Is being cool the president’s job?… Read the rest
Rough Edges at Harvard
Aug 25th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonMore multicultural understanding, or more reading and math?… Read the rest
Groupthink?
Aug 25th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAre pro-GM scientists bullying dissenters to get them to agree?… Read the rest
Non sequiturs?
Aug 25th, 2003 | By Julian Baggini"As yet another (British) panel concluded this week, there is no evidence
that GM crops now in commercial cultivation are more dangerous to human health
than conventional foods. So there is no reason why Europeans should not eat
the GM food that Americans already consume by the siloful."
Economist leader, 26 July 2003
For the critical thinker, no error is more basic than the non sequitur: the
conclusion that doesn’t follow. Non sequiturs are extremely common. People seem
to like to scatter their texts with words like "therefore" and "so"
whether or not the various points they are making in some way follow from each
other.
Saddam Hussain showed himself to be a brilliant exponent of the non sequitur
in … Read the rest
Irritating Fella
Aug 24th, 2003 11:44 pm | By Ophelia BensonBut I already knew I disliked Alan Wolfe’s work – I just didn’t know quite how much. That’s how I found the comment about postmodernists, as a matter of fact: I was googling him to try to pin down exactly who he is and why he says such irritating things. Now I know he founded a Center for Religion, it all makes sense. I did a Note and Comment on an article of his a couple of months ago, one of the ones that disappeared when we had the server mishap, but I don’t think I’ll bother typing it back in, because the article in question is from the New Republic and it’s gone subscription. It was an irritating piece … Read the rest
Category Mistake
Aug 24th, 2003 10:45 pm | By Ophelia BensonNow wait a minute. There is a limit. I can make fun of postmodernism as well as the next person, but it has to be actual postmodernism, not just any old thing I don’t happen to agree with. There’s no shortage of real, avowed, self-declared pomos out there, there’s no need to start expanding the pool by calling people postmodernist who aren’t.
… Read the restBy ‘engaging big issues with the depth of insight that social science can offer,’ Wolfe said, the Boisi Center will stand in ‘a great tradition’ reaching back to pioneering sociologists such as Max Weber, author of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, and Emile Durkheim, author of The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, scholars who treated
Oh That Old Ploy
Aug 24th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAstrology’s alibi: we’re ‘not a science but a symbolic, allusive language.’… Read the rest
Valid Points? Or Merely the Usual Suspects?
Aug 24th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonDid Habermas and Derrida ignore the Others, are they Eurocentric, what about Africa and Asia?… Read the rest
C. Wright Mills
Aug 23rd, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘his name rarely appears on the reading lists of fashionable graduate courses in social and cultural theory’ and that’s reccomendation enough.… Read the rest
Foucault on Society
Aug 23rd, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHe wasn’t the first to point out the importance of the despised and excluded, but he did it well.… Read the rest
And Another Thing
Aug 22nd, 2003 8:20 pm | By Ophelia BensonThe subject of yesterday’s Comment interests me perhaps out of proportion to its importance…but then again perhaps not. It does involve certain habits of thought and silly ways of arguing (what one might call bad moves) that one finds in a lot of fashionable nonsense. Or to put it another way, there is some fashionable nonsense going on in Colgan’s diatribe.
For one thing there’s the sly business of motive-questioning – which in fact in cases like this surely backfires on the perpetrator. What does it amount to saying, after all? ‘There can’t possibly be a legitimate reason for thinking and writing that my novel is bad, therefore anyone who does think and write so must have some invidious motive.’ … Read the rest
Helpful Hints from Michael Hann
Aug 22nd, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe newspapapers as guides to what to say about Martin Amis.… Read the rest
‘Family-Friendly’ Policies and Gender Roles
Aug 22nd, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonStudy shows the relationship between workplace flexibility and who does the housework to be complex.… Read the rest
Who Is Rubbishing Whom?
Aug 21st, 2003 8:23 pm | By Ophelia BensonWell we’ve seen this kind of thing before. For instance we heard it in a story also in the Guardian, and by the same reporter. Perhaps she specializes in silly self-flattering self-justifying whinges by bad novelists. What a dismal career choice.
But never mind that. The point is, what makes people think it’s a good idea to say things like this? Do they not realize how stupid and self-serving it makes them look? Yo! You wrote a novel, you got it published, you put it out there. Now people have a right and even a duty to say whatever they like about it. That’s how the system works. You do not have a right to prevent them. Got that? You … Read the rest
Popularising Without Dumbing Down
Aug 21st, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonStephen Law abandoned ‘dippy’ ideas for reasoned ones.… Read the rest
Ted Honderich Page
Aug 21st, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWith links to letters from Habermas and others relevant to publication controversy.… Read the rest
Science as Democratizer
Aug 21st, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonCritical thinking is good for democracy, and science can unify people.… Read the rest
Trotsky’s Great Grand-daughter
Aug 21st, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘If you want to be a scientist, you cannot allow politics to get in the way of your objectivity.’… Read the rest
Publisher Drops Honderich Book
Aug 21st, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonGerman publisher Suhrkamp reacts to charges of anti-Semitism.… Read the rest