For our series of wicked book reviews:
The volume's weaknesses come as an especially great disappointment, because there is so much room for more detailed, careful engagement with philosophical work on reasons that brings to bear a more sophisticated and careful understanding of background issues in the philosophy of language and linguistic semantics. It would be incredibly lovely to have a book that engages carefully in this space, educates rather than browbeats its readers, and distinguishes between areas of reasonable controversy and questions whose answers should be clear. This book is not that book. It is full of unsupported sweeping claims, substantive stipulations of what is true that are unaccompanied by arguments, deeply uncharitable readings of others' positions, overly uncritical reliance on some claims defended by other authors (in some cases my own), an arrogant and contemptuous tone toward other authors that is particularly out of place in light of how undeveloped their own view is and how uncareful its own development, and a pervasive sense that it is the job of philosophers to tell each other how it is okay to talk, rather than to work to make sense of one another.
It is a slight worry about this review that the main example of "uncharitable readings" concerns one of Schroeder's colleagues. But critical reviews are a rare commodity, given that academics are generally ass-kissing cowards, so this candid assessment (assuming it isn't mistaken) is refreshing. If Professors Weaver and Scharp reply, I will certainly note that.




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