of what can be known. It's hardly surprising that we don't have a fully formed epistemology of the human mind, much less of human social interactions.
Nonetheless, he is right to point out that the epistemology exists, and it's worth making it explicit. It's especially important in this age where deliberate falsehoods are spread, knowing that they are false, to people who choose to uncritically accept them. Race is one of many areas where people will defend their own racism, justified on grounds that are flagrantly false and which a moment's reflection would reveal that they cannot possibly have the information they believe they have.
I think this is, overall, a pretty good paper. But he's also very clear that it does not invalidate the fundamental thesis made in DiAngelo's book.
I saw an interesting flowchart someone had made (I am looking for it even now) about that book -- it pulled quotes from the book which demonstrating that the concept was a tautology, no null hypothesis. I reviewed the flowchart and thought, "Hey, this is a lot like those circular (but labyrinthine) arguments from the Christians about the Bible!"
That's actually kinda the point of both the book and Sokal's analysis of it. It sounds as though you haven't read the book, but feel confident in your rejection based on somebody else's analysis presented in meme form.
The book has a thesis on why you might feel so confident in the face of insufficient information. Sokal critiques some of the underlying epistemological questions of the insufficient information, how we come to accept or reject it.
> it seems to me that clarity of thought is not a mere academic nicety, but is an essential component of informed public debate; if academic philosophy can help to provide or enhance such clarity, that constitutes a significant contribution to society.
I really appreciate this statement. Yes, clarity of thought is central to good thinking, good thinking is indispensable when judging the difference between true and false (or good and evil), and correct judgments are necessary to functioning as a beneficial member of society.
That's not to say diversity of opinion is a bad thing. On the contrary, divergent opinions expressed publicly with clarity help us all think better.
I'm not familiar with the source material here, but I'm familiar with Alan Sokal's book Intellectual Impostures (also titled Fashionable Nonsense in some countries).
the allegedly incompetent and pretentious usage of scientific concepts by a small group of influential philosophers and intellectuals; and
the problems of cognitive relativism—the idea that "modern science is nothing more than a 'myth', a 'narration' or a 'social construction' among many others"[1]—as found in the Strong programme in the sociology of science.
Really worth reading; essentially a take-down of "mystification, deliberately obscure language, confused thinking and the misuse of scientific concepts", and when you read it you realise that it really needing writing but must have been really hard work. Taking on the postmodernists in this way is like the academic equivalent of patiently trying to explain to with a bunch of online conspiracy theorists why their ideas make no sense - important work, but a daunting hard slog against a never ending stream of muddled thinking.
Sokal's name raises my hackles. I don't believe his "hoax" was as informative as people like to imagine. The kind of postmodernism he was challenging is deliberately about exploring genuinely novel ideas that aren't easy to understand, and is thus easy prey for a deceptive credentialed person. He was tilting at a windmill of a tiny subset of people doing a different thing than he wanted them to be doing.
I still think he's missing the point of sociology. Sociology is not physics. It is an evolving field that is trying to describe the insane complexity of human relationships. It's no surprise that it doesn't have a fully solid epistemic grounding. Scientific revolutions occur because we spend time with one ontology and suddenly discover a new, better one -- which often comes with a rewriting of the epistemology of what can be known. It's hardly surprising that we don't have a fully formed epistemology of the human mind, much less of human social interactions.
Nonetheless, he is right to point out that the epistemology exists, and it's worth making it explicit. It's especially important in this age where deliberate falsehoods are spread, knowing that they are false, to people who choose to uncritically accept them. Race is one of many areas where people will defend their own racism, justified on grounds that are flagrantly false and which a moment's reflection would reveal that they cannot possibly have the information they believe they have.
I think this is, overall, a pretty good paper. But he's also very clear that it does not invalidate the fundamental thesis made in DiAngelo's book.