Dear Tom and Paul,
How we have been admirers of your work since we were your students! We can't tell you how excited we were to enter graduate school and put our stamp on the problems--legal, political, and philosophical--on consciousness and analyticity--as you have done over the years. Kudos for paving the way for young academics such as us, the editors of Wheelhouse!
We do, however, want to regretfully inform you that we caved in somewhat on your respective philosophical positions. Tom, sorry to say, one of our editors has sold your "The Possibility of Altruism" for $2.00 at a local used bookstore. Call it an instrumental need; since you and Paul have busted the NYU graduate assistants union so hard in the past few months, we can't quite seem to pay for our own little magazine without getting rid of a few "good" books. But Paul, we just can't seem to get rid of your work. Nobody cares about it much; the one essay we find worthy of sale, to be realists here, is your "Analyticity Reconsidered." Too short to be of any economic use.
Tom, what can we say other than that one of your life-long theses--that to be altruistic is in some determinable way instrumental--seems to be pure theory to you. If you were really the instrumentalist you seem to want to be, then you would encourage President Sexton and NYU to settle with the UAW on a union contract. For a union contract means less teaching for you, andgiven your busy lecture circuit schedule these days, we all know how much you'd love to stop teaching undergraduates altogether!
And Paul, oh Paul! You're work is realist to the core. You strive for analytical purity, much like Plato, and unlike your aforementioned colleague, you seem to live your life like you write: your lips planted firmly on the ass of the administration that values your very relevant work, your waffling on the issues, fearing to take a definite stand just in case certain axioms within your neatly constructed argument are contingent on hidden assumptions... Right down the middle. That's what we expect from a second-rate academic. So, congrats on being a mealy-mouthed ass kiss. Your legacy will surely be great.
It's really gratifying to see two well-off, tenured white men meekly oppose what has been, and should be, the right of any worker: to bargain collectively over their working conditions. We know you both have the hegemonic, myopic disease called "Pencil Dick Syndrome," the symptoms of which include 1) a sudden, euphoric feeling of superiority, 2) a knee-jerk desire to see the world remain status quo in fear that otherwise it may utterly collapse around you and 3) a lack of empathy so strong that only your own work could pull you out of it. Let me just say that we at Wheelhouse empathize: We sure don't know what it's like to be a bat, but we could well imagine what it's like to be an asshole.
Yours
Truly,
The Editors at Wheelhouse Magazine
Response
from Tom Nagel: Silence
Response from Paul Boghossian: Silence