Friday, May 28, 2010

What a Wonderful World it Would Be

Sam Cooke left one out. There should have been a line in there about “Don’t know much about philosophy…” but there wasn't. So here I am trying to spin a metaphor that quite frankly just isn't going to work.

Well, fuck and piss and vinegar!

To tell you the truth, I am having a lot of trouble with this review. Normally it is very easy for me to absorb, process, synthesize, and find fault with a collection of someone else’s personal idea of what makes for compelling writing. But this blog, Love of All Wisdom, penned by Professor of Philosophy Amod Lele, is somewhat more challenging to me. And here’s why: I don’t know if I can tell for sure whether he is doing a good job or not. Depends on what you mean by “good” or “job.” He comes across as intelligent. Deep. Consistent. True to his stated goal.

But it reads like a text book. And uses a lot of terms that are not familiar to the lay reader, which may be fine, as the lay reader may not be who this feller wants to talk to. I know for a fact that he does not intend for this to be a personal blog about who he’s dating, or how he feels about things, or any of the kinds of things that most people are polluting the Internet with. (You’ll notice, I deliberately left the “s” off the end of that term, as I have come to the conclusion that using the term “Internets” is an affectation. You may disagree. Discuss among yourselves. Just, if you are going to do so, do it over there where I can’t reach you with my taser.)

As an armchair philosopher who has grappled with concepts of morality, ‘God’/gods, ethics, etc., I found this to be a very compelling and very dense read. I want to read more. Then again, I want to read all the shit on my bookshelf that I bought because that’s what I thought educated, intelligent people should do – books like War and Peace, The Age of Reason, Ulysses… That doesn't mean that I have a hope in hell of ever doing so.

My biggest complaint is that in order to do a fair review, in order to fully process everything that he has written, about 20% of the content requires me to do ancillary research at Wikipedia or by buying and reading books I don’t intend to read because it assumes a prior knowledge that I just don’t possess. And I just don’t have enough hours in a day. As an example, here is a brief excerpt:

“This question of technique came up at least three times at the SACP. Peimin Ni – next year’s SACP president – argued that Mencius’s metaphysical theory of human nature is there not to justify his ethics, but to help provide practical guidance in shaping human conduct.”


This assumes that I know who Mencius is and what his/her metaphysical theory of human nature is. And that I know (clearly) what metaphysics is. And what is meant, philosophically, by the term “ethics.” Even the use of the word “technique” was a bit context-less for me until later on, when a context sort of grew up around the rest of the concepts being discussed.

My slightly smaller complaint is the template. Little white text on a black background. After reading for about an hour one day, I stepped away from the screen and my entire world had light and dark horizontal stripes running across it until my rods and cones in my eyes re-acclimated. This was a severe annoyance to me. My world should not be a zebra, even if just temporarily.

My smallest complaint is not really a complaint at all rather than an observation. In many cases, I just flat disagreed with him. And the beauty part is – in a philosophical discussion, we can disagree 100% and both be 100% right. For example:

“What a dream is, is an interior state. Of course physical changes occur in the brain when we dream; but a dream is necessarily more than that.” (emphasis mine)

(Really? Necessarily!? Not the way I understand the physiology of the brain, and memory, and consciousness.)

“To say a dream is nothing but those physical changes is to say not merely that the things we dream about do not exist, but even that the fact that we dreamt about them did not exist.” (emphasis his)

(The things we dream about MAY exist, but being in a dream doesn't make them so. I can dream of a rainbow colored unicorn, which may be simply automatic firing of certain memory and creative centers of my brain, but that doesn't make such a unicorn exist in the world of protoplasm. And I do not follow the logic that is employed to determine that this somehow makes the fact of the dream not exist. You've lost your firm footing here.)

He makes certain statements that I feel are unfounded. But, shit, he’s got a PhD in Philosophy (from Harvard! Oooooh!) – I took an Intro to Philosophy course in the 1980’s from a textbook that had been out of print for twenty years (yet had been written by the professor teaching the course, so of course, we had to use his text). And I feel more than a little bit intimidated by his assured tone and his credentials.

Still, one does not need an alphabet soup after one’s name to be able to apply logic. And I think that may be one of my biggest beefs with him – it seems he values intuition too much over logic (a deeper and more protracted read may prove this to be false), and I distrust intuition. I think that intuition can, and does, lie to you. It stands to reason that this may be one of the biggest separators of Eastern and Western philosophical approaches, and that I may simply not be “eastern” enough.

I don’t know.

What I do know is that this blog is an acquired taste. And won’t be to everyone’s liking. I also know that his template looks cool as shit until you have to start reading things. If you want to read him regularly, use a reader. His categorization is helpful, but only if you understand his classification system. Which I don’t know that I do. His writing is factual and unemotional, and will generally only appeal to philosophy dorks like me, but it is clear and well-edited.

Overall, I think that he is doing what he set out to do. I don't know why he submitted for a review here, but he did. So I have to give him a meaningful rating. Since he accomplishes that which he seems to set out to do, I'm giving him two stars.



But because he's unapproachable as hell and is flat out wrong in my opinion on occasion, I am also giving him a single flaming finger.



And finally, because his template made me see zebra stripes repeatedly, I am giving him two more flaming fingers.

36 comments:

  1. You know when you rub your eyes real hard and then open them quickly? That's what the template looks like.

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  2. I Kant bring myself to delve into it, but at least he has his own Nietzsche.

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  3. He's no Martha Nussbaum, that's for sure.

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  4. I think I'll Descartes this blog from my must-read list.

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  5. I'm all up in starting a discussion with him about philosophy and shit because it's fascinating, but it's just too much. And I know a great deal about it.

    Scorp, I'm so glad I didn't have to review this. Very nicely done. Seriously.

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  6. Blues, I'll Kierkegaard you from harmful naysayers.

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  7. Because I have good Marx-manship.

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  8. I had no idea that the AAYSR readership had so many cunning punnilinguists.

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  9. I will Locke you up for doubting me.

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  10. By the way, I tried to notify him. I am unsure as to whether or not my comment got through. He may simply have moderated it owing to the fact that the URL has the word "fucking" in it, which is unbecoming of a Philosophy Professor.

    Possibly.

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  11. Man, my, "Dewey know if he's been notified?" question just seems redundant now.

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  12. It's punnilicious around here today.

    Yes, Scorpio, over my dead exHumed corpse will you doubt my punnability.

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  13. Redundant indeed. And it might just Confucious things.

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  14. I cannot for the life of me come up with a Machiavelli pun.

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  15. Oh I had one, but now, poof, it's Gandhi.

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  16. I got nothing. But you guys are funny.

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  17. I Sartre of agree with you that it's funny, but in reality I think it's because the Aristotle-y thin where I am.

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  18. ';aiopwefjaof'jo/sdm,.asdklm

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  19. I don't have any words to explain how hard I laughed at that, Pos, so I just banged on the keyboard.

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  20. I got nothing. Haven't read any philosophy since Dr. Seuss. Just counting the last 40 minutes 'til this three day weekend starts.

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  21. Scorpio, thank you for your review. Your notification was caught by my spam filter at first, but I approved it so it's showing up on the site now. (I generally avoid swearing on the site myself because I'd like to welcome readers who are religious or traditional conservatives, as well as the blasphemous liberals I usually hang out with. But I have no problem with other people swearing there.) I submitted the site to you because I really want it to be a good one, and I'm looking for honest feedback from people who have no stake in the matter. So I appreciate your comments, and I'd like to offer a few responses.

    On the blog's writing style, I'll agree that it can come across as intimidating. I try to throw in links with most of my unfamiliar terms, in order to leave a paper trail, but I'll grant that following them requires more effort than most people would want to put in. I suspect the blog's biggest weakness is also in some respect a strength: I'm deliberately writing for multiple audiences. I want the blog to be sophisticated enough that other PhDs in the area will get something out of it that they didn't already know, but I also want it to be possible for the general reader to follow it. From the sound of what you say here, I think I've succeeded at that much - it may be very difficult for a general reader to follow it, but at least it's possible. I can do better at this, to be sure - I would certainly like to write as well as Martha Nussbaum. But it looks like a start.

    On logic and intuition, I do value logic highly, and often criticize those who rely too much on "intuition." At the same time, I'm aiming at the big picture, which means I often don't spend too much time on the details; and I'm sure that makes me come across as less logically minded than an analytic philosopher in a typical philosophy department (or a scientist). The details of logical argument I often tend to leave for the comments rather than the posts.

    On the template, your objections are both the white-on-black and the small font size? I'm intending to redesign it at some point, and will definitely enlarge the font. I've received a number of compliments on the template, and it looks fine to me, but maybe my senses are warped from having grown up with DOS. Do you think a white (or very light) coloured background is a necessity for readability?

    Re the question of dreams, I'm happy to debate that with you if you're interested, but I'm not sure that this is the venue for it. If you like, I could reopen the comments for that entry on the blog.

    And while a good pun is its own reword, I think y'all have covered most of the good philosophy puns already, so I won't try to do my own.

    So. Rather long-winded reply, but if you've had a look at the blog yet, I don't imagine you expect anything else. Thanks again.

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  22. You guys are awesome, really, you inspire awe.

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  23. I think quote of the week should be one of the philosophy puns, I admire your ability to out nerd one another.

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  24. Is it an affectation if you call it the Interwebz?

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  25. I would love to contribute to this but I'm afraid I would only Machi-a-velli bad pun.

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  26. It's nice to see a blog with a little class... er maybe a little too much class, actually.

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  27. One of my biggest blogging peeves is bloggers who claim to blog for "everyone" but then go on to use vocabulary that's very specific to their field. It really kills the flow of a post when you have to look up one out of 5 words on Wiki.

    I wanted to throw in a pun, but I'm not really creative, and it's late. Maybe next time.

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  28. Pos should definitely get comment of the week. That was fucking hilare.

    Oh please Shiny one? Can you bring back comment of the week? (I'm also invoking the powers of LB from beyond).

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  29. @Amod -- thanks for the feedback on my feedback.

    First and foremost, I'm not interested in debating the topic of dreams. I'm not interested in debating anything, but I am more than happy to have a respectful discussion with you about it in any forum you wish. See, the difference in my mind is this -- I'm not interested in "winning" anything, only in the expansion of "truth" -- whether it be an expansion of my horizons, your horizons, or the horizons of those who observe our discussion. It may simply be a semantical distinction, but it is one that I hold dear.

    Also, you said "And while a good pun is its own reword, I think y'all have covered most of the good philosophy puns already, so I won't try to do my own." I do believe that you have come up with the best pun of all, and I'm not even sure it was intended. "a good pun is its own reword". Brilliant, even if it was Freudian.

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  30. You're right Blues, Pos deserves comment of the week. Too bad I think it was the first worthy comment since I started this gig. We are seriously slacking on wit around here. Where are all the dirty, sexy people who don't have jobs that require actual work?

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  31. I plan on posting lists of reviews as well. Eventually.

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  32. Oh, the "reword" pun was absolutely intentional - best I could do since the philosophy puns had been taken. Glad you liked it.

    Re discussion vs. debate, that's certainly what I'd prefer. Your tone in the post was combative enough that it suggested debate, which is probably why I put it that way (I wasn't thinking about the word choice that hard). But I'm all for discussion over debate. Perhaps I'll post on the matter again in the next couple of months on my blog, and send you a message notifying you when I do?

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  33. Amod, isn't every review on here combative?

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  34. Shinerpunch: Certainly, and that's what I was expecting. That's why Scorpio's preference for discussion over debate took me by surprise a bit, though it was a pleasant surprise.

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  35. My preference comes from not wanting to waste my time, not necessarily from any sort of "we're all in this together" hippie love sort of a place. I have made the mistake of "debating" with people in the past about matters of opinion, and found that you can only change the mind that wants to be changed, and generally minds that engage in debates aren't interested in changing -- they are interested in changing YOUR mind.

    Hence, I choose not to debate.

    ("Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig." - Mark Twain)

    You'll note that my review doesn't categorically state that there's anything wrong with your blog. There are things that I dislike and things that I like. There are things that I think the *average* lay reader will find challenging. But these aren't facts -- they are opinions. My opinions. As the designated blog expert of the day, it is my prerogative to point these things out.

    As such, you are free to decide what you agree with and what you don't. I don't consider my review all that combative. Maybe a bit brusque, but not intended to be fighting words.

    Not like my review of JohnnyKage was...

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Grow a pair.