I agree. The only "continental" I have failed to find anything of interest in is Derrida. There may be something there but I've tried to find it and remain convinced that if there is something of interest there it is probably not significant enough to warrant the effort I would need to put in in order to find it.

But how does it alter rational thought, problem-solving or navigating the physical world? — Vera Mont

I'd say the most significant thing is that it enables collective learning. History and art and literature and music and science and so on.

Is there anything we think that no other species thinks? Or do we think nothing that is uniquely human, but we're the only ones who have the language to express it all? — Patterner

It seems to me that abstract thought, thought about generalities may be impossible without langauge. Perhaps animals of various kinds think some things that we cannot.

Redefining so-called analytic philosophers who are interested in and/ or influenced by Hegel as being no longer analytic philosophers seems rather self-serving.

they represent a departure from ‘classic’ Analytic thought. — Joshs

Here you have an exceedingly vague category "'classic' analytic thought". I wonder why you placed the 'classic' under inverted commas.

It seems to me that they most likely have self-awareness, because otherwise they couldn't navigate the world or tell the difference between the things around them moving and themselves moving. I have often seen them exercising self-control - just ask them to sit and stay while you walk away. Other animals I don't know well enough to opine. Self-reflection seems to me to depend on human language so I'm willing to let that go. — Ludwig V

Not sure if you are disagreeing with me here. I believe animals to varying degrees are self-aware. But I find it hard to imagine how they could be reflectively or narratively self-aware given that they don't possess symbolic language.

The fact that grammar permits it is no reason to suppose that each step is meaningful. — Ludwig V

Yes. all that. So what we call reflective self-awareness which some would say elevates us above the other animals I would say is not anything different in any phenomenologically immediate sense than simple awareness of or sense of difference between self and other, but merely the post hoc narrative about our self-awareness which language enables us to tell.

I have to say, this is entirely intelligible to me and (linguistically) solves a problem I've had for some time - there are clearly non-physical objects of experience. — AmadeusD

"Objects of experience" or 'aspects of understanding or judgement'? Perhaps an example or two would be helpful.

First of all, consider this: can you think of any philosophers generally thought of as Analytic who mentioned Hegel positively, or at all, in their work? — Joshs

John McDowell and Robert Brandom.

But humans go a step beyond that. They're aware that they're aware. — Wayfarer

I'm not sure being aware of awareness makes sense. Perhaps it's just that we can tell ourselves that we are aware on account of possessing symbolic language.

Nice thought. Does this link compliment what you said? — Athena

I think so, In line with my response to Wayfarer above I tend to think that whereas other animals distinguish themselves from everything else in having a sense of self but are not conscious of doing that distinguishing we that possess symbolic language are able to reflectively tell ourselves that we are doing that distinguishing and even tell ourselves that we are directly aware of doing that distinguishing. I tend to think the latter is a kind of illusion though.

:up: Ambiguity may be evocative and thus inspiring as with some poetry. However ambiguity is not necessarily confusion and need not produce confusion.

I don't think you demonstrate an understanding of it. — Wayfarer

If you disagree with an argument it follows that you must not understand it. QED

A part of the universe is aware of itself. — Patterner

The parts of the universe that become aware of themselves and other parts only do so by distinguishing themselves and other parts from everything else.

No worries.

Christ, you sound like a joyless unimaginative old man. — Joshs

That's it. When argument fails you resort to ad hominem. You failed to answer the question as to whether you think it is a good thing to put faith in superstitious beliefs which have no evidence to support them. As I noted I would never seek to deny anyone the right to believe whatever they want provided those beliefs do not serve as a detriment to others. It doesn't follow that I have to respect their intellectual integrity even if their beliefs are socially benign.

Today’s tried and true verities become tomorrow’s superstitions. — Joshs

That's not necessarily true. That past superstitions founded on human imagination and storytelling have been supplanted by scientific knowledge founded on observation does not entail that current science will later be seen as superstition. The fallacy you are falling into lies in thinking that the past gives an inerrant or even more or less reliable guide to the future.

You’re missing Rorty’s point. He believes that the goal of science isnt to arrive at the way things truly are, but to enhance social solidarity. For Rorty it is not just philosophy that resembles art but science as well. — Joshs

I was only addressing what Tom Storm said about Rorty valuing philosophys role in discovering new ways of thinking about things. I haven't anywhere denied that science also may do this.

'Inventing terms' resonates. Richard Rorty often talked about philsophy as being an ongoing activity of "finding new vocabularies." In his view, you get philosophical progress from the creation of new ways of speaking and thinking through which we identify and tackle new problems and experiences, rather than through discovering objective truths. The search for a final vocabulary that represents reality "as it is" was a misguided one. Or something like that. — Tom Storm

I agree with that. Thinking about things in new and fruitful ways can certainly be a positive creative aspect of philosophy. Philosophy as art more than as science. I think the caution needs to be there to avoid imagining those ways as being absolute truths rather as being useful provisional entertainings.

This quote amounts to no more than confusing a personal preference for a profound insight. He falls into a common misapprehension of those with a talent for a specific form
of expression. — Joshs

I see no reasoned critique in or adequate explanation of this seemingly flippant and facile attempted dismissal

One person’s illusion is another’s emancipation. Could be that a bit more diversion and fantasy might actually enhance your life. Perhaps it will even reveal that the ‘facts of human life’ you feel you need to anchor yourself to are more a recipe for conformism than for flourishing. — Joshs

I don't know what you are referring to. By "fantasy" I was mostly alluding to ideas about afterlife. Do you support people believing in such fantasies. Note that I don't condemn people holding fantastic beliefs that might be psychologically necessary for them. But I would imagine that such fantasies become impossible for those who are more highly educated and reasonable.

Diversions are okay provided they don't dominate one's life to the point of occluding reality. Everyone perhaps needs some time off for the mind to 'go on holiday'. Would you count the mind being permanently on holiday as being a desirable state of affairs?

Most 'facts' of human life are not obvious enough to fall prey to philosophy, in the way you want. Surely, philosophy's main role (at least now, post-religion) is to investigate the 'facts of life' as found by science, say. — AmadeusD

There are many obvious facts of human life that are pre-science. There are also newer scientific facts. How do you purport to know what way I supposedly want these facts to "fall prey" to philosophy whatever that is even supposed to mean?

To the second point: Indeed, I didn't see where morality came into it in the first place; I was only quoting you that it was a "moralizing" question. — J

I see philosophy as essentially ethical. Whereas morality involves others ethics need not. "How should I best live" is an ethical question. The answer could be very different for different people and need not involve others for example in the case of those who find solitude paramount.

Where I made mention of the moralizing side of philosophy it was in reference to those who think such things as for example that materialism is a view that annihilates any hope and hence ought to be reviled.

To my way of thinking such an attitude is inherently moralistic and polemical and suggestive that there is only one true general way to think about human life—a way that does not reduce us to being mere animals or chemical robots. Such thinkers often yearn for a supposed golden age of philosophy. I count such attitudes as lacking in subtlety.

I'm not sure we've completely eliminated the normative, though, by putting it in these terms. Presumably you'd say that someone who disagreed with the "philosophy should improve the quality of my life" position was wrong, wouldn't you? Or is that too only meant in the sense of "For me, philosophy is about improving the quality of my life. You may have a completely different conception of what the use of philosophy is, and there's no right or wrong here"? — J

I think the best philosophies are those which are most in accordance with the facts of human life. I don't think living in illusion is likely to lead to flourishing in any real way. It is often the stuff of diversion and fantasy.

Isn't the above a definitive answer to the question of how to do "proper" philosophy? — J

Why would it be when we are all individuals and may find very different approaches individually beneficial?

Even if there were only one way of doing philosophy which improved human life advocating that way.would not be a moral prescription but a pragmatic one.

he's critical of philosophical and scientific materialism on the grounds of reason alone, because he sees that it doesn't make sense. — Wayfarer

That's nonsense. Nothing doesn't make sense on the basis of reason alone except that which is self-contradictory. Materialism is self-contradictory only on the most tendentious and/ or simpleminded interpretations of its meaning. Such simplistic thinking is the go-to of polemicists

As to the OP philosophy if it is to be of any use should improve the quality of our lives. Someone mentioned conceptual analysis. Conceptual analysis would be useful if it produces clarity, and it is arguable that clarity should help us to live better than confusion.

Returning to the improvement of the quality of human life—why should we assume that it will be the same ideas which improve the quality of all human lives?

Another point is that so-called 'analytic philosophy' cannot consist entirely of analysis. Analysis without synthesis would be to quote Dostoevsky "pouring from the empty into the void".

Those who concern themselves with such pointless questions as what the correct way is to do philosophy for example regarding the 'analytic/ continental' or the 'materialist/ idealist' divides are mostly moral crusaders. As it is in science, so it should be in philosophy—all avenues which yield fruit should be explored and we should maintain open minds.

Why should we concern ourselves with such tedious moralizing questions as which is the correct way to do philosophy? If there is one way not to do philosophy that would be it.

I don't usually like to quote passages from other writers but here is an interesting take on philosophy from E M Cioran's A Short History of Decay:

Farewell to Philosophy

I turned away from philosophy when it became impossible to discover in Kant any human weakness, any authentic accent of melancholy; in Kant and in all the philosophers. Compared to music, mysticism, and poetry, philosophical activity proceeds from a diminished impulse and a suspect depth, prestigious only for the timid and the tepid. Moreover, philosophy—impersonal anxiety, refuge among anemic ideas—is the recourse of all who would elude the corrupting exuberance of life. Almost all the philosophers came to a good end: that is the supreme argument against philosophy. Even Socrates' death has nothing tragic about it: it is a misunderstanding, the end of a pedagogue—and if Nietzsche foundered, it was as a poet and visionary: he expiated his ecstasies and not his arguments.

We cannot elude existence by explanations, we can only endure it, love or hate it, adore or dread it, in that alternation of happiness and horror which expresses the very rhythm of being, its oscillations, its dissonances, its bright or bitter vehemences.

Exposed by surprise or necessity to an irrefutable defeat, who does not raise his hands in prayer then, only to let them fall emptier still for the answers of philosophy? It would seem that its mission is to protect us as long as fate’s neglect allows us to proceed on the brink of chaos, and to abandon us as soon as we are forced to plunge over the edge. And how could it be otherwise, when we see how little of humanity’s suffering has passed into its philosophy? The philosophic exercise is not fruitful; it is merely honorable. We are always philosophers with impunity: a métier without fate which pours voluminous thoughts into our neutral and vacant hours, the hours refractory to the Old Testament, to Bach, and to Shakespeare. And have these thoughts materialized into a single page that is equivalent to one of Job’s exclamations, of Macbeth’s terrors, or the altitude of one of Bach’s cantatas? We do not argue the universe; we express it. And philosophy does not express it. The real problems begin only after having ranged or exhausted it, after the last chapter of a huge tome which prints the final period as an abdication before the Unknown, in which all our moments are rooted and with which we must struggle because it is naturally more immediate, more important than our daily bread. Here the philosopher leaves us: enemy of disaster, he is sane as reason itself, and as prudent. And we remain in the company of an old plague victim, of a poet learned in every lunacy, and of a musician whose sublimity transcends the sphere of the heart. We begin to Eve authentically only where philosophy ends, at its wreck, when we have understood its terrible nullity, when we have understood that it was futile to resort to it, that it is no help.

(The great systems are actually no more than brilliant tautologies. What advantage is it to know that the nature of being consists in the “will to live,” in “idea,” or in the whim of God or of Chemistry? A mere proliferation of words, subtle displacements of meanings. What is loathes the verbal embrace, and our inmost experience reveals us nothing beyond the privileged and inexpressible moment. Moreover, Being itself is only a pretension of Nothingness.

We define only out of despair. We must have a formula, we must even have many, if only to give justification to the mind and a facade to the void.

Neither concept nor ecstasy are functional. When music plunges us into the “inwardness” of being, we rapidly return to the surface: the effects of the illusion scatter and our knowledge admits its nullity.

The things we touch and those we conceive are as improbable as our senses and our reason; we are sure only in our verbal universe, manageable at will—and ineffectual. Being is mute and the mind is garrulous. This is called knowing.

The philosopher’s originality comes down to inventing terms. Since there are only three or four attitudes by which to confront the world— and about as many ways of dying—the nuances which multiply and diversify them derive from no more than the choice of words, bereft of any metaphysical range.

We are engulfed in a pleonastic universe, in which the questions and answers amount to the same thing.)

OK. It's just that it seems to me to be a requirement for a species to be social at all. A "society" in which every member felt free to cannibalize the other members wouldn't survive for long, just as an individual that didn't regard itself as a priority (prioritizing its own life over that of an aggressor) wouldn't survive for long. If that's a prejudice, it would be hard to criticize a society or an individual that had it. — Ludwig V

Yes I wasnt trying to suggest that animals could change their preference for their own kind. And I agree with you that such a disposition is a pragmatic necessity for the survival of animal societies as well as human ones

It's significant, though, that you (rightly) hold human beings responsible. What's more, we can't expect any other species to step up and control the situation. — Ludwig V

Right both because they could not do anything about it or even understand it and because they could never have created the situation in the first place.

The exceptionalism that I'm opposed to is the exceptionalism that seeks to disown or set aside our animal nature, pretending that we are not animals. In a phrase, it is the idea that we have "dominion" over everything else. It has too often been interpreted as a licence for tyranny, when stewardship is called for. — Ludwig V

Totally agree with this.

That they are demonstrably lacking the rational faculties of h.sapiens is not an expression of prejudice or bias, but a simple statement of fact, which seems inordinately difficult to accept for a lot of people. — Wayfarer

Its not difficult for me to accept that humans possess symbolic language and thus are capable of collective learning in ways that other animals are apparently not. What is difficult for me to accept is that this means we are more than merely another kind of animal or that we are more important in any absolute sense than other animals.

.

Unfortunately I can find nothing to disagree with there.

:up: Yes it seems that whatever we say about this there will be a way or ways of interpreting it that will make it look aporetic.

I think the inference is that what we can possibly know of things does not exhaust their being.

There has been a well-known disagreement between Kant scholars as to whether Kant intended a 'two world ' interpetation or a 'two aspect' interpretation. I favour the latter. Its just a logical distinction between what things are for us and what they are in themselves. Of course the latter cannot be anything for us by definition apart from being the mere logical counterpoint to phenomena.

It depends on what you mean by "experience". If you restrict the term to mean "consciously experienced" and I agreed with that restriction then I would agree with you. However I don't. I think the point is that an object as we experience it is a function of our interaction with it which would include its affects on our senses. The ding an sich as I understand is intended to denote whatever the thing is in itself beyond its potential to affect our senses. On account of the dialectical nature of our thinking we can think such a thing. It doesn't follow that the thought is a coherent one.

severe hemorrhoidal itching. — BC

Sounds nasty. I hope never to experience it.

I am still not understanding what you are claiming the thing-in-itself is: I am saying it is the thing which excites our senses. Can you put in simple terms what you think it is?

What do you think the thing-in-itself actually is, what concept is being represented by those words?

It represents an object in reality as it is in-itself—i.e., qua itself—i.e., independent of any experience of it — Bob Ross

If 'the thing in itself' denotes the thing "independent of any experience of it" then how can it be "the thing that excites our senses"? To say that is to contradict yourself.

Though we must have the concept of a fundamental reality, otherwise we couldn't be talking about it.

Presumably, our concept of a fundamental reality, in order to have any value, must be consistent with our observations. — RussellA

Right of course we have a concept we call "fundamental reality". My point was that if there is such a thing as a fundamental reality it is not a concept.

I agree that if we are going to attempt to give an account of what fundamental reality might be that it should be consistent with our best science.

This is what I mean by that: in most cases, if you test your models, the result that comes back from fundamental reality, most often agrees with those models. — Carlo Roosen

Should we think of the data that comes from our testing as showing us something about fundamental reality or reality as we experience and understand it? The problem is that the term 'fundamental reality' is not definitve.

How could the force of gravity have been known prior to the force of gravity being discovered — javra

It was known as I said by being experienced and understood as a force. It is irrelevant that Newton may have coined the word 'gravity'. Are you going to try to argue that the ancients had no concept of force?

As though there is no comparative value to be found in these. — javra

There is comparative value to be found in all animal capacities. I haven't denied that it is commonly believed that humans in some senses have greater cognitive capacities than most other animals.

That seems a bit hasty to me. The lion's attitude to non-lion creatures is certainly not based on a rational evaluation of them. But saying that it is all prejudice suggests that it is an opinion that the lion could change. But the poor beast has no choice about it's behaviour; it's a carnivore. — Ludwig V

I wasn't suggesting that it was a prejudice that could be changes, merely that it is a kind of natural prejudice shared by all social animals in favoring their own over other species.

But human exceptionalism can be a basis for pinning responsibility on them. That's the key point of much of the argument about climate change. — Ludwig V

I cannot agree with that interpretation. Humans are responsible for climate change simply insofar as they are causing it.

The notion of gravitational force as a scientific law was unknown until the 17th century, right about Newton's time. — javra

I already acknowledged that the force was known but not the (scientific) explanation for it.

No, it doesn't. It boils down to lesser animals being of lesser value in comparison to humans. One can kill a mosquito without qualms but not a fellow human, kind of thing. — javra

That humans commonly consider other animals of lesser value (just as many other animals do) does not entail that they are of lesser values as such.

If the second, please do enumerate at will ... such that the life of some non-human animal is to be valued more than the life of a human. — javra

:roll: Youre not paying attention to what Ive been saying. A lion will consider the life of some non-lion animal to be of lesser value than a lions life. Its all pure prejudice. Humans are greater than other animals in the sense that they can if they are rational enough see through and overcome their human exceptionalism.

There are no two ways about it. Human exceptionalism stinks.

Sure, but neither does this dispel that the force of gravity was unknown till a few centuries back — javra

Again I disagree. The force was known. It would have been observed everywhere and even felt in the body. What was different was the explanation for the force.

I've already made my case for this terminology here. — javra

What you've said there boils down to saying that no other animals have symbolic language. In that sense and only in that sense are they to be counted as "lesser". Well we are lesser than other animals in many different ways. Need I enumerate them?

The scientific sense of the term "gravity" which we now make common use of is first recorded in the early 17th century. Yes, people before this mused about why things fall back down to Earth, but then you also have musings about witches flying on broomsticks, people walking on top of water, yogis levitating in the East, and the like. — javra

Gravity defined simply as the tendency of things to fall was and is experienced by everyone. It is hardly something one could be unaware of. Speculations about it and the other things you mention are not in the same class for the obvious reason that the other things would not have been common experiences or to be skeptical even experienced at all.

lesser animal — javra

:roll:

Why don't you call it learning? It is after all, what one must be able to do before one can join in. The rower who is "conditioned" to that particular routine is learning to row, acquiring a skill. — Ludwig V

I like to maintain a distinction between what is deliberately learned in order to be able to participate in some specific activity and what one introjects without any awareness of or choice about what is being instilled.

When you decide to "bracket" the social role conception of the self, you have created your own problem. "Self" is a complex, multi-faceted idea. ("Facet" implies that each facet depends on the others for its existence). It is an idea that not realized in identifying objects, but in the ability to take part in various activities. — Ludwig V

I don't see that I have created a problem. I don't deny that social role(s) are a part of any elaborate conception or account of self. As I said before I think there is a more basic and more primordial sense of self, which is involved in the sheer sense or affect or apprehension of being.

We can to some extent talk about that but not in definite ways. It is more something to be evoked or alluded to than something to be defined. To relate this back to the OP somewhat I would say that the animal sense of self is not any different.

If the speed of light, together with all the other physical constants, exhibited no consistency and continually changed, one day 350,000,000 m/s and the next day 250,000,000 m/s, it seems to me that life would not be possible. — RussellA

You mean if there were no constants then no stability including life would be possible? If so I agree. That seems obvious. I think using the word consistency here clouds the issue. For me the word suggests one thing being in conformity with or non-contrary with or non-antithetical to something else and its use would thereby be better restricted to matters of logic.

I don't know the answer to your question. I don't know what fundamental reality is consistent with.

What do you think fundamental reality is consistent with? — RussellA

In accordance with what I say above I think the idea of consistency loses its meaning in that context, both because fundamental reality is presumably not something conceptual and because there is no second thing for it to be consistent with even if it were conceptual.

Good point. Myths are composed or propositions, but that's doesn't mean that they are propositions. Belief does seem to be better - so long as we bracket the context of evidence that applies to most run-of-the-mill beliefs. — Ludwig V

I am not clear what the distinction would be between being composed of propositions and being a proposition or set of propositions or being composed of beliefs and being a belief or set of beliefs. I wonder whether your point was that the use of either term should not confuse us into thinking that a myth is a belief or proposition that we have arrived at by ourselves and decided for ourselves. They are rather beliefs or propositions that are the result of social conditioning. They are introjections. In that sense they are "hinge" or "bedrock" or "background'.

A sense of self that via memory "unifies" experience.
— Janus
It seems to me that there are two related but different ideas of the self. To a great extent, we define ourselves or create who we are by what we (choose to) do. But that sense of self-identity is not always identical with our sense of the identity of others. A further complication is that often our identity is given by the roles that we occupy and these differ in different contexts. (Parent/child, teacher/student, manager/colleague) One can appeal to continuities of one kind or another - stream of consciousness, physical continuity, and so forth - but then there is the question of how important or relevant they are - especially when they conflict. So unity of experience is one factor amongst others. — Ludwig V

I did not have in mind the 'social role' conception of the self at all. I was thinking of the difficult to articulate primal sense of being an individual. As the name imply an individual is one who is not divided. One who experiences a sense of continuity. That is what I meant by saying that memory unifies experience.

:100: If fundamental reality wasn't inherently consistent, life couldn't exist. — RussellA

If fundamental reality wasn't consistent with what? Life? If fundamental reality wasn't consistent with life life couldnt exist? Profound!

No, 'shape' is the name of a discernible. 'E' is the name of a human sound.

I would say that most everyone knows very well what theft, assault, rape, murder and torture are, so I'm not seeing the confusion you apparently think is there.

For example, don't conflate the normal condemnation of murder with the practical ethical question as to which deeds deserve the appellation. The point is that if an act is identified as murder it will be almost universally condemned.

Yes, and each time, in each particular situation, how can you be sure that what makes that situation right or wrong draws from the same rules, criteria and justifications as the previous time, or compared with 20 years ago? — Joshs

The almost universal agreement about the most significant moral issues I outlined above doesn't change from time to time or culture to culture, as least when it comes to members of what one considers one's own community..

I don't know what this means. The only time I need to know right from wrong is in some "particular situation." — T Clark

The counterpoint would seem to be that what you "know" as right and wrong might not be what others "know" as right and wrong. That said, most everyone knows right from wrong when it comes to the most significant moral issues. Theft, assault, rape, murder, torture.

Without humans inventing the letters E and F, how can there be these letters in fundamental reality? — Carlo Roosen

The shapes, not the names.

The presumptousness of the inexpert.

OK. "Myths and metaphysical speculations and religions" all belong in a very special category. I'll express this by saying that they are pre-rational and foundational. By which I mean that they give the people who accept them their framework for explaining and understanding the world. Its misleading, in my view, to say that people believe them because that places them alongside believing that an earthquake is happening or that the harvest is bad - everyday facts. — Ludwig V

I'm not sure about saying that myths and metaphysical speculations are pre-rational. I guess it depends on what you mean by "rational". I think of rationality as "measuring" things against other things and seeing possibilities. Hence its etymological commonality with ratio. In that kind of sense we can say (some) animals are rational from which it would follow that no aspect of human life is at least in that sense pre-rational.

I agree with you that culturally entrenched beliefs were probably at least by and large unquestioned and in view of that they could be thought of as being in the Wittgensteinian sense "hinge propositions" (although I never liked the word "proposition" in that context and I think 'belief' would probably be better).

So yes, people may not have " believed" such foundational ideas if by "beleived" is meant something like "personally arrived at by thinking about it".

Well, I disagree with the "mere" in "mere idea", because some ideas (including "I") are what set the framework within we can identify facts, experiences, etc. On the other hand, I agree that many people (try to) reify that idea. But that is a misunderstanding of language, which is not built in to, but results from imposing a limited model of language on our linguistic practices. — Ludwig V

Of course the idea of self is a kind of master or overarching idea. A reaching for unity. But is it anything more than an idea? I suppose you could say as I already have that there is a pre-conceptual "sense of self" in us and also probably in (some) other animals. A sense of self that via memory "unifies" experience.

Out of respect for our history, I won’t be so brash as to throw the ol’, much-dreaded “categorical error” at you, but rather, merely bringing it up might provoke you into looking for it. Or, in all fairness, showing there isn’t one. — Mww

But you have brought it up and I think now more explanation is required since I'm not sure what you are alluding to. Never fear giving offense. I'm here to learn not to find support for some pet theory.