Cameron Watch, Again
Alex:
May 4th, 2007
David Cameron’s latest little piece of political opportunism has got the scientific community in a huff and rightly so. Apparently, the lessons of the science curriculum should be flexible, and probably sufficently flexible to include challenges to large-scale scientific consensus during lessons. That’s right: creationism of the intelligent design brand taught alongside evolution.
Once again, this shows the clear reasoning behind the current Tories, a reasoning that mirrors that of New Labour circa 1997. Neo-Liberal Thatcherite with a hatred of society? Join the party! Left-environmentalist with a concern for the lovely ‘ickle animals? We are for you! Country-side Aliance type readying his pack of hounds? Here’s your badge! Wacky fundamentalist, whose opinions have no scientfic, theological (see the Arch-Bishop of Canterbury’s comments) or philosophical basis? Come abroad! Sadly, as the good ship New Labour sinks without trace into the quagmire of Iraq, its new skipper will be doubtless reduced to such obscene popularism. Not that we ever expected any more of him anyway.
May 4th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
Are you implying that creationism has no place in philosophy? I’m no creationist myself but I’ll think you’ll find that many scientists find their science compatible with arguments about intelligent design. I have no problem against teaching creationism alongside evolution – what are we afraid of? The students should be able to think for themselves and work out which is better without us getting worried about the status given to both. We learn about bad theories in philosophy so why not science? As philosophy of science would tell you, what counts as science and what doesn’t is not clear-cut. Why cut something out of classes that can plausibly be held to be scientific by many? Even if you believe that creationism is not science, I don’t think you should assume that so flippantly. A fundamentalist scientist is almost as bad as a theistic one!
May 5th, 2007 at 1:18 am
Sigh. Yes, creationism and specifically the intelligent design advocated in the states should be kept out of science class rooms, because as science, which is what is taught in science classrooms, it is ultimately so suspect that I doubt you can call it science by any decent definition. Its psuedo-science at best, why not freshen up astronomy classes with lengthy discussions of astrology as well? We could study the theory of four humours in biology while we are at it. Mathematics, why not numerology. In short, it isn’t science, if anything its very bad psuedo-Christian theology, and has no place in the science classroom (or for that matter the theology one).
By saying creationism I don’t mean God created the universe, which I clearly don’t think is incompatiable with evolution, but specifically things like irreduciable complexity and the arguments of the young earth creationists who advocate that the age of the earth is 6000 years. Should children be taught all the bad theories that there have been in science and be allowed to decide for themselves? Or should they be taught which is the best to our current knowledge? All science education is a gross simplification in order to make it understandable, so why, at a pragmatic level this shouldn’t be taught, unless to show why it is utterly wrong. What are we afraid of? A complete de-valuing of scientific education perhaps?
I am a theologian and philosopher by trade, and some that I am going on to study at PhD level. So can hardly be called anti-religion or, indeed, anti-philosophy. And I am also hardly a fundamentalist anything, but much less a fundamentalist scientist and I am well aware of the issues of philosophy of science. I am also not entirely pro-Darwinism, as I think many of the claims of, for example, evolutionary psychology, are weak to say the least. Though this reads like a flippant dismissal, the post is about Cameron mainly, not about the ins and outs of creationism. I would gladly say why it isn’t science, but this isn’t the time or place.
May 5th, 2007 at 8:56 am
The main problem with teaching ID in science lessons is that there is no emprical evidence to suggest that the theory is in fact correct (however hard they are trying at the Biologic Institute). Teach that it’s a theory that some believe in Religious Studies lessons by all means, but it has no place in science.
If a scientist had come up with a theory that they had absolutley no evidence for and then tried to get it accepted, they’d just be ignored until they had substantial corrobarative proof. I don’t see why the rules should be changed just because religion is involved (as they sadly seem to be in so many cases).
As both a Christian and a geneticists, I am strongly, strongly opposed to the teaching of ID in science classrooms until there is some scientific evidence that it is the correct theory (and with all the evidence for evolution this is a little unlikely). And yes, I have read the two papers published by the ever wonderful Douglas Axe that anti-evolutionarists now use to prove that there is a strong scientifict basis for ID. I hardly call two papers that don’t actually show anything strong scientific evidence, but if you are aware of others do let me know.
May 5th, 2007 at 10:07 am
To Alex:
You simply cannot just mention any other “obviously” unscientific thing and say well, if you are going to study intelligent design you might as well study that too. It is obviously begging the question to do that as most supporters of intelligent design do not think that numerology, astrology, and so on are actually science at all. I think there are big reasons why intelligent design might count as a science and why astrology may not. The main thing that must be admitted about evolution is that it simply cannot explain everything. Two things I will mention here are a) The origin of life and b) Consciousness. It is obvious that whilst evolution can tell you how lower life forms became higher life forms, it cannot tell you how blind matter became life in the first. More curiously, it cannot tell you how the mind became CONSCIOUS. Consciousness is such a different kind of property unlike any other that it is difficult knowing where it came from. Now, I’m not saying that these things necessarily lead you to intelligent design, just that they are considerations against (or even compatible woth) evolution. Indeed these kind of considerations strongly swayed atheist philosophers like Anthony Flew (who has now become a deist I think).
The second thing I want to say is that if you have ever read Popper and falsificationism, there is something very suspicious about evolution in that it can’t really be falsified. If a theory can’t be falsified no matter what, then obviously there is no hope for those who are against the theory. What would anyone have to do to prove evolution wrong? I cannot think of anything myself, which makes me very suspicious of whether evolution is a science (indeed Popper held the criteria that any putative scientific theory that is not falsifiable is not a scientific theory).
All things considered, I think it’s far too presumptious to not even give the other side of a very controversial debate any kind of leeway. I admit I’m kind of playing devil’s advocate here because it would take a lot more for me to be convinced of intelligent design, but I think they should at least be given a chance and not mocked away from school.
To Tasmin:
There are many points I made above which apply to you too, but I’ll reiterate that corroboration isn’t necessary for science as much as falsification is. If you argue that intelligent design cannot be corroborated, I can simply say that evolution can’t be falsified so there’s something wrong with both. And I also reiterate that often you don’t need adequate direct evidence to prove a theory, you just need an absence of any plausible OTHER explanation. If nothing at all except A can show you why B happened, then it is certain that A happened. Inference to the best explanation!
May 5th, 2007 at 10:37 am
Admittedly, evolution cannot explain those things you mention and I am dubious that it will ever explain these things successfully, in a manner that will be satisfyingly empircal. But this doesn’t explain why it should be taught alongside the speculations of a load of fundamentalist idiots. Look at your logic here: which appears to be, I just state what evolution can’t explain and this makes ID more scientifically viable that astrology. I am generally not particularly bothered about discourses policing their boundaries, but I think this is one, if the central tenet of the discipline (eg experimental data) is to be respected.
I am afraid I can simply mention other obviously unscientific things and claim they should be taught, since they are essentially on the same level as ID, in that they have no empirical evidence and no regard to the scientific method. Explaining what Methodologically, ID includes metaphysical speculations, or should not be allowed in a science class room. And I am afraid to point out Flew is probably the only atheist to be swayed by this argument.
Let us refresh our memory of the moves of the movement: 1. there is something really complex, 2. evolution/science can’t yet explain it 3. soooooo God! Now this is begging questions so much I can’t believe anyone would take it seriously. Simply because something is not yet science, doesn’t mean it is God, it just means science hasn’t explained it yet. And besides the God (alien? robot? whatever) is hardly easy to argue back to the God of Jesus Christ, or any “theist” God or as my lecturer noted, any God worthy of anyones worship. I problematise the term theist because I have serious problems believing that anyone, philosophical theists included, believes in the theist God. This is not to mention everyone of IDs irrediucibly complex systems has been shown quite comprehensively to be actually fairly easily reduced. Of course, ID is far more unfalsifiable than evolution is itself….
What is obvious regarding ID is that its supporters have no regard for science proper, but rather an ideologically blinkered version of it that only serves their narrow problematically Christian worldview.
I have read Popper and I am aware of his post-logical positivist moves, but I regard him as Jacques Derrida did, as a lot of a bore, whose opinions are fairly boring. That and his readings of Marx and Plato in Open Society and Its Enemies are so creepingly anodyne they make me want to kill – ooo Plato was a fascist etc etc, with no regard for the literary genre of The Republic. But the word very suspicious never cross my mind when I considered evolution. Despite the fact it is unfalsifiable, the overwhelming quantity of evidence is its favour. Unfortunately, philosophy of science mostly lives in a magical world that is completely divorced from the day to day reality of science. While philosophers of science might get all worried about evolution being unfalsifiable, whole disciplines found themselves and the almost entire real world success of their experiments (which are very successful) upon its principles. Now this appears to subscribe to a vaguely pragmatic theory of the nature of truth in science, but thats fairly much what I believe anyway, with correct regard for data, clearly. And though a bore, I am pretty sure Popper would have been pretty mad at his ideas used to call evolution in as “just a theory”.
So yes, the other side of the debate should be given leeway, but only sufficent leeway so it can be crushed and exposed for the sham intellectually it is.
May 5th, 2007 at 10:50 am
” If you argue that intelligent design cannot be corroborated, I can simply say that evolution can’t be falsified so there’s something wrong with both.”
This is why Poppers theory is fairly nonesensical. Since it fails to prioritise what science does on a day to day basis, finding facts etc, and makes us able to trump it all by throwing out the falsification card and saying “there’s something wrong with both”. What is wrong with one, is not the same degree as what is wrong with the other….ID can’t be corroborated or falsified, so where do we stand now?
May 5th, 2007 at 11:46 am
Gosh, what a load of stuff to reply to! It’s fun though!
First of all, by continuing to use the words “idiots” with regards to theists is not only disrespectful but completely needless. Fundamentalist theists are bad yes, but scientists who can’t understand the idea that they could possibly be wrong are almost as bad. There is very little science that has remained static, all science seems to be subject to change. You admit that there are some things that science could never explain but you don’t say anything more about what this implies. Why can’t science explain them? Is it that the subject matter is unscientific itself or that science just doesn’t have that kind of power? And now, can I ask you a question. What if (and I’m not necessarily saying this is the case), what if something could not be explained by anything except by the postulation of a creator, would you still say that we shouldn’t believe in a creator? If a miracle happened and you knew FOR SURE that nothing could explain it except something supernatural, wouldn’t that in itself count as evidence for the supernatural? I agree that I can’t think of any situations like that, but just for argument’s sake, I’m trying to show that you can come to the conclusion of God just through experience (if experience can’t be explained any other way).
Second of all, I think you’ve misunderstood about the whole creationist thing leading to a Judeo-Christian conception of God. All I think creationism shows is that there is a CREATOR. It doesn’t tell us about any of the properties of such a creator, hence why I was referring to Deism rather than Christianity. All that is required of the creator is that whoever He is consciously created the universe.
As for Popper being a bore, how can you be so blasphemous! (;)) I prefer him to any continental who is so muddled up with his pretentious lingo that he doesn’t make any sense to ANYONE. Yes, Derrida, Heidegger, the lot. Anyway, let’s not digress, you admit that evolution is unfalsifiable. For me that in itself does show that there is something wrong with evolution. Every other scientific theory that I can think of is at least falsifiable in principle. And to say that philosophy of science lives in a magical world is completely ridiculous. You are missing the point of philosophy of science which is to analyse science and check whether the methods used are right or wrong. It takes a birds-eye view of science in a way science can’t itself. There is nothing else which can analyse the scientific method, and I think it is important to check the workings of anything like that. As for Popper himself being mad about his ideas used to say that evolution is just a theory, Popper does admit that evolution isn’t science but rather a “metaphysical research programme”. But you don’t believe Popper anyway so there’s no point going on about what he has to say.
I’m also not saying that evolution is just as bad as intelligent design, or vice versa. I was just saying that simple corroboration isn’t enough for any of them.
May 5th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Oh my goodness. I am sorry but trotting out the standard analytical philosophy line on “pretentious lingo” just makes me want to spit. If you read these people as foreigners and as part of a longer tradition that includes Hegel but more significantly the phenomenologists and the whole bank of other literatures you will realise that the only thing they are is different from analytical philosophy, but still philosophers nonetheless. Do they spoon feed everyone in philosophy departments the continental bad, that is to say filled with “pretensious lingo”, that actually stops anyone actually reading them and making their own mind up? I am suprised your department lets you read them, least the books “muddle” you up, as if being muddled (made to think) was a bad thing. Read Being and Time, its pretty clear, much clearer than some Kripke I recently had to choke down. And also, since when was philosophy supposed to be easy. And also, how much continental philosophy have you actually read before making sweeping statements regarding a whole tradition of thought. Please don’t do this, it really gets my goat. Not only is it frankly ignorant, but completely unphilosophical in its approach. You have dismissed a whole tradition. What do you know of, say, Alain Badiou, who is deeply a continental philosopher whose influences include Deleuze and the much maligned Lacan, but it interested in mathematics to the degree that he founds an ontology on it, and on Russell’s set theory. His writing is crystal clear. What about Deleuzes stuff in What Is Philosophy that you can read to anyone? By all means, say late Heidegger is mystical nonsense, but don’t just dismiss it all out of hand. Incidently, Wittgenstein basically says the same as Heidegger and Derrida and I don’t see anyone taking him down.
PS Popper really is a bore. For all his faults, and for the amount of people he annoys, at least Derrida was interesting. Briefly and in a badly argued way, Popper belongs to this British common-sensical mode of philosophy, which seems to simply codify common sense and use “oh come off it” as its mode of argument. Compared to Derrida, Popper just tells you something you already knew, where as at least Derrida inspires you to think, even if you violently disagree with him. As for Derrida not making sense to anyone, well that is clearly false, since I think many people have a grasp of what is going on, since they discuss him all the time. His book on money and his book on religion are as clear as any other philosophy book, though something like Of Grammatology might be tougher. Sorry but this has really made me angry.
1. I am hardly disrespectful to theists and far, far closer to their stance than atheists in almost every way. Actually, I’ll change that for religious believers, because I don’t think theists exist. as I said before, no one believes in the God of theism. To conclude God is perhaps philosophically acceptable in the cases you describe. Yet to conclude God as science oversteps the boundaries of what science is able to say – it strays into metaphysics and what cannot be understood by its methods. Sure, a scientist can think it might point to this conclusion, but not when he is speaking as a scientist. I agree with the bit about fundamentalist scientists, by the way.
2. I think it is obvious that the ID programme in the states refers directly to the Judeo-Christian God. Just look around some pro-ID websites. I agree with you on this point, but all this talk by ID types about “its just a creator, it could be anything” is clearly nonesense generated to give it an air of scientific orthodoxy.
3. RE: Popper. I do actually side with Popper when he says certain strands of evolution have a metaphysical bent, particularly evo psychology and the kind of tripe Dennett/Dawkins comes out with all the time. Now about the magical world comment, well I still think this is the case. Though second order reflection in philosophy of science is worthy and interesting, it is divorced from science as practice neccesarily as it is second order reflection. Hence to some extent, it always see science as such as a partial representation of it, so always inhabits neccesarily a partial fantasy in order to gain its birds eye view.
May 5th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
I’ll try and reply to your post in more detail if I remember to, but the fact that you can be so rude in a civilised discussion is putting me off a little. No need to say things like “makes me want to spit”, it’s not just my wild little idea – I think I’m in good company when I find continental philosophy (some, not all) needlessly confusing. The simplest continental literature I’ve read is Sartre’s Existentialism and Humanism (and bits of Being and Nothingness) and even they were too painful. I also had a look at passages from the stuff you posted a while back – Baudrillaurd I think his name was. I think even you wouldn’t be able to explain that to me, and you’re obviously a fan!
May 5th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
Hmm. Maybe I am being polemic here, but I hardly think “so rude” is appropriate.
Say I insulted what you pretty much do for a living, saying it is all nonsense, I think you would be pretty offended too. It is precisely the fact that it isn’t your wild idea that it annoys me, its the whole systematic dismissal of a highly complex system of ideas under “they are a bit hard to read innit”. I just get sick of hearing this total non-argument from intelligent people. You might be in good company in a department in this country and probably in the states, but actually worldwide, continental philosophy’s figures such as Heidegger are actually better known and better respected (for example in the orient, Japan etc). As I said, these people are translated and they are part of a tradition, that has to be read sympathetically, not in the way that analytical philiosophers have read it since Russell, which is simply to begin by saying “this is difficult and not rigorous” and proceed to hate it prima facie. No one can be expected to understand anything without understanding first the context it is written in and the technical language it is using. Not everyone in philosophy should aspire to write like a scientist. As for Baudrillard, I would be able to explain a great deal to you, but obviously not everything. Then again, I doubt I would be able to explain what someone like, say, Quine was going on about 100% of the time, let alone Mr Terse Davidson.
May 5th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
And is Existentialism is Humanism really that difficult a read? Sure, bits of being and nothingness are tough going, but I’ve had entirely non-philosophical friends breeze through it.
May 5th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
Deary, you are being so hypocritical. You get angry and feel really insulted when I say anything about your beloved continental philosophy and yet you keep on making sweeping remarks about the whole of the analytic tradition! You mock them and say they’re boring, not very creative, not intelligent enough (shown by your use of the word “innit”), too commonsensical and rigorous (as if that was ever a bad thing?!). I don’t see how you can get away with making such remarks about analytic philosophers, which are nastier than anything I’ve said about continentals.
But anyway, could it not be that we’re just taking a different meaning of philosophy? I like the analytic approach because I like reasoned valid arguments that convince me that something is the case. Continental philosophy on the whole tends to be more “literary” and focusses on (often unargued) spiels about the human condition. They probably both have their place, but given that I have been studying in the analytic tradition I’m more likely to favour the analytic approach for its almost-mathematical assessment of its subject matter. I like it that way, because I see philosophy as strongly linked with the sciences rather than to literature. The point of philosophy for me is not to confuse and muddle you for ages thinking of interpretations, but conversely to elucidate things that you were already muddled on. Being modelled on common sense is a strong point, not a weak. If it illuminates something you “already knew”, even more points in favour of such a philosophy for keeping in line with intuitions.
As for your argument about continental philosophy being well loved elsewhere, to be honest I don’t know the point of that rather superfluous remark. For a start, there are lots of things that are appreciated in the East and not here. Stoning women to death is a well-loved practice but no one’s going to use it as an argument to say maybe it’s not as bad as we think. I know the analogy borders on ridiculous but my point is that saying other people like it does not itself convince me of anything. It could well be (and I think it IS) in fact taht they just have a different conception and appreciation of philosophy than I do. In fact, what they are after is a complete different kettle of fish to what I’m after.
May 5th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
Oh and two other points.
a) When you say, “understand first the context it is written in and the technical language it is using”, I can be sympathetic towars the context because that is not the choice of the writer, but technical language? Why should I have to tolerate needless waffle?
b) What is so difficult about Quine then? Could it just be that YOUR logical training isn’t quite up to scratch?
May 5th, 2007 at 6:18 pm
And as for:
“And is Existentialism is Humanism really that difficult a read? Sure, bits of being and nothingness are tough going, but I’ve had entirely non-philosophical friends breeze through it. ”
Maybe it’s BECAUSE they’re non-philosophical that they’ve breezed through it.
May 5th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Okay, I really don’t have the fight for this discussion, which has been rehearsed all over the blogosphere in epic terms for years – probably should have back down earlier and been less aggressive from the start, but ho hum. I have to get on with serious philosophical stuff to get my degree rather than have this psuedo-debate, which I am sure you fine has tiresome as I do. I am sorry if I have offended you, which was not my intention, but it just annoys me.
Basically, you are right in that they are two different styles and approaches. I prefer neither, and think the boundary is increasingly only virtual (at least in the States), but simply object to when people trot out the standard “objection” to continental philosophy being it isn’t rigorous (by whose standards?) and it isn’t clear (again by whose standards?), particularly when they come from an analytical philosophy department and seem to be actually taught, much against proper free thinking, to hate this stuff and trot out the standard “arguments” generally. I literally meet someone who says the same thing every time I mention a figure, it happens every week. Yes I may be a hypocrit here, yet, in this country those continentally inclined are always a bit touchy because they always have to be on the defensive as to if their subject “counts”.
And as for your characterisation of continental philosophy is “speils about the human condition” I can only suggest that your exposure to it is limited, not to be rude, but you do come from an analytical department, and from what you have said it seems to be just the existentialists. Continental philosophy encompases all the areas analytical philosophy does, including philosophy of science, and with varying levels of detail and richness and, indeed, accuracy. Are, for example, Foucault’s writings on history “speils about the human tradition”? Badiou’s on mathematics and set theory? Are Derrida’s on the gift? Are Bergsons on the concept of internal time consciousness? Macintyres on morality? Laurelle’s on non-philosophy? As for the continental tradition being literary and the analytic aligned to the sciences, this doesn’t hold true anymore. In the case of a number of the figures I have mentioned: Deleuze thinks through ecology and the new biological sciences etc etc. As for unargued, well, I suggest you get hold of a copy of Post-Continental Philosophy (an outline) and read about Malarkey’s definitions of rigour etc, as he argues far better than I can. I’ll quote from the blurb, as it says it better than I could:
Post-Continental Philosophy examines the shift in Continental thought over the last ten years through the work of four central figures, Gilles Deleuze, Alain Badiou, Michel Henry, and Francois Laruelle. Though they follow seemingly different methodologies and agendas, each insist upon the need for a return to the category of immanence if Philosophy is to have any future at all. Rejecting both the German phenomenological tradition of transcendence (of the Ego, Being, Consciousness, Alterity, or Flesh), as well as the French post-structuralist valorisation of language, they instead take the immanent categories of biology (Deleuze), mathematics (Badiou), affectivity (Henry), and axiomatic science (Laruelle) as focal points for a renewal of philosophy. Consequently, Continental Philosophy is taken in a new direction that engages with naturalism with a refreshingly critical and non-reductive approach to the sciences of life, set-theory, embodiment, and knowledge. Hand in hand with this seriousness towards science and the natural world, is a reawakened appetite and aptitude for metaphysics, once this is understood as immanent and processual rather than as a transcendental thought of unchanging ideals.
a) No you shouldn’t but you shouldn’t stumble across any technical language and baulk at it. Frankly analytical philosophy is just as bad for technical language.
b) Regarding Quine I was refering to his prose style rather than his arguments. I rather like some of what he says (his famous Two Dogmas Paper), but I find him difficult in how he says it eg “We lately reflected that in general the truth of statements does obviously depend both upon extra-linguistic fact; and we noted that this obvious circumstance carries in its train, not logically but all too naturally, a feeling that the truth of a statement is somehow analyzable into a linguistic component and a factual component.”
May 5th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
“As for your argument about continental philosophy being well loved elsewhere, to be honest I don’t know the point of that rather superfluous remark.”
That was a remark to correct the usual opinion that analytical philosophy was dominant world approach. It isn’t. Its commonly thought continental philosophy is a marginal concern, where as analytical philosophy is what most people do. This is incorrect.
May 5th, 2007 at 8:20 pm
Someone get that woman a dictionary!
Philosophy is difficult, every discipline has jargon (have you talked to a plumber lately? assholes can’t use simple English! what’s so wrong with ‘drain broke, me fix’?!?), and apparently we can make careers out of whining about how hard something is rather than putting down the laptop and doing our homework.
May 5th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
I have to say, that blurb did very little to clarify anything. It was just as unclear as the philosophy itself! You say it is NOT unclear, i.e. it is clear, but by whose standards, Alex? Anyone will agree that different people find different things clear, but I think an appeal to “the normal reader” may be needed here. It’s not likely to be very clear anyway, is it, if the writers don’t even make an attempt at it, like analytic philosophers do. “Clear after interpretation” is not as clear as “plain reading” and the former simply counts as UNclear to me.
May 5th, 2007 at 9:21 pm
Did you know that Of Grammatology was top of the Paris best seller lists for several months after it was released? As was The Order of Things. The normal reader is, of course, relative. In France, just as the day to day people pick up and read Baudelaire, they read these supposedly technical texts that aren’t aimed at the “normal reader”. When Derrida died, there was a pull-out special of several pages in Le Monde explaining his life and work. I very much doubt we will see the same when A.C. Grayling shuffles off this mortal coil. My major point is 1) these works are translated, often not particularly well 2) it is a style read in a tradition and has to be best understood this way (I don’t read a paper on Philosophy of Mind and start asking why it has no references to Kafka) 3) it needs to be read with sympathy because of those things.
Quoting the blurb was only to demonstrate that the idea that analytic philosophy=science and continental=literature is increasingly outmoded (in this country) and always was fairly outmoded anyway. I don’t understand what was unclear about it to a philosophical reader. Was it the terms immanence, transcendence etc – maybe I am just used to it, but it seems clear to me. Admit to me, and be honest, how are you able to assess the content of that book and call it unclear from the blurb alone? And how many of those figures mentioned, who are the leading lights of the current debate, were you aware of before I mentioned them? Your conception of continental philosophy is somewhat outmoded. Derrida is not a big name anymore. There is a serious swing to neo-rationalism (via Badiou) and various complex forms of realism and indeed discussions of science in great detail, see the work of De Landa. See a forthcoming conference – http://www.continental-philosophy.org/2007/03/29/speculative-realism/ .
Anyway, surely someone has a better thing to do with a Saturday night than thrash this one out.
May 5th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
! and
and fun etc.