"Terrific. .The dialogues are great fun. I sat back and enjoyed it." ---William H. Shaw "Total devastation. Splendid book. An absolutely first class piece of work." ---Antony Flew Some say we can't really know anything, unless we first irrationally accept some things blindly on faith. Is that true? And what is truth, anyway? Is objective truth a bankrupt notion, as postmodernists say? They also say observations are always theory-laden and everything is socially constructed, "including giraffes." Of course, this means "all knowledge is essentially political," and "science is best seen as a socially constructed discourse that legitimates its power by presenting itself as truth." Worse than that, "there is no procedure called 'turning to the facts'.there is no procedure of 'justification in light of the facts' which can be opposed to consilience of one's own opinion with those of others." Rather, "the notion of accurate representation is simply an automatic and empty compliment we pay to beliefs which help us to do what we want to do." Unfortunately, postmodernists didn't get that way on account of ignoring the teachings of the Philosophy department, but on account of sincerely imbibing them. The terrible truth is that postmodernism is what happens when somebody who believes what he reads, reads the Philosophy canon. Avoiding technical jargon and presented in the form of a spirited dialogue between a professor and student, The Slightest Philosophy attacks what it sees as the real roots of postmodernism: the skeptical/anti-realist rut philosophy has been in since the eighteenth century. Opposing the canon from a position of naïve realism, the book's refutation of epistemological skepticism applies a method usually called abduction, or argument to the best explanation. The unexpected power of this pedestrian approach becomes apparent when it finally proves its mettle against philosophy's scariest monsters, including the Cartesian Demon, the Brain in the Vat, the Problem of the Criterion, and Hume's Riddle of Induction. Along the way, The Slightest Philosophy also provides a snappy introduction to the central controversies in philosophy. Not only will it make you laugh, it also renders compelling the unavoidable questions too often made to seem obscure. Rarely has epistemology seemed so accessible as in the hands of a writer Antony Flew called "never dull."
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50 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Intellectual Self-Defense,
By
This review is from: The Slightest Philosophy (Paperback)
These days post-modernist philosophy haunts American universities like the undead haunt shopping malls in George A. Romero's zombie films. It's dead, but somehow it doesn't know it: it just trudges along, bumping into walls here and there, groaning the same futile arguments over and over, and still managing to take a bite into the brains of those most vulnerable--the young, the curious, the ill-informed.
One of the unfortunate consequences of this present state of affairs is that an intelligent person who would like to read philosophy (or criticism of whatever type) will find nothing of the sort at the local bookstore. Instead, a quick look at any bibliography reveals that, while the titles change, the ideology does not. You end up reading the same book over and over. Or, more realistically, the same words over and over--words that don't always make sense because the syntax is obscurant, terms are left undefined, and neologisms are coined for no apparent reason. Only fully-fledged members of an academic cult can even bother to read these texts, and in the end the payoff is often nil. It's junk food for the mind: you can keep eating it, but it's not nourishing you. This is why "The Slightest Philosophy" is such a breath of fresh air. This is the kind of book I wish I had had while I was being assaulted by the Count Ugolino-like professors I studied under in grad school. It would have saved me so much time by guiding me through some of the most outrageous, arcane, and inane polemics that students are forced to contemplate today in the humanities: the so-called "social construction of reality;" the "prison-house" of language; et cetera. Nelson's book is an historically-contextualized refutation of the various post-modernist arguments. This alone will make it refreshing as it allows you to trace the origins of post-modernist thought, and to see its development and evolution at the hands of Hume, Kant, Hegel, and others. As things come together, you get a better idea of where to place yourself and contemporary trends. This is an intelligent text for an intelligent reader. You do not have to be a specialist; in fact, my field is not philosophy, yet I was able to follow the arguments easily. Nor are these Straw Man arguments. Many of them I recognized straight from the graduate courses I took in Comparative Literature (the footnotes helped me to finally identify the original sources of many of them). Nelson rigorously dissects each premise, carefully scrutinizing the logic (or lack thereof) that permits today's professors to say things that clearly fly in the face of reality, experience, or evidence of the senses. While at grad school I remember thinking "this can't be right," and yet lacking the words, insight, or knowledge that would have allowed me to formulate a refutation. This book will help you to do so by pointing out where so many of these arguments go wrong: usually at their very foundations, which can and must be identified and understood. The first two chapters are lucidly written in standard essay form. The rest of the book is written as a Socratic Dialogue, though it is broken up into sub-chapters which address specific arguments. At first I was a bit suspicious of this strategy, but that changed when I realized that Nelson's antagonist (the Pragmatist/Post-modernist) was not a fool but an academic who aggressively attempted to defend his ideas. Again, no Straw Man arguments here; Nelson cites directly from the texts. Particularly helpful is the appendix, which is a compendium of citations from the various philosophers whose ideas have evolved into what has become post-modernist theory. Since (at the time of this writing) there is no link to the table of contents, I will list the chapters, but not all the sub-chapters as there are too many: INTRODUCTION: The Postmodern Condition CHAPTER 1: What Can Be Realism CHAPTER 2: The Same Waking that Dreaming CHAPTER 3: Seeing Things CHAPTER 4: Doubting Skepticism Some of the sub-chapters include, for example: Scientific Realism, Postmodern Hopelessness, The Postmodern Prison-House, Arguments from Illusion, Are Objects Objective?, Color and Subjectivity, Is This Epistemological Conservatism?--and others. On page 166 of the book, Nelson states that the purpose of philosophy is "To learn how to reason more carefully, to identify and guard against common fallacies. To check ourselves for consistency. To find plausible beliefs and correct, or at least improve on, them. To combat false and harmful doctrines that people are suffering from. False beliefs are a hazard," she says. "Knowledge, on the other hand, is power." If this is what you think philosophy can and ought to be, then I encourage you to read this book. Highly recommended: informed general readers, upper-level undergraduates, graduates and academics alike will find something here to chew on.
31 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Witty critique of postmodern philosophy,
By Stephen Hicks, Ph.D. "Stephen" (Illinois) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Slightest Philosophy (Paperback)
Quee Nelson's The Slightest Philosophy is a well-written, jargon-free critique of postmodern philosophy, tracking it from its skeptical and idealist origins in Berkeley, Hume, Kant, and Hegel to its recent anti-realist manifestations in Rorty and the rest. Nelson also ambitiously and in take-no-prisoners-fashion connects that philosophical morass to deadly politics: "A Cambodian guerilla deep in a steaming jungle carries a paperback copy of Rousseau, and the next thing you know, a million people are dead." The political connections are less developed, but Nelson explains covers well some important philosophical developments in accessible and witty language.
30 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Heretical Views in the Philosphy Department,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Slightest Philosophy (Paperback)
This book is certain to raise the ire of the credentialed and tenured many who have happily adopted shape-shifting, post-modernist self-rationalization, as a basis on which to view world events and rationalize their own moral choices, secure in the knowledge that they are following in the footsteps of the "greats." For the author, the road less traveled ... and a detour very early on in the journey.
Herein is a rare, humor-filled, insider's insight into philosophy department indoctrination techniques of "smoking your own dope," abandonment of critical thinking, and the crushing of dissent. If you have ever wondered what it would have been like to study philosophy in school in the modern ages, look no further, and warn your college-age children. The author's common-sense, irreverent take on the rock-star like cult status of philosophical figures (Hume, Kant, et. al.), and the damage that their groupie-like heirs have wrought, provides a unique insight from a camp dissenter. The interested would do well to view with skepticism the posted long-winded and ostensibly "positive" review, a classic example of "damning with faint praise," an oft-seen reviewer technique for discouraging potential readers from considering books with opposing philosophical views. The criticisms are not reflective of the actual content nor reflect the author's careful argumentation - most are out of context or off-topic -- smacking of a professor chastising a contrarian student, and seem almost a parody of the professorial archetypes so wickedly described in the book. The reviewer can't even resist getting off an irrelevant, vulgar, cheap shot at current political events. The author has clearly hit close to home, to drive the reviewer into such a frenzied long-winded recitation of "begats" and self-display, as if the mere recitation of any of the "popular" names in philosophy imbues either the speaker or the subjects themselves with gnostic infallibility. There are terms in the book that require context and background, and a reference glossary for non-philosophy types would be useful, but given the subject matter, this is a strikingly jargonesque-free foray into the rarefied area of those considering themselves on the vanguard of epistemology. The author bravely dissects the logical fallacies generated from erroneous first principles of the anti-realists in clear, concise, non-obfuscating language, often in the form of a lively debate between a tenured philosophy professor and a "naïve" student (i.e., one who hasn't yet drunk the koolaid). For non-philosophy buffs, such as myself, the author raises a veil to expose how some modern philosophers use of a layman's understanding of science (current favorites seem to be decades-old snapshots of quantum mechanics and ocular imaging) to prop up pet theories and overwhelm their generally non-scientific target audience, to suit their pet point of view. Fascinating for both the content, and for the reaction that it inspires. A great addition to the library for those interested in the origins of many of today's fashionable, yet sinister, political and social philosophies.
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