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Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

psyche.co

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Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#71

Post by baryphonic »

mrkeen wrote: post #42

> Harris’s failure to grasp the content of many of the philosophical claims and arguments that he criticises > Lawrence Krauss engages with philosophical arguments for theism without understanding them properly. Most saliently, he ends up criticising a caricature version of the so-called cosmological argument about the existence of God. Oof. Perhaps back up those drive-by-shootings with some clarification. > Usually,…

> The irony.

Translation for the HN crowd: obscurantist pseudophilosophy == philosophy theater through obscurity.

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#72

Post by ssimpson »

I have an old coworker in a group of friends that fits this description. Its frustrating because they will continue to spout this stuff off confidently, but not ever listen to the counter argument or understand that their philosophy is flawed. It makes it challenging to continue to engage with this group of friends.

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#73

Post by samuelizdat »

Baudrillard would have more parallels to what they are trying to convey than Foucault if they want to pick French Post-modernists.

The author is just a member of clergy upset that uneducated barbarians and peasants have unorthodox beliefs. Yet they are just victims to post-truth hyperreality. What is their solution to keep people in line? The AI from Metal Gear Solid 2? Who is this written for? Are flat-earth people or anti-vax people going to read this and change their mind? It's just ball fanning.

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#74

Post by _qulr »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #52

As somebody who makes a living "as a philosopher" in areas that overlap with CS, decision making, logic, AI and appear to be more scientific in nature, I may find this article emotionally somewhat appealing but still don't think it's a useful view about philosophy. The first and foremost thing about philosophy laymen should realize is that the vast majority of philosophers do not consider philosophy a science. They a…

> the majority of philosophers silently agree that 80% of all publications or more in philosophy are nonsense or bullshit

> These disciplines have overall lower standards in comparison to philosophy

Given your earlier statement, may I ask what you consider to be the higher standards of philosophy?

I ask somewhat rhetorically as a former philosophy PhD student who left because I felt the whole field seemed quite indifferent to anything other than careerist journal stuffing.

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#75

Post by vixen99 »

Be nice if this philosopher started by defining terms. For instance, are we all crystal clear as to what pseudophilosophy is? A quick search came up with (chiefly pejorative) Any philosophical system that does not meet mainstream academic standards.. I hope there's no possibility of this being an own-goal.

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#76

Post by whimsicalism »

bakhy wrote: post #32

There's a contradiction in the conclusion. Foucault was an academic philosopher, got a degree in philosophy, was awarded a doctorate, and is respected by many people who also got a lot of education in philosophy. So, how is more philosophy education supposed to have stopped him?

I suspect they are saying more analytic philosophy education a la departments in Britain and America would have lead to more critical thinking.

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#77

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

coldtea wrote: post #22

> Often, it’s due to simple misunderstandings (such as confusing truth with belief or knowledge), but sometimes it’s due rather to wilful obscurity Sorry, but the pseudophilosopher here is the author of the article. He can't disambiguate between truth as some property of the universe/time-space/actual historical occurence, and truth as it matters to us, and thinks that just because Foucault doesn't spell the distinct…

You gave some examples of what this kind of truth doesn’t cover. Fire is hot. Australia exists. This table is wooden. The sun is hot.

Could you give some examples of what it does cover?

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#78

Post by narrator »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #52

As somebody who makes a living "as a philosopher" in areas that overlap with CS, decision making, logic, AI and appear to be more scientific in nature, I may find this article emotionally somewhat appealing but still don't think it's a useful view about philosophy. The first and foremost thing about philosophy laymen should realize is that the vast majority of philosophers do not consider philosophy a science. They a…

The question that most puzzles me is who gives grants to these obviously nonsense humanities academics to do their work and why? I guess this is a pretty cheap area of research to fund, but why bother at all?

I imagine there's a delusional rich person, or academic running a foundation who wants his confirmation biases satisfied. I figure there's got to be more to it than that though.

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#79

Post by sosomething »

_qulr wrote: post #74
jonathanstrange wrote: post #52

As somebody who makes a living "as a philosopher" in areas that overlap with CS, decision making, logic, AI and appear to be more scientific in nature, I may find this article emotionally somewhat appealing but still don't think it's a useful view about philosophy. The first and foremost thing about philosophy laymen should realize is that the vast majority of philosophers do not consider philosophy a science. They a…

> the majority of philosophers silently agree that 80% of all publications or more in philosophy are nonsense or bullshit > These disciplines have overall lower standards in comparison to philosophy Given your earlier statement, may I ask what you consider to be the higher standards of philosophy? I ask somewhat rhetorically as a former philosophy PhD student who left because I felt the whole field seemed quite indif…

OT, but with best wishes:

> //i.postimg.cc/28gH97Ly/23091-en-FORGIVEN-FORGOTTEN-LOST-CONDONED-FINAL-Mail.png

(-;

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#80

Post by karaterobot »

whimsicalism wrote: post #55
mrkeen wrote: post #42

> Harris’s failure to grasp the content of many of the philosophical claims and arguments that he criticises > Lawrence Krauss engages with philosophical arguments for theism without understanding them properly. Most saliently, he ends up criticising a caricature version of the so-called cosmological argument about the existence of God. Oof. Perhaps back up those drive-by-shootings with some clarification. > Usually,…

> The irony. It's only ironic if you haven't read this so called "obscurantist pseudophilosophy." This sentence hardly holds a candle to the writings of someone like Deleuze or Derrida.

Agreed with this. Also, to give the author of the Psyche article credit, he defined what he meant by obscurantist philosophy earlier in the article. In my fairly limited reading of them, Foucault, Derrida, et al., don't always do this, even when the terms they use are much less self-explanatory than this one.
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