Questions that Matter: An Invitation to Philosophy

Rating:
Summary: More like an Uninvitation to Philosophy!
Review: Before my professor made the decision to complete the class without the assistance of Ed Miller's "Invitation" to philosophy, I took a brief break from reading one of the chapters to either gouge my eyes out with my highlighter or compose a short list of things I didn't like about the textbook:

1. The book is wordy, a sentiment previously expressed by my classmates. A lot of multi-faceted concepts are introduced in a single bound, with the assumption the reader is familiar with their implications.

2. As has been previously mentioned, the author makes excessive use of excerpts from other texts. Long, frequent, and teensy are the ingredients for a block quote most readers will skip. I began to feel that I myself could write a philosophy textbook if all I had to do was string together more adept, articulate literature.

3. The book not only denies the reader the convenience of easily accessible definitions (which can be found in the margins of greater texts), it lacks the self awareness to know when it's using a term that could be unfamiliar to an introductory student.

Although I am not a philosopher and am in no position to critique the validity of the book's contents, any astute college student can identify the shortcomings of a textbook that doesn't compare to the more palatable ones they've had. Ed Miller's Invitation to Philosophy was like showing up at a party and being met by a host who had no idea I was coming.

Rating:
Summary: More like an Uninvitation to Philosophy!
Review: Before my professor made the decision to complete the class without the assistance of Ed Miller's "Invitation" to philosophy, I took a brief break from reading one of the chapters to either gouge my eyes out with my highlighter or compose a short list of things I didn't like about the textbook:

1. The book is wordy, a sentiment previously expressed by my classmates. A lot of multi-faceted concepts are introduced in a single bound, with the assumption the reader is familiar with their implications.

2. As has been previously mentioned, the author makes excessive use of excerpts from other texts. Long, frequent, and teensy are the ingredients for a block quote most readers will skip. I began to feel that I myself could write a philosophy textbook if all I had to do was string together more adept, articulate literature.

3. The book not only denies the reader the convenience of easily accessible definitions (which can be found in the margins of greater texts), it lacks the self awareness to know when it's using a term that could be unfamiliar to an introductory student.

Although I am not a philosopher and am in no position to critique the validity of the book's contents, any astute college student can identify the shortcomings of a textbook that doesn't compare to the more palatable ones they've had. Ed Miller's Invitation to Philosophy was like showing up at a party and being met by a host who had no idea I was coming.

Rating:
Summary: . . . Answers that don't!!!!!
Review: First, to setup the context: I accepted a commission to teach an intro philosophy course where the previous instructor canceled at last minute. This book had already been ordered, so I could not use one of my choosing, I had to use it.

I am not at all happy, and it is not just because I didn't get to choose the book.

I completely agree with the previous review on several points. Miller is using this text to serve his own Christian agenda. This is obvious to both myself and my students (who have never taken a philosophy course before). Also, there are just some egregious omissions. In his section on epistemology, he omits even *mentioning* theories of what knowledge is (such as coherence theory, correspondence, the tripartite account of knowledge) He doesn't mention the Gettier problem. And in his chapter on skepticism, he says nothing about Hume. (!!)

A complaint that my students have made is that he frequently offers very long quotations and doesn't summarize them well (or at all) - almost as if it was convenient to fill pages with excessive historical quotes and avoid the work of trying to make sense out of it. It is, of course, a fine thing for philosophy majors to take original texts and making sense of them on their own. But, this is SUPPOSED TO BE FOR AN INTRO-LEVEL COURSE.

Let me make this last part clearer: it's not the book is too hard, it's that the citations seem like excessive/confusing padding.

Another OBVIOUS problem is that the book grossly over-emphasizes the importance of philosophy of religion by dedicating an ENTIRE SECTION (five chapters!!) to it. This just doesn't reflect the modern place that philosophy of religion holds in academic philosophy. Philosophy of religion holds a quite minor place at this point. It quite pluasible to go through a philosophy graduate degree program and take little or no philosophy of religion. The same could not be said for metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. Yes, yes, yes - all of us philosophers should be aware of the ontological and cosmological arguments for the existence of God and the like, but this kind of thing can be addressed at the introductory level via a single chapter (as the other two intro philosophy texts I own demonstrate).

I told my students that I've never used this text before and that therefore I am reading the book right along with them. I've found myself apologizing for the text so often, continuing to say "hopefully the next section will be better."

At this point I've had it. I am announcing tomorrow morning that we are no longer using this text. I actually think it would be quite easy to formulate a solid argument that this kind of tendentious text is both 1) harmful to philosophy (it is bound to turn off students early on) and 2) immoral (since it serves a religious agenda where it is not appropriate to do so). SHAME ON YOU ED.

Well, I've got to go now - I need to make copies of *real* introductory texts for the next class readings. :)

Rating:
Summary: 'Questions that Matter' - Drops the Ball
Review: Questions That Matter is purportedly a general text in philosophy intended for college students. In fact, it is a tract in Catholic moral philosophy. For every question introduced, e.g. 'Does God Exist?, the answer is already available and manifestly Catholic in content and thrust. No truly open inquiry is permitted. It is quite clear, even to the most naive reader, that he is being steered along a particular thread or line of biased argument to agree with Miller's own metaphysical preconceptions. Indeed, the words chosen and questions posed are designed to imitate the habituated conditioning and thought patterns endured over endless hours re-gurgitating answers in The Baltimore Catechism.

Peppered liberally throughout the book are incredible errors of logic as well as a dearth of empirical evidence to support Miller's sundry claims and theist assumptions. As an example, he appears willing to go along with Anselm's arguments pro-deity, in his chapter on the "Existence of God". These arguments, to be concise, are that "God being the 'greatest entity/being" that one can imagine is substantively distinct from such fantastic entities as 'unicorns', etc. Thus, if so many people can imagine such a 'greatest being' he/she/it must exist in reality and not merely in their imagination.

Of course, this is a patent non-sequitur. The limits of my own imagination, for example, can extend to projecting within my mind's eye a 'being' the size of the whole universe with conscious powers to match (e.g. through quantum wave superpositions). But, however sophisticated and compelling this image may be, it emphatically doesn't exist in objective reality! I point this out because one standard definition of madness is the inability to distinguish one's inner imaginings from external reality. In this regard, Anselm and his mental descendants must be considered as quite mad if they genuinely suppose their 'greatest being imaginable' actually exists!

Secondly, if the current 'greatest being' imagined defines this entity ("God") then what does this really say, given that humans possess a finite neural capacity (as well as a flawed brain architecture)? If this neural capacity (and by extension, imaginative power) is enhanced, say by evolution, then what? Do we accept the newer, larger imagined version over the old? If so, that says more about the acceptance of our own thought conceptions than it does about any exterior being that supposedly exists. None of these points have been included for possible discussion by Miller.

In the chapter on Materialism, Miller does himself in by referring to the sophisticated arguments of philosopher J.J. Smart, who uses quantum physics and its indeterminism to extend the basis of that philosophy away from its ancient (and overly simplistic) Greek origins. However, here the author has bitten off more than his metaphysics can chew. He would probably have been better off staying away - and sticking to his various castigations of 'mechanistic' Materialism (a la Newtonian laws) rather than doggedly taking on quantum mechanical issues of which he displays woeful ignorance. (QM is at the heart of modern Materialism!)

For example, Miller offers no compelling refutation of Smart's considerable tract, and thereby ends up looking as bereft of intellectual moorings as Anselm's unbelieving 'fool' is bereft of faith. ("The fool hath said in his heart there is no God", etc). Miller simply attempts to discredit Smart by resorting to the usual staid religionist tactics (based on ignorance of complexity at different physical levels). For example, according to Miller: 'If all thought is purely the result of physical brain activity then why should the content of this thought be anything special... why pay any attention to it if it is thus self-refuting?'

This, however, is based on several egregious assumptions, not the least of which is the unproven belief that self-refuting thought can be unimpeachably identified. As I note in my book, 'The Atheist's Handbook to Modern Materialism' (p. 164) - since there's no practical method to identify the site of a specific thought (where the quantum neural wavepacket collapses), nothing can be said about the quality or content of the thought. In other words, the supernaturalist can't make any claims about thought in a purely Materialist context. Including whether it is "self-refuting".

Most of the remainder of Miller's monograph is devoted to flaying all those philosophers with whom the author does not agree: David Hume, Jean Paul Sartre and a litany of others. This is accomplished within the scope of 4-5 paragraphs of a chapter section, after setting the victim up in one or more convenient 'straw man' positions (e.g. the attacks on Austrian philosopher J.J. Smart on pp. 165-168). Of interest - at least to me - was after several such 'flayings', I found myself scribbling notes in the book's margins, putting down arguments in their defense as they might had they been alive to do so.

Perhaps, this is the single redeeming feature of Miller's book: that it encourages such interaction! Apart from that, far superior texts are available (e.g. 'Problems of Life & Death' by Kurt Baier, 1997, Prometheus) to address and answer the questions to which Miller alludes.