Intellectual Impact
Intellectual Impact
I am interested in the intellectual impact of this blog on the minds of its readers (who range from all over the world). What is it doing to your minds? I ask this as an educational psychologist manque. What you get here is a barrage of subversive thought, relative to received opinion, though highly disciplined. And it will not stop. Is it annoying, exhilarating, disturbing, amusing, infuriating? Is it changing the way you see things? Is it reshaping your mind? Does it come back to haunt you in the dead of night? I myself find it quite liberating and mind-altering, like a kind of intellectual LSD. So, readers, look within and report your findings to me. I will analyze the results.
Two things, Dr McGinn. First on sheer accessibility. It would help your readers enormously, especially those using smaller devices, if you were to darken the font colour and increase the font size. Your thoughts are truly a struggle to read.
On the more substantive side, your arguments would sometimes be more compelling to me if they were a little more formal. Unanchored abstractions often so beloved of philosophers, can smuggle in a lot of beside-the-point purposelessness – often dispelled by a small amount of mathematical modelling, even as an example of what you mean. Nothing past A-level is usually required.
First, let me thank you for responding. Unfortunately, I have no control over the font color and size. I do see your point. Your suggestion about using a bit of mathematics is quite alien to philosophy as it has been practiced for a couple of thousand years and I have no idea how it would work. It is perfectly true that I do little to explain terms and provide background, which makes it hard for people who haven’t studied philosophy intensively.