Is Philosophy an Art?
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Is Philosophy an Art?
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Re: Is Philosophy an Art?
#2Working on some inforgraphics tackling gender bias a while back, I was'accused' of producing data visualization art. I defended the intellectual rigor of my work, yet lost the argument - my 'accuser' turned out to be the curator of data visualization art at the Tate Modern. He won the argument by pointing out that the work, though based on hard data, was designed to evoke an emotional rather than an intellectual response.
Ao much philosophy is taught as if it were a niche area of literary criticism, rather than as raw materials for the creation of algorithms for intentional living, it probably is fair to regard much philosophy as if art, or even art criticism.
Re: Is Philosophy an Art?
#3I think of philosophy of the art of words and ideas, just like literature is generally the art of words and stories. But, for historical reasons, many people and most philosophers claim philosophy is much more than this.
Spinoza was convinced he was "engaged in the pursuit of truth", as the article writes, and he probably thought he had built a logical proof of the existence of god. But his concepts are fuzzy, so his reasoning is unprovable, and his apparent rigorousness is not at all scientific. Many philosophers disagree with his theories, and none of them are wrong or better or worse than Spinoza, since there is no way to refute or evaluate philosophy.
Apart from these points (proof, progress, consensus), there are many indices for classifying philosophy among the arts. No one would claim to be an expert of a philosopher without reading and studying his book and articles. But, if the substance was more important than the form, it should not matter. One can master Gauss' mathematics or Einstein's physics without reading the original works.
Re: Is Philosophy an Art?
#4Relevant: http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html
Re: Is Philosophy an Art?
#5Working on some inforgraphics tackling gender bias a while back, I was'accused' of producing data visualization art. I defended the intellectual rigor of my work, yet lost the argument - my 'accuser' turned out to be the curator of data visualization art at the Tate Modern. He won the argument by pointing out that the work, though based on hard data, was designed to evoke an emotional rather than an intellectual resp…
There's something to be said for the notion that, in the modern world, anyone who is a "professional philosopher" is just incapable of doing the kind of "here's how you should live" work that dominates early Western and Asian philosophy. Among modern professions, the only ones that can bear the legal liability of such a line of inquiry are in the health sciences.
In this sense, philosophy professors cannot be doing what Socrates thought he was doing, except while teaching. But, as a rule, teaching is not considered the "productive work" of any professors. The "serious" work of academics is to produce tomes and articles, and to manage their citations like investments.
Re: Is Philosophy an Art?
#6I think of philosophy of the art of words and ideas, just like literature is generally the art of words and stories. But, for historical reasons, many people and most philosophers claim philosophy is much more than this. Spinoza was convinced he was "engaged in the pursuit of truth", as the article writes, and he probably thought he had built a logical proof of the existence of god. But his concepts are fuzzy, so his…
Wouldn’t that imply that no philosophy is true? I think of it as the search for truths that we can’t empirically prove, contrasted to science and math which are purely logical. But math and science have their bases in philosophy through universal laws and propositions, which are unprovable but necessary.
Art is more concerned with human experience and seems like a different thing.
Re: Is Philosophy an Art?
#7I think of philosophy of the art of words and ideas, just like literature is generally the art of words and stories. But, for historical reasons, many people and most philosophers claim philosophy is much more than this. Spinoza was convinced he was "engaged in the pursuit of truth", as the article writes, and he probably thought he had built a logical proof of the existence of god. But his concepts are fuzzy, so his…
Stating "there is no way to refute or evaluate philosophy" while then going on to do the same seems incongruent.
Re: Is Philosophy an Art?
#8I think of philosophy of the art of words and ideas, just like literature is generally the art of words and stories. But, for historical reasons, many people and most philosophers claim philosophy is much more than this. Spinoza was convinced he was "engaged in the pursuit of truth", as the article writes, and he probably thought he had built a logical proof of the existence of god. But his concepts are fuzzy, so his…
> his apparent rigorousness is not at all scientific.
It is more scientific than Galileo, just less empirical.
Spinoza's contributions to thought lie on the logic axis, not the empirical axis. That didn't really get going until the British empiricists, culminating with Newton, who absolutely saw himself as a philosopher, and saw his physics as part of his philosophical work[1].
But Spinoza's historical axis includes Leibniz, on whose work both Gottlieb Frege and Bertrand Russell saw themselves as building when they formalized mathematical logic as we now know it[2][3]. Turing is another few steps down this road, and knew it[4]. Further down Spinoza's road we also get Kant, who Einstein targeted when he was trying to understand what space actually is[5].
It's also worth mentioning that the whole logic thing starts with the Greek philosophers, who saw themselves as extending Euclid's geometry into other domains. Aristotle formalized several still accepted forms of logical inference and rigorously taxonomized fallacies, as well as inventing the notion of taxonomies (and biology) to begin with[6]. Incidentally, much later, Descartes finished the work of applying Euclid's work to other domains, by marrying algebra and geometry[7], while trying to prove that God exists[8].
> there is no way to refute or evaluate philosophy.
This is plainly false. Every philosopher in the Western canon saw themselves as refuting earlier philosophers and traditions. Sometimes, these refutations were so spectacular that they became sciences.
I don't know man. To me, even when these guys fuck up, they still produce an awful lot of cool tools.
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[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/newton-philosophy/
[2] https://www.jstor.org/stable/40693547?seq=1
[3] https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-1-4020-524...
[4] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing/#TurMacCom
[5] https://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410/chapters/si...
[6] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-biology/
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_geometry
[8] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/#FirResNewMisMe...
Re: Is Philosophy an Art?
#9I'm reminded of a story from "Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman" where he asks a bunch of philosophy graduate students on what the definition of a certain phrase was, and everyone actually had a different idea. This ambiguity of language is why in my opinion philosophy is most certainly an art and not a science.
Re: Is Philosophy an Art?
#10I think of philosophy of the art of words and ideas, just like literature is generally the art of words and stories. But, for historical reasons, many people and most philosophers claim philosophy is much more than this. Spinoza was convinced he was "engaged in the pursuit of truth", as the article writes, and he probably thought he had built a logical proof of the existence of god. But his concepts are fuzzy, so his…
>many people and most philosophers claim philosophy is much more than this.
on the other hand many people and most artists claim art is much more than philosophy.