A bit of self-reflection can be good for the soul.

Or would be, if we had them.

Have you any interest in Žižek? I've been trying to make sense of his treatment of ideology. I rather like it, at least in how it undermines the classic marxist approach...

Thinking of starting a thread, but not sure of a suitable approach.

Have you any interest in Žižek? — Banno

Never heard of him. Seems he is a Lacanian, which raises a few flags for my unquiet soul. I liked Freud a lot at some point, but it proved a bit too esoteric and fact-free for my taste. He was clearly onto something though. Then I landed on Bateson, a brilliant mind (English-speaking all right) who made much more sense to me, and I never went into Lacan. My sense is that Freud 'goes on a limb' (produces much non-empirical theory, as pointed by Popper again), and that Lacan goes on that limb even further...

Some AP guys go around on the same old beaten track all the time. Some continental philosophers do the exact opposite: they rush as fast as their mind can go, like Willy the Coyote, way beyond the cliff of empirical facts.

Another flag is his use of language. BS philo producers tend to use opaque convoluted language to look like Kant and fool their preys. Certainly that's a mark of Hegel and Heidegger and Derida. And Lacan also uses his own esoteric, sui generis language instead of plain French. At best, it raises the cost of entry into his thinking, comparatively to other philosophers. Life is short. At worse, it's a smoke screen.

But if someone like Žižek can boil Lacan down for us, I'm all for it.

One thing to mention: all these silly labels that people like to use - 'analytic' or 'continental' or whathaveyou - these are nothing more than ecologies of conversation. They are bounded by nothing other than their proximity among themselves, which they use to develop and complexify along all sorts of divergent paths, not unlike rich old rainforests. To the degree that there is anything like an analytic or continental or XYZial camp of philosophy, at best we are simply talking about one, two, three or other various biomes of ideas and motivations. The idea that any of these ecologies are defined by certain essences or uniform techniques or whathaveyou is just stupid: the kind of thing you tell an idiot child to get them to shut up while the adults are working.

Apples and oranges - yeah, both are fruit - should not be compared, or one reduced to the other, if intellectual clarity in philosophizing via avoiding nonsense, etc, is what (I assume) you're after. — 180 Proof

That depends on what we are trying to do with our criticism? Not all criticism is of equal value. When philosophy begins talking about the attributes of concepts, and I would encourage you to think about this deeply, it is falling back in on itself in a kind of negative negation.

The idea that any of these ecologies are defined by certain essences or uniform techniques or whathaveyou is just stupid: the kind of thing you tell an idiot child to get them to shut up while the adults are working. — StreetlightX

This is an incredibly weak and emotional argument. Further, it is elitist: "while the adults are working." This validates everything I have been saying about Analytical Philosophy. You guys presume that you are doing the most important thing and that you are engaged in real philosophical work. This has not been substantiated but merely presumed. At which point is this elitist branch humbled? The social sciences have been making progress without Analytical Philosophy! In fact, this method would only get in the way. Should I read Davidson or choose to devote my time and energy to Perry? My claim is that this is not a subjective consideration. I do not deny Analytical Philosophers the aesthetic right to play their analytical games, but what I do deny is its presumption of elitism and relevance.

I do not deny Analytical Philosophers the aesthetic right to play their analytical games, but what I do deny is the presumption of elitism and relevance. — JerseyFlight

Relevance to what? Do you think they should reciprocate and not deny you the aesthetic right to play your dialectical games (or however you style them) but deny your presumption of elitism and relevance?

I hear ya. It's for us, though - students of philosophy - to dialectically apply e.g. conceptual analysis and discursive hermeneutics to knowledge practices and/or our experiences. That is how we translate 'idealist' methods into 'materialist' critiques (and vice versa), turning Hegel on his head so to speak (à la Feuerbach or Peirce or Adorno). Don't blame the (master's) tools or the tool-makers for not showing us (the precariat) how to use them.

JerseyFlight, you profess to be a man that wishes to foster thought that benefits human kind. Look at the replies to your responses in this thread. Are you meeting your goals? If you are to rise to the ideals you set, you must be the example of this.

Currently this thread is no longer discussing philosophy. It is an opinion pissing contest. Several people have remarked that you do not have the evidence to attribute the entirety of analytic philosophy as useless to society. It is useless to YOU. And that is fine. That is the only thing which can be logically concluded from this discussion.

So will you continue to partake in this pissing contest? Because this conversation is not furthering thought, or good will in mankind. Will you rise to your ideals, are are they simply words you put forth to make people think you are better than you are?

Relevance to what? — Janus

Existence, the concrete and contingent life we live on this infinitesimal rock.

My claim is that this is not a subjective consideration. — JerseyFlight

Says the dude whose only 'evidence' has been some second hand quotes and word garble that no one can make sense of.

It's for us, though - students of philosophy - to dialectically apply e.g. conceptual analysis and discursive hermeneutics to knowledge practices and/or our experiences. That is how we translate 'idealist' methods into 'materialist' critiques (and vice versa), turning Hegel on his head so to speak (à la Feuerbach or Peirce or Adorno). Don't blame the (master's) tools or the tool-makers for not showing us (the precariat) how to use them. — 180 Proof

I have no problem with conceptual analysis, in Analytical Philosophy this analysis has gone off on a tangent. It has yet to be demarcated that Analytical Philosophy is in fact a form of bourgeois philosophy. (Live long enough and you will be able to view it as a school of thought). It is a revival of idealism in the most tragic sense of the term, here tragic is a reference to its emphasis, which is not the world, not even concepts that matter to reality, just the attributes of concepts.

Currently this thread is no longer discussing philosophy. It is an opinion pissing contest. Several people have remarked that you do not have the evidence to attribute the entirety of analytic philosophy as useless to society. — Philosophim

Quite the contrary, the presumption of value has not been sustained.

Since you want to thrust yourself into the fight: what exactly was wrong with the definitions I provided?

I suggested an evidential contrast between Davidson's content and Perry's content.

:up:

I don't know, personally, if the entirety of analytic philosophy is useless to society - probably not, but a lot of it is. Philosophers very often vastly disagree on different central questions, so there's not much unity in the field in contrast to many other fields where there is widespread agreement on the basics that they can teach students. Even in the rare cases that there is widespread agreement, like with the Gettier paper, no one outside of philosophy really seems to care and there doesn't seem to be direct applications for it.

I feel bad sometimes for studying philosophy. Other fields are focusing on actual problems like how to stop COVID or how to help countries with serious economic problems while philosophers shut them selves off from the outside world to go play in their own heads or provide extensive commentary on a long dead philosopher that no one cares to read and often requires a second language to fully understand. It sometimes makes talking with them about contemporary issues extremely frustrating as facts and evidence clash their a priori presuppositions. Every once in a while though the old armchair philosopher will come down from his ivory tower and become strong proponents for a cause, if not lead the charge themselves like Peter Singer.

Existence, the concrete and contingent life we live on this infinitesimal rock. — JerseyFlight

If you're referring to practical, political or ecological relevance, then so what? No philosophy really has direct practical relevance, and only political philosophy has political relevance. Whatever Analytic Philosophy is it is not concerned with politics and never pretended to be. Of course that doesn't mean its practitioners are not interested in politics.

In general it is other fields, not philosophy, that have more direct social relevance to general human life. Why do you think there is no Nobel Prize for philosophy, when there is for, for example, a Nobel prize for literature? Is it not because literature is considered to have more general social relevance?

So, if you wanted to say that Critical Philosophy (as represented by Adorno, Horkheimer et al) is more socially relevant, is that not because it is more closely aligned with sociology than with it is with philosophy (as it has been traditionally conceived)?

Says the dude whose only 'evidence' has been some second hand quotes and word garble — StreetlightX

I wonder, are other people buying your line of reason, that is, that the quotes I provided are invalid? You did not refute my position, you didn't even have the conversation, you simply dismissed my argument with ad hominems as you are doing now. The presumption seems to be that I need to do more in order to refute Analytical Philosophy's presumption of value. I flat out deny it, this presumption bears the burden of its own proof, and further, it doesn't stack up very well against other forms of communication. The social sciences, where all the progress in society has been made, don't make use of Analytical Philosophy. One might be infatuated with it, but it's doubtful that an Analytical Philosopher would ever advise their child to pursue this path professionally. One cannot even approach society through this eccentric communication. The question remains: what are Analytical Philosophers doing, where do their word games lead? Not a single person on this thread has even used the Analytical Method to defend the Analytical Method. Some people require a great deal of sophistication before they will ascent to a simple premise. Is this really a sign of intelligence? I don't think it is, and everyone had better figure it out because the mortal clock is ticking. Should you spend your life reading Davidson or Perry? This is a decision, as philosophers, we all must make over and over again.

this presumption bears the burden of its own proof, — JerseyFlight

:lol:

Ah, my mistake, I thought you were even half-serious. My mistake, carry on.

That same argument has been aimed at other sorts of philosophy.

The premiss of this thread, as I pointed out earlier, is to treat philosophy like a competition between teams; like it was a game of football. The argument itself trivialises philosophy.

If you have a choice not to do philosophy, then don't. If you are going to do philosophy, do it well.

This thread is not good philosophy.

I think the thing that makes analytic philosophy as such as socially ineffectual as it is, is precisely its aversion to system-building. While piecemeal investigating particular problems can be productive in those areas, I think it’s also very important to keep the big picture in mind.

For example, I can easily see myself in a political argument ending up talking about speech-acts and other philosophy of language stuff. See, my political principles are grounded in my normative ethical principles, which in turn depend on my meta-ethical framework, including moral semantics, which invokes philosophy of language concepts such as speech-acts. The normative ethics itself also depends a lot on deontic logic and so logic and language generally, and the pragmatics of my politics hinges a lot on linguistic pragmatics and related rhetorical theory.

It’s all connected, so it all has to be able to fit together, every view on every topic has implications on the possibilities in many other topics. That big picture, and the practical application that it enables, is what analytic philosophy seems to miss the most. It makes some great tools, it just need to actually put them to the job too.

Whatever Analytic Philosophy is it is not concerned with politics and never pretended to be. — Janus

Popper sure seemed concerned with the political implications of his philosophy of science and epistemology.

In general it is other fields, not philosophy, that have more direct social relevance to general human life. — Janus

I have a very different view of philosophy, knowing it to be thought. But to answer you from the basis of your own premise: then what does philosophy tell you about Analytical Philosophy? Here you have already affirmed a distinction of value.

I don't know, personally, if the entirety of analytic philosophy is useless to society - probably not, but a lot of it is. — BitconnectCarlos

As long as you don't pretend to claim you have the authority to blanket an entire history of thought process as useless to society, that's fine. To a person who cares about such things, analytic philosophy might provide some use to them as a tool. What an individual finds useful can vary from person to person, and it is not for us to judge if something we find personally meaningless provides another fulfillment.

I feel bad sometimes for studying philosophy. — BitconnectCarlos

True, the history of philosophy is often a study of its failures. Not everyone is interested in seeing how thought processes have evolved. Still, Karl Popper's contribution to the scientific method of today can be a nice read if you're interested in such things. The Gettier paper is a nice starting point for people interested in tackling epistemology as well.

Some philosophers are interested in the history of philosophy for its own sake. It is a hobby of puzzles to themselves. That is fine. We all entertain ourselves in our own particular way, and taken objectively, they're all frivolous in the face of the big questions in life. Sometimes people study it to improve their own and others lives. It sounds like you are interested in philosophy to tackle questions of today and the future. Then use that as your guide. Don't concern yourself with what others find meaningful, if it inhibits what you find meaningful.

I feel bad sometimes for studying philosophy. Other fields are focusing on actual problems like how to stop COVID or how to help countries with serious economic problems while philosophers shut them selves off from the outside world to go play in their own heads or provide extensive commentary on a long dead philosopher that no one cares to read and often requires a second language to fully understand. It sometimes makes talking with them about contemporary issues extremely frustrating as facts and evidence clash their a priori presuppositions. Every once in a while though the old armchair philosopher will come down from his ivory tower and become strong proponents for a cause, if not lead the charge themselves like Peter Singer. — BitconnectCarlos

This is exactly the question, what does thought tell us we should do? How should philosophy be used? The reason you are able to arrive at these conclusions about philosophy is because the philosophical enterprise has been focused on idealism. In Marx a split occurred, philosophy was brought back down to earth, rescued from the games and error of the supernatural idealists. There have been lots of philosophers who labor in the realm of relevant theory, as opposed to abstract idealism. (Of course, even this is objectionable, but at least the emphasis is relevant).

I agree with what you're saying. My claim is that philosophers have to do better than mere subjectivity, otherwise their entire program turns to dust. If one is just playing an aesthetic game, and they claim that's what it is, then they have already refuted themselves. There is no valid request for a formal refutation or argument after this, one can simply dismiss it on hedonistic terms. One can even characterize it however they want, as long as it brings value to them.

To a person who cares about such things, analytic philosophy might provide some use to them as a tool. — Philosophim

See the point about subjectivity I made above.

I'll first mention that I completely agree with you when it comes to your assessment of analytic philosophy today. When I think back to the system builders I think back to really the mid 19th century with Schopenhauer, Hegel, Kant, and a few other who were really very ambitious, and we don't really see that anymore, and I think part of the reason is just because there's so much knowledge out there that I just don't see how anyone can put forth something like that today, but I know your project and I do wish you luck.

For example, I can easily see myself in a political argument ending up talking about speech-acts and other philosophy of language stuff. — Pfhorrest

Interesting, could you explain please? Maybe cite an example?

The premiss of this thread, as I pointed out earlier, is to treat philosophy like a competition between teams; like it was a game of football. The argument itself trivialises philosophy. — Banno

Not all philosophical forms are of equal value. As a philosopher wouldn't you want to know that you were practicing a form of language and analysis that had the maximum potential of relevance? Why not?

Perhaps, as an antidote to this rather nasty little thread, we might compose a list of philosophers who are socially active.

Peter Singer, of course. A student of R. M. Hare.

Baroness Warnock, part of the same Oxford circle as Hampshire, Strawson, Berlin...

Hanna Ardent.

Martha Nussbaum, who takes Aristotle into modern law.

Add to the list, let's see what it looks like. At present it looks like there is more of a problem with male philosophers than with analytic philosophers.

I think part of the reason [we don't really see system-builders anymore] is just because there's so much knowledge out there that I just don't see how anyone can put forth something like that today — BitconnectCarlos

Someone else mentioned up thread, in a way better than I can recount from memory, how one of the founding principles of analytic philosophy was the rejection of system-building, so I don't just think that it's hard to do, I think it's being actively avoided, for reasons I still don't really comprehend. The lack of systematization, or architectonics as @apokrisis would say, is the thing that I found most lacking in my own (analytic) philosophical education, and the thing that spurred me to start my project.

Interesting, could you explain please? Maybe cite an example? — BitconnectCarlos

I did, right after the bit you quoted in that post:

my political principles are grounded in my normative ethical principles, which in turn depend on my meta-ethical framework, including moral semantics, which invokes philosophy of language concepts such as speech-acts — Pfhorrest

So politically, I'm a socialist because I'm a libertarian, and I'm a libertarian because of my deontological normative ethics (something like the non-aggression principle that you're probably familiar with), and my deontological ethics hinges on there being things that are objectively right or wrong (if it's not actually wrong to aggress upon people, but just "unpopular" or "illegal" or something, then the whole politics falls apart), and that account of things being objectively right or wrong can't be explained without explaining what "right" and "wrong" (etc) even mean, which is an account of moral semantics, which of mine hinges on the concept of speech-acts, but in any case all moral semantics, being semantics, hinge on some linguistic concepts or other.

The lack of systematization... is the thing that I found most lacking in my own (analytic) philosophical education, and the thing that spurred me to start my project. — Pfhorrest

I think it one of the best aspects of philosophy since Moore and Russell. Grand systems, by their very nature, are wrong; and I mean both in terms of truth and morality.

Save us from systematisation.

Then we have folk with a background in philosophy, who work in other areas -

Popper's student George Soros; so beloved by the right wingnuts.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/456809