But look how poetically you express this! — path
And he allows you to look for any sense in your way.Its flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And every evening I slow down a reduction of the blinds. — Wilfred Owen
Man is a useless passion. — Jean-Paul Sartre
Of course, you can use metaphorical philosophical terms to innovate or change the philosophical outlook. Existentialists and postmodernists are brilliant at this. Anxiety, being there, deconstruction... But there is a difference. — David Mo
Poetry doesn't analyze its own demolition of language. — David Mo
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. — Eliot
And then he explains this. That is, the analytical task. — David Mo
One point: the characteristic of philosophy is that it is a kind of thought that questions itself. How many books of scientists are there who ask themselves what science is?
This implies a first conclusion: there is no single philosophical method. — David Mo
I think that rather than presenting the positive method of philosophy it is easier to say what philosophy is not: it is not science, poetry, religion, rhetoric... Why not? — David Mo
As regards the definition of philosophy, a quick and general answer would be that philosophy is about the fundamental topics that lie at the core of all other fields of inquiry, broad topics like reality, morality, knowledge, justice, reason, beauty, the mind and the will, social institutions of education and governance, and perhaps above all meaning, both in the abstract linguistic sense, and in the practical sense of what is important in life and why. But philosophy is far from the only field that inquires into any of those topics, and no definition of philosophy would be complete without demarcating it from those other fields, showing where the line lies between philosophy and something else.
Philosophy is not Religion
The first line of demarcation is between philosophy and religion, which also claims to hold answers to all of those big questions. I would draw the demarcation between them along the line dividing faith and reason, with religions appealing to faith for their answers to these questions, and philosophies attempting to argue for them with reasons. While it is a contentious position within the field of philosophy to conclude that it is never warranted to appeal to faith, it is nevertheless generally accepted that philosophy as an activity characteristically differs from religion as an activity by not appealing to faith to support philosophical positions themselves, even if one of those positions should turn out to be that appeals to faith are sometimes acceptable. The very first philosopher recognized in western history, Thales, is noted for breaking from the use of mythology to explain the world, instead practicing a primitive precursor to what would eventually become science, appealing to observable phenomena as evidence for his attempted explanations.
Philosophy is not Sophistry
Despite turning to argumentation to establish its answers, philosophy is not some relativistic endeavor wherein there are held to be no actually correct answers, only winning and losing arguments. While there are those within philosophy who contentiously advocate for relativism about various topics, philosophy as an activity is characteristically conducted in a manner seeking out answers that are genuinely correct, not merely seeking to win an argument. Though the historical accuracy is disputed, a founding story of the classical era of philosophy ushered in by Socrates, at least as recounted by his student Plato, is that philosophers like them were to be distinguished from the prevailing practitioners of reasoned argumentation of their time, the Sophists, who on Plato's account were precisely such relativists uninterested in genuine truth, only in winning. It is from that account that the contemporary use of the word "sophistry" derives, meaning wise-sounding but secretly manipulative or deceptive argumentation, aimed more at winning than at finding the truth. And whether or not the historical Sophists actually practiced such argumentation, philosophy since the time of Socrates has defined itself in opposition to that.
Philosophy is not Science
What we today call "science" was once considered a sub-field of philosophy, "natural philosophy". This had been the case for thousands of years since at least the time of Aristotle, such that even Issac Newton's seminal work on physics, often considered the capstone of the Scientific Revolution, was titled "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy". But increasingly since then, what was once considered a sub-field of philosophy is now considered separate from it. What remains still as philosophy is demarcated from science in that while philosophy relies only upon reason or evidence to reach its conclusions, rather than appeals to faith, as an activity it does not appeal to empirical observation either, even though within philosophy one may conclude that empirical observation is the correct way to reach conclusions about reality. It is precisely when one transitions from using empirical observation to support some conclusion, to reasoning about why or whether something like empirical observation (or faith, or so on) is the correct thing to appeal to at all, that one transitions from doing science to doing philosophy.
Philosophy is not Ethics
One may be tempted to conclude that this means philosophy is entirely about prescriptive matters, rather than descriptive ones; that philosophy is all about using reason alone, without appeals to faith, to reach conclusions not about what is or isn't real, but about what one ought or ought not do, or broadly speaking, about morality. In other words, that philosophy is equivalent to the field of ethics. But as described just previously, philosophy does treat other topics concerning not just morality but also reality, at least the topics of how to go about an investigation of what is real. And while ethics is currently considered soundly within the field of philosophy, I contend that it properly should not be, for as I will elaborate across several later essays, I hold that there are analogues to the physical sciences, what we might call the ethical sciences, that I consider to be outside the domain of philosophy, in that they appeal to specific, contingent hedonic experiences in the same way the physical sciences appeal to specific, contingent empirical experiences. I hold that philosophy bears the same kind of relation to both the physical and the ethical sciences, providing the justification for each to appeal to their respective kinds of a posteriori experiences, while never itself appealing to either of them, instead dealing entirely with a priori reasoning.
Philosophy is not Math
That in turn may raise the question of how philosophy is to be demarcated from mathematics, which also deals entirely with a priori logical reasoning without any appeal to a posteriori experience. Indeed in some ancient philosophy, such as that of Pythagoras, mathematics and philosophy bleed together in much the same way that what we now consider the separate field of science once did with philosophy as well. But today there is a clear distinction between them, in that while philosophy and mathematics share much in common in their application of logic, they differ in that mathematical proofs merely show that if certain axioms or definitions are taken as true, then certain conclusions follow, while philosophy both does that and asserts the truth of some axioms or definitions. So while mathematics says things of the form "if [premise] then [conclusion]", philosophy says things of the form "[premise], therefore [conclusion]". Mathematics explores the abstract relations of ideas to each other without concern for the applicability of any of those ideas to any more practical matters (although applications for them are nevertheless frequently found), but philosophy is directly concerned with the practical application of the abstractions it deals with. It is not enough to merely define axiomatically some concept of "existence", "knowledge", "mind", etc, and validly expound upon the implications of that concept; it also matters if that is the correct, practically applicable concept of "existence", "knowledge", "mind", etc, that is useful for the purposes to which we want to employ that concept.
Philosophy is not Art
Similarly, philosophy has many similarities to the arts, broadly construed (as I will elaborate in a later essay) as communicative works presented so as to evoke some reaction in some audience. Philosophy is likewise an evocative, more specifically persuasive, discipline, employing not just logic, as with mathematics above, but also rhetoric, to convince its audience to accept some ideas. But philosophy is not simply a genre of literature. Whereas works of literature, like all works of art, are not the kinds of things that are capable of being correct or incorrect, in the way that scientific theories are, but rather they are only effective or ineffective at evoking their intended reactions, with works of philosophy correctness matters. It is not enough that a philosophical theory be beautiful or intriguing; a philosopher aims for their theories to be right.
Philosophy uses the tools of mathematics and the arts, logic and rhetoric, to do the job of creating the tools of the physical and ethical sciences. It is the bridge between the more abstract disciplines and the more practical ones: as described above, an inquiry stops being science and starts being philosophy when instead of using some methods that appeal to specific contingent experiences, it begins questioning and justifying the use of such methods in a more abstract way; and that activity in turn ceases to be philosophy and becomes art or math instead when that abstraction ceases to be concerned with figuring out how to practically answer questions about what is real or what is moral, but turns instead to the structure or presentation of the ideas themselves.
For this view of philosophy as bridging the abstract, concerning thought and language in themselves, with the more practical, concerning the direction of our actions, I name my metaphilosophy here "analytic pragmatism".
The word "philosophy" derives from Greek words meaning "love of wisdom", in a sense of "love" that in Greek meant attracted to or drawn toward it. The characteristic activity of philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom, not the possession or exercise thereof. Wisdom, in turn, is not merely some set of correct opinions, but rather the ability to discern the true from the false, the good from the bad; or at least the more true from the less true, the better from the worse; the ability, in short, to discern superior answers from inferior answers to any given question.
I'm tempted to say that every thoughtful person does at least some kind of informal or amateur philosophy. — path
Philosophy is not Ethics
I hold that there are analogues to the physical sciences, what we might call the ethical sciences, that I consider to be outside the domain of philosophy, in that they appeal to specific, contingent hedonic experiences in the same way the physical sciences appeal to specific, contingent empirical experiences.
philosophy is about the fundamental topics that lie at the core of all other fields of inquiry, broad topics like reality, morality, knowledge, justice, reason, beauty, the mind and the will, social institutions of education and governance, and perhaps above all meaning, both in the abstract linguistic sense, and in the practical sense of what is important in life and why
What remains still as philosophy is demarcated from science in that while philosophy relies only upon reason or evidence to reach its conclusions, rather than appeals to faith, as an activity it does not appeal to empirical observation either, even though within philosophy one may conclude that empirical observation is the correct way to reach conclusions about reality. It is precisely when one transitions from using empirical observation to support some conclusion, to reasoning about why or whether something like empirical observation (or faith, or so on) is the correct thing to appeal to at all, that one transitions from doing science to doing philosophy.
but can we ever live this ideal separation of reason from empirical observation? — path
To me it makes more sense to think of philosophy as concerned with the world or existence as a whole and then understand science as part of that world. — path
The comment about hedonic experiences is meant to be analogous to empirical experiences,
— Pfhorrest
But the mere analogy doesn't go very far. — David Mo
I trust science when I want to know what a galaxy is and I add philosophy when I want to analyze the scientific method. Where is the problem? — David Mo
Okay. But how do you get reliable information from the world if not through the senses systematized into scientific knowledge? Pure reason? A sixth philosophical sense? Doesn't ring a bell. — David Mo
The problem with metaphysics is that it remains anchored in the scandal that Kant denounced: no progress, no agreement between metaphysicists. With that barrier, it's hard to convince anyone. Especially when today it is impossible to talk about the roots of reality and infinity without knowing quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity.All of this connects to our current economic arrangement, which encourages a 'technical interpretation of thinking.' — path
Not very widespread among the popes of philosophy.But these are also philosophical virtues. — path
The problem with metaphysics is that it remains anchored in the scandal that Kant denounced: no progress, no agreement between metaphysicists. — David Mo
Especially when today it is impossible to talk about the roots of reality and infinity without knowing quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity. — David Mo
On the other hand, you'll have to recognize that science is more than just machinery. Apted's pre-coordinated spins, time dimensionality, wave collapse, not to mention string theory, are more than beaters and gameboys. If you force me, even gravity theory seems like a metaphysical thing. The problem is that most scientists don't even realize what they're doing and think Einstein is a washing machine. — David Mo
Not very widespread among the popes of philosophy.
Philosophers don't convince others. At most they convince themselves. — David Mo
That's not unlike rejecting art because artists vary or all of religion because religions vary. — path
Instead, we should appeal to everyone's direct sensations or observations, free from any interpretation into perceptions or beliefs yet, and compare and contrast the empirical experiences of different people in different circumstances to come to a common ground on what experiences there are that need satisfying in order for a belief to be true. — Pfhorrest
Antecedent to epistemology, Sellars’s treatment of semantics essentially constitutes a denial of what can be called a semantic given—the idea that some of our terms or concepts, independently of their occurrence in formal and material inferences, derive their meaning directly from confrontation with a particular (kind of) object or experience. Sellars is anti-foundationalist in his theories of concepts, knowledge, and truth. — link
Then we should devise models, or theories, that purport to satisfy all those experiences, and test them against further experiences, rejecting those that fail to satisfy any of them, and selecting the simplest, most efficient of those that remain as what we tentatively hold to be true. — Pfhorrest
I don't blame you if you just get tired of answering me. — path
Do scientists agree? — path
Think also of rejecting all political theory because there is no consensus. — path
Talk of the 'roots of reality' sounds good, but it's the same old metaphysics. — path
Deciding what's so special about science, if anything, is philosophical and contentious — path
Of course, in the higher spheres of science, consensus is broken. But we have to admit that they still have nothing to do with the philosophical chicken coop where there is not even consensus on terminology.And your anti-philosophy view is familiar to me. — path
You have to be foolish to despise something that you have no choice but to do. I'm just asking for a cautious metaphysics. That is to say, not to pretend to function independently of the data that science provides and to move too far away from them.
So I'm not against philosophy. Just that it should be a philosophy that knows where to step, asphalt if it's asphalt and quicksand if it's quicksand. Those who hear the word "quantum mechanics" and start seeing the Holy Spirit make me nervous.
And, unfortunately, my experience with philosophers is that there are quite a few who see the holy spirit and have no idea what quantum mechanics is. — David Mo
Thank you for the excellent reply. We're not so far apart after all. — path
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. — Eliot
There are more like this. Plenty of modern English poetry is not so easy to separate from philosophy. Poets arguably obsess over density. They want the 'music' and 'concept' to be fused together unforgettably. — path
There is nothing to do about it., we're gregarious. — David Mo
You have need be a little hypocritical to keep friends. — David Mo
I forgot this: I really liked the two final verses of Eliot that you include. — David Mo
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph — Eliot
A relief among the quarrelsome tendency of the philosophy forums. — David Mo
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