I think my answer to that is pretty idiosyncratic. — T Clark

My expectation is that all of our answers will be pretty idiosyncratic, at first -- but perhaps through that expression we can find paralleles and bridges.

I've talked about it on the forum before. I carry a model of the world around inside me, in my mind - intellectual but also visceral. I visualize it as a cloud lit from within. I stand in front of it and I can see everything. Dogs and trees, but also love, ideas, and experiences. Myself and other people. Neutrinos and the Grand Canyon. Things I know well are more in focus while those I know less are foggier and vague. Then there are things not included at all - things I'm not aware of.

I judge the truth, value, or interest of something by how it fits in with my model. Things that fit well help bring things into more focus or might expand the cloud. Things that don't fit well might cause me to reexamine my ideas and might make things less in focus. Things that don't fit at all, and that includes much of philosophy, I'm not really interested in.

Makes sense to me.

In my experience, this is where intuition comes from. If you want to simplify, I just you could just say I pick the ideas I'm interested in intuitively.

So this is the part that I want to probe -- and you need not have an answer that satisfies the aesthetic question -- why am I picking the ideas I'm interested in intuitively? Is there some further philosophical reason for it, or is it "Cuz it's pretty to me"?

I tend to think that we terminate our thoughts in aesthetics, so this question has wider implications than I've said up front. If they terminate there then we're pretty much in agreement.

AH! That helps. lol.

I don’t just make order up. — Fire Ologist

As long as I emphasize your statement thus: "I don't just make order up"

Sure.

Taking that out though I think "I don't make order up" is false.

We do!

Why else place the fork on the left?

My reaction to philosophy is not aesthetic at all. It might matter to me whether something is well written, but that’s mostly just so it’s easier to understand. I do enjoy and appreciate good writing, but that wouldn’t be enough to influence my choices. Bad writing might be enough to push me away from something that I might otherwise find useful.

It’s the ideas that matter. — T Clark

Yes.

Though I'm talking past, then.

It's the ideas that matter.

What I'm asking is if there's a reason you're attracted to this or that idea/author that doesn't have to deal with "it's just intuitive"

Or all the others I've listed.

Something I think about with respect to what I read is that I'm a naturally skeptical reader. So I'm attracted not just to skeptics, but everyone else too. Maybe the skeptics have it wrong, after all. :D

I have that skeptical inclination, and that's what has led me to where I am.

That's the kind of thing I have in mind. Why "intuition"?

I provided the previous explanation but I am thinking on the question still.

So...


"Nature is ordered"

and

"There are Physics"

?

It doesn't seem to me there are that many philosophical questions. — Janus

That'd challenge an argument I'm making in favor of asking what aesthetics we utilize to make choices in philosophy: That because there are a lot of philosophical questions we must make choices on what to put effort into answering or wondering about. (even if that answer is "I don't know", though I'd say that's the same as "because it's true" or "intuitive")

We are probably each attracted to a different mix with different emphases on the main categories. I understand that there are people who want to believe this or that when it comes to metaphysics for example. As Tom Storm noted some dislike science because they think it disenchants the world. Others like science because to them, on the contrary, understanding how things work makes the world more interesting and hence more not less enchanting.

I think that's a good first stab, though I'd take out "probably" and say "Here's a likely important explanation: Some of each of us are attracted to a different mix with different emphases...." etc.

As always, trying to shy away from universalization.

I have always been constitutionally incapable of believing anything that does not seem sufficiently evidenced. I was once attracted to religious/ spiritual thought, and I tried hard to find various religious ideas believable, but I failed the task. So, you could say I would like to believe the world has some overarching meaning, but I just don't see the evidence. Probably a lot depends on what ideas and beliefs one is exposed to, perhaps inducted into, when growing up.

Definitely!

Partly this is a question meant to reflect on for ourselves: While it's probably because of how we grew up and various experiences and intuition and because it's true ---- everyone says that.

Is it possible to offer an aesthetic justification, rather than a causal-historical-preference justification, for what we read and say in philosophy?

Just for a place to start: Yes, I have a sense of my own taste in philosophy, and I've noticed that it can change over the years. — J

Definitely the same for me.

Some things stay consistent, though. I appreciate good writing and have trouble with what I consider turgid prose, though this is not a very profound reason for choosing Philosopher X over Y. I also want the philosophy I read and practice to help me understand who I am. What that means continues to be an open question for me, but it unquestionably involves what you're calling aesthetics. — J

Yeah. I tend to believe that philosophy is always a work on the self, no matter how externalized it may look.

And the prose sometimes dissuades me. Spinoza's Ethics -- I tried a couple times and just decided to let others smarter than I on that subject to know what they know :D

Is "having an open question" an aesthetic choice, or more of an in media res whereby there's a landing?

One more observation: I enjoy the philosophical activity of questioning, of finding good questions and understanding why they provoke me. I'm much less interested than I used to be in the possibility that true-or-false philosophical answers will turn up -- or perhaps I should say, T-or-F answers to good questions. — J

Yeah.

The process of philosophy is more interesting to me than the results of philosophy. At least what we usually mean by "results" -- various theories which are true or whatever.

Good questions and observations that force us to look at the world differently -- that's the best philosophy to me.

If you want to simplify, I just you could just say I pick the ideas I'm interested in intuitively. — T Clark

I don't want to oversimplify. In a way I think this is similar to saying "Because they're true" -- everyone can answer that, so it doesn't get at a philosophical explanation for why there's a difference in choices.

That actually also demonstrates my point. I agree astrologists are kidding themselves, both or all of them that can create logical chains of astrological reasoning. I believe this because of the world and the evidence I can show you from this world; we can show how astrologers are kidding themselves. — Fire Ologist

Can we? Have you tried?

What I've noticed is that I'm showing myself why I don't believe them, and they are dismissive of what I say.

Without the order in the world, we can’t do this. Without order in the world, why would you be hesitant to accept what they think they are saying provided a reasonable, coherent, functioning, map? Astrologers made some map applicable to the world and that keeps “order” as you would have it, out of the world and only in the words and descriptions we fabricate? They are a better example of where you think order only resides - in our descriptions (like astrology). — Fire Ologist

Notice how I said "of course there are regularities" -- I'm not trying to maintain an idealist thesis here. I'm a materialist and a realist. My doubt so far has been with respect to the notion of laws of nature.

A regularity can be as simple as "The sun rose yesterday morning and this morning" -- two observations grouped together. The observations are of something, of course -- but I don't think it's so general as to be able to claim something like "All of Nature is Ordered" or "There are Laws of Physics"

Rather, just like the astrologist, we go out to look for evidence for our beliefs while usually avoiding evidence that counts against our beliefs.

And lo and behold, upon seeing a stone drop twice I knew there was an eternal order in nature! :D

If I say something and you hear it. And then you respond to what I said and I hear it as logically following the order that I started. And then I say something else in response to your response and you hear it. And you hear it as logically following the orderliness you were following/building - haven’t we both found orderliness in the world in our eyes that read words and ears that hear sounds? — Fire Ologist

Possibly, but not necessarily.

A favorite example of mine is astrology. People who take astrology seriously are able to do all the things you just said: Hear and respond and understand one another in a perceived orderly manner.

But I'd be hesitant to draw the conclusion that the astrologists have found order in the world. I think they've ordered their thoughts in a manner that they are able to communicate, and that their names refer to various objects in the world, and all their explanations are entirely false.

Basically we want to believe if we are coherent that what we believe is true, but that's not enough because sometimes we can build whole ways of talking together in an orderly way -- such as astrology or numerology -- which has nothing to do with the world and everything to do with what satisfies us to hear.

I'm of the opinion that they are all reasonable evolutions of Marx. Rather than trying to defend the original vision of Marx as something which was intended to be more beautiful than it was I think they knew what they were doing and what happened is a legitimate result which has to be reckoned with in thinking about the philosophy.

For one, they all read the fuck out of Marx. And engaged in revolutionary programs which united the industrial working class, in the case of Lenin and Stalin, or the agricultural working class, in the case of Mao. The political parties built then proceeded to revolt against their respective governments for the purpose of obtaining the power which had been previously used against them, and succeeded at taking over the state.

That's pretty much the blueprint as Marx sets it out.

Now, "communism" isn't exactly what was achieved, but then that is supposed to be something which only comes about when all the classes have truly been abolished, so they were and are all still in that transition state. Notice, however, how the states didn't exactly whither away. So while that was the theory there might not be something entirely right with it.



Basically I prefer to study Marxism from the perspective of what Marxists have done, and not just on the basis of what Marx or Engels mean. You don't get an easy or pretty picture when you look at it like this.

So why bother?

Well, when you're that honest not only with the Marxist countries, but your own country, you'll find that none of the countries that are standing -- have won -- ever have pretty histories. States win by being more evil than the other states. We're familiar with the sins of Marxist states to dissuade us from their feasibility and accept that what we have now really is the best of all possible worlds, though it may be bad.

But they conveniently leave out the various sins that allowed us to establish capitalism, or the sins that it perpetuates.

The reason to bother is to look at what's true and what's false about what people say, and for the most part what's true is that all countries do evil, and what's false is that "this is the only feasible system" -- I prefer to look at political thoughts and actions from the expectation that there will be warts when we decided to look, and we have to accept the history of these various thoughts warts and all.

I've noticed in conversations with people about big questions, like meaning and God, that there is often a clear aesthetic preference for a world with foundational guarantees of beauty and certainty. For some, this makes the world more pleasing, more explicable, more enchanting. An enchanted world is a more engaging and attractive world for them. A hatred of physicalism and 'scientism' often seems tied to a view that meaninglessness is ugly, stunted and base, or somehow unworthy. Not to mention, wrong. — Tom Storm

Right!

I think that's a good insight into what I'll dare to call "layperson philosophy" -- not as a denigration, but a categorical distinction between people who are Picasso and people who take an art class and like painting.

What's up with that aesthetic preference? Is it possible to justify or ground it? And, in spite of it all, what do we do when we encounter someone with a different aesthetic preference, though we feel it ought be universal?

Heh, yeah.

Indeed, they amount to much the same view... — Banno

Well -- how are we supposed to fight about who is right now?

:up:

Right. That's what I mean by

what I want to focus on is the aesthetic judgment of the philosophy itself. — Moliere

I'm asking after philosophical justifications for this aesthetic choice. — Moliere

The ideas matter, of course -- not the expression so much.

But why these ideas and not those ideas?

Surely you see we gravitate towards different philosophers.

Maybe we could say that nature lends itself to description because of embedded similarities? — jorndoe

We could, though that might still start looking like "law-speak" again.

What I'm aiming to say is that the description works because there are some conditions by which we judge the description as true -- namely pragmatic ones that deal with technology -- but that does not then warrant an inference from these regularities to an ontological justification of regularities.

Rather than treating the regularities like a cause or a law or logical connection between events they're just as plain as asking "How is it that we describe things?" -- though, perhaps, that's not exactly "plain" after all, I'm hesitant to give ontological justification to scientific work. There's something that it tracks, but there's no checking the thing-in-itself to really make sure that we are tracking this time.

:D

Yes indeed.

The universe is shaped like the consummation of a human male and a human female.

I think electrical description is particularly prone to seeing the world like a clockwork mechanism -- but it's a good example to get at what I'm thinking. The digital nature of electricity is very much something we constructed. There were regularities there of some kind, of course, but before we shaped copper into circuits with strict yes/no conditions they were not. We had to go out and look for them, imagine what might be and make guesses with some kind of shared criteria for evaluating those guesses over generations.

We wanted electricity to behave like pressure pumps. It was imagined to flow from the positive to the negative, and that description was close enough to purpose.

But now we believe that the flow from positive to negative is, in fact, the opposite -- at least in terms of the description of the flows of electrons.

But back then that didn't matter.


It's in this way that we can observe a regularity which we observe but which is not, strictly, true of the world -- and we can get by all the while feeling like we really do know what it's all about.

So now, we can say we make laws out of descriptions. There appears to be some kind of structure to these descriptions we’ve made. Call them law-like, descriptions. Why are these descriptions orderly, or, describing something a certain way to function as descriptions? — Fire Ologist

I think that's a better question.

I'd say it's because we noticed something that fits with our notion of orderliness.

In a way what I'd say is that there is no more mystery to the regularities of nature than there is to any other description. Why is the red cup red? Why are the regularities I care about regular?

Because we went looking for them and whenever something didn't fit within our notion of orderliness -- usually specified by technological achievement to do what we've done before, but better -- we threw it out.

Rather than an ontological mystery I'd just say "Cuz that's what you went looking for, and found it" -- so sure there are regularities in nature. But to go so far as to say these regularities are laws seems to interpret nature in the form of our government -- where there's some body which creates laws that follow the subject-predicate form and our guesses in science are trying to match what those laws passed by that body "says".

Be it a book of nature ala Galileo or the Mind of God ala Kant there's some order in nature which is mind-shaped, but not ours, and we're trying to "match" that mind-shape with our mind-shapes in order to comprehend nature as a whole.

At least, these are the sorts of thoughts that come to mind when someone says "law of nature" -- there are no laws of nature in the manner that you mean. There are some regularities we notice, but we never comprehend the whole such that we can "match" the shape that reality is with our mind.

The fact that the universe behaves in an orderly and intelligent fashion should be questioned, no ? — kindred

Yes!

I'm attempting to probe your thoughts, not dismiss them.

The universe contains many laws which govern how the universe operates e.g. laws of physics. The question that is puzzling me right now is why are there laws in the first place and why is the universe not lawless instead ? — kindred

Are there laws of nature?

I am more inclined to say that there are regularities in nature that we pay attention to.

"Laws" sounds like there's a universally true statement about nature.

Or something along those lines, however we parse that. It's confusing because we're talking in vague terms now.

I can understand the belief that the universe contains many laws which govern how the universe operates, like the laws of physics. But my antidote to your question is to ask if you're puzzling over something false -- perhaps there are no laws of nature, after all.

True. I even describe politics with 2's, though it's a recent fad.

EDIT: (thinking how the formatting isn't as easy to translate into binary -- so nonbinary politics are ones which use emphases that are ambiguous to translate into binary)

this Western global upper class is the last place to look for any systemic change. — boethius

Yup.

Basic point of the analysis being that the global revolution, if it is to come to pass, will be mostly carried out by non-Imperial-beneficiaries mostly in poor countries. — boethius

Yup.

There are proletarians in the USA, but they are not beneficiaries of imperialism -- thinking here of migrant farm workers and prison labor as clear cut examples.

Even on this writing challenge, that specifically wanted a philosophical essay — RussellA

Maybe that point needs new wording in the future -- in setting up the event at least we intended to allow both kinds of philosophical writing. Perhaps we ought restate the guideline as "4) Submissions must be philosophical writing, broadly conceived"

My hope was to elicit both kinds of writing, at least, if with more effort than we usually put into OP's and responses.

Who's the "we" tallying the results and scoring the competition? — Srap Tasmaner

The TPF mods, naturally.

It would be much harder to pull off that kind of life now. — BC

Naw. Every age has its challenges and the free spirits are still out there fighting the good fight.

Was my nephew doing philosophy? Was it rigorous? Was it disciplined? Was there logical inference at play, even at four years old? — Leontiskos

Yes.

I find children are pretty open to philosophical exploration, especially with respect to adults. Obviously they're children and do it their way, but it bears all the hallmarks of wonder, asking questions, making distinctions, pointing out what doesn't count, making up rules, etc. etc.

Something more substantive from me: I feel like I'm following along at an intuitive level here -- infinite as something we don't contain but instead outstrips, and noting how this is a kind of materialism jives well with a lot of my thoughts. Also, naturally, I like the analogy to art and noting how the infinite there is the notion that even though philosophy is ridiculous -- which I thought you parsed very well @Jamal -- you pursue it anyways, and still sincerely, while knowing it has no end.

Well, now we can proceed... lol

"Infinity"

Having gone over the disenchantment of the concept Adorno turns towards a particular concept to disenchant it from its idealist home: Infinity.

Then

:D

That's all I had written as I was reading the next bit then read your summation.

The "why these two" question has a deeper answer, viz., they represent the most rigorous investigations into foundational questions in their respective domains, and it’s during the same historical period. Wittgenstein was examining the foundations of ordinary knowledge and language, while Gödel was examining the foundations of the most rigorous knowledge we possess (mathematics). That they independently discovered analogous structural limits suggests this isn't domain-specific but reveals something about the structure of systematic thought itself. — Sam26

:up: That satisfies me, at least. Similar time periods, different areas of inquiry, similar conclusions indicate that we're dealing with something deeper than just a single thinker. Especially as the thinkers, as others have said here, don't see eye-to-eye elsewhere.

I am now caught up to here. One thing I want to highlight that I didn't see anyone else highlight just yet:

To change this direction of conceptuality, to turn it towards the non-identical, is the hinge of negative dialectics. — p 23

The use of "hinge" stood out to me because of his invocation of Wittgenstein. (I did a quick google and PI was 1953, and ND was 1966 for publication dates)

Interesting to me in the way that he's reflecting from Hegel -- the metaphor of a hinge with relation to Hegel makes sense of what he's doing I think. There are some certainties which Hegel would not have grasped or set out as important whereas Negative Dialectics does, namely by the reading so far the particular and the non-conceptual, or non-identical.

Finished my first read. Something I think worth noting from the conclusion:

Unless names are invidiously named, sermons like this one tend to cause less
offence than they should, because everyone imagines that they are aimed at other people. — Timothy Williamson

I was impressed by that because I began to think while reading "Is this just a sermon?"

Well, not just -- but an earnest sermon to pay attention to.

Still mulling, but there's a lot of good reflections in there. (And, actually, I thought the paper had demonstrated its point at around page 15-ish)

What I felt may have 'gone wrong' a little was a lack of 'fun' element, which was present in the short story competitions. I wonder if it was because there was not a competition, or whether the word 'essay' makes the writing seem too serious and reminiscent of school essays. — Jack Cummins

I could have done a better job here. And truthfully my hope is someone else takes the spot of coordinator for next year -- I'd like to participate next time!

Great essay @Sam26, and I found your above responses elucidating.

I can see the structural parallel. There's a part of me that still wonders: Why this particular set of parallels? My first guess is that in two disciplines in which complicated thought is required we find a common between Godel and Wittgenstein, and that particular combination is persuasive of a larger structure in thinking that must be -- namely that there will be truths that are not grounded at the same level within any sufficiently "complicated"* body of -- knowledge?

*Whatever that is cached out as

I can see the analogy, but it's the part that I think could really sell the argument home -- not just a strong analogy, but even a reason to bring these people together due to the structure of thought, or something like that. Somehow strengthening the tie between the two examples.

Still, I say that in an attempt to be helpful, and your essay far surpasses my little comments on it. Thanks for your submission!

I regret not having responded in time for your passing Vera. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. Yours is a good reflection on one of those perennial philosophical questions, and I enjoyed the quirky contrast between asking what it means to be human and what it means to be lettuce -- two questions of the same form but which we'd probably want to treat differently, so what's the difference?

Rest in Peace, Vera.

Nice. I like it!

I am one of those who likes rhymes in poems because it makes them easier to speak aloud in a manner that captivates the audience. So when I read the above out loud to myself I could feel the rhythms carrying me through the ideas much better -- but that really may just be due to my own preferences and experiences with poetry, too. Thanks for indulging me!

I'll unpin this message since the event is officially over, but honestly I'm going to keep commenting on them too. There's two essays I've yet to respond to, and so will do that by the end of day today.

But they all have a lot of richness and capability to continue spurring on discussion. Unlike an OP, though, I've had to put more effort into even a first response in order to respect the time and care that all of the authors put into their works.

I'm really impressed with everyone's work -- I felt a lot of different thoughts going in various ways I wouldn't have without having read them all. The hardest part was even attempting to offer some kind of critical feedback in the spirit of philosophy because of how good they all were. So thanks to everyone for your work! I know I'll continue to respond even though the event is "officially over".

Such as changing it to a dialogue? Or to another structure? Suggestions? — PoeticUniverse

If it were to my preferences then I'd ask you to do something like iambic pentameter where the main thoughts are in the rhyming form of ABAB CDCD EFEF etc. as needed and chosen, and when you reach a conclusion you finish it with a rhyming couplet.

Basically I like Shakespearean Sonnetts.

To be fair -- I haven't read Schiller. I do like your presentation of "play" though.

I'd like to include this notion of "play" into "aesthetic judgment". We both express and judge our taste -- I'd go so far as to say in order to express taste we had to form a judgment of some kind, even if it be an impression and nothing else.

I think philosophy expresses "aesthetics", whereas the artist expresses the art which aesthetics is about. I don't think that the analytic approach must be brutal. It can be, but it can also acknowledge many differences as long as they are clear.

But I agree that the useless nature of aesthetics is what makes it important. Similarly so with philosophy.

May art, and thereby philosophy, be ever more useless I say!