Quee Nelson's Blog

“The Slightest Philosophy is an amazing, liberating book that deserves a wide audience. Quee Nelson is a realist in both senses of the term. With verve and wit that cannot be found within Philosophy departments, and with sound learning as well, she has made stone kicking both intellectually respectable and fun.”—Frederick C. Crews, editor of The Norton Anthology of American Literature, author of Postmodern Pooh, Unauthorized Freud, and Follies of the Wise

“I agree about The Slightest Philosophy

INTRODUCTION: The Postmodern Condition

First Naiveté
Beat the Demon


CHAPTER 1: What Can Be Realism

What Realism Can’t Be
Representative Realism
Scientific Realism
Mock Realism Internalized
“Direct” Realism: Straw Man, Red Herring
The Irrelevance of Representationalism


CHAPTER 2: The Same Waking that Dreaming

Postmodern Hopelessness
Farewell to Reason
Are You on the Bus?
Farewell to Truth
Madhouse Philosophy
The Postmodern Prison-House
Blind Submission


CHAPTER 3: Seeing Things

Cros

The Postmodern Condition

On Bullshit is a serious philosophy book. At first glance, it might look offensive or flippant, but actually it’s a rigorous philosophical analysis of an important concept which, unfortunately, just doesn’t have any other name. Harry Frankfurt’s careful analysis argues that ‘bullshit’ isn’t, like lying, a kind of discourse that intentionally opposes the truth, but rather a kind of discourse that just disregards the truth. A casual reader might wonder why a philosopher

What Realism Can Be
“Naive Realism is the view of the great mass of civilized humanity,” explained Oswald Kulpe’s 1895 Introduction to Philosophy. “Naïve realism” is, as Ernst Mach put it in 1886, “The philosophical point of view of the average man.” Dickinson Miller, in his 1908 article “Naive Realism: What is It?” expressed it similarly: “By naive realism we mean the attitude of the ordinary mind towards the external world.”
This is what I mean to defend, naive realism. The only proble

The Slightest Philosophy
(prospective second ed.)

Citing a Problematic Tradition

Sextus Empiricus:

“Although, no doubt, it is easy to say what nature each of the underlying objects appears to each man to possess, we cannot go on to say what its real nature is, since the disagreement admits in itself of no settlement. For the person who tries to settle it is...in one of the aforementioned dispositions... And if he is to judge the sense impressions while he is in some one disposition...he will not be

A Refutation of Skepticism via Inference to the Best Explanation


Here's an infallibilist argument for radical skepticism:

1) Really knowing anything requires an infallible, perfect kind of certainty.
2) This requires that no mistake is even possible.
3) It seems that for us fallible creatures, perhaps this is never the case.
4) Therefore, it seems that we know nothing at all.

Here's a problem: Are propositions 1-4 themselves infallibly certain? Apparently not. Especially if nothing c...

A Refutation of Skepticism via Inference to the Best Explanation


Here's an infallibilist argument for radical skepticism:

1) Really knowing anything requires an infallible, perfect kind of certainty.
2) This requires that no mistake is even possible.
3) It seems that for us fallible creatures, perhaps this is never the case.
4) Therefore, it seems that we know nothing at all.

Here's a problem: Are propositions 1-4 themselves infallibly certain? Apparently not. Especially if nothing c...

How To Beat the Vat by Appeal to the Best Explanation
Quee Nelson
posted November 6, 2008


Here's an infallibilist argument for radical skepticism:

1) Really knowing anything requires an infallible, perfect kind of certainty.
2) This requires that no mistake is even possible.
3) It seems that for us fallible creatures, perhaps this is never the case.
4) Therefore, it seems that we know nothing at all.

Here's a problem: Are propositions 1-4 themselves infallibly certain? Apparently not. Esp

How To Beat the Skeptic Abductively
Quee Nelson
posted November 6, 2008


Here’s an infallibilist argument for radical skepticism:

1) Really knowing anything requires an infallible, perfect kind of certainty.
2) This requires that no mistake is even possible.
3) It seems that for us fallible creatures, perhaps this is never the case.
4) Therefore, it seems that we know nothing at all.

Here’s a problem: Are propositions 1-4 themselves infallibly certain? Apparently not. Especially if nothing