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How Philosophers Think

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Re: How Philosophers Think

#71

Post by neonological »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #68
neonological wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 find philosophy to be highly irrational. It studies topics that are uniquely different yet it categorizes these topics as the same thing. Aesthetics aka beauty is a philosophy, and so is logic. How do…

> How do these things exist on the same level? Through Mathematics ?

Mathematics makes beauty and logic equivalent fields of study that belong in the same category? How?

Re: How Philosophers Think

#72

Post by yesenadam »

becquerel wrote: post #41
btilly wrote: 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.

Did you read e.g. Sokal and Bricmont's Intellectual Impostures, aka Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science?!

Set out to show how numerous key intellectuals have used concepts from the physical sciences and mathematics incorrectly, Sokal and Bricmont intentionally provide considerably lengthy extracts in order to avoid accusations of taking sentences out of context. Such extracts pull from such works as those of Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Paul Virilio, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Luce Irigaray, Bruno Latour, and Jean Baudrillard, who—in terms of the quantity of published works, invited presentations, and of citations received—were some of the leading academics of continental philosophy, critical theory, psychoanalysis, and/or the social sciences at the time of publication.

The book provides a chapter to each of the above-mentioned authors, "the tip of the iceberg" of a group of intellectual practices that can be described as "mystification, deliberately obscure language, confused thinking and the misuse of scientific concepts." For example, Luce Irigaray is criticised for asserting that E=mc2 is a "sexed equation" because "it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us;" and for asserting that fluid mechanics is unfairly neglected because it deals with "feminine" fluids in contrast to "masculine" rigid mechanics. Similarly, Lacan is criticized for drawing an analogy between topology and mental illness that, in Sokal and Bricmont's view, is unsupported by any argument and is "not just false: it is gibberish."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashionable_Nonsense

Re: How Philosophers Think

#73

Post by yesenadam »

denton-scratch wrote: post #64
scoofy wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tradi…

I think some of the TLP can be approached almost as a poem. I havn't read it in German, but in translation I think the poetic parts are expressive language, organised into stanzas. That's close to poetry. You don't need a background, unless you want to read the middle section, which is close to advanced maths.

"the TLP"?

. Ohh, the Tractatus. Ok. "You don't need a background" is absurd! Sure, you can physically read the words. But you won't have a clue why he's saying what he's saying, or what he meant by it. And Wittgenstein himself within a few years would've told you it's nonsense and not to go anywhere near it.

Re: How Philosophers Think

#74

Post by yesenadam »

idolaspecus wrote: post #26
xenophon wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try Derek Parfit. His book "Reasons and Persons" touches on some fascinating questions (identity) with clear thought experiments that actually reach the level of clarity this article suggests.

I would definitely not say "Reasons and Persons" is clear. It might be precise (I personally don't think so, I think he makes tons of subtle mistakes), but it's at least not clear. It's full of ideas like "rational irrationality" which is at best a poor choice of naming, IMO.

> I think he makes tons of subtle mistakes

That's true of (at least) all important philosophy books, isn't it?

Re: How Philosophers Think

#75

Post by yesenadam »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #63
idolaspecus wrote: post #23

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…

> I have a really really really hard time taking Hegel seriously I really enjoyed Schopenhauer 80+ pages rant in "Parerga & Paralipomena" on Hegel and why he considered him a fraud. Nothing in philosophy is as consistent as Schopenhauer's "Hegel bashing" or using the term "Hegelian" only in a dismissive way. Maybe I ought to read Hegel since he is a central figure in Western philosophy. My excuse so far has been that…

I used to enjoy Schopenhauer, and am still fond of him, but his student Nietzsche has taken his place for me, a cheerier, funnier companion. Well, like me, Nietzsche was inspired by Emerson throughout his life. Emerson was never funny, but always inspiring.

Santayana's Egotism in German Philosophy is one of my favourite books in philosophy, a history of German/"continental" thought from Leibniz to the Nazis—published 1916. Chapter II, The Protestant Heritage[0] begins:

"The German people, according to Fichte and Hegel, are called by the plan of Providence to occupy the supreme place in the history of the universe.

A little consideration of this belief will perhaps lead us more surely to the heart of German philosophy than would the usual laborious approach to it through what is called the theory of knowledge."

Gold! I love Santayana's gentlemanly, restrained sense of humour, so superior to, say, Russell or Nietzsche's savage mocking.

The best short thing I've read on Hegel is William James' essay On Some Hegelisms[1], and the long Note at its end, where he recognized Hegel-style thinking in his own crazed thinking while on nitrous oxide. Very funny, insightful stuff. After all, psychological experiment was James' own field:

"It is impossible to convey an idea of the torrential character of the identification of opposites as it streams through the mind in this experience. I have sheet after sheet of phrases dictated or written during the intoxication, which to the sober reader seem meaningless drivel, but which at the moment of transcribing were fused in the fire of infinite rationality. God and devil, good and evil, life and death, I and thou, sober and drunk, matter and form, black and white, quantity and quality, shiver of ecstasy and shudder of horror, vomiting and swallowing, inspiration and expiration, fate and reason, great and small, extent and intent, joke and earnest, tragic and comic, and fifty other contrasts figure in these pages in the same monotonous way. The mind saw how each term belonged to its contrast through a knife-edge moment of transition which it effected, and which, perennial and eternal, was the nunc stans of life. The thought of mutual implication of the parts in the bare form of a judgment of opposition, as 'nothing — but,' 'no more — than,' 'only — if', etc., produced a perfect delirium of theoretic rapture. And at last, when definite ideas to work on came slowly, the mind went through the mere form of recognizing sameness in identity by contrasting the same word with itself, differently emphasized, or shorn of its initial letter."

[0] https://archive.org/details/egotismingermanp00santuoft/page/...

[1] https://archive.org/details/willtobelieveoth1910jame/page/26...

Re: How Philosophers Think

#76

Post by yesenadam »

jfengel wrote: post #66
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…

Yes, philosophers love the mud. That's why they're philosophers. Everything we call "science" is something that has been separated out, cleaned up, and polished. Darwin and Newton both considered themselves "philosophers", because they looked in the mud and took out a nice, separable piece of it. What's left as "philosophy" is the mud, the stuff that we haven't taken away from the philosophy department by giving it a…

> Darwin and Newton both considered themselves "philosophers"

The word "scientist" was only coined in the 1830s. Science for the vast majority of its history existed as a branch of philosophy called natural philosophy.

Re: How Philosophers Think

#77

Post by yesenadam »

jfarmer wrote: post #21
andagainagain wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You might like American Pragmatism: CS Peirce, FP Ramsey, CI Lewis, William James, John Dewey, etc. Peirce's "How to Make Our Ideas Clear": https://courses.media.mit.edu/2004spring/mas966/Peirce%20187...

Also Richard Rorty. I seem to never agree with anything he says—he always goes too far—but have all his books and find him very stimulating. Hilary Putnam talks in his books about their disagreements, and Putnam always seems to take the more sensible side. Putnam is a very clear and stimulating writer—his Realism with a Human Face is perhaps his best and a good place to start, filled with remarkably good essays.

p.s. Dewey's Art as Experience changed my life. I'm a musician/artist and philosophy student, and it solved all my problems concerning art, which each further book of analytic philosophy of art had only multiplied.

Re: How Philosophers Think

#78

Post by andagainagain »

arolihas wrote: post #19
andagainagain wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What of his work have you read that was so unclear?

I read about half of "The Republic". I would pull out the book again to find a good example, but I think I donated the book a few months ago.

Re: How Philosophers Think

#79

Post by andagainagain »

jfarmer wrote: post #21
andagainagain wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You might like American Pragmatism: CS Peirce, FP Ramsey, CI Lewis, William James, John Dewey, etc. Peirce's "How to Make Our Ideas Clear": https://courses.media.mit.edu/2004spring/mas966/Peirce%20187...

Thanks, I'll save that for later reading.

Re: How Philosophers Think

#80

Post by BlueTemplar »

neonological wrote: post #71
BlueTemplar wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do these things exist on the same level? Through Mathematics ?

Mathematics makes beauty and logic equivalent fields of study that belong in the same category? How?

Geometry plays an important role in aesthetics (symmetry for instance). (Also math in music.)
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