Allen was inspired (by a passing joke of mine) to send me a line of Frank Cioffi‘s, from his review of Sulloway’s Freud: Biologist of the Mind (1979):

Material has been accumulating for some time that the account of the birth
and early growth of the psychoanalytic movement which derives from Freud
and Ernest Jones, and has been so often repeated, bears little relation to
reality. In an ideal world this would have knocked several more nails in
Freud’s coffin, but since it is so widely believed that he is not in it,
having climbed out on the third day, it has had little discernable effect.

I liked that so much he sent another, this one from a review … Read the rest

Excellent stuff (as usual) from Fred Halliday. The world’s twelve worst ideas.

Number nine: We live in a “post-feminist” epoch. The implication of this claim, supposedly analogous to such terms as “post-industrial”, is that we have no more need for feminism, in politics, law, everyday life, because the major goals of that movement, articulated in the 1970s and 1980s, have been achieved. On all counts, this is a false claim: the “post-feminist” label serves not to register achievement of reforming goals, but the delegitimation of those goals themselves.

Really. The idea that feminism has nothing left to do – what a joke. Tell that to women in India, or Pakistan, or Niger, just for a start.

Number seven:

While we’re on the subject of biases and the difficulty of spotting one’s own (especially compared to the extreme ease of spotting everyone else’s) – Nigel later asked me a follow-up question for that interview he did at Virtual Philosopher, about just this issue. I didn’t see it until after he posted the interview, so I’ll post the q and a here, on account of relevance.

NW: Do you really believe we can eliminate our prejudices, the political, ideological and moral commitments that usually infect our judgements? I’m thinking of what Nietzsche said about how philosophers end up simply confirming their own prejudices under the guise of applying reason dispassonately…

OB: Well, I don’t really believe there’s any certainty

Biases are just endlessly interesting, don’t you think? Apart from anything else they remind us (if we’re paying attention anyway) that we all have them; they’re like kidneys, or toenails; part of the standard issue equipment. In fact the idea that we’re too clever to have them (or anything like them) is one of them.

Social and cognitive psychologists have identified a number of predictable errors (psychologists call them biases) in the ways that humans judge situations and evaluate risks. Biases have been documented both in the laboratory and in the real world, mostly in situations that have no connection to international politics. For example, people are prone to exaggerating their strengths: About 80 percent of us believe that