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How Philosophers Think

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Re: How Philosophers Think

#41

Post by becquerel »

btilly wrote: post #34
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Continental (non-analytic) philosophers seem to me to be somewhat like impressionist painters. (Does anyone else see that similarity?) And the absence of this "clarity of thought" focus might be why it feels that way to me.

I would be less kind. Scott Aaronson said it well in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FwiPfF8Woe5JrzqEu/philosophy... One final note: none of the positive or hopeful things that I said about philosophy apply to the postmodern or Continental kinds. As far as I can tell, the latter aren’t really “philosophy” at all, but more like pretentious brands of performance art that fancy themselves politically subversive, even as…

I've yet to see a claim of obscurantism leveled against a post-structuralist that I felt had any serious weight. They're mostly just awful prose writers (and even worse, French).

Glibly casting off an entire intellectual tradition as a case of the emperor having no clothes is, to me, a really tragic dismissal of an electrifying body of ideas.

For anyone who's been put off by the language of continental philosophy, I'd recommend Peter Barry's book called Beginning Theory. It's written in very clear English and gives concrete examples of the terms you usually just hear bandied about (deconstruction, semiotics, whatever).

Re: How Philosophers Think

#42

Post by becquerel »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #27
keiferski wrote: post #5

This article isn’t terrible, but it does illustrate the pitfalls of writing about a field (philosophy) without being intimately familiar with it. Specifically, because you assume that [your culture’s version of] a thing is a universal one. Philosophy is a good example, because even “Western Philosophy” has so many fringe and irregular thinkers (Nietzsche, Deleuze, etc.) that trying to nail down how a “philosopher” th…

Continental (non-analytic) philosophers seem to me to be somewhat like impressionist painters. (Does anyone else see that similarity?) And the absence of this "clarity of thought" focus might be why it feels that way to me.

In some sense I agree. The Continental tradition has always been frustrated by the innate limits of language, so a tendency towards impressions over concrete, clinical terminology makes sense to me.

Re: How Philosophers Think

#43

Post by LudwigNagasena »

keiferski wrote: post #5

This article isn’t terrible, but it does illustrate the pitfalls of writing about a field (philosophy) without being intimately familiar with it. Specifically, because you assume that [your culture’s version of] a thing is a universal one. Philosophy is a good example, because even “Western Philosophy” has so many fringe and irregular thinkers (Nietzsche, Deleuze, etc.) that trying to nail down how a “philosopher” th…

> This article isn’t terrible

I totally disagree with this statement, the article looks like something from a cheap business webinar. He talks about Planck, Chomsky, Charlie Munger, Joseph Henrich and even talks about something cringely named “Quantum Thinking” yet he fails to mention a single philosopher born after 400BCE and only makes platitudinous references to Plato and Socrates.

Re: How Philosophers Think

#44

Post by becquerel »

hashberry wrote: post #20

> Quantum Thinking, which is holding multiple contradictory ideas in your head at the same time. By oscillating between radical extremes, you put ideas at war with each other in the name of truth. By doing so, you stretch each idea to its logical conclusion. Isn't this the 19th century Hegelian dialectic, not a quantum-whatchamacallit?

If you write a thinkpiece online that doesn't include the word quantum, commentariat assassins will personally break into your house and torture you.

Re: How Philosophers Think

#45

Post by bionhoward »

andagainagain wrote: post #14
jolux wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends who you read. Some philosophers are better writers than others, some philosophical traditions prioritize clarity more, and some translations are really bad. If you’re looking for relatively straightforward thinking, Plato is often where freshman philosophy students start and his work is considered background knowledge for basically all of the rest of western philosophy.

Name me two. And I've read some Plato some years ago. I would not classify him as a clear thinker by any remotely modern standards.

Marcus Aurelius and Seneca

Re: How Philosophers Think

#46

Post by fjfaase »

There are some things that software engineering and philosophy have in common. One is that they are both about (abstract) concepts and their relationships. Another is that they are based on languages. Just like software engineers have the tendency to develop new programming language, philosophers of all ages, have come up with new words to represent certain ideas. Thus there must be some similarities between how philosophers and software engineers think.

Yet, I get the impression that many software engineers are rather suspicious about philosophy. (I do not know about the other way around.)

Maybe it is because as a software engineer you have the experience that you are often wrong about what you think is right. This especially comes from debugging, were you over and over discover that your idea about the cause of the bug is wrong when you finally have found a satisfying solution. And even then, you often realize that the fact that the bug was possible was due to some design decision made some years ago, and that an even better way to fix the bug is to revert that design decision.

Maybe it because you have learned that reality is always far more complex than you would have thought at first.

Maybe it is because we as software engineers have learned to deal with situations where the rubber meets the road, while many philosophers did not have to cope with that experience.

Re: How Philosophers Think

#47

Post by milkey_mouse »

andagainagain wrote: post #3

Every time I've looked at philosophy in my life, I kept searching for this promise - where intellectual giants grapple the truth and discover their secrets. What I've found, from famous books by famous philosophers all the way to pop philosophy books to vague philosophical discussions... is some of the muddiest and most convoluted self-indulgent thinking i've ever seen. I am thus convinced that philosophers ENJOY the…

> I am thus convinced that philosophers ENJOY the mud, not the clarity.

I agree that this describes many philosophers, but "quietists" such as John McDowell and (late) Wittgenstein would disagree:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quietism_(philosophy)

Re: How Philosophers Think

#48

Post by scoofy »

I very much appreciate the section: The Dangers of Thinking Like a Philosopher. I was a philosophy major and then graduate school student, and if it weren't for the financial crisis in 2008, i would likely have attempted some career in academia.

After finishing graduate school, i found myself constantly sort of being referred to as awkward, out of touch, unpleasant person, because i was used to the university discourse of the philosophy department. A place where playing devil's advocate is required, not frowned upon. I thought people cared about the correctness of their ideas. I eventually had to unlearn, or re-learn how to talk to people.

I now deeply value my friends who want to engage in good-faith discussions in which "controversial" ideas (often just genuine curiosity) are allowed, and you're not seen as some sort of persona non grata for entertaining them. The true persona non grata, from my perspective, is entertaining these wrongthink ideas as a means to justify them, rather than good-faith explore them.

Now, as a way to avoid responding to certain people talking about certain subjects, i'll just say some subject should stay inside the walls of academia.

Re: How Philosophers Think

#49

Post by scoofy »

mistermann wrote: post #7
keiferski wrote: post #5

This article isn’t terrible, but it does illustrate the pitfalls of writing about a field (philosophy) without being intimately familiar with it. Specifically, because you assume that [your culture’s version of] a thing is a universal one. Philosophy is a good example, because even “Western Philosophy” has so many fringe and irregular thinkers (Nietzsche, Deleuze, etc.) that trying to nail down how a “philosopher” th…

For analytic philosophy, where should one go, specific philosophers, or...?

I think the previous poster is being a bit heavy handed about the analytic tradition being the jumping off point. You'll get some mileage with some of Bertrand Russell's non-technical stuff, but there are lots of conversations going on that have to do with historical ideas.

Typically the direction starts with Descartes, then Hume, then Kant, and after that, there is a real break between continental and analytic traditions. So, jumping into Wittgenstein might be a really bad idea for someone without a background, but who knows. The Philosophical Investigations is a fairly approachable book.

Re: How Philosophers Think

#50

Post by denton-scratch »

"To that end, most of the time a philosopher spends writing doesn’t involve typing"

Most of the time a philosopher spends philosophising doesn't even involve thinking.

Bertrand Russel said that philosophy was very difficult, and even very good philosophers only succeeded in doing it for a few days a year.

Or something; I don't think it's from Problems Of Philosophy, and I can't lay my hands on my copy of In Praise Of Idleness.

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