Is Philosophy the "Highest" Discourse?

We’re all familiar with the idea that philosophy operates at a level of discourse than which there is no higher, in some structural sense. What does this claim actually amount to?

First, a clarification: The idea I’m referring to doesn’t denigrate poetry, or fiction, or prayer, or paying compliments, or any other non-discursive uses of language. Whether such uses represent anything “higher” than philosophical discourse is a separate question, though of course a related one, and interesting in its own right. Here I’m sticking to the discourses of rational inquiry.

It may be the case that philosophy does represent an argumentative pinnacle. A given discipline – let’s say biology – has its subject matter and techniques, and biologists spend their days doing biology. We expect no more of them. But if a particular biologist was moved to begin asking questions about the meaning and boundaries of her discipline, the purposes that biology might serve, how biological puzzles fit within an overall scientific ontology, how scientific method itself is or isn’t culturally formed – she would no longer be doing biology. These are philosophical questions. She has moved to a different level of inquiry.

Those philosophy-of-science questions can themselves be questioned. Perhaps we want to know what would count as “the truth” in such matters. Or perhaps we become puzzled about whether the entities that science investigates are the same kinds of things that philosophers mean when they use terms like “reality” or “being.” We often call these meta-philosophical questions, but the plain fact is that they’re just more philosophy.

This seems to be how the philosophy-as-pinnacle idea gets generated. The inquirer realizes that, once you hit philosophy, there’s nowhere else to go. No new level of inquiry opens up, in the way that questions about biology lead to questions about science, and then to philosophical questions. All we need to add in order to put philosophy at a pinnacle is to imagine these as true levels, vertical rather than horizontal. From biology to philosophy isn’t a lateral move, on this view; we’re going up the ladder a rung, looking down on our previous viewpoint from a higher and more perspicuous and more general one. And, completing the picture, once we’re at the philosophy level, there are no more rungs.

I’m suggesting that this be downrated to an argumentative pinnacle because of a particular characteristic it reveals: The philosopher can automatically trump any card played against them. Suppose some surly neo-Freudian interrupts me at the point where I assert that “there’s nowhere else to go.” Nonsense, he says. “I’ll give you a psychological-slash-reductive explanation of why philosophers do what they do, and this explanation will have nothing to do with ‛ideas’ or ‛reasoning,’ and everything to do with culturally determined modes of expression mixed with individual depth psychology.” Ah, but I can reply, “Indeed? And what is your justification for asserting that such an explanation is true?” We see where this has to go: We’re back to doing philosophy. My surly interlocutor has been trumped. My question doesn’t arise out of any real insight or depth, but he can’t very well deny that it’s reasonable and meaningful. And nor can he claim that it has an answer within his discipline.

And so it goes. I suppose that, if you consider this sort of closure to be an intellectual pinnacle rather than an unavoidable result of argumentation, then philosophy gets to sit on the top rung and be “highest.” But I don’t think this is at all what (some) philosophers mean when they try to describe philosophy as an endpoint of thought. Rather, the suggestion is that this formal structure built into philosophical inquiry is also some kind of revelation or explanation: We will learn something important about thinking (and, if we tend toward monism, about the world itself) by realizing that it is impossible to ask a self-reflexive question that is not philosophical, and that there is nothing beyond self-reflection. This, so the suggestion goes, is not merely a trivial fact based on definitions of “philosophy,” but a situation that is interesting, and full of potential to instruct us about who we are.

I’m not persuaded by this . . .

. . . but I think there’s something to be said for it. Let me bring in a distinction between a refutation and a conclusion. Let’s also give the above thesis, about philosophy as endpoint, a name: call it the Top-Level Thesis (TLT). Now we can see that, if the TLT is true, it doesn’t mean that there is a refuting conclusion to reflection, in the way that an argument can be concluded by refuting another argument. Quite the contrary: The TLT would have it that, if philosophy is essentially reflexive, essentially always able to take another look at a previous reflection, then reflection cannot end. Nothing could represent the end of this kind of inquiry. Or perhaps it’s better to rephrase this slightly: Any given line of thought can end, perhaps with some reflective equilibrium among inquirers, perhaps even with a truth that appears irrefutable, but the enterprise of philosophy as such isn’t affected by such an ending. There is no position from outside philosophy that can silence philosophy itself by permanently drawing the inquiry into a different field.

Still, what have we achieved by saying this? So we remain mired in reflection – how is this illuminating, or even helpful?

My knowledge of Hegel isn’t deep, but I know he was concerned with this question of refutations as a way of thinking about how ideas develop, and how philosophy can be “highest” or “last.” In his lectures on the history of philosophy, he called the sapling the “refutation” of the seed, and the leaf of the sapling, and the blossom of the leaf, and the fruit of the blossom. But he meant this in a special sense, and perhaps the term is unfortunate. The fruit refutes the blossom in the sense of being the endpoint of a quasi-teleological process. It’s not that the blossom was wrong and the fruit right. Nor is it merely a question of coming last in time; that is not what “endpoint” means here. The fruit contains all the previous moments, it could not be what it is without them. If a plant could be aware, it would see that all its earlier stages were a necessary progression to arrive at the conclusion of what it is. It would also see that what it is can’t even be understood without reference to each stage of its dialectic.

When Hegel compares this image to the way a philosophical idea develops, he points out that nature must exist in time, so this development is necessarily time-sequential. But he emphasizes that, again, being last in a sequence is not what he means by “highest” or “last” philosophy. We are speaking of a dialectical process in which each stage retains or “sublates” the former one. Ideas reveal themselves as a theoretical unity, they do not grow or develop in time, like a plant. That would be like saying that 3 “comes before” 4 according to a clock measurement. This coming-before is surely not temporal. Rather, we perceive the sequence in one glance, so to speak, and can recognize that what is last has to be last, but not in the way that events in time are last.

So, a conclusion doesn’t have to be a refutation, but nor does it earn some special value simply by coming last in a series. Let’s return to the TLT. We can phrase this thesis in a way that is intriguingly contradictory: Philosophical inquiry cannot end, it cannot be overtaken and supplanted by a different discipline, but for that very reason this is a kind of ending. The TLT says that, precisely because there is no concluding the process of inquiry, that process itself is a conclusion. It is the last thing we can do with this way of thinking. It may not conclude or refute any particular train of thought, but it represents the conclusion of a way of thought, of how to think. And again, not to belabor the point but this “lastness” is not merely temporal. We could grasp the sequence of the dialectic in an instant, the same way we grasp a number line.

At this point, if we want to, we can shrug our shoulders and declare nothing of interest here. Or we could keep the Hegelian glasses on and speculate that philosophy is “last” or “concluding” because it represents a true limit of something beyond mere argumentation. If we go full-on Hegelian, we would describe this something as Idea, or Spirit. But we could also say, more modestly, that the limits of inquiry may also show us the limits of being. As mentioned earlier, this requires a monistic turn, a suspicion that what is true of thought must be true of being as well. We have all read Irad Kimhi by now ( :joke: ) so we know how complicated this can get. But, again more modestly, all I’m pointing to is this: If there is an important connection between what can be thought and what exists, then it must include a thesis about self-reflection, and the limits of inquiry, and how these limits are related to what exists.

The TLT could be that thesis. Let me end by restating it in these terms: The discovery that self-reflection cannot end, and that philosophy consistently trumps any reflection meant to silence it, is also a discovery about metaphysical structure. It’s not a gotcha! about human thought, with a purely argumentative result. Inquiry stops with philosophy because being -- what there is -- does not extend beyond what can be reflected upon.

I think this thesis is grandiose and difficult to evaluate, pulling a very hefty rabbit out of a smallish hat. But it continues to intrigue me as I spend more and more time on these questions. What do you all think?

Leontiskos

Interesting thread. Philosophy could be called highest because it is without presuppositions. But could it be called highest for a more substantive reason?

You seem to want to say that philosophy has to do with thinking qua thinking, and that if all being can be thought, then philosophy has a relation to all being in a way that other disciplines do not. That seems right. Or we might say that there is no thinking or knowledge that is non-philosophical. Philosophy itself has no presuppositions, and every act of thinking has philosophical presuppositions.

Fooloso4

Inquiry stops with philosophy because being -- what there is -- does not extend beyond what can be reflected upon. — J

Why would you assume that the limits of human thought are the limits of being? Perhaps what is is without limits.

Fooloso4

Philosophy could be called highest because it is without presuppositions. — Leontiskos

Such presuppositions are the death knell of philosophy.

Tom Storm

↪Fooloso4

I'm not sure what it even means to be without limits? Is this a capacity we have for reinvention, redefinition and ceaseless change, or does it refer to some transcendental factor? Or something else?

↪Fooloso4

I wouldn't assume it. But it might be the case. This OP is definitely in a speculative mode. More an attempt to tease out some possibilities as we consider what, if anything, is special about philosophical discourse.

You seem to want to say that philosophy has to do with thinking qua thinking, and that if all being can be thought, then philosophy has a relation to all being in a way that other disciplines do not. That seems right. Or we might say that there is no thinking or knowledge that is non-philosophical. — Leontiskos

Yes, that would all be in the spirit of what I'm suggesting. I'm sort of test-driving what I'm calling the Top-Level Thesis about philosophy, and trying to find a way in which it might be interestingly true, as opposed to merely a report about an argumentative trick that philosophy can perform.

Leontiskos

↪J

- Right, but I am uncomfortable with viewing the presuppositionaless-ness of philosophy as "an argumentative trick." There is something substantive about the uniquely presuppositionaless discipline. I find that aspect of philosophy interesting and important, albeit inevitable. So we could ask whether there is something more without denigrating that aspect.

Wayfarer

From biology to philosophy isn’t a lateral move, on this view; we’re going up the ladder a rung, looking down on our previous viewpoint from a higher and more perspicuous and more general one. And, completing the picture, once we’re at the philosophy level, there are no more rungs. — J

I will sometimes argue that there is such a thing as the philosophical ascent, generally understood as moving from a state of ignorance to insight or enlightenment. And also that there are degrees of knowledge, the 'analogy of the Divided Line' in the Republic being a paradigm for that.

A couple of sources which make the idea of higher knowledge explicit:

The "perennial philosophy" is in this context defined as a doctrine which holds (1 )that as far as worth-while knowledge is concerned not all men are equal, but that there is a hierarchy of persons, some of whom, through what they are, can know much more than others; (2) that there is a hierarchy also of the levels of reality, some of which are more "real," because more exalted than others; and (3) that the wise men of old have found a wisdom which is true, although it has no empirical basis in observations which can be made by everyone and everybody; and that in fact there is a rare and unordinary faculty in some of us by which we can attain direct contact with actual reality through the Prajñāpāramitā of the Buddhists, the logos of Parmenides, the sophia of Aristotle and others, Spinoza's amor dei intellectualis, and so on; and (4) that true teaching is based on an authority which legitimizes itself by the exemplary life and charismatic quality of its exponents. — Edward Conze

The Sage was the living embodiment of wisdom, “the highest activity human beings can engage in . . . which is linked intimately to the excellence and virtue of the soul” (WAP 220). Across the schools, Socrates himself was agreed to have been perhaps the only living exemplification of such a figure (his avowed agnoia notwithstanding). Pyrrho and Epicurus were also accorded this elevated status in their respective schools, just as Sextius and Cato were deemed sages by Seneca, and Plotinus by Porphyry. Yet more important than documenting the lives of historical philosophers (although this was another ancient literary genre) was the idea of the Sage as “transcendent norm.” The aim, by picturing such figures, was to give “an idealized description of the specifics of the way of life” that was characteristic of the each of the different schools. — About Pierre Hadot, IEP

I am uncomfortable with viewing the presuppositionaless-ness of philosophy as "an argumentative trick." — Leontiskos

Oh, I didn't realize that's what you meant. I was referring merely to the "gotcha" aspect, where any questioning of philosophy becomes yet more philosophy. Do you think this has to do with the lack of presuppositions? I'd like to hear more about that.

(Is "presuppositionaless-ness" translated from the German? :wink: )

Leontiskos

(Is "presuppositionaless-ness" translated from the German? :wink: ) — J

:lol:

Oh, I didn't realize that's what you meant. — J

I see it more as an aside, since your OP is not centered on this topic. My first post only touched on it in my first two sentences.

I was referring merely to the "gotcha" aspect, where any questioning of philosophy becomes yet more philosophy. Do you think this has to do with the lack of presuppositions? I'd like to hear more about that. — J

I don't know if this answers your question, but I see the presuppositionaless-ness of philosophy as substantive because it represents one of the basic reasons why philosophy is so difficult and so useful. It is what gives philosophy an undeniable sovereignty. Other disciplines have fairly clear starting points, but not philosophy. Other disciplines have a fairly clear Overton window, but not philosophy. ...Or at least, much less so with philosophy.

But I don't want to distract from the more central topic of the OP, which seems to be, "Is philosophy 'highest' in some way beyond having no presuppositions?"

Fooloso4

I'm not sure what it even means to be without limits? Is this a capacity we have ... — Tom Storm

I think all of our capacities have limits, except perhaps for our capacity to deceive ourselves. I can't say what those limits are, but they fall short of omniscience and omnipotence.

Fooloso4

More an attempt to tease out some possibilities as we consider what, if anything, is special about philosophical discourse. — J

The only thing special about philosophical discourse is that we cannot identify anything that is special about it, that is, there is nothing unique that all philosophical discourse has in common that distinguishes it from other modes of discourse. But that might be something that is special about it.

Other disciplines have fairly clear starting points, but not philosophy. — Leontiskos

This is going to sound paradoxical, but perhaps the starting point of philosophy is in fact the realization that its inquiries cannot be brought to an end by absorption into another discipline. This connects with what I saying about temporal sequence as being different from the "lastness" of philosophy. Clearly we couldn't know that reflection is endless until we'd discovered it to be so, which is a process in time, but having learned this, we can posit that feature as the feature which makes philosophy unique -- and in that sense it's the starting point, the presupposition (of sorts).

there is nothing unique that all philosophical discourse has in common that distinguishes it from other modes of discourse. — Fooloso4

Except, as above, that all philosophical discourse resists being absorbed/reduced into a different discourse. Or at least that's the possibility we're looking at here.

Fooloso4

Except, as above, that all philosophical discourse resists being absorbed/reduced into a different discourse. Or at least that's the possibility we're looking at here. — J

To the contrary, much of philosophy is modeled on the success of science.

Consider also the proliferation of the philosophy of science and its disciplines, such as biology, medicine, political and cognitive science. Then there is philosophy of religion, of literature, law, environment.

The division between philosophy and literature is not so clear.

I will sometimes argue that there is such a thing as the philosophical ascent, generally understood as moving from a state of ignorance to insight or enlightenment. And also that there are degrees of knowledge, the 'analogy of the Divided Line' in the Republic being a paradigm for that. — Wayfarer

This is a good counterpoint. A philosophical ascent, whether Platonic, Hegelian, or spiritual, ought to be about more than the ability to trump a questioner with yet further philosophy. Surely it can't be that which makes philosophy a love of wisdom? Knowledge, insight, enlightenment . . . these are the things we want philosophy to offer us. The question of the OP is, in part, can we find the path to these qualities by examining the peculiar nature of philosophical reflection?

much of philosophy is modeled on the success of science. — Fooloso4

That's true, but science cannot absorb philosophy into its inquiry, whereas philosophy can set the terms for discussing how science is done. See my example of the curious biologist. That's the peculiar self-reflexive quality I tried to describe in the OP. If a philosopher models herself after scientific method, this will be for philosophical reasons, not scientific ones.

Moliere

The division between philosophy and literature is not so clear. — Fooloso4

Yup. My inclination is to reduce philosophy to literature.

The question of the OP is, in part, can we find the path to these qualities by examining the peculiar nature of philosophical reflection? — J

First, excellent OP. I hesitated to respond until you gave me something more specific to latch onto.

I'd say we can, but that we don't need to.

If philosophy is only reflection then clearly there's something "higher" than philosophy -- action, life, experience, whatever you want to call it.

We can reflect forever (and I ought note that this is a feature, not a bug): but I think that philosophy touches upon what we do.

Or, at least, I see action as a part of philosophy.

Which makes the idea of philosophy as the highest discourse a bit hard to follow. -- though you've made me think of Ian Hacking's Elevator Words in The Social Construction of What?. Take a gander at page 31* of the pdf and page 21* of the printed page numbers and tell me what you think.

*They are the same page with a subsection titled OBJECTS, IDEAS, AND ELEVATOR WORDS -- that's the section I mean. His notion of elevation seemed similar to your idea about higher discourse.

EDIT: Though I'm laughing upon rereading where the examples for nonfancy commonsensical actions is (throwing a ball, rape) -- OK! What about (throwing a ball, theft)? lol. But I suppose that's the continental in me. Also, I don't think I'd draw the division as Hacking does, it's just a text to riff from that came to mind.

you've made me think of Ian Hacking's Elevator Words in The Social Construction of What?. Take a gander at page 31* of the pdf and page 21* of the printed page numbers and tell me what you think. — Moliere

This was new to me, and I like it very much. "Elevator words" is a really useful concept. I agree that it's another look at how philosophical discourse can get itself to be "higher." I think it's different from the situation I'm writing about, though. My use of "higher" has to do with the characteristic way that philosophers can respond to challenges both from inside, but especially from outside, the philosophical universe of discourse. We don't have to "blind them with elevator words" (!), we only have to ask for an argument. This inevitably means more philosophy -- so we win! And this is so trivial that I want there to be more to it; something closer to @Wayfarer's ideas about insight or enlightenment.

If philosophy is only reflection then clearly there's something "higher" than philosophy -- action, life, experience, whatever you want to call it. — Moliere

Or, at least, I see action as a part of philosophy — Moliere

Fair enough. That's a reasonable response, which I tried to leave open by saying, at the start of the OP, that there are all sorts of other "discourses" -- including those of action -- that may also be said to be "higher" than rational inquiry. I don't think they're "clearly" so, but they may be. Whether they are, and what that would mean, would be the subject of another OP, perhaps starting with Marx. I'm limiting myself here to the question of what is "higher," if anything, about philosophy understood only as inquiry.

Leontiskos

This is going to sound paradoxical, but perhaps the starting point of philosophy is in fact the realization that its inquiries cannot be brought to an end by absorption into another discipline. — J

Sure, but isn't it that there is no end because there are no presuppositions? If an inquiry requires support and presuppositions are the ultimate supports, then an inquiry without presuppositions cannot ultimately be brought to an end in any obvious way.

But one could speak about "bringing an inquiry to an end" via justification or via termination. I am thinking about justification, where an answer to a question is definitively justified.

This is similar to our exchange here about the uniqueness of metaphysics.

Clearly we couldn't know that reflection is endless until we'd discovered it to be so, which is a process in time, but having learned this, we can posit that feature as the feature which makes philosophy unique... — J

I think we could know this "a priori." That given the principles at stake, philosophical investigation can have no concrete end.

If an inquiry requires support and presuppositions are the ultimate supports, then an inquiry without presuppositions cannot ultimately be brought to an end in any obvious way. — Leontiskos

I'm not sure about this. I'll think more about it.

But one could speak about "bringing an inquiry to an end" via justification or via termination. I am thinking about justification, where an answer to a question is definitively justified. — Leontiskos

Yes, that's an important distinction. I think the problem I'm proposing in the OP is more about termination than justification. Self-reflection -- that is, the ability of philosophical discourse to always reply with more questions that can only be answered philosophically -- is literally interminable. That's the aspect that I said cannot be brought to an end, and that many philosophers regard as evidence of something important and special about such discourse. Philosophy proudly refuses to be silenced, or translated into silence by some other discipline.

The justification problem is closely related but different. Here, the impulse within philosophy is to silence itself, by reaching conclusions via some definitive proof, refutation, or similarly airtight justification. Justification, thus, can also end a line of inquiry, but in a very different way than a termination due to silencing by some other form of discourse. The fact that silence by justification has so rarely been achieved is surely indicative of something important, but what? Must philosophy also go on ad infinitum in this way, trying to end each line of inquiry with justification for one answer over another? Here, unlike the case of termination, it's not that we know this to be impossible. It's more that it almost never seems to happen. Maybe we could learn from the cases in which it has happened. Though it would be hard to get agreement on which those are!

Leontiskos

Yes, that's an important distinction. I think the problem I'm proposing in the OP is more about termination than justification. Self-reflection -- that is, the ability of philosophical discourse to always reply with more questions that can only be answered philosophically -- is literally interminable. That's the aspect that I said cannot be brought to an end, and that many philosophers regard as evidence of something important and special about such discourse. — J

Yes, I think we are on the same page. I was thinking of that as justification, but as your post indicates, if an answer to an inquiry cannot be definitively justified then that inquiry cannot come to a term (or be terminated). Similarly, an answer which cannot be satisfactorily/definitively justified for a community cannot be terminated/concluded by that community. The history of philosophy shows that even where agreement and termination occurred, it did not occur universally (cf. Holmes' dissent in Abrams, "...time has upset many fighting faiths...").

I suppose I am wondering what you meant when you talked about an inquiry being, "brought to an end by absorption into another discipline."

goremand

(...) true teaching is based on an authority which legitimizes itself by the exemplary life and charismatic quality of its exponents. — Wayfarer

I have to ask, is this what you yourself believe?

fdrake

I’m suggesting that this be downrated to an argumentative pinnacle because of a particular characteristic it reveals: The philosopher can automatically trump any card played against them. Suppose some surly neo-Freudian interrupts me at the point where I assert that “there’s nowhere else to go.” Nonsense, he says. “I’ll give you a psychological-slash-reductive explanation of why philosophers do what they do, and this explanation will have nothing to do with ‛ideas’ or ‛reasoning,’ and everything to do with culturally determined modes of expression mixed with individual depth psychology.” Ah, but I can reply, “Indeed? And what is your justification for asserting that such an explanation is true?” We see where this has to go: We’re back to doing philosophy. My surly interlocutor has been trumped. My question doesn’t arise out of any real insight or depth, but he can’t very well deny that it’s reasonable and meaningful. And nor can he claim that it has an answer within his discipline. — J

I don't think it follows that one discipline is more primordial/foundational than another based on the "what is your justification for this?" question's recursive nature. I will spell out why.

Asking the question "What's your justification for this this?" is recursive. Call asking that question of an assertion X the function Q( X ), which I'll just assume maps to another assertion X'. Every assertion occurs in a context, and call the mapping from an assertion of X to its context C( X ). I'm going to leave 'context' undefined for now, and just assume that every assertion has a context of utterance that makes it understandable, and some rules that characterise that context.

Some contexts will have properties that make their rules philosophical. If a context is characterised by rules of philosophy - again stipulate that such rules are comprehensible and recognisable -, say that that context has the property Phil.

The quote says that for every statement X, there exists a number of recursions of Q^n ( X ), mapping an assertion to its justification, such that Q^n( X ) has a context C characterised by Phil. You can grant that, but you might wonder why such a thing would render philosophy the "top level". Roughly what this claim states is that asking for justification eventually terminates in philosophy, but there's no particular argument for the uniqueness of the termination. The statement in the quote construes Phil as the demarcation between a fixed set of Q and other sets. There's a question about the uniqueness of the fixed set - why does asking that question eventually lead to philosophy?

When Hegel compares this image to the way a philosophical idea develops, he points out that nature must exist in time, so this development is necessarily time-sequential. But he emphasizes that, again, being last in a sequence is not what he means by “highest” or “last” philosophy. We are speaking of a dialectical process in which each stage retains or “sublates” the former one. Ideas reveal themselves as a theoretical unity, they do not grow or develop in time, like a plant. That would be like saying that 3 “comes before” 4 according to a clock measurement. This coming-before is surely not temporal. Rather, we perceive the sequence in one glance, so to speak, and can recognize that what is last has to be last, but not in the way that events in time are last. — J

The iteration of Q also induces an order on contexts. If you consider the sequence X, Q( X ), Q^2 ( X ) ..., Q^n ( X ) and so on, you could treat that as defining an order on the contexts. Which would just be C( X ), C(Q( X ) ), C(Q^2 ( X ) ), each context has its place in the order given by the number of recursions of Q it is evaluated of.

If you showed that for every initial X there existed an n such that C(Q^n ( X ) ) = Phil, you would have some kind of "termination in philosophy".

At this point, if we want to, we can shrug our shoulders and declare nothing of interest here. Or we could keep the Hegelian glasses on and speculate that philosophy is “last” or “concluding” because it represents a true limit of something beyond mere argumentation. If we go full-on Hegelian, we would describe this something as Idea, or Spirit. But we could also say, more modestly, that the limits of inquiry may also show us the limits of being. As mentioned earlier, this requires a monistic turn, a suspicion that what is true of thought must be true of being as well. We have all read Irad Kimhi by now ( :joke: ) so we know how complicated this can get. But, again more modestly, all I’m pointing to is this: If there is an important connection between what can be thought and what exists, then it must include a thesis about self-reflection, and the limits of inquiry, and how these limits are related to what exists. — J

But the relationship between the termination of the sequence of contexts in Phil and any properties of the recursive function Q remains unspecified. Why Q has the (alleged?) properties it has is something hitherto unexamined.

I do notice a bit of a landmine in this discussion, however. There is a presumption that Q can be meaningfully applied to any assertion X which is reached by some application of Q. Roughly this means that any assertion is in the domain of Q. Why would this be the case, when we know that questions generically also occur in contexts that determine their conditions of meaningful answer?

A ) For example, if you have 2+2=4, and someone asks why, you better give a mathematical answer.
B ) If you ask why Frodo had to bear the ring, you better give an answer in terms of Lord of the Rings.

In both cases, if you ceased talking in the initial context of assertion, you would no longer be providing relevant information about the question. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, since contexts tend to relate to each other even if they are distinct (but have fuzzy boundaries). What I suspect is producing the termination in Phil, if it indeed happens, is that it is a property of Q itself rather than any of the assertions it is applied to.

Here's an example of a chain that doesn't terminate in philosophy. So if X is "Frodo bears the ring", Q( X ) would be the answer to "How do you justify that Frodo bears the ring?", which would be "I read it in the book"... And someone asks you why... And you assert you read it in the book. And someone asks you why. And you assert you read it in the book. Which, I hope we can agree, is not a termination in philosophy. It's about basic reading comprehension.

It thus seems to me to be a big extrapolation to imagine that every image of Q's context tends more and more to philosophy. What ensures that Q( X ) has this convergent property? And what ensures the convergence always goes to philosophy? How do you argue that the convergence goes to philosophy without already arguing that philosophy interrogates the context of all contexts.

I suppose I am wondering what you meant when you talked about an inquiry being, "brought to an end by absorption into another discipline." — Leontiskos

I was referring to a situation such as the one involving the neo-Freudian. He attempts to short-circuit philosophical discourse by explaining it in terms of his discipline, abandoning any philosophical vocabulary about reasons, arguments, or truth. Another example might be a theological coup, in which someone insists on translating all talk of reasons, truth, etc., into a discussion of the speaker's salvation status (i.e., "You're only saying that because you're saved/damned"). It's a kind of ad hominem argument, but more general and potentially sweeping because it claims to invalidate not only a particular argument but all the premises of philosophical discourse. Many positivist/ordinary-language attacks on metaphysics also have this same characteristic, I think. And I'm claiming they can all be answered with more philosophy.

Fooloso4

... science cannot absorb philosophy into its inquiry, whereas philosophy can set the terms for discussing how science is done. — J

Philosophy is for Hegel science. It differs from the natural sciences in that its subject matter is not an object that is other than the subject. It is the science of the whole, which included the thinking subject.

From the thread on the preface to the Phenomenology:

3. … the subject matter is not exhausted in its aims; rather, it is exhaustively treated when it is worked out. Nor is the result which is reached the actual whole itself; rather, the whole is the result together with the way the result comes to be.

The whole of the subject matter includes not just the result of what has been worked out but the working out itself, which is to say, the working itself out.

… differentiatedness is instead the limit of the thing at stake. It is where the thing which is at stake ceases, or it is what that thing is not.

The thing at stake, the subject matter, die Sache selbst, is not a thing-in-itself, Ding an sich. In other words, it is not something to be treated as a subject does an object that stands apart.

Instead of dwelling on the thing at issue and forgetting itself in it, that sort of knowing is always grasping at something else.

That is, instead of standing apart one must stand within. The term ‘subject matter’ rather than ‘object matter’ is suggestive.

5. The true shape in which truth exists can only be the scientific system of that truth.
The truth exists only in the system of knowledge of the truth.

To participate in the collaborative effort at bringing philosophy nearer to the form of science – to bring it nearer to the goal where it can lay aside the title of love of knowing and be actual knowing – is the task I have set for myself.

Hegel sees himself as a participant in a collaborative effort with those who are lovers of knowledge, that is, the philosophers who preceded him, of whom it can be said that they are not actual knowers. To the extent he succeeds he will be the first to actually know.

The inner necessity that knowing should be science lies in the nature of knowing, and the satisfactory explanation for this inner necessity is solely the exposition of philosophy itself.

Hegel’s task is the exposition of the inner necessity of knowing, that knowing is the system of science.

However, external necessity, insofar as this is grasped in a universal manner and insofar as personal contingencies and individual motivations are set aside, is the same as the internal necessity which takes on the shape in which time presents the existence of its moments. To demonstrate that it is now time for philosophy to be elevated into science would therefore be the only true justification of any attempt that has this as its aim, because it would demonstrate the necessity of that aim, and, at the same time, it would be the realization of the aim itself.

The exposition of the inner necessity is externally realized in time, and Hegel will demonstrate that now is with his philosophy the time for philosophy to become actual knowing.

↪fdrake

This is tremendously helpful. You’ve given this a rigor I wasn’t able to achieve – or actually you’ve revealed it to be several interrelated problems. Let me see if I can respond to them.

Roughly what this claim states is that asking for justification eventually terminates in philosophy, but there's no particular argument for the uniqueness of the termination. — fdrake

I think this is right. It depends on the question of other sets of C, which you also raise later. Someone who wanted to argue for the TLT would need to explain a sense of “highest” that corresponds to (at least) uniqueness. We’d have to show how other contexts, even if possible, aren’t relevant.

If you showed that for every initial X there existed an n such that C(Q^n ( X ) ) = Phil, you would have some kind of "termination in philosophy". — fdrake

Beautiful. Yes, that’s what you’d have to show.

But the relationship between the termination of the sequence of contexts in Phil and any properties of the recursive function Q remains unspecified. Why Q has the (alleged?) properties it has is something hitherto unexamined. — fdrake

This is the question I’m raising when I noted that mere argumentation (which I’m now going to call “Q recursion,” a much more apt term) isn’t a very good reason for finding philosophical discourse to be special or illuminating. The reason why Q is what it is, and the reason why we can’t go beyond the Phil-contexts sequence, should match somehow. This should not be coincidence, and it should not be trivial. This needs a lot more thought (on my part). I may not even have understood everything you’ve packed in here, but so far it looks like a formidable challenge to justifying the TLT as stated.

I do notice a bit of a landmine in this discussion, however. — fdrake

Here I think I disagree. Let’s use the Frodo example.

So if X is "Frodo bears the ring", Q( X ) would be the answer to "How do you justify that Frodo bears the ring?", which would be "I read it in the book"... And someone asks you why... And you assert you read it in the book. And someone asks you why. And you assert you read it in the book. — fdrake

I say that the dialogue would go differently. After the first reply of “I read it in the book,” the next recursion is not “Why?” but rather, “Tell me how reading it in the book justifies your answer.” The interlocutor would then need to give an account of fictional realities, and how they may relate to truth and justification, etc. etc. More philosophy, and very interesting philosophy at that. So it’s not just reading comprehension. What it “says in the book” is far from a concluding moment in the dialectic.

What ensures that Q( X ) has this convergent property? And what ensures the convergence always goes to philosophy? — fdrake

Right. I see a path toward the answers in what you also say here:

What I suspect is producing the termination in Phil, if it indeed happens, is that it is a property of Q itself rather than any of the assertions it is applied to. — fdrake

Let’s assume that Q does have some property that produces convergence. I agree that we haven’t yet explained precisely what it is, though I think we both see a pretty good case that it is. Is it necessary, ensured? To me, it does have a nomic character. But must the convergence always terminate in Phil/philosophy? We’re back to the reason why the TLT is attractive: It claims that this termination is both inevitable and important. If at the end of our cogitating, all we have is the Q recursion as our "termination in philosophy," that’s not much of a result. The problem is how to shape it into something more significant, something actually about the nature of philosophy as a pursuit of wisdom, or at least knowledge.

Leontiskos

I was referring to a situation such as the one involving the neo-Freudian. He attempts to short-circuit philosophical discourse by explaining it in terms of his discipline, abandoning any philosophical vocabulary about reasons, arguments, or truth. Another example might be a theological coup, in which someone insists on translating all talk of reasons, truth, etc., into a discussion of the speaker's salvation status (i.e., "You're only saying that because you're saved/damned"). It's a kind of ad hominem argument, but more general and potentially sweeping because it claims to invalidate not only a particular argument but all the premises of philosophical discourse. Many positivist/ordinary-language attacks on metaphysics also have this same characteristic, I think. And I'm claiming they can all be answered with more philosophy. — J

Okay. In that case I agree with you that, "...the starting point of philosophy is in fact the realization that its inquiries cannot be brought to an end by absorption into another discipline" (

↪J

).

And I would say that these cases like the neo-Freudian rely on philosophical thinking to debunk philosophical discourse, and therefore result in a kind of performative contradiction. Thus philosophy could here be considered "highest" because it does not require these sorts of performative contradictions and rational gaps/incoherence.

fdrake

I say that the dialogue would go differently. After the first reply of “I read it in the book,” the next recursion is not “Why?” but rather, “Tell me how reading it in the book justifies your answer.” The interlocutor would then need to give an account of fictional realities, and how they may relate to truth and justification, etc. etc. More philosophy, and very interesting philosophy at that. So it’s not just reading comprehension. What it “says in the book” is far from a concluding moment in the dialectic. — J

Broadly speaking I wanted to use the Frodo example to highlight some challenging properties of the question sequence that would need to be in place for the "termination in philosophy" to behave as you seem to want it to. But I wasn't explicit about it, because I hadn't thought those constraints through. Here is my attempt to highlight what was merely implicit in the Frodo example.

I think this is presumptive in a way the set up of the problem hasn't specified. It could very well be that the "right" answer to Q in that instance is as you say, but that elides the nature of a criterion by which the right answer could be specified.

I have bolded "would" there since it seems modal. But in my view it's the wrong modality for the question - I think the dialogue must go differently than I suggested in order for it not to count as an counter example. So we'd be left requiring an account of why the flippant repetition cannot count as an answer. It strikes me that it could count as one, even if it is a bad one.

Roughly, you'd need to constrain which answers are accessible from a start point by iterating Q.

Another wrinkle is that Q would need to be a specific question with one variable in it. It would need to behave very much like "Why is X justified?", where X is the prior assertion. I think you've given yourself a freedom to change at least the exact wording of the question in that paragraph. Which would be fine, but then there's a similar question to above regarding which questions are accessible from which other questions in this context. How do you ensure the content is preserved? Does the content need to be preserved? Or is the thesis a bit different?

Is it now more: "For every initial statement X, there exists a series of questions Q1, Q2, ... , Qn such that when Q1 is asked of X, and Q2 is asked of the answer of Q1 to X... the context of the answer of Qn is Philosophy"?

Leontiskos

How do you argue that the convergence goes to philosophy without already arguing that philosophy interrogates the context of all contexts. — fdrake

I see this as fairly simple. There is a context of all contexts and that which pertains to it is what we call "philosophy."

contexts tend to relate to each other even if they are distinct (but have fuzzy boundaries) — fdrake

You are relying on a very linear justificatory scheme, where the boundaries aren't overly fuzzy. Classically the boundary of philosophy or metaphysics is not fuzzy, it is non-existent. The context of contexts is not a linear terminus that is hermetically sealed. It is encompassing.

If at the end of our cogitating, all we have is the Q recursion as our "termination in philosophy," that’s not much of a result. The problem is how to shape it into something more significant, something actually about the nature of philosophy as a pursuit of wisdom, or at least knowledge. — J

Why isn't it "much of a result"? Is there some argument other than, "Because it's inevitable?" Because I don't see why an inevitable justificatory aspect must be unimportant. I actually think the inevitability of philosophy is largely what makes it important. Philosophy is necessarily unavoidable, and that is why it is important.

There is a sui generis aspect of philosophy here given the way it is being defined. Instead of defining it according to its principles and object—as we do with other sciences—philosophy is being defined as the study pertaining to the "context of contexts," to use fdrake's language. Or for Aristotle, "The study of being qua being." Philosophy or metaphysics is not limited in the way that every other science is limited. It is not contextualized; it is not bound by a priori principles or presuppositions.

Aristotle's depiction is instructive. Sciences other than philosophy/metaphysics study being under some aspect other than being. For example, physics is the study of being qua movement. But the study of being qua being will be implicated in every other study of being (qua X). Thus philosophy does not stand merely as a linear foundation, but rather as a porous and encompassing ocean for all aquatic life.

fdrake

But the study of being qua being will be implicated in every other study of being (qua X). — Leontiskos

Why though?

Is Philosophy the "Highest" Discourse?

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