I am troubled by the fact that many\u00a0 speakers and writers do not acknowledge or are\u00a0ignorant of previous relevant writings\u00a0on a topic, and really repeat saying\u00a0what others have written; thus,\u00a0“reinventing the wheel.”<\/p>\n
What can explain this phenomenon?\u00a0Well, it is obvious that people want to\u00a0have personal success and income\u00a0from their speaking and writing, and so, they try to\u00a0get attention.\u00a0 They want people to view\u00a0their videos, read their books, and be\u00a0invited to various interviews, debates,\u00a0and lectures.<\/p>\n
They succeed, in part, because they\u00a0appeal to a wide ignorant audience,\u00a0which is attracted by the speaker’s or writer’s\u00a0entertainment qualities, rather then by\u00a0his or her scholarship.<\/p>\n
For example, what do I want from a\u00a0writer on a topic such as ethics? I want\u00a0him to begin with something similar to\u00a0what C. D. Broad did in his Five Types\u00a0of Ethical Theories<\/em><\/a> (1930). This is what he\u00a0wrote: “Sidgwick’s Methods of Ethics<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>seems to be on the whole the best\u00a0treatise on moral theory that has ever\u00a0been written, and to be one of the\u00a0English philosophical classics.” p. 143.\u00a0\u00a0And the bulk of Broad’s book — 113\u00a0pages our of a total 285 — is devoted\u00a0to a critical examination of Sidgwick’s\u00a0ethics.<\/p>\n Instead of jumping right into a topic, I would like an author to start by identifying what he considers to be the best work to date on a topic and write a critique of this work.<\/p>\n I had tried to do something like this in my dissertation in the fields of epistemology and\u00a0metaphysics . I did not outright say that Wilfrid Sellars is the best\u00a0contemporary thinker on these topics,\u00a0but I did so implicitly by choosing to\u00a0critically examine his views and\u00a0claiming that he had verisimilitude.\u00a0Here is what I wrote: “The examined\u00a0philosopher provides an occasion for\u00a0developing one’s own philosophy, and\u00a0this is especially rewarding if the\u00a0examined philosophy has verisimilitude,\u00a0as does that of Wilfrid Sellars. The\u00a0conclusions I reach are very close to\u00a0Sellars’ own — so close, in fact, that I\u00a0am not certain whether what I am\u00a0offering as correction are of things I am\u00a0only misinterpreting.” Andrew\u00a0Chrucky, “Critique of Wilfrid Sellars’\u00a0Materialism<\/a>,” 1990.<\/p>\n I myself have not done any systematic\u00a0work in ethics, but it seems that being\u00a0able to pursue a critical examination of\u00a0morals assumes a cultural and political\u00a0\u00a0context of such things as having had\u00a0an education which gives one the\u00a0critical acumen to pursue such studies,\u00a0as well as the leisure to do so; rather\u00a0than working at some unrelated area\u00a0for a wage; and the means to pursue\u00a0such a study — as access to a suitable\u00a0library or the means to purchase\u00a0necessary books. And, most important,\u00a0there is the necessity of cultural tolerance and\u00a0the political right of free speech.<\/p>\n Although I have a concern with ethics,\u00a0there are also the more basic problems of how to\u00a0cope with people who do not have a\u00a0concern with morals and how to cope with institutions\u00a0which allow such people to flourish. It\u00a0is a question how to wage war<\/strong> against\u00a0such people and such institutions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am troubled by the fact that many\u00a0 speakers and writers do not acknowledge or are\u00a0ignorant of previous relevant writings\u00a0on a topic, and really repeat saying\u00a0what others have written; thus,\u00a0“reinventing the wheel.” What can explain this phenomenon?\u00a0Well, it is obvious that people want to\u00a0have personal success and income\u00a0from their speaking and writing, and so, they … Continue reading “On Reinventing the Wheel”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bullshit-scholarship","category-bullshit-institutions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=821"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":845,"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821\/revisions\/845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}