« Philosophers' Carnival XVI | Main | Dr. Steen »

July 24, 2005

John Roberts: Wrong Line of Work?

A New York Times piece on Judge John Roberts makes this interesting statement:

"The English teacher used to talk about his papers after he had written them because they were outrageous but very well crafted," remembered John Langley, an emergency room doctor in New Orleans who was a class below Judge Roberts at La Lumiere. "He could take an argument that was borderline absurd and argue for it so well that you were almost at the point of having to accept his stance even though it was intuitively obvious that it was absurd."
Perhaps he should have been an analytic metaphysician.

Posted by Jeremy at July 24, 2005 5:07 PM

Comments

That's just the sort of skill I hope to master!

Posted by: chuck at July 30, 2005 8:27 PM

Did he actually argue for arguments? Most of us just argue for conclusions!

Posted by: John Turri at August 3, 2005 2:14 AM

I've been a sleeper at this site for a few weeks now, but this sentence ripped a comment out of me:

"Even though it was intuitively obvious that it was absurd."

Who can argue with that?

Posted by: Thame at August 4, 2005 10:04 PM

Maybe Roberts could share some of his mephistophelean debating skills with G.W. :)

Posted by: Aidan Maconachy at September 11, 2005 3:49 PM

A propos of the wrong line of work:
www.sthorpe.79.5u.com

Posted by: streff at September 12, 2005 6:07 PM

isnt that one of the skills all philosophers and politicains aspire to?

Posted by: drew at September 14, 2005 10:15 PM

Politicians who are honest and of good moral character will argue for views they consider true. That doesn't take being able to argue for views that they think are nuts. Philosophers, on the other hand, seem happy to distance themselves from their own views to see where an argument leads. Analytic metaphysicians are particularly noticeable in doing this, since almost all of them defend views that the average person would consider absolutely ridiculous.

Posted by: Jeremy Pierce at September 15, 2005 12:48 PM