Milinda’s Questions

In a previous post, I listed some of the books I’ve read over the past few months, and offered to publicize my appraisals of those works for anyone who might be interested. So far, I’ve had no takers (not surprising, in light of the number of readers that that offer is, realistically, likely to have had), so I kind of feel like responding to my own hypothetical question. (Isn’t that really the motive for a whole lot of writing?) What was the best book on that list?

I dunno.

And I mean that seriously, and as a challenge of sorts to anyone who would try to force me to make a choice.

I mean, here, to raise a more general point: a principled objection to the entire practice of ranking and rating, that leads to the practice of Top Ten Lists.

My objection to this practice is, basically, the objection that has been raised by those far more articulate than I to entire families of practices, such as the more simplistic forms of hedonistic utilitarianism, and preference-satisfaction theories of happiness, well-being, utility, value, etc., in economics. To put it in simpler terms: there is no single scale on which everything can be ranked. And to those who think that forced choice situations can offer any resolution to what people’s “genuine” preferences are: it seems evident to me that the result of “forced” choices will be so heavily dependent upon dependent factors obtaining at that moment, that they will indicate nothing about agents’ long-term dispositions towards behavior.

To any readers who may be saying at this point: WTF???????? let me say first that, yes, there really are those of us who spent so many years in school that we naturally and spontaneously talk this way, even when hanging out in such laid-back venues as the Bouldin Creek Coffeehouse, which is where I am now. Second, let me say that . . . aw, I don’t really feel like explaining it right now.

But with regard to books in particular, I can elaborate. It seems to me that the very question, “What’s your favorite book?” is screwed up. It reflects a kind of lack of seriousness about reading . . . a lack of seriousness that I can best indicate by describing the ideal of seriousness: that for every book you start reading you can answer, with a fair degree of serious, “What do I want from reading this book?” If the answer falls into the category of the “undifferentiated aesthetic” — by which I mean such responses as” “entertainment”, “a good read”, “a thrill,” “a buzz” — then you’re not reading seriously. Thus, books can only be ranked, insofar as they can be ranked at all, in terms of how well they address a particular purpose. This system of ranking, like any other, demands a degree of the kind of tacit knowledge that comes from innate sensitivity plus experience; carried to an extreme, it would result in the judgment for every book that “This book is the best of its kind”, since every book would be sui generis.

Sometimes these theoretical considerations become moot, though, when a single work achieves a superlative on every conceivable scale of evaluation. So what was the best book I read during the second half of 2007. I dunno; but it’s much easier to make judgments about the worst book I read. The winner is . . .

The End of Faith by Sam Harris

In a way, I regret having to give the Booby Prize to Harris’ book. It doesn’t merit that award on the grounds of triviality: on the contrary, it deals with vitally important matters, which is part of why I evaluate it so harshly. It’s just that . . . first of all, it’s written so badly. Clearly, the book was rushed to publication in in the wake of 9/11 on the basis of someone’s judgment that it was likely to find an audience, and was never subjected to a critical reading by anyone who had the slightest knowledge of the matters with which it deals. (It’s telling that the on the back cover the publisher says it should be filed under “Current Affairs” rather than philosophy, or history of ideas, or any remotely academic field.) Unique among the books I read, this one contains numerous instances where the author plainly doesn’t know what an English word means, or how to put an English sentence together. (I’d be happy to substantiate that charge, if anyone who reads this is interested.) I found the treatment to be grotesquely uninformed about the matters with which it dealt, even on those subjects where I was in principle most inclined to be sympathetic to it (e.g., the final chapter, on mystical experience.)

A close second on the Roll of Dishonor would have to be Why God Won’t Go Away. It isn’t as badly written as The Death of Belief, but it contains a number of really elementary philosophical boners that almost made me toss the book away in disgust.

Anything here worth reading? Well, the book on Fechner was very enlightening, and will repay numerous rereadings. The author connects draws connections between the 19th-century German tradition and contemporary analytic philosophy of mind that should be of interest to anyone interested in either subject.

And finally, on the fiction side of things, I have to say that Ian McEwan lives up to his reputation as a very fine writer.