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.

this is certainly the sort of stuff that has historically be called "philosophy," even if some of it might fall into literary analysis. — Count Timothy von Icarus

And we could find many other examples that illustrate how variously "philosophy" has been understood. I like keeping the umbrella open wide. @Joshs reminded us that Witt didn't view his later work as philosophy at all. (Or so he said! I wonder about his rhetoric sometimes.) (Witt's, not Josh's!). Would it matter? I'm Hegelian in the sense that I believe philosophy is constantly trying to understand its own nature, but using definitions and discriminations to try to winnow the field doesn't seem like the right way to get this knowledge.

But his move removes doubt from its usual context, and especially it's usual consequences. — Ludwig V

Absolutely right. So I read you as saying, "There is only one good purpose to which doubt can be put -- its usual context -- and because Descartes is suggesting otherwise, it's unsatisfying, like shaking hands without touching."

But we can instead say, "This is why Descartes is a great philosopher, not just an interesting one. He believed he had found a whole new and important use for doubt, one that is precisely not its ordinary use. And the ramifications of his idea were so provocative that we've been discussing it ever since!"

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.

But improvising on the basis of an unreliable memory is also quite fun. — Ludwig V

:rofl: Story of my life.

Now you are switching back to wholesale undermining of an entire class. We have ways of telling when our sense our misleading us (I prefer "telling when we have misinterpreted our senses"). How else does Descartes know that he has been misled in the past? This won't do at all. — Ludwig V

Yes, the doubt here is applied to the class, not individuals within the class. The "how else" question is largely answered by Descartes in terms of dreaming. He says he's been misled in a dream --and not known it at the time -- to such an extent that he thinks we have to take the possibility as real. But remember, the question is not "Did it happen?" but "Could it happen?" Of course you may feel it simply could not, but that's disagreeing about a result concerning what can be doubted, not the method itself.

But if we want to eliminate all contingent statements from our knowledge base, we'll end up in a sad state, don't you think? — Ludwig V

Yes! That's why Descartes is so concerned to win back all (or most) of the territory he concedes as uncertain. He uses doubt to demonstrate, in the end, a method by which we can learn what is certain.

Shouldn't we demand clarity as much from those asking questions as those seeking answers? — Banno

Why does the question remain unanswered? Why is it ignored? — Banno

Yes, these are the right questions to pose. If you think they're legitimate in any given case, I'll take that to mean that you agree with Williamson to some extent. And yes, we can't address every problem, but must pick the most tractable and interesting.

Isn’t the way I’ talking here in the spirit of the article? — Fire Ologist

Yes, I thought that might be what you meant, but since physics is science par excellence, I wasn't sure I understood you. Actually, it raises an interesting question: There is the rigor of science, such as seen in physics, but also something else in phil which doesn't claim to be science at all.

he doesn’t so much dissolve all philosophical questions as shows us that scientific , logical and mathematical domains are not self-grounding but instead are contingent and relative products dependent for their grounding on an underlying process of temporalization. Unlike writers like Husserl, Heidegger and Deleuze, Wittgenstein was reluctant to call the questioning that uncovers this process philosophical. He thought of philosophy as the imposing of metaphysical presuppositions (picture theories) on experience but not the self-reflexively transformative process of experiencing itself. — Joshs

All well said, thanks. The part I bolded is where the question of method, obviously, remains open for us. We need not agree with Witt about what constitutes philosophy, while still valuing his accomplishments, under whatever description.

Is this all in the right neighborhood of what Banno is saying? — Fire Ologist

@Banno will have to speak for himself. I don't think so. I looked back to try to see where you got "scientific" from and couldn't find it. Could you explain why you're casting this in terms of what is most or least "scientific"?

The Wittgensteinian Ur-picture, which I don't share, is that "philosophy leaves everything as it was." It is a diagnostic tool to help us understand where our language led us astray. Once we've done that, we'll be left with very little to worry about. Genuine problems will be assigned, or promoted, to the disciplines that study them, such as physics and politics. You can see why this is often viewed as a therapeutic understanding of philosophy -- or, less elevatedly, as plumbing out the pipes.

I think this is what Banno is describing. Again, he will tell us, I'm sure. Personally, I think a dose of Doctor Witt's therapy is a very good thing for all of us from time to time, especially when we get a strong hunch that our terminology is backing us into implausible corners. As I said to Banno above, I don't think all the important philosophical questions can be treated and dissolved in this way, but it's a fantastically useful technique to have at the ready.

It makes a difference to me whether I’m doing something because I think it’s right rather than only because it’s what’s expected of me. — T Clark

OK, I see that. I hope our moral understanding can support that difference.



A good, interesting discussion, which helps lay bare just how far down the difference in perspective goes. Let me quote two things:

there are two categories of descriptively moral behaviors. As I described, the first category of moral norms increases cooperation within an ingroup but can exploit (sometimes coerce) outgroups. The second category solves cooperation problems within ingroups and does not exploit outgroups - as Golden Rule and so forth. — Mark S

When I describe a behavior as innately immoral, I mean that it creates cooperation problems. — Mark S

Now you have every right to describe morality and immorality in this way, and you are scrupulous in calling the behaviors "descriptively moral" rather than just "moral." If there is nothing further to the idea of the moral than a certain group of behaviors that assist humans in cooperating, such a description sounds plausible to me.

But what I'm claiming, along with a few others here, I think, is that this misses entirely what "moral" means, except as a sociological or biological description. When I ask, "Is X the right thing to do?" I'm not posing a question about whether X is consistent with the evolutionary strategy you describe. Of course, nine times out of ten -- perhaps 99 out of 100 -- it may well be. Cooperation, the Golden Rule, etc. are usually very consonant with what I will decide is the right thing to do.

But there are two problems. First, trivially, this is not always the case, unless we mandate the equation by stipulative definition. More importantly, when I choose what I think is right, I do so for ethical/philosophical reasons that do not refer back to cooperation or ingroups and outgroups. Or if they do, I have to ethically justify that connection, rather than merely describe or assert it. In other words, if you ask me, "Why do you think X was the right thing to do?" and I reply, "Because it increases cooperation within an ingroup," you have every reason to persist and ask me, "But why is that a good thing? Is it always? Why in this case?" etc.

I'm trying to avoid putting this in terms of "is can't generate ought," but that's what it comes down to. Mother Nature is what she is, but ethical questions are about what I ought to do. It takes an independent argument to establish that the two are the same.

But sometimes there may also be good reasons not to follow those rules, or at least to question them. When that happens, the difference between morality and social control is important. There’s a difference between doing what’s right, and doing what’s expected of you. — T Clark

Yes, I think so too. So what we're asking is, Is that "difference" also something that can be subsumed under the same scientific explanation from which we derive the theory of morality as social control? Maybe I'm not getting exactly what you mean yet, but it seems to me that is impossible. Doesn't the theory have to account for all we want to say about morality? How can it leave an escape clause for things that are actually right, as opposed to learned or evolved rule-following behaviors?

Since I don't know if the Matrix exists or not, I take the red pill as an experiment. When I wake up in a "new reality", how do I know it is the true reality and not just another [part of the] program? How do the "Masters" know if their reality is a simulation or not? — Harry Hindu

Yes, very good. The "maybe I'm in a simulation" thought experiment can never deliver us out of it.

I don't think the "Masters" would . . . — Harry Hindu

This is where the whole thing gets too vague for me. Who knows what the hell such beings would or wouldn't consider worthwhile?

...we should be open and explicit about the unclarity of the question and the inconclusiveness of our attempts to answer it, and our dissatisfaction with both should motivate attempts to improve our methods. — p. 12

Yes, and notice how this paragraph begins: "Of course, we are often unable to answer an important philosophical question by rigorous argument, or even to formulate the question clearly. High standards then demand not that we should ignore the question, otherwise little progress would be made, but that . . ." and then your quote follows.

My worry about both (some) analytic phil and (some) Witt-derived phil is that the thus-far unanswered questions are indeed ignored, or rather ruled out as nonsensical. "Solve or dissolve," in other words. Let me ask you directly: Do you think there is a warrant for that, or is Williamson correct here? This clearly goes to the heart of the meta-discussion about method.

And what does the honest philosopher (language plumber) think politics is? Total bullshit? — Fire Ologist

The pairing of politics with physics suggests an answer. Neither is bullshit in the least, but (on this view) neither one is philosophy either.

It seems to me to be a question of what we can logically doubt, — Janus

I'm not sure; it's more complicated than it looks.

Descartes doesn't start with, "The LNC is true; therefore . . . " He seems to place relatively little weight on the status of logical certainties. Indeed, he says that the evil demon could make us wrong even about "2+2 = 4". Would he agree, then, that his methodical doubt should exempt logical truths? Evidently not. "I think," for Descartes, has a certainty and an incorrigibility that "LNC" does not.

So if I say that the LNC is indubitable -- that it is not possible to doubt it -- Descartes wants me to explain this in the same way I would explain the alleged indubitability of perceptions, and he doesn't think I can do that. The evil demon holds sway not only over the physical world, but the logical world as well. (Once the demon's sway is broken, as the Meditations proceed, we can recover certainty about logic and much else.)

This raises enormous problems for the role of logic in Descartes' own method, of course.

That said, if we accept a rough equation of "What can be logically doubted" and "What it is possible to doubt," then yes, you've described the general level of doubt that Descartes is employing. He's using methodical doubt for a specific, highly unusual purpose -- a kind of metaphysical litmus test. As I wrote to @Ludwig V, there's a lot more to be said about why Descartes thought this would be so effective as a means of discovering certainty.

It seems to me that Descartes was pushing for metaphysical certainty, and I think it has been amply demonstrated that metaphysical certainty is impossible. — Janus

Hmm. Is the cogito meant to be an example of metaphysical certainty? Many philosophers do disagree that the cogito does what Descartes wanted it to, but to say it's been "amply demonstrated" is an exaggeration, wouldn't you say? Or perhaps you have some other level of metaphysical certainty in mind.

"J" is unsearchable. — Banno

I could do several riffs on that, but I'll spare everyone!

Seriously, is that a problem? No one has ever mentioned it to me. I don't mind changing my monicker if it improves functionality.