Michael Dummett (Philosophy Now)

Rating:
Summary: INSIDER WRITING FOR INSIDERS
Review: The publisher has described this book on the back cover as follows. "This book offers, in an accessible and no-nonsense manner, a systematic presentation of the main elements of Dummett's pivotal contribution to contemporary philosophy. Its overarching theme is his discussion of realism: Bernhard Weiss explores the philosopher's characterization of realism, his attack on realism, and his invention and exploration of the anti-realist position." After reading the book, I cannot agree that its presentation is accessible - I found it very difficult reading and in this review I will describe its peculiar manner of inaccessibility. Moreover, I cannot agree it has a "no-nonsense" style - I found the writing contrived, self-conscious and obscure. I found that the book's design made study and reflection unnecessarily arduous and tedious. For example, the notes do not come at the foot of the page, nor even at the end of the chapter; they are all collected on the last eleven pages of the book. Even worse, many of the notes should not have been notes at all: some are citations that would have been more conveniently incorporated into the text using the author's own abbreviating scheme given on page ix, some are just short parenthetical remarks, and some are gratuitous side comments.
Before describing the book's character, I need to reveal its content. What follows is again from the back cover. "The book begins by examining Dummett's views on language. Only against that setting can one fully appreciate his conception of the realism issue. With this in place, Weiss returns to Dummett's views on the nature of meaning and understanding to unfold his challenge to realism. Weiss devotes the remainder of the book to examining the anti-realist position. He discusses anti-realist theories of meaning and then investigates anti-realism's revisionary consequences. Finally, he engages with Dummett's discussion of two difficult challenges for the anti-realist: the past and mathematics."
One aspect of the book's inaccessibility is its insularity - the fact that it is written by an insider for insiders and that it shows no awareness that the outside even exists much less might want some background or clarification of the insider dogmas. An especially flagrant example comes early: on page 2 we learn that Dummett believes that "the (sic) goal of philosophy is the analysis of the (sic) structure of thought". Weiss shows no awareness that many if not most philosophers would find this belief to be extreme, astoundingly exclusionary, perhaps insulting. But there is no shortage of less obvious examples. On page 1 we learn that Dummett's main teachers at Oxford were Urmson and Anscombe, "the latter exerting the greater influence". Presumably, the reader knows who these people are and what Anscombe's influence was: we are not told another thing about either, except in the index where Anscombe's initials are given. On page two we learn the shocking "fact that Frege, a philosopher whom he [Dummett] profoundly admires, held some extremely racist views". The only evidence we are given is a quote by Dummett that says nothing about racism, but only that Dummett was shocked when he read Frege's diary. We never learn just what Frege said. We are not given an opportunity to decide for ourselves whether Frege expressed a view that we would regard as racist, and if so whether borderline racist, marginally racist, firmly racist, or extremely racist. Ironically, even though Dummett does not quote the Frege passage, he complains that the Frege's editors "chose to suppress" the diary passage in question. Could it have occurred to Dummett that he too was suppressing the Frege passage? Could it have occurred to Weiss that Dummett had made an omission that he, Weiss, had the power to correct for the benefit of outsiders?

Rating:
Summary: INSIDER WRITING FOR INSIDERS
Review: The publisher has described this book on the back cover as follows. "This book offers, in an accessible and no-nonsense manner, a systematic presentation of the main elements of Dummett's pivotal contribution to contemporary philosophy. Its overarching theme is his discussion of realism: Bernhard Weiss explores the philosopher's characterization of realism, his attack on realism, and his invention and exploration of the anti-realist position." After reading the book, I cannot agree that its presentation is accessible - I found it very difficult reading and in this review I will describe its peculiar manner of inaccessibility. Moreover, I cannot agree it has a "no-nonsense" style - I found the writing contrived, self-conscious and obscure. I found that the book's design made study and reflection unnecessarily arduous and tedious. For example, the notes do not come at the foot of the page, nor even at the end of the chapter; they are all collected on the last eleven pages of the book. Even worse, many of the notes should not have been notes at all: some are citations that would have been more conveniently incorporated into the text using the author's own abbreviating scheme given on page ix, some are just short parenthetical remarks, and some are gratuitous side comments.
Before describing the book's character, I need to reveal its content. What follows is again from the back cover. "The book begins by examining Dummett's views on language. Only against that setting can one fully appreciate his conception of the realism issue. With this in place, Weiss returns to Dummett's views on the nature of meaning and understanding to unfold his challenge to realism. Weiss devotes the remainder of the book to examining the anti-realist position. He discusses anti-realist theories of meaning and then investigates anti-realism's revisionary consequences. Finally, he engages with Dummett's discussion of two difficult challenges for the anti-realist: the past and mathematics."
One aspect of the book's inaccessibility is its insularity - the fact that it is written by an insider for insiders and that it shows no awareness that the outside even exists much less might want some background or clarification of the insider dogmas. An especially flagrant example comes early: on page 2 we learn that Dummett believes that "the (sic) goal of philosophy is the analysis of the (sic) structure of thought". Weiss shows no awareness that many if not most philosophers would find this belief to be extreme, astoundingly exclusionary, perhaps insulting. But there is no shortage of less obvious examples. On page 1 we learn that Dummett's main teachers at Oxford were Urmson and Anscombe, "the latter exerting the greater influence". Presumably, the reader knows who these people are and what Anscombe's influence was: we are not told another thing about either, except in the index where Anscombe's initials are given. On page two we learn the shocking "fact that Frege, a philosopher whom he [Dummett] profoundly admires, held some extremely racist views". The only evidence we are given is a quote by Dummett that says nothing about racism, but only that Dummett was shocked when he read Frege's diary. We never learn just what Frege said. We are not given an opportunity to decide for ourselves whether Frege expressed a view that we would regard as racist, and if so whether borderline racist, marginally racist, firmly racist, or extremely racist. Ironically, even though Dummett does not quote the Frege passage, he complains that the Frege's editors "chose to suppress" the diary passage in question. Could it have occurred to Dummett that he too was suppressing the Frege passage? Could it have occurred to Weiss that Dummett had made an omission that he, Weiss, had the power to correct for the benefit of outsiders?