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                                                June 14, 2011

                                                 ALL_THINGS_SHINING

"All Things Shining" is such a
bad book that the temptation is
to swing back too far in the
opposite direction.

One of the reasons I wanted to read
this book was to look for something
salvageable that a too-doctrinaire
critic might have missed.

  Like Dreyfus and Kelly,
  I hold out little hope
  for a unified field            ETHICAL_MORAL
  theory of ethics...
  we don't have a morality
  engine where you just
  turn the crank and find
  out what you should do.
                               Though if you're game to try
  Most of us expect that       your hand at developing a
  the moral/ethical realm      morality engine, by all means
  will always have a legal     go for it...
  quality to it: full of
  poorly definied edge                       But it's a nasty problem with a
  cases with a need for                      dubious history: the people who
  many judgement calls.                      claim they have a solution
                                             always seem to be lying to
  This is awfully weak tea to                themselves.
  subsist on for a philosopher
  with a hunger for grand
  systems, and Dreyfus and
  Kelly themselves appear to
  have over-reacted: since
  there is no perfect system we      LAOTZU
  will have no system at all.

  They insist that they are looking for
  an antidote to nihilism/relativism.
  They don't use the word "absolute",
  but it would seem that they must
  believe that somewhere down there in
  the collection of all our "whoosh"
  moments there must be a common factor;
  we all must have the same sense of The        Or at least the same
  Good, if only we could learn the skill        range of possible goods
  of listening for it.                          (polytheism, right?)

           Perhaps this attitude is
           the result of starting
           with Homer?

           The gods, the divine --> the Universal.

           But what if the god is within?
                                                   SHINING_MUSE



But periodically I do run into                         TECHIES_FALLACY
people who seem to need
reminders about the problems        Many-- though not all-- are techies,
with systemtizing all knowledge,    who are uncomfortable with the
so let me list some points where    fuzziness of humanities, and nurse a
I think I'm in agreement with       suspicion that it's a result of
Dreyfus and Kelly.                  intellectual laziness.

  We don't have an infallible                      (People like this are one
  method of identifying Hitlers.                   of the reasons that the 
                                                   wikipedia style guide has
    Sometimes, grand movements                     become such an unwieldly
    look good at the outset,                       mess... they keep trying
    and then turn unbelievably                     to specify things that
    sour.                                          probably can't be.)

  And yet, we can't always
  hang back from the mass
  of humanity and remain      TRAGEDY
  human.

    There are times when you need
    to "trust your instincts",
    and move fast and do it right    SHINING_SPIKE
    without apparent thought.


  Rigorous plodding is
  not the sole path of       It is however,
  intellectual progress.     often productive
                             and successful.     IN_DEFENSE_OF_NERDS

    There's also a need
    for intuition.

                               There is something profoundly
                               strange (to us) about the
                               attitude toward life on
                               display in Homer.

                                  THE_ILIAD_AND_THE_PROTESTANT


                 Individual responsibility,
                 however necessary the idea
                 is to us, is seriously        SELF
                 problematic.


                                                 DIVINE_INFLUENCES









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