ut to Banno's point - this ain't a brilliant thing for the philosophical enterprise if accurate.
If true, it raises follow up questions - can this be overcome or dealt with in some way? How is it identified?
Can we make an effort to read and understand thinkers we are not drawn to? What should matter is the quality of the content, not whether it appeals, but I guess it could be argued that even our ability to sit with some ideas and not with others may rest with personal taste. — Tom Storm
And here various truths are filtered in favor of maintaining the system of explanation that most assists oneself in making sense of existence. Thereby, that system of explanations which best helps one to live. I’m by no means any exception to this bias. — javra
If there were to be a theory of everything in philosophy, it would need to explain everything to a t: both real and fictional, both metaphysical and physical, and so on. Thereby holding complete explanatory power for everything - for that which our own temperaments value as well as that which we find no great value in, though it be valuable to others. — javra
Often the matter of truth does not seem to be quite clearly distinguishable from the matter of taste. — spirit-salamander
You’re missing the very essence of understanding. You’re mistaking the pre-condition for comprehending anything with some sort of flaw, which is the point Nietzsche is trying to make. But you’re not alone here. There are never ending laments on this site about ‘prejudice’, ‘bias, the appeal of ‘emotion ‘ over objectivity. What you’re calling ‘personal taste’ is the result of the fact that the understanding of anything new must be based on compatibility with a pre-existing frame of reference. What makes us drawn to certain thing s over others is our ability to relate to them, to find them relevant and significant to our concerns. Something appeals to us because it matters to us, and it matters to us because it is comprehensible and meaningful in relation to how we see the world. Things and events completely outside of our worldview not only don’t matter to us, they are entirely invisible to us. This isn’t something unique to philosophy, it’s how scientific knowledge functions as well, which is what Kuhn was getting at. — Joshs
Are you saying there is an alternative to this ‘bias’? If sense-making is a bias , what is the alternative to sense-making? — Joshs
The reason that theories of everything end up getting replaced is that ‘the ‘ everything’ they are describing isn’t a static set of facts but is constantly evolving, because we are a part of this everything and are constantly evolving — Joshs
Adorno’s moral philosophy is similarly concerned with the effects of ‘enlightenment’ upon both the prospects of individuals leading a ‘morally good life’ and philosophers’ ability to identify what such a life may consist of. Adorno argues that the instrumentalization of reason has fundamentally undermined both. He argues that social life in modern societies no longer coheres around a set of widely espoused moral truths and that modern societies lack a moral basis. What has replaced morality as the integrating ‘cement’ of social life are instrumental reasoning and the exposure of everyone to the capitalist market. According to Adorno, modern, capitalist societies are fundamentally nihilistic, in character; opportunities for leading a morally good life and even philosophically identifying and defending the requisite conditions of a morally good life have been abandoned to instrumental reasoning and capitalism. Within a nihilistic world, moral beliefs and moral reasoning are held to have no ultimately rational authority: moral claims are conceived of as, at best, inherently subjective statements, expressing not an objective property of the world, but the individual’s own prejudices. Morality is presented as thereby lacking any objective, public basis. The espousal of specific moral beliefs is thus understood as an instrument for the assertion of one’s own, partial interests: morality has been subsumed by instrumental reasoning. Adorno attempts to critically analyse this condition. He is not a nihilist, but a critic of nihilism.
Adorno’s account of nihilism rests, in large part, on his understanding of reason and of how modern societies have come to conceive of legitimate knowledge. He argues that morality has fallen victim to the distinction drawn between objective and subjective knowledge. Objective knowledge consists of empirically verifiable ‘facts’ about material phenomena, whereas subjective knowledge consists of all that remains, including such things as evaluative and normative statements about the world. On this view, a statement such as ‘I am sitting at a desk as I write this essay’ is of a different category to the statement ‘abortion is morally wrong’. The first statement is amenable to empirical verification, whereas the latter is an expression of a personal, subjective belief. Adorno argues that moral beliefs and moral reasoning have been confined to the sphere of subjective knowledge. He argues that, under the force of the instrumentalization of reason and positivism, we have come to conceive of the only meaningfully existing entities as empirically verifiable facts: statements on the structure and content of reality. Moral values and beliefs, in contrast, are denied such a status. Morality is thereby conceived of as inherently prejudicial in character so that, for example, there appears to be no way in which one can objectively and rationally resolve disputes between conflicting substantive moral beliefs and values. Under the condition of nihilism one cannot distinguish between more or less valid moral beliefs and values since the criteria allowing for such evaluative distinctions have been excluded from the domain of subjective knowledge. — Adorno's moral philosophy
Morality is thereby conceived of as inherently prejudicial in character so that, for example, there appears to be no way in which one can objectively and rationally resolve disputes between conflicting substantive moral beliefs and values. Under the condition of nihilism one cannot distinguish between more or less valid moral beliefs and values since the criteria allowing for such evaluative distinctions have been excluded from the domain of subjective knowledge. — Adorno's moral philosophy
I have often wondered about this and have written here that temperament and aesthetics probably inform people's choices. — Tom Storm
If true, it raises follow up questions - can this be overcome or dealt with in some way? How is it identified? — Tom Storm
From my own perspective I am personally struck by this from Nietzsche's The Gay Science — Tom Storm
I'm not sure if moral beliefs were any easier to discern before rationalism - pre-democratic, verging on monolithic cultures, nurtured less diversity. — Tom Storm
You are just describing an epistemic vice in yourself and projecting it onto others, it seems to me. — Bartricks
But those people are not really doing philosophy. For they are not trying to follow reason but trying to get reason to follow them. — Bartricks
My philosophical views do not reflect my tastes. I had no desire to believe in God, and no vested interest in doing so, yet now I do due to philosophical reflection. — Bartricks
A matter of need more often than taste. Our shifting philosophies serve a vital need to make sense of our lives, they are not decorative. — Olivier5
My philosophical views do not reflect my tastes. I had no desire to believe in God, and no vested interest in doing so, yet now I do due to philosophical reflection. Lots of my views are like this. Don't you change your views when you encounter arguments for views you do not yet hold yet cannot refute?
Of course, many are not like this and decide approximately what's true in advance of philosophical investigation and then look to philosophy to provide them with rationalizations of their convictions. But those people are not really doing philosophy. For they are not trying to follow reason but trying to get reason to follow them. — Bartricks
Things outside this worldview are 'entirely invisible' to me. Well, some are and some are not. Some are shadows and shapes — Tom Storm
Not all relativism accepts the claim that all truths are equally justified, but rather, take the position that all justification is relative. — Fooloso4
Other than grammatically, I don't see any significant difference between our respective definitions. — 180 Proof
Hmm, by “truth filtering” I was referring to forsaking certain truths that don’t cohere into one’s system of explanation in favor of those truths that do. — javra
To the latter, teleology is bogus, fictional, illusory, and so forth, even though they have goals in mind in so conceiving. — javra
I will say, however, that this God you now believe in consists of a formless quality that you attribute to a certain language structure of three letters. How you might describe or define ‘God’ is then a matter of taste. — Possibility
I get that you’re trying to ‘follow reason’ — Possibility
but I’m afraid we’re really not as rational in word and action as we might assume. We only appear rational by projecting affect or emotion outward as ‘logical’ judgement or evaluation. — Possibility
Logic would insist that only one of these can be true, and yet nothing but ignorance or judgement either way would tip the scales. My philosophy, therefore, must allow for both possibilities, even as I’m aware that my words or actions at any time will always be interpreted as if only one is true. — Possibility
I’m not really interested in an argument about the existence of ‘God’. — Possibility
But if one’s system of explanation functions as a unity, like a scientific paradigm , then it wouldn’t be a question of seeing certain truths and then making a decision to foresake them , but of not having a coherent glimpse of them in the first place. — Joshs
Kuhn said that events that fall outside of the scope of a paradigm are not experienced as evidence. — Joshs
I would say that what is meant by teleology isn’t properly grasped in the first place by the group rejecting it, because they have no framework in which to make it coherent. — Joshs
Because there is at most one complete truth about anything. The whole point of that last post of mine is that many competing philosophies are all partial truths, so whatever the complete truth is, it would thus incorporate all of them. The alternative is that there is no truth in philosophy at all, in which case everything we’re doing is meaningless nonsense. — Pfhorrest
I was absolutely delighted like many students reading these authors. It would have been great to have been able to fully commit to Plato there, to reject Aristotle's critiques. Because, of course, Aristotle is not as fun to read. Instead of a series of polished dialogues we mostly have cluttered, meandering lecture notes stapled together. It would be preferable to get to ignore him, if he wasn't right. — Count Timothy von Icarus
People often change their philosophy over time. — Count Timothy von Icarus
People don't choose philosophies, they have philosophies carved into them over time. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Whether one becomes a follower of Wittgenstein or Jaspers, Heidegger or Carnap, Thomas, Kierkegaard, or Hegel is almost accidental in some cases: what all such followers have in common is that after their initial great expenditure no capital remains for a second, third, or fourth investment of comparable magnitude, let alone a novel enterprise.
As to Aristotle being so boring, I believe classical sources point to "delightful" dialogues by him with his mature thought included. They have just all been destroyed. — Count Timothy von Icarus
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