Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking • Hacker News Board

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#141

Post by ostrophene » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

steveklabnik wrote: post #45

rvense wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't read the linked article yet, but to me, Foucault really is one of the most interesting intellectuals of the 20th century (or longer) - if only because of how differently people perceive him. There's that old debate between him and Chomsky, and it's incredible how different people will score that debate. Some see obscurantist posturing versus Chomsky's towering, rigourous intellect, where others see Chomsky o…

One of my favorite takes on this debate, from a software developer: http://byfat.xxx/chomsky (SFW even though it's on an .xxx domain) (It is "this debate" in a broader sense, not this specific debate, which I also happen to love. I both agree with you that it is amazing how everyone sees what they want to see in that debate, and also am in the "lol Chomsky got owned so hard he didn't even know what was going on" camp…

very good take here, and it gets to the heart of the issue: Chomsky comes out of the analytic tradition where the goal is to rigorously explain and define everything that can't quite be pinned down by mathematical symbolization. French intellectual traditions owe way more to existentialism and phenomenology, where the goal is rather to understand experiences in new, historically appropriate ways. the latter partakes, even where Foucault, for instance, is apparently undertaking a historical analysis, far more of poetic language, because the thinking is "we here in history are disclosing the historically unthought that everyone before us couldn't see"

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#142

Post by ntsplnkv2 » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 5:35 PM UTC

_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 stands to reason that most papers will not be impressive, so even if the filter is biased it likely has some sort of value.

It's always a balancing act. Become too restrictive and good ideas could get snuffed out, but too open and it's just a giant cluster of bad ideas and too much noise.

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#143

Post by ostrophene » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 5:36 PM UTC

great comments and replies in this thread! one thing that it really brings to light for me is that unfortunately, a lot of us in the West just aren't conditioned to receive continental thought. for us academic disciplines are supposed to have specific empirical domains to whose technical development they have a historical mission to contribute. for continentals in the 60s and 70s, that very notion of "missionness" was in question, especially for a discipline like philosophy which had historically partnered as much with labor as with capital.

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#144

Post by whimsicalism » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #114

whimsicalism wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that this article is rehashing the age-old continental vs. analytical debate, I disagree that because the debate is old, it is thus worthless. I see many defending the "perfectly clear" meaning of continental philosophers, even if they don't obviously build up a clear argument from assumptions like a "10 year old" analytic philosopher might do. Many, in my view, are forgetting just quite how obscurant many of…

> is close-to-incomprehensible to me Because it's written for an audience of people who are very familiar with structuralism, Althusser, and the general development of Marxist philosophy over a 200 year period of time. This is no different than a paper like "Attention is All You Need" expecting you to have a background in neural networks, recurrent neural networks specifically, neural-language models, and the transfo…

> the general development of Marxist philosophy over a 200 year period of time.

Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg, they are all quite clear.

Many modern marxists, like G.A. Cohen, write similarly clearly.

> Attention is All You Need

That paper actually defines quite a bit of what it is talking about. Nor are the sentences run-on or as dense in jargon as this.

I've actually read quite a bit of the "psychoanalysis"-inspired philosophy sub-genre inaugurated by Lacan. I think it is insulting to compare the jargon used in that context, where authors will often admit to be intentionally obscurant, with a technical paper like Attention is All You Need.

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#145

Post by gmtx725 » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

andagainagain wrote: post #124

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…

It almsot sounds likes what we need is a differentiation of words. Most people that like "philosophy" disagree on what they mean. I mean, that's a layman problem. But if philosophers themselves disagree on what philosophy in general is, then perhaps it should differentiate into specific philosophies. Say, "scientific philosophy", which is the subset of thinking that considers philosophy as a science, with assigned tr…

"Analytic" Philosophy is already a term, I think it does the job pretty well

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#146

Post by ostrophene » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #58

Veen wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There would be little problem if his methods were confined to examining questions such as the truth of phrenology, the ideological presumptions that made it an appealing set of beliefs, and power relations that motivated them. Unfortunately, his followers (and Foucault himself) cast a far wider net than that, to the point at which power-knowledge becomes the predominant or even the only acceptable analytical framewor…

The Focaultian mindset makes you twitchy, paranoid, and hostile. We think of it as "of the Left", but there's also nothing to stop "the Right" from buying the idea that everything is just about Power. Then if you keep at that line of thought pretty soon you turn into a Nazi. Or at the very least, you will hear all claims from "the Left" about "care" or "empathy" with knowing cynicism. And my perception is that these…

Foucault's biggest inspirations were Nietzsche, where Foucault gets the basic notion of power's universal systematicity (everything is already/can be articulated as a master/slave relation); and Heidegger, for whom the core essence of Being was always and eternally retreating from sight. combine these two notions and you get someone endlessly searching for a power he knows is screwing him but which he can't see or hear or touch. and combine THAT with generally declining career prospects for left-leaning Anglos studying continental philosophy... yes i'd say you have yourself a personality type.

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#147

Post by gmtx725 » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 5:43 PM UTC

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.

I admit Deleuze's writing is hard work but he has some really interesting metaphysical ideas linked to complexity and systems theory, try reading Manuel DeLanda for a more accessible introduction

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#148

Post by BlueTemplar » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

nescioquid wrote: post #51

082349872349872 wrote: post #8

In the Phaedrus, it was predicted that writing and reading in general (let alone specific examples such as pseudophilosophy) would eventually encourage confused, self-indulgent thinking. > You offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, s…

There's a strand of suspicion towards literacy in Plato. Mainly I'm thinking of the dialog in which Socrates talks to a man about to sue his father (I'm sorry, I'm blanking on the name of the dialog); mainly the idea is that writing enfeebles the memory and intellect. > In the Phaedrus, it was predicted that writing and reading in general... would eventually encourage confused, self-indulgent thinking. We don't learn…

Hmm, Plato didn't consider that sophistry might be easier through oration than through writing ?

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#149

Post by Netbeing » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

mcv wrote: post #112

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'd say the majority of philosophers silently agree that 80% of all publications or more in philosophy are nonsense or bullshit and only the rest is even worth reading, but they all disagree about which 80% percent..." Are you saying that philosophy in general encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking?

One of my favorite things I've ever read is David Stove's essay on this subject, "What is Wrong with Our Thoughts?" wherein a cranky old philosopher excoriates his profession.

https://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/wrongthoughts.html

To be fair, as the GP states, most philosophers are honest about this. How much better off we'd all be if economists would admit the same truth about their "discipline".

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#150

Post by ostrophene » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

BlueTemplar wrote: post #134

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…

Yeah, isn't it basically a repeat of Jordan Peterson's criticism of 'French Theory' academics ? I don't know that much about 'postmodernism', but it seems like both JP and the North American academics responsible for the 'French Theory' are pretty much misunderstanding those French philosophers (which is partially the fault of French philosopher's dense prose, which isn't new for philosophers (I hear some Germans are…

French intellectual celebs from the period only started talking postmodernism in the 70s and 80s, after Anglos started asking them about it!

the idea itself is largely derived from Fredric Jameson's writings on it in the 1980s. he characterizes it primarily as a flattening of emotional and historical affect such that all time periods represented in culture fundamentally partake of a liberal market-oriented ideological framework. in that sense, Foucault can be seen as paradigmatic through his willful 'rewriting' of the historical archive.