The topic of this note is unrefined philosophy and refined philosophy. We being with a story then define terms.

Imagine some primitive tribe chews the bark of a certain tree as a headache remedy. When a tribe member has a headache, they sacrifice two doves to the god of the tree and then chew the bark. One day, scientists extract the tree bark’s active ingredient, name it “aspirin,” and make aspirin available to everyone, eliminating the need to chew tree bark and saving the lives of countless doves.

Unrefined philosophy is philosophy as it is commonly practiced today. The student suffers though The Critique of Pure Reason, endures the pain of The Phenomenology of Spirit, only to lose their way in Being and Time. Here’s an excerpt from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s “Spinoza’s Theory of Attributes.”

1.2 Definition of Attribute
Spinoza defines the term “attribute” thus: “By attribute I understand what the intellect perceives of substance as constituting its essence” (1D4). This definition is reminiscent of Descartes’ notion of attributes as it appears in the Principle of Philosophy insofar as attributes are related to the essence (or essences) of substance. However, as many have noticed, it is not clear from the definition alone what exactly Spinoza means. There are several, by now famous, ambiguities in the definition.[7] These, together with the different interpretative options, are discussed in Section 1.8.

What did Spinoza mean by “attribute”? Discuss. Define different positions and argue as to which is the correct one. And don’t forget to sacrifice two doves.

The subject matter of refined philosophy, as I see it, would be ideas. There are different ideas of what Spinoza meant by “attribute”? Great. Clearly and distinctly define those ideas. Give each idea a label. Teach, ponder, discuss the ideas. Let Spinoza fade into the background. In other words, follow the lead of the hard sciences. Extract the important ideas and discuss them, leaving the baggage for the student of the history of philosophy.

Not that the history of philosophy is a useless study—for the interested student. There are physicists who know much about the history of their subject. But the student of physics isn’t required to master or even read Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Rather, the student studies a calculus text which presents the ideas of Newton, Leibniz, Rolle, etc. in an extracted, clarified, streamlined form. If physics students had to read the original writings of Newton, Leibniz, et al., getting a Ph.D. in physics would be the work of a lifetime.

Moreover, if refined philosophy clearly defined and catalogued ideas, it might eventually have a taxonomy of ideas. Hegel wrote that the idea of quantity contains the ideas of similarity and dissimilarity: similarity in that we cannot recognize two apples unless we see the similarity that the two objects are both apples; dissimilarity in that we must recognize the apples as non-identical to have two distinct objects. Wonderful. So, the idea of quantity seems to derive from similarity and dissimilarity. A taxonomy of ideas might have an entry something like:


Could we derive an ontology from a taxonomy of ideas? An ontology of ideas? What ideas exist and the relations between them?

We might even envision a version of Hermann Hesse’s Glass Bead Game where each clear and distinct idea has its own unique symbol inscribes on a glass bead, and we play at arranging ideas to create something like the symphonies created by the arrangement of musical tones.

We could play other games with ideas. Consider, for example, the game of matching “AbPats”, i.e., abstract patterns. Here’s an example of Al and Bea playing the game.

Al: I take a trash bag out of the box. The box is now empty. So, I put the box in the trash bag.
Pattern: A _contains_ B, then B_contains_A (box contains bag, then bag contains box)

Bea: I row a canoe downstream; I encounter some rocks in the stream, so I row ashore and carry the canoe on the bank past the rocks.
Pattern: A_carries_B, then B_carries_A (canoe carries me; then I carry the canoe)

Al: I “carry” my child financially but in later years when I’m retired, my child helps carry me financially

Bea: I feed the food on my farm with fertilizers, etc. and later the food from my farm feeds me.

Abstractly, the pattern A_**_B, then B_**A seems to be the idea of reciprocity.

Al: Here’s a new pattern. The trash bag is empty except for the box it contains. Overtime the trash bag fills.
Pattern: A_contains_B, but eventually A contains more than B

Bea: The canoe begins with me in it. But I stop and pick up my friend Carol, who has her baby with her. Now the canoe contains more than me.
Pattern: A_contains_B, but eventually A contains more than B
Type: exact pattern match

Al: Here’s a new pattern. Driving down the street, I look aside at someone I know walking on the sidewalk. Due to my inattention, I bump into the car in front of me.
Pattern: Diverted attention causes an accident to occur

Bea: I’m watching my two-year-old but turn away for a moment and he falls, hurts himself and begins to cry.
Pattern: Diverted attention allows an accident to occur
Type: verb substitution match

We might also play the game by keeping the AbPat fixed and looking for instances.

Pattern: short – long – short
• 3 music notes, the first and third are 8th notes, the middle note is a whole note
• Person who won first place, standing on middle higher platform, while 2nd and 3rd are on lower platforms
• In Morse code, dot-dash-dot is the code for the letter F. Or individually, it’s E-L-E
• I place my hand in the shower for a short time, to check the temperature; my shower lasts a longer time; finally, I forgot to turn the shower off before exiting, so I reach in for a short time to turn the water off.
• Tap a nail lightly to get is started; hit longer and harder to drive it into the wood; tap a final time to ensure the nail head is flush with the wood,
• Cannot walk for a short time after birth; can walk most of life; when elderly are confined to a wheelchair.
• A snake that has just had a meal: head area has a small diameter. There’s a large bump in the snake’s belly area; the tail area has a small diameter.
• A tiny acorn gives birth to a large tree which, in turn, sheds a tiny acorn.

Some AbPats have been recognized and named. For example, “reductio ad absurdum” is used when there are only two possibilities, A and B. We assume B is true and reason to an absurd conclusion; therefore, A must be true. Most, if not all, named logical fallacy can be viewed as an AbPat.

Of course, we’d want more than a taxonomy. We’d want to know what ideas correspond to reality (e.g., electromagnetic radiation) and which do not (e.g., luminiferous ether). We might regard this as a branch of refined philosophy, i.e., applied refined philosophy. Seen thus, many sciences are a type of applied refined philosophy.

To sum up, ideas are (or should be) the proper subject matter of philosophy, their description and inter-relations. When and by whom the idea was presented, the person’s life history, their writings, all belong to the history of philosophy, not philosophy proper.

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Speculation: In a religious society, each and every word of scripture is to be understood. Ideally, we place ourself in the mind of the human author to see most clearly what God is trying to communicate. It should not be surprising, therefore, if the attitude towards philosophical works mimics the attitude towards scripture. What did Kant mean in this paragraph? What was he thinking? There must be some meaning. What is it?

No. Maybe Kant was confused when he wrote that paragraph. Maybe if he were writing today, he’d delete the paragraph. If scholars over the centuries can’t agree, then maybe the paragraph should be consigned to the dustbin of philosophical history. No student should have to wade through it. But the ideas that scholars have about the paragraph, if clear and distinct, would belong to a taxonomy of ideas. And students could learn from textbooks that describe that taxonomy, learning along the way the great ideas of philosophers without having to wade through the less-than-great or even gibberish ideas.

Is unrefined philosophy a relic from the age of faith? Would refined philosophy be a philosophy that is closer to science? Would refined philosophy be philosophy as philosophy should be? The answers, I propose, are “yes.”