Steven Parmenius

  There are public intellectuals who are decorous in debate, nuanced and careful in their arguments, cautious in their assertions and meticulous in researching the subjects they comment on. Then there is Richard Dawkins. Dawkins is a man with a megaphone who models, lavishly models, basic intellectual irresponsibility. Like Ben Shapiro (his right wing equivalent) he cultivates radical stupidity and sells it to the public as cutting edge intelligence.   Years ago when I first picked up the God Delusion I realized not five pages in that it was the work of an intellectual fraud (this is because religion and philosophy are my ACADEMIC specialties- sorry to pull rank).   I have no reason to think this fraudulence extends further than his popular works on religion and other topics. Dawkins is famous because he published a book with selfish in the title at the cusp of the Reagan/Thatcher era. It was read and admired, I am told, by CEO’s who suddenly found their narcissism and gr...

  In philosophy we have a series of idealized positions and arguments about which we argue like nominalism, realism, idealism, materialism and so on. This is both good and bad. It is bad because the use of such categories often distorts the complexity of individual thinkers. Historical positions aren't pure examples of idealized conceptual stances. A rationalist may have empirical elements in his thought and vice versa. One person’s realism or nominalism may be more radical than another’s and a philosopher, who after all is not an all knowing machine, may build doubts and hesitations into his position. He may even have unresolved contradictions. He may even have contradictions he does not WANT to resolve as (after all) what is a contradiction but an unfinished thought? That said it is sometimes necessary to paint in broader strokes as all analysis can’t be carried out at the individual level. This is as much as to say that in history there are broad movements that cohere over time ...