There's a tension between system building and critical evaluation in philosophy. Perhaps the system builders - your Kant, Hegel, Russel - thrive when the basis of society is unthreatened; and the critics - Socrates, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein - in what might be called "interesting times"? — Banno
the presumed notion of a social contract has its limits. Only then we can look for something better. — Banno
when things go to shit, then we start questioning fundamentals such as the 2008 market crash or the Pandemic now. — Manuel
evolves past its previous presumptions without the direct help of philosophy. What philosophy can do is make explicit what is only held as implicit within other modes of thought. — Joshs
I think it’s the other way around. We find something better and only then do we see the limits of the previous approach. — Joshs
Are you saying that the role of philosophy is essentially descriptive? How do you assess Midgley's paper? — Tom Storm
I think Midgley right in pointing to social contract theory as the broken pipe in the foundation, and I don't see that there is a clear solution; so I don't agree with you. If you were correct that we see the rot only from the vantage of a new philosophical system, that system would be apparent and ubiquitous — Banno
...Midgley's point; philosophers are needed in order to point to the smell and the feted pooling. — Banno
Rather the philosophical landscape is in a state of upheaval, while simultaneously fighting to justify itself in the face of it's own creation, economic utility. — Banno
Another article of Midgley's that is interestingly provocative. The metaphor is that like plumbing, philosophy is taken for granted until it goes wrong; then we are obliged to call in the experts and clean up the mess. — Banno
It follows that Midgley does not offer a solution, although she indicates a few alternatives. She instead admonishes us to engage in sorting out the conceptual confusions that we otherwise take for granted.
(Edit: by way of full disclosure, see also Midgley vs Dawkins, Nietzsche, Hobbes, Mackie, Rand, Singer...) — Banno
Since I wholeheartedly agree with the spirit, if not also the letter, of Midgley's paper, I've nothing to add until others come along and earnestly clog-up the pipes with their (youtubed) "doctrines". — 180 Proof
She was a disarming grandmotherly figure, it seems, quietly pointing to the blocked drain. — Banno
Andrew Anthony interviewed her, describing in context, her spirit and intellect.
Re any school-marmly style, Mary responds to his question on consciousness 'with a professorial air of correction'. Quite the character and driven to write.
'....It has remained one of Midgley's principles to write in such a way that the maximum number of people can see what she's talking about. The philosopher and historian Jonathan Rée says: "She has always written in a language that's not aimed at the cleverest graduate student. She's never been interested in the glamour and greasy pole" associated with Oxbridge and London.'
I think this comparison of women and men philosophers interesting.
Elaborate competitive games v simple clear communication of ideas.
The term 'school-marmly' could be seen as pejorative and off-putting to some.
An elderly women philosopher discounted -
Mary would eat you for breakfast :cool:
Midgely also says that philosophers should 'stop imitating Hegel.' — Jack Cummins
What about something that, till recently, our moralists hardly mentioned at all, namely the non-human, non-speak- ing world—the needs of animals and plants, of the ocean and the Antarctic and the rainforests?
Is philosophy like plumbing? I have made this comparison a number of times when I have wanted to stress that philosophising is not just grand and elegant and difficult, but is also needed. It is not optional. — Mary Midgley
When the concepts we are living by
function badly, they do not usually drip audibly through the ceiling orswamp the kitchen floor. They just quietly distort and obstruct our thinking — Mary Midgley
Great philosophers, then, need a combination of gifts that is extremely rare. They must be lawyers as well as poets. They must have both the new vision that points the way we are to go and the logical doggedness that sorts out just what is, and what is not, involved in going there. — Mary Midgley
Plainly, social contract thinking is no sort of adequate guide for
constructing the whole social and political system. It really is a vital means of protection against certain sorts of oppression, an essential defence against tyranny. But it must not be taken for granted and forgotten, as a safe basis for all sorts of institutions. It needs always to be seen as something partial and provisional, an image that may cause trouble and have to be altered. — Mary Midgley
Freedom, here, is no longer
being viewed as a necessary condition of pursuing other ideals, but as being itself the only possible ideal — Mary Midgley
This ought to make it
easier to admit also that we are not self-contained and self-sufficient, either as a species or as individuals, but live naturally in deep mutual dependence. — Mary Midgley
But if we can once get it into our heads,that a model is only a model[...] — Mary Midgley
The alternative to getting a proper philosophy is continuing to use a bad one [...] — Mary Midgley
That realization seems to be the
sensible element at the core of the conceptual muddle now known as Postmodernism [...] — Mary Midgley
Myths are stories symbolizing profoundly important patterns, patterns that are very influential, but too large, too deep and too imperfectly known to be expressed literally. — Mary Midgley
Examples like these led Enlightenment thinkers to denounce all myths and to proclaim, in Positivistic style, a new age free from symbols, an age when all thoughts would be expressed literally and language would be used only to report scientific facts. But the idea of such an age is itself a highly fanciful myth, an image quite unrelated to
the way in which thought and language actually work. All our thinking works through them. New ideas commonly occur to us first as images and are expressed first as metaphors. Even in talking about ordinary, concrete things immediately around us we use these metaphors all the time, and
on any larger, more puzzling subject we need constantly to try out new ones. — Mary Midgley
Thought is incurably powerful and explosive stuff [...] — Mary Midgley
That is the way people often do interpret this kind of claim, and it is particularly often brought forward as a reason for doing science. But Socrates [the unexamined life is not worth living] was surely saying something much stronger. He was saying that there are limits to living in a mess. — Mary Midgley
But wisdom itself matters everywhere [...] — Mary Midgley
It may well be that other cultures, less committed to talking, find different routes to salvation, that they pursue a less word-bound form of wisdom. — Mary Midgley
Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must shut our gob — Ludwig Wittgenstejn
Those who speak don't know. Those who know don't speak. — Lao Tzu
Most of us, I think, have long lost our umbilical cords, and so too the last connection each of us have had with another human being. — NOS4A2
Midgley is plumbing with duct tape here. — NOS4A2
More like macrophages because we can move in our own. Still, yes. You are a product of a highly advanced society. What have you accomplished all in your own?
It follows that Midgley does not offer a solution, although she indicates a few alternatives. She instead admonishes us to engage in sorting out the conceptual confusions that we otherwise take for granted. — Banno
Since I wholeheartedly agree with the spirit, if not also the letter, of Midgley's paper, I've nothing to add until others come along and earnestly clog-up the pipes with their (youtubed) "doctrines". — 180 Proof
I think it might well pay us to be less impressed with what philosophy can do for our dignity, and more aware of the shocking malfunctions for which it is an essential remedy.
Granted, then, that the confusions are there, is abstract philosophical speculation really a helpful remedy? Are the plumbers any use? Obviously this kind of speculation cannot work alone; all sorts of other human functions and faculties are needed too. But once you have got an articulate culture, the explicit, verbal statement of the problems does seem to be needed. — Midgely
That is the way people often do interpret this kind of claim, and it is particularly often brought forward as a reason for doing science. But Socrates was surely saying something much stronger. He was saying that there are limits to living in a mess. He was pointing out that we do live in a constant, and constantly increasing, conceptual mess, and that we need to do something about it. He knew that the presence of this mess, this chronic confusion, is something we do not much want to think about because it indicates the thoroughly undignified fact that we are inherently confused beings. We exist in continual conflict because our natural impulses do not form a clear, coherent system. And the cultures by which we try to make sense of those impulses often work very badly. — Midgely
Logic + Creativity = Philosopher. — TheMadFool
...I didn’t mean narrowly descriptive truths about the way the world really is, but truth in a broader sense that also encompasses prescriptive or moral “truths” (correct norms), logical or mathematical “truths” (valid inferences from coherent axiomatic definitions), rhetorical or artistic “truths” (effective presentation and delivery of useful or otherwise wanted content), and most to the point, philosophical truths, which I hold to lie in the intersection between logical/mathematical and rhetorical/artistic truths. — Pfhorrest
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