On the Value of Not Knowing Everything

James McWilliams has a good article “On the Value of Not Knowing Everything“, centering on the Mysterian position which emanates from Thomas Nagel’s seminal bat argument, an argument I believe is incontestable. Despite a few misplaced snickers (e.g., describing anti-pomo scholar Mark Bauerlein as ‘cranky’; describing being against deconstructionism as being ‘stodgy’), and what is ultimately a misunderstanding of Nagel (“If, after all, Nagel is proven wrong—that is, if subjectivity is in fact reducible to an identifiable network of neural synapses—what is the point of investigating the human condition through a humanistic lens?”), the article is a very good distillation of the cultural problem writ by an onslaught of empiricism and reductionism.