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Currently at Toronto Pearson: -3. High today: 2, through the early morning.
There is a characteristic of weak philosophical texts that I see again and again (in places where you find weak philosophical texts, like anthologies of recent work in philosophy-of-x, marketed for teaching undergrad courses): they make lists that suffer from category errors. I.e., they do things like listing "the four characteristics of x" where at least one of the four is just a specification of another more general characteristic on the list. This is especially aggravating because students love lists--I mean, students who want to be reassured that they know what they need to know for the exam. If I tell them, look, here's so-and-so's list of four characteristics of x, then they will happily memorize those four characteristics and feel like they know the answer to the question "what is x, according to so-and-so?". If I tell them, look, here's so-and-so's list of four characteristics of x, but it's badly confused and really only contains about two and a half distinct characteristics ... then they don't know what it is they're supposed to know.
This of course means that it is preferable philosophically to teach weak texts that make lists suffering from category errors.
There is a characteristic of weak philosophical texts that I see again and again (in places where you find weak philosophical texts, like anthologies of recent work in philosophy-of-x, marketed for teaching undergrad courses): they make lists that suffer from category errors. I.e., they do things like listing "the four characteristics of x" where at least one of the four is just a specification of another more general characteristic on the list. This is especially aggravating because students love lists--I mean, students who want to be reassured that they know what they need to know for the exam. If I tell them, look, here's so-and-so's list of four characteristics of x, then they will happily memorize those four characteristics and feel like they know the answer to the question "what is x, according to so-and-so?". If I tell them, look, here's so-and-so's list of four characteristics of x, but it's badly confused and really only contains about two and a half distinct characteristics ... then they don't know what it is they're supposed to know.
This of course means that it is preferable philosophically to teach weak texts that make lists suffering from category errors.
