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Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

psyche.co

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Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#101

Post by natex »

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…

I appreciate this comment but I have some questions/comments:

> 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.

I don't think the article was making a claim about philosophy being a science. On the contrary, it seemed make a pretty clear distinction between them and highlighted some perils of falsely mixing the two.

"Often implicit empiricist assumptions in epistemology, metaphysics and the philosophy of language are relied upon as if they were self-evident, and without awareness of the threat that those very assumptions pose to the author’s own reasoning. We can call this phenomenon scientistic pseudophilosophy."

"While pseudoscience can perhaps be counteracted by science education, the cure for pseudophilosophy is not science education but philosophical education."

> If you don't like a particular philosopher's work, you generally don't read and support it, and that's it. Calling the work pseudophilosophy will only enrage people who disagree and not help with anything.

The article wasn't about disagreeing with opposing philosophers' work, it as a critique of those non-philosophers who "fail to grasp the content of many of the philosophical claims and arguments that they criticize"

"There are two kinds of pseudophilosophy, one mostly harmless and the other insidious. The first variety is usually found in popular scientific contexts. This is where writers, typically with a background in the natural sciences, walk self-confidently into philosophical territory without realising it, and without conscientious attention to relevant philosophical distinctions and arguments.

The insidious kind of pseudophilosophy, which I will focus on here, is an academic enterprise, pursued primarily within the humanities and social sciences." (e.g. phenomenon obscurantist pseudophilosophy)

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#102

Post by colechristensen »

>by using the word ‘truth’ in an impressionistic fashion, the distinction between belief and truth is smudged over, allowing Foucault to make seemingly profound statements such as:

>>[T]ruth isn’t outside power, or lacking in power: contrary to a myth whose history and functions would repay further study, truth isn’t the reward of free spirits, the child of protracted solitude, nor the privilege of those who have succeeded in liberating themselves. Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint.

>I leave it as an exercise to the reader to disambiguate this statement and see what remains.

Foucault wrote in French. Translation of any work between language is hard, and always a creative effort. Philosophy, I think, suffers from this to the highest degree ... to the end that a lot of philosophy in translation comes across as nearly indecipherable nonsense which is perhaps not the fault of the author, the topic, or the translator, but only the fact that translation is difficult.

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#104

Post by mistermann »

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.

Similarly:

> There are many kinds of pseudosciences: astrology, homeopathy, flat-Earthism, anti-vaxx. These ‘fields’ traffic in bizarre claims with scientific pretensions. On a surface level, these claims seem to be scientific and usually appear to comment on the same kind of things that science does. However, upon closer inspection, pseudoscience is revealed to be bullshit: it is indifferent to the truth.

...combined with:

> A problem is that most of us are lacking in epistemic conscientiousness, at least sometimes and to some extent. In order for something to count as pseudoscience, some minimal degree of unconscientiousness is therefore required. A good rule of thumb for being conscientious is to keep an eye out for classical fallacies such as ad hominem, straw man, false dilemma and cherry-picking. Such fallacies occur in all kinds of contexts, but in pseudoscience they occur more systematically.

They "surely" occur more systematically in "pseudoscience", but it's funnier when they occur in an article that is literally criticizing others for this kind of thinking.

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#105

Post by yters »

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,…

Most of the modern atheists are clueless when it comes to the theism discussion.

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#106

Post by Schiphol »

_qulr wrote: post #98
Schiphol wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP, but well regarded philosophy journals (in my academic neck of the woods) have ridiculously low acceptance rates (2-3% often), and in general peer review is done and taken seriously.

> well regarded philosophy journals (in my academic neck of the woods) have ridiculously low acceptance rates (2-3% often) This just shows that academic philosophy is a very exclusive club. It doesn't say anything about the standards involved. If anything, an extremely high rejection rate tends to enforce intellectual conformity and conservatism on a field that you would think is least in need of those qualities.

It definitely looks like standards from the inside :)

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#108

Post by _qulr »

Schiphol wrote: post #106
_qulr wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> well regarded philosophy journals (in my academic neck of the woods) have ridiculously low acceptance rates (2-3% often) This just shows that academic philosophy is a very exclusive club. It doesn't say anything about the standards involved. If anything, an extremely high rejection rate tends to enforce intellectual conformity and conservatism on a field that you would think is least in need of those qualities.

It definitely looks like standards from the inside :)

Oh yes, I agree!

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#109

Post by freedomben »

Really interesting piece, and I especially appreciated this:

> Usually, the prose is infused with arcane terminology and learned jargon, creating an aura of scholarly profundity. We can call this phenomenon obscurantist pseudophilosophy.

But more of a meta comment: can we please not start calling people who disagree with us "pseudophilosophers," or start using it as an insult to hurl against people we don't agree with?

The amount of ad hominem accusations of "pseudoscience" drive me crazy. So often (especially these days) we take a "real" thing and broadly misapply it to anyone or anything that disagrees with us, all the while pretending we're using "science" or "philosophy" to disarm the opposition.

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#110

Post by elgaard »

paganel wrote: post #50
ostrophonics wrote: post #10

This sort of thing is always by turns boring and frustrating to read, because there are good and interesting philosophical criticisms to be made of Foucault's epistemology, but the idea that for him facticity itself is questionable isn't one of them. Foucault is never really in doubt about what constitutes, e.g., an event, occurrence, or fact - actually his entire corpus very self-consciously relies on having a commo…

> facticity itself There are facts and facts. The OP thinks that Foucault's (pseudo-)philosophy is against the fact that the Earth is non-flat, or that saying that the Earth is non-flat is somehow infused with ideology, but there are also facts that are given to us as true (and which affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people) which are indeed infused with ideology, one of the latest examples being the "fact"…

That the Earth is non-flat is a fact.

That austerity was the thing to do was never a fact. Even in 2008-2010 it was a much debated policy.

Just because governments do something that you believe is wrong, it does not mean that they have used their power to somehow change the truth.

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