not necessarily that it means that every opinion is equal, just because someone holds it. — Wayfarer

God, no. We tolerate every species of fool in my country; dunno about yours. But tolerate them we do, because freedom of speech is a rights-based equality, available to all.

Why I brought it up in the first place, is because the role of there being 'degrees of reality' as providing a qualitative axis, an axis against which terms such as 'higher knowledge' is meaningful. I fully understand this triggers a lot of pushback, as I think it's probably quite inimical to liberalism in some respects — Wayfarer

I wonder which respects. I'm assuming you mean "liberalism" as a political philosophy, not the conventional, rather crude binary of liberal vs. conservative. I'm trying to picture what John Rawls might object to about a "qualitative axis" . . . The point of classical liberalism is that we allow, politically, for differences of opinion about this; we don't say that no opinion is or can be correct.

Now, having opened this exceedingly large can of worms, I'm going to be scarce for a couple of days, due to familial obligations. But I hope that provides grist to the mill. — Wayfarer

Your worms are good grist! (Mixed Metaphor of the Week Award goes to Wayfarer . . . :wink: )

Have you looked at the book I have mentioned, Eric Perl Thinking Being? The chapter on Plato in particular, — Wayfarer

Thanks, I'll put it on my virtual nightstand.

Well, I open my eyes and see a bird, and think, "Huh, a bird" and then I close them and the experience has ended.

I know this isn't what you mean, but it's what I mean when I ask about a temporal slot for a particular thought, understood not psychologically as a brain event but some other way. Brain or no brain, isn't it still an event in time?

Bloom wanted to get out to see them. He asked: "Do you think they'll attack if I got out and approach them?" And Rosen said: "I don't think they've read Closing of the American Mind". — Fooloso4

:lol: I appreciate Bloom's scholarship while deploring his politics.

Clearly we're differing on how straightforward a reading we should give to the Republic. FWIW, my first wife was a Plato scholar who studied with Jonathan Ketchum at the (somewhat notorious) Oakstone Farm at SUNY-Binghamton. So I'm no stranger to reading Plato against the grain. Indeed, my current view may be in part a reaction against what I eventually decided was ironic or aporetic reading taken much too far.

Probably a good target statement to see where people land on this would be your "What else could he have brought back?" OK, the whole allegory is just that -- an allegory. So we have to read it allegorically, as Plato intended. Within allegory, of course we have nothing but images -- as you say, what else could there be? But this is not an allegory about images; it's a story that uses images to try to explain how knowledge may be attained.

So, to vastly oversimplify:

Socrates truly "knows" nothing = ironic reading of Plato
Socrates knows a great deal = straightforward/traditional reading of Plato
We can't decide until we understand more deeply what Plato thought about knowledge and dialectic = fair game for endless, interesting debate

Yes.

Your answers are interesting because they help me realize that I'm not speaking precisely enough. Sorry. I wasn't asking about the 1st person thing/soul as an entity in itself (or not, as the case may be), but rather the experience it undergoes when it has a thought, which you said you believed Descartes was defining as a "1st-person thing." That was what I was asking about when I asked if this 1st-person thing, aka thought, occurred during a specifiable time period. The soul as such . . . of course, that depends.

I think it's pretty clear from the Meditations that he isn't defining "thought" as an event in the brain, though. It's more of a first person thing. — frank

Fair enough, but is the first-person thing an event that happens from T1 - Tn?

The lowest level of the divided line is not transcended or abandoned. — Fooloso4

Well, but it is. Unless you believe that the description of the divided line itself given in Book VI is mere image or opinion, on the grounds that we are only humans? It uses an image -- Socrates doesn't think there is a real Divided Line somewhere -- but it seems a strained reading to say that therefore nothing he goes on to teach can be taken as true, or as different from what we see in the city/cave. Allan Bloom's commentary sounds about right to me: "It [the Line] shows that reality extends far beyond anything the practical man ever dreams and that to know it one must use faculties never recognized by the practical man." To doubt this, I think, is to doubt the cave allegory as well -- or else give it a reading in which the one who returns brings back only another image.

I suppose we could view Socrates as trying to block rational thought at these points of aporia, but I'm not sure that's his purpose.
— J

It is not that he blocks rational thought but that it has reached its limit. — Fooloso4

Interesting distinction. It depends on how we judge Socrates' sincerity in these moments. I think the aporia is often constructed by Socrates himself, as a teaching tool. But again, we'd need to be more specific in each dialogue. Thanks for the references to your earlier discussions -- I'll have a look.

I don't see this as being about the Forms themselves.
— J

It is about knowledge of the forms, or lack of such knowledge. — Fooloso4

I read back, starting from the discussion about astronomy et al., and I can't find this. Where do you see the forms fitting in here?

And Socrates does not know it either. He knows only how it looks to him. — Fooloso4

Begging the question, no? It's the very thing we're debating.

Overall, I agree that there is a mystical element in Plato, and that there are aspects of what noesis shows that probably can't be considered "objective" in any modern sense. I'm just holding out for Socratic/Platonic philosophy as an attempt to achieve a view that is freed from the chains of shadowplay.

But it'd be an argument against what Sartre is saying, I think, if you could argue that the cogito was no longer active, due to this move, and so existence is thrown back into doubt -- that'd be an interesting skeptical response. — Moliere

Yes, but it does feel like a "move," and I wasn't suggesting it seriously.

So [Sartre on the Cogito] fits in that funny place phenomenology often does -- between metaphysics, but then sort of drifts into psychology. — Moliere

Good observation. I think that philosophers who are hostile to phenomenology want this liminal place to be a mistake, an inability to be clear about what the topic is. A more sympathetic reading, starting with Husserl, is that the distinction between metaphysics and psychology must be put into doubt as a first step toward a new conception of doing philosophy in the first person.

One example where it does create confusion, though, is what I tried to straighten out with @frank, above. He quite reasonably wanted to know why a thought must occur in time, which leads us into the two common meanings of the term "thought." One is psychological, the other metaphysical. And see Frege on psychologism.

By "actual thoughts" I meant real-time brain events, not the content of those thoughts. It's very plausible that the thought "2+2 = 4", understood as content or proposition, is timeless, or at least not to be identified with any particular time-based instantiation. But the event of such a thought occurring in my brain is something that happens in time, at a particular T1, since everything at all that happens in the physical world, happens in time. So my question about the Cogito was, Which sort of "thought" is it?

in the context of the meditations it makes sense because we're presented with a story of a man who goes to his desk and thinks a few things until he gets tired, then comes back the next time to push his thoughts further. But in the context of Being and Nothingness it doesn't immediately follow because the "I think" is the in-itself, whereas the "I am" is the for-itself. — Moliere

My question for both Descartes and Sartre is this: Are you offering a psychological story -- that is, a story about actual thoughts -- in which case it must indeed occur in time? Or is the "moment" of the Cogito pointing to a different mode of understanding? I hesitate to use the word "transcendental" because Descartes probably wouldn't know how to respond, and Sartre had his own very special understanding of transcendentality in phenomenology. So I'm struggling for words here. What I'm groping toward is the idea that the indubitability of the Cogito doesn't rest on any account that involves time at all. Suppose we all agreed that it's impossible to experience a present moment. I think many psychologists believe this; it's a version of the Achilles-and-tortoise problem. Would that mean that the Cogito is no longer operative? That, since it doesn't report an actual experience, my existence is thrown back into doubt? That doesn't sound right. I dunno . . . pardon me if this is too murky for response.

Does Sartre say that the for-itself is an object of experience, in addition to being the ground for the possibility of experience? I can't remember.

He does advocate a positive doctrine but it is made to persuade the Athenians not would be philosophers. — Fooloso4

We must have different passages in mind. I'm thinking of Books VI and VII. If the divided line isn't for would-be philosophers, I can't imagine who else it's for.

aporia as a possible gateway to something better.
— J

Aporia means impasse, the opposite of a gateway. — Fooloso4

Yes, or perhaps perplexity, which is why the idea that we are meant to go through aporia is so enticing. I suppose we could view Socrates as trying to block rational thought at these points of aporia, but I'm not sure that's his purpose; I think the aporiae still promise a path forward. We could look at specific dialogues for that, but we'd need a new OP.

A major key to understanding the Republic is the making of images — Fooloso4

I agree that's the case with the form of the city image itself, which we know is constructed in the Republic in order to be a picture of the human soul.

In the Republic after Socrates presents the image of the Forms Glaucon wants Socrates to tell them what the Forms themselves are. Socrates responds:

You will no longer be able to follow, dear Glaucon, although there won’t be any lack of eagerness on my part. But you would no longer seeing an image of what we are saying, but the truth itself, at least as it looks to me. Whether it really is so or not cannot be properly insisted on.(emphasis added)
— 533a — Fooloso4

Hmm. I don't see this as being about the Forms themselves. In 532d, Glaucon is asking to be told what "the character of the power of the dialectic is, and, then, into exactly what forms it is divided; and finally what are its ways." Socrates says he can't present the truth of this particular form -- that is, the dialectic -- without using images. And yet, in the next sentence after your quote, he says. "But that there is some such thing to see must be insisted on." So at best this is equivocal about the dialectic, and doesn't really seem to speak to the overall doctrine of the Forms at all.

With that said, we both know Plato well enough to be aware that, like the Bible, you can find support for diametrically opposed positions depending on what you quote!

See above in my reply to @joshs concerning my careless use of "most philosophers."

Without knowledge I do not see how we can get beyond "how it looks to us." In many cases inquiry ends in aporia. — Fooloso4

Indeed, and in many Platonic cases it did not. As was said by Count T, there are a lot of versions of Socrates to choose from. I agree that sometimes he seems to merely be a gadfly trying to reduce false positions to rubble and use aporia as a possible gateway to something better. But the Socrates (or Plato) of the Republic is doing more than this. Here we specifically examine the difference between knowledge and "how it looks to us." Our modern talk about convergence etc. would be foreign to Plato, but I see him advocating a positive doctrine about knowledge that is meant to be independent of what Athenians, or anyone else, think of it.

You're quite right. Rather than "most philosophers," I should have talked about "a continuing engagement with this question among philosophers who aren't happy to draw the conclusions that Witt. and Heidegger drew about this." I suppose you feel Habermas is retro as well? To me, he's the best exponent of how to live in the Nagelian tension between the search for objectivity and the realities of intersubjectivity and the necessity of hermeneutics.

have I completely mischaracterized Socrates, who swore up and down that he did not inquire into the heavens and the earth like some others, but only asked people questions? — Srap Tasmaner

Socratic irony? And possibly also it's Socrates stating his creed about how wisdom is to found: in dialectic, not in armchair inquiry.

But an examination of opinion is not an attempt to find a view from nowhere. It is an attempt to find the opinions that seems best. It is the view from where we are, in our ignorance of transcendent truths. The questions remain open, to be looked at again from another limited point of view. — Fooloso4

This is the tension that Thomas Nagel and others say we have to live with. Of course the view from nowhere is an unreachable idealization that no one ever achieves. But it's a spirit that can't be exorcized. Consider: "an attempt to find the opinion that seems best." From what viewpoint would we make this judgment? From our own, and from our culture's, certainly. But is that the final word? What happens when two opinions make competing claims to be best, and give their reasons? I think Socrates and most philosophers since are committed to the idea that there is an ideal convergence point, involving rational inquiry, where we can reach consensus based on what is the case, not simply on "how it looks to us." We may all be wrong about this, of course.

The view from nowhere is a forgetfulness or disregard for the human — Fooloso4

So it needn't be this. What could be more human than this passion for truth, objectivity, understanding? I suppose, if someone were to claim, first, that they had actually reached the endpoint of inquiry on a particular subject, and second, that this endpoint dissolved all subjective or intersubjective concerns, we might deplore this as a disregard for the human. But I think that's a straw man.

Good thoughts here. Two things:

it's an excellent example of philosophical engagement without agreement, and without simply negating. — Moliere

I think so too, and this kind of engagement seems crucial to doing any deep work in philosophy. Disagreement should, in my view, produce puzzlement, and then curiosity -- what might we learn here? I wouldn't necessarily pick Sartre as my favorite interlocutor, but I like it that he has no interest in "refuting" Descartes.

Second thing: I rooted around in B&N for the context of these quotes and found this interesting passage (my emphases):

If I cannot re-enter into the past, it is not because some magical power puts it beyond my reach but simply because it is in-itself and because I am for-myself. The past is what I am without being able to live it. The past is substance. In this sense the Cartesian cogito ought to be formulated rather: 'I think; therefore I was.' — B&N, p. 173 (Washington Square Press ed.)

To de-jargonize, "in-itself" means, more or less, without self-consciousness or awareness; "for-itself" characterizes the being of conscious creatures like us. So my past might as well be a rock, for all that I can re-enter it or use it as a postulate about my current being. But Sartre does appear to believe that my previous existence can be a conclusion derived from "I think," which may pertain to your OP.

I’d bet that the percentage of deep and original work in academic philosophy, compared to less meaningful writing, hasn’t changed since there were universities. We revere the past because the only ones we’re still reading are the ones who have survived their times. But everyone wasn’t that good.

Yes, reading what you said as a view of current U.S. academia makes it much more colorable, to me. I got out of academia for different reasons, but was there long enough to observe the emphasis on "criticism of criticism" and the never-ending search by scholar-squirrels for some nut that hasn't been published-upon already.

(Just realized you could take "nut" in either sense! :smile: )

It's not a matter of resolving it in the sense of providing the longed-for certainty, but critiquing the conceptual and cognitive framework which gave rise to it. — Wayfarer

Yes, and the Bernstein book you referenced does a brilliant job of that. Consider the title: Beyond Objectivism and Relativism. The conceptual framework of "EITHER certainty OR it's the end of the rational world!" is what produces a dichotomy like objectivism/relativism.

Thanks for the shout-out to Richard J. Bernstein. Yes, I know his work well -- in fact, he was one of my teachers. "Cartesian anxiety" is a great phrase. But again, resolving a bad case of Cartesian anxiety is probably not on anyone's agenda, philosophically -- if by "resolving" we mean actually finding certainty of the sort Descartes longed for.

For the greater part of Western cultural history, philosophy was woven into a fabric which included poetry, theology, fiction, art and drama — Wayfarer

That's one way of putting it. We could also say, " . . . philosophy was desperately mired in a swamp of inchoate expressions which included poetry, theology . . . " etc. I'm being a little tongue-in-cheek here, but the point is serious. Different accounts of philosophy will offer different interpretations. There is no one obviously correct story.

A lively response, thanks. We could go back and forth on how much of this is really attributable to Nagel, but I'm more interested in your overall picture of modern philosophy. I'll only say that IMHO Nagel could have made an important distinction between his other forms of transcendental service (to society, the state, the revolution, the progress of history, the advance of science) and the glory of God, but this wasn't germane to his argument. In the context of his essay, devoting one's life to serving God is open to the same objections as the other forms of service. It's worth noting that much of his later philosophy seeks to illuminate what, if anything, is special and important about the religious point of view.

But anyway. Do philosophers today really denigrate their work in the way you're saying? I move in circles that are more artistic than academic, so perhaps you're right. But when I read the current philosophers I admire -- Nussbaum, Sider, McDowell, Karen Bennett, Susan Haack, Kimhi, Plantinga, Habermas, Nagel himself -- that's not the impression I get. Could you say more about who exactly thinks their profession is useless?

Similarly, I think I know what you mean when you talk about the early-modern quest for certainty; there's no doubt that epistemological concerns have characterized much of philosophy since Descartes. But I don't see very many philosophers linking "anything meaning anything at all" with the concepts you listed: "objective meaning," and "objective value," the absolute as the objective, set over and against the non-substantial "subjective." Of course some philosophers talk that way, but a great many do not. If a civilian asked me what recent (not modern, in your sense) philosophy was most interested in, I might say something like "Trying to find a reasonable middle ground between unsustainable foundationalist claims about knowledge and the complete abandonment of rationality and values." And as you know, there are many such middle grounds on offer, in both analytic and Continental phil.

Maybe I just don't know what you mean by "the early modern period."

This is very much my own view too. I've often used the idea that philosophy leads us to a door we have to open by other means. My only concern is that, in this particular thread, we've gotten ourselves round to thinking that the claim of philosophy to be "highest" (sorry for the scare quotes!) must be opposed to other forms of knowledge. I tried to guard against this when I wrote, in the OP:

First, a clarification: The idea I’m referring to doesn’t denigrate poetry, or fiction, or prayer, or paying compliments, or any other non-discursive uses of language. Whether such uses represent anything “higher” than philosophical discourse is a separate question, though of course a related one, and interesting in its own right. Here I’m sticking to the discourses of rational inquiry. — J

I can weigh in, briefly, on that separate question: I think the languages of art and of faith (and the experiences which those languages attempt to capture) are, for me, higher in the sense that they take me closer to understanding who I am, and what is the source of my being. But there . . . such talk is no longer philosophical discourse, in my understanding, so I'll stop.

And from the Sufi tradition, the Master's Prayer:

O Parvardigar, the Preserver and Protector of All,
You are without Beginning and without End,
Non-dual, beyond comparison, and none can measure You.
You are without colour, without expression, without form and without attributes.
You are unlimited and unfathomable, beyond imagination and conception, eternal and imperishable.

Nagel's ironic response to absurdity, — Count Timothy von Icarus

I reread the Nagel piece. I can't help thinking that "irony" was the wrong word for what he was trying to say. He writes that, after we've questioned how seriously we ought to take our lives, and human life in general, "We then return to our lives, as we must, but our seriousness is laced with irony." Doesn't he mean something more like "detachment" or "bemusement"? Irony generally refers to a quality of appearing to be one thing when actually being, or meaning, another, and I don't see that here. Unless he means that we can't take our seriousness seriously?

The final sentence of the essay is, "If sub specie aeternitatis there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair." This makes it sound like a Camusian creed, but it's in the context of his final point, which is that absurdity is only a problem if we make it so, by insisting that our concern about not mattering has to matter a great deal.

In any case, I'm curious why you think the piece deserves to be called "an example of all that is wrong with modern philosophy." It seems a rather innocuous early piece to me, not as good as Nagel usually is but hardly all that misguided.

"the view from nowhere" is a more modern term, I think, though maybe I'm wrong there. — Moliere

Yes, it is, and not everyone uses it the same way. I use it to refer to an ideal objective viewpoint, the convergence point for rational inquiry, from which we can see what is actually the case, as opposed to whatever various beliefs and opinions may present themselves to us in the "heteronomous" world (Kant). Obviously there are grave doubts among many philosophers about whether such a viewpoint even makes sense.

But see how the analogy has a place, rather than being a "view from nowhere"? — Moliere

In the sense that it's a visual analogy, sure. But when, as the Wiki has it, Plato tells us through Socrates that "the object was essentially or 'really' the Form and that the phenomena were mere shadows mimicking the Form," this is meant to be what I'm calling a view from nowhere. That is, we aren't supposed to think, "Well, that's how Plato sees it" or "That's a possible view" or even, "Humans have to see it that way" but rather "This is what is really the case, regardless of what you or I or Socrates believes." A God's-eye view, if you will. Again, these worries about idealized objectivity are modern, but I'm pretty sure Plato thought that what dianoia and noesis reveals is viewpoint-independent.

Another point is how radically different Socratic philosophy is from "the view from nowhere". — Fooloso4

In general I agree with your emphasis on the dialogical aspect of Platonic thought, but let's not get carried away. When Socrates asks for a definition of a term that he and all the interlocutors believe is important but disagree about, he is surely trying to find the view from nowhere, the place where we transcend doxa and perhaps, eventually, dianoia as well, and can see the Good itself. Now the ability to do this may indeed depend upon personal/subjective virtues, as opposed to simply being good at argumentation, but that's not the same thing as saying that Plato didn't think rationality was objective in a sense that strongly resembles our own.

There needs to be something about the sequence of questions that renders each of them somehow relevant to what they're asked, and the answer to be informative to what it's asked of. That is, the question has to be a "good" question in a nebulous sense and the answer has to be a "good" answer in a nebulous sense. — fdrake

What if we loosen Q ( X ) a little, so that it doesn't have to be, literally, "What is your justification for X?" each time. Thus, the response here:

If you asked "What is your justification for "I speak English?"?, one could very well answer "I speak English" as a demonstration — fdrake

could change to, "Could you explain how 'I speak English' provides a reasonable answer to my question?" This is still asking for a justification, but from a different angle or level. Which leads to this:

One way of fleshing that out [a guarantee that one would always end up in philosophy when asking justificatory questions] would mean at some point questions about justification always become philosophical. About the meaning of justification. — fdrake

It's an "up-a-level" question because it asks the interlocutor to justify why they believe that "I speak English" is a justification.

I think this gets closer to giving an account of how a call for justification is what the Q recursion is, but the more plausible our account gets, the less it seems to be formalizable. Or maybe the problem is with the "nebulous" terms like "good" (and perhaps "relevant") and not the form itself. And are we any closer to demonstrating that this characterizes what phil. is, or must be? Probably not, since so many divergent accounts of phil. are possible. But if phil. is understood as "rational discourse in a context of communicative action," then perhaps we've made an advance.

I'll say that a question is good when it reveals something about how what it is asked of is known or supplementary information about what it is asked of. And perhaps we should assume that the answerer plays nicely and just answers truthfully, directly and sincerely every time. No frame shifting on their part. — fdrake

I like this, though if the answerer tries any deception or frame-shifting, that doesn't really have any bearing on whether the question is a good one, does it? Nor does it demonstrate that the Q recursion is invalid, only that the answerer refuses to help demonstrate its validity. In contrast, if the answerer does play nicely, we have a Habermasian communicative-action situation, where all parties mutually ascribe rationality to each other and claim "unconditional validity" for what they say. This takes us rather far away from the "recursion as highest" question. But since this thread has sent a few fibers out in the direction of what proper argumentation consists of, I'll close with this:

These argumentative presuppositions [for communicative action] obviously contain such strong idealizations that they invite the suspicion that they represent tendentious description of argumentation. — Habermas,

"Communicative Action and the Detranscendentalized 'Use of Reason'," in Between Naturalism and Religion, p. 50

But Habermas goes on to argue against this suspicion, claiming that the idealizations are both necessary and actually efficacious for keeping argumentation philosophical.

Oh yes, from Mortal Questions. Thanks, I'll think about your take on it.

Gadamer's word here, "hollowness", is really interesting. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, and again the context is specifically about that particular kind of gotcha! recursion:

The question arises of the degree to which the dialectical superiority of reflective philosophy corresponds to a factual truth and how far it merely creates a formal appearance — Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. 308-9

We have the appearance of being able to corral any discourse back into philosophy -- but where does that leave the search for wisdom?

We spend so much time arguing about how strong particular arguments are -- are we missing something? — Srap Tasmaner

Yes. We need to inquire about inquiry, ask ourselves what the value of a strong argument is.

then there's increasing specificity, in terms of subject matter. — Srap Tasmaner

Can you say more about that? Not sure I see it.

What distinguishes the philosopher from the sophist, according to Gadamer, is a matter of intent. A difference in a way of being. (The Idea of the Good, 39.) — Fooloso4

Good find, I'd forgotten he said that (if I ever knew). It fits very well with the above speculations about the ethics of philosophical discourse. We may have uncovered a whole new way of approaching the question of phil. as "highest" -- though a lot more needs to be said about that "difference in being."

we might consider here Nagel's ironic response to absurdity — Count Timothy von Icarus

Is this Thomas Nagel? Or Ernest? What passage do you have in mind?

Argument and discourse are only issues for those beings that have souls ― logic arises in the context of ethics. — Srap Tasmaner

Very good. I often tend to forget that, for Plato and Aristotle and probably for Kant too, there is an ethical motivation for arguing properly, one that has nothing to do with the more familiar "practical reason" or phronesis.

I especially like this passage: "I am in danger at this moment of not having a philosophical attitude about this, but like those who are quite uneducated, I am eager to get the better of you in argument." As Socrates goes on to say, convincing oneself is more important. This probably doesn't happen by a kind of arguing with oneself -- at least not in my case.

I ran across this in Gadamer's Truth and Method, just harking back to the OP if you're interested:

The question arises of the degree to which the dialectical superiority of reflective philosophy corresponds to a factual truth and how far it merely creates a formal appearance. . . . All these victorious arguments have something about them that suggests they are attempting to bowl one over. However cogent they seem, they miss the main point. In making use of them one is proved right, and yet they do not express any superior insight of any value. . . . Thus the formalism of this kind of reflective argument is of specious philosophical legitimacy. In fact it tells us nothing. We are familiar with this kind of thing from the Greek sophists, whose inner hollowness Plato demonstrated. It was also he who saw clearly that there is no argumentatively adequate criterion to distinguish truly between philosophical and sophistic discourse. — Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. 308-9

Gadamer goes on to question a subset of reflexive argument, where the interlocutor points out logical or performative contradictions in, e.g., relativism or skepticism. But he is clearly talking about the reflexive nature of argumentation overall, and his doubts about it are similar to mine.

The final sentence I find especially intriguing. Leaving aside the question of whether he's right about Plato, I read Gadamer as saying to us: "No, you're wrong, philosophy is not characterized by a method or a discourse (or, perhaps, a formalism). What differentiates it from sophism is something else -- but there is a difference."

Evolutionary trends are beneficial for humanity, — Seeker25

This is the assumption I'm questioning, at least for purposes of argument. Perhaps you need to say more about what an evolutionary trend is? To avoid begging the question, I think you need to give a description of these trends in value-neutral terms, so we can decide for ourselves whether they must necessarily be beneficial for humanity.

What is rationality other than consistent thinking from some foundational premises or other? — Janus

OK, but specifying the premises, and determining how foundational they are, has been the longstanding task of philosophy, with no obvious right answer in sight. It's like saying, "Move the world? Sure, no problem, just give me a very large lever . . ."

Simply saying that X is a cup if and only if X is a cup or that X is a king if and only if X is a king is vacuous, and doesn't address any philosophical dispute. — Michael

That's not quite what Banno said. He said:

extensionally, X is a cup if and only if X is a cup. Extensionally, we are able to substitute salva veritate — Banno

I've bolded "extensionally" as the key term here. I think your debate is about what constitutes a cup (or a king) intensionally. Once we agree about that, picking out examples is relatively easy, but there's no vacuity involved. And no objects persist or cease to exist, depending.

Let’s grant your thesis that what you’re calling the evolution of the Earth contains important guidance for how humans should behave in order to flourish as a species. Let’s also agree that there are “trends” that can be discovered and used as the basis for that guidance.

Here is what I think you need to argue for:

1. Very few humans give much consideration to the flourishing of the species, and they need reasons – ethical reasons, presumably – why something so abstract should count more than their immediate practical concerns, which may be pursued both successfully and unethically.

2. The trends you’ve isolated are uniformly positive; they can be easily translated into familiar ethical precepts for humans. Isn’t that stacking the deck? Couldn’t we also talk about trends of destruction, suffering, and death? If we knew the end of Earth’s story, and it was one in which the positive trends prevailed, we might be justified in putting the current spotlight on them. But for all we know, the really significant trends are going to turn out to be the destructive ones.