Verbal facility, emotional range, moral complexity, political satire. Go Pogo.… Read the rest
Why Does No One Read Analytic Philosophy?
Oct 13th, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWhy yards and yards of Foucault next to zero Fodor on the shelves?… Read the rest
Key Thinkers and Canons
Oct 12th, 2004 7:38 pm | By Ophelia BensonNow that’s funny. Made me do one of those loony blurts of laughter at the computer screen that solidify one’s feeling of creeping insanity. No but really, it is funny. The Guardian has a really exceptionally irritating smug knowing comment in a leader on our debt to Derrida. My point is not to quarrel with the late Derrida, whom I haven’t read; my point is to quarrel with this particular remark in this particular rather silly piece in the Guardian.
… Read the restWhat was important was that deconstruction held that no text was above analysis or closed to alternative interpretation. It is no coincidence that it came into vogue in the 1960s and 1970s, when many cultural and social institutions were being
A Paradigm Shift
Oct 12th, 2004 6:37 pm | By Ophelia BensonMy colleague and I have been talking in an inconclusive back-and-forth way about the subject of certainty, the revisability of scientific claims, the difference between in principle and in reality or in practice or in fact, transcendence, labeling, rhetoric, the difference between what can be imagined and what is a live possibility. We’ll talk about it further in a couple of days (well, three) when we’ll be able to do it with the useful accompaniment and assistance of gestures, grimaces, thrown objects, slaps, pinches, what my brother always called as he administered it to me an ‘Indian rope burn’ but which must be called something else now but I don’t know what, table-thumping, brow slapping, eye rolling, hair tearing, and … Read the rest
‘The Plan’
Oct 12th, 2004 5:14 pm | By Ophelia BensonSpeaking of poetry – Norm has a poem by Sophie Hannah. It’s brilliant. I’d quote a bit but that would spoil the effect; read the whole thing.
Poetry rocks.… Read the rest
Derrida in the Newspapers
Oct 12th, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWanted to play football but realised he wasn’t good enough.… Read the rest
Grayling Replies to Guardian on ‘Canon’
Oct 12th, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonDoes a good job of it, too.… Read the rest
A Few Key Thinkers on Derrida
Oct 12th, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAlso one or two key non-thinkers.… Read the rest
Our Debt to Derrida
Oct 12th, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHe allowed Braddon to sit down next to the Brontes. … Read the rest
The Hunting of the Top Quark
Oct 11th, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonA non-physicist philosopher of science got it right. Makes a change.… Read the rest
History, Fiction, Truth, Evidence, Details
Oct 11th, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonDetails matter; it is unwise to make them up if you want to be believed.… Read the rest
Scott McLemee on Derrida
Oct 11th, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘An approach that could push one’s mental stamina to the limits.’… Read the rest
The War on Science, Bush Division, Again
Oct 11th, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIf agencies say what you don’t want to hear, then re-organize them.… Read the rest
Blore Moor I Mean More Bloor
Oct 9th, 2004 8:51 pm | By Ophelia BensonA little more Bloor for you, in case you’ve been missing him.
The law which is at work here appears to be this: those who are defending a society or a subsection of society from a perceived threat will tend to mystify its values and standards, including its knowledge…[T]he variable of perceived threat operating upon underlying social metaphors explains the differential tendency to treat knowledge as sacred and beyond the reach of scientific study.
This is interesting stuff, because what Bloor means by ‘beyond the reach of scientific study’ is ‘not considered amenable to substantive analysis by people who are not trained in the subject.’ That is, he is claiming (in great detail, e.g. via an extended comparison of Popper … Read the rest
UN Investigates Sugar Industry
Oct 9th, 2004 | Filed by Ophelia BensonDid sugar industry fund human dietary requirements study?… Read the rest