But look how poetically you express this! — path

You're the one who said it: poetry. (Bad poetry in my case. Writing in English costs me sweat and blood.)

So, philosophy is not poetry. What's the difference?
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. Poetry doesn't analyze its own demolition of language. The poet writes:

Its flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And every evening I slow down a reduction of the blinds. — Wilfred Owen

And he allows you to look for any sense in your way.

The philosopher writes:

Man is a useless passion. — Jean-Paul Sartre

And then he explains this. That is, the analytical task.

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?

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 not a single philosophical method.

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

To be sure, we have two words for a reason. Philosophy is not poetry in the everyday sense of the terms. I wouldn't even say that philosophy is 'really' poetry in some complicated way. I just claim what you yourself admit, that metaphorical philosophical terms change philosophy. I agree with Rorty that metaphors and images are even dominant as the background or framework for careful arguments.

Poetry doesn't analyze its own demolition of language. — David Mo

That's a strong statement which is true of some poetry.

This reminds me of Derrida:

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

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. They are perhaps more willing to be suggestive. They aren't in the middle of a debate. So the social context is different, but stances on existence are captured.

I like Sartre. I like 'man is a useless passion.' It's grim. It's a powerful summary. I also think there are some killer lines in Existential Psychoanalysis. He uses the metaphor of a bird swallowing a rock for our relationship to scientific knowledge. We can and cannot claim it, even if we discover/create it. He writes about destruction as a form of appropriation, things like that. Perhaps you are familiar. Then there's Nausea. That's a great philosophical novel.

If someone writes a dry non-narrative paper on the ideas in Nausea, does it then become philosophy? If someone translates Plato into English iambic pentameter, does it cease being philosophy?

And then he explains this. That is, the analytical task. — David Mo

Typically, yes. Philosophers make a case, or at least elaborate. But that's a convention. Wittgenstein gave us remarks. And what about La Rochefoucauld ? We get lots of little aphorisms that have a cumulative effect.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/9105/9105-h/9105-h.htm#linkmaxims

I'm not against the analytical task, just to be clear. I just don't think that's the only way to go. It's one more approach that analysis might put into question. Maybe as philosophers we realize that we have been dogmatic in our notion of what analysis is or how it should be done.

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

We agree that there is no single method. I haven't studied physics since I was an undergrad, but I do know that Wittgenstein was influenced by some scientists who did wrestle with what they were doing.

http://wab.uib.no/agora/tools/alws/collection-9-issue-1-article-62.annotate

My view is that 'philosophy' has no exact meaning but can be thought of as the name of a genre. For historical reasons both Plato and Wittgenstein are 'philosophers' while Harold Bloom is not. I just read a sociology classic (The Social Construction of Reality) that might as well be philosophy. And is Marx a philosopher or a sociologist? Who cares, right? We all just read books. Loose classifications are only good for so much.

I think maybe we agree that philosophy is more about a kind of self-questioning thinking that is tangled up with large issues. I'm tempted to say that every thoughtful person does at least some kind of informal or amateur philosophy.

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

This was the approach I took in the What Is Philosophy? thread that spawned the thread that spawned this one:

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

This ties in closely to the next two threads I intend to start, one of them on the faculty needed to do philosophy (spoilers: it’s personhood or sapience), and then another on who is to do philosophy (professional vs amateur, basically).

Caramba, what a long comment! Let me to get a time to read it.

For the moment I am surprised that it excludes ethics, which is a part of philosophy universally admitted by philosophers themselves. I'll take a closer look.

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.

Starting here because we'll have to start somewhere.
I think we have to distinguish two things: morals and ethics.

Morality is a system of rules of what must be done, which starts from a more or less coherent idea of good.
Ethics is an explanation of the meaning of that good that is included in every system of morality.

One example: the Homeric world is dominated by the concept of success and honor. It is good what leads to triumph (of the warrior mainly) and gives him honor among his peers.
An ethical question: is the concept of Homeric virtue compatible with the morality of modern responsibility?
Non-philosophical question: was Homeric morality better?
Philosophical-ethical question: are there objective criteria for evaluating the morality of different cultures?

I don't think there is a scientific system of ethics because there is no way to prove empirically that good is this or something else. Hedonism, which you quote, is not a scientific system but a particular (philosophical) conception of what the moral good is. What experiment can prove this? You don't have to experiment at all to see around you that many people are not governed by the principle of pleasure. You don't have to experience anything to see that many of those who are governed by the principle of pleasure do things that others say are morally wrong. Ethical reflection is needed on this point, which according to your own criteria, will be philosophical (not experimental).

The question remains whether prescriptive moral activity can be philosophical or falls outside its scope.

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

I like this definition. It hits the spot.

In my opinion, when specialists in other fields are engaged in clarifying fundamental concepts that are not included in their own work, they are going into philosophy, even when they are using their own scientific knowledge. An example: when Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg and others discussed the real content of quantum mechanics they were doing philosophy, and they knew it!

That’s a combination of a bunch of comments from the other thread, so yeah it’s long.

You and I have been over the ethics thing before, and it now sounds like you agree in principle with what I’m trying to say but disagree with how I say it: that philosophy’s role in normative questions is figuring out the foundational principles to use to figure out what is good or bad etc, not in actually deciding what in particular is good or bad.

The comment about hedonic experiences is meant to be analogous to empirical experiences, not saying that hedonism can be empirically proven. My philosophical views on how to answer normative questions end up saying to appeal to hedonic experiences to answer them, in a way analogous to how science appeals to empirical experiences to answer factual questions.

But that’s way beside the point of that whole bit, which is simply that philosophy isn’t JUST about normative questions, and not ALL normative questions are philosophy: philosophical and ethics aren’t synonymous.

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.

I do see the advantages of this approach, but can we ever live this ideal separation of reason from empirical observation? Consider Hume's problem of induction. In terms of something like pure reason there is no apparent reason to trust experience at all. We live and seemingly can't help living a kind of animal faith in the uniformity of nature. To me, Hume made that animal faith visible to us. That's just one example.

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. They don't run side by side, each doing their own job. Philosophy in the strong sense places determines not only what science is but constantly tries to clarify its own task. It's the identity crisis of human existence. Any philosophy that can define itself would in that sense also die. Philosophy is always already metaphilosophy and meta-metaphilosophy, to put it aphoristically.

The comment about hedonic experiences is meant to be analogous to empirical experiences, — Pfhorrest

But the mere analogy doesn't go very far.

but can we ever live this ideal separation of reason from empirical observation? — path

It seems that Hume or Kant lived very well with that separation of fact (ideal?). 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?

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

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.

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

This is becoming a topic for another thread, but I elaborate much further upon that analogy elsewhere:

With regards to opinions about reality, commensurablism boils down to forming initial opinions on the basis that something, loosely speaking, looks true (and not false), and then rejecting that and finding some other opinion to replace it with if someone should come across some circumstance wherein it looks false in some way. And, if two contrary things both look true or false in different ways or to different people or under different circumstances, commensurablism means taking into account all the different ways that things look to different people in different circumstances, and coming up with something new that looks true (and not false) to everyone in every way in every circumstance, at least those that we've considered so far. In the limit, if we could consider absolutely every way that absolutely everything looked to absolutely everyone in absolutely every circumstance, whatever still looked true across all of that would be the objective truth.

In short, the objective truth is the limit of what still seems true upon further and further investigation. We can't ever reach that limit, but that is the direction in which to improve our opinions about reality, towards more and more correct ones. Figuring out what can still be said to look true when more and more of that is accounted for may be increasingly difficult, but that is the task at hand if we care at all about the truth.

This commensurablist approach to reality may be called "critical empirical realism", as realism is the descriptive face of objectivism, empiricism is the descriptive face of phenomenalism, and what I would call a critical-liberal methodology is more commonly called just "critical" as applied to theories of knowledge.


With regards to opinions about morality, commensurablism boils down to forming initial opinions on the basis that something, loosely speaking, feels good (and not bad), and then rejecting that and finding some other opinion to replace it with if someone should come across some circumstance wherein it feels bad in some way. And, if two contrary things both feel good or bad in different ways or to different people or under different circumstances, commensurablism means taking into account all the different ways that things feel to different people in different circumstances, and coming up with something new that feels good (and not bad) to everyone in every way in every circumstance, at least those that we've considered so far. In the limit, if we could consider absolutely every way that absolutely everything felt to absolutely everyone in absolutely every circumstance, whatever still felt good across all of that would be the objective good.

In short, the objective good is the limit of what still seems good upon further and further investigation. We can't ever reach that limit, but that is the direction in which to improve our opinions about morality, toward more and more correct ones. Figuring out what what can still be said to feel good when more and more of that is accounted for may be increasingly difficult, but that is the task at hand if we care at all about the good.

This commensurablist approach to morality may be called "liberal hedonic moralism", as moralism is the prescriptive face of objectivism, hedonism is the prescriptive face of phenomenalism, and what I would call a critical-liberal methodology is more commonly called just "liberal" as applied to theories of justice.



When it comes to tackling questions about reality, pursuing knowledge, we should not take some census or survey of people's beliefs or perceptions, and either try to figure out how all those could all be held at once without conflict, or else (because that likely will not be possible) just declare that whatever the majority, or some privileged authority, believes or perceives is true. 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. 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. This entire process should be carried out in an organized, collaborative, but intrinsically non-authoritarian academic structure.


When it comes to tackling questions about morality, pursuing justice, we should not take some census or survey of people's intentions or desires, and either try to figure out how all those could all be held at once without conflict, or else (because that likely will not be possible) just declare that whatever the majority, or some privileged authority, intends or desires is good. Instead, we should appeal to everyone's direct appetites, free from any interpretation into desires or intentions yet, and compare and contrast the hedonic experiences of different people in different circumstances to come to a common ground on what experiences there are that need satisfying in order for an intention to be good. Then we should devise models, or strategies, 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 good. This entire process should be carried out in an organized, collaborative, but intrinsically non-authoritarian political structure.

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

There is no practical problem. The philosopher can always try to get clearer about what we as humans even mean by 'knowing' and 'is.'

I suggest that the prestige of science is largely about its practical power. We can fly through the air at hundreds of miles per hour. We can talk with people across oceans. All of this is clear enough for us to respect the discourse associated with this. We are primarily practical beings, and science allows us to be 'lords and masters of nature.' Fair enough! But a philosopher can ask if we aren't just reacting to increased prediction and control by pasting on a hazy metaphysics.

To be clear, I know that we as practical creatures value technology that works more than a 'useless' pointing out of the haziness of our otherwise effective thinking. I myself earn money by working with technology. I'm paid for an 'exact' thinking that doesn't bother to question its position in a larger context. All of this connects to our current economic arrangement, which encourages a 'technical interpretation of thinking.'

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

I also reject pure reason and value the scientific method. I think it's OK, though, to question the representational paradigm. What do you think of instrumentalism, by the way? Optionally we can understand science as a central way of coping with our human situation. The equations and prosy background are a practical tradition for getting shit done. It's OK that we are endlessly hazy on our terms, because the gear works. That's enough for us, but we also like to dress it up as something more, as a kind of substitute for lost religion.

We should also do justice to its open-mindedness, its exposing itself to criticism. But these are also philosophical virtues.

I'm not going to discuss your theory here. You say yourself it's off-topic. Just one main objection.
There's a great consensus on the knowledge of facts: its purpose is to tell, predict and control the facts.
There is no similar consensus in ethics: there is no agreement on what might be called "good" that we can seek by different methods. You have decided that it is the experiences of pleasure. But there are many people willing to tell you that there are pleasures that are bad, not because they produce dissatisfaction but because they lead to higher order evil. There will even be people who will say that all pleasures are bad.

I'm afraid your argument is not going to be convincing to many experts and non-experts in ethics.

All of this connects to our current economic arrangement, which encourages a 'technical interpretation of thinking.' — path

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.

I believe that Kant had perfectly pointed out the way: stop wondering about questions without answers and postulating contradictory entities and worry about looking for philosophy in the analysis of knowledge. This is the way to start.

But these are also philosophical virtues. — path

Not very widespread among the popes of philosophy.
Philosophers don't convince others. At most they convince themselves.

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.

The problem with metaphysics is that it remains anchored in the scandal that Kant denounced: no progress, no agreement between metaphysicists. — David Mo

That's not unlike rejecting art because artists vary or all of religion because religions vary. It equates progress with consensus. Do scientists agree? Not a chance. The conflict is essential. Individual scientists contribute to things like Plandemic. Some are religious,etc.

Think also of rejecting all political theory because there is no consensus. Life is political, the clash of voices. Philosophy is tangled up in that. One might say that politics is applied philosophy, and that you are being a philosopher right now, disagreeing with me about the meaning/value of science and philosophy.

You still haven't clarified how scientific progress isn't more than increased prediction and control.

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

Respectfully, that is a thoroughly metaphysical and contentious statement. Talk of the 'roots of reality' sounds good, but it's the same old metaphysics. What's reality made of? Our models? Our maps? We're right back in the anti-realist quagmire. I'm not 100% an instrumentalist, but I like it as a less naively metaphysical approach to science. It's at least aware of the issue.

My philosophical gripe is that people talk about 'reality' without really knowing what they mean. Actually I don't think we can ever be done figuring that out, but the first step (to me) is seeing how vaguely we are talking. Like maybe you'll answer 'the physical.' Then physicists study the physical and the physical is what physicists study.

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

Of course my more sincere view is that science is more than technology. But to simply say that it studies reality is not very illuminating. Why doesn't literature study or reveal reality? Deciding what's so special about science, if anything, is philosophical and contentious. A person can of course get sick of wrestling with 'useless' issues and lean on Kant (a metaphysician, ultimately) as an escape from metaphysics. We can all fall back asleep. We all do fall back asleep. IMV we are never totally awake, always taken something for granted...and fending off those who try to wake us (impose their dreams on us.) We can and do pretend to have conquered existence with a neat little system. And even anti-systematic talk partakes in this, foisting openness as a closure.

Not very widespread among the popes of philosophy.
Philosophers don't convince others. At most they convince themselves. — David Mo

Well arguably philosophy is just too complex for perfect transmission. It's as complex as life itself. Philosophers partially convince one another all of the time. And your anti-philosophy view is familiar to me. Everyone's version is a little different, but it's a recognizable inheritance. You have your influences just as I do. We were persuaded. We are recognizable types, reenacting an old battle.

That's not unlike rejecting art because artists vary or all of religion because religions vary. — path

But artists don't pretend to know the truth of what they paint. Some do, but that's their problem. As for priests, they're much worse than philosophers when it comes to scandals. Politics is not a form of knowledge. And don't make an example out of professional politicians. Plato already made them look bad and things haven't changed much since then.
:sad:
Don't overwhelm me with so much comment. I can't cope them so quickly. I'll get back to them when I can.

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

How might you address the attack on the myth of the given? Here's what it 'is' and a link to more detail.

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

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sellars/

More generally, attempts to create a method almost invariably lean on 'myths' that are taken for granted, uncritically inherited from the tradition. The critical thinking that would like to define critical thinking turns out again and again to be insufficiently critical.

I don't blame you if you just get tired of answering me. That's what we all do. We 'irrationally' or 'uncritically' ignore the fault-finding of our peers. (To be clear, I rate many of us here as far above average in that regard. So it's just that we mortals have limits.)

Short version is I am also anti-foundationalist like Sellars, and not trying to push foundationalism in the part you quoted. Experiences are not opinions: they (and logical consistency) are what we criticize our opinions with.

The part I wrote immediately after the part you quoted is the critical/falsificationist/anti-foundationalist part:

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

The experiences are the things we’re trying to explain with our theories, but they don’t uniquely determine any particular theory. Every theory (and piece thereof, including more simplistic concepts) is initially equally tenable, not because it’s grounded in some foundational beliefs but because the default initial state of everything is “tenable”: then we check each of the options for success against our objective (explaining our experiences) and eliminate those that fail.

Also, that bit about interpretation you quoted is meant mostly to spell out how science differs from just polling people on what they think they saw, and compare that to how I say to conduct a moral investigation vs just polling people on their desires.

I don't blame you if you just get tired of answering me. — path

No, for god's sake, I wasn't tired of your interpellations. I was overwhelmed by the amount of ideas you put out in a row and I thought and I think I can't answer all of them here. I have my limits. I'll try to select a few to give you an answer.

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

And your anti-philosophy view is familiar to me. — 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.

What is special about science is its humility (pride is for positivists). That is to say, to limit itself to explaining a concrete field of knowledge and to leave the cosmic fantasies to the poets. Science is capable of saying "if x and y, then z" and it is right and it is not magic. A great deal that instrumentalist philosophy can only explain if it goes from humble to falling into the well of radical skepticism that satisfies no one except the stubborn ones who maintain it. Neither Dewey nor anyone else can be satisfied by saying "This works". Everyone, including Dewey when he lets his guard down, wants to know what's in there. I mean, they want to get to the roots of things, as much as possible.
And that's why we walk around wondering what could produce life on Earth and what's behind the collapse of the wave function. This is a metaphysical task, in the sense that theoretical scientists themselves have to go beyond scientific certainties to pose it. But I don't despise metaphysics. 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.

Oh, yeah. It is precisely the art of politics, so little practiced nowadays, that is the search for consensus while it is possible. A world in which there would be a general consensus (consensus, I mean, and not mindless or submissive) between minorities and majorities, exploited and exploitative, violent and peaceful... would probably be a utopia, but one not to be lost sight of.

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. I think you are referring to quantum woo, which I also dislike. I studied some QM in school but wasn't a physics major. Feynman is one of my many heroes, along with laughing Democritus. I currently work on AI, or glorified statistics.
I've been talking about AI in other threads to try to demystify consciousness. [Or to join in the old game of trying to demystify consciousness.]


My objection to holy ghost philosophers is that they won't confess that it's just poetry. They could add that 'poetry' is a metaphysical concept, but they don't think of that.

I love science for exposing itself to falsification. It takes guts to make an unambiguous prediction. It takes guts to climb in a machine and hope to end up on the moon.

I also agree that instrumentalism isn't completely satisfying. I want the truth, without knowing exactly what it means to say that I want the truth.

Thank you for the excellent reply. We're not so far apart after all. — path

Thank you for the undeserved praise. One has moments of inspiration... rather rare. But, in general, we tend to like what matches us. There is nothing to do about it., we're gregarious. And, as you say, we agree on quite a few things. A relief among the quarrelsome tendency of the philosophy forums.

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

I forgot this: I really liked the two final verses of Eliot that you include. They make you think. I have a very good friend who is also a great poet, I think, and a complex metaphysician in a pack. That is, his verses shake you up and make you think about man, time and the celestial vault. But he once wrote an article about Ausiàs March, a medieval poet, and I didn't like it that so much. Too obvious, too flat, too simple. My personal impression is that he was very good at handling complexity and irresolution, and not so good at giving clear explanations. This is the difference between poetry and philosophy.

Of course, I didn't tell him that. You have need to be a little hypocritical to keep friends.

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 like your sense of humor!

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

They somewhat sum up what Derrida means to me. I know you don't like him (probably his style), but I can't help mentioning him, because I think he's deep beneath his gimmicks.

A relief among the quarrelsome tendency of the philosophy forums. — David Mo

What I like is a friendly, playful, creative quarrel. If we challenge one another in a spirit of respect (easier said than done) then we all end up better than when we started. This place can be truly amazing at its best.

Make TPF great (again) :cry: