Agnes Callard cancelling Aristotle

Paideia precedes eusebia and oikos. Before there was Religion, before there were individual family units, there was Instruction for the children of the sept. The fact that Paideia has no history of itself is because it consists of a series of 'enlightened' cancellings of its own foundational darkness. Neither Eusebia nor Economia have any place for 'cancelling' because the repressed returns with a vengeance. But Paideia does have such a place, indeed, is such a place, because it is nothing but repression as the revenge of the talentless. Thus 'cancelling' is its essence as oubliette.

Agnes Callard, writing in the NYT, asks if Aristotle should be 'cancelled'- i.e. if there should be an agitation for the 'removal of support for Aristotle as a public figure in response to his objectionable behavior or opinions. This might include boycotts or refusal to promote his work.'

The answer, of course, is that Aristotle is not a public figure. He is the subject of numerous academic availability cascades but only in moribund University Departments which should have been shut down long ago. It would certainly be appropriate to cancel one or all of the worthless courses at Universities which purport to reflect his thought. But this would affect few or none at all. No Church or other ideology is currently reliant on Aristotelianism. Nussbaum type shite has hit a wall along with Straussian type shite. Thus, canceling or not canceling the old fool is a non issue.

Callard takes a different view-

The Greek philosopher Aristotle did not merely condone slavery, he defended it; he did not merely defend it, but defended it as beneficial to the slave.

I suppose Callard is thinking of attacks on the statues of Slave Traders or Confederate Generals. But Aristotle was not defending or condoning Trans-Atlantic Slavery. He was speaking of an institution that existed in Africa and Europe and Asia during his life-time, centuries before Christ.

Furthermore, scholars acknowledge that Aristotle's views on slavery were jumbled and incoherent. We have various drafts and lecture notes but not a properly prepared text with a logically coherent theory of Politics. Indeed, some of Aristotle's defenders suggest that his definition of a 'natural slave' is empty- there are no human beings like that. Alternatively, we may have an argument to exercise 'regal' control over a population inclined to slavish submission to authoritarian leaders with the aim to educate them away from a preference for  despotism. Thus, American sponsored Occupation and 'de-Nazification of Germany might be considered a virtuous thing. Sadly, 'de-Baathification' in Iraq was a disastrous. Suddenly cancelling Aristotle & Straussian stupidity doesn't look so bad.

His view was that some people are, by nature, unable to pursue their own good, and best suited to be “living tools” for use by other people: “The slave is a part of the master, a living but separated part of his bodily frame.”

That is what he said in one place. But he said contradictory things in other places. Aristotle's admirers point out that he liberated his slaves in his Will.

Aristotle’s anti-liberalism does not stop there.

There was no 'Liberalism' at that time to which he could have been opposed.

He believed that women were incapable of authoritative decision making.

He held absurd biological views- fair skinned women have a discharge during sex which is like that of a weak or amputated man and this discharge mingles with the male discharge and this affects the baby. Dark skinned women have no discharge during sex.

The Sciences 'cancelled' this sort of shite long ago. Catholic Theology stuck with him till quite recently- but has gone barking mad and is now confined to the stables. Some Political Philosophy- like that of the noisome Nussbaum- might still harken to him but only by employing tippex over 'tolmema'.  Cancel Aristotelianism by all means. It is a waste of time.

And he decreed that manual laborers, despite being neither slaves nor women, were nonetheless prohibited from citizenship or education in his ideal city.

Needless to say, Aristotle's idealized City had to bend the knee to Kings and Emperors. Lots of Greek philosophers ended up as slaves to more virile tribes or nations. Aristotle's pedagogy was already obsolete and backward looking. Elite Paideia generally has that quality.

Of course Aristotle is not alone: Kant and Hume made racist comments, Frege made anti-Semitic ones, and Wittgenstein was bracingly upfront about his sexism. Should readers set aside or ignore such remarks, focusing attention on valuable ideas to be found elsewhere in their work?

The problem here is that there are no valuable ideas in their work. Kant was wrong about a priori synthetic truths. They don't exist. Russell's paradox put paid to Frege's program. Wittgenstein didn't do game theory, so his babbling about 'language games' was useless. As for Hume, better than anything he wrote is plain Scottish common sense.

It would be a good thing if stupid and lazy pedants stop quoting these long dead figures and admit that some academic availability cascades have become wholly degenerate. They must be expelled from the Academy. On the other hand, we'd be cutting off our nose to spite our face if we dismiss any STEM subject breakthrough for a gesture political reason.

This pick-and-choose strategy may work in the case of Kant, Hume, Frege and Wittgenstein, on the grounds that their core philosophical contributions are unrelated to their prejudices, but I do not think it applies so well to Aristotle: His inegalitarianism runs deep.

But no existing inequity is justified in the name of any of these fools. Get rid of the bunch of them by all means to free up space for useful study. Philosophy majors don't have to be utterly shite.

Aristotle thought that the value or worth of a human being — his virtue — was something that he acquired in growing up. It follows that people who can’t (women, slaves) or simply don’t (manual laborers) acquire that virtue have no grounds for demanding equal respect or recognition with those who do.

But we now know no actual virtue adhered to Aristotle or his students. They were stupid, ignorant, and useless. Greeks were enslaved soon enough. If they re-established themselves, it was no thanks to Philosophy. By contrast, Christianity has paid for itself.

Cancel Philosophy by all means. No harm will befall the commonweal. On the contrary, resources may be better allocated.

As I read him, Aristotle not only did not believe in the conception of intrinsic human dignity that grounds our modern commitment to human rights, he has a philosophy that cannot be squared with it.

This isn't true. His philosophy is 'anything goes'. Most philosophy is. That's why it is worthless.

Aristotle’s inegalitarianism is less like Kant and Hume’s racism and more like Descartes’s views on nonhuman animals: The fact that Descartes characterizes nonhuman animals as soulless automata is a direct consequence of his rationalist dualism. His comments on animals cannot be treated as “stray remarks.”

But 'Occasionalism' repairs Descartes. One can always stipulate for more 'soul' for different types of animals, plants, rocks etc. But, why bother with Descartes? Science has moved on. So has Maths. As for Chomsky's 'Cartesian Linguistics'- the thing is hilarious.

If cancellation is removal from a position of prominence on the basis of an ideological crime, it might appear that there is a case to be made for canceling Aristotle. He has much prominence: Thousands of years after his death, his ethical works continue to be taught as part of the basic philosophy curriculum offered in colleges and universities around the world.

But this 'basic philosophical curriculum' is making people stupider not smarter. Junk it.

And Aristotle’s mistake was serious enough that he comes off badly even when compared to the various “bad guys” of history who sought to justify the exclusion of certain groups — women, Black people, Jews, gays, atheists — from the sheltering umbrella of human dignity. Because Aristotle went so far as to think there was no umbrella.

Everyone of us knows there is no 'sheltering umbrella of human dignity'.  Why? We have all gotten very very wet because of a sudden rain shower.

Yet I would defend Aristotle, and his place on philosophy syllabuses, by pointing to the benefits of engaging with him. He can help us identify the grounds of our own egalitarian commitments;

But, if that is something worth doing, it should be done by everybody not just those who have the time and money to get exposed to something as worthless as a 'philosophy syllabus'. Callard has not provided a defence of Aristotle. She has provided a reason to cancel him. There is a quicker, more sensible, way of achieving the same objective in a more universal fashion. Look at Rahul Baba. Listening to Nussbaum type shite has made him unelectable in his own ancestral constituency.

'Identifying the grounds of egalitarian commitments' is 'second order' work. It does not itself create or give forward momentum to egalitarian commitments. It can never be the case that a first order problem should be allowed to fester so that second order work can burgeon. Why not simply say- 'we must reintroduce Slavery and Gas Chambers so as to give a fresh impetus to anti-Slavery studies or anti-Nazi ideologies?'

If 'cancelling culture' can prune back useless 'second order' work, which crowds out first order endeavour, then it is a good thing. It is part and parcel of how a Society makes progress. But such things happen already by people 'voting with their feet' against enrolling in shite courses of instruction or hiring the products of those shite course of studies.

and his ethical system may capture truths — for instance, about the importance of aiming for extraordinary excellence — that we have yet to incorporate into our own..

Surely, every kid who wants to be a sports star, or a music star, or a Scientist or a stand-out Mathematician or Doctor or Soldier or anything else knew that they must aim for extraordinary excellence?

On the other hand, few who now study Aristotle aim for or achieve any such thing. They may have become stupider and more boring than they would otherwise have been.

And I want to go a step further, and make an even stronger claim on behalf of Aristotle. It is not only that the benefits of reading Aristotle counteract the costs, but that there are no costs.

There is an opportunity cost. Time wasted on that shithead could have been spent learning how to repair air conditioners.

In fact we have no reason at all to cancel Aristotle. Aristotle is simply not our enemy.

Nor, on the evidence Callard presents, is he worth cultivating. Cancel him by all means.

I, like Aristotle, am a philosopher,

Aristotle was Alexander's tutor. Callard's students are likely to be cretins.

and we philosophers must countenance the possibility of radical disagreement on the most fundamental questions.

As must everybody else. Just recently, I discovered why the restaurant down the road has a doorman. It is because there are a lot of elderly people like me who have radical disagreements with doors regarding whether one should push or pull them to open. Thus the presence of a doorman is required to ensure we don't end up starving to death trying to get in while trapping diners trying to leave.

Philosophers hold up as an ideal the aim of never treating our interlocutor as a hostile combatant.

But nobody holds up Philosophy as fulfilling this ideal. It is riddled with vicious attacks by men of straw on straw-men. Philosophy mattered, when a rival philosopher could get you burned at the stake or sent off to a Gulag. Canceling Philosophy is one step towards canceling the notion of thought crime.

But if someone puts forward views that directly contradict your moral sensibilities, how can you avoid hostility?

The same way you avoid hostility when someone contradicts you in some other way. There is nothing special about moral, as opposed to aesthetic or intellectual or cultural or consumerist sensibilities.

The answer is to take him literally — which is to say, read his words purely as vehicles for the contents of his beliefs.

If someone says 'It is moral to punish with penal servitude the perpetrators of  unnatural sexual acts like masturbation and oral sex', it would directly contradict my moral sensibilities. If the person in question poses no physical threat to me, it is likely that I will express my hostility to him. Should I wish to repress this hostility, would taking the fellow literally- viz. concluding that he himself would perform a citizen's arrest on anyone he saw wanking in the vicinity- help me in any way? I don't see how. I suppose I could start tugging myself off and then punch the fuckers lights out if he tries to arrest me. But that's probably what the pervert wants. The better course is to express my hostility to the cunt in a manner which won't give him jollies.

Callard, it is true, is not expressing hostility to those who wish to cancel Aristotle. But she is literally admitting the maximal version of their case. She then says something like- 'I get something valuable from Aristotle. I'm valuable. So don't cancel Aristotle'. But Callard is literally shite as is her argument.

Imagine some savant in the early Nineteen Forties saying- 'Don't fight against Hitler. My own critique of Weimar's occulted anti-semitism is based on a close reading of his speeches. This work is very valuable in showing how systemic discrimination against Jews is epistemically endorsed. Thus killing Hitler and shutting down his Death Camps harms me and harms the wider cause of helping Jews.'

There is a kind of speech that it would be a mistake to take literally, because its function is some kind of messaging.

 Speech which occurs in 'buckstopped' juristic, protocol bound, contexts should be taken literally save when it would be inequitable or unfair to do so. Otherwise, literally nothing should be taken literally. Any critique, no matter how utile, could be countered with the exclamation, 'OMG, this cretin is taking me literally! What is her major malfunction?'

Advertising and political oratory are examples of messaging, as is much that falls under the rubric of “making a statement,” like boycotting, protesting or publicly apologizing.

Yet some component of an advertisement or snippet of political oratory is justiciable because it can be taken literally.  The Court may accept a defence of 'mere puffery'. But then again, it may not.

Such words exist to perform some extra-communicative task

No word exists which can perform 'extra-communicative tasks'- unless you believe saying 'Abracadabra' can cause a rabbit to jump out of a hat.

; in messaging speech, some aim other than truth-seeking is always at play.

Communication is not about truth-seeking. Some sub-set of it may be. But a larger sub-set may be lie-seeking.

One way to turn literal speech into messaging is to attach a list of names: a petition is an example of nonliteral speech, because more people believing something does not make it more true.

Quite false. Literal speech, within a 'buck stopped', protocol bound, juristic discourse, if approved, is 'action-guiding'. There is a normative link to a specific course of action. Such speech, if approved by a 'list of names', becomes even more prescriptive and action-guiding in proportion to the standing and number of signatories. Thus, if every Fields Medallist except Mochizuki says- 'abc conjecture has not been proved', that means it hasn't been proved. Offered disproofs may themselves be disproved. Mochizuki may be right. But we can't say, 'Maths has proved the abc theorem'.  Of course, we could subscribe to dialethia or 'fuzzy logic'. Mathematical work which assumes the truth of the abc conjecture is not necessarily worthless. But that is a utilitarian matter. Philosophy can say nothing here.

Whereas literal speech employs systematically truth-directed methods of persuasion — argument and evidence — messaging exerts some kind of nonrational pressure on its recipient.

This is nonsense. Nobody believes anything of this sort. Callard is talking ignorant bollocks. Literal speech may be mendacious. Arguments may be fallacious. Evidence may be fabricated.

In any case, save in a protocol bound juristic process, there is literally no way of demarcating literal from figurative speech.

Callard's own sentence is not 'literal speech'. It is about something with a metaphoric representation as 'literal speech'. It does not employ 'systematically truth-directed methods' because such methods are intensional. They define everything save their own 'Tarskian primitives'. But if 'literal speech' is a Tarskian primitive then it literally means anything you want it to mean. Thus, Callard's sentence is 'messaging'. It is certainly 'non-rational'. But that is because it is stupid. It does exert 'pressure'. But that 'pressure' goes in the direction of deciding that her University Department is shit. Thus people with Collidge degrees wot don't like Trump are a clear and present danger to the Polity. This may plausibly be said to be an Aristotelian position. It may even be Callard's own position. But it is a view which would turn Humans into Anatidae, in tutelage to Prof. Magnus Mallard, who turns them first into a sitting duck, then a lame duck, then a duck being retrieved in the soft mouth of a hunting dog.

For example, a public apology can often exert social pressure on the injured party to forgive, or at any rate to perform a show of forgiveness.

But that 'social pressure' could either be artfully redirected so that more and more heartfelt apologies are required, or else there never was an apology- merely the appearance of one to wrongfoot the injured party. Or, it may be, there was just 'social pressure' and nothing else.

Messaging is often situated within some kind of power struggle.

No. Messaging is not situated. It may claim to be essentially embodied. Power struggles may be situated. But they are not essentially embodied because potential threat points matter.  Sexual Competition must be embodied. Everything else is situated in idiographic Scarcity.

In a highly charged political climate, more and more speech becomes magnetically attracted into messaging; one can hardly say anything without arousing suspicion that one is making a move in the game, one that might call for a countermove.

Alternatively, one could literally talk sense or be funny or wise or kind or virtuous. Callard can do none of these things. She has written Grievance Studies type nonsense about 'cancelling Aristotle' only to end up offering the worst possible argument for not cancelling Aristotle- viz that Aristotle has helped her personally to shit higher than her arsehole.

For example, the words “Black lives matter” and “All lives matter” have been implicated in our political power struggle in such a way as to prevent anyone familiar with that struggle from using, or hearing, them literally.

Because the context is 'common knowledge', BLM literally means 'disproportionate and discriminatory police violence against African Americans must no longer be a metric for the success of macho 'Tough on Crime' platforms. The individual lives, which make up the statistics of criminals shot or incarcerated, matter in themselves. No longer, should the Criminal Justice look at such people as emblematic of Crime and thus suitable cannon fodder for the War against Drugs or Gangs or 'broken windows'. This sort of scapegoating must stop.'

Callard forgets 'common knowledge' is what permits 'literalness'. But perhaps she never knew the relevant literature- stuff like the Aumann agreement theorem- in the first place. That's the problem with Aristotle. Teaching him makes you stupider and more ignorant than when you started out.

But if an alien from outer space, unfamiliar with this context, came to us and said either phrase, it would be hard to imagine that anyone would find it objectionable; the context in which we now use those phrases would be removed.

Nonsense! If an Alien says 'Black Lives Matter', this means Aliens see something different about Blacks. Perhaps they taste better or Aliens gain exquisite delight by drinking the tears of Black Folk. On the other hand, if the Alien says 'All Lives matter', that would be reassuring. Aliens may think we shouldn't be eaten or exterminated.

Still, both statements would be objectionable. The first because it may be part of a 'divide and rule' strategy. The second because it may justify our demographic replacement by immigrant Aliens who are biologically superior to us.

In fact, I can imagine circumstances under which an alien could say women are inferior to men without arousing offense in me.

It would arouse offense in me. Those fuckers should be equal opportunity anal probers. Why single out Men?

Suppose this alien had no gender on their planet, and drew the conclusion of female inferiority from time spent observing ours. As long as the alien spoke to me respectfully, I would not only be willing to hear them out but even interested to learn their argument.

Hilarious! Callard wants aliens to speak to her respectfully. That's her big worry. The rest of us are shitting ourselves coz we know about anal probes. But Callard is happy to be told women are inferior- and hence will be the new slave caste- provided she is respectfully addressed as Doctor Callard.

I read Aristotle as such an “alien.”

Because you'd get on like a house on fire with an actual alien who says 'Dr. Callard, human females are inferior. Hence we will use them as slave labor to terraform your planet. Males are superior. We would exterminate them if it weren't for the exquisite pleasure we gain anally probing the shit out of them.'

His approach to ethics was empirical — that is, it was based on observation — and when he looked around him he saw a world of slavery and of the subjugation of women and manual laborers, a situation he then inscribed into his ethical theory.

No. Empiricism is one element in Aristotle. Ethics is another. There is an Aristotelian, or Kantian, 'Anthropology' which mixes the two up. But we can excise that 'Anthropology' from their 'Philosophy'. This is easily done by something like Hume's fork, or the 'insha' 'khabar' distinction in Falsafiya, or formal deontic logic or theology or various types of metaphysics.

Callard's literalism makes herself, not just Aristotle, cancel-worthy. Why? Because she lacks not just 'common knowledge' but also 'common sense'.

When I read him, I see that view of the world — and that’s all.

Which suggests a failure in reading Aristotle and an inability to grasp the economic 'mechanism design' underpinnings of a particular type of Society.

I do not read an evil intent or ulterior motive behind his words;

Yet, an ulterior motive, or evil intent exists,- viz. to profit by, in a competitive market, a particularly worthless type of pedagogy.

I do not interpret them as a mark of his bad character,

Why not? It would be Aristotelian to do so. Plato lives by reason of a suave gentlemanliness of character. Aristotle dies along with all those 'Masters of those who know who turn out to be pedantic ignoramuses

or as attempting to convey a dangerous message that I might need to combat or silence in order to protect the vulnerable.

It is too late in the day to do so. You may as well help defend against Genghis Khan.

Of course in one sense it is hard to imagine a more dangerous idea than the one that he articulated and argued for — but dangerousness, I have been arguing, is less a matter of literal content than messaging context.

This is silly. Aristotle does not have a 'dangerous idea'. Why? Because everybody knows that savants who died centuries before Christ were as ignorant as shit.

The literal content of an ISIS website is highly dangerous. Its messaging context may be quite pathetic- it may represent a despicable trawling for low-lifes and retards and gullible 15 year old girls looking for adventure.

What makes speech truly free is the possibility of disagreement without enmity,

Nonsense! Speech is truly free if there are no consequences to disagreement with the most venomous enmity. One can say what one likes about a subject which nobody cares about. On the other hand, if you leak State secrets, or publish the names of local gangsters, it is likely that your freedom or your life are in grave peril. Yet only this sort of speech really matters. We expect the police to prosecute in the one case and protect in the other case, the person exercising parrhesia.

A separate point has to do with 'mimetic desire'. You may not want to say something which is common knowledge for fear of provoking rage against you for being the first to say what everybody is thinking. Agreement, not disagreement, can give rise to murderous rage. Let us ceremonially kill the Sacred King who is the first to reveal the truth nobody did not know. Socrates, perhaps, was such a pharmakos or korban.

and this is less a matter of what we can say, than how we can say it.

This may be the view of the Courts. It may not. However, if you could have your throat slit for what you said then it is unlikely that how you said what you said mattered at all. It was not the way Salman Rushdie expressed himself in 'Satanic Verses' but what he was deemed to have said which put his life in danger.

“Cancel culture” is merely the logical extension of what we might call “messaging culture,” in which every speech act is classified as friend or foe, in which literal content can barely be communicated, and in which very little faith exists as to the rational faculties of those being spoken to.

Callard is just making this shit up. There is no such 'messaging culture' anywhere. Nobody reads the label on the tinned goods in the Supermarket and says 'these tomatoes are pro-Trumpian. They would poison me.'

Literal content is communicated even to paranoid nutjobs. Even during a Gang War, drug crazed, trigger happy, adolescents have sufficient rationality to read and understand road signs so as to get to the location of their next drive-by shooting victim.

It simply is not the case that 'literalism' can defeat all the 'messaging' evils of our age. On the contrary, 'literalism', not metaphoricity, is what makes 'messaging' a utile activity. It is literally the case that your buying Product X is the outcome strived for by all the subtle messaging the Producers of X bombard you with. Nobody has a bumper sticker which says 'my other car is a Porsche- metaphorically speaking'.

In such a context, even the cry for “free speech” invites a nonliteral interpretation, as being nothing but the most efficient way for its advocates to acquire or consolidate power.

So, Callard admits that literality invites nonliteral interpretation. Thus, it can't be a panacea. She might as well write, 'In such a context, even my claim regarding literal speech will be interpreted in a nonliteral way. People will say what I am doing is not supplying a solution to a problem but merely acquiring or consolidating power of some type in what seems to me to be the most efficient way.'

I will admit that Aristotle’s vast temporal distance from us makes it artificially easy to treat him as an “alien.”

No. It makes it easy to treat him as a dude wot died long long ago. Get over him already. Only if the guy had tentacles should we treat him as an alien who might hold the key to finding a wormhole to another Galaxy.

One of the reasons I gravitate to the study of ancient ethics is precisely that it is difficult to entangle those authors in contemporary power struggles.

Another reason may be that it is difficult to entangle those authors in anything meaningful or worthwhile for contemporary societies. Thus, this is a field where you will be competing with other retards.

When we turn to disagreement on highly charged contemporary ethical questions, such as debates about gender identity, we find suspicion, second-guessing of motives, petitioning — the hallmarks of messaging culture — even among philosophers.

Callard is equating strategic, as opposed to alethic, speech acts with 'messaging'. Why? In any bargaining problem we expect to see both types of communication from the same channel. Extracting the alethic signal from strategic 'noise' is the name of the game. But, Economists have long known that this is a difficult matter. We may have faith in a 'Revelation Principle' but 'Mechanism Design' is still going to be hit and miss for at least a couple of iterations.

Philosophers have never been held in high esteem. Since the time of Aristophanes, or- at least- Pyrrho, their lucubrations have been regarded as dreary nonsense filled with absurd caricatures of each others positions. Ad hominem attacks and question begging and every other sort of fallacy or blatant lie interweave their texts. Take out the stupidity and the ignorance and you are left with nothing or only such a sentiment as might fit on a Hallmark card.

The proper 'antidosis' for Aristotle was the Roman cursus honorum. Greek philosopher-slaves may have polished the Patrician turd headed towards a Consulship. But this did shit to save the Republic. My memory is that Cicero was sodomized by Storm Troopers on the floor of the Senate as Emperor Palpatine looked on sympathetically.

I do not claim that the possibility of friendly disagreement with Aristotle offers any direct guidance on how to improve our much more difficult disagreements with our contemporaries,

But you do claim some indirect benefit may accrue. This is not the case unless you are actually a duck and Prof. Magnus Mallard is a pal of yours and he wants you to have a friendly disagreement with some dude wot died long ago and you think that's a swell idea coz u iz one daffy daffy duck.

but I do think considering the case of Aristotle reveals something about what the target of such improvements would be. What we want, when we want free speech, is the freedom to speak literally.

We don't and mustn't have it if it is against the law. I may want the freedom to communicate in a very literal fashion what I want to do to my enemy but I will be locked up if I communicate anything of that sort. On the other hand, if I use non-literal 'messaging', I may be able to escape prosecution by claiming that I had no intent to threaten or intimidate or cause a breach of the peace. All I was doing was sharing gardening tips about how to increase the size of root vegetables by inserting them periodically in one's rectum. I was expressing my willingness to help my enemy win big with a truly outsized Turnip at the next Giant Vegetable Competition.

Bryan Van Norden calls Callard on her imbecility in an article in 'the Medium'. He writes-

Philosophers like Russell, Carnap, and Orwell knew that vagueness is not just a theoretical defect.

This is false. Russell had a theory of types and it may be that 'univalent foundations' are possible provided we learn to live with 'vagueness'. Carnap was simply wrong. Nothing in the realm of the Sciences is 'immediately given' to perception. Stuff like quarks and super-strings have to start of vague and may end up vaguer yet. But they could be useful. Orwell was not a philosopher. He didn't have a degree and dropped out of the Burmese Police Cadre. He was literally a paranoid cretin of a type Eton's infantilizing Paideia still saddles us with.

Vagueness can be the tool of oppression.

No it can't. It may be a tool of obfuscation. Alternatively, where there is no oppression but paranoid or antagonomic nutters can point to some vague statement and interpret it to mean they have been insulted and injured.

It allows one to influence others in a way that evades rational critique by being impossible to pin down. (Trump is a master of this technique, as are the authors of the “Harper Letter.”)

Those who already have influence would be foolish to endanger it by subjecting themselves to 'rational critique' by those who don't have influence. Why? You needlessly make some rando your equal. That's not a smart thing to do. Vagueness may be one way of brushing such people off. But telling the world that the critic is a worthless piece of shit works even better. The 'Harper Letter' was about the superiority of its signatories to the common ruck.

However, in my closing summation, I will follow the author’s advice and merely respond to the “literal content” of the essay: it is poorly written and poorly argued because it is vague.

This is false. Callard makes a specific claim which is not vague. She says 'literal speech' has some magic property which enables it to defeat all that evil 'messaging' the kids talk about. Callard is wrong. Why? Because she is stupid and ignorant. Where there is common knowledge, literal speech may lead to 'Aumann agreement' by reason of shared Bayesian priors. But, if Evolution is real and Knightian Uncertainty obtains, this can never be the case, or if it is, then by another result by Aumann, unanimity must be rejected. In other words, 'literalness' means antagonomia is licit. Cancelling the shit out of research programs can't be a priori wrong. Universities must get used to the idea that they can't continue to teach shite just because shite has always been taught.