[nn3]

So if all the humanities papers have a serious message which is just somehow obscured due to circumstances outside the author's control, you would expect at least someone (particularly the editors of the journals) to understand them.

But how can the Sokal affair[1] be explained then? There clearly no-one understood it but it was still published.

I suspect Sturgeon's law[2] applies to the humanities, as well as to a lot of other things.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

[jolux]

The Sokal affair is explained in realizing that he didn't know what he was talking about and essentially quote-mined the people he was targeting while carefully shrouding his deception. He claimed to believe in what he said in good faith, and he actually didn't. You can't tell that from reading his essay.

http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/fish.html

[dTal]

The whole point was the fact that it was possible to do that is a red flag. Could you "quote-mine" physics or maths papers and get them published, as long as you claimed to believe in your results? If the journals are relying on the honor system and "good faith" to not let crap through, then what exactly is the point of them?

[jolux]

You could absolutely quote mine physics and math papers to make a point that's not true, if that's what you're asking. I think it might be harder to get such a project into a physics journal, but yes, I think it's doable.

That being said, I don't think just anything can make it into a philosophy journal either. He was clearly trying very hard to make a point, and when smart people work hard on things, the result is very rarely worthless. I'm sure that came through in reading his writing, which is why it was published. Continental philosophy is largely subjective, (which isn't to say it doesn't very in quality) and as such it can't be gauged like analytical philosophy or physics can be.

The greater intellectual fraud is extrapolating this example of a minor journal focused on postmodernism publishing an article written in bad faith to a rejection of postmodernism wholesale. There's a lot of valuable insight to be gained from studying it, which I encourage anyone skeptical of postmodernism to do.