things not to do in an Amazon review

Don’t plug your own book when negatively reviewing another. It doesn’t look quite right:

“Louis Berger reviewed The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism
still too few options October 5, 2011
This “turn” is the turn away from the now apparently passe “linguistic turn” made famous by Rorty and others, via a turn toward “reality” — away from a too subject-centered humanism. BUT: this turn is still situated within a dichotomous framework, where as far as I can see the only options, the only perspectives, continue to be the view either from “inside” (from the person) or from the “outside” — the option which, in my view, is a variant of Nagel’s famous view from nowhere: a view of the material reality — but, by whom? Articulated how? Getting its meaning, description, discussion, or even its perception, from what? There continues to be an either-or ontological situation. What I object to is the total absence of any consideration, or even awareness, of a third option, one that I propose is provided via a truly radical developmental (ontogenetic) perspective, the perspective I’ve tried to conceptualize, present, and pursue in my recent Language and the Ineffable: A Developmental Perspective and Its Applications. Hence my less than enthusiastic rating of this massive effort by notable thinkers.”

Furthermore, everyone in the volume is well aware of the “third option.” It’s called correlationism, and it is merely a form of idealism that pretends to be beyond the idealism/realism dispute.

Richard Rorty: “Every ten years or so, someone writes a book with a title something like ‘Beyond Realism and Idealism.’ And it always turns out that what’s beyond realism and idealism is– idealism!”