The Perils of Pop Philosophy

ThousandStars tips a new piece by Julian Sanchez, the guy who, in case you missed it, brought us a succinct definition of the one-way hash argument (of the type often employed in the US culture wars). This one is about the dangers of a certain kind of oversimplifying, as practiced routinely by journalists and bloggers. "This brings us around to some of my longstanding ambivalence about blogging and journalism more generally. On the one hand, while it's probably not enormously important whether most people have a handle on the mind-body problem, a democracy can't make ethics and political philosophy the exclusive province of cloistered academics. On the other hand, I look at the online public sphere and too often tend to find myself thinking: 'Discourse at this level can't possibly accomplish anything beyond giving people some simulation of justification for what they wanted to believe in the first place.' This is, needless to say, not a problem limited to philosophy."

Comments

Wrong, Wrong, Wrong

[siloko]

'Discourse at this level can't possibly accomplish anything beyond giving people some simulation of justification . . .

Well the guys obviously wrong, or at least guilty of a typo - I think he meant stimulation of justification.

Time for philosophers to take a stand.

[lxs]

Let's have an international philosophers strike to protest. Let's bring this planet to it's knees!

Re:Time for philosophers to take a stand.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just remember not to take them out to dinner or you'll just end up deadlocked.

I don't see the point in discussing this article.

[tnok85]

Discourse at this level can't possibly accomplish anything beyond giving us some simulation of justification for what we wanted to believe in the first place.

I know better

[Chrisq]

The guy reckons that people who know least about a complex subject generally think that its simple and that they know a lot about it, whereas experts know that there are many complexities and know that their knowledge is limited.

Bah, rubbish - what does he know about it?

So what he's basically saying is...

[lanceblack]

oversimplifying is bad?

Re:Conservation of Mind.

[machine321]

We disagree.

Re:Conservation of Mind.

[__aaxwdb6741]

We are Blog. Intelligence is irrelevant. Resistance is futile. We will add your philosophical and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service ours.

He talks too much. That's what.

[Anonymous Coward]

"blah blah without philosophical background blah blah you won't understand any of this blah blah blah takes thousands of words and dozens of paragraphs blah blah" I mean, get to the point already, man!

Re:I think I speak for many of us when I say...

[shadow349]

What?

Blogging; never before have so many people with so little to say said so much to so few.

(Apologies to Despair).

Hey, man...

[Ignatius D'Lusional]

Y'know, like... I didn't read the whole article or nothin' but, like... I gotta say that my best philosophical arguments happen while smoking hash, man. So, like... I don't know what this guy's got against hash, be it "one-way" or another but like... oh wait. I forgot what I was saying. Oh well... now where the hell did I put the Doritos?

Re:I think I speak for many of us when I say...

[plover]

Me too!

Re:I think I speak for many of us when I say...

[Phreakiture]

What?

He said that the sort of debate that often takes place in public forums is useless, because it grossly oversimplifies things.

Re:And this is all that is required anyway

[bgray54]

You really shouldn't generalize like this. All generalizations are bad.

Re:I think I speak for many of us when I say...

[Locke2005]

Could you please illustrate that point with a car analogy? Thanks.