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How Philosophers Think

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Re: How Philosophers Think

#51
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

> I've yet to see a claim of obscurantism leveled against a post-structuralist that I felt had any serious weight.

I've yet to see a claim made by a post-structuralist that I felt had any serious weight. The awful prose just makes it worse.

Re: How Philosophers Think

#52
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

It's difficult to dispute a philosophic framework on its own terms. It's not that difficult to be self-consistent. But when you dig into these philosophies I always find myself asking, "So what?".

Compare Jean Baudrillard's Simulcra to Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities. IMO, they both identify the same basic phenomenon--that the reality we inhabit is socially constructed, including much or all of what we consider our physical reality, if only because it's difficult if not impossible (except through contrivances like math) to disentangle socially imbued meaning from even the most mundane of objects and events. But Baudrillard builds an exaggerated philosophical framework with little if any additional descriptive power.

Similarly, Baudrillard's philosophy is often used, including my himself, in an excessively prescriptivist manner, unrestrained by any admission of incompleteness. (Continental philosophers have always loved indulging in supposedly universal philosophies that can be used to explain and dictate everything.) By contrast Anderson's Imagine Communities concept is principally descriptive, emphasizing as it does the emergence and importance of nationalism in particular. That makes it, among other things, more easily analyzed, critiqued, and even falsified. Extrapolating the framework into a more universal philosophy is something you would have to do entirely on your own, and at your own peril. Importantly that makes it much more difficult to weaponize Anderson's concepts, directly or indirectly, in political and cultural rhetoric. Yet, at the end of the day, you can ride Anderson's concept anywhere you might Baudrillard--in the abstract it doesn't limit you; in fact, arguably it can take you more places by being less categorical.

There's a hilarious chapter, "Foreword to Newt Gringrich's Post-structuralism for Republicans: TrumpTruth and How to Make It, By Betsy DeVos" in the book Moving Forward: Real Introductions to Totally Made-up Books. I feel like the author tore the entire story straight from my head; thus, unsurprisingly, I find it hilarious. But in any event it IMO perfectly encapsulates not only the shortcomings in post-structuralism and related philosophies, but the dangers.

FWIW, I don't think all non-analytical philosophies are problematic. I far prefer Camus' writings over Satre's precisely because Camus evinces a laudable restraint. He doesn't emphasize implications; at most he hints at that them. Whether that's because he was just a good storyteller (letting the reader fill in the gaps), or because he was conscious of the inherent incompleteness of his perspectives and was capable of admitting to himself uncertainty, I don't know, but it makes for a far more mature and, ultimately, truthful examination of the human condition.

Re: How Philosophers Think

#53

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.

I do see the similarity.

I also agree that among many of them, there's an 'impressionistic' approach to presenting their work. Handwavy, you could say. But that's not to say their work isn't the expression of deep and clear philosophical insight.

There are notable continental philosphers whose presentation is tightly-argued; Hegel and Kant come to mind, but there are many others.

Re: How Philosophers Think

#54

Good essay, but a little short on examples of how philosophers actually think. Here's a famous example, a paper written by philosophers to poke fun at their profession. A dialogue that opens with "if you believe that only material objects can exist, do holes exist?" and goes to pretty ridiculous depth. http://home.sandiego.edu/~baber/metaphysics/readings/Lewis&L... I've read a lot of philosophical reasoning that was…

An awful lot of philosophical disputes are disagreements about the definitions of words, but neither side states their definition - they just assume their definition. The different sides then have different things that are "obviously true" (once you assume their definition of some word), and they proceed to argue back and forth, each with their assumptions, but with neither side ever stating their assumed definition.…

I think this get things backwards. Philosophers (save maybe Austin) generally reject the authority of a definition. In the analytic tradition, words are just pointing at things or concepts, and a definition is a heuristic or shorthand.

Fighting over the definition of "exist" is exactly trying to take the concept(s) the two are thinking of, and decide whether they are internally consistent. If they are, all the better, they needn't even be the same, but if they are not internally consistent, then the concept is clearly wrong and not worth discussing.

Re: How Philosophers Think

#55
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This expresses an approach to philosophy that I think is, at its roots, ineffective. It treats "philosophy" as "Philosophy", as some thing, some well-defined corpus that deals with truth and can be explored top-down systematically, something that you can "look…

Have you read Kant? I've had a lot of trouble with Hegel as well, and everyone tells me it's because he's responding to or building on arguments that Kant makes that seem to be pulled from whole cloth without that context (Kantext?). We're certainly not the only ones though, a lot of famous philosophers think Hegel is bullshit. I don't know how much respect the Hegelian lineage has outside of continental philosophy c…

Marxism is derived from Hegel's work.

Re: How Philosophers Think

#56
post #34

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…

Lumping postmodern and continental together is a sure sign that Mr. Aaronson doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Re: How Philosophers Think

#57
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

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.

Where do you get the impression that I'm merely being glib?

I'm not being put off by the language. I can make my way through that (though I do a lot better in English translations than the original French). But whenever I make the effort, I find that "there is no there there". And I have the effort on a number of occasions because someone I respected swore that a particular work was particularly important.

But the more I did, the more I found myself agreeing with Paul Graham in http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html. And I've found the hard way that whenever there is a topic of interest that both philosophy and science touch on, I always prefer to read what science has to say about it.

My reasoning is different than his. Whenever we think of something, our odds of being on the right path are low. We need feedback to steer by. And "applicability" makes feedback much clearer than any other standard that I can think of.

Re: How Philosophers Think

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wittgenstein came to the same conclusion. Whereof one cannot speak, one must remain silent. And he’s just paraphrasing the Buddhists/Taoists (and a bunch of other lesser known religious orders) who had that same insight a few thousand years earlier. Most people aren’t interested in silence though. The mud keeps humans entertained and hungry. Those humans build the societies we live in, monks living in silence in mona…

In the Tractatus (TLP), which you quoted, Wittgenstein came to a conclussion about language, not about philosophy itself. He rejected many of the major themes of the TLP in his later work, Philosophical Investigations (even jokingly calling the person who wrote the TLP an idiot) Wittgensteins metaphilosophical thoughts are best captured in the Blue Book (a series of lecture notes) and Philosophical Investigations.

I don't agree that he rejects much of TLP in Phlosophical Investigations, although most secondary sources say he did. So I'm deviant.

I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on this subject, 40 years ago.

I think it's a bad idea to write an undergraduate dissertation that implicitly criticises prominent philosophy writers; they are probably your examiner's drinking buddy.

I got a gamma (scrape pass).

Re: How Philosophers Think

#59
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An awful lot of philosophical disputes are disagreements about the definitions of words, but neither side states their definition - they just assume their definition. The different sides then have different things that are "obviously true" (once you assume their definition of some word), and they proceed to argue back and forth, each with their assumptions, but with neither side ever stating their assumed definition.…

I think this get things backwards. Philosophers (save maybe Austin) generally reject the authority of a definition. In the analytic tradition, words are just pointing at things or concepts, and a definition is a heuristic or shorthand. Fighting over the definition of "exist" is exactly trying to take the concept(s) the two are thinking of, and decide whether they are internally consistent. If they are, all the better…

I'd say that there are more than one concept that can be labeled by the word "exist". If you don't say which concept you're talking about, and the other person is running with a different concept that wears the same label, that discussion isn't worth having.

They could discuss either concept, and have a meaningful discussion (with quite a bit of agreement). But because they're actually discussing different concepts, but using the same word, the discussion just wastes everybody's time.

Re: How Philosophers Think

#60
I'm not impressed by this article. The author talks a lot about what he says is a desirable way to think, but fails to actually think that way.

For example:

"My Why You’re Christian essay demonstrates the process I use to interrogate my ideas."

So I go look at that essay, which can be summed up quite simply by quoting its last line:

"Ultimately, there are two ways to justify a belief in human rights: you can either construct a bottom-up, rational argument, or you can surrender to the supreme word of God."

And the whole essay is spent agonizing about the second option, without ever even discussing the first. Not only is the author apparently unaware of all the literature on constructing bottom-up, rational arguments for human rights (not to mention many other common values), he hasn't even tried to come up with one himself. Has it never even occurred to him that one obvious argument for human rights is that societies that respect them are better places to live?

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