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Showing posts from January, 2018

About Stephen Law

Overview ·    Public academic ·       Writer and speaker on a range of issues, academic and non-academic, for a wide variety of audiences - specialist and non-specialist ·       Authority on critical thinking and philosophy and their public application. Research interest in everyday irrationality and bullshit. Public speaker and writer. Has appeared many times on TV and Radio (including episodes of Closer to Truth in the US). Has written or been interviewed for The Guardian , The Independent on Sunday , The Mail on Sunday . The Sydney Morning Herald , The Times (book extract), Newsweek , Aeon , and New Scientist magazine. Author of ten critically received popular non-fiction books, including: ·       Many best-selling introductions to philosophy including The Philosophy Gym ·       A Very Short Introduction to Humanism for Oxford University Press ·       Believing Bullshit - a book on irrationality and bullshit, ·       The War For Children's Min

Who is Jordan Peterson? I have no idea.

Who is Jordan Peterson? My first exposure to him was the Cathy Newman interview . Folks are asking whether he is the intellectual giant some are suggesting, and even whether he is really qualified to be a public intellectual. We could ask the same question re Alain de Botton, of course. Yet what Alain De Botton does is fine. So, I am not bothered too much about Jordan Peterson's credentials re his role as 'public intellectual', which I am sure are perfectly OK even if he is not quite the intellectual giant some are suggesting. For neither is Alain de Botton. However, unlike Jordan Peterson, Alain de Botton is not saying stuff that odious right wing folks really want to hear. As I say, the Cathy Newman thing was my first exposure to JP and I thought he was alright, actually. Not that I agreed with him, but he was calm, polite, patient, and made a case while being constantly misrepresented and feebly challenged by someone - Newman - who clearly felt very str