The Worldly Foolishness of Philosophy

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The philosopher is mostly a dunce in the eyes of a world “assured of certain certainties.” Philosophy is “obviously” just "a bunch of opinions." That this philosophical statement cancels its own authority goes unnoticed.

In our default thuggishness, we reluctantly concede that an otherwise unwelcome theory is not “just an opinion” only to the degree it threatens or seduces us practically.

The physicist is a wizard who summons nuclear fire, perhaps to destroy cities, perhaps to save the world with cheap energy. The biologist tweaks the code of life, perhaps to summon pandemics, perhaps to end aging forever.

What can the philosopher offer ?

Is the philosopher a life coach ? A spiritual advisor ? This “philosopher” is analogous to a nutritional supplement, --- a piece of technology, tested qualitatively like a new painkiller or piece of music in terms of the feeling he/ it gives us.

Or can we really take seriously the idea that a philosopher is essentially “scientific” in some radical, foundational sense ? Is the philosopher a kind of “pure mathematician” of existence as a whole ? I say “pure” because I want to highlight an impractical interest in truth for its own sake. Even an unpleasant truth is still good, because it is possessed as truth, because it’s worse --for people like 'us' -- to be confused or deceived.

I claim that philosophy in the grand ur-scientific sense outlives its gravediggers, because these gravediggers are themselves such philosophers in disguise (as post-metaphysical neopragmatists perhaps). I make the structuralist point that, call it what you will, we engage as human beings in some analogue of fundamental ontology, albeit more or less seriously in terms of openness to criticism.

Philosophy has made substantial progress, but this progress is not naked for outsiders in the way that progress in physics is naked – via “miraculous” technology. A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign.

What I’m trying to foreground is a style of tacit irrationalism, already in Francis Bacon, that conflates science and worldly power –- in a word : sophistry. I don't pound at the gates of power and demand recognition. I try to articulate and even embrace the status of the transcendental buffoon. Of course the engineer and the sophist (also an engineer really) get better seats at the table. Let us recall the drink that was offered to Socrates for all his 'useless' clarification of our existence.

Please join me in some conversational research !

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You tossed a blanket from the bed,
You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.
And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed’s edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44214/preludes-56d22338dc954

universeness

What can the philosopher offer ? — plaque flag

Brain storming/imagineering/musing/rumination! which is unrestricted by any notion of 'can't go there because.....'
Such, can cause thoughts in scientists that that they would otherwise, never have thought of.

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Brain storming/imagineering/musing/rumination! which is unrestricted by any notion of 'can't go there because.....'
Such, can cause thoughts in scientists that that they would otherwise, never have thought of. — universeness

:up:

Reminds me of Popper's appreciation of metaphysics. I know also that some great scientists have loved philosophy.

Joshs

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I make the structuralist point that, call it what you will, we engage as human beings in some analogue of fundamental ontology, albeit more or less seriously in terms of openness to criticism — plaque flag

Care to opine concerning the level or mode in which this openness to criticism takes place? What criteria have to be already in place in order for scientific criticism to be intelligible within any given community of researchers? And what sort of discipline is best suited to question and replace these criteria within which normative questions of truth and falsity, and correctness of method, gain purchase?

unenlightened

Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it's much more serious than that. — Bill Shankly

Philosophy is football with the universe as the ball, and everyman the referee.

The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.

The Goal.

Philosophers are the thought police; roping off the dead ends and directing the traffic, but going nowhere themselvesselves. Dutiful, taking pains, loving, hoping not to get run down today by a man in a hurry.

jgill

Dutiful, taking pains, loving, hoping not to get run down today by a man in a hurry. — unenlightened

Yesterday, upon the stair,
A hurried man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish, I wish he'd go away...

unenlightened

↪jgill

Oh, sorry.

Gnomon

The philosopher is mostly a dunce in the eyes of a world “assured of certain certainties.” — plaque flag

Historically, some professional philosophers have been known to pontificate : to speak from authority, but in complex abstruse esoteric language. That's why my indirect & superficial introduction to Postmodern philosophy sounded more like legalistic Sophistry, than Socrates faux humility "know nothing" set-up.

Unfortunately, some people want to get their wisdom cheap & revealed to them, pre-packaged, by wiser heads, in cryptic words that will make the dummy seem to be an authority. But then there are those (Trumpers) who merely want to be told --- in no uncertain terms --- what they already believe. So, who's the dunce here? :smile:

Pontificate : express one's opinions in a way considered annoyingly pompous and dogmatic

Anti-Sophistry :
"And this is the point in which, as I think, I am superior to men in general, and in which I might perhaps fancy myself wiser than other men, – that whereas I know but little of the world below, I do not suppose that I know".
Note that here Socrates does not say that he knows “nothing.” Instead, he says that he does know “little.” The main point is not that he wants to glorify ignorance, but to expose those who pretend to know things that they don’t. ___Socrates
https://daily-philosophy.com/quotes-socrates-knowing-nothing/

Tom Storm

The physicist is a wizard who summons nuclear fire, perhaps to destroy cities, perhaps to save the world with cheap energy. The biologist tweaks the code of life, perhaps to summon pandemics, perhaps to end aging forever.

What can the philosopher offer ? — plaque flag

Since you mentioned nuclear annihilation and physicists - wouldn't it be the case that many people think philosophers have annihilated human values, unleashing relativism, hopelessness and nihilism? Scientists and experts are not much liked or trusted, but I would think poststructuralists and postmodernists have provoked as much popular outrage and disapproval as any other type of maven or wizard. Philosophy continues to slaughter gods, bringing with in the extermination of tradition and certainty. Turning cities into fireballs is one thing, but how about wiping out foundationalism and with it identity and truth... :razz:

180 Proof

What can the philosopher offer ? — plaque flag

Exemplary daily exorcisms of foolery (re: meta-ignorance (i.e. agnotologies (e.g. pseudo-discourses, sophistries)); expectations misaligned with reality (i.e. self-immiseration, alienation, dukkha); maladaptive habits of mind (e.g. mis/ab-uses of communication, judgment, knowledge), etc) aka "spiritual exercises".

jgill

What can the philosopher offer ? — plaque flag

Not much these days. But being philosophical might help smooth out the bumps in life.

The teaching of the sciences embodies the appropriate philosophical ideas for those subjects.

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What criteria have to be already in place in order for scientific criticism to be intelligible within any given community of researchers? And what sort of discipline is best suited to question and replace these criteria within which normative questions of truth and falsity, and correctness of method, gain purchase? — Joshs

Did you ever look into Karl-Otto Apel ?

Apel's strong thesis is that his transcendental semiotics yields a set of normative conditions and validity claims presupposed in any critical discussion or rational argumentation. Central among these is the presupposition that a participant in a genuine argument is at the same time a member of a counterfactual, ideal communication community that is in principle equally open to all speakers and that excludes all force except the force of the better argument. Any claim to intersubjectively valid knowledge (scientific or moral-practical) implicitly acknowledges this ideal communication community as a metainstitution of rational argumentation, to be its ultimate source of justification (1980).

https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/apel-karl-otto-1922

I first read about Apel in Zahavi's book on Husserl and intersubjectivity. I take him to be sketching a minimal foundationalism, relying primarily on the exclusion of performative contradiction. This is not so far from Brandom's coherence-aspiring subject. Behind it all is a quest for autonomy.

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Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it's much more serious than that.
— Bill Shankly

Philosophy is football with the universe as the ball, and everyman the referee. — unenlightened

:up:

Great quote. Like it or not, we seemed forced to do philosophy, and I include the possiblity of trying to avoid doing so, which just means a mess inherited unexamined beliefs.

Is the 'examined life' really Better ? I don't know. I can't help myself. Husserl talks in his introduction to the first English translation of Ideas about having fallen in love with philosophy -- as fateful as falling in love with a bad but beautiful woman.

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Yesterday, upon the stair,
A hurried man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish, I wish he'd go away... — jgill

:up:
I love this classic. Just a hint of madness. Great parody. Wittgenstein might have included it in his unwritten book o' philosophical jokes. [ I think I saw it where the second line is 'I saw a man who wasn't there.]

Wayfarer

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Agree with the sentiment. It is perfectly reflected in those articles you sometimes see ‘scientists puzzled over why consciousness exists’, ostensibly because it seems to serve no evolutionary purpose.

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some professional philosophers have been known to pontificate : to speak from authority, — Gnomon

I don't think it's that easy for a professor to speak from authority (they can be ejected for speechcrime), but certain movements seem to take certain assumptions / styles for granted.

complex abstruse esoteric language — Gnomon

Sometimes thinkers are saying simple things in a complicated way.

Sometimes thinkers are saying complicated things in a simple way.

Only insiders can tell the difference. I think this is a hard truth, because one becomes an insider --- able to genuinely follow and appreciate canonical works --- only with years of serious study. I don't pretend that insider-ness is an exact binary status, just to be clear.

Lately I use ontology as a synonym for philosophy because I personally like to stress its [ur-]scientific intention apart from the search from wisdom.

A person can be relatively wise and virtuous without caring much about the fussy details of ontology.

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wouldn't it be the case that many people think philosophers have annihilated human values, unleashing relativism, hopelessness and nihilism? — Tom Storm

Excellent question ! For my money, the first big shock was just Voltaire and the wrecking crew of his time. The Enlightenment itself (atheism, humanism, autonomy, democracy) is what seems to trouble most people. Atheism implies/threatens nihilism. Even pluralism makes it hard to believe in my DIY household gods, because humans fundamentally need (are) community and recognition. In my view, this was 'bound' to happen in some way or another, given our nature as 'exponential' 'time-binding' primates. Is the issue that technology didn't bring Utopia ?That we are spoiled freed slaves who take our relative liberty for granted, use it primarily to cry for a return to slavery which is at least less lonely ? [ I'm against resentment. Virtue is its own reward. Hard to let go of wanting a pat on the back of course. ]

You reference more specifically what I'd call educated irrationalism. I see this as offending most people in exactly the same way that Voltaire does. A few others, like Husserl in his day, are offended by the treachery of these paradoxical clerics. More seriously, critical rationality was always already self-critical. Sometimes a daring self-critical thesis is revealed to be unstable or self-cancelling. Ideally this is revealed in conversational research and the thesis is patched or abandoned.

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you sometimes see ‘scientists puzzled over why consciousness exists’, — Quixodian

I think we both agree that they have simply assumed a flawed ontology. It's crucial that science looks around any particular human subject. It's absurd to radicalize or misunderstand the first genuine necessity and (pretend one can) look around human subjectivity altogether.

I'm a fucking empiricist [ like Husserl, who experience conceptuality as we all do ] , and I can make no sense of human cognition peeping around human cognition. I use my body to see, my brain to think. I can, when I'm around, pretend that I'm not around, but that don't mean I'm not around.

Instead this individual can see farther or better (is less biased or incomplete) than that one.And our specialized knowledge is largely necessarily dormant ('viral' inscriptions) and distributed -- no room for it all in the living single subject. We have to trust one another.

So there's the human/environment dyad and the individual/community dyad in a difficult-to-untangle relationship here, hence the confusion ?

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But being philosophical might help smooth out the bumps in life. — jgill

:up:

Fair enough. I think all of are philosophical in the navigation of our identity. Who am I ? Who should I be ? Fundamental questions in a free-ish society. Probably literature is just as good if not better at this task (dramaturgical ontology, choice of the hero path, like a discipline or inflexible point of honor.)

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The teaching of the sciences embodies the appropriate philosophical ideas for those subjects. — jgill

I very much think that a mathematician or physicist or biologist can do genuine 'ontological' work themselves.

My OP would also apply to nonapplied sciences --anything that the outsider can't cash out in terms of the 'miracle' of technology. A certain kind of pure mathematician is in the same boat as the apparently useless ontologist. [ G. H. Hardy thought his own work was useless, but it became useful (I'm thinking of crypto's use of number theory.) ] But I think both characters are doing something 'scientific.'

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Exemplary daily exorcisms of foolery (re: meta-ignorance (i.e. agnotologies (e.g. pseudo-discourses, sophistries)); expectations misaligned with reality (i.e. self-immiseration, alienation, dukkha); maladaptive habits of mind (e.g. mis/ab-uses of communication, judgment, knowledge), etc) aka "spiritual exercises". — 180 Proof

:up:
expectations misaligned with reality
To me this hints at ontology. What is this reality ? The sciences are a prime source of information, but I contend that the personality has to synthesize a 'grand narrative.' Your offering of what philosophy is for is a great example of that.

I'd call that ontology. I don't see how a specialized science could do the same job. To be sure, this kind of ontology might be called 'merely' a private spiritual practice. But I think you and I both aim for a truth that is not merely yours or mine.

jgill

I very much think that a mathematician or physicist or biologist can do genuine 'ontological' work themselves — plaque flag

It's better they are unaware that's what they're doing. :roll:

180 Proof

What is ~~this~~ reality ? — plaque flag

Whatever reality is, reality necessarily excludes – negates – unreality (i.e. ontological impossibles (e.g. un-condittionals, un-changeables, reified ideas ('ideals'), etc)).

Wayfarer

Bearing in mind we all routinely do things that would have been thought ‘excluded from reality’ by our forbears.

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It's better they are unaware that's what they're doing. :roll: — jgill

You might be right. I'm supposed to be a mathematician (by formal education), but I mostly read and write philosophy. I'm corrupted.

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Whatever reality is, reality necessarily excludes – negates – unreality (i.e. ontological impossibles (e.g. un-condittionals, un-changeables, reified ideas ('ideals'), etc)). — 180 Proof

:up:
The necessary exclusion you mention is also my approach. A minimalist foundation (reasaonable starting point) is precisely the outlawing of performative and logical contradiction.

I've been thinking lately that positivism, phenomenology, Kantianism ---all of these movements share in this properly exclusive spirit. Don't talk nonsense.

But it's hard to get right. Because (I claim) it's necessarily ontological. Can't do 'pure' epistemology first, because there's always some at least implicit ontology one argues from to establish that epistemology.

Yet I'm confident about the general approach of excluding nonsense. The identity of critical thought is blurry but weighty and solid. The task is endless clarification.

RogueAI

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Physics necessarily leads to metaphysics. Philosophy can't be avoided.

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Physics necessarily leads to metaphysics. Philosophy can't be avoided. — RogueAI

I can definitely agree that anyone who wants to deeply understand reality is going to end up shoulder-deep in metaphysics. But it's almost a tautology. Foundation. Radicality. All of these metaphors of the basis and the basic.

I perhaps foolishly very much wave the flag of philosophy.

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Bearing in mind we all routinely do things that would have been thought ‘excluded from reality’ by our forbears. — Quixodian

Yes, so it's very difficult. Rorty viewed [ critical, secular ] philosophy as essentially Kantian. It is theory of knowledge, of the structure of all possible inquiry or experience. It seeks apriori truths about the deep structure of human existence. I still embrace this project, but he saw himself as moving beyond it.

Your own statement features the complexity of the enterprise, because you are speaking to the necessity of the possibility of surprise. Braver's book on antirealism follows the 'explosion' of Kantianism into a thinking that is more and more historical. The transhistorical center of the subject is shrunken along the way. Less and less of the traditional universal subject functions as a reliable immobile center. More and more the subject is deemed a creature of its time --often to the point of performative contradiction, which is my fundamental gripe about some 'pomo.'

RogueAI

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Also, everyone grapples with questions of purpose, meaning, ethics, duty, etc. I think these questions are a lot more important to people than how old the universe is or what Dark Matter/Energy are.

The Worldly Foolishness of Philosophy

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