This book raises a number of ideas and questions that are both important and interesting. However, it is often unclear what the author thinks about maThis book raises a number of ideas and questions that are both important and interesting. However, it is often unclear what the author thinks about many of them in the end. There are many rhetorical questions—and seemingly many genuine questions also—that are simply left as questions. At many other points we get involved reconstructions of the history of later 20th century feminist thought, without a clear statement of what the upshot of the history is for the contemporary topics at issue. Much of this feels like inside baseball; and I was not sure what the point of it was in a general audience text (as opposed to an academic text aimed at other feminist philosophers).
Finally, there is the issue of empirics. There are many claims of the form 'feminists have argued that social practice x causes y result'. Well, does x actually cause y? Take for instance the effects of pornography on the mental lives and outward behavior of heterosexual men. Despite devoting a whole chapter to pornography, the book offers us very little in the way of empirical analysis. The familiar 'correlation does not imply causation' line is trotted out, and one, *maybe* two studies are briefly mentioned without any substantive discussion (what were the sample sizes in these studies? the p values? did they replicate? What does an up-to-date review of the relevant empirical literature have to say?). Causal inference is notoriously difficult (see https://www.cold-takes.com/does-x-cau... and https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12...), and after reading the chapter on pornography, I don't feel much better informed on the issue than I did going in. ...more
Possibly the best book I have read this year. Gripping narrative accounts of combat interspersed with compelling character vignettes and incisive obsePossibly the best book I have read this year. Gripping narrative accounts of combat interspersed with compelling character vignettes and incisive observations on psychology, masculinity, and meaning. Strongly recommend.
“War is a lot of things and it’s useless to pretend that exciting isn’t one of them. It’s insanely exciting. The machinery of war and the sound it makes and the urgency of its use and the consequences of almost everything about it are the most exciting things anyone engaged in war will ever know. Soldiers discuss that fact with each other and eventually with their chaplains and their shrinks and maybe even their spouses, but the public will never hear about it. It’s just not something that many people want acknowledged. War is supposed to feel bad because undeniably bad things happen in it, but for a nineteen-year-old at the working end of a .50 cal during a firefight that everyone comes out of okay, war is life multiplied by some number that no one has ever heard of. In some ways twenty minutes of combat is more life than you could scrape together in a lifetime of doing something else. Combat isn’t where you might die — though that does happen — it’s where you find out whether you get to keep on living. Don’t underestimate the power of that revelation. Don’t underestimate the things young men will wager in order to play that game one more time.”
“War is a big and sprawling word that brings a lot of human suffering into the conversation, but combat is a different matter. Combat is the smaller game that young men fall in love with, and any solution to the human problem of war will have to take into account the psyches of these young men. For some reason there is a profound and mysterious gratification to the reciprocal agreement to protect another person with your life, and combat is virtually the only situation in which that happens regularly. These hillsides of loose shale and holly trees are where the men feel not most alive — that you can get skydiving — but the most utilized. The most necessary. The most clear and certain and purposeful. If young men could get that feeling at home, no one would ever want to go to war again, but they can’t. So here sits Sergeant Brendan O’Byrne, one month before the end of deployment, seriously contemplating signing back up.”...more
I found this book very helpful to read as an academic philosopher working on Buddhism. I think it would be a difficult read for someone who has not stI found this book very helpful to read as an academic philosopher working on Buddhism. I think it would be a difficult read for someone who has not studied both analytic metaphysics and Buddhism at at least the undergraduate level. I would have preferred a concise presentation of the Madhyamaka view alongside an assessment of its plausibility in the context of contemporary analytic philosophy, as opposed to the details the book offers on textual exegesis and the historical Madhyamaka-Nyaya dialectic; but this simply reflects my own interest in contemporary philosophy over history of philosophy. ...more
This is top-tier sci-fi, and I've read a LOT of sci-fi. Unlike many other works of fiction that attempt to do so, this book raises a variety of philosThis is top-tier sci-fi, and I've read a LOT of sci-fi. Unlike many other works of fiction that attempt to do so, this book raises a variety of philosophical questions (e.g. about mind, freedom, and identity) in a way that is fresh and fascinating. Highly recommend. ...more
I found the empirical points in this book interesting (particularly the psychology of trolleyology). However, I didn’t find its philosophical thesis pI found the empirical points in this book interesting (particularly the psychology of trolleyology). However, I didn’t find its philosophical thesis persuasive. The major worry is that meta-ethics don’t fit well with the ethics.
Greene rejects meta-ethical realism, which I understand as the conjunction of two claims, namely (i) that there are objective, mind-independent moral facts (facts about what is morally right and wrong and valuable and disvaluable) and (ii) that we can (in principle) find these facts out through a priori reflection. So, he goes in for meta-ethical anti-realism, on which (roughly) moral “facts” and reasons are mind-dependent, i.e., dependent on what we happen to care about (being the contingent flesh-and-blood creatures that we are). At the level of normative (i.e. first-order) ethics, Greene goes on to endorse utilitarianism. The problem is that utilitarianism is much more plausible conditional on meta-ethical *realism* than it is on meta-ethical anti-realism.
Utilitarianism violates our intuitions across a variety of cases (witness e.g. Transplant, (Very) Repugnant Conclusion, experience machine, and hedonium, not to mention giving zero non-instrumental normative significance to personal relationships, ground projects, justice, or fairness). That utilitarianism is deeply counterintuitive is not strong evidence against it if meta-ethical realism is true. For if meta-ethical realism is true, there’s no reason to think that normative reality matches up well with our intuitions. (For the objective, mind-independent moral facts might 'stare back at us' in the way that physical reality does (think e.g. of the radically counterintuitive nature of quantum mechanics).) But if meta-ethical anti-realism is true, ethics can’t radically depart from our intuitions. Since utilitarianism does radically depart from our intuitions, it is unlikely given anti-realism.
At other points in the text, Greene retreats to the claim that utilitarianism is just supposed to be a tool for resolving moral disagreement. But if we’ve agreed there are no objective, mind-independent moral facts to which we have epistemic access, and so that we are left (at best) with systematizations of our cares and concerns, why should we allow utilitarianism – which does not do well at capturing many things that most of us care about – to be the arbiter of moral disagreement?...more
Somewhat of a letdown in the wake of Bostrom's prior work. I don't regret reading this, but I also don't know whether I would recommend it. Most of thSomewhat of a letdown in the wake of Bostrom's prior work. I don't regret reading this, but I also don't know whether I would recommend it. Most of the philosophical action occurs in a relatively small percentage of the book; much of it is merely interesting and/or nice-to-know rather than need-to-know. ...more
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