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Jack comments on Oh, mainstream philosophy. - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (27)
A.) It's not a journal article. B.) He "conveys mostly mysteriousness to his audience" only if what you mean by that is that he explains and explores a problem while admitting he does not have a complete answer yet...
What I mean by conveying mysteriousness is that he starts with a topic the audience will have an initial common-sense reaction to, and spends the article showing why their first justifications of this reaction (which can be funneled a bit when he tells everyone what some possible justifications are) cannot be trusted. It's provocative, which is a fine thing. But it plays into the whole "reason clashes with common sense, the truth is mysterious" thing, which is less fine.
I don't really know what this "thing" is or why it's bad. I take your use of the word "mysterious" to be referencing "Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions" but I don't think Kagan is doing anything more than enjoying tackling an interesting problem. The same as any scientist would. "Common sense" is often a heuristic response that hasn't been subject to our analytic processes, there is nothing wrong with checking to see if the heuristic response makes sense with full analytic scrutiny.
Hm, I guess it's a bit different. If it was like that, the question would be "why are living things special?" and the answer would be "they have elan vital." "Elan vital" being the mysterious answer to the mysterious question.
In Kagan's article, the question is "is death bad for me?" and the answer is "it's mysterious."
Well if Kagan is wrong about it being mysterious, then I suppose it would be bad to give that answer. But simply writing an article saying something is mysterious is not at all bad in itself.
I agree.