Response to Amy Olberding, "Philosophical Exclusion and Conversational Practices"

At the start of her insightful and disconcerting essay, Amy Olberding mentions that while responsibility for the conversational practices that exclude and are forms of boundary policing are not evenly distributed throughout the profession, they likewise belong at once to everyone and to no one, influencing how our interactions transpire but rarely are consciously adopted or mindfully endorsed. In reading these remarks the author expected her to outline, perhaps obliquely, the powers and persons who have more of this responsibility and who may very well know what they are doing. The exclusionary effects of the patterns of conversation Olberding discusses and dissects are real. But she is also a bit one-sided in presenting the nature of the disciplinary discussion today. The preceding paragraph is a bit defensive, but it also helps explain the perspective from which he write the present comments.