Especially on the point of some newer members coming in with a ToE — Manuel

Thanks - yes, but that aspect of the OP has been sidelined. I'm intrigued by the apparent way in which criticism of a suggestion is seen as impolite...

Shouldn't it be seen as doing a great curtesy?

As an example of the monolithic style of thought I'd say Hegel takes the cake. — Moliere

Fair. the genesis of analytic philosophy was arguably the rejection of British Hegelianism... all in good keeping with the motion of the Dialectic, of course...

I can say that philosophy has shown me that there may be realms of experience beyond the discursive. That's not to claim that philosophy has talked about them. — J

Well said. Me, too. But I can't say more. :wink:

Let's take math. — J

Maths doesn't close itself off in the way I'm suggesting. Consider potential closures: ' 'There can only be one line through a given point that is parallel to another line". But what if we just suppose that there can be more than one? What happens? Well, Hyperbolic geometry. "You can't have the square root of a negative number"? But what if we just imagine that there is one, and call it "i"? A complete and coherent and quite magnificent geometry. Mathematics is not closed to contradiction, to criticism, to what is contrary to it.

Now let's take music. — J

There's a well-documented path from field songs to Blues to Rock, but it's a path seen by looking backwards, not forwards. Again, music is not closed to novelty and contradiction and looking forward it is not possible to see what comes next - which is why it is such fun.

But I do think that deductive, foundationalist philosophies run a higher risk of being trapped in a method that, for structural reasons, cannot see a different viewpoint as anything other than a deductive mistake or misunderstanding. — J

Yep. And we might add that we can map out what it is about them that makes them this way. Hence my previous remarks about Popper and Watkins. But that's one example amongst many. I was surprised to learn from @Jamal's thread that Adorno has a similar approach... I must get back to that and give it more consideration.

This might also relate to . Seems to me that part of what is missing, if critique is absented, is a lack of what might in information theory be called a feed-back mechanism, a reflexivity, that is needed for improvement.

There are a few things that could be said here about fossilised medieval doctrines. Best not.

You cannot answer the question: "in virtue of what does 'anything not go' given we have already said that we do not possess the truth? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Have you stopped beating your wife?

No, I won't answer your question.

I made "I have all and only the truth" a claim of hubris. This is not the same as "

you were the one who made "I have truth" a claim of hubris — Count Timothy von Icarus

The bit were you said

I won't respond to the rest, because it's all based on this misreading.

So where to from here?

Bit of a shame your post came at the bottom of a page, as it seems to me to deserve quite a bit of attention.

The closure we're talking about is methodological. Popper perhaps set the standard for understanding method, with his discussion of the logic of falsification. Popper showed how to compare the logic of different methods. His apostle, Watkins, wrote a very good piece which was the subject of a thread of mine a few years ago. His article, Confirmable and influential metaphysics, contrasts the logic of some differing approaches to acquiring knowledge. I think we can use this approach here.

I began a long post outlining Watkins' approach, but you may be familiar with it already, and can always read his article if you are interested.

What's relevant here is the way in which some theories, by virtue of their logical structure alone, can be neither falsifiable nor confirmable. So, "All ravens are black" can be falsified, by presenting a raven that is not black. Other theories an be confirmed: "There are white swans" is confirmed by presenting a white swan. Notice that this is a result of their logical structure - U(x)(f(x)⊃g(x) for the former, ∃(x)(f(x) ^ g(x)) for the latter. Any theory with that form will also be either falsifiable or confirmable.

Other theories are neither confirmable nor falsifiable. Some, because they are immunised against either by their structure: "The dragon is invisible to those who do not believe" - if we cannot see the dragon, then it's becasue we do not have sufficient belief, not becasue there is no dragon. Or "Every event has a sufficient cause" - a favourite around here. Consider, if we happen across an event that on the face of it does not appear to have a cause, we cannot conclude that it has no cause - the cause may be hidden from us for some reason. And, since it does not specify what counts as a cause, neither can we find every cause for every event, confirming the theory.

Such theories have a group of specifiable logical structures that prevent criticism. "That style of philosophising is structured to preclude objection."


Now lets' go back and consider Tim's

apprehension comes prior to judgment — Moliere

This is a haunted universe doctrine because it:

• Posits a mythical, inaccessible epistemic layer,
• Relies on unacknowledged metaphysical commitments (dualist structure, immediacy of the given),
• Functions to foreclose critique and legitimate authority,
• And encourages a methodology of closure rather than open-ended dialogue or triangulation.

It presents itself as methodologically innocent, but is in fact haunted by an entire metaphysics—of mind, knowledge, and reality. And once that haunting is seen, the claim can no longer function as a neutral starting point.

@Moliere is rightly sceptical. If someone claims to judge righty without prior apprehension, the comeback is that they had not noticed their prior apprehension; the theory is unfalsifiable. And for any judgement, the prior apprehension remains unspecified; the theory is unverifiable.

The take away here is that the logical structure of a doctrine can shield it from critique. And I hope you will agree that this is not a good thing.

More to come.

I don't really think of falsity as a privation of being. — Moliere

yeah, not a bad reply at all.

The whole architecture is authoritarian in form. That style of philosophising is structured to preclude objection. Each term is defined into place. Every disagreement is downgraded to a misunderstanding of the system. There’s no space for a counter-example, because nothing is allowed to count as one unless it already fits the scheme. That is the problem of the “grand theory”: not that it's false, but that it's closed.

So the come back will be that you haven't understood... becasue the monolith protects itself.

The question arrises, how this is to fit with @J's idea of not critiquing until the whole is understood, when the act of understanding closes of critique.

Puzzling.

Aporia can be seen as precisely the points where dialectic ends and noetic insight is required. — Wayfarer

I agree.

(especially by you!) — Wayfarer

Well, sometimes. True.

But there's stuff after the Tractatus, and not just from Wittgenstein. The stuff that can't be said can still be evaluated, by examining what it does.

Think I've pointed that out before.

So there is I think not all that much difference between our positions... the vanity of small differences, mostly.

You occasionally lean on a dualism or idealism, and it's mostly these to which I object - where things are said that don't work.

It's a question. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Indeed it is. But we agreed:

I won't respond to the rest, because it's all based on this misreading.

And your

...you are also ruling out: "I have truth"

is just such a misreading. Indeed, I gave an example of how truth might work, following Kripke's formal example, to @J earlier in this thread.

Of course there are truths, and we can "have" them.

You are once again conflating "something" and "some thing." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Let's look at that, then.

"Something" means: There exists an x such that... ∃(x)φ(x)

"Some thing" means: There exists an x that is a thing, and... ∃(x)(thing(x) ^ φ(x)

Now in both of these "x" is an individual variable. It stands for some individual. That is, in both, the x is treated as a thing.

So you want to draw a distinction between “something” and “some thing” as if this can do substantive philosophical work—as if the former is lighter or more deflationary in its ontological commitments. But this distinction collapses under scrutiny. In both formulations, we are quantifying over a domain of individuals using an existential quantifier. The variable x in both cases ranges over individual entities, regardless of whether we label them “things” or leave them bare.

This is still treating wisdom as a thing, not, say, an activity, disposition, virtue, capacity or what have you. It is still reifying wisdom.

Yet my point is merely that a vacuous term (or one that is indeterminately mutable) cannot be the criteria for "what goes," (i.e. which "narratives" are accepted) else "anything goes." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Here you have it again. I don't see that you have explained how "wisdom" (our present example) is a vacuous term. I haven't said that it is vacuous - far from it. You appear to think that something I have said leads directly to that conclusion, but what?

Lets' backtrack - it's always worth keeping an eye on how we got here. You said

If philosophy is the love of wisdom, it is presumably the love of something in particular — Count Timothy von Icarus

To which I objected, because it makes assumptions that I think are unreasonable. It presumes that for some notion to be coherent or meaningful, the object of its love (wisdom) must be determinate—a particular something. It presumes that “wisdom” must function like a referential term—picking out an object in the way that “the tree” or “the number 2” does. It presumes that this object must exist in some way that justifies the pursuit.

It comes back to a picture that has you enthralled, such that there is wisdom out there somewhere, wisdom as a treasure hidden in the world or the mind, and our job is to find it; but why shouldn't wisdom be instead what we do?

Philosophy need not be the love of some particular thing called wisdom. It might be the love of wise ways of being—and those are not found but lived.

I'd make the case that the builders need the critics — Moliere

Speaking roughly, it's just myth-making until the critique begins - then it can be doing philosophy.

No, just the idea that "wisdom" cannot be vacuous or apply to everything equally. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There's whole worlds between what is vacuous and what is determinate. That seems to be our point of difference. Those worlds are were we find the unknown, the unknowable, the mysteries and mystical, as well as scientific method and myth.

If it's wisdom, it would have to be something. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You are treating "wisdom" here as an individual, and making an existential instantiation? That is,
∃(x) (x is wisdom) ⊃ (a is wisdom) were "a" is a new individual constant.

That's inconsistent with your claim that wisdom is not a thing:

"Something in particular," not "some particular thing." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Hmm. But if wisdom is not a thing, we can't make the inference that it is a determinate thing.

Otherwise "anything goes." — Count Timothy von Icarus

This just doesn't follow.

But then what is wisdom — Count Timothy von Icarus

And again, asking this supposes that there is a sequence of sentences such that their conjunct sets out all and only what is wise and excludes all that is not wise.

And there need not be any such conjunction of sentences.

Instead, what we might do is map out how we find people using the word "wisdom" in various situations, noting the similarities and differences and so developing an open map of the ways the word functions in our community.

A much more involved and interactive task than thinking up a definition in the comfort of your armchair.

Along the way, we might develop some understanding of why not just anything is wise.

Is that so hard an alternative to grasp?


(added: Just to be clear, I am here playing along with the idea that we could set "wisdom" in syllogisms in this way, in order to show that in doing so we must treat wisdom as something it is not.)

So, I won't respond to the rest, because it's all based on this misreading. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Love this. On this, at least, we might agree!

So where else might we find agreement?

How am I reading "determinate content"? I presume you mean something along the lines of a sequence of sentences such that their conjunct sets out all and only what is wise and excludes all that is not wise. Such a sequent, when applied, provides an algorithm that systematically ascribes "wise" or "not wise" to every posited example.

Is that not so?

I understand your view to be that unless such a sequent can be set out, then wisdom is vacuous.

And I think that approach misguided.

But this is just your recitation of your ideosyncratic worldview. — Hanover

:smile: Of course it is. Who else's would you have me recite? :wink:

Thanks for the perspicacious post. — Gnomon

Cheers. Hope the OP is helpful.

...you could spend a lifetime “dissecting” other people's ideas, and end-up with a pile of disconnected notions. — Gnomon

Oh, to be so lucky!

But as you so eloquently say, we do find ourselves putting the pieces of our history together in a narrative. This is an inevitable consequence of living a reflective life. This may be a sort of mythologising, a sense-making that to a large extent sits outside critical appraisal, at least by it's author.

Tolkien cannot be wrong about what happens in Lord of the Rings.

also agree that attempting to find a static set of rules that will apply correctly in all Real World situations is a fool's errand. — LuckyR

Yep.

Of course this doesn't mean that we can't make use of rules at all in our explanations, only that we be willing to revise them.

, as I've said before, it seems to me that for you language is all names, that you think each word stands for something. And I think this is mistaken. I think that what counts is not what the word stands for - if anything - but what we do with our words in context.

And i think this difference prevents us seeing eye to eye.

The "cost," when it comes to a philosophical Theory of Everything, may be something very much like this. Not every sentence can be given a truth-value, though such sentences may be needed for consistency. — J

Yep.

Sometimes opening a meta-discourse such as your OP will draw people into a frame of reference that's fresher than their usual ones -- or at least that's how I experience it. — J

Cool. It's kinda what I had in mind. It seems to me there is a lot of very bad philosophy being done in the forums, and this thread is by way of articulating the problem, mostly to test if I'm mistaken.

Why should we limit wisdom to being either a particular, or a thing?

"Something in particular," not "some particular thing." Which is just to say, the term wisdom has to have some determinant content or else philosophy, the love of wisdom, would be the "love of nothing in particular." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Why must wisdom "have some determinate content"? There's the idea again that if it has no "determinate content" then it is nothing, but that doesn't follow. The assumption is that without determinacy—without clear, specifiable content—“wisdom” is vacuous. But this is not a necessary conclusion. The leap from indeterminacy to meaninglessness is unwarranted.

Tim's argument reveals again a tendency toward conceptual authoritarianism: the idea that unless a term can be decisively bounded—defined, categorized, and agreed upon—it cannot function in serious discourse. But this is not how language works, especially moral and philosophical language. Terms like “wisdom,” “justice,” or “goodness” do not operate by being strictly defined; rather, they are thick concepts, entangled with practices, forms of life, and modes of evaluation. Their meanings are enacted rather than fixed. Philosophy consists not in flattening the knot but in understanding how the knot was tied.

Tim's view betrays a kind of metaphysical anxiety—a need for fixity. But philosophy, at its best, is precisely the space where such anxiety is exposed and undone. The refusal to accept a concept unless it can be nailed down is a refusal to stay with the concept. It’s not a philosophical strength; it’s a failure of nerve. The world is uncertain. Deal with it.

Isn't it entirely possible that wisdom could be seen in what one does rather than in what one believes? We need not assume that there is one true account of what is wise. Indeed, if one reflects on the many and varied situations in which wisdom might be displayed, that seems quite unlikely.

Apparently it cannot be truth. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Why not? We don't need to embrace dialetheism (that something can be both true and false) to admit that sometimes we don't know if something is true, or if it is false.

So again, we might prefer coherence to completeness.

I can't see why you allow the "perhaps". Socrates would not get started without Laches and Euthyphro and Alcibiades. Equally, Plato needed Socrates to get started on his journey. — Ludwig V

That's fair. If I recall, at the time I wrote "Perhaps you can't have one without the other" I was puzzling about whether it really is dissection that marks the emergence of doing philosophy, as opposed to just making shit up. It's so tempting to supose that elenchus that marks the beginning of something new and different, and to say that philosophy consists in exposing ideas to criticism. Hence the "perhaps", guarding against this perhaps too extreme view. But that's more rhetorical posturing than a philosophical commitment.

And these may be ‘beyond discursive thought’ and so ‘philosophizing’ in the sense of verbal formulation. But it is still part of the broader territory of philosophy (or at least used to be.) — Wayfarer

Trouble is of course that if something is beyond discursive thought then it cannot be said. We could not have an argument that reached such a conclusion. And indeed the ending of elenchus is often aporia - the method of dissection ends without resolution.

This relates to the other dialectic mentioned in the OP, parallel to that between dissection and discourse – the tension between coherence and completeness.

Mysticism presents as a desire to leap from the aporia to a conclusion, to complete the dialogue.

But it does so at the risk of losing coherence.

I've said this previously in relation to the path you follow. The leap from aporia to closure cannot be justified. Of course that does not make it wrong, or the conclusion false – if such terms even apply here.

There are two paths here. One is silence, were we grant that there is nothing more to be said. The other is showing, were the value of one's beliefs is seen in what one does.

Karl Stone has the martyrdom he desired.

I'd count introspection as a tool rather than a method. And not a good one.

Your threads tend to be dissections rather than discourses. Those "What is..." questions, together with the way you like to dig in to detail.

So we don't just agree on what is metaphysical...

Right - hence the distinction in ancient philosophy between praxis and theoria. — Wayfarer

So let's go back to my question to Tim. If we are to focus on praxis, then what does the Grand Theory Of All provide? Why do we need an analysis of being in order to say that the flower is pretty?

My suspicion is that it provides a rhetorical tool for authoritarianism. It's the elite philosopher kings who really understand which flower is beautiful and which plain.

The flower is pretty not because we’ve deduced it from a theory of beauty, but perhaps because it calls something in us to attention—and we respond. The work of philosophy might be to keep that response from being stolen by those who would pretend it isn’t real until it’s been certified.

Perhaps here we agree that the thermometer reads 0℃ and yet differ as to the appropriate response?
— Banno

Another, similar way of saying the above. We concede the fact of the matter but notice that different responses might make sense for different people. — J

In terms of Davidson's triangulation, the temperature being 0℃ is one vertices, the other two being the bloke not putting on his coat on the one hand and the interpretation of that as a bit crazy on the other.

For folk from Canada, 0℃ may be balmy. The fact of it being 0℃ is different to the interpretation given it.

Thanks, Janus. Join us when you can.

...analytic and the synthetic... — Janus

Part of the thinking that went on before posting here was a rejection of those very terms, and the selection of 'discourse' and 'dissection', in the hope of leaving behind the baggage of the term "analytic". And don't mention "continental".

Another part was my trying to put a finger on what I find distasteful about Peirce, Deleuze, Merleau-Ponty, Whitehead and others.

I'd also like to consider the early socratic dialogues as dissections rather than discourses. Perhaps the move to discourse came as Plato moved from telling us what Socrates said to telling us what Plato said.

as 180 Proof points out that philosophical practice cannot be neatly categorized in a strictly binary manner. — Janus

Again, I'm happy with that, but still think the distinction worth some consideration.

, , all good stuff. Can I draw your attention to how these posts are now about evaluating what we do so that we can improve? and not just that, but what it is to become better?

I like how this is panning out.

All the examples are artificial. — Wayfarer

Sure.

And the guitarist practices outside of the performance.

I recall, back when I meditated, long sessions in which my teacher had us focus in great detail on various entrails. A confronting reality that for me at least fed in to an empathy for the bungled and botched.

I see what Count Timothy is getting at, though I don't think it's well expressed. — Wayfarer

I had to smile at this, since Tim prides himself with some justification on his erudition.

I submit that there is an actual good — the good — Wayfarer

I've been chasing Tim on this very issue in the recent thread on aesthetics. Here's what I asked:

I've made the claim that aesthetic assessments are a construct of human culture, built by an interaction between the object, the speaker and those in the community.

How are assessments made, in a world that features your "sui generis source of beauty in the cosmos"?

My hands are open: If your assessments in your account are made in the same way as are assessments in my account, then deciding if something matches the "sui generis source of beauty in the cosmos" is a construct of human culture.

If so, like Wittgenstein’s beetle in the box, , the "sui generis source of beauty in the cosmos" drops out as irrelevant. a placeholder for something that makes no practical difference in our shared practices of judgment. — Banno

Supose that there is an actual good. Now supose that we are in a position to pass a judgement on some act - kicking a puppy or stealing a loaf of bread to feed one's children or what ever - is that act Good? We look to the circumstances, to the consequences, to the intent of the participants. How would what we do in making that assessment differ, if there is no "actual good"?

Do we really need to understand the nature of being, to have the whole and complete truth before us, before we decide that the sunset is beautiful, or that kicking a pup is wrong, or that stealing to feed one's children is forgivable?

God, I hope not. 'cause if we do, we're pretty much fucked.

the discourse vs. dissection idea, which is a very helpful way to think about phil. — J

Cheers.

got to take a class once with Richard Bernstein, and I remember his credo, which was something like this: "You have to restrain your desire to respond and refute until you've thoroughly understood the philosopher or the position you're addressing. [And boy did he mean "thoroughly"!]. — J

Trouble is, we have to act. We don't always have the time, fortitude or inclination to understand someone - especially when their view is well removed from our own.

There are views that look to be not worth the effort. And we have to make judgements as to where we start our efforts and what to look at in detail.

There are posts in this thread to which I have chosen not to respond simply becasue I want to go have breakfast. I made a choice between those that seemed to progress the discussion, and those that don't. Others may make a different choice, and hopefully take this thread in directions I find unexpected.

I appreciate the Richard Bernstein account. Trouble is, there are limits on our resources. But also, responding and refuting can be a part of developing an understanding.

And there is this: we are involved in

a fairly sheltered discourse — Tom Storm

Doing philosophy is a human endeavour. While it reaches for glory and joy, it stands in mud, puss and entrails. :wink:

So to avoid circularity, a TOE will have to provide this account on a different level than the theory-internal explanations of other things. — J

This put me in mind of the use of metalanguage in Tarski, a hierarchy in which the truths in each language are set out in it's metalanguage, and infinitum.

There's an alternative, from Kripke, in which instead of assigning "true" or "false" to every sentence, we assign "unknown"; then we proceed to assign values of "true" and "false" as we interpret the language.

We thus avoid assigning a truth value to "This sentence is false".

Interestingly, this approach provides a theory that is consistent at the cost of not assigning a truth value to every sentence.

Run that alongside Midgley's idea of plumbing. Both find fixed points in an interdependent web. Both are partiality, interdependent, and rely on the practical need to patch leaks as they arise.

I think Rorty is probably right that philosophy is essentially a discursive project. The history of philosophy resembles a conversation in slow motion, one marked by fashions and phases, as well as by committed reactionaries and revolutionaries. But it is also a fairly sheltered discourse, since most people take little interest in it and are effectively excluded by barriers such as literacy, time, education, and inclination. As a result, there tend to be two conversational groupings: the intellectual 'elite', and the rest of us, who paddle around in the shallow end with the slogans, fragments, and half-digested presuppositions that trickle down. — Tom Storm

Nice.

Banno's Logical Positivists — Leontiskos

Oh, Leon. Already misrepresenting. You are a liar. You know better, but you do this sort of shit. And repeatedly and to others as well as to me.

It's a shame, really. You can do better.

If philosophy is the love of wisdom, it is presumably the love of something in particular — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't see that this is so.

Why should we limit wisdom to being either a particular, or a thing?

And see how even here, at the first step, so much is presumed?

We need not assume the dilemma that either there is one true narrative, or else all philosophical positions were equally wise.

Hubris, to presume on has access to the one true narrative. That, and a certain deafness. One might cultivate a sustained discipline of remaining open to what calls for thought. One might work with others on developing a coherent narrative while not expecting to finish the job. Something to sit between "I have the truth" and "Anything goes".

Since the beginning of philosophy there have been those misvaluating the highest concepts to the point that they were considered more real than the world of the senses, when in reality they were merely the most general, the 'highest' abstractions of that world, and consequently also the most empty. — ChatteringMonkey

Yep. That's the poison for which critique is the antidote.

Interesting OP. It does often seem like there are people here who are trying to understand what others think, and others who want everyone to think like them. — Tom Storm

Sure. I would also draw attention to the extra step of casting a critical eye over what is being thought. A shift from hermeneutics to critique. The best philosophical conversations seem to hold both in tension: sympathetic understanding and critical scrutiny.

Added: Yep.

eulogistics
— Banno

No such word... — Wayfarer

:wink: Indeed - although there is now such a word, created self-consciously. Good on you for noticing. I did indeed want something that portrayed an obsession with the dead, but thought "necromancy" a bit much. So I invented a term for the study of eulogies. The threads hereabouts on Kant, Aristotle, Plato, Descartes, yes and Wittgenstein and Kripke, too, as evidence.

It's not the topic that is problematic, so much as the approach.

And we have some agreement that philosophy ought to be therapeutic, although while you take that as placing it on the shelf alongside the self-help books, I want a therapy that prevents and cures obsessions with complete narratives at the cost of coherence, in which we might accepting that understanding may sometimes consist in living well with contradiction, rather than resolving it. It’s also a kind of ethical stance—valuing honesty, humility, and the capacity to dwell in uncertainty over the satisfaction of final answers.

And it would be fair to accuse me of virtue signalling here. But you have seen my work, and know that I don't live up to this ideal.

Knowing you these many years, I have learned your worldview to be deeply religious, leaning heavily upon mysticism, enjoying Continental philosophy, although having an admiration of Descartes and wanting to better understand qualia and metaphysics. — Hanover

I'm flattered that you have paid me so much attention. :wink:

You read me as denying that I have a worldview. I presume you got that from

Not only did I not have a philosophy, I wasn’t even looking for one. — Banno

And you are right, this is an overreach. I recall dithering between existentialism, Popperian falsification, and a half-understood utilitarianism, then finding a way to bring these together by looking closely at the language used.

In my defence, the aim of those who's engagement with philosophy is primarily a discourse is completeness, while whatever world view I accept is certainly incomplete. My aim, in writing on these forums, and in applying the analytic tools we have at hand, is to achieve some measure of coherence. Those of us who see philosophy less as a doctrine and more as a practice of clarification—of untangling the knots in our shared language—inevitably work with fragments, revisable insights, and partial alignments.

While some approach philosophy as a quest for a complete worldview, my interest is in the practice of philosophical inquiry itself—how our language reveals, limits, or reshapes the positions we take. In that sense, coherence—not completeness—is my measure of success.

So, point taken. Thank you.

Yep. See the mention of Midgley, in my reply to @180 Proof.

Where we - you and I - may lock horns is where I occasionally see science has having made certain conceptual assumptions, or as having presumed that it's conclusions apply where they do not. But it is incumbent on the philosopher to first understand the science before critiquing it.

I recall an argument that raged in a University Magazine between an old Kantian Ethicist and an agricultural scientist, many years ago. The Scientist claimed to have a way to ensure that beef was "good", involving certain measurements of the animal before slaughter. The Kantian of course could not resist pointing out at length that this was not "good", and in particular that the slaughter did not deserve the affirmation.

Never the twain, as I recall, both leaving the conversation perplexed as to what the other meant. Midgley would say the philosopher’s task here is not to discredit the science, but to situate it—morally, linguistically, and existentially—within the wider network of human concerns. Not to refute the scientist, but to enlarge the conversation so that words like “good” are not silently reduced or misappropriated.

I don't agree philosophical practice is strictly binary... — 180 Proof

I'm happy to mix the two. Glad you can see the line of thinking here, and you are right to link it with Midgley. A related point came up in another thread only yesterday:

Multiple true descriptions can emerge, provided that they are mutually interpretable and answerable to the same worldly constraints. That preserves both Davidson’s realism and the possibility of plural, non-relativistic perspectives. — Banno

Midgley argued that different explanatory modes (say, biological, psychological, sociological, or aesthetic) are not competing for the title of The Truth, but are each illuminating different aspects of reality, as long as they remain answerable to the shared world—that is, not solipsistic or fantastical, but rooted in experience, practice, and evidence.

,

Perhaps here we agree that the thermometer reads 0℃ and yet differ as to the appropriate response?

So the world is constant, yet the utterance changes against the beliefs of the speaker, and is to be triangulated with the beliefs of the interpreter.

Do we then have agreement as to the facts, but not as to what to do about them?