As someone with predilictions for and training in philosophy, I’m not used to having answers.
In my field of academia, appeals to authority are generally considered fallacious ways of arguing and, for the most part, one is encouraged to avoid dogmatic stances on the issues under examination.
When people ask me what I teach, I usually say “Nothing, really. Just questions.”
Consequently, it’s quite strange for me, but actually quite refreshing, to be in a field where my word is gold and what I say goes, no backtalk or second-guessing permitted.
This field, of course, is the baseball diamond.
An umpire calls them as he sees them and, as I’ve learned, sometimes calls them even when he doesn’t. But the calls still stand, as long as I stand behind them.
Inevitably, some douchebag on one of the teams starts riding me about my strike zone or because he didn’t agree with my judgment that that tag at third base was indeed made. If I were teaching a philosophy class, I’d have to entertain his perspective even-handedly, and offer a supportive response to his position in keeping with the principles of charity and understanding.
As an umpire, however, I can turn my back, walk away, and even threaten to throw him out of the game should he keep at it.
Now, that’s entertainment.
This isn’t to say that, as an umpire, I’m not open to self-examination and self-criticism; I’m trying to do a better job all the time. But that’s my own internal umpire, the one making calls on the calls.
I don’t need some thirty-something ex-jock reliving his glory days of high school to get in my face over a questionable call in a Sunday-afternoon co-ed recreational softball league game in which his team is already winning by twenty runs in the fourth inning.
You don’t have to be a university-trained Anglo-American analytic philosopher whose area of expertise is in ethics to ascertain the wrongness of that.
In my field of academia, appeals to authority are generally considered fallacious ways of arguing and, for the most part, one is encouraged to avoid dogmatic stances on the issues under examination.
When people ask me what I teach, I usually say “Nothing, really. Just questions.”
Consequently, it’s quite strange for me, but actually quite refreshing, to be in a field where my word is gold and what I say goes, no backtalk or second-guessing permitted.
This field, of course, is the baseball diamond.
An umpire calls them as he sees them and, as I’ve learned, sometimes calls them even when he doesn’t. But the calls still stand, as long as I stand behind them.
Inevitably, some douchebag on one of the teams starts riding me about my strike zone or because he didn’t agree with my judgment that that tag at third base was indeed made. If I were teaching a philosophy class, I’d have to entertain his perspective even-handedly, and offer a supportive response to his position in keeping with the principles of charity and understanding.
As an umpire, however, I can turn my back, walk away, and even threaten to throw him out of the game should he keep at it.
Now, that’s entertainment.
This isn’t to say that, as an umpire, I’m not open to self-examination and self-criticism; I’m trying to do a better job all the time. But that’s my own internal umpire, the one making calls on the calls.
I don’t need some thirty-something ex-jock reliving his glory days of high school to get in my face over a questionable call in a Sunday-afternoon co-ed recreational softball league game in which his team is already winning by twenty runs in the fourth inning.
You don’t have to be a university-trained Anglo-American analytic philosopher whose area of expertise is in ethics to ascertain the wrongness of that.
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