there's a lot to learn about how & what we value by looking at how we talk. & There's also something fun (even creatively joyful) in sussing out our implicit criteria. — csalisbury
Going back one generation, Walter Benjamin's Arcade Project is in the same spirit. In pop culture, I think there was a move in this direction with Carlin & his heirs. Or, to be fair, Lenny Bruce -->Carlin-->Next generation. Obviously it's a little looser, but there's something OLP-y about Seinfeld, for example, at least if you squint. — csalisbury
I'm coming at this from a different angle, but I don't want to push it either. As a student of anthropology and sociology, you're familiar with the dynamic of landed vs aspirational classes ( the way in which the landed color the aspirational.) I'm talking about something like that. — csalisbury
My view of philosophy is a bit more prosaic. It's just a bad method of inquiry, based on misconceptions that we have no reason to bind ourselves to anymore. It's like entrail-reading to try to see the future, say. We just don't really have a reason to do it anymore. — Snakes Alive
Hmm, I'm not sure what you're getting at. Are you saying that philosophy comes from the 'landed' esoteric tradition, and it's not possible to shake it off? — Snakes Alive
You can talk to a fisherman about life shit and they will have a lot to say, right? (& yeah, this is classic liberal wisdom-of-the-working-man pap that has been around since at least Wordsworth. Nevertheless it's true, I spend a lot of time talking to fishermen) A lot of what they're saying is going to, occasionally, take a philosophical flavor; the tuned-in philosophy brain will take this stuff into a mental vestibule, without letting it into the main room. You understand what they're saying, but you see the mistakes they're making. — csalisbury
So what's happening? Here you can take the historical or anthropological perspective and kind of break down what's going on. They are doing an anthropologically known activity that you are not, or are no longer, doing. Ok. But fold it back on itself. A martian anthropologist, or whatever. What's happening when you're recognizing, from your post-philosophy anthropological perspective, what they're doing? You listen and nod, but for a canny observer, who knows how you act in other situations, it's clear you're not expressing real agreement. For the martian anthropologist, this looks a lot like someone who, idk, is familar with olympic-level athletics, tolerantly observing a sub-olympic performance. Advanced biometrics and the deal's sealed - this is someone simply tolerating a performance they know is lacking. — csalisbury
The truth is that, if you're a fisherman, all that really means is that you're good at fishing — csalisbury
But is there an OLP of bird augury? — csalisbury
Ok, maybe. But really think about that. Imagine someone told you back in the day that the stuff you were getting into was bogus. Imagine you didn't work through this stuff, but were nudged away from it. Good anthropologically, maybe. But would you feel as confident saying its hokum? — csalisbury
Of course. But I think being good at fishing is a real and useful skill, whereas being 'good at philosophy' doesn't really entail being good at anything, unless you're on the job market in philosophy. — Snakes Alive
I actually do think philosophy is losing its popular prestige — Snakes Alive
It depends on the social context. One reason I don't have to be nudged away from, say, flat-earth theory, is because I grew up in a context in which the reasons it was inadequate were obvious enough that trying to adopt it would be a huge affront to my ability to make it through the day (I would need to make sense of how my plane trips worked). You could imagine a world in which we just know enough about the way our own language and cognitive faculties work, and this was such an ambient part of an ordinary person's knowledge, that the idea of adopting philosophy would look as silly as adopting flat-earthism or bird augury. — Snakes Alive
I think the chief achievements of OLP are at a meta-level: it was the site of the invention of not only of metaphilosophy (including the journal of that name, which is still going to this day and quite good), but also of metasemantics, that is, the search for the conditions under which expressions become meaningful, and what it is for something to be meaningful. — Snakes Alive
The OLPers had a view of the foundations of meaning, where the foundational conditions were not coherently deniable from within, as you made use of those very conditions ('ordinary language is correct language,') but which themselves were multiform and contingent (something like the the shifting riverbed). — Snakes Alive
The only way out is to introduce some normative idea of why an Austin is doing something different. I want to really focus on this - because even the fact of meta-cognitive illusion etc only matters from a normative perspective. It doesn't necessarily have to be a philosophically normative perspective, but it is going to be normative. The 'puzzle' in my earlier post is to explain why OLP is a better approach (than say german idealism) without using philosophical resources. — csalisbury
I would add that looking and describing the grammar of a concept is only the first step; that creating examples to make claims about our ordinary criteria provides the discussion point for our philosophical issues (Cavell will call the examples "philosophical data"). — Antony Nickles
this type of change in perspective is not reached through argument but in you being able to see for yourself what I am (and Witt is) describing. — Antony Nickles
The word "concept" here is used as a "term" by Witt with a specific use, not anything like a conception or an idea. — Antony Nickles
you still feel the need to hang on to the feeling that we "all know the same stuff differently". — Antony Nickles
we can't be said to "know" our phone number in different ways — Antony Nickles
However, OLP is addressing the issues that are skipped over that only philosophy can still bring to light--self-knowledge through understanding our responsibilities and the implications we are subject to...... — Antony Nickles
Part of what Witt is trying to show in unearthing our desire for certainty is to turn us around to see our real needs and desires. — Antony Nickles
If anything is individual, our interests are, and there is no argument to change that if someone just doesn't care — Antony Nickles
I wouldn't think it was that weird, if he just did it once in a while, and maybe to try to get someone to stop fishing. I don't really discuss philosophy anymore except in threads like this about this very topic (and even then, I think I haven't commented here in like half a year), and I don't really read it anymore or talk about it anywhere else. — Snakes Alive
I have said this in another post about "ought", but any force of "normativity" does not come from OLP's claims to descriptions of our ordinary criteria for apologizing; it comes from apologizing itself. — Antony Nickles
It's not clear why one would think that the methods of philosophy can unlock general features of the universe – on reflection the idea seems somewhat insane. — Snakes Alive
I think philosophy is weird in a way fishing isn't, in that fishing doesn't have a professed aim it manifestly fails at, and has for thousands of years. This is maybe the most salient feature of philosophy, and periodically gets noticed and lamented even by philosophers themselves (who have professional and cognitive incentives not to notice).
It's also clear why one would think that fishing catches you fish. It's not clear why one would think that the methods of philosophy can unlock general features of the universe – on reflection the idea seems somewhat insane. That's why it's interesting to think about why people might have been led to believe in the methods. — Snakes Alive
It's not clear why one would think that the methods of philosophy can unlock general features of the universe – on reflection the idea seems somewhat insane. — Snakes Alive
Kantian never yields any results, proves anything, — Snakes Alive
The Kantian is no better, in thinking that the nature of the mind, or whatever it might be, can be unlocked in the same way. — Snakes Alive
It's not clear why one would think that the methods of philosophy can unlock general features of the universe — Snakes Alive
The word "concept" here is used as a "term" by Witt with a specific use, not anything like a conception or an idea.
— Antony Nickles
Which is the same as re-defining a term. As we all know.....one can make anything stick by simply changing extant definitions to fit what’s being said. If Witt has something new to say, he should use terms specific to the novelty. — Mww
you still feel the need to hang on to the feeling that we "all know the same stuff differently".
— Antony Nickles
It isn’t a feeling, it’s an empirical reality. — Mww
One may know an iceberg as a floating chunk of ice, another may know an iceberg as a broken piece of glacier. — Mww
However, OLP is addressing the issues that are skipped over that only philosophy can still bring to light--self-knowledge through understanding our responsibilities and the implications we are subject to......
— Antony Nickles
Subject to implies empirical psychology or social/linguistic anthropology. Fancy words for “group-think”. — Mww
Part of what Witt is trying to show in unearthing our desire for certainty is to turn us around to see our real needs and desires.
— Antony Nickles
Our desire for certainty is contained in reason itself; no need to unearth it, for it is manifest as a predicate of an intrinsic human condition. — Mww
To turn us around to see our real needs and desires presupposes we don’t already see them. Being both presumptuous, insofar as that which belongs to me necessarily, cannot but be apprehended by me, and self-contradictory, insofar as my intrinsic “desire for certainty” must already contain them. — Mww
Furthermore, as “real” needs and desires, herein taken to indicate fundamental or characteristically personal as opposed to empirically determinable, they are not susceptible to experiential incursion, for they are derived from purely subjective causality. Which ultimately reduces to some form of moral philosophy anyway, which I wouldn’t think has anything whatsoever to do with OLP. — Mww
Someone ought to tell philosophers that's what their subject is about – it seems they haven't gotten the memo! They talk about, for example, the nature of mind, the world, language, and so on. — Snakes Alive
To talk about "the nature of the mind, the world, language, and so on" would be to talk about the different ways in which we can think about those things, or what are the most plausible or most productive ways to think about those things. — Janus
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