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Sunday, September 12, 2010
REVIEW: Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set
That said, I do have decidedly negative feelings about D&D IV, but they're mostly of a very muted sort. Dismayed as I am by the turn the game has taken since 2008, I can't really muster any real hatred for it. This is not a game I play, so why waste any energy in loathing it? Sure, I'd have preferred if WotC had adopted a more genuinely old school approach to their new edition, but then I wish the Star Wars prequels were better than they turned out to be too. For me, D&D IV isn't generally on my radar and, if others are having fun with it, that doesn't impact me one whit.
Still, when one of the players in the Dwimmermount campaign, who has played D&D IV, brought over a copy of the Starter Kit last weekend, I can't deny that I was intrigued. Though I'm no fan of the Mentzer edition of the Basic Set from 1983, seeing its Elmore cover art gracing a WotC product did pique my interest. Clearly, this was meant to appeal to older gamers who never really warmed up to D&D IV. The Starter Kit looks to have been envisaged as a second chance to introduce the new edition to gamers turned off by its original hamfisted 2008 roll-out ("Zee game is zee same"). Score one for WotC on that, at least, because I did give the game a fresh look thanks to this box, although WotC earned no coin for their efforts. Had a friend not loaned me his copy, my interest would never have been enough to get me to fork over $19.95 for this boxed set and, having now read it, that situation hasn't changed.
The contents of the set consist of two paperback rulebooks, a 32-page player's book and a 64-page DM's book -- again, just like the Mentzer version -- a sheet of tokens, power and magic item cards, a double-sided battlemap, and some dice. The box itself is really very nice: sturdy and deep. Indeed, its depth gives a false impression of just how much material is included in the boxed set, since the bulk of the box contains a cardboard tray. That said, there's no denying it felt awesome to again hold a D&D boxed set in my hands. The books themselves felt very flimsy, like glossy laser-printed pages stapled together and with "covers" that are of the same quality -- a pity. The map and cards likewise felt cheap to me and perhaps they were; I imagine WotC needed to cut corners to keep the costs down somehow.
The Player's Book consists almost entirely of a choose-your-own-adventure type scenario that's intended to introduce players new to tabletop roleplaying (more on that later) to D&D IV. In that respect, it does a pretty good job, since it expects only that the player choose a name, gender, and race before getting into the action. As the players makes his way through nearly 100 numbered sections of the scenario, he's given choices that, besides advancing the action, also introduce game mechanics that are then explained in context. The result is a somewhat stilted "adventure," but one that nevertheless decently presents the D&D IV rules piecemeal rather than in a giant technical manual-like infodump.
Now, I was already familiar with D&D IV's rules, so very little in the Player's Book was new to me. However, I won't deny that this style of presentation was very clear, if a little hokey at times, but then I feel the same way about the Mentzer Basic Set's similar approach. I'm clearly not the target audience for a product like this, though this raises the question of just why WotC decided to use Elmore art on the box cover (art that is not repeated on the inside, I should make clear), but that's a topic for later in this review. As an introduction to the game for complete newcomers, though, I think the Player's Book is rather good.
The Dungeon Master's Book is, I think, a huge step up in complexity from the Player's Book and necessarily so. That said, I found it a lot less "basic" than I was expecting it to be. There are far fewer well-meaning platitudes about the nature of being a referee here than I was expecting. Indeed, the book is extraordinarily light on the philosophy of refereeing, concentrating instead on the rules a DM needs to know in order to run an adventure. On the one hand, I think this is refreshing, far more useful than the usual silliness that passes for referee advice in a lot of RPGs these days. On the other hand, I do wonder if a genuine newcomer will get a good sense of what the DM is and what he needs to do from this book, nearly 20 pages of which consists of an adventure. Besides the rules and the adventure, there is a small selection of monsters included (about 20), and a too-brief overview of a genuinely interesting little sandbox setting, the Nentir Vale.
The Starter Set is a very strange product. It is not, at least from my perspective, much of a deviation from the standard D&D IV rules, though I'm by no means an expert on that score. From what I can see, the set's rules are just a pared down version of what's in the hardcover rulebooks, rewritten and presented in a less intimidating fashion for the benefit of newcomers. It is not by any means a "basic set" in the sense that that term is usually used. There are, for example, no independent rules for creating characters; to create a character one must go through the solo adventure to determine ability scores and to see which abilities and powers go with which races and/or classes. That's fine as a tutorial, but, as a reference work, it leaves much to be desired. Furthermore, the material presented in the game is sufficient to handle a character only up to Level 2, after which one is directed to other supplements in this new line of D&D IV products. To my mind, that limits the utility of this boxed set even to D&D IV players; it's essentially a one-trick pony to be bought, used briefly, and then to be put on the shelf to gather dust as you move on to the "real" products.
I'm far from a neophyte, so it's hard for me to gauge how successful this product is as an introduction to the game. I think the Player's Book is a pretty decent tutorial and I appreciate that the Dungeon Master's Book opts for a no-nonsense, straightforward approach rather than the airy-fairy philosophical jabbering one usually gets in books aimed at referees. But I repeat: this is not a basic set for D&D IV. It is, like all of WotC's intro efforts to date, a piece of crippleware designed to get you to buy into the larger game line. To be fair, the set does not claim otherwise. It calls itself a "starter set" and, as such, it does what it sets out to do but no more. I can now say I have a much better grasp of the D&D IV mechanics than I did before and, while my opinion of them hasn't changed much, there's no question that the Starter Set is better and more clearly written than, say, the Player's Handbook.
But I remain confused about the use of the Elmore artwork. If this product is intended for true newcomers to roleplaying as it appears, then why use art from 25 years ago? If the product is intended to entice old school gamers into giving the new edition a second look, to prove that it really is "old school," then why is it written the way that it is? Simply limiting options to the classic tetrad of character classes and races can't hide the fact that, underneath it all, this is not, as the saying goes, "your father's Dungeons & Dragons." It's a very different game, both mechanically and stylistically, and, while I don't begrudge anyone who favors the new game (even if I do question their taste), I don't see a lot here that's of interest to fans of Gygax, Arneson, Holmes, Moldvay, or Mentzer.
I certainly can't blame WotC for that. I doubt old schoolers constitute a large enough potential market to justify catering to their grouchy idiosyncrasies, especially when they've already got games to which they've stubbornly clung for decades, despite the march of "progress." Reading through the Starter Set, though, did make me long for my old Holmes box. Boxed sets are no panacea for the declining state of the hobby, but there is something magical about them nonetheless. I wish WotC would, say, reissue the Holmes or even Moldvay boxed sets as "Classic Dungeons & Dragons," like Hasbro has done for some of its other games. That's something I'd buy without a second thought.
Presentation: 9 out of 10
Creativity: 6 out of 10
Utility: 3 out of 10
Buy This If: If you're curious about D&D IV's rules and don't mind spending $19.95 for a well-presented but extremely limited introduction to them.
Don't Buy This If: You either don't care about D&D IV's rules or are looking for a genuine "basic set" for the new edition.
58 comments:
I was talking to a retailer in Minneapolis yesterday who said maybe 1 in 5 people who bring this up to the counter to purchase think it's a reprint of the Mentzer basic set. It seems to be a frustrating situation for them having to explain to everyone what this is and isn't. Of course, there are a lot of old-schoolers in the area so maybe somewhere else doesn't have that issue.
ReplyDeleteI reviewed Carcosa a long time ago, when it was first released. Just use the "search" function to look for it. Short version: I like it but have some qualms about some of its content and the way it presents itself. It's worth getting, especially, in the expurgated version, if you like dark fantasy settings.
ReplyDeleteHmm. This is interesting. I did not know about its existence. I'm a sucker for starter boxes. And I know a couple of IV campaigns around that I've been avoiding b/c I don't want to buy a new rulebook. This might just be a compromise that allows me to take another look at them. Cheap enough to pick up, but not so much that I'll be burned if I never play. Nice review.
ReplyDeleteI have trouble being offended by the appropriation of the Elmore art and Mentzer Basic look, as I always thought both were a bit crap. Are we really that protective of the artistic integrity of Larry Elmore? That's like a Bad Brains fan getting his underwear bunched over the commercial use of a Green Day song.
I suspect that this box will have the desired effect of catching the attention of more than a few lapsed gamers. WotC has cynically (and correctly) surmised that most older gamers aren't versed in the history of the hobby or interested in whether or not a product is true to its roots. Most gamers, then as now, don't much know or care about anything other than what happens at their own tables. Hell, that's probably the way it should be, although there's no accounting for taste.
When the subject of gaming comes up in real life with other people around my age, I find myself nodding politely as they tell me about their old campaigns and characters - "old school" to them is the Bloodstone modules and 2e splatbooks. It's like someone finding out you like music and then going on about a great Nickelback show. Just not my thing at all. Folks like us are very much in the minority of the minority when it comes to the type of game we enjoy even among people who played 25 years ago.
Anyway, I think those folks are the target market - people who played D&D in the early 80s and aren't particularly critical about it as long as it has the right look. They had fun with whatever called itself D&D in the Mentzer Basic and AD&D 2e days, and they'll have fun with whatever calls itself D&D now if they give it another try. More power to them. Beats watching TV.I have trouble being offended by the appropriation of the Elmore art and Mentzer Basic look, as I always thought both were a bit crap.
You speak wisely.
Anyway, I think those folks are the target market - people who played D&D in the early 80s and aren't particularly critical about it as long as it has the right look.
I can believe that that's the thinking, but there's a reason these people aren't gaming anymore. I'm not sure they're a good audience to bank on attracting for the long haul, but then maybe WotC just intends to make a quick buck, I don't know.I think the old art is supposed to draw in "lapsed" players. People who played 20 years ago and haven't paid attention to D&D since. The low price point and familiar picture will probably be enough to sell a lot of copies.
I bet if they did reprint the old box it'd sell a ton of copies. I'm certainly glad I still have a rules cyclopedia. Wish I had the old boxes still, but it's good enough for my purposes.Hmmm. I had hoped that Essential D&D would be a rules lite restatement of D&D4 - something I might be interested in. But even with a spoon-fed programmed introduction if not going to play D&D4 as it's currently offered.
How does this set related to the Essential D&D rules compendium being published next week?Most gamers, then as now, don't much know or care about anything other than what happens at their own tables<
That was me up until a couple of years ago. Look at me now!
I now know that as far as D%D, I was not missing much. Still not. WOTC only got my money during my 90's MTG phase. Never again."I tried to read the IV PHB, but couldn't force myself past the halfway point."
My gaming group was just chatting about this today during our game session. All of us have the D&D "IV" Player's Handbook and all of us thought it was a dreadful read. It does not do a great job of explaining the rules, and more-over, it's just plain boring. It's not fun to read. It's sad that something that is supposed to fire the imagination instead became a boring list of page after page of different "powers", all of which started to sound the same after a while.
After all this time, I still continue to pull out my 1st Edition, 2nd Edition and even 3rd Edition Player's Handbooks to read for inspiration or just for fun. But I've never read the 4th Edition PHB all the way through and I don't see myself ever pulling it off the shelf again to leaf through "just for fun."
How sad.As a guy who runs a AD&D mega-dungeon campaign and a story driven D&D 4e game. I have to chime in say that I believe the Starter Set and Essentials line seem to be a introductory line of products. It uses the same mechanics as the full blown 4e game, but the classes are simplified and more straightforward. Beholding to their more original designs and following a set path for their progression through levels. Later products will introduce character generation in more detail and there will be a DM Kit box set and a campaign book on the sandbox campaign they mention. This box set really has nothing for someone who is familiar with the game or RPG's in general. It is dumbed down to a fault. It is basically a sampler platter and nothing more. Liked the fresh rolls - sorry there are only 2. And I simply ignored it, as did my players of the 4e edition. If I was just starting the game I dare say the tokens might have been cool. But, I already have minis and status tokens aplenty. Beyond an introduction to the game mechanics and the concepts of the RP gaming. There isn't much here.
If I had to hazard a guess I would say this product is WotC hoping to expand the game beyond local game shops and other specialty retailers and more into the mainstream like the bygone 80's RPG land rush. You could only buy the Essentials line (much like you could buy the old BECMI line) and not need anything else. And I predict there will also be a not so subtle selling point that you should "grow up" into the hard covers. Much like the old box sets alluded to moving on to AD&D. The Elmore cover art will appeal to parents who are buying Christmas gifts and lapsed gamers who might have played during those days when every one at least dabbled in the game. The original Red Box with Elmore art sold a lot of copies and is well recognized. You would see it in department stores, Sears catalogs, and toy stores back in the day. I can see why they would want to tap into that lost energy and visual recognition.
It is an interesting product line in that it doesn't divorce it self from the other books. You can easily have a character created with the Starter Set running in the same party has a character created by a power gamer with every hard cover on his shelf. The parts are interchangeable and both use the same rules. Though I have noticed that there is a bit more editing going on in some parts of the game with the release of this line. The treasure system is becoming a bit more challenging for players to acquire magical items for example. And monsters have been changed to be more of a threat in terms of damage formulas.
My only complaint is that WotC really gives me the impression that they are learning how to do this whole RPG publishing through trial and error. At least they aren't creating a 4.5 edition this time around. And instead of rewriting the whole game they are just coming out with a low cost book that has all the rules updated with errata.
As for the depth of the box. I play a lot of board games like Arkham Horror, Twilight Imperium, and Catan. I like it when boxes leave room to hold additional future expansions/books. Makes it easier to take stuff to other locations to play.
But, D&D has always been a moving target in what it is for me. Having been one of those kids who had the Holmes, Mentzer, and Moldvay books and trying to figure out why they were all slightly different.But I remain confused about the use of the Elmore artwork.
It's only for the first print run. The second printing will go for an updated version of the same image, done in the current house style. I believe the logo will be changed too.
It seems as if this new Essentials line represents a consolidation of the rules changes made to D&D4 since its release, so as Zak says, what you get in the Red Box is somewhat different to what you get in the three core rulebooks. Indeed, I believe that the core books are going out of print to make way for the Essentials line.Captain Jack: How does this set related to the Essential D&D rules compendium being published next week?
As I understand it, the rules compendium is the new edition of D&D4, reformatted and with some minor revisions. Some have called it D&D4.5, but I don't know if the rules changes have been that drastic; there does seem to have been a lot of errata, even during the brief period in which I played the game.
The current D&D4 materials are going out of print, with the new Essentials line - including the Red Box, the rules compendium and the Monster Vault - taking over as the official "face" of the game.I had pre-ordered this, thinking it actually was a Mentzer-style Basic Set for 4e, and hoping for a simpler-than-full-4e but still complete game for the level 1-3 range. Luckily I read my first review in time to realise it was not that at all, and cancel my preorder.
One of my big problems GMing 4e is that much of the time I have no idea what the PCs are doing. The player declares "I'm using XX", Where XX is a Power, and rolls dice and (hopefully) tells me the in-game effect, but XX is rarely self-explanatory and only the best players bother to give any in-game visualisation of what's actually happening. And of course most of the other players don't know what's happening either, except the mechanical effects - Monster X takes Y damage and is Dazed/Stun/Prone/Immobilised et al. At least with the monsters I as GM can provide "flavour text" to go with the "crunch", and I do that with PC powers if I can grasp what's happening, but it's the first time I've GM'd a game where *I as GM do not know what is happening in-world*. It's a strange and frequently frustrating experience.I was really hoping WOTC was going to rid all their "bloat"rules like healing surges, action points,kewl rules but they of course they didn't.
Maybe their upcoming Rules Compendium might give on more insight into help tailoring 4E to individual players/ DM's taste, but chances are that won't be the case either.
One disappointment after another...When you say "there's no question that the Starter Set is better and more clearly written than, say, the Player's Handbook", do you mean the 1e version or some other version? (I don't even know if they still use Player's Handbooks anymore, that's how Old School I am.)
I meant the current D&D IV version, although I would never hold up even the 1e version as a particularly good example of a game manual, even if I am very fond of it.How does this set related to the Essential D&D rules compendium being published next week?
Interestingly, the same friend who lent me the Starter Set brought the compendium over this week. I flipped through it and what it appears to be is all the non-character-specific rules in the current edition collected under a single 400-page trade paperback-sized book. So, all the combat rules are here, as is stuff about running skills challenges, etc. Again, it's a nicely arranged and put together book and I really liked the size and format (and the quality feels better than the flimsy stuff in the boxed set), but a compendium that's 400 pages (even 400 cut-down pages)? That tells me all I need to know.Just so y'all know--according to my sources certain classes in the box ARE slightly different than in straight up Type 4 D&D and WoTC is planning to make future products consistent with New Red Box presentation of them.
I'd heard this too and I have no doubt that it's true, but it's hard to say just from reading the Starter Set, since there are no full character class write-ups to compare with the D&D IV PHB versions and I didn't feel like borrowing that book too for this review.As I understand it, the rules compendium is the new edition of D&D4, reformatted and with some minor revisions. Some have called it D&D4.5, but I don't know if the rules changes have been that drastic; there does seem to have been a lot of errata, even during the brief period in which I played the game.
I think it's true that the compendium incorporates a lot of the errata to the game that's been added since 2008, but the underlying game seems to be still fundamentally the same, so I'm not sure calling it "4.5" is really accurate, at least not in comparison to v.3.5. Now, that said, it does look like there are changes present here that are more than cosmetic ones, like the new versions of the four basic character classes.In my opinion, it's obviously who this product is aimed at: parents. Dads and moms will see the cover, feel nostalgia, and buy it for their own kids. Get these kids interested in D&D and then suddenly you've got a new and growing market. The holiday season is coming up, after all. I really don't think WOTC gives a crap one way or the other about all of the grognards and others cleaving to earlier editions. Otherwise they'd do what those people want and re-release the old stuff as PDFs or Print on Demand (or both).
ReplyDeleteI think the Starter Set succeeds at it's goal as an introduction to the 4e mechanics. In the intro to the DM section they bring up computer RPGs and how D&D is the progenitor of these game. But what rubbed me the wrong way is that I felt they never state the advantage of playing D&D 4e (i.e. tabletop roleplaying) over CRPGs.
Why should they have to go through several dozen steps to make a character and run an adventure when a CRPG handles all that for you?
Here is were I think the 4e focus on encounters is self-defeating. The strength of tabletop RPGs is the roleplaying aspect and the imagination of the human referee and the human players.- AnonymousSeptember 13, 2010 at 9:46 AM
"I tried to read the IV PHB, but couldn't force myself past the halfway point."
Me too and I run a bi-weekly 4e game! The 4e PHB is a reference book, and that's about it. I learned the combat rules, I read the powers/feats/rituals/magic items that my characters need, and that's about it. It's nowhere near the enjoyable read that the older editions were. The fun of 4e happens at the table. The strength of tabletop RPGs is the roleplaying aspect and the imagination of the human referee and the human players.
Yes, definitely. I think tabletop RPGs will only suffer in comparison if computer games are used as the metric for discussion. As I see it, these are two very different pastimes and, if tabletop RPGs are to survive and prosper, RPG companies need to play to their strengths rather than presenting them as if they were analog video games.SImply put, the reason the art is the same isn't some hamfisted attempt to get people like you, James. It's to get people who lapsed during the Mentzer days for one reason or another and see the box while they're at Target (They sell it at Target, now. How the hell about that, James?) Christmas shopping for their little cousins or whatever and be like "oh hey, D&D!"
In essence, the gamers who are old school because they haven't had exposure to 20 years of evolution, rather than those who have rejected it.
And it seems to be fairly successful at doing so from what I understand.
I want one badly, but god I do not have anyone to teach in my life who cares to learn.I was hoping you'd post a review of this. I'd like to share my thoughts, as a 36 year old father of two boys, 9 and 15. As a kid, I had all the Mentzer era D&D boxed sets and dabbled in 2E for several years as well, before abandoning D&D for other things. I picked the new box up thinking it would be a great family activity, and good math practice for my 9 year old.
I ran through the character creation with both kids. My younger son loved it, and went into great detail RPing the fights. My oldest was more into the rules aspects and number crunching. That's all well and good, it takes both to make the world go around, right?
I made a character for my wife and we all sat down one evening and ran through the first group encounter from the DM's book. It took over an hour to run this single encounter. My oldest son had questions about the skill Sneak Attack, which the Player's book instructed to write down as a skill but had no corresponding power card. We just ignored it after a fruitless, lengthy search through both books. They are horribly organized for any sort of reference. After the encounter was over, we quit for the evening.
I am of the opinion that there is far too much rules-mongering in this new edition. I like the idea of power cards, but it makes things so slow when each character can use so many special abilities! I thought I'd simply slog through it until we got through the DM book adventures at least.
But then I read about the encounter with the white dragon. To see an interaction with such a beast reduced to "make X skill checks in a row to win" broke my heart. That kind of an encounter should be role played, not roll played through! I put the book down in disgust.
The next time I was at my local game shop, in the used game section, was a battered copy of the Mentzer Basic rulebooks. I bought both for $6 total and plan to use the nice red box I have to store them in. Might pick up some old 1E AD&D stuff for kicks soon, and I suspect they'll make more memories for us than the new edition ever would have.It's to get people who lapsed during the Mentzer days for one reason or another and see the box while they're at Target (They sell it at Target, now. How the hell about that, James?) Christmas shopping for their little cousins or whatever and be like "oh hey, D&D!"
You may well be right, but experiences teaches me that, while this sort of strategy does result in short term sales, it does not translate into creating new players of the game. Back during the 3e days, I bought its version of a starter set for my younger cousins and they were simply baffled and disinterested in the thing. Now, maybe if I'd actually played it with them, they might have become hooked, I don't know.
Remember I was and am a very devoted roleplaying gamer. How many lapsed Mentzer era players, though, will be devoted enough to play the game with their little relatives, especially when its contents are nothing like the game they played back in the 80s? I'd be amazed if it were many.- AnonymousSeptember 13, 2010 at 11:56 AM
With the advent of Essentials, my group finally gave up on the great 4e experiment, after over a year of gamely trying to get the rules to work.
We went back to AD&D (pre-2nd edition), starting with Keep on the Borderlands. Granted, we miss a few innovations like skills, but still the game is just so much more fun. "I attack" is plenty when even ogres don't have 20 hit points, and it was so nice as DM to actually be master of the game. We'll probably phase in a few 2nd edition things soon.
Like someone else commented, in 4e, the GM can never be a master. There's no way I can keep track of all the hyperspecial attacks..."Flying Crotchgrab Smash" doesn't really give a hint, and the hundreds of hit points of healing and damage sloshing around just doesn't make for a clean game even if the GM could really follow it all. James, you should thank Wizards for sending you on this journey rather than blaming them. ^_^
As I've said before, Wizards taught me what I want by giving me exactly what I thought I wanted. Would I have ever found Dragonsfoot and rediscovered classic D&D without 3e?
Anyway, this review is disappointing. While I'm not a fan of 4e, I thought perhaps Wizards had finally seen the light with respect to an introductory game, but it seems they've made the same mistakes.
The brand name with the most potential to expand the hobby and the market, and they're squandering it with an overly complex system that turns off many newcomers. It doesn't help to have a simple "starter set" if you then dump them straight into full 4e.
Time to sprinkle a few more print-outs of retro-clones and quick-starts thereof around the world."Like someone else commented, in 4e, the GM can never be a master. There's no way I can keep track of all the hyperspecial attacks..."Flying Crotchgrab Smash" doesn't really give a hint"
Yup. GMing 4e I definitely don't feel that I am in charge. Sometimes it's nice to be surprised, but other times I just feel bewildered and a bit lost. GMing OSRIC online recently I've really loved the feel of actually being in charge of the game again, of it being my rulings, not the book's rules, that the game hangs on. It's a big responsibility to do it right, but I think it makes for a better and more satisfying game for everyone.I am not sure how I see the confusion part.
The target audience for this set are people that have not gamed in decades or have gamed at all. With the last group they have no prior experiences to confuse them with.
Personally I think that anyone that reads this blog is by definition far outside of the target market. Not the WotC is trying to exclude us, but they are going where the potential for new customers is. We have games, often several that are called "D&D", we don't need this intro.
All that aside I do applaud their efforts.
They are going after a new crowd and they are pricing the game at a level to attract the most casual of buyer. The retro-design sure has it's appeal, but again we are not who they are aiming for.
Having played the game I can say it is fun. It is easy to learn and I had my kids up and running with it in no time. At the end of the day, that is what I want in a game.
It's like that old parody commercial for the Wii vs. Playtstation 3. Play the Wii, it is cheap and fun.
Now if we could only see a D&D Classics line. Hasbro is already doing it with the Star Wars figures. Of course splitting an already small market is rarely a good idea.I noted that for the D&D Game Day last Saturday, WotC was suggesting that players come enjoy a retro gaming experience.
In recent months, I've seen a lot of products making use of 70s and 80s nostalgia as a marketing ploy (which is interesting in itself), so I guess WotC is just tapping into that? Sadly, it's all form and no substance and simply calling something "retro" and slapping old art on the box isn't enough to change its essential nature (pun intended).It never ceases to amaze me how two of the industries which meant so much to me as a kid (RPG and comics) can be so relentless in their efforts to confuse the (potential) market and extract as much money as possible from a shrinking audience. If someone were going to walk in off the street and try to "start" playing D&D, they'd be confronted with a series of high-priced hardcovers (some of them bearing the word "essential" in their title, which sure makes it seem like as if you need to purchase them in order to play the game), a new red-boxed "starter" set whose trade dress looks nothing like the other books, an older "starter" set which *does* look like the other books, *plus* a "compendium" of the rules, all of which bear some unspecified relationship to each other. Where to begin? And if you're the unlucky guy who elected to start with the "starter" set, you quickly find out that in order to play the game in any meaningful sense, you should have just put your $20 towards the aforementioned high-priced hardcovers. If the industry was *intentionally* trying to alienate potential new players it's hard to imagine what else they could do to accomplish that goal short of publishing everything in Sanskrit.
It's the same affliction which has meant that a decade of Spider-Man (and other comic book) movies (which, measured in dollars are among the most successful movies in history) has translated into no appreciable increase in sales of the underlying property: the budding Spider-Man reader walks into a store and is confronted with, depending on the year and month, upwards of a half-dozen ongoing monthly titles spanning multiple fictional universes, to say nothing of one-shots, limited series and cross-overs. Both industries seem intent on wringing the last available dollar from every remaining fan - and seem to confuse what will appeal to existing customers with what will appeal to new ones.I succumbed to the marketing blitz at Gen Con and PAX, and ordered the starter box from Amazon.
I guess I qualify as one of the "lapsed gamers" described above. I used to play a lot when I was a teenager (1st Edition), and am now a middle-aged salaryman who's getting back to the table and would love to play more than I do.
All of my D&D-playing friends play 4E, and I enjoyed it when I tried it - except that I'm finding it really complicated. I spent much of the game sessions flipping through the rulebook trying to figure out the rules for flanking and combat advantage, and managing all of my powers and healing surges and whatnot.
Now, I managed to figure out Champions back in the day, so I think I could figure out 4E eventually. But I was an obsessive 14-year-old kid with lots of unsupervised time on his hands back then. My hope for the new red box is that it will provide training wheels to help ease me into the 4E rules. And the red box reassures me with the promise that I will feel as comfortable and familiar with this game as I did in the early 1980s.
But I haven't played it yet, so...we'll see.- AnonymousSeptember 13, 2010 at 2:10 PM
"Like someone else commented, in 4e, the GM can never be a master."
I completely disagree. In 3rd ed., the DM could never be a master. The players always had special rules or spells that could get them out of any jam. Additionally, the rules were so specific that the DM really didn't have any leeway to dictate how things happened. 4e gives the DM much more control over narration and scene control.
Where 4e takes away some DM control is in how you move monsters around the battlefield. Players have lots of powers that push/pull/immobilize creatures. I know DMs who hate that mechanic, because they can't just say "the boss walks up to the wizard and pounds him." No, instead, the boss might be dazed or immobilized, and the DM actually has to use some tactics and skill to challenge the players.
Overall, I think 4e appeals to wargamers. The wargames crowd already expects complexity, and they're willing to accept that in a game that plays cleanly and provides a tactical challenge. That's a fair description of 4e.
If WotC feels that targeting the wargamer market is a wise business move, that's their right. In their defense, it's been 3 years since 4e was released, and a lot of people are still playing it, so it seems they're doing something right. I bought this product purely so that I could get my hands on the shiny retro box, to keep my actual Mentzer booklets in. On that count, I'm not disappointed. It's a really nice box.
What comes inside the box, though, is another matter entirely. I was already passingly familiar with the 4th edition (A)D&D rules, but this is the first time I've really examined them in-depth, and one thing struck me above all else: LOOK AT HOW MANY HIT POINTS THE MONSTERS HAVE.
Weapon damage isn't all that inflated compared to previous editions. The "basic attack" deals a die of damage plus a middling single-digit modifier, not all that far off from typical weapon damage in a 3rd edition game. But hit points have increased tenfold! Gelatinous cube with 150 hp? Kobolds with 30 hp? When in all the older versions, it wouldn't be unusual to see 15 and 3 for the respective monster's hp totals? NO WONDER PEOPLE COMPLAIN ABOUT THE "GRIND"!
This sticks in my craw, because it means that the vaunted, carefully balanced math that went into designing 4th edition is actually a carefully concealed shell-game meant to hide the fact that combat is a huge time-sink, pretty much by design.
Does everybody remember how in the *real* Mentzer basic set, the first example battle was your solo adventure fighter versus a snake, and you just exchanged blows that dealt 1 hp of damage (since the game was explaining the concept of hit points, but hadn't gotten around to rolling damage yet)? That's what *all* combat in 4th edition is *supposed* to be like, spiced up on occasion with encounter and daily powers. It's as if you were playing good old basic D&D, except that instead of all hits dealing 1d6 damage, all hits are supposed to deal 1 (or, if you're casting a spell, 2-3) points of damage. Think about how long combat would take in OD&D if that were the case, and you have a good idea of how 4th edition is *intended* to play.
The options in the Starter Set player's book, too, seem carefully geared to pushing players toward engaging in combat. Try to select an option that doesn't meet 4e's definition of "heroic" (i.e. violence motivated by lawful goodness) and the booklet tells you go back and pick a more appropriately bloodthirsty-but-not-evil course of action. Oy gevalt!
D&D is supposed be a role-playing game, not a skirmish sim.Here's my take on the confusion aspect:
I already have a visual guide to D&D editions that I have to break out when talking about D&D to someone in any depth. It's already confusing enough to try to come up with names for all the games that have been called "D&D". At least the covers helped. Now, even there you suddenly need a footnote or qualification.
Or look at the "red box" groups that are springing up. It used to be that you could put a picture of the old red box on a flyer and people would either know what the group was about or at least know that it was about an edition they weren't familiar with. That's no longer true.
It's not a big issue, IMHO, but it is senseless.Rach's reflections, do you know if the next print run will include the changes seen in the Essentials line? My understanding was that they just weren't going to bother reprinting the older rules when they had the compendium out.
If they do, then that might be a problem. As bt says, how does a shopper know what to buy if they see the starter set, the Red Box, the Essentials and the original books, all in a row?- AnonymousSeptember 13, 2010 at 5:01 PM
"It's as if you were playing good old basic D&D, except that instead of all hits dealing 1d6 damage, all hits are supposed to deal 1 (or, if you're casting a spell, 2-3) points of damage."
You're half right. What you're missing is this: Some classes are much better at dealing damage than others. For example, a first level rogue can deal 1d4+5+2d6 damage with a basic attack, not even using an at will power. A dwarf fighter can do 3d10+7 with a daily at level 1.
Encounter powers do a lot of damage, and they're not used occasionally, as you suggest. No, by 9th level, each character generally has 4 or so encounter powers, and so they're coming out every round. Not to mention the synergy bonuses that characters can get by working together. For example, the Warlord in our group can expend his at-will to allow an ally to take a second attack with a +5 bonus to damage. Groups that work as a team are very dangerous.
Still... there is a big grind factor, especially with new DMs, who often stick lots of "soldier" and "brute" monsters in a single encounter. It's an issue that's been discussed quite a bit on some of the 4e forums. - AnonymousSeptember 13, 2010 at 5:43 PM
"I completely disagree. In 3rd ed., the DM could never be a master. The players always had special rules or spells that could get them out of any jam. Additionally, the rules were so specific that the DM really didn't have any leeway to dictate how things happened. 4e gives the DM much more control over narration and scene control."
I'm actually on the side of 3e, here, which was actually something of a pseudo-simulationist algorithm which seemed to lend itself to on-the-fly adjustments - and was incredibly easy to "weight" while remaining 5% or so unpredictable. As soon as you've got "Encounter Powers," for example, though, you have to start designating "Encounters," which actually starts mucking about with the pace of a game. 3.0 started the mess with the miniature's handbook (with its unabstractable "positioning"), but you could ignore that and play the game. You can whittle that part out of 3.5 (basically by updating some bits of 3.0) or Pathfinder. 4e seems to have written the aspects so deeply into the game, and added more besides, that I for one CAN'T play the thing without a Grid and set-piece "encounters," at least without rendering a large part of Chargen meaningless and stipping pcs of their abilties.
P.S.: I got the new box for $15. It's now the new home for my Mentzer books (take out the slanted cardbord, and they'll fit!) and a set of Modlvay/Cook. If I ever feel compelled to use minis for a special combat or anything, the floorplans and chits might come in handy. I think James, that the Elmore art and revived "red box" format have thrown you for a loop only because you have paid little attention to 4th Edition. Having never been an AD&D fan—I started with the Holmes boxed set and followed all the boxed set lines through Mentzer—I was completely put off by 3rd Edition, which was "D&D" in name only. In every way that really mattered (races, classes, Great Wheel Cosmology, alignment, and edition designation) it was Advanced Dungeons & Dragons with a jumped up system and the "A" filed off. 4th Edition—which I tried but did not like—was clearly revised by people like me who had fonder memories of the Mentzer "classic D&D" than OD&D or AD&D. It scaled down the alignment system to something closer to the boxed sets, dumped the Great Wheel cosmology in favor of something that looked suspiciously like the classic universe, and revived the concept of tiered play which characterized the boxed sets. The initial classes and races (aside from the silly new additions) even dumped AD&D touches like Barbarians, Druids, and Gnomes. Heck, the 4e monster manual did not even have AD&D's metallic dragons, just as the boxed sets didn't. Mind you, I am not saying 4th Edition even vaguely resembles those sets mechanically—it is the love child of 3.0 and 3.5—but it is clear that 4e was created by people with nostalgic feelings for the old boxes. This "Starter Set" merely confirms what I have felt about 4e since it appeared.
ReplyDelete- AnonymousSeptember 14, 2010 at 4:33 AM
3E is the clear heir to AD&D. 4E is deliberately cut down and simplified, with the DM given much more control and freedom. I found DMing 3E a lot of work, and now find DMing 4E a relative breeze. 4E is a somewhat ambitious attempt to fix some longstanding issues with D&D while paring back the weight and depth of rules it had accumulated. I know that sounds ironic, given the sheer page count, but the actual rules (as opposed to character options; powers and feats) are MUCH shorter and simpler than 3E or AD&D, for that matter.
Jeff Rients still has the Mike Mearls quote on his page: "Yup, that's right. At WotC we're playing OD&D. I read Jeff Rients' report of his Winter War OD&D game, and I had to run the game." Hey folks, I actually just did an interview with Mike Mearls on The Escapist, that's all about the red box.
It's an interesting interview. Essentials, according to Mearls, actually is the new direction for the game. He even told us not to buy the old books. He thinks the game went wrong in 4e and is trying to steer it right.
Example quote: "If you look at the Fighter and the way he works in D&D Essentials, we removed the Daily powers to get more of a sense that 'fighters and wizards should look really different,' because that's how D&D originally approached it," Mearls said.Just bought this over the weekend for my son who turned 12. Personally, it did 'feel' good seeing the old box of what I remembered getting 26 odd years ago. I still have my old books and it was fun to see not only my son get into it, but my 14 yo daughter excited to create her back-story (which of course has plenty of drama - and a romantic theme). My wife laughs at how giddy I am to do this again, and I thought this Starter Kit was a great find.


text:
Bizarre views are a hazard endemic to metaphysics. The metaphysician starts, seemingly, with some highly plausible initial commitments or commonsense intuitions -- that there is a prime number between 2 and 5, that I could have had eggs for breakfast, that squeezing the clay statue would destroy the statue but not the lump of clay -- thinks long and hard about what they imply, and then ends up positing a realm of abstract Platonic entities, or the real existence of an infinite number of possible worlds, or a huge population of spatiotemporally coincident things on her mantelpiece. I believe there is not a single detailed exploration of fundamental issues of metaphysics that does not, by the end, entangle its author in seeming absurdities (sometimes advertised as "surprising conclusions"). Rejection of these absurdities then becomes the commonsense starting point of a new round of metaphysics, by other philosophers, which in turn generates a complementary bestiary of metaphysical strangeness. Thus are philosophers happily employed.
I see three possible explanations of why philosophical metaphysics is never thoroughly commonsensical.
One is that a thoroughly commonsensical metaphysics wouldn't sell. It would be too boring. A famous philosopher can't say only obvious things. The problem with this explanation is that there should be at least a small market for a thoroughly commonsensical philosophy. Common sense might not be quite as fun as Nietzsche's eternal recurrence or Leibniz's windowless monads or Hegel's world spirit, but a commonsensical metaphysics ought to serve at least as a foil; it oughtn't be so downmarket as to be entirely invisible. In the 18th century, Thomas Reid helped found the Scottish school of "common sense" philosophy, and today he is the best known representative of that school -- so one might naturally wonder if Reid's metaphysics is thoroughly commonsensical. It's not. See, for example, his thoughts on the immaterial souls of vegetables. Nor is G.E. Moore's, when he develops his positive views in detail, despite his famous "Defence of Common Sense". See, for example, his treatment of sense data.
Another possible explanation is that metaphysics is incredibly hard. There is a thoroughly commonsensical metaphysics out there to be had; we simply haven't pieced it together yet. Maybe someday someone will finally bring it all together, top to bottom, with no serious violence to common sense at any point in the system. I fear this is wishful thinking against the evidence. (In a future post I hope to argue the point in more detail for the metaphysics of mind.)
A third explanation of the bizarreness of metaphysics is this: Common sense is incoherent in matters of metaphysics. Detailed examination of the consequences of our commonsense opinions inevitably leads to contradictions. To develop a coherent metaphysics in detail thus necessarily involves rejecting some aspects of common sense. Although ordinary common sense serves us fairly well in negotiating our everyday social and physical environments, it has not proven a reliable guide in cosmology or microphysics or neuroscience or evolutionary biology or probability theory or structural engineering or medicine or macroeconomics or topology. If metaphysics more closely resembles items in the second class than in the first, as it seems to, we might justifiably be suspicious of the dependability of common sense as a guide to metaphysics. Undependability does not imply incoherence, but it does seem a natural next step in this particular case, especially since it would generate a tidy explanation of the historical fact that detailed metaphysical systems are never thoroughly commonsensical.
Thus, I am endorsing the incoherence of common sense in matters metaphysical as an empirical hypothesis, justified as the best explanation of an empirically observed pattern in the history of philosophy.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Why Metaphysics Is Always Bizarre
Posted by Eric Schwitzgebel at 3:49 PM
Labels: metaphilosophy, metaphysics
60 comments:
I think I agree with option three-- though I also think that option one is part of it.
Here's a question for you, though. One might think that the two ways to measure and evaluate metaphysical theories are 1) internal coherence/consistency and 2)accord with common sense. But, if common sense itself is inconsistent and/or wrong, perhaps (2) is not the right thing to look for. But (1) is way too cheap-- there are plenty of plain crazy theories that have (1). So what else do we use to evaluate and sort metaphysical theories? Accord with science? Maximal expressive power? Maximum precision? Something else?
Or do we just stop betting on the horses, so to speak? - Mon Sep 19, 08:22:00 PM PDT
why not just have a deflationary view of truth and just have the crazy true one? - Tue Sep 20, 01:52:00 AM PDT
- Eric Schwitzgebel said...
@ Brandon and Richard: Nicely posed question. I see three outcomes: (a.) Reduction to an empirical issue (e.g., issues about the mechanisms of self-knowledge); (b.) Pragmatism, where by pragmatism I mean that one makes a value-guided choice about what metaphysical structure to impose on things, as a kind of rigorizing of language, given the empirical facts (e.g., how is it best to conceptualize "belief"); or (c.) Pessimism that we can ever know at least given current resources (e.g., about what sort of hypothetical beings would and would not have a stream of conscious experience). All three options are compatible with deflationism about truth, I think. They are also all compatible at least in principle with "crazyism" (see my previous post on that term), though (c)-type cases are where crazyism strikes deepest, I think.
Maybe there's a (d), too, where the issue becomes purely formal, like mathematics. - Tue Sep 20, 08:05:00 AM PDT
I like how you have created constrasting terms: metaphysics, scientific reasoning and common sense. The way I interpret what you say is that they are concerned not with different analysans, but have different kinds of desiderata about how to accomodate data into what is the canon of science/metaphysics/common sense.
Framing a question: what is the goal of science, metaphysics and common sense? I'm not sure I can give a comprehensive answer, but I think they have conflicting goals, or at least goals in tension with each other. At a prima facie:
Metaphysics; commensuration with common sense taken with some notion of logical consistency (how far can we go with pretheoretic ideas - or which are true and which are not)
Science: commensuration with experimentations and models with their evidences. Science is known to go against common sense in many issues, as it does philosophy. Many times they go along together as well (suggestive of some shared quality?)
Common sense: pretheoretic notions consistent with past life experience/general experiences? (not quite sure how to frame this one)
I see potential for a provoking analysis here. - Wed Sep 21, 04:18:00 PM PDT
- Tristan Haze said...
Here's an unfashionable thought. Not sure if I think it's true:
Common sense only appears to be committed to an incoherent metaphysics. The appearance arises when we take linguistic forms out of the (different) contexts which give them life and throw them together. This can be thought of as causing two interrelated problems: (i) ("formal") equivocation through mixing of language strata and (ii) loss of meaning. - Wed Sep 21, 10:16:00 PM PDT
What is needed is a metaphysics that takes into account both common sense and science, as well as the history of metaphysics itself. Such a metaphysics has been developed by the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset. See his Some Lessons in Metaphysics (Norton, 1969) as a starting point.
By the way, the Comments section would be easier to read if the "Leave your comment box was located either at the top or after the posted comments, allowing for wider lines. Thank you. - Wed Sep 21, 10:32:00 PM PDT
So the history of philosophy is essentially a history of error?
What makes you think that your present criteria of what constitutes the integrity or coherence of a set of philosophical doctrines are the final, truly correct ones? Do you think that your criteria stand outside the historical process, in a privileged space that transcends culture and language?
Are you prepared to say explicitly what I'm reading your post to imply, namely:
All learned culture -- past and present -- that does not conform to Eric Schwitzgebel's particular version of twenty-first-century, white middle-class university-trained west-coast secular American rationality, are basically, well... crazy. Or, to be (slightly) more charitable, *objectively inferior*.
Have I got the implications of your hypothesis for understanding culture wrong? - Thu Sep 22, 07:56:00 AM PDT
- Jackson Davis said...
Yes, the history of philosophy is filled with errors. So is science. So is common sense. This does not mean that there is no resulting truth. By the way, philosophy began with an error. It started with the Parminedean search for the one unchanging "Being," that has been sought by both philosophers and scientists as well. The scientists have discovered that all physical phenomena involve change, radom at the quatum level, evolutionary at the cosmic level. It's time for the Heraclitean worldview of "Change" to take hold. My favorite philosopher , José Ortega y Gasset, posits that the era of "Philosophy" is over and it is to be replaced by what he calls "Vital or Historical Reason," based on a dynamic "Living" instead of a static "Being." As for "Science" he sees it as a search for "a story that is true whenever it is told." But it's still just a story. See his What is Philosophy?, Man and Crisis, The Origin of Philosophy, and Historical Reason. It's all really quite "Bizarre"!
- Thu Sep 22, 09:55:00 AM PDT
Boy, this thread sure went downhill quickly.
- Fri Sep 23, 02:24:00 PM PDT
- Jackson Davis said...
Speaking of "downhill," it can mean an exhilarating ride to a skier, or a treacherous fall to a hiker. It all depends on what we are trying to do. According to Ortega's "bizarre," but common-sense metaphysics, "my life," your life, the life of each individual human being, is the basic, fundamental or "radical" reality, in the sense that all other realities are "rooted" in it. And this reality, "my life," has a structure. "My life" consists of "I," "my self," the person that I am, and "my circumstances," which includes not only so-called "physical phenomena," but also so-called "mental phenomena," "social phenomenal," and even "spiritual phenomena," in short, anything that "occurs" to me. "My life" consists of "happenings" or "occurrences," "what I do and what happens to me." Now a hill, even a down slope on a hill, can be a facility or a difficulty for me depending on what I am trying to do or what "concerns" me. Now Ortega traced back original meaning of the Greek word "pragmata" to just that: "concerns, affairs, or matters". But Greek philosophers began using the word to mean "things," material objects having existence independent from me. And this word, "pragmata," was translated into Latin as "res" and the res-t is history. So in a few sentences, we have slid "downhill" from a common-place "occurrence" (a down-sloping hill), to a common-sense "concern" (skiing or hiking), and then to the history of metaphysics. Incoherent? Inconsistent? Not in accord with common sense? "How's 'things'?"
- Fri Sep 23, 09:54:00 PM PDT
- Jackson Davis said...
Speaking of "downhill," it can mean an exhilarating ride to a skier, or a treacherous fall to a hiker. It all depends on what our circumstance are and what we are trying to do. According to Ortega's "bizarre," but common-sense metaphysics, "my life," your life, the life of each individual human being, is the basic, fundamental or "radical" reality, in the sense that all other realities are "rooted" in it. And this reality, "my life," has a structure. "My life" consists of "I," "my self," the person that I am, and "my circumstances," which includes not only so-called "physical phenomena," but also so-called "mental phenomena," "social phenomena," and even "spiritual phenomena," in short, anything that "occurs" to me. "My life" consists of "happenings" or "occurrences," "what I do and what happens to me." Now a hill, even a down slope on a hill, can be a facility or a difficulty for me depending on what I am trying to do or what "concerns" me. Ortega traced back the original meaning of the Greek word "pragmata" to just that: "concerns, affairs, or matters". But Greek philosophers began using the word to mean "things," material objects having existence independent from me. And this word, "pragmata," was translated into Latin as "res" and the res-t is history. So in a few sentences, we have slid "downhill" from a common-place "occurrence" (a down-sloping hill), to a common-sense "concern" (skiing or hiking), to a "pragma-ric metaphysics of life, and then to the history of metaphysics itself. Incoherent? Inconsistent? Not in accord with common sense? Show me "How's 'things'?" or "What's 'happening'?" to you!
- Fri Sep 23, 10:29:00 PM PDT
Sorry about the duplication.
- Fri Sep 23, 10:34:00 PM PDT
Jackson: by "downhill," I presume the poster meant that things took a turn for the worse. I'm not sure if Ortega y Gasset has anything interesting to add to this debate--he may or he may not. But what I do know is that if you want to make his contributions known, you've got to learn to explain him more clearly than you have. I have no idea what you're saying and I doubt I'm alone in that regard.
- Sat Sep 24, 07:13:00 PM PDT
Of course, I knew what the poster meant by "downhill," and since I assumed he was referring to my previous posting, my posting was a reaction to it. I merely wanted to indicate that there might be a metaphysics that met the criteria of internal coherence and consistency, as well as according with common sense, as specified by Brandon Towles in the first comment of this thread, namely the metaphysics developed by the Spanish philosopher, José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955). I know that Ortega's metaphysics is a challenge to some because he starts with the statement: "My life is the radical reality." By "my life" he means the individual human life in all its aspects. By "radical" he means that all other realities are "rooted" in it. To quote from his book, What is Philosophy, where he first enunciates this idea: "Every other thing, every other manner of being, I find within my own life, both as a detail of it and with reference to it. In it is all the rest, and all the rest is what it is with regard to that life. The most abstruse mathematical equation, the most abstract and solemn philosophic concept, the very Universe, even God himself, are things that I find in my life...." Of course, I also find "I," "my self" along with "all the rest," or what he calls "my circumstances," which includes all the phenomena that occur to "I," "me," the person that I am, within the "radical reality" that is "my life." Any problems so far?
For this more formal approach, you can consult my webpage, "Ortega y Gasset's Philosophy of Life" at , in progress. - Sat Sep 24, 09:10:00 PM PDT
That website for "Ortega y Gasset's Philosophy of Human Life" is http://www.webspawner.com/users/ortegainus/ortegaygassetsp2.html.
For some reason it didn't print out. - Sun Sep 25, 03:42:00 PM PDT
- Benj Hellie said...
Jessica Wilson and I would give the following answer (for further elaboration, go here: http://individual.utoronto.ca/benj/nicut-hvd.pdf http://individual.utoronto.ca/jmwilson/NICUT_Wilson.ppt).
Academics answer questions. What distinguishes philosophy from other academic disciplines is that while they take an intrinsic interest in answering questions only about a specific subject-matter (molecules, the past doings of human societies, whatever the subject-matter of math is), we answer questions about /any/ subject-matter.
In answering a question, one makes certain presuppositions. The status of these presuppositions typically does not concern the subject-matter of the question. Accordingly, for the disciplinary researcher, their status is of no intrinsic interest. Not so for us.
In reasoning through the answer to a question, one needs to consider, and thus take seriously, a range of alternative answers. If the question concerns the status of presuppositions that are widely agreed-upon in some other discipline, some of these answers will violate widespread agreement elsewhere.
Moreover, in assessing these presuppositions, one needs to make further, deeper, presuppositions---ones which no one else has bothered to make explicit---and to do so with customary philosophical rigor, one needs to be explicit about these presuppositions.
Being explicit in ways no one else has been, and taking seriously prospects else simply assumes away, are two ways of considering prospects that might be regarded as 'bizarre' (a subjective and culturally-relative notion, it should be emphasized). - Mon Sep 26, 05:24:00 AM PDT
Here's a fourth explanation for why metaphysics is never thoroughly commonsensical: Sometimes common sense beliefs are false (this includes common sense beliefs about the nature of persons, material objects, etc.). Since common sense gets things wrong, our metaphysics shouldn't be thoroughly commonsensical.
I'd also appreciate a clarification of your thesis. You say:
"I am endorsing the incoherence of common sense in matters metaphysical as an empirical hypothesis..."
What is supposed to be incoherent here? I don't know what it would mean for common sense to be incoherent, nor do I think that the idea of appealing to common sense in matters metaphysics is incoherent. I'm guessing that you have something like the following in mind: metaphysics conflicts with common sense; metaphysics is strange or bizarre or incoherent, and therefore conflicts with common sense. I'd appreciate it if you'd be willing to clarify. Thanks! - Mon Sep 26, 06:07:00 AM PDT
But don't you think that modern analytic metaphysics has become a new form of scholasticism? What on earth gave people the idea that they could find out about the ultimate structure of reality without ever leaving their armchairs? It's true that physics is also "weird", but physicists have something that pushes back, so the game is completely different. Is this what it has come to? Rudolf and Hans must be turning in their graves.
- Mon Sep 26, 07:38:00 AM PDT
Some of us are not so skeptical about armchair philosophy. We claim thought experiments differ from the experiments of scientists in degree rather than kind. Roy Sorensen, for example, defends this approach against charges that they are arbitrary whilst agreeing that sometimes they can lead us astray. But science experiments are not free from that hazard either. - Mon Sep 26, 12:56:00 PM PDT
It may well turn out that most of contemporary mainstream metaphysics is false or worse ("not even false"..), but if by my inquiring I have contributed to Rudolf C turning in his grave, at least I know that it wasn't ALL in vain..
- Mon Sep 26, 03:21:00 PM PDT
- Benj Hellie said...
Anon 7:38 -- You should read Lee Smolin's /The Trouble with Physics/: that'll disabuse you of the sense that physics requires 'pushback'
- Mon Sep 26, 04:15:00 PM PDT
[anon 7:38 here] Benj -- Au contraire! without pushback it's metaphysics (by definition)
- Mon Sep 26, 04:50:00 PM PDT
- Eric Schwitzgebel said...
Thanks for all the interesting comments, folks!
Benj: That's a cool story, and I don't reject it as part of what philosophy does. There's a beneficial diversity, as you and Jessica say, in philosophers pushing against presuppositions. But shouldn't there also be room for a philosopher who says that all the presuppositions are right and shows how they can work into a coherent system? When philosophers like Reid, and GE Moore and PF Strawson have tried to do this, though, they haven't been able to pull it off. An appealing explanation, I think, is that the presuppositions don't all fit together into a coherent whole. I think this needn't conflict with most of your picture. - Mon Sep 26, 07:02:00 PM PDT
- Eric Schwitzgebel said...
Anon 06:07: If metaphysical truth were a strong constraint on philosophical theorizing, that explanation would work, I think. But since most metaphysicians must be wrong (since their systems contradict each other), the question remains why none find a way to a thoroughly commonsensical system.
On your second thought: My claim is that common sense is committed to a number of propositions, P1, P2, P3, etc., from which a logical contradiction can be derived. But more than that, it is not some little side thing like some abstruse paradox of set theory, but rather that that sort of incoherence infects core ideas of the metaphysics of common sense. Admittedly the last point is difficult to make formally precise. - Mon Sep 26, 07:06:00 PM PDT
- Eric Schwitzgebel said...
Anon 07:38: Yes, I have some sympathy for that, but I also see a role for metaphysics -- for example, what Benj alludes to, and also via pragmatically governed concept construction, and in conjunction with the empirical.
- Mon Sep 26, 07:12:00 PM PDT
Armchair philosophy by Greeks produced intuitions considered correct by science thousands of years afterward, eg, the concept of the atom and conservation of matter/energy.
Some philosophers are so scared to being incorrect they can't even move.
There are insects and there are sword swingers. Philosophy has lost the epic instinct by being thrown into chains and told what to do, and how to do it.
Dragon slaying is "irrational"---it must be bad to operate this way. Remember to be extremely careful at all times when you think, and apologize in advance for any fire you might not have stamped out in your heart yet. - Mon Sep 26, 09:30:00 PM PDT
What about the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition? In my undergrad class I'm currently muddling through Descartes' "Meditations" and I'm not finding it particularly "clear and distinct," if you pardon my humor. I've found Aristotle, however, to be a lot simpler and more lifelike- for example, two billiard balls striking each other do seem to have a causal relationship in everyday experience. Hume may cast doubt on this, but isn't he the one who is going out on a obtuse metaphysical or epistemological limb?
The same goes for Aquinas- It doesn't seem that radical to me to assert that being/existence undergirds what we observe to be real. What is reality if not existent entities? - Mon Sep 26, 09:52:00 PM PDT
Chesterton talks about this in general in his book on Aquinas:
"So much is familiar; but what is not even now realised is that not only the practical politics, but the abstract philosophies of the modern world have had this queer twist. Since the modern world began in the sixteenth century, nobody's system of philosophy has really corresponded to everybody's sense of reality: to what, if left to themselves, common men would call common sense. Each started with a paradox: a peculiar point of view demanding the sacrifice of what they would call a sane point of view. That is the one thing common to Hobbes and Hegel, to Kant and Bergson. to Berkeley and William James. A man had to believe something that no normal man would believe, if it were suddenly propounded to his simplicity; as that law is above right, or right is outside reason, or things are only as we think them, or everything is relative to a reality that is not there. The modern philosopher claims, like a sort of confidence man, that if once we will grant him this, the rest will be easy; he will straighten out the world, if once he is allowed to give this one twist to the mind.
Against all this the philosophy of Saint Thomas stands founded on the universal common conviction that eggs are eggs. The Hegelian may say that an egg is really a hen, because it is a part of an endless process of Becoming; the Berkeleian may hold that poached eggs only exist as a dream exists; since it is quite as easy to call the dream the cause of the eggs as the eggs the cause of the dream; the Pragmatist may believe that we get the best out of scrambled eggs by forgetting that they ever were eggs, and only remembering the scramble. But no pupil of Saint Thomas needs to addle his brains in order adequately to addle his eggs; to put his head at any peculiar angle in looking at eggs, or squinting at eggs, or winking the other eye in order to see a new simplification of eggs. The Thomist stands in the broad daylight of the brotherhood of men, in their common consciousness that eggs are not hens or dreams or mere practical assumptions; but things attested by the Authority of the Senses, which is from God."
(This is a chapter of a longer book, "St. Thomas Aquinas," which I have not yet read) - Mon Sep 26, 10:08:00 PM PDT
- Eric Schwitzgebel said...
Undergrad: Terrific quote from Chesterton!
Aristotle and Aquinas are interesting cases. I think it can be said confidently that the *jargon* of "prime matter", "substantial forms", etc., are not commonsensical. However, it might be argued that really they are just ways of formalizing common sense.
One reason to think not is to look at how people reacted to scholastic philosophy. To scholars such as Ockham and the early moderns, it seemed, orthodox scholastic ontology was a kind of bloated monstrosity, not at all in line with common sense.
Aristotle also explicitly states that his conclusions will run contrary to the prior opinions of ordinary people, in Book One of the Metaphysics. (I don't know if Aquinas says anything similar.) - Tue Sep 27, 05:44:00 AM PDT
- Benj Hellie said...
Anon 7:38 -- I'm thinking that 'physics' by definition is what people in depts of physics do. If you read the Smolin book you will learn that things there have gone off the rails, pushback-wise -- call it metaphysics if you will but it is metaphysics being done by physicists under the name of physics.
Schwitz -- without specific examples of how you think Reid etc collapse into bizarreness it's hard to judge whether it is necessary that such efforts do so, of course.
I wonder also whether the notion of 'metaphysics' at issue is slightly underspecified. For example, I'm thinking of the project people like Terrence Parsons and Paul Pietroski engage in with regard to the 'logical form' of the verb phrase and its apparent ontological commitments counts as metaphysics. It is not so implausible that when Brutus stabbed Caesar in the back violently with a knife, that consisted in the occurrence of a stabbing of which Brutus was the agent and Caesar the patient, a knife was the instrument, Caesar's back was the 'target' or something, and it was violent. Is that metaphysics? If so then that is a case of non-bizarre metaphysics.
In other cases perhaps something Carnapian/Rylean/Investigations-y could be said by way of expanding on the second way of being bizarre. Perhaps sometimes in considering alternatives to a certain presupposition people make a mistake about its intended function: the sentence expressing it is not supposed to have any 'fact-stating' power but is rather endowed with some other purely 'expressive' function, like assisting in computation. If we ask /why did 2+3 have to = 5? -- Jack and Jackie could have had different kids, so why the necessary connection among these numbers?/ -- there we are assuming that the point of math discourse is fact-stating when it is in fact expressive.
That would be something we could regard as an empirical mistake, if we were motivated in theorizing by the sorts of bizarreness judgements that bother you. Other motivations would lead to other theories. - Tue Sep 27, 08:46:00 AM PDT
- Steve Biggs said...
I largely accept the Benj/Jessica picture of metaphysics/philosophy. It's worth noting that this picture doesn't explicitly identify how metaphysicians do/should proceed (e.g. how they should assess presuppositions etc.). So, the initial respondent, Brandon Towl, might be left wondering whether we do/should assess presuppositions etc. on the basis of their bare coherence, fit with common sense, or ...
Here'a sketch of one take that fits naturally with the Benj/Jessica picture: Metaphysicians do/should rely on a sort of inference to the best explanation that subsumes various non-demonstrative inferential principles (e.g. of parsimony, explanatory comprehensiveness, etc. (This relates to Brandon Towl's wondering whether "accord with science" and "expressive power" might play a role.) I provide a preliminary motivation for this sort of "abduction-based epistemology for metaphysics" (specifically for modality) and try to show that/how it can support some metaphysical hypotheses over others here: http://www.stephenbiggs.com/papers/Abduction_and_Modality.pdf.
This method doesn't put common-sense at the center of metaphysics any more than it's at the center of science, regardless of whether a complete common-sense metaphysics would be boring/interesting, hard/easy, or possible/impossible. - Tue Sep 27, 09:31:00 AM PDT
- Mark said...
Couldn't the whole post be re-written with "Epistemology" substituted for "Metaphysics," (or, ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of science, what have you), and the rest of the terms substituted so that the same case can be made for just about any field of philosophy?
It seems so to me. If not, why not?
But, in any case, I think this deserves more study. A huge grant should be given to be split amongst many, many metaphysicians about why we study such a bizarre subject matter. I offer to head up the institute. - Tue Sep 27, 10:57:00 AM PDT
- Eric Schwitzgebel said...
Benj: Reid thought that physical events or entities had no causal power, which he admitted was contrary to the opinions of ordinary people. And he thought that vegetables have immaterial souls, which also seems contrary to common sense (though there might be a question here about whether it fit in with a commonsensical vitalism in his day). Moore gets weird about sense data. Strawson gets weird about mental-physical causation (in his 1983 book). Obviously, I can't do every case. If a metaphysical view is narrow enough in its scope (your stabbing case?) then one might avoid violations of common sense. Hence I phrase the claim in terms of "detailed exploration of fundamental issues". Perhaps that phrasing is a bit mushy and I should unpack it a bit, but my thought is that there would have to be specific commitments on a broad range of metaphysical theses that make contact with things that ordinary people have opinions about, such as the relation of the mind and the body, the types of entities that do and do not exist, and causation. I don't think one can go fully "expressive" on these matters as a way of saving common sense, since such a pervasive expressivism would itself be a violation of common sense.
That, at least, is my thought. - Tue Sep 27, 01:31:00 PM PDT
- Eric Schwitzgebel said...
Steve: I wonder about how far abduction can take us in metaphysics. Maybe it can help somewhat, but I'm inclined to think that often we won't have good epistemic grounds for choosing decisively among some very different potential explanations. If common sense is flawed as an epistemic basis, then it makes sense not to be entirely in its thrall, but pulling away from common sense also deprives metaphysics of much of its epistemic traction, don't you think?
- Tue Sep 27, 01:39:00 PM PDT
- Eric Schwitzgebel said...
Mark: I'm certainly in favor of the grant! Regarding the extent to which these remarks can be generalized to other subfields of philosophy -- maybe they can. But metaphysics has always struck me as the most palpably bizarre of the subfields.
- Tue Sep 27, 01:42:00 PM PDT
- Steve Biggs said...
Thanks for the reply.
On how far abduction can take us ... Far enough. I doubt abduction ever delivers decisive epistemic grounds for choosing among competing theories. But I doubt any method delivers decisive epistemic grounds for any theory. Rather than aiming for a method that delivers so much, we should aim for something that delivers good grounds for ranking theories one way or another. I think abduction often does that in metaphysics, no less than in physics, chemistry, criminal investigations, medical diagnosis, etc. Of course, there may be disagreement about which theory abduction supports. But the same holds for physics etc. In neither domain does disagreement show that abduction gets no epistemic traction.
On pulling away ... I suspect that pulling away from commonsense deprives metaphysics of epistemic traction to exactly the degree that pulling away from commonsense deprives physics/chemistry etc. of epistemic traction. In all cases, although ceteris paribus it's good to respect commonsense, commonsense doesn't have the final say. I don't know just how much respect commonsense should get or exactly how it should figure into abduction--I suspect not much--but I see no obvious, compelling case for presupposing that commonsense gets more weight in metaphysics than in other domains, including physics, chemistry, criminal investigations, etc.
One might say, "Look at the way metaphysicians proceed versus the way that physicists proceed! Clearly the former give commonsense more weight!" But it's pretty rare these days that commonsense is taken (explicitly anyway) to decide an issue in metaphysics. More often, one considers various theories, adduces considerations for and against each, and then offers a judgment about which theory best fits the evidence. Sometimes commonsense may be used to "pushback" on a theory. But, even when this pushing is taken seriously, it is rarely treated as more than one among many relevant considerations, some involving commonsense, others not. At any rate, I suspect that metaphysicians should rely on abduction even if they presently put too much weight on commonsense. - Tue Sep 27, 03:07:00 PM PDT
To the things themselves = A return to common sense.
- Tue Sep 27, 06:43:00 PM PDT
If there can be a rational explanation for God, it seems that even a Cartesian philosopher has to go against the bizarre side of it. It should be interesting:
http://eternal-cartesian.blogspot.com/2009/08/heisenberg-and-god.html - Wed Sep 28, 02:21:00 AM PDT
I think Wittgenstein figured this one out a long time ago: "Philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday." That is to say, what appear to be metaphysical problems are really linguistic problems; they exist (and persist) only because philosophers try to do things with language that language isn't capable of.
When, oh when, will philosophers finally take Wittgenstein to heart? My guess is never, because then they'd all be out of jobs. - Wed Sep 28, 02:02:00 PM PDT
- Benj Hellie said...
Schwitz -- Moore was agonized about whether the 'sense-datum' (the direct object of perception) was inner or outer until his last published paper from 1957, where he came down on the side of 'inner'. The 'London dilemma' is the problem here: phenomenologically, the direct object of perception would seem to be outer; but considerations of illusion and the like seem to suggest it is inner. Here I note that considerations of illusion and the like really do not suggest this: Aristotle was a disjunctivist (read his stuff on dreams some time).
Mental/physical causation is problematic but I'm of the view that here there are plenty of difficult conceptual issues to be resolved: maybe the problem is just hard and we lack the technology (although my view is that once we deploy the right technology the problem displays itself as insoluble -- because of incoherence considerations somewhat different from yours).
I doubt that expressivism about causation is at odds with common sense. Students are pretty comfy with the idea that 'P because Q' means something like 'P and normally if Q then P' where the 'normally' and the 'if' express adventitious and subjective strategies for carving up the world. - Wed Sep 28, 05:36:00 PM PDT
- Benj Hellie said...
Anon 2:02PM -- some philosophers do agree with this, others don't; others think there are no philosophical problems but that some problems philosophers worry about arise from language going on holiday.
Anyway "hoc Zenon dixit" and all. - Wed Sep 28, 05:48:00 PM PDT
- Jackson Davis said...
Re: Inner vs. Outer
With regard to "sense-data", Ortega's metaphysics would hold that they are "outer" to "me", the sensing subject, but "inner" to "my life", which is the "radical reality" in the sense that all other realities occur or are "rooted" in it. "My life" includes both "I," the person that I am, and "my circumstance," which includes all the phenomena (including "sense-data") that are not "me", i.e., that are "outside" of me, but that occur to and coexist with "me," "inside" the "radical reality" that I experience as "my life". As to whether there is a "you" who lives within a "radical reality" that you also call "my life" along with a set of phenomena you also call "my circumstance," I can only speculate based on how "you" "occur" within "my life."
To me this was at first a "bizarre" metaphysics that, once I thought about it, made not-so-common sense. - Wed Sep 28, 10:00:00 PM PDT
- Eric Schwitzgebel said...
Anon 9/28 2:02: I will differ from Wittgenstein, I think, on how comfortable we should be with common sense and whether philosophers are developing its incoherent implications (as I think) or instead only taking words where they have no business going (as on a common reading of the language-on-holiday remark).
- Thu Sep 29, 08:53:00 AM PDT
- Eric Schwitzgebel said...
Benj: I agree, Moore's 1957 does resolve some of his waffling, in part by repudiating earlier views. I find it odd, still, that he says that when someone points to a penny and says "this is a penny" she is referring to two things rather than one, a sense datum and a penny. Also his 1957 is less metaphysically broad-ranging than his 1953, so he can dodge troubles by narrowness (cf. my reaction to your stabbing example), e.g., in his 1953 he contemplates the continued existence of unexperienced sense data whereas in his 1953 he doesn't really address the ontology of sense data.
The "it's difficult" response to the problem of mental-physical causation seems to me to have some merit. I suspect it's overly optimistic to suspect that we will solve it properly *and* do so in a way that fully respects common sense, but I can see how someone might disagree with me about this. It's a matter of judgment.
Expressivism about causation doesn't seem very commonsensical to me. But that's just confession I suppose! I'd have thought people were realists at root and that they would deny that certain "normal" constant conjunctions (night/day? tar-stained fingers/lung cancer?) are causal. But maybe a lot of work is being done by "normal" in your claim?
I feel a bit odd speculating about common sense in the armchair when clearly it's an empirical issue. But there you have it. That isn't to say that I think "common sense" is entirely straightforward to test. - Thu Sep 29, 09:17:00 AM PDT
- Eric Schwitzgebel said...
Jackson: I'll settle for not-so-common sense, if I can find it!
- Thu Sep 29, 09:18:00 AM PDT
[The Pragmatists] declared that philosophy must be practical and that practicality consists of dispensing with all absolute principles and standards—that there is no such thing as objective reality or permanent truth—that truth is that which works, and its validity can be judged only by its consequences—that no facts can be known with certainty in advance, and anything may be tried by rule-of-thumb—that reality is not firm, but fluid and "indeterminate," that there is no such thing as a distinction between an external world and a consciousness (between the perceived and the perceiver), there is only an undifferentiated package-deal labeled "experience," and whatever one wishes to be true, is true, whatever one wishes to exist, does exist, provided it works or makes one feel better.
A later school of more Kantian Pragmatists amended this philosophy as follows. If there is no such thing as an objective reality, men's metaphysical choice is whether the selfish, dictatorial whims of an individual or the democratic whims of a collective are to shape that plastic goo which the ignorant call "reality," therefore this school decided that objectivity consists of collective subjectivism—that knowledge is to be gained by means of public polls among special elites of "competent investigators" who can "predict and control" reality—that whatever people wish to be true, is true, whatever people wish to exist, does exist, and anyone who holds any firm convictions of his own is an arbitrary, mystic dogmatist, since reality is indeterminate and people determine its actual nature.
Ayn Rand's definition at this link:
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/pragmatism.html - Fri Sep 30, 08:19:00 AM PDT
I don't think the claim that our common sense concepts might be incoherent is new, or even that the possibility frightens that many metaphysicians. What I think should be made explicit is that even those metaphysicians who proclaim not to care about whether common sense is incoherent--they still rely on common sense intuitions as evidence for a lot of their claims. And that reliance seems to presuppose coherence of common sense (unless they can locate which common sense claims are the true ones).
- Fri Sep 30, 09:19:00 AM PDT
- Eric Schwitzgebel said...
Anon 9:19: Right. The claim that common sense is incoherent isn't new. For example, Kant seems to say something like it in the antinomies. And I agree that many, probably most, metaphysicians are okay with acknowledging that their views have aspects that conflict with common sense. And the methodological criticism that you advance is in the ballpark of what some recent foes of metaphysics say in the x-phi community.
What I haven't seen, though, is the empirical argument I've set forward here. It starts with an empirical universal claim: All observed metaphysical systems are bizarre. And it concludes with an inference to the best explanation of that claim, that common sense is incoherent.
The universal claim is somewhat bold, since it requires asserting that Aristotle is bizarre, Moore is bizarre, Strawson is bizarre, etc. I've been trying to look at all plausible candidate cases of broad-ranging metaphysicians who are able to thoroughly respect common sense. And I am making this strong universal claim on the basis of examining cases, not on a priori grounds like Kant's.
Now it could be that someone else has put forward my argument before, the argument from empirical observation of the universal bizarreness of metaphysics to abductive conclusion about common sense. If you or any other reader can think of a precedent, I'd appreciate a reference! - Fri Sep 30, 04:34:00 PM PDT
- CrankyProfessor said...
I think it is a pretty simple statement that prime numbers are NOT common sense. How do they have any applicability to every day life other than a certain joy in numbers? An initial commitment? Maybe. But you're already in the math game when you are lying in bed figuring primes.
- Fri Sep 30, 05:09:00 PM PDT
- philosopher-animal said...
Crankyprofessor, if you've ever bought anything online (at least from anything like a reputable place), you've paid homage to prime numbers: they are used everywhere in cryptography these days.
As for the topic of the thread, when I did my tiny drops of work in metaphysics, I didn't regard common sense as a constraint at all. Why should one? One doesn't adopt the naive view(s) of stuffs in chemistry, the naive view of organisms in biology, etc. I basically regard science and metaphysics as continuous: the more general sciences are more metaphysics-y. Hypergeneral theories are the most metaphysical of all (like automata theory, one of my favourites), since they can even apply regardless of composition of the system.
As for why metaphysical systems turn out bizarre, it is not because they conflict with common sense (and yes, I think they usually do, even Strawson's _Individuals_). It is because there are no additional constraints - which are admittedly very hard to articulate, and of course time dependent. Descartes, for example, did not know about conservation laws in the way we do today; hence he can be forgiven for postulating psychoneural dualism. Dualists today have no such luxury, and in my view until they can show that the conservation laws are wrong (and win a nobel prize in physics along the way), they can stand refuted. - Fri Sep 30, 06:22:00 PM PDT
You made the right choice.
Sometimes common sense is just wrong.
For example you deride the notion of an infinity of different universes. Why? This actually jibes with what physics seems to be telling us, and the main point of resistance seems to be nothing more than "we weren't used to thinking of thing that way." - Fri Sep 30, 09:41:00 PM PDT
I guess there's a relationship between what counts as crazy/common sense and expertise, so that perhaps philosophers tolerate more crazyism than non-philosophers. If so then perhaps common sense is responsive to strereotypes about what we expect to be told by different groups. So maybe we might ask whether metaphysically bizarre claims when produced by metaphysicians as metaphysically bizarre find acceptance easier than the same views expressed by non-metaphysicians? Maybe a principle like 'If it aint crazy, she aint a metaphysician' is a common sense guide to metaphysics that then allows for common sense people to expect the crazyism? So there's a scale of common sense to crazyism that runs in inverse proportion to whether its a metaphysician or lay person putting forward the ideas. After all, look at the blog string here - the metaphysicians seem quite happy with apparently quite crazyist ideas which I doubt would be quite so easily swallowed if we were all economists, say. (No disrespect to economists meant here!) - Sat Oct 01, 12:23:00 AM PDT
Couldn't your argue the same thing about modern physics. That looking at its history of finding surprising conclusions that violate common sense is empiracle evidence that physics actually does violate common sense? And in the case of physics wouldn't that be an entirely uninteresting argument?
- Sat Oct 01, 09:07:00 AM PDT
- Ilya Farber said...
Nice question!
I'm certainly with you on the incoherence of common sense, though I think there are still a few steps that would need to be filled in to reach the conclusion that metaphysical systems must be necessarily *bizarre* (i.e. flagrant violations), rather than just modest revisions of common sense.
But more importantly, I think you may be selling option #1 short. Someone who proposes a new metaphysical system is asking a lot of us; at minimum, they're asking us to take on board some new fundamental conceptual structure, and often in the absence of any compelling practical justification. The violation of common sense at least promises that, by adopting the new system, we may come to see the world in a new way and transcend some previously widespread limits or errors of thought. In a sense, it's a way for the author to up the stakes, to command our attention by pointing out what a big difference it will make if they turn out to be right. If a new system can't offer that, then it's hard to see why readers would be motivated to put in the time and effort required to understand it.
(Plus, and relatedly, the counterintuitive claims then become a flashy badge of membership for new converts, and a lure for the intellectually curious …) - Sat Oct 01, 10:47:00 PM PDT
What Illya and Colin said reminds me of Nietzsche saying that the role of the philosopher is to create new concepts, which is also the priority of philosophers in the Deleuzian vein. It seems a neat example of how methodological naturalisism can include crazy bedfellows. As Leiter has been arguing for some time now, commonsense views of philosophy specialists about analytical and continental traditions look increasingly undefendable. So perhaps crazyism has important contributions for the sociology of philosophy on top of everything else.
- Sun Oct 02, 02:42:00 AM PDT
- Troy Camplin said...
Perhaps Nietzsche's eternal recurrence isn't all that crazy:
http://evolutionaryaesthetics.blogspot.com/2007/11/iii-chaos-theory-umwelts-eternal-return.html - Mon Oct 03, 02:13:00 PM PDT
- Eric Schwitzgebel said...
Thanks for the link, Troy!
- Mon Oct 03, 03:35:00 PM PDT
- Southgate said...
Empiristic or pragmatic approach do not sopouse to be unavoidably non-founded or incoherent to a methaphysicall view to the world. A contrary. They should serve to the metod of knowledge. The rational, scientific metod is the tool in that path. The major issue, I think,is the relation between mehaphysics and modern sciences.
- Mon Oct 24, 04:43:00 AM PDT
- Unknown said...
It is expected right? new thought metaphysics will definitely be bizarre with all the possibilities that you can think off. If you will believe it, everything is possible. That's what most people say.
- Thu Feb 20, 04:28:00 AM PST
- Kaiser Basileus said...
I can meet all the criteria wished for in the OP. Will anyone give my extraordinary evidence a hearing?
- Sat Nov 20, 09:01:00 AM PST

subset: commoncrawl


text: Fuel Tank: Stores fuel. Internal baffles prevent sloshing during stops and starts. Fuel Pump: Draws the fuel from the tank and propels it through fuel lines. Fuel Lines: Steel lines and flexible hoses carry the fuel from the tank to the engine. Fuel Filter: The fuel filter is important for keeping your fuel system functioning at its best. A clean fuel filter means better gas mileage. (Change every 20,000 miles or once a year.) Fuel system wear and tear can be affected by the quality of fuel used in your automobile, the age of your car or truck, driving conditions, maintenance history and the number of miles on the vehicle. Potential fuel system related problems that you may or may not experience some time in the life of your vehicle include: poor gas mileage, "won't start", difficulty starting, check engine light appearing on the dashboard, stalling, surging, misfiring or hesitating. EGR (Exhaust Gas Recirculation) Carbon deposit is the number one issue related to the fuel system. The by-product of burning gas is soot, carbon build-up. That carbon build-up acts like a sponge. As gas is burned, carbon deposits build up on the fuel system components. The deposits soak up fuel, causing the car to think it is running lean and the car's on-board computer tells the fuel system to deliver more fuel. Once the deposits are saturated the car will adjust back. This process has the biggest impact on fuel economy. As the deposits grow, the harder the fuel system has to work, causing poor fuel economy.


text:
Potol. Posto. Potol Posto. Period.
Oh no wait...first I need to tell you this conversation I had with Little Sis. Okay ? Okay. Period.
So it is one of those days and I am tired and I tell LS: "If I knew magic I could come home from work in a second and wouldn't have to drive so long".
LS: " Well, for that you need to ask someone who knows that kind of magic".
Me: " Well, how do I know someone like that?"
LS appears to ignore this and then after a minute says : "Or you could Dream. Dreams come true, you know?"
Me, excited at this optimistic, positive child of mine: "Really? So what do you dream of ?"
LS: "Well that I am a famous singer". Whaa...at, really???? " And that I am eating chocolate cake" That is better. "And I am watching Food Network". Really kiddo...this...this is your dream... of watching stupid Chopped on FN.
But I don't say all that. Instead I say: "Ahhh that sounds great. So tonight I am going to dream then".
At this LS goes into deep thought and then after a minute says : "Well, actually dreams don't even come true. They say all that in the TV. Anyway nothing that they say on TV is true. On TV, Franklin the turtle talks. Do turtles ever talk in real life ? No.They are all puppets on TV and dreams will never come true"
I give up. Let us eat the Potol Posto instead. Don't ask me why I added Onion, you might as well skip it.And if you don't get Potol, don't even dream of it. Will not help. Period.
Scrape the skin off Potol/Pointed gourd/Parwal and peel strips in alternate. I had about 10 small potol .Chop each potol in 4 along the length. Chopping in two should have been fine but these potol were not very fresh so I did 4.
Toss them with salt and turmeric powder and keep aside for 10 mins.
Meanwhile dry grind 1/4 cup of posto aka poppy seeds and mix with little water to make a thick-ish wet paste.
Heat a tbsp musard oil. Fry the potol till they develop brown spots. Need not get all crinkly. Remove and keep aside
If there is not enough oil in the kadhai/frying pan, add about 1 tsp more.
When the oil is hot temper the oil with 1/2 tsp of Kalo Jeera/Kalonji and 4-5 hot green chili slit through.
Once the spices pop add half on an onion chopped in thin slices and fry the onion till it is soft and light brown.
To the pan add the fried patol and toss it with the spices and onion. Next add the poppy seed paste and with sprinkle of water fry for next 3-4 minutes till raw smell of posto is gone.
Now add a little more water, a little less than 1/4 cup, add salt, sugar to taste and cover and let the patol cook till done. Remove cover and serve with rice.