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But it'd be an argument against what Sartre is saying, I think, if you could argue that the cogito was no longer active, due to this move, and so existence is thrown back into doubt -- that'd be an interesting skeptical response.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

I'm asking the kind of question intended just to prompt thinking, to make you wonder if the answer that comes immediately to mind is right, to make you pause and wonder what other answers might be available. — Srap Tasmaner

Excellent; my favorite kind of question. I guess I should have made it clear that all of that post was to be preceded with a big IF: IF philosophy proceeds rationally, and can give a definition of what rationality is, THEN all of these consequences seem to follow. I'm more unsure than perhaps you imagine about whether the IF is correct. I'm trying to paint a certain picture, which I think is very common to philosophy both now and historically, and then see clearly what the picture shows.

Another way to approach this, maybe a better one, is to call a halt to the "philosophy of philosophy" questions, stop worrying about whether and how phil. and rationality overlap, and simply focus on rationality alone. We'll still have problems about how to define it, but probably all the questions of the OP can be asked of rational discourse per se, without claiming anything one way or the other for philosophy.

If philosophy takes up the question of whether philosophy is rational, and even if it judges that it is, this is merely a result. It may even be descriptive of philosophy's practice in reaching that very conclusion, but it cannot be constitutive of that practice. — Srap Tasmaner

Philosophy is the activity that invents, for its own use, the very idea of rationality — Srap Tasmaner

I may not understand you completely, but isn't the second observation a partial answer to the problem posed by the first?

You're saying that, like mathematics, philosophy produces results which are conceptually distinguishable from phil. itself, understood as the process that led to the results. This seems relatively clear with the math example. But the moment you allow that a result within phil. can be "descriptive of philosophy's practice in reaching that very conclusion," you open the reflexive curtain that leads to the next stage, in which phil. gives itself the (rational) law, a la Kant. I don't know whether phil. invents rationality or discloses it within the world. But either way, we have the result that "philosophy is rational." To put it differently, we could say: Philosophy justifies its rationality at two levels of description -- by producing the "result" that phil. is rational, and also by demonstrating, in the very act of obtaining this result, that this is the only way philosophy can proceed.

One of J's first moves in the OP was to take philosophy and the sciences (and maybe history, I don't know) all together as "rational discourses," or something like that. I don't think that will work. I don't think philosophy can allow itself to be defined by some external perspective — Srap Tasmaner

This observation confuses two different things, doesn't it? On the one hand, we can certainly question whether phil. is constituted by something called "rational discourse," and whether it has that in common with other disciplines such as science. But on the other hand, would this be a case of phil. allowing itself to be defined by an external perspective? Perhaps it's up to phil. to define itself as "rational discourse" (or something else). Here we run up against the self-reflection again: Phil. is trying to look at itself, inquire about inquiry, and make a determination about its nature. The next quote directly follows from that:

(Such a move is even more untenable if you think of "rationality" as one of the areas philosophy is concerned with, and perhaps is authoritative on. Presumably then it would be up to philosophy to decide whether philosophy falls within its own purview, to decide whether this discourse is rational ― but not if it's already defined as "rational".) — Srap Tasmaner

That last clause is tricky. We're postulating a situation in which phil. is authoritative about two things: what rationality is, and whether philosophy is characterized, in a semi-definitional way, as being rational. So let's say that phil., armed with a concept of what rationality is, decides that its own discourse is indeed rational. I think your final clause is meant to suggest there's something dubious or circular going on. But why? There's nothing pernicious about defining something to be rational (though of course one may be wrong), and it's not the case that phil. has "already defined" itself as rational. That defining is precisely what is happening in the present moment of the postulated thought. It didn't happen earlier in the thought process, because it isn't analytic that the discipline that defines what rationality is must also be rational.

Interesting as all this may (or may not) be, your larger question about the marriage of philosophy and rationality, especially when it posits a certain kind of justification as essential to that rationality, seems like the important one.

And the "higher" thing again . . . , yeah, the metaphor just may not work here. Philosophy does something different from other disciplines, and that difference is procedural or formal as opposed to a question of subject matter -- that much I'd defend. My original question was, Is this formal something (aka the Q recursion) worth anything? Does it provide a perspective for thinking that is broader or more perspicuous than the other disciplines? I'm still nagged by the sense that it does, or should, but the discussion on this thread certainly highlights the difficulties of believing such a thing.

This would be a good OP idea. Philosophy as practice, and perhaps praxis. When I try to explain to friends why I do phil., I usually wind up talking in those terms, but not with much clarity.

Great, I'll spend some time on this, but for now, let me just note that The Shitty Terminations would be an excellent name for a band.

all it does is show that an awareness of said relevance isn't necessary to produce a desired result. — KantRemember

Your first post, I see -- welcome to the Forum!

If I understand you, you're saying that (for example) the acoustician could be unaware that Western music theory is indeed relevant to their work. Therefore, we need another criterion of relevance that doesn't involve awareness of said relevance.

That's a good point, and my example was loosely worded. Better to have said, "An acoustician conducts their research in complete independence of what theory may do with it, and it will not be possible to find any relevance for that theory to their work." Is it still clear that relevance isn't symmetric? I suppose this wording is slightly more deniable, because by shifting modal ground and talking about what is and isn't possible, we have to meet a higher bar. But let's not get caught up in extreme and/or unlikely cases. The idea was to question whether relevance is symmetric in a much more powerful and common way -- so that @fdrake's conclusion about what we've calling the Q recursion is true. I think his argument necessitates a near-perfect match of symmetries in order to go through. But perhaps he'll weigh in on this.

Insofar as Y exists, and X is relevant to Y, Y will always be relevant to X due to the connection X has with it. — KantRemember

Well, that's the question, and I think you need to do more than restate it as a conclusion. At issue would be "the connection X has with it" -- how does that show the relation must be symmetrical?

I don't think it follows that one discipline is more primordial/foundational than another based on the "what is your justification for this?" question's recursive nature. I will spell out why.

Asking the question "What's your justification for this?" is recursive. Call asking that question of an assertion X the function Q( X ), which I'll just assume maps to another assertion X'. Every assertion occurs in a context, and call the mapping from an assertion of X to its context C( X ). I'm going to leave 'context' undefined for now, and just assume that every assertion has a context of utterance that makes it understandable, and some rules that characterise that context.

Some contexts will have properties that make their rules philosophical. If a context is characterised by rules of philosophy - again stipulate that such rules are comprehensible and recognisable -, say that that context has the property Phil.

The quote says that for every statement X, there exists a number of recursions of Q^n ( X ), mapping an assertion to its justification, such that Q^n( X ) has a context C characterised by Phil. You can grant that, but you might wonder why such a thing would render philosophy the "top level". Roughly what this claim states is that asking for justification eventually terminates in philosophy, but there's no particular argument for the uniqueness of the termination. The statement in the quote construes Phil as the demarcation between a fixed set of Q and other sets. There's a question about the uniqueness of the fixed set - why does asking that question eventually lead to philosophy? — fdrake

First, just some housekeeping: We considered whether "Why?" was the actual recursive question, and raised some problems about that. But the way you've formulated it here is better, and still allows a robust sense of relevance, unlike the "What would Kant have thought of that?" example. So let's say that Q( X ) asks, "What is your justification for X?"

The idea, then, is that the Top-Level Theory would first have to show that the (undefined but described) C (context) is always philosophical, when the Q recursion takes place. You're willing to grant that, as am I, but the problem comes in the next bit, where we'd have to additionally show that there is a particular kind of uniqueness about this termination in philosophy. I have questions about that, and about uniqueness.

You point out the danger that we've done some definitional fast-footwork here. Philosophy (or the context Phil) is being construed as "the demarcation between a fixed set of Q and other sets." Does this mean that the fixed set of Q is only unique in this way? "Why does asking [the Q question] eventually lead to philosophy?" you want to know, and the suspicion is that is does so because we have defined it thus; there is no other reason.

Let me stop there and ask if I've understood you well enough, and if we're on the same page.

1 ) Take a philosophical claim X which does not have relevance to a claim in any discipline.
2 ) Take the collection of statements of which X has relevance to and call it Q.
3 ) Relevance is transitive, if X is relevant to Y, and Y is relevant to Z, then X is relevant to Z.
4 ) Relevance is symmetric, that is if X is relevant to Y, then Y is relevant to X.
5 ) Relevance is reflexive, X is relevant to X.
6 ) Relevance is an equivalence relation.
7 ) Then anything relevant to X cannot be relevant to any philosophical claim.
8 ) Then all of Q is not relevant to philosophy. — fdrake

I want to return to this loose end. Am I right that we can avoid the conclusion in (8) by denying (4), the symmetry of relevance? Apart from it being a good thing not to have to conclude (8), I think there are independent reasons for denying (4). Consider this example: The natural acoustic properties of tones are relevant to Western music theory, but the reverse isn't true. An acoustician can conduct their research in complete independence of what theory may do with it. The only way I see that we can get "relevance" to be symmetric here is to define it as such, so it means something like "possibility of making eventual connections." But that seems much too broad, and misses the interesting questions about why we care about relevance in the first place.