I don't think philosophy is 'nothing but' abstraction; I understand it to consist of complementary aspects: (a) reflective inquiry into ab/mis/uses of abstractions (e.g. language-games, institutional facts), and (b) reflective practice of using meta-abstractions to differentiate correlate and contextualize object-abstractions (e.g. aesthetics of music, dialectical materialism).What is philosophy but abstraction, and what is abstraction but if not the neglect of context, the disregard of it? — Ciceronianus the White
Dewey's concern, I think, arises only when philosophers make 'categorical (especially self-subsuming) truth-claims' about matters of fact on the basis of abstractions alone (i.e. "pure reason") e.g. all truthes are relative ... nothing matters ... everything has consciousness ...And if that's the case--whither philosophy?
What is philosophy but abstraction, and what is abstraction but if not the neglect of context, the disregard of it? — Ciceronianus the White
I have no idea whether Dewey used the good ole pencil/stick in water chestnut as an example — Ciceronianus the White
Do you think we understand stuff on a day to day basis without abstractions? My actions might be specified, but my beliefs which show themselves within them are often conceptual. Concepts seem a lot like abstractions to me - being generalisations from experience.
So I imagine that it's an inescapable source of error in philosophy, but simply because it's an inescapable source of error everywhere - the world won't always behave in the ways I expect it to. — fdrake
Confucius he say, "Stick in water chestnut make good party food." — unenlightened
So I imagine that it's an inescapable source of error in philosophy, but simply because it's an inescapable source of error everywhere - the world won't always behave in the ways I expect it to. — fdrake
Dewey also applied this principle to the means-end issue. Utilitarianism presumes that certain ends can be imposed on contexts, wherein means can then be selected arbitrarily (i.e. the ends justify the means). Dewey offers that, instead, we should always be prepared to "discover" new ends based on the discovery of new capabilities in contexts. — Pantagruel
Dewey's concern, I think, arises only when philosophers make 'categorical (especially self-subsuming) truth-claims' about matters of fact on the basis of abstractions alone (i.e. "pure reason") e.g. all truthes are relative ... nothing matters ... everything has consciousness ... — 180 Proof
Dewey felt that philosophical thinking in large part involves abstraction, reification, and a tendency to treat as insignificant, and perhaps even as less than real (not really real)--or even unreal, that which is non-cognitive or pre-cognitive. — Ciceronianus the White
All too often, I think, philosophy involves abstraction regarding not what we actually encounter in life, which requires deliberation and action in context, and a result, which may or may not require additional deliberation and action--but mere abstraction where context is at most of nominal concern. There's abstraction in context (in interaction with others and our environment) and abstraction without context, I think. — Ciceronianus the White
Philosophical abstractions arise in in a context of the exercise of reasoning about something. — fdrake
I don't conceive of these "roles" as "opposed" to one another but as complementaries of theory (i.e. 'how best to think') and practice (i.e. 'how best to live') in a positive feedback loop relation such as (Gramsci/Arendt) praxis.Yes, I'd agree that's his primary concern. And I think philosophy remains useful, along the lines you note. But its role then becomes something very different from the role it's played for centuries. Does its role then become one of developing and employing a method of addressing and resolving what Dewey called "the problems of men" as opposed to "the problems of philosophy"? — Ciceronianus the White
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