David Rose On Institutional Marginalisation And Comparing Theories

 After ChRIS CLÉiRIGh replied to David Rose on asflanet on 25 Mar 2024, at 15:34:

So when it comes down to choosing between theories, say, Newton's or Einstein's construal of gravity, it comes down to feelings: which one the community feels happier with. Perhaps a more appropriate example would be a fundamentalist religious community choosing between Natural Selection and Creationism, on the basis of which one they feel happier with.

 

 David Rose replied on asflanet on 26 Mar 2024, at 20:56:

An example closer to home might be the persistent marginalisation of SFL in international linguistics. The people ignoring or locking it out of courses and departments all have PhDs in linguistic reasoning.

Couldn’t resist sharing this re comparing theories...

‘There is a distinct difference between having an open mind and having a hole in your head from which your brain leaks out’.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, here Rose is invoking the siege mentality of his faith community. From The Culture Of Strong Social Cohesion In The SFL Community at What Lies Beneath:

The origin of strong social bonds within the SFL community can be traced back to the early general exclusion of SFL Theory from linguistic departments and linguistic publications, due to the once overwhelming popularity of Chomskyan Formal Linguistics.

This helped to induce a general 'siege mentality' in the early SFL community: a collective state of mind in which a group of people believe themselves constantly attacked, oppressed, or isolated in the face of the negative intentions of the rest of the world, among the consequences of which are social conformity, and a strong sense of social cohesion.

This strong sense of social cohesion has remained ever since, despite SFL Theory becoming less excluded from linguistic departments and linguistic publications.

One intellectually debilitating consequence of a culture of strong social cohesion is the increased likelihood of 'groupthink'. Groupthink is a phenomenon that occurs when the desire for group consensus overrides people's common sense desire to present alternatives, critique a position, or express an unpopular opinion. Here, the desire for group cohesion effectively drives out good decision-making and problem solving.

From The Tactics Of The Disciplinarian Head Of The Martin Faith Fellowship at What Lies Beneath:

The way Martin constructs a socially bonded community around him is to invoke a 'siege mentality', both with regard to the SFL community in relation to the rest of the linguistic community, and with regard to his own community in relation to the rest of the SFL community.

[2] To be clear, this implies that SFL academics, unlike other linguists, do not have PhDs in linguistic reasoning. 

[3] To be clear, here Rose unwittingly presents a 2005 quote from the opponent of pseudoscience, the late James Randi, as if it supports Rose's anti-intellectualism rather than condemns it. The same point had been made previously by his friend, Richard Dawkins, in a public lecture in 1996:

By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out

and similar wordings have been attributed to Carl Sagan and Groucho Marx.