Talk:Stanley Fish

Murray is best known for defending racism in the controversial book "The Bell Curve".

He did not actually defend racism in that book. In the book, Murray and Herrnstein argued that IQ exists; that it is heritable; and that some of the difference in mean IQ scores between the white European population of the United States and the African-American population (one full standard deviation of 15 points) is probably attributable to genetic factors. (FOR WHOM THE BELL CURVE TOLLS: A Prelude to an Upcoming Special Issue of Skeptic (Volume 3, #3)An Interview with the Author of The Bell Curve CHARLES MURRAY Interview by Frank Miele)If you had read the book (specifically the thirteenth chapter), you would know that nowhere in it does Murray defend racism.

This is the dictionary definition of racism.

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I'm with you anonymous person. That's why I'm deleting this sentence. Actually, there's lots else wrong with it, too. It's POV to say that Murray is "best known" for that particular book anyway -- he was a pretty important public intellectual before it.

--Christofurio 23:42, May 19, 2004 (UTC)

Isn't Stanley Fish the guy who published Sokal's fake article in Social Text? Or is that someone else entirely?

I think you're thinking of Aronowitz.

Copyright violation

As requested by Mwanner, I'll note that certain sentences are copied verbatim or only slightly modified from the FIU link cited in the copyvio notice:

FIU text	Wikipedia text
"Fish earned his Ph.D. ... from Yale University in 1962. He taught English at the University of California at Berkeley and Johns Hopkins University before becoming arts and sciences professor of English and professor of law at Duke University, where he taugh for 14 years in the 1980s and 90s."	"Fish earned his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1962. He taught English at the University of California at Berkeley and Johns Hopkins University before becoming Arts and Sciences Professor of English and professor of law at Duke University from 1986 to 1998."
"Considered a leading scholar on English poet John Milton—author of “Paradise Lost”—Fish’s reputation was cemented by his book “How Milton Works”, published in 2001."	"Considered a leading scholar of Milton, a reputation cemented by the book How Milton Works in 2001...."
"Fish is best known for his work on interpretive communities, which looks at how the interpretation of a text by a reader depends on the reader's acceptance of a common set of foundational assumptions or texts."	"...Fish is best known for his work on interpretive communities, ... that studies how the interpretation of a text by a reader depends on the reader's ... acceptance of a common set of foundational assumptions or texts."

There may be more. I stopped there. --Flex 13:07, July 22, 2005 (UTC)

It appears that FIU copied Wikipedia, not the other way around. The press release is dated June 29. The last major change to the page was June 11 and the text in fact goes back months further. I expect this sort of thing will become increasingly common as Wikipedia becomes more popular. AaronSw 15:33, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

In fact, that is exactly what happened. I emailed FIU's office of media relations and asked them about the similarities. They responded:

I am responding your email to the Office of Media Relations regarding a possible copyright infringement of Wikipedia's entry for Florida International University Professor Stanley Fish.

Please allow me to express our sincere apology for not properly sourcing the material we used in the press release announcing his hiring. We will fix the problem immediately by amending the press release in our archive database.

--Flex 12:38, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

Fish and Legal Theory

I think something should be put in about Fish's writings on jurisprudence. It can't be said that he has a particularly strong reputation in the field, but he has been published on legal theory and, if only because of his reputation as an English scholar, his efforts produced a number of responses from such distinguished jurists as Ronald Dworkin and Richard Posner User: JRJW 19 December 2005

Interpretive communities

1. I have talked to Stanley Fish, and he has said that the author's intent is the only possible meaning a text can have.
2. The NYT article I cited in edit summaries makes very clear that all interpretation is necessarily interpretation of authorial intent.
3. I have fixed the sloppy wording of "true."

Can someone please give a reason, therefore, for deleting accurate information from this article? Phil Sandifer 22:22, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

1 That you have spoken to Fish about this issue is unverifiable, and I for one don't believe you. Er sorry, I mean... I have Stanley Fish right here and he's saying that what he intended to say was that authorial intent is meaningless. (sigh)

2 That NYT article is just another example of what Fish does. He approaches an established debate, makes some concessions to one side or the other and then explains why the debate in its current form is meaningless. The statements in this Wikipedia article shoehorn Fish back into the established debate that he deftly sidesteps in the NYT article. If it said that he wrote something like, "All interpretation would be by definition interpretation of authorial intent, but true interpretation is impossible anyway, because of the limitations of interpretive communities, etc," then you'd be closer to summarizing what he said in the NYT article. The current Wikipedia article makes it seem as if he's taken sides against the arguments made in Wimsatt and Beardsley's seminal paper "The Intentional Fallacy," and that he has not done.

3 The reason Wikipedia is riddled with errors and will always be riddled with errors is that there are posers like Phil who will take ownership of material they don't understand and prevent those who do from making corrections.

Andy Barnes 1:07, 19 February 2006