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I respond to this report here https://jasonstanleyantifascist.substack.com/p/on-the-philosophical-muddle-that
For what it’s worth, I agree. I have, with some trepidation, given it a bunch of my papers and asked…
Looking at some of the AI-amplified cranks on philpeople, it is hard to agree with the assessment of this article.…
Perhaps a useful distinction here is between replacing philosophers and changing the conditions under which philosophical work gets done. LLMs…
Conditional on the hypothesis that journal editors sometimes desk reject high-quality papers written and commended by world experts on a…
Some users seem to have conflicting impressions about the (absolute level of) abilities of current iterations of the LLMs. But…
One thing I appreciate about Greco’s piece is the very helpful distinction between instrumental and intrinsic value, which he lays…
I haven't had a chance to read the book yet, but in addition to David Brooks' op-ed the NY Times also published a book review in today's print edition by Michael Roth of Wesleyan. It is also available online.
Audio of an interview today with Dreyfus and Kelly:
http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201101041000
Can someone tell me the difference between All Things Shining and Charles Taylor's "A Secular Age"? They sound very similar in their analysis and solutions.
Is there any substantial empirical data to back up these philosophical myths of the Fall that the populace (or any significant portion) of the USA has somehow gotten too rational/scientific in the making of decisions (or values they hold) or is this a kind of old-fashioned theological/prophetic Word for the people, more of our "tendency to sublime the logic of our language"?
http://www.torilmoi.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Moi_They-Practice-Their-Trades.pdf
A disclaimer: I haven't read the book. But I am anxious to read it. I am interested in the authors' claims about lack of inner life. I proposed something similar in, of all the things, the Old Testament. I stake this claim of the earlier parts that would be contemporaneous to Greek epic, but would have less confidence in it with regard to the later parts. It would be an interesting historical project to see if the concept of inner life appear at similar times.
I've only read the introductory chapters to All Things Shining and A Secular Age, but they appear to have significant differences. I suspect the former might be more appealing to atheists, while the latter is more likely to be appealing to critics of secularism. All Things Shining uses literary analysis to map the history of a crisis–the existential crisis of what the authors call "the burden of choice," the condition of having to determine for ourselves the values and rules we live by. The authors do not seem to argue for a religious view of life, but only for a more intimate acquaintance with our own lived experience. Their solution, it seems, is to accept and embrace the pluralistic nature of meaning, and not to look for a single, unifying Truth or God to ground us. Taylor's book, on the other hand, seems more about defending monotheistic institutions and traditions, and critiquing some contemporary ways of thinking about the history of secularism. Both books might appeal to the same sensibility, the sense of being out of sync with our own lives, but their methods and aims are a bit different. At least, that's what I got from what little I've read.
Here's Brooks: "Dreyfus and Kelly don’t give us a satisfying basis upon which to distinguish the whooshing some people felt at civil rights rallies from the whooshing others felt at Nazi rallies."
I'm guessing that Dreyfus-Kelly were relying implicitly on the distinction between activities that liberate millions from those that annihilate millions. I appreciate, though, that it's a difficult distinction for some people to grasp.
Intellectuals have a long and dubious history of romanticizing and making a fetish of the familiar "mythos over logos" notion that enlightenment secularism has made our world disenchanted. Longing for a golden age of hellenistic arcadian "whooshing up" has a complex pedigree, one that includes German romanticism and New Age mysticism, but it's a thin line between Frazier's antiquarianism and Evola's mytho-fascism, or between the academicism of Edith Hamilton or Northrop Frye on the one hand, and the regressive cultism of Rene Guenon or Ezra Pound on the other. I recommend the book "The politics of myth: a study of C.G. Jung, Mircea Eliade, and Joseph Campbell" by Robert S. Ellwood, as an antidote to any easy thinking about this very difficult way of viewing the past.
Now on the NY Times Bestseller List at #22!
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