That’s a good argument, and I think @Ciceronianus and @Banno were saying roughly the same thing. I think it’s basically in line with the OP, in which I generalize the questioning of religion to the role of critique.

Still, there’s something about it that makes me suspicious. The idea that philosophy is an independent ever-expanding toolbox, ready to apply to whatever exists—this is surely a fantasy. Philosophy is itself always historically situated, and part of what it does is to apply its tools to itself, even to its own tools, depending on the social conditions.

post-secular — Wayfarer

Interesting. Seems reasonable.

My own interest in some sort of secular sacredness is in a different direction: immanent and earthly rather than transcendent and heavenly, more like magic than mythology or religion. Art is probably the model here, though it’s notable that even that model may have been lost, since the rise of postmodern, conceptual art.

By 'nihilism' I understand the belief that nothing human (i.e. mortal, finite, caused, contingent, imperfect) is meaningful or significant or real. Thus, I interpret 'supernatural religions' (e.g. Abrahamic, Vedic, pantheonic, shamanic, animist, ancestral, divine rightist, paranormal, ... cults) as manifest 'nihilisms' which, as Freddy points out, devalue this worldly life by projecting – idealizing (i.e. idolizing, disembodying) – 'infinite meaning, significance & reality' as originating with and/or only belonging to some purported 'eternal otherworldly life' — 180 Proof

Yes, I like this way of putting it. Feuerbach’s critique was similar.

What we see then are different kinds of nihilism: from the devaluation of earthly life in traditional societies to morality and reason as purely subjective under capitalism. Roughly speaking.

As noted, I agree with him that a major role of philosophy is questioning, even interogating, religion. He says that doesn't mean rejecting it. — Wayfarer

Yes, it’s a liberal view that’s hard to disagree with, namely that philosophy helps us moderate our ideas and prevents the descent into fundamentalism. It could even be argued that it’s conservative, in that it positively helps prevailing beliefs to continue prevailing, since moderate beliefs are easier to live with, more stable, less open to attack (motte-and-bailey again).

Even so, I wanted to highlight the basic critical role of philosophy. It’s another matter whether the aim of this criticism is to maintain or destroy existing belief systems. As to that, I tend in a more radical direction than Moeller.

It may be a modern conception, but philosophy has been doing it since ancient times.

thanks for the opportunity of holding forth on one of my favourite themes. — Wayfarer

You’re welcome, I enjoyed it.

The only thing I’ll say at the moment is that neither I nor Adorno would go along with the alternative to nihilism described by Nagel, since (a) it’s not a realistic alternative so much as a worldview of former times that cannot be retrieved, (b) it is myth, which is as irrational as nihilism, and (c) the notion that human life without a universal soul is “merely human life” is anathema.

The failed mathematician bit will fall flat — Banno

I appreciated it.

I'll get all analytic and point out that the arguments and strategies philosophy provides to us have a more general application than just the critique of religion, and cite the threads on Trump, Covid and the invasion of Ukraine as evidence. — Banno

Sure, these arguments and strategies help, not least in allowing us to ask the right questions. But where I’m coming from is that there is a critical and subversive force in philosophy, that it shouldn’t just be the handmaiden to science or theology. As it happens this is the thrust of The Eclipse of Reason.

The Eclipse of Reason — Wayfarer

Damn you for adding to my reading list. The prose looks... interesting — Banno

I read it recently. I quite liked it and broadly agree with a lot of it, but it’s ranty, dated, and often shallow. So far I’ve found Adorno more subtle and interesting, and their joint Dialectic of Enlightenment a better presentation of the position, even though it’s not as clear.

That is quite interesting.

Note that the word is questioning, not combating. You can question X without being anti-X, just as, for example, Adorno and Horkheimer questioned enlightenment without being anti-enlightenment.

That’s not to say it’s necessarily bad or unphilosophical to be anti-X. Nietzsche and Marx went further than polite questioning, and I regard their thought as extremely philosophically interesting. So there’s a spectrum of intensity and motivatedness in criticism, but it’s just criticism as such that I was emphasizing in the OP.

By the way, “criticism” in my usage is just a synonym for “questioning”.

Enough bickering chaps.

I am always interested in new arguments to combat what I consider the more pernicious aspects of religion so as I commented to 180 Proof, I am musing on what philosophical counter points they might come up with against your 'maybe sometimes, probably often, but not always.' — universeness

Ah, ok. I’m not interested in that.

I don’t really understand your questions, but I have a feeling they boil down to this: are religious philosophers philosophers at all? On one level Of course they are, yes. Some of those philosophers who questioned religion the most have been religious. All philosophers have their prior commitments, and sometimes that’s religious faith.

Is this somehow against the spirit of philosophy? Maybe sometimes, probably often, but not always. In any case, philosophers can be great philosophers in some ways and still have blind spots.

It’s a fact that history is full of arguments for the existence of God and all that, but this is still consistent with the OP.

Religious philosophers exist in a philosophical milieu in which questions about religion have come up, a context in which the inquiry into religious concepts has become normal. So I’m inclined to look at the big picture rather than the orientations of individuals: that there are religious philosophers shows that religion is being questioned.

And religion has been questioning religion from the start. The formation of new religions typically carry with them an implicit critique of older established ones ( Protestant reformation, Conservative, reform and reconstructionist Judaism, etc). Meanwhile, the history of Western philosophy has mostly consisted of questioning one religious metaphysical system in order to prepare the ground for a different religious metaphysical system. — Joshs

Although I may have implied that the history of philosophy is one of inevitable progress towards the banishment of religion through the advance of thought, another way to see it is just that philosophy is always there to question religion, not especially as part of a destructive plan but to help religions move with the times, or as you say, lay the groundwork for different religious systems. Or, to prevent the descent into fundamentalism.

One of the other functions of philosophy mentioned in the video is the coining of concepts, and I guess this has been part of how philosophy prepares the ground for new systems.

For me as a layperson, there's philosophy I can use or learn from and philosophy for academics who relish jargon saturated, recondite deliberations about thinkers so intricate or verbose, no one can seemingly agree about the correct reading of their work. — Tom Storm

I was watching Rick Roderick the other day and he pointed out that the best books, whether in philosophy or not, are those that produce the most, and the most diverse, interpretations. I agree with him. The idea that philosophers, by means of clarity and brevity, can pin down the meaning of their works, has not stood up to scrutiny.

That’s not to say all interpretations are equally good though.

Yes, I agree. I was careful not to say that philosophers were the central cause of enlightenment.

But some philosophy points not to upward dialectic of Man but of the inherent perennial suffering nature of existence. See: Schopenhauer (suffering Will), Kierkegaard (angst), Siddhartha Gotama (dukkha), Hartmann (social despair), Mainlander (cosmic suicide), Zapffe (over-evolved self-awareness), E.M. Cioran (resigned indifference, disappointmentism), etc. etc. — schopenhauer1

As I implied, philosophers like to criticize. Maybe those guys were freeing us from our illusions and thus contributing to enlightenment. And Siddharta was quite big on enlightenment, I hear.

As we move through cultural history, we are given more chances for sophisticated reflection of the intractable problems of human existence. — schopenhauer1

Ah, history as progress … towards antinatalism. :wink:

I’ll include the next sentence this time:

Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance of thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters. Yet the wholly enlightened earth is radiant with triumphant calamity. — Adorno & Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment

Their answer to why this is so is that enlightened reason itself tends to go wrong, and we end up dominating nature and each other to the detriment of both. And in becoming aware of this dialectic we might be said to reach something like a more holistic perspective.

I really don't get this obsession with bathrooms. There's a nightclub I sometimes go to where all the toilets are unisex. It's really no issue. It's a just a room with private cubicles and a shared sink to wash hands. — Michael

Yeah, I don't get it either. Where I am, most of the bathrooms are unisex. Nobody cares or thinks it's a big deal as far as I can tell.

And I do believe in the concept and value of righteous anger. The question then is which side is right to be angry and why? And it is a case of who is angry and determined and persuasive enough to get the most attention and influence. — Andrew4Handel

Then this is the wrong place for it, because TPF is explicitly not the place for campaigning. It’s in the guidelines.

The next paragraph is important, because that’s where he answers the question:

The moment pragmatism asks this question, it sees the answer: True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot. That is the practical difference it makes to us to have true ideas; that, therefore, is the meaning of truth, for it is all that truth is known-as.

This thesis is what I have to defend. The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth happens to an idea. It becomes. — William James

:up:

If I’m not mistaken, @T Clark agrees with James on truth, so maybe he’ll say something about it.

this seems to be saying that the truth is instrumental in so much as it serves a purpose and not whether it is intrinsically true — Andrew4Handel

Maybe you could say what you think is wrong with that.

Weird response.

Anyway, note that some people choose to put their discussions in the Lounge, so don’t assume that they’ve all been put there by staff.

fatal conflict — Andrew4Handel

drastic mistake — Andrew4Handel

gross misogyny — Andrew4Handel

flagrantly giving away — Andrew4Handel

makes me very angry — Andrew4Handel

It’s clear that you’re angry. The rhetoric is a sign that you can’t think clearly about this issue. If you’re so angry about it, this is not really the place for you to talk about it.

Otherwise you’re not really arguing for all of these melodramatic phrases. Mostly it’s obvious straw men.

Do you mean I should quote published philosophers on this like pragmatists and relativists? — Andrew4Handel

If possible yes, or just discuss their views, or present your own interpretation of their views, or present what you see as the standard arguments, etc., and then criticize them. Relativism in particular is very commonly misunderstood, so it would be useful to get an idea of what relativists, if such creatures exist, are actually saying, so that you’re not attacking a straw man.

I watched the below video involving Rorty and in it they raised issue of the impact on civil rights movements on the idea that you can't define a concept among others such as whether you can define a vulnerable or threatened group or make a claim like "all men are made equal". — Andrew4Handel

So the thing here would be to pick out something substantial from the video and go through it in some detail.

Which Lounge discussion do you think should not be in the Lounge?

This one is interesting, I think. It would have been nice if Benj had given his interpretation of the quotations, but on balance I thought it might produce an interesting discussion.

As far as I know there are no philosophers who are “anything goes relativists” or who deny the existence of the world outside their own minds, so maybe you’re just arguing against the bad philosophy you sometimes see on TPF. So, although I agree with you, I question that it’s a good topic for philosophy.

Note also that you’ve brought up three issues that, while sometimes connected, are usually tackled separately: truth, Cartesian scepticism, and relativism.

Formally yes--one is about "bachelor", the other is about bachelors--but practically I'm supposing that the latter, if it's ever said, usually just functions to tell people what the word means, which is why it's fair to reword it to refer to the word instead of the thing.

In modern discourse you will rarely see bigots sincerely peddle their true argument (the bailey) because it's not only wrong and clearly fallacious, but often times monstrous. The problem however is trying to expose the bailey instead of fighting on the motte, because the motte is the shadow, it's never really about that. — Darkneos

Yes indeed. I think we see this from white supremacists, motte-and-bailey not so much as a fallacy but as a long-term strategy.

@fdrake talked about it here:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/3976/the-cooption-of-internet-political-discourse-by-the-right/p1

I realized that until today I’ve been using the phrase “strong claim” to describe the bold, unsafe claim, i.e., the bailey, when in fact the bailey is weak, in that it’s hard to defend. What a fool I’ve been.

Ah, young Jamal has been looking for examples of the motte-and-bailey fallacy — Banno

I don’t even have to go looking for it; I’m seeing it everywhere now.

7 ) I now defend not( not(X implies Y) implies Y) — fdrake

I don't think anyone ever gets to stage 7. — fdrake

Pretty sure I’ve been there a few times.

I also don't trust that it's rightly construed as just a fallacy of inference. — fdrake

Certainly. In terms of form, content, and context, M&B is maybe fallacious in its context, because of the way the argument is “assigning inconsistent meanings to positions”: (A) might argue validly for the motte position, but since that’s not the position they take themselves to be arguing for (or, if they are being devious, the one they want to prevail), there’s a mismatch between argument and context.

Or from the dialogical perspective, it’s a violation of dialogue rules.

No objections. So what you’re saying is, in the legal example it’s not a fallacy so much as a strategy to win, but at the same time, logic remains relevant to this? Seems reasonable.

Looking at the example again, I don’t think motte-and-bailey models it well. With M&B, (A)’s unsafe claim is the one she wants to prevail but is forced to retreat from. In your example, this is “The collision damaged me terribly,” which she doesn’t retreat from. The tactical retreats occur when trying to make a case for this proposition, and the successive retreats do not function to allow the previously defeated evidential claims to prevail; they function as successively weaker evidence for the proposition that “The collision damaged me terribly”, deployed in transparent sophistry.

So yes, I guess I’m agreeing that it’s not fallacious.

However, fallacy and strategy are not mutually exclusive. It’s just that in this case, we see the latter and not the former. Maybe.

My observation here then is that this is less a fallacy than a strategy in getting a desired outcome. — Hanover

Nice example. My observation is that in a debate, if the strong claim—the claim that (A) wants to prevail—fails, then retreating to a more defensible position is a tactic still to make the strong claim prevail. I think it’s fair to call this a fallacy.

In a court of law, everything is sophistry anyway, therefore there are no fallacies.

:ok:

Because antinatalism is the same as the sexual enjoyment of coprophagia. In many societies there’s going to be a few people who are into it.

a preposterous claim — TonesInDeepFreeze

Your entire reply is preposterous, performatively contradicting your stated ideal debating behaviour of “high-minded participants.”

But still, “men make their own history”. We couldn’t even do that without being thrown into a world to begin with. Choosing doesn’t apply to when and where and how you are born, only to what comes a few years later. It’s like that, and that’s the way it is.

I remember watching a youtube video from Philosophy Tube which made the point that anti trans prejudice is rooted in some kind of "metaphysical skepticism". That trans people don't "really" exist in some sense. Because the notions of gender identity we're brought up with make them fall through the cracks. Food for thought. — fdrake

Speaking as someone who has moved from roughly the position of @Mikie and @Pantagruel to a much less trans-sceptical position, I can attest to this.