tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/ray-hadley-20548/articlesRay Hadley – The Conversation2021-07-14T08:59:02Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1644892021-07-14T08:59:02Z2021-07-14T08:59:02ZRight-wing shock jock stoush reveals the awful truth about COVID, politics and media ratings<p>A COVID-induced rancour that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/jul/13/rightwing-media-war-over-covid-lockdown-escalates-as-ray-hadley-calls-out-ridiculous-alan-jones">has broken out</a> between Sydney’s commercial radio shock jocks and the Sky News night-time ravers over Sydney’s lockdown would be funny if it were not so serious.</p>
<p>It is mildly entertaining to see 2GB’s Ray Hadley excoriating his former colleague Alan Jones, now at Sky, for his “ridiculous stance” against the lockdown, with Jones calling New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian “gutless” for extending it.</p>
<p>Hadley went on to brand Sky’s Andrew Bolt a “lapdog” for agreeing with Jones, and Bolt retaliated by calling Hadley a “weak and ignorant man who panders to an ugly pack”.</p>
<p>It takes one to know one, of course, but behind all this spittle-flecked slanging there is a serious issue: the disproportionate political power of a small group of radio and television broadcasters in Sydney.</p>
<p>It is one factor that helps explain the procrastination and prevarication that have marked the premier’s response.</p>
<p>Long before COVID-19 afflicted the world, the shock jocks of Sydney commercial radio stations, particularly 2GB and 2UE, had created a successful business model built on outrage.</p>
<p>It is based on a political ideology that appeals to an older audience living in what Jones is pleased to call “Struggle Street”. It is not conservatism, as they like to claim, but rank reactionaryism.</p>
<p>In marginal electorates, largely in western Sydney, there are enough people who find this ideology attractive to make politicians nervous.</p>
<p>That is what has given these jocks political power incommensurate with their position in Australia’s democratic institutional arrangements.</p>
<p>They have become a kind of shadow government in New South Wales.</p>
<p>For example, in 2001, when Bob Carr, a Labor Premier, was about to appoint Michael Costa police minister, he sent Costa to Jones’s home to discuss law-and-order policy.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-times-suited-him-then-passed-him-by-the-alan-jones-radio-era-comes-to-an-end-138420">The times suited him, then passed him by: the Alan Jones radio era comes to an end</a>
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<p>In 2017, a former Director of Public Prosecutions in New South Wales, Nicholas Cowdery, QC, <a href="https://www.legalaid.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/27520/Nicholas-Cowdery-Influence-of-the-media-on-the-criminal-justice-system-in-NSW-Legal-Aid-NSW-Criminal-Law-Conference-2017-.pdf">singled out</a> Jones and Hadley, as well as the recently resurrected John Laws, as wielding disproportionate power over politicians and other policy-makers.</p>
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<p>They hate, to differing degrees, independent statutory officers such as Directors of Public Prosecutions who speak out objectively on issues in criminal justice.</p>
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<p>In more recent times, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has relied on Hadley to provide him with a friendly platform on which to propagandise. </p>
<p>The relationship between the two has been described as a “bromance”, although it had a temporary rupture in 2015 when Hadley tried to have Morrison swear on the Bible concerning any role he might have had in the demise of Tony Abbott as prime minister.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411191/original/file-20210714-27-1c4ktsm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411191/original/file-20210714-27-1c4ktsm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411191/original/file-20210714-27-1c4ktsm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411191/original/file-20210714-27-1c4ktsm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411191/original/file-20210714-27-1c4ktsm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411191/original/file-20210714-27-1c4ktsm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411191/original/file-20210714-27-1c4ktsm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Scott Morrison often relies on sympathetic interviews on Hadley’s show to get his message across.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mick Tsikas</span></span>
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<p>Berejiklian, as a Liberal premier, has also prospered in her commercial radio relationships, most notably from the benignity of Jones’s successor in the 2GB breakfast slot, Ben Fordham.</p>
<p>He was supportive of her even during the embarrassing disclosures about her relationship with the Wagga Wagga MP Daryl Maguire, who is the subject of an <a href="https://www.icac.nsw.gov.au/investigations/current-investigations/2020/former-nsw-mp-for-wagga-wagga-operation-keppel">ICAC investigation</a>.</p>
<p>So she had a stake in not rattling the shock jocks’ cages. That meant trying to hold the line against lockdowns.</p>
<p>However, that calculation changed abruptly last week after the latest Sydney radio ratings showed that for the first time in 18 years, 2GB lost the breakfast time-slot.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/contrasting-nsw-and-victoria-lockdown-coverage-reveals-much-about-the-politics-of-covid-and-the-media-163482">Contrasting NSW and Victoria lockdown coverage reveals much about the politics of COVID – and the media</a>
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<p>The winners were the KIIS FM pair of Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O, whose shtick involves penis pageants and a determination not to be “woke”.</p>
<p>Horrified fellow-travellers in the right-wing commentariat pounced on Fordham. Jones was especially vitriolic. His successors, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/jul/13/rightwing-media-war-over-covid-lockdown-escalates-as-ray-hadley-calls-out-ridiculous-alan-jones">he said</a>, didn’t have the “balls” to stand up to “cancel culture warriors”. Government, media and big pharma seemed to be all in bed together, and the media were too ready to accommodate the left.</p>
<p>Management at 2GB were also aghast. The Australian reported they told Fordham to take a harder line with Berejiklian, and Fordham duly delivered. Three days after the ratings results had come out, <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/ten-reporter-unloads-antoinette-lattouf-on-racism-at-nines-today-show/news-story/0120052e5b828d1bd061b2ebf31b40ec">he unleashed</a> this on-air tirade against the Premier’s lockdown decision:</p>
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<p>The virus hasn’t killed anyone this year, but the lockdowns, the extensions, the excuses, the mistakes, the missed opportunities, they are killing this city fast. And stop telling us it’s about the health advice!</p>
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<p>By now Berejikilian was in a bind.</p>
<p>There was her own hubris, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/sydney-will-be-lucky-if-lockdown-isn-t-extended-20210626-p584iy.html">proclaiming</a> her state doesn’t do lockdowns.</p>
<p>There was Scott Morrison’s hostility to lockdowns, exemplified by his repeated attacks on the Victorian Labor Government. Was she to be a source of further embarrassment to him over how the pandemic is playing out?</p>
<p>There was Morrison’s cosy relationship with the likes of Hadley, in which their reciprocal position on lockdowns was self-reinforcing.</p>
<p>And there was the demonstrated willingness by 2GB station management to go after Berejiklian in pursuit of better ratings for Fordham’s breakfast show.</p>
<p>In the circumstances, it is hardly a surprise that she has procrastinated and prevaricated.</p>
<p>If, <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-tougher-4-week-lockdown-could-save-sydney-months-of-stay-at-home-orders-our-modelling-shows-164483">as many epidemiologists</a> are saying, the so-called “light” approach is condemning Sydney to a long lockdown and exposing the rest of the country to avoidable risk, the role of the jocks in creating the political climate in which Berejiklian is operating since the Delta strain took hold should not be underestimated.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164489/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denis Muller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Behind the vitriol over whether Sydney should be in lockdown is a window into how power operates in New South Wales.Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/650992016-09-08T03:05:56Z2016-09-08T03:05:56ZIndulge me this: how not to read Daniel Dennett’s comments on philosophy and self-indulgence<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136995/original/image-20160908-25260-1p6my4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Daniel Dennett, philosopher</span> </figcaption></figure><h2>Callicles, Ray Hadley and Daniel Dennett?</h2>
<p>“A great deal of philosophy doesn’t really deserve much of a place in the world,” leading <a href="http://qz.com/768450/one-of-the-most-famous-living-philosophers-says-much-of-philosophy-today-is-self-indulgent/">philosopher Daniel Dennett has recently suggested</a> in an interview at his year’s Association of the Scientific Study of Consciousness conference in Buenos Aires. </p>
<p>“Philosophy in some quarters has become self-indulgent, clever play in a vacuum that’s not dealing of problems of any intrinsic interest.”</p>
<p>People in many other quarters of the world roll their eyes, or blink.</p>
<p>For this kind of accusation against philosophy is hardly new.
The character Callicles in one of Plato’s stories suggests that philosophy <a href="http://www.roangelo.net/logwitt/gorgias.html#study-of-philosophy-proper-to-youth-only">is, more or less, child’s play</a>: fit to entertain youths, but hardly a decent pursuit for serious adults.</p>
<p>Radio 2GB stalwart <a href="http://sjm.ministers.treasury.gov.au/transcript/109-2016/">Ray Hadley has more recently taken up something like Callicles’ strains</a>, in what has become a periodic refrain in the tabloids lamenting continuing government funding for humanities research, including in philosophy.</p>
<p>What is new about Dennett’s claims, which is making people within the discipline take notice, is that he is neither a Callicles, nor a Ray Hadley. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Daniel-C-Dennett">Daniel Dennett is a decorated Professor of Philosophy of some decades’ experience</a>, and near-universal respect amongst professional scholars. </p>
<p>Dennett also hails from the angloamerican or “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_philosophy">analytic” stream of philosophy</a>. This stream has been, until recently, the side of the “analytic-continental divide” a lot less open to weighing philosophy’s history, place and role in society, let alone delivering such strident self-criticisms.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the Callicles’ of this world should draw breath and read again before too quickly taking Dennett’s criticism as a wholesale dismissal of philosophy, or the reflective humanities. </p>
<p>We can even take Dennett’s provocative remarks as the spur they seem intended by him to have been: a spur to undertake some philosophical reflection about philosophy’s relations to the wider world, as against its insulation from it.</p>
<h2>He who doesn’t philosophise…</h2>
<p>The first thing to note is that Dennett is not saying that all forms of philosophy are “<a href="http://qz.com/768450/one-of-the-most-famous-living-philosophers-says-much-of-philosophy-today-is-self-indulgent/">idle—just games” or a “luxury”</a>. Dennett praises forms of philosophy, like his own contributions to debates on religion and reason (and this <em>Cogito</em> column, gentle reader) that “engage with the world.” </p>
<p>He notes that it takes years for younger generations to “develop the combination of scholarly mastery and technical acumen to work on big, important issues with a long history of philosophical attention.” </p>
<p>But such issues, as he sees things, clearly do exist. And developing the wherewithal to deal philosophically with them is something Dennett evidently values.</p>
<p>When Dennett takes aim at “self-indulgent, clever play in a vacuum”, he has more particular quarry in his sights. </p>
<p>It is just as well. The Greeks had a saying that “he who does not philosophise, philosophises”, and philosophy—as the cradle of all the academic disciplines—has a long history of engaging with and changing the Western world, since about 600 BCE.</p>
<p>Socrates—responding to that other charge the Hadleys’ and Callicles’ of the world will always make (that, far from a harmless indulgence, philosophy harmfully corrupts the youth)—insisted that its role was to assist people <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/apology.html">in taking care of their souls</a>, and helping them live better lives.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136994/original/image-20160908-25279-ju46bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136994/original/image-20160908-25279-ju46bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136994/original/image-20160908-25279-ju46bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136994/original/image-20160908-25279-ju46bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136994/original/image-20160908-25279-ju46bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136994/original/image-20160908-25279-ju46bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1093&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136994/original/image-20160908-25279-ju46bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1093&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136994/original/image-20160908-25279-ju46bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1093&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Socrates, who brought philosophy into social affairs.</span>
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<p>Surely this sounds quaint for our wiser times. The connection between rationally questioning the norms and ideas we entertain and cultivating better lives can also seen opaque, even to Socrates’ bigger fans. </p>
<p>But Socrates’ fundamental idea is simple. Nearly all of the characteristics we admire in people and institutions require forms of knowledge. </p>
<p>The man who would show his courage, but doesn’t know for what cause, is not courageous but foolhardy. He’s unlikely to last long. </p>
<p>The government that would be just, without knowing who and what people and initiatives are worth supporting or censoring, will be unjust.</p>
<p>The person who would live happily but does not know what people truly need to be happy will end up disaffected; and so it goes. </p>
<p>Philosophy, on this original model, is the rational, questioning pursuit of the kinds of knowledge necessary to recognise and promote different forms of human flourishing and excellence. Far from indulgent, it has this much in common with the practical concerns of governors and managers, CEOs and parents: “leaders” of all kinds, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership_studies">as we might say today</a>.</p>
<p>Philosophy, again, involves the attempt to think rationally about the goals of human endeavours, on the basis of the most clear and comprehensive understandings of what kinds of creatures we are, and how we fit into the larger ecology and economies of the world. Far from being indulgent, this kind of thinking seems more necessary than ever today. </p>
<p>For individuals and governments who do not understand the significance of their actions for this wider “whole” (“the truth is the whole”, <a href="https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ph/phprefac.htm">a famous philosopher said</a>) are bound to pursue short-sighted policies, which produce longer-term problems and “externalities”.</p>
<p>Philosophy, again, has long concerned itself with those difficult, ultimate questions that all people have been posed, whether we ask them or not: <em>is there a God? Is there a soul, life after death, or transcendent meaning to life? How should we live? What is worth pursuing?</em></p>
<p>To call every person who ever asked these questions, at some point in their lives, indulgent would be to paint nearly everyone who has ever lived with the same, tarring brush.</p>
<p>Philosophy, finally, has since Aristotle been understood by some of its most eminent votaries as the “knowledge of knowledges”. </p>
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<span class="caption">Aristotle teaching Alexander the Great.</span>
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<p>Philosophy did not simply give birth to the other disciplines, as you might say. It was “interdisciplinary” from the start. Or at least, it has always been concerned to think through the relations between the different forms of intellectual inquiry and their place in the world. The concern is exactly to prevent particular “cottage industries” (Dennett’s term) proliferating into a cacophony of competing knowledges, without any symphonic wisdom.</p>
<p>Far from being indulgent, universities and governments today still face this form of philosophical issue, as they deliberate about how to manage the academies without which our societies’ historical memory and ability to reflect critically and democratically upon themselves will be sadly diminished:</p>
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<p><a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/b/bacon/francis/b12a/">For as water</a>, whether it be the dew of heaven or the springs of the earth, doth scatter and leese itself in the ground, except it be collected into some receptacle where it may by union comfort and sustain itself […]; so this excellent liquor of knowledge, whether it descend from divine inspiration, or spring from human sense, would soon perish and vanish to oblivion, if it were not preserved in books, traditions, conferences, and places appointed […]</p>
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<h2>He who does philosophise …</h2>
<p>Now, I don’t know whether Daniel Dennett would support everything I’ve tried to say in his defence here. Recalling the different forms of apology for philosophy (another ancient genre), I hope, can help to halt the kind of misreading of his comments as a wholesale “anti-philosophical” tirade that will inevitably sound about.</p>
<p>What is clear is that Dennett is not a critic of philosophy <em>per se</em>, let alone of philosophy in the several (amongst many other) larger senses I’ve picked out here.</p>
<p>What Dennett is critical of is the way academic philosophy is being undertaken, in situations in which a good many of its traditional functions—including reflecting critically about its “utility” and relation to other pursuits and disciplines—are being decided externally to the discipline itself.</p>
<p>For if the different justifications of philosophy we’ve recalled are clear enough, the ways in which philosophy has been funded and institutionalised throughout history have been ceaselessly up for negotiation.</p>
<p>Dennett, very much in the Platonic vein, is especially worried about the next generations of philosophers. He sees the ever-more pressing imperatives they face in order to advance within the institutional settings in which academic studies are today undertaken.</p>
<p>As everyone in the tertiary sector knows, so in this one discipline, <a href="http://qz.com/768450/one-of-the-most-famous-living-philosophers-says-much-of-philosophy-today-is-self-indulgent/">“young philosophers are under great pressure to publish”</a>. Nearly all of the material preconditions for ever being able to teach philosophy as a career depend upon meeting this pressure. </p>
<p>Little matter if the budding philosopher has only had the time to develop a limited, if highly cultivated area of specialisation. No matter if that specialisation’s relations to other parts of philosophy, knowledge and society remain unquestioned by him (or, as is less likely, her). “[S]o they find toy topics that they can knock off a clever comment/rebuttal/revival of.”</p>
<p>“These then build off each other and invade the journals, and philosophical discourse,” <a href="http://qz.com/768450/one-of-the-most-famous-living-philosophers-says-much-of-philosophy-today-is-self-indulgent/">Olivia Goldhill glosses Dennett</a>, in the article that sparked <a href="http://dailynous.com/2016/08/29/philosophers-should-be-more-like-daniel-dennett-says-daniel-dennett/">the present discussions</a>.</p>
<p>Now, this is a very different object of criticism than philosophy <em>per se</em>. It is a form of criticism which it can be imagined has relevance beyond philosophy. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136996/original/image-20160908-25260-1m7lv35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136996/original/image-20160908-25260-1m7lv35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136996/original/image-20160908-25260-1m7lv35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136996/original/image-20160908-25260-1m7lv35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136996/original/image-20160908-25260-1m7lv35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136996/original/image-20160908-25260-1m7lv35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136996/original/image-20160908-25260-1m7lv35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Plato in the first academy.</span>
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<p>To criticise a certain form of some activity is not to undermine that activity, after all. It may be a call for needed reforms. <a href="pages.pomona.edu/%7Ecmc24747/sources/cic_web/de_or_2.htm">Cicero defended rhetoric</a> by saying it got its bad name from a few bad men who misused it. Francis Bacon at the dawn of the modern period <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/b/bacon/francis/b12a/">echoed this kind of defence</a>. </p>
<p>The prejudices of political men against the life of scholarship <em>per se</em>, he argued, applied only to “deficient” forms of university learning, not liberal education itself, which must be renewed. </p>
<p>But let me end with Plato, since I think Dennett must have had him in the back of his mind as he made his comments, and especially <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.7.vi.html">the sixth book of the <em>Republic</em></a>. </p>
<p>For this founding text of our discipline is all about Plato’s concern with how to recognise and educate good philosophers. The problem is that nearly everything speaks against the young attaining to something like that kind of “<a href="http://qz.com/768450/one-of-the-most-famous-living-philosophers-says-much-of-philosophy-today-is-self-indulgent/">scholarly mastery and technical acumen</a>” Dennett recognises amongst the larger goals of a humanistic education. </p>
<p>There are sophists, who promote name over wisdom. There is the appeal of popularity, which lures many of the best students away from their studies into political pursuits. Yet again, there is money-making, that lures many more again away from scholarly pursuits into more lucrative trades. </p>
<p>And, saddest of all for Plato as seemingly for Dennett too, some amongst the young who have been taught clever forms of dialectical argumentation too early fall prey to cynicism or “<a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedo.html">misologia</a>”: a scorn for the whole business of true philosophy like that of Callicles, who had a sophistic training himself.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65099/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Sharpe works for Deakin University. He is part of an ARC funded grant on the history of philosophy, its practice and practices, and relations to the world.</span></em></p>No comfort in Dennett for detractors of philosophy and humanities research …Matthew Sharpe, Associate Professor in Philosophy, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/642902016-08-23T08:01:41Z2016-08-23T08:01:41ZA pub brawl over research funding doesn’t benefit any of us<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135125/original/image-20160823-30257-152s889.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Is this really how we want to decide where research funding should be allocated?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Here we go again. On Monday, we were interested to see The Daily Telegraph’s Natasha Bita and 2GB broadcaster Ray Hadley making a strong fist of implying they would make good directors of Australia’s research funding system, supported by a college of experts in suburban pubs.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/taxpayer-dollars-wasted-on-absurd-studies-that-do-nothing-to-advance-australian-research/news-story/c0c20e651da84b3f249f6e77405cfc7c">this piece in the Telegraph</a>, Bita provides us with some examples of what are headlined “‘absurd’ studies that do nothing to advance Australian research”. </p>
<p>Studies lined up for ridicule included a project to “investigate warfare in the ancient Tongan state through a study of earthwork fortifications”; another on “whether colleagues chatting in open-plan offices ‘creates annoyance’ and affects productivity”; and an investigation of the “post World War II evolution of the Australian university campus”. </p>
<p>Hadley <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/research-funding-for-obscure-projects-needs-closer-examination-morrison-warns/news-story/602d7b2ecdba18fd1b1dbc4d41c763a6">joined in the ruck</a>, suggesting that the Australian Research Council (ARC) should be forced to “justify its grants in the front bar of a pub in western Sydney or northside Brisbane”.</p>
<h2>Get a new hobby horse folks, this one’s dead</h2>
<p>It’s all so sadly familiar: lazy swipes by lazy blowhards at lazy academics lazing their way through granting procedures (notwithstanding the fact that these procedures are hyper-competitive). It seems like this has happened nearly every year since taxpayer dollars started being spent on science and research.</p>
<p>In 2014, Fox News joined with Texas Republican Representative Lamar Smith in <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/09/28/feds-spend-300k-on-study-on-how-to-ride-bikes.html">lambasting “wasted” US National Science Foundation money</a>. In 2013, while in opposition, Australian Liberal MP Jamie Briggs condemned <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/education/pyne-steps-back-on-grants-audit/news-story/a2c86e334b8c560ad45c8419ffde759d">“completely over-the-top” and “ridiculous”</a> grants. </p>
<p>As is now standard, these attackers often stress that they’re not against science and research <em>per se</em>; they’re just upset that research they don’t value is taking money away from the research they reckon really matters. </p>
<p>It seems all such commentators really <em>know</em> <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/taxpayer-dollars-wasted-on-absurd-studies-that-do-nothing-to-advance-australian-research/news-story/c0c20e651da84b3f249f6e77405cfc7c">what valuable research looks like</a> and what it does not. And in Australia they apparently also know exactly whom to call on to back them up.</p>
<h2>All roads lead to a western Sydney pub</h2>
<p>If you’re Ray Hadley, for example, the only way to collect genuine, representative views on things we should value – and therefore fund – is to go to a pub in western Sydney. It’s as if these pubs are populated by the most genuine Australians: people united in a single dream of how the perfect Australia should look, and moreover that it’s the <em>right</em>, perhaps <em>only</em>, dream.</p>
<p>In Ray’s view, discourse in these Utopian drinking establishments represents the true north of Australian public opinion, which naturally includes how best to prioritise research funding. </p>
<p>But why on earth would this be our yardstick for measuring value? </p>
<p>If we’re going to talk about what people do and don’t value, ask us what we think about motor sport, AFL, or hipster poetry slams. We’re not huge fans. But saying that doesn’t mean we think they are without some intrinsic value, or aren’t incredibly important to others, or shouldn’t be supported by the government or community at large. </p>
<p>You see, people differ. Sometimes we are interested in things that others aren’t, and that’s OK. That’s part of living in societies and agreeing to hand over a proportion of our income in order to maintain, and nurture, these societies. And it’s not as if the government doesn’t fund things like <a href="http://www.ausport.gov.au/supporting/funding">sport</a>. </p>
<h2>Being different is damned useful</h2>
<p>Over the last ten thousand years or so, humans have come up with this great thing called specialisation. Instead of everyone being a food-collecting, house-building, animal-husbanding generalist, we’ve discovered that having some people excel at spouting confected rage on the radio, and other people being good at assessing the quality of research, is a good thing for us as a society. </p>
<p>So for Australian society, how could an idealised, homogeneous subset of working-class (and typically white male) pub-goers be the ultimate litmus test for deciding if something is of value <em>to the whole country</em>? </p>
<p>In what possible world would they be the sole, and best, representatives of all Australian people – all taxpayers, all parents, all community groups, everyone? In what possible world is <em>any</em> single demographic group going to be?</p>
<p>There are innumerable potential problems out there, so many that we can’t be sure we even know what all of them are, better yet which are most important to invest money and research effort in.</p>
<p>And it’s impossible to tell which individual idea or piece of research might trigger the next revolutionary breakthrough. Few people anticipated that optimising radio telescopes would yield <a href="http://www.csiro.au/en/About/History-achievements/Top-10-inventions">Wi-Fi</a>, or that bird watching would lead to an understanding of <a href="http://australianmuseum.net.au/gould-and-his-contribution-to-science">evolution</a>, or that the musings of a few philosophers would transform our <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations">economy</a>.</p>
<p><em>We</em> don’t know precisely what research should be funded today, and neither do Hadley, or Bita, or the individual researchers submitting their research grants, “absurd” or otherwise. We’re sure we would all agree that investing in anything is risky, so like any sensible investor, society diversifies when allocating its collective research dollars. </p>
<p>And to the degree that anyone decides where the money should be spent, it should be people who have the knowledge and expertise to <a href="https://theconversation.com/if-youre-going-to-ridicule-research-do-your-homework-64238">understand</a> and judge the relative merits of research proposals.</p>
<p>Of course, we prioritise a sizeable chunk of the total research kitty to certain areas, pursuits, problems and interests. But to arbitrarily decide that a research area is literally of no value because five guys in a pub in a particular part of the country <em>might</em> laugh at the grant proposal title? Who’s being absurd now?</p>
<h2>Is this really just about exchanging cathartic rants?</h2>
<p>It’s fair to say that some of our colleagues in academia are unquestionably as dismissive of the priorities of Ray Hadley’s mythical, homogeneous, working class pub-goer as those pub-goers allegedly are of them.</p>
<p>It’s also fair to say that we from the research side of town could do more to be available, relevant and intelligible to people who would like to ask questions of us, to know more about what we do, and perhaps to make suggestions about what we <em>should</em> do. This is, at least in part, a failure of the research class to reach out beyond its own borders.</p>
<p>But we also have to ask: how much do people want to be reached out to? We ourselves wouldn’t want people constantly cluttering our Facebook timelines, inboxes, Twitter feeds and pub chats with attempts to make us like motor sports, AFL, hipster poetry slams or Donald Trump. </p>
<p>Honestly, we’re happy for other people to prioritise spending money (yes, even sacred taxpayer money) on things even if we don’t personally value them. We also hope that in turn perhaps they might be able to be accept us wanting to know more about the post World War II evolution of the Australian university campus.</p>
<p>In the end, perhaps the solution to this constantly rehashed problem of conflicting priorities is simply to acknowledge that people will always have conflicting priorities, and think about how best to live alongside each other: mythical, homogeneous pub-goer and irrelevant, out-of-touch academic alike? </p>
<p>Not all differences of opinion are problems that need to, or even <em>can</em>, be solved.</p>
<p>Perhaps instead of periodically lobbing abusive word-bombs at each other via our media outlet of choice, we could all occasionally go to a pub halfway between <em>Western</em> Sydney and the <em>University</em> of Sydney, ask each other a few questions, and raise a glass to the wonder that is the diversity of Australian culture. Surely we’d agree we’ve all benefited from that. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Will Grant will be online for an Author Q&A between 10 and 11am AEST on Wednesday, 24 August, 2016. Post any questions you have in the comments below.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64290/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rod Lamberts has in the past received funding from the ARC. He is also an avid pub-talker about research as co-host of The Wholesome Show </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Will J Grant receives funding from the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science. He also communicates possibly obscure research in a pub via The Wholesome Show. </span></em></p>Well, here we are again. Lazy swipes by lazy blowhards at lazy academics lazing their way through hyper competitive granting procedures.Rod Lamberts, Deputy Director, Australian National Centre for Public Awareness of Science, Australian National UniversityWill J Grant, Researcher / Lecturer, Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/477922015-09-18T10:45:10Z2015-09-18T10:45:10ZRay Hadley mauls Scott Morrison – but no hard feelings<p>Shock jock Ray Hadley and minister Scott Morrison enjoy a mutually useful, cosy relationship. Their regular on-air chats beam to a large audience; Morrison gets his message out via a sympathetic presenter.</p>
<p>But Friday was <a href="http://www.2gb.com/audioplayer/128626">something else</a>. A feral Hadley turned on Morrison – who kept calling him “mate” – accusing the minister of dirty dealing, lying and disloyalty to Tony Abbott, and challenging him to swear on a Bible to prove his denials.</p>
<p>Morrison, who was in a Canberra press gallery studio, emerged shellshocked after his long-distance encounter with the Sydney-based Hadley. At a press conference afterwards he said defiantly he wouldn’t be “bullied by anyone when it comes to my religion or my faith”, or stopping the boats, or anything else. “I am my own man,” he declared.</p>
<p>Hadley had set up Morrison. He told the Canberra radio staff to get hold of a Bible and put it in the studio, which they did. He demanded that Morrison, alone in the booth, locate the Bible, and swear on it.</p>
<p>Hadley asked: as a man of staunch religious beliefs, did Morrison understand “that I think you misled my listeners on Monday?”</p>
<p>Morrison protested his innocence, drawing on the people smugglers as character witnesses. “People know me, mate. I say what I mean, I mean what I say, I do what I say. The people smugglers know that and my colleagues know that.”</p>
<p>He was, reasonably enough, outraged at the proposition he should take an oath.</p>
<p>“I don’t see what my faith has got to do with it Ray.” Anyway, he couldn’t find the Bible. He fumbled on the shelf under the desk. “There is not one there mate … you have a copy of the budget from 2009-10. You have a Productivity Commission Report and you have got a few other things”, he reported, before coming back to his point. “I am not going to use my faith as a stunt, mate, for the program.”</p>
<p>Morrison was right about the principle, though wrong about the Bible, which was neatly placed at the other end of the small shelf.</p>
<p>Later in the interview, when Hadley returned to his call for an oath, Morrison switched his position. He still couldn’t see the Bible, and continued to berate Hadley for trying to “use my faith as some sort of debating point … It is a pretty offensive thing to do to use people’s faith and religion in an interview like this”. But he said “bring it in” and he would take the oath. “I will do it if that is what you require.”</p>
<p>Hadley, who had said he was sorry if Morrison was offended “but it is a way of making sure that I believe you”, then suddenly backed off. “I am certainly not going to insist on making anyone do anything they don’t wish to do.”</p>
<p>Asked later why he had changed his position on the oath, Morrison told reporters: “I didn’t believe he would insist on it.” Hadley had probably understood he’d overstepped the line, Morrison said.</p>
<p>The set-to was born out of their Monday discussion when Hadley suggested to Morrison that Turnbull was plotting. Morrison said: “Everybody knows where I stand supporting the prime minister. I have got no idea what others are up to and that’s up to them and I have no reason to think that anyone would be up to anything, Ray.” If anyone was plotting “they wouldn’t be talking to me”. As for Turnbull, “I haven’t seen him doing anything. He hasn’t said anything to me”.</p>
<p>After Abbott was brought down, Hadley had a big rant, including a spray about Morrison, referring to his comments. Morrison contacted him, asking to go on air to answer the attack.</p>
<p>On Friday Hadley demanded to know why Morrison had not “reached out” to Abbott after he was defeated and whether he was “embarrassed by the role you played in his demise”.</p>
<p>“Well mate, when bosses change … you turn up for work the next day and you get on with it,” Morrison told him. “I expressed my condolences to him and I said good luck and I shook his hand.”</p>
<p>He had had “no role in his demise. For the last five, six years I served Tony Abbott as a shadow minister, as a minister and I gave him everything I had … He got my vote on Monday night and he had my support.”</p>
<p>But why hadn’t Morrison influenced his factional allies – the several people who look to him in the party? “You must be confusing me with Bill Shorten. … In the Labor Party and in the unions people go around strong-arming people for their votes. Now I don’t do that, mate,” Morrison said.</p>
<p>Morrison revealed that on Friday of last week – when there was a Daily Telegraph story saying Abbott planned to axe a number of ministers – he had warned the Prime Minister’s Office “that I thought things were pretty febrile and they should be on high alert”.</p>
<p>Hadley wondered if Morrison found it a bit strange that he would be the only Abbott supporter elevated in the Turnbull Sunday reshuffle, in which Morrison is set to replace Joe Hockey as treasurer.</p>
<p>“Well I believe in promotion on merit,” Morrison said. The only person who had offered him the job of treasurer before Monday’s ballot had been Abbott, he said.</p>
<p>Hadley said that Abbott thought that Morrison “ran with the foxes and hunted with the hounds”. “Well he is wrong,” Morrison retorted.</p>
<p>When Abbott proposed he run for deputy leader and take the treasurer post, he could not “understand, Ray, why I was being offered that job when he had showed such strong support for Joe Hockey. He was asking me to throw Joe Hockey under a bus.”</p>
<p>“One of Tony Abbott’s great strengths is his loyalty and I didn’t understand why he wanted me to pick a fight with Joe Hockey and throw him under a bus and why he wanted me to pick a fight with [deputy leader] Julie Bishop who I had no grievance with.”</p>
<p>“I have never been offered the job of treasurer by Malcolm Turnbull.”</p>
<p>Finally, the Hadley onslaught ended with his telling Morrison “we will talk to you some time in the future”.</p>
<p>Morrison said later he was “very, very disappointed” with the attempted bullying on the basis of his faith. “Ray and I have been good mates.”</p>
<p>But after the “dust settles and the moods change” they’d be back on air. “I’m a forgiving sort of person, I know he is too … Stuff happens, we build a bridge and we get over it, don’t we?”</p>
<p>Within hours the bridge had been constructed. Hadley reported later in his show they’d exchanged texts. He had told Morrison half of his audience thought he had gone over the top; the other half “still love me”. Morrison had replied, “at least I got half back”. He said he would be in touch after Monday, when the ministers will be sworn in.</p>
<p>They are both going to sign the crash helmet Morrison had arrived with for the interview.</p>
<p>Morrison’s last text words were: “All good mate. Talk soon”.</p>
<p>And so it goes, in the theatre of political talkback.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/politics-podcast-arthur-sinodinos-on-why-australia-needed-a-new-prime-minister-47696">Listen to the latest Politics with Michelle Grattan podcast with guest, Arthur Sinodinos.</a></strong></p>
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Shock jock Ray Hadley and minister Scott Morrison enjoy a mutually useful, cosy relationship. Their regular on-air chats beam to a large audience; Morrison gets his message out via a sympathetic presenter…Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.