@Joshs

This is how I (mis?)understand Deleuze.

↪J
Perhaps this helps. — GrahamJ

Yes, thanks, and it's close to the sort of paraphrase I would have offered. The problem for me -- in my language, that is -- is that none of this is about anything that could be called "ontological priority." If we said "conceptual priority" instead, what would be lost? What would be gained is that we're now using a much more familiar idea, both within analytic phil and in educated non-specialist discourse. That doesn't automatically make it the best way to go, of course -- especially given the concerns raised earlier about "familiarity" -- and that's why I'm asking what "ontological priority" may be contributing that "conceptual priority" does not.

So, the doubter can doubt everything, but the act of doubting reveals his own existence. — Ludwig V

Just a quick response for now: Yes, this is what Descartes says too, and Williams tells us that both "je pense" and "cogito" were much broader than the English "I think". Descartes would have meant something closer to "I have mental experiences" or "I am conscious". The cogito does not imply a consciously formed thought, as we might say in English, "I thought of that" or "I had that thought." And this becomes important in understanding exactly what Descartes believes we can infer from the cogito: You don't have to form the thought "I think" in order to be thinking, on his usage. Self-awareness is not part of existence.

Don’t get your knickers in a twist . I’m not in philosophy to insist on do-or-die, right or wrong ( Heidegger spent his career deconstructing the concept of truth as correctness). — Joshs

Knickers untwisted! :razz: But the binaries "essential-or-meaningless, succeed-or-fail" are from the Heidegger quotes, and if he doesn't believe he's correct about what he says, he's doing a very good imitation.

‘summarize the ideas of a philosophical school in a way that is reasonably consonant with the community of scholars who inhabit it or you haven’t understood’. Before we can get to the agree or disagree part, we have to get past this key first step. — Joshs

Yes. And so often the step is skipped. It raises a huge question -- bigger than can fit in this thread, probably -- about whether the conditions for understanding are the same as the conditions for verification. But in a case like this, since my understanding of Heidegger on this subject is shaky at best, I have no opinion on whether he's saying something insightful.

Difference must be understood as ontologically prior to identity. — Joshs

OK, I'd like to understand this. Do you believe it's possible to offer a explication that launches from common English uses of the key words (difference, understand, ontological, identity), or would an explication necessarily bring in further technical terms?

I'm reminded of how one of my good friends, who's a physicist, talks to me about his work. At a certain point, inevitably, he'll say something like, "Well, you'd need the math now," and we both know I don't have it. But . . . before reaching that point, he's able to use my language -- non-technical but educated English -- to explain a great deal. He believes that, as a specialist, he has an obligation to do this, as best he's able, which I appreciate very much, since I learn a lot. I will never completely understand the topics he talks about, and as for having an opinion about whether he's "right" about some thesis he puts forward . . . that would be ludicrous. But there is absolutely some translation going on.

So I guess that's my question to you. Can something like "Difference must be understood as ontologically prior to identity" be translated into my language? In my language, neither difference nor identity have anything like ontological priority, because they aren't entities. You see what I mean . . . I can think of some possible paraphrases that do make sense in my language, but I'm afraid they would miss Heidegger's point.

I thought I was clear in my OP that the subject was the usefulness of understanding the function of cultural moral norms and our moral sense (what moral behaviors socially and biologically ‘are’) and NOT what we imperatively ought to do. — Mark S

You were. Thanks for pointing me back to it. You're doing a careful job of trying to find a way to separate out the idea of a "moral fact" as a universal fact about humans, from the idea of a "moral fact" as a value about what is right and wrong. If I'm right that this is your program, I don't think it quite succeeds.

You argue that "moral sense" equates to "what moral behaviors socially and biologically ‘are’." I think you mean that it follows that therefore, if anyone refers to their moral sense, they are referring not to actual questions of right and wrong as usually discussed in ethics, but rather to the built-in behaviors that our species is endowed with, both biologically and culturally. OK, fair enough.

So when we return to the question of individual behavior, you rightly ask why one should choose to adopt these built-in cooperation strategies -- since, however hardwired they may be, we know we can act against them

You ought do so if you prefer following Morality as Cooperation’s prescription for moral ‘means’. And "prefer" would usually be because you prefer the consequences as an instrumental choice. — Mark S

But now we're right back in the middle of ethics as usually discussed. Here are the good reasons for following a particular maxim, and here's Ornery Joe saying, "Well, I don't prefer the consequences." Is there something further that Morality as Cooperation can say to Joe? Is he "wrong"? I don't see how he can be. He sees the universal "moral fact" about cooperation and claims he doesn't give a toss.

So . . . the question I'd put to you is, Does this matter? Can we get the most out of "moral facts" and use the Cooperation thesis to point a path forward, without worrying about the likes of Joe, and the usual disputes about ethical reasons? You could, for instance, say something like, "Look, we understand how 'morality' came about -- it's a way of improving cooperation and helping cultures thrive -- and that's plenty good enough. Some people will never get it, and insist on a different kind of reason for what they call moral behavior, but that's irrelevant. We can still use the 'moral fact' of a universal cooperative strategy to help us decide many important questions about how we ought to behave. When uncertain, we'll try to discover which choice will most advance cooperation."

I put a lot of words in your mouth, but is that close to your position?

But what he’s trying to say is that, as Wittgenstein would agree, to understand anything in a fundamental sense is to understand it in a new way, in a fresh context. To treat what is understood as already familiar as a derivative of a pre-existing scheme or picture is to render it meaningless, to fail to understand it in Heidegger’s primordial sense. — Joshs

Again, I'm curious what this amounts to without the hyperbole. To understand anything in a fundamental sense is to understand it in a new way? Why? Couldn't the old way have been fundamental too?

And "to render it meaningless"? Why so drastic? Why not just "to construe it in a less interesting way than the writer intended"? And I'm sorry, but what the heck is a "primordial sense"?

You see where I'm coming from (hopefully with both our senses of humor intact :smile: ). I would very much like to see Heideggerians and others who followed his path stop treating all these matters as if they were do-or-die, right-or-wrong, essential-or-meaningless, succeed-or-fail, agree-or-you-haven't-understood, etc., etc., and aim for more modesty and, dare I say, humility. We're all in this conversation together.

What's curious is this "Let A = ..." business.

"Let A = ..." is a sort of snapshot of the translation process. — Srap Tasmaner

Very good. Reminiscent of Rodl's "naive" questions about what 'p' is supposed to represent.

The labeling is not all that important to me, but I don't think it's helpful to ignore the difference between what is clearly technical work and what isn't. Call it all "philosophy" if you want, but you'll still need some terminology for that obvious distinction. — Srap Tasmaner

Hear, hear. This is what is important: There is an obvious distinction, and we can probably find some consensus on terminology that eschews the "phil/not phil" binary. I've grown used to thinking of what you're calling technical work as simply "semantical or logic-derived analytic phil." A bit cumbersome, maybe, but as you say, we all more or less know what we're talking about.

I think we should also try to avoid a value judgment about what is better or worse philosophy -- style-wise, that is, not in terms of interest or rigor or clarity.

There is, for example, no actual philosophical work by anyone anywhere in this thread. At least on this view. Strictly speaking. — Srap Tasmaner

I know what you mean, and the mathematical analogy makes clear what "actual philosophical work" might look like, on this view. But I think -- and don't you? -- that this view is wrong. Two reasons: First, to hold the view, you have to dispute or ignore the overwhelming consensus; you have to deny that all the "non-mathematical" philosophers are also doing philosophy.

Second, this view is ameliorative. It proposes a way that philosophy should be understood and practiced, and suggests that we come up with a different word for what the others are doing. This seems unnecessarily radical. As was pointed out elsewhere in this thread, we have the same situation involving the post-structuralists or continentals, to speak loosely. I don't think we should encourage wrangles between overarching schools of thought and practice about who is "really" doing philosophy. I'm happy to read the Williamson paper as a defense of more rigor and care within analytic phil. I don't need to be persuaded additionally that this is the only way of being philosophical.

There is a raft of issues about the cogito. — Ludwig V

Oh, indeed. Descartes himself dealt with a number of objections from people who pointed out that the "I" in "I think" could use a lot more specification. And there is the so-called "impersonal cogito," which considers whether it should more properly be phrased as "there is thinking going on" rather than "I think". (Williams analyzes this one at some length and believes it is an incoherent objection.)

I meant to say that it has been amply demonstrated that metaphysical certainty in the traditional "absolutist" sense is impossible to attain. Would you not agree that Descartes was attempting to discover what he (and by extension, we) could be certain of vis à vis what necessarily exists? — Janus

Yes, I would (and of course we understand that "necessarily exists" doesn't mean "must exist". It means, given the fact of thinking, then necessarily I must exist.) And given the continuing lively debate about Descartes' project, and much else in metaphysics, I say again that "amply demonstrated" and "impossible" are too strong. I'm agnostic, leaning toward skeptic, about metaphysical certainty, but the debate is hardly over.

As I think Ludwig is suggesting my point was that any discourse which purported to deny the LNC must necessarily be involved in an incoherent performative contradiction because to do so would undermine discourse itself. — Janus

Yes, with a few qualifications about the type of discourse. I appreciate the reminder from Ludwig that logical truths and their role in reasoning was a different animal, back in Descartes' time. It is part of Descartes' interesting "flavor" that his approach is so subjective, so first-personal, attempting to find certainty in experience rather than what we would call analyticity.

the space of causes and the space of reasons. The latter cannot be understood (parsimoniously at least) solely in terms of causes. — Janus

I agree. In the current context, though, Ludwig probably meant "empirical" to cover both. Oh yes, I now see he agrees with Sellars. But the problem being raised is whether:

The price of absolutely certainty is paralysis in the empirical world.

which would remain a problem however you choose to construe "empirical." My view is that there's no reason to restrict one's actions to what can be based on certainty. It's a good question whether Descartes would have viewed lack of certainty as a reason for inaction. Maybe it's somewhere in his writings.

Perhaps J could check Williams' book and see what he says? (about mathematical truths) — Ludwig V

I will. The book is so good that I'm reading it slowly, lots of notes, and have only gotten to God! Williams is quite hard on D here, as are most philosophers I've read.

Williamson finishes by explicitly acknowledging that his own essay does not meet the criteria it advocates.

He couldn't, becasue the essay is not an argument as such, so much as an aesthetic critique. He is showing us again what is beautiful in philosophy, and what isn't. — Banno

This is possibly the most interesting part of the paper, for me. We could take W's remark to mean two things:

1) I have not lived up to the highest possible standards of rigor here, though I have tried.

2) The nature of what I am saying in this paper contradicts, or at least blurs, the whole idea that the only good philosophy is "rigorous" philosophy of the sort it advocates.

I rather take him to be saying the former. But I think he ought to say the latter, perhaps along the lines that you paraphrase.

Despite all the talk of rigour, logic, clarity, and convergence, Williamson’s piece is fundamentally rhetorical: — Banno

If "rhetorical" is taken as the alternative to "argumentative," then yes. But rhetoric often gets rejected as not philosophy at all -- and sometimes for good reason. W's paper is very clearly philosophy. But from its very title, "Must Do Better," it is meant to be ameliorative. A certain course is being recommended, not merely analyzed. What sort of philosophy is that?

What is philosophy for?

That's the question that will decide what you think philosophy is, and how you will do philosophy. — Banno

Or we can pose a question Witt might pose: Is this language on holiday? in this sense: We seem to be asking for a definition, or at least a useful description, of an activity that, among other things, constantly asks the question "What is philosophy?" Does a question about itself still mean anything?

I think it does, and believe strongly in the self-reflexive character of philosophy, but I'm not sure how to fit that into a question about what philosophy is, or is for. Not saying it can't be done, I'm just uncertain how to proceed.

I have no idea what the third means. — T Clark

Yes, and it's the third one that connects with a "pure" good will that does not consider ends to be reasons for acting.

J, thanks for your careful response. — Mark S

And thanks for yours.

I definitely want to reply in depth to your points -- you're right, for one thing, that I'd forgotten the thrust of your OP -- but will shortly be offline probably till "my" tomorrow. (it's 8:45 am EDT, USA, now, where I live). So, since I don't want to do a hasty job .. . till then.

You have to appreciate these remarks in the context of Heidegger’s critique of technology. When he says that the “immediate effectiveness must remain foreign to all essential thinking, because such thinking, in its truth, must be prevented from becoming “familiar” and “understandable” to contemporaries”” , he equates the the familiar and immediately effective with the technologizing instrumentalism of empirical science as well as the Cartesian metaphysics that grounds it.Philosophy cannot be the mere putting into practice of a pre-conceived plan. — Joshs

Thanks, that's helpful, and probably connects with @Janus's insight about "knowing that" and "knowing how." As long as we acknowledge that Heidegger's context in re technology is not the only one from which terms like "essential thinking" can be evaluated, I'm fine with it. Well, that's not quite true . . . in general, I wish Heidegger and other continentals could be a little less pompous in their language. But as I don't read German and would to have struggle through difficult French, I don't really know their language, so perhaps that's unfair. Suffice to say, it doesn't translate well.

I think Heidegger is referring to his distinction between between vorhanden "present at hand" knowledge and zuhanden "ready to hand" wisdom. I see that distinction as being basically similar to the distinction between "knowing that" and "knowing how". — Janus

The connection seems right to me. I'm willing to believe that Heidegger at least had this partially in mind, especially given what @Joshs says above, about the tension between the two types of "rationalization" that so many philosophers were concerned with at that time. As Josh writes, the fear is of a process "which turns everything into order-able standing reserve, including human beings." How do we prevent "rationality" from becoming Weberian "rationalizing," the instrumentalization of the world? What is "at hand" can be taken either way.

But I also think the Heidegger passage is more combative than that. He writes:

such thinking, in its truth, must be prevented from becoming “familiar” and “understandable” to contemporaries.

"Prevented" is very strong, especially when coupled with "in its truth." If he'd said, "in its misunderstanding" or "in its misapplication," that might be different. But H seems to want it both ways: "What I'm saying is true, but don't you dare claim that it is 'understandable.' That would be to turn it into a technology."

What I really think: This is all rhetoric of a bygone moment in philosophy. We can find plenty to think about in Being and Time without worrying about whether H was often defensive and hyperbolic.

Can you take a stab at what you think it means? — Janus

Sure will, but probably not tonight, life calls. Appreciate the insight.

They wanted desperately to be understood, tried every way they could to be understood, but also knew that fundamentally new ways of thinking are not commodities whose communication is guaranteed by use of the right words. — Joshs

Good. That makes Heidegger's hyperbole here a bit suspect, doesn't it?:

precisely this misinterpretation of all my work (e.g., as a “philosophy of existence”) is the best and most lasting protection against the premature using up of what is essential. And it must be so, since immediate effectiveness must remain foreign to all essential thinking, and because such thinking, in its truth, must be prevented from becoming “familiar” and “understandable” to contemporaries.

The bolded statements are kind of criticism-proof, aren't they? Reading them as a literary editor (which I am, partially, IRL) they also seem defensive and self-consoling in the face of lack of acceptance. Why couldn't he just say, "My stuff is hard. It'll take a while," instead of making it a hallmark of "essential thinking" or "genuine philosophy" or whatever?

But human, all too human . . . as are we all.

Yes, Nietzsche is a good response, should have thought of him myself. Except . . . do you really believe he didn't want to be understood by his contemporaries? that, indeed, if he had been, he would have felt he hadn't done worthwhile philosophy? That doesn't sound like him, except when he's in a very bad mood.

For that matter, Heidegger did not exactly shy away from praise, or conversation with peers.

immediate effectiveness must remain foreign to all essential thinking,

It's an . . . unusual claim. Does anyone know whether another philosopher besides Heidegger ever said something similar? Reminds me of Beethoven saying that his final music was "for a later age."

Trying to explain why something is funny to one person but not to another is a notoriously hopeless task. If @Count Timothy von Icarus meant to amuse me, he succeeded. If he didn't . . . well, I still found it funny but that's just me.

Yes, but entertaining vacuous self-indulgent name-dropping garbage. :smile:

(Not really, Count T!)

The endlessly running policeman represents Wittgenstein, coming to the aid of these poor language users who haven't agree on their game . . . Notice how long it takes him to get there. But once there, he's stern!

there's no problem about agreeing to disagree and moving on to other things. That's a perfectly normal thing to do in conversations like this. Is that what you had in mind? — Ludwig V

I'd thought we could focus more on why Descartes chose methodical doubt as a way to establish certainty. But given the many objections you raise, and given your honesty that you're not really open to the idea that there could be a sound basis for it, I'm fine with letting it go. Agreeing to disagree about Descartes' project is almost a sure sign of philosophical maturity! :smile:

We can assess it, then, by considering how far he set these doubts to rest. Sadly, that was not very far. — Ludwig V

This is another, separate question, also interesting. I assume you don't think Descartes was successful in raising his methodical doubt, given your objections to the method. But are you saying that he failed to set the doubts to rest on his own terms? -- that is, allowing for the purpose of argument that real doubts were raised, are you saying he failed to allay them in the ways he believed he had?

Questioning one’s data, axioms, assumptions in a theoretical context is fine. The context limits the corrosion and ensures that there are ways to distinguish true from false. But without context, one just gets universal corrosion. — Ludwig V

This is the only one of your objections I'd really want to push back on. I'm having trouble seeing why Descartes doesn't have a legitimate theoretical context. Maybe you can give an example of a theoretical context where "questioning one's data . . ." etc. does make sense?

"clever on the surface but pointless when you think about it". It applies to this paragraph. I should have deleted it rather than posting it. — Ludwig V

Oh no worries. Just checking to make sure you didn't really believe it was that simple! :wink:

OK, thanks.

Well, that's a clear statement of moral relativism and/or the incoherence of allegedly moral values.

Do you think there's a worthwhile purpose for the "artificial construction" of morality, or is that just sending the question back in a circle ("worthwhile" = "of moral value")?

Some will argue that answering this question reveals affective valuation as primary and grounding. — Joshs

Sure. I only said that we can't conclude, without further argument of the sort you describe, whether feeling good is what moral good means.

Yes, same point I made above. Morality asks what is the right thing for me to do, not how the species should survive, or how to feel good.

By “understanding ourselves,” I meant fully decoding ourselves—much like scientists are currently attempting with the simplest model organism: the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. This tiny animal consists of 959 cells, its nervous system of 302 neurons, and its genome was fully sequenced back in 1998. Yet even after more than 60 years of research, we still haven't succeeded in fully understanding how it functions. — Jacques

What would decoding mean, then? What have the scientists failed to do with the nematode? As a non-programmer, I guess I'm asking whether decoding is an analogy, or something that literally can be done with creatures.

The paragraph, at the top of page sixteen, on the aesthetics of definitions is harder to follow. An example might have helped. — Banno

Agreed. "Ugly, convoluted, and ramshackle" need some specific instances.

I've sometimes wondered whether aesthetic criteria are more like correlations than causes. In other words, let's not say that the beauty or elegance of a definition somehow explains why the definition is a good one. Rather, we could note that good definitions -- ones which we approve for other reasons -- will often have the characteristic of also being aesthetically admirable. We might even be able to make a tentative identification of useful, fruitful definitions by first noticing their elegance. And vice versa. Emphasis on "tentative."

in philosophy, the real danger isn't just explicit contradiction, but the glossing over of inconsistencies in the name of elegance or rhetorical flourish. That’s where Williamson’s critique really bites. — Banno

This is one of the real dangers, true. Another that I think is equally important is the danger of becoming attached without warrant to a method that assumes what it sets out to prove -- usually something about consistency or the role of logic. Of course, "without warrant" is the argument-starter here!

"Why should I reproduce?" has no answer for the individual from evolution, and so cannot justify any morality, and the species or perhaps 'society' is the moral agent, of which the individual is a mere temporary and dispensable cell. — unenlightened

That's a good way of highlighting the shortcomings of evolutionary explanations of morality. We're being asked to see morality as a kind of trick on us, designed to get us to care about the survival of the real "agent", our species.

Love and sex do feel good, usually, so the trick is very effective, on this view. But what if they don't feel good to me? Or what if I don't care about feeling good? The moment we redirect the question to the individual, the theory is left with nothing to say.

And besides, just cos it feels good, doesn't mean it is good.

Congratulations -- that may be the most dementedly entertaining post I've yet read on TPF! :party: Well, it's Saturday night and Dionysus rules . . .

Not wrong, but not grounding questioning and thus not genuine philosophy, — Joshs

What you say is clear enough, but I'm still missing the warrant for "genuine philosophy." I appreciate questions about grounding very much, and consider them important, but by what standard is it genuine, as opposed to ersatz, philosophy? Are there some uninterpreted "grounds" that are meant to be obvious?

OK, I'll be the one to ask the obvious question: The idea that there is something that "philosophy should genuinely be concerned with" -- how does that enter the story?

You don't seem to even see what I am saying. I see us saying a lot of the same things. — Fire Ologist

You're right that I'm having trouble seeing what you're saying. We may well be saying a lot of the same things.

So your answer to whether I am understanding anything from the article or from what you said must be "no" — Fire Ologist

Not at all. The fact that I'm having trouble grasping your thought is quite separate from what you do or don't understand.

I think I'm following the article just fine. — Fire Ologist

I'm glad of that. All I can do is repeat my suggestion that, for better communication, it can really help to pare down a post to a couple of carefully expressed questions or observations. But this is no reflection on your grasp of the article.

I agree with all of this, as it relates to what we generally mean today by "good will." Kind of like "they mean well" or "good intentions." We give people a break on those grounds, or try to.

Kant had something different in mind, though arguably it would also be grounds for not blaming people when things go wrong. He talked about "will" as in "power to choose freely" (roughly). He thought we had to exercise this freedom and choose the good for the correct reasons. And for Kant, the only such reason was, "Does my action conform to the moral law?" which in turn meant, "Am I acting in such a way that I could advise anyone in my shoes to do the same? Is what I'm doing generalizable?"

The latter is one way of expressing the categorical imperative: no special pleading, no appeal to personal preferences. The law's the law. This characterization leaves out about 17 important points, but that's enough for this thread!

I don’t think this is nitpicking - rather than “why” I would say “how.” — T Clark

No, that's good, and it can extend to Kant as well. His "good will" is very much a "how" thing, at least on my reading. Kant did think we needed to know all the conventional moral strictures, but he argued that if we followed them because of some aim -- even our own happiness, or the happiness of others -- we were off-track. We have to will all our actions because, and only because, they follow the moral law. I call that a "how" thing because, if you actually ask yourself what that would mean, what it would look like in practice, it seems to require enormous centeredness and self-transcendence.

The bad news is, he thought this was another way of stating the categorical imperative!

Good discussion.

Again, we'd need to really dig in to his reasons for "inventing" Methodical Doubt, and what he hoped it could accomplish. I'm willing, if you like.
— J
OK. Hit me. — Ludwig V

It occurs to me that maybe the best way to do this is for you to say why Methodical Doubt is a "wrong idea." That way I could try to articulate what I understand as Descartes' reasons so as to address your points specifically, rather than just paraphrase the Discourse and Meditations.

It's that insistence on being absolutely certain now that creates much of the problem. — Ludwig V

Interesting. I don't know that Descartes addresses this question. His "Pure Enquirer" is definitely imagined as a 1st person, present-tense viewpoint.

But Descartes' project is removed from any specific context, and it's target is everything he, and we, think we know. — Ludwig V

We'll get into this, I'm sure, but I believe the project does have a specific context -- that of attempting through 1st person reflection to arrive at a standard of certainty out of which we can build up our knowledge. What you mean, I guess, is that there is no specific context of ordinary doubt, the sort we come upon in daily life. But I'm arguing that it's precisely the genius of the method that this be the case. Can you keep open the possibility that he is simply not "doubting things" in the ordinary way, and that there's method to his madness?

People forget that something can be possible and not the case. — Ludwig V

Not Descartes! He insists on this. As discussed above, he is interested in what is possible, not actual.

it is, in theory, possible that I do not have two hands. But if I consider the idea carefully, it makes no sense; there is not the remotest actual argument for supposing that I do not have two hands. — Ludwig V

Well, you know what Descartes would say to that: The evil demon has done a very good job here. He has convinced you that your senses are completely reliable, and the resulting beliefs incorrigible. Or to leave the demon out of it: Dreams can be very realistic. We rarely doubt what they represent to us. It is possible, then, that I am something quite other than what I appear to myself to be, and only imagining the reality I experience.

Let me stress again, Descartes doesn't believe this. It's the "pre-emptive skepticism" idea again. He's saying, "Let no one ever accuse me of not taking every conceivable skeptical possibility seriously." If you don't think that doubting your hands is a skeptical possibility, no matter. This counts nothing against the method; you're just saying that Descartes is over-scrupulous or too imaginative.

one of the founders of philosophy discovered that he knew nothing and the other unwittingly showed that it is not possible to know anything anyway. No wonder philosophy is a mess. — Ludwig V

That's clever, but I hope you acknowledge that both those characterizations of the founders are highly debatable. If Descartes really "showed that it is not possible to know anything," why has that conclusion not won universal acceptance?

But I also think if I rephrased what you seem to me to be saying, and questioned “metaphysical” above about the inference, and if I expounded on “the structure of language” being referenced here regarding what is obvious to only one of us, or addressed “capable of only one interpretation” - if I spoke about what you are saying you would probably say I was still getting it all wrong — Fire Ologist

Help! Can't follow this, sorry.

the thing to focus on here is probably that "language about language" is an essential tool.
— J

But language about language remains the clearest domain of the most scientific statements we can make.
— Fire Ologist

“essential tool” similar to “clear…scientific”.

Not the same, but neighbors, or showing family resemblance, if you will. — Fire Ologist

Again, I'm not sure what's at stake with the "neighbor" analogy. If you're asking me, "When you say 'language about language' is an essential tool, do you mean that it resembles the clarity of science?" my answer is no, that's not what I meant. I tried to explain what I did mean.

I’m hoping I’m close, explaining why and how I think that, and asking you to work with me to either dissect and clarify what I said, or agree and/or build on it. — Fire Ologist

Happy to continue talking, but I admit it's often difficult for me to grasp your points. It helps me, when drafting a post, if I write it out first offline, and let it sit, and think about what I'm trying to get across, and then edit the shit out of it!

My biggest philosophical interest and justification for all of the painful rigor, is something eternal. — Fire Ologist

Are you open to the thought that the eternal something might inhere in the process, and not the (unreachable) result of certainty and eternal knowledge?

Would divergence indicate a problem then? — Count Timothy von Icarus

It could. Like "convergence," there are a lot of ways people can exhibit "divergence." To pick one of my examples, if there's no agreement on what the important questions are within a discipline, and the result is that there are many research programs that have difficulty talking to each other, that would be problematic, I should think.

Or, just as convergence is not a sure sign of progress, divergence may wind up being healthy. Sometimes you have to let a hundred flowers bloom, and see what happens. In the context of Williamson, I think we're talking about a kind of convergence we're all familiar with, when an intractable or muddy issue starts to gain form, and those in the field see daylight ahead and begin mutually to use new concepts and methods. Not infallible, of course.

It's worth noting that this paper was delivered at a conference on realism and truth. That likely accounts for why Williamson spends so much time on the realism-irrealism debate.

Williamson apparently sees convergence as an indicator of progress. An interesting thought — Banno

It is interesting. People can converge on a number of things. One type of convergence is an agreement on a solution to a problem. That's not always what happens in analytic phil, though sometimes it does. Another type is convergence on a question as being an important one. Yet another type is convergence on how to formulate that interesting question in the most precise and helpful way. I could go on, but just one more: Convergence can also mean increasing agreement on the right methods to use when inquiring into a problem.

My point is that "mere" convergence -- as opposed to some allegedly demonstrated answer -- can indeed be an indicator of progress, as long as we don't insist on the narrow type of convergence that means "problem solved."

Goodness, as I understand it, certainly does not mean humankindness and responsible conduct! It is just fully allowing the uncontrived condition of the inborn nature and allotment of life to play itself out. — T Clark

This may be way out of left field, but it reminds me of Kant. Chuang Tzu is saying, What you do is morally irrelevant, or at least secondary. What matters is why you do it. For him, the "why" is a rather mystical expression of authenticity and oneness. For Kant, it's the good will, also rather mystical in the end.

I think people find it unsatisfactory when they listen to themselves reciting and performing according to the image they have of themselves. They do not listen to the emptiness, but fill it with theory and listen to that. — unenlightened

Good. The inner chatter is surely not what Chuang Tzu has in mind.

You and J both seem to be saying I’m not even in the neighborhood. — Fire Ologist

I'm getting vague on what the "neighborhood" analogy was for. I think it was about whether linguistic/semantic philosophy can be likened to the most rigorous way of doing science? -- you were asking if seeing linguistic phil that way was "in the neighborhood" of what @Banno was talking about? I said I didn't think so, and tried to say how I saw it.

Well, neighborhoods aside, the thing to focus on here is probably that "language about language" is an essential tool. Philosophers from Witt to Quine to Banno to me will differ about its role. But it's always appropriate to call a time-out, so to speak, and say, "Now hold on. Notice how we're using the words here. Do we agree on terms, for starters? And is there something about the structure of language that may be influencing what (one of us) takes to be obvious, or capable of only one interpretation, or producing some necessary metaphysical inference?"

To me, that's just being a "disciplined" (to use Williamson's term) philosopher. I don't require such analysis to set the philosophical world aright, and as that hasn't happened yet, I doubt it will.