This post is dedicated to my dear friend Marsha.
Can a psychopath be a good philosopher? "There is a strong analogy here with postmodernism. Just as psychopaths lack moral virtues and values and do not want them, postmodernists lack epistemic virtues and values and do not want them. There is a trend in philosophy of science, in trying to distinguish science from pseudoscience and nonscience, which is not to look for any one or few essentialistic features but to find the distinction in a cluster-class of epistemic virtues and values that promote the pursuit of knowledge. Among these are being clear, valuing evidence, exposing theories to testing, not being dogmatic, keeping explanations and explanatory entities as simple as possible, and not letting politics determine good scholarship. This is why no religion or theology is a science and why astrology and homeopathy are not real sciences either. They lack epistemic virtues and values. And postmodernists lack them too. They lack them, and moreover they don’t want them. In fact, in analogy with the narcissism of psychopaths, postmodernists view themselves as superior to those who possess epistemic virtues and values. They see themselves as above such things, as superior. “You don’t really think that people believe because of arguments, do you?” is a common question put by postmodernists, usually with an arrogant and condescending tone." See the full article at http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=fi&page=stamos_31_5 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
