Solipsism would be but one example of a philosophical position which denies the claim that there are independent minds, and therefore that there is any such thing as the field of psychology. — Leontiskos

As I noted, psychology is the study of minds. You need a mind to think and you need to think to generate a philosophical position such as solipsism. And I didn't say anything about independent minds. I'm serious about my argument, but I can see we'll just go back and forth on this. As far as I can see, philosophy can't step outside the box of psychology.

And to be fair, I don't care a lot about this argument. It just bothers me when people want to claim that philosophy is somehow more than it really is. Philosophy is wonderful, but all it is is thinking about stuff.

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. — J

Origin is ever-present. It is not a beginning, since all beginning is linked with time. And the present is not just the “now,” today, the moment or a unit of time. It is ever-originating, an achievement of full integration and continuous renewal. Anyone able to “concretize,” i.e., to realize and effect the reality of origin and the present in their entirety, supersedes “beginning” and “end” and the mere here and now. — Jean Gebser, Ever-Present Origin

But there is a question of fact about whether the Freudian psychologist is making use of what J would call "philosophical" thinking on order to deflate the philosopher's claim. I think it should be recognized that what the Freudian psychologist sees himself as refuting and what @J sees as "philosophy" are probably two different things. — Leontiskos

Let's say this: the philosopher believes questions of justification are always legitimate and appropriate; the psychologist believes questions of "motivation," say, are always legitimate and appropriate.

If the philosopher believes he's on firm ground demanding to know how the psychologist knows what he claims to know, the psychologist believes himself to be on ground just as firm in examining the philosopher's motives for demanding justification.

Of course each side sees the other as dodging a legitimate question. I do not see philosophy doing anything unique here, just treating everything as a nail, as every other domain does.

And of course there will be philosophical justifications for treating questions of justification as special and uniquely important, but that's just a restating of philosophy's initial position.

The natural move would actually be to engage in internal critique of psychology, to attempt to explain the study of psychology with reference to the motivations of psychologists. The problem is, that's no help if it actually works; you have to hope that psychology is unable to account for itself.

(And suddenly I recall as a teenager snickering at the phrase "inorganic chemists".)

there are many other useful
discourses WITHIN philosophy besides that of rationally generated consensus and the primacy of rationality itself. — Joshs

Well, that's the question, isn't it? I suspect you're right (emphasis on the word useful) but we're still left wondering about this peculiar reflexive or recursive character of what's generally thought of as "rational inquiry." Does a broadening of what counts as philosophical discourse change the picture? I'll shortly try to respond to @Srap Tasmaner's interesting concerns about this, and whether it all comes down to philosophy understood as justification.

When you try to make substantial metaphysical points with a formalism or set theory, you are baptizing the formalism and the set theory into metaphysics. It is natural enough that by limiting your thought to such forms you limit your conclusions to formalisms. — Leontiskos

I prefer to think of it as using a powerful tool to help make discriminations among ideas that are often too vague in English, or at least too vague in an OP by me :smile: . I can't speak for @fdrake, of course, but I don't see any of this as necessarily limiting anyone's thought, unless fdrake or his evil twin were to come along and claim that this is the only way of understanding the issue I raised in the OP. Which I don't think he has. My own interest in the question does indeed go beyond what I think formalism is likely to be able to show, but we need to understand what that is first.

Lots here. I'll have to do this piecemeal due to time constraints, but thanks for giving so much thought to this, despite finding some of the set-up uncongenial.

the initial pitch was for philosophy as the ultimate backstop or bedrock, because philosophy can force any discipline ― or even any claim ― into a philosophical discussion, but once there, any further probing and questioning is just more philosophy. Among the many overlapping ideas in this setup was that philosophical ideas are simply impervious to any but philosophical counters. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, though it leaves out an important emphasis -- that philosophy engages in this kind of discourse in a context of self-defense, so to speak. I wasn't thinking so much about the philosophical gadfly who keeps pulling their interlocutor back into phil. disputes, though of course we all know phil. is capable of this. Rather, the idea was to point up what seemed to me to be phil.'s unique ability to refute explanations or dissolution-by-translation into another discipline or discourse. So the particular "forcing" going on here is the insistence that phil. can only be challenged* with more phil.

*(and I think we're going to see that the nature of what counts as a "challenge" is critical)

Only now it turns out you don't intend to show that this is so, but enforce it, by fiat. You just define the discussion as philosophical from the start. — Srap Tasmaner

I don't think this is right. There may indeed be an appeal to definition going on, but not one I'm making up. Or maybe I don't understand you. Would you say that the Freudian "Very interesting..." response is philosophical? I assumed we would all agree that it wasn't, on any common understanding of what we do. Isn't it an attempt to launch a dissolution of philosophy? It avoids what would otherwise be what @Leontiskos noted was a performative contradiction of sorts, since if the Freudian challenges phil. on the level of reason or ideas, he's doing more phil.

So this was indeed the key word in the original post:

And what is your justification for asserting that such an explanation is true?
— J — Srap Tasmaner

This is a good observation. It seems possible that by equating phil. with rational justification, we produce the puzzle we're worrying about.

and this word [justification] is the private property of philosophy. — Srap Tasmaner

I hear your indignation, but I'm not clear on what there is to be indignant about. Are you saying that there are other relevant (in this context) ways of justifying a position that are not philosophical? Or is it that philosophy ought to be so much more than justification?

Have to stop here for now.

unless fdrake or his evil twin were to come along and claim that this is the only way of understanding the issue I raised in the OP. — J

The only way of understanding anything is to assign symbols to bits of it. Paying no attention to the silent process of individuation which allows the symbol to refer to a target. It worries me, but I think I'm joking.

Let's say this: the philosopher believes questions of justification are always legitimate and appropriate; the psychologist believes questions of "motivation," say, are always legitimate and appropriate. — Srap Tasmaner

Does the psychologist think theories of motivation need to be justified? If the answer is "yes," then the psychologist is involved in performative contradiction.

If the philosopher believes he's on firm ground demanding to know how the psychologist knows what he claims to know, the psychologist believes himself to be on ground just as firm in examining the philosopher's motives for demanding justification. — Srap Tasmaner

Aquinas does talk about the way that the intellect and the will are both infinitely recursive and intermixed, and you could think of "motive" as pertaining to the will and "justification" as pertaining to the intellect. That's fine as far as it goes, but that deep analysis of the will strikes me as philosophical, not psychological. It is certainly not psychological to the exclusion of being philosophical. The dispute between intellectualism and voluntarism has not historically been construed as a dispute between philosophy and psychology, even though it can truly be said that modern and contemporary philosophy are excessively intellectual.

I prefer to think of it as using a powerful tool to help make discriminations among ideas that are often too vague in English — J

@fdrake has tried to force things into his set theoretic paradigm. It is unnatural but also unreflective, given that it fails to consider why set theory must be the controlling narrative or paradigm, or where such "tools" are located metaphysically. There is no reason to assume that set theory will be able to capture the nature of philosophy vis-a-vis other areas of study, so why assume that? I see this as the mathematical version of the Freudian psychologist.

And the argument that tries to run with such assumptions is not only invalid, it is contradictory.

As I noted, psychology is the study of minds. — T Clark

No, you didn't. And if you want to say something like that then I would ask you what philosophy of mind studies. I don't think your arguments are very clear at all, and part of the proof is that you think you said things that you haven't said.

One question - why the quotes around "highest" in the thread title?

As I noted, psychology is the study of minds.
— T Clark

No, you didn't. And if you want to say something like that then I would ask you what philosophy of mind studies. I don't think your arguments are very clear at all, and part of the proof is that you think you said things that you haven't said. — Leontiskos

Oops.

I think it is reasonable to say that philosophy is the study of thought, beliefs, knowledge, value, which are mental phenomena - the structure and process of the conscious mind. As such, it is a branch of psychology. — T Clark

Also, are you arguing that there is not a philosophy of mind and a psychology of mind? Given my position, why would that be a contradiction?

- The post you quote does not say what you think it does.

The post you quote does not say what you think it does. — Leontiskos

Pretty lame argument, and irrelevant to my position. We should probably leave it there since we seem to be descending into disagreeableness.

Lots here. I'll have to do this piecemeal — J

Don't bother. I'm doing some rereading and may have yet another take on all this at some point.

In the meantime, have you considered that you might be misconstruing what you've discovered?

What you describe could also be taken as showing that philosophy is a trap: inquiry is in danger of getting stuck there, no longer producing knowledge. (Which, let's be honest ...)

"Philosophy" may be what we call inquiry that has run off the rails, or gotten stuck in the doldrums, or reached a high point it's unable (or unwilling) to climb down from.

Instead of asking if philosophy is in danger of being dislodged from its perch by any other discipline, maybe the right question is whether any other discipline can come to philosophy's rescue. Are there disciplines that can help you get down, or do you have to jump?

What you describe could also be taken as showing that philosophy is a trap: inquiry is in danger of getting stuck there, no longer producing knowledge. (Which, let's be honest ... — Srap Tasmaner

You feel that philosophy is longer producing knowledge? How long has this state of affairs been the case?

I think it is reasonable to say that philosophy is the study of thought, beliefs, knowledge, value, which are mental phenomena - the structure and process of the conscious mind. As such, it is a branch of psychology.
— T Clark

Also, are you arguing that there is not a philosophy of mind and a psychology of mind? Given my position, why would that be a contradiction — T Clark

In my view, philosophy in its most general sense refers to a mode of discourse melding comprehensiveness, unity, and explicitness. One can make any kind of thinking in any disciple more or less philosophical by moving in one direction or another along this spectrum. So a psychologist can become more philosophical, more ‘meta’, by moving from cognitive psychology to philosophy of mind. Does this mean that philosophy is a branch of psychology? No, because there are many philosophers who define psychology as an empirical discipline, the scientific study of mental phenomena in all its guises and levels of focus ( cognition, emotion, sociality, biological ecology, neuroscience, genetics, etc).

What binds all these domains of study together as psychological is a shared acceptance of a set of presuppositions concerning what it means to be empirical, scientific, objective , natural and real. Those philosophers who don’t consider their mode of inquiry as belonging to psychology, who believe that disciplines like philosophy of mind (and writers like Daniel Dennett) ‘psychologize’ philosophy, argue that psychology forces us to confuse the primordial underpinnings of being and existence with the contingent results of a science. They may argue psychological concepts like ‘mental’ , ‘physical’ , ‘value’ and belief’ are confused derivatives of more fundamental truths that no longer belong to psychology, but are instead ontologically prior to it.

Cool question! In part they're scare-quotes; I don't want to be seen as naively endorsing the idea of "highest" as "best" or "most perspicuous" that is often associated with philosophy. But also it was an attempt to capture the ambiguity of "highest," which I discuss in the OP. "Highest" can mean what I just wrote -- "best," more or less -- or it can mean "up a level, beyond which there are no more levels," without comment on value. I raised the possibility that phil. discourse is only highest in this sense.

There should be a typographical symbol that would mark ambiguity.

Darn, I was just hitting my stride! I hope whatever you write next will continue the themes of phil. as justification, and also the idea that there was something deeper I was reaching for in my OP, with all the subsequent discussion being preliminary to that. I think that's correct, though preliminary discussion (about what, if anything, it is that philosophical discourse does specially) is necessary before we can ask, as I did, what this might say about being, a la Hegel.

have you considered that you might be misconstruing what you've discovered?

What you describe could also be taken as showing that philosophy is a trap: inquiry is in danger of getting stuck there, no longer producing knowledge. (Which, let's be honest ...) — Srap Tasmaner

Absolutely. That's why I commended @Wayfarer for bringing up aporia. We have to keep this tension in mind -- that what we'd like to believe is phil.'s superpower might in fact be its downfall. But again, until we first get clear about what this superpower is supposed to be, we can't know how to proceed about this.

I'm interested in the difference between your descriptions of philosophy and psychology. You describe philosophical thought as united by a "mode of discourse," that features certain attributes, whereas psychology is characterized by "a set of presuppositions." This is quite similar to an idea @Leontiskos was talking about earlier, that the lack of presuppositions may be what makes phil. unique. Are you also trying to make this distinction?

You describe philosophical thought as united by a "mode of discourse," that features certain attributes, whereas psychology is characterized by "a set of presuppositions." This is quite similar to an idea Leontiskos was talking about earlier, that the lack of presuppositions may be what makes phil. unique. Are you also trying to make this distinction? — J

No, I don’t believe there can be philosophy without presuppositions. Philosophers arise out of a contingent culture which shapes the sense of the questions they ask and how they interpret the answers. For me the distinction between philosophy and psychology has only to do with the how richly and comprehensively those presuppositions are articulated.

Let's take your first example, the biologist. Here's a simple approach.

You're doing biology, some research, some model building, some reading, etc. You take a step back and reflect on what you're doing and how you're doing it. That's an important step in research and in problem solving. I would be okay with following @Joshs here, I think, in saying this is a "more philosophical" moment, on a spectrum.

But now what? You have a new perspective and some new ideas. Do you get back to work? Step back off the ladder? Or do you take another step up, another step away from research and toward contemplation and reflection? Do you follow up on how that step up can inform and maybe improve your work, or do you find yourself looking out across the landscape, noticing other ladders sticking up here and there, getting interested in them, wanting to get higher so you can see more ladders, because now you're interested in ladders and heights ...

I guess you could call this a different kind of research, so that we don't have to say that philosophy is that form of inquiry that doesn't involve research, but it's a different sort of thing from what people on the ground do, and what you used to do when you were a biologist. And what you're inclined to say about what goes on down there, and about what people are doing who study what's on the ground, it's more and more likely to be bullshit, something that sounds good to you, all alone, a thousand feet above them, when you can no longer see what's down there in any detail.

Philosophers arise out of a contingent culture which shapes the sense of the questions they ask and how they interpret the answers. For me the distinction between philosophy and psychology has only to do with the how richly and comprehensively those presuppositions are articulated. — Joshs

I'm wondering, and suspect you would though I don't know, if you'd accept a similar articulation along the spectrum of literature. As in: "For me the distinction between philosophy and science has only to do with how richly and comprehensively each rendition articulates their presuppositions"

Where I think I'd disagree -- I'm not sure how to differentiate, but I feel that both philosophy and science articulate their presuppositions in a rich and comprehensive manner. This is part of why they look similar.

For me, and probably for you in various ways (and I'm more interested in the various ways than the differences, only expressing a point here): the difference has to do with method more than a description of presuppositions.

It could be a side-trap, though, considering that I'm a fan of Against Method :D -- Just some thoughts.

And what you're inclined to say about what goes on down there, and about what people are doing who study what's on the ground, it's more and more likely to be bullshit, something that sounds good to you, all alone, a thousand feet above them, when you can no longer see what's down there in any detail — Srap Tasmaner

I could point out the danger of not seeing the forest for the trees by spending all one’s time on the ground. You could point out the opposite danger of losing sight of the grounding facts by seeing them from too great a distance. But does the philosophical-empirical distinction have to be understood in terms of breadth vs detail metaphors?
Dont the best philosophers through history also have a comprehensive knowledge of the sciences? For them, isn’t it less a question of sacrificing detail for the sake of breadth than of enriching the understanding of the details by supplying what is hidden from their gaze, the underground plumbing so to speak? Let’s take Husserl’s method of bracketing, for instance. By putting out of commission our knowledge of the detailed facts of science, he stays as close as possible to those details, while burrowing beneath them to reveal the presuppositions animating their sense.

Where I think I'd disagree -- I'm not sure how to differentiate, but I feel that both philosophy and science articulate their presuppositions in a rich and comprehensive manner. This is part of why they look similar. — Moliere

Give me any scientific theory, and I’ll show you how philosophical questions can reveal the metaphysical presuppositions making its assertions intelligible. This job of uncovering metaphysical commitments is not something that the sciences normally engage in , since by their nature they take for granted such presuppositions in order to do their work. This is what I mean by richness and comprehensiveness. Science by its nature stops short of exposing its underground plumbing.

Give me any scientific theory, and I’ll show you how philosophical questions can reveal the metaphysical presuppositions making its assertions intelligible — Joshs

I believe you and I can always show how philosophical questions can reveal metaphysical presuppositions, and that these presuppositions at least help to make phrases intelligible.

What I suspect is that science -- even of the psychological kind -- cannot show how artistic questions reveal metaphysical presuppositions which make its assertions intelligible. And these days I tend to think of scientists as the poets of math, but that's a metaphor I'm still thinking through.

Could the same hold true for literature?

Is there a difference between literature and philosophy, in your opinion?

I agree with (almost) all that! @Pierre-Normand had a useful thing about universality and generality that fits here too.

And obviously I have in the back of my mind LW's comments about needing the overview, the birds-eye-view.

What I like is the idea of going up and down @J's ladder. And stepping back doesn't always have to mean going up either. You can also step over to some other part of the garden, and see how things are going there, look for commonalities and differences, but also look for analogies.

I still think there's room to be wary of the intoxication of heights, the seductive power of going up and staying there. Back to the rough ground!

To start, before I get more specific, I agree with just about everything you've said. And I'll add this - my primary argument is against setting philosophy up as some sort of pinnacle of human inquiry. I don't see it as all that special. For me, it is an exercise in self-awareness - more a practice than a study.

In my view, philosophy in its most general sense refers to a mode of discourse melding comprehensiveness, unity, and explicitness. — Joshs

I like this. I used to say that metaphysics is the set of phenomenological rules we reason, argue, by. Although I still think that's a good way of thinking about it, most people don't look at it that way, so I've taken a different approach.

So a psychologist can become more philosophical, more ‘meta’, by moving from cognitive psychology to philosophy of mind. Does this mean that philosophy is a branch of psychology? No, because there are many philosophers who define psychology as an empirical discipline, the scientific study of mental phenomena in all its guises and levels of focus ( cognition, emotion, sociality, biological ecology, neuroscience, genetics, etc). — Joshs

I even agree with most of this, all but the "no" part. Yes, I overstated my case for rhetorical purposes by calling philosophy a branch of psychology, but that doesn't mean that isn't a defensible way of looking at it. Maybe you can see from the things I've said - I come at philosophy from a psychological point of view, i.e. why I do it, what I use it for. As I said previously - self-awareness. My discussion with @Leontiskos started when I questioned his statement that philosophy has no presuppositions. At that point, I started thinking about what the underlying assumptions of philosophy might be. The ones I came up with were psychological. The example I used was the assumption, what Collingwood calls an "absolute presupposition," that there is a conscious mind. You can't have philosophy without a conscious mind, which is a psychological entity.

Those philosophers who don’t consider their mode of inquiry as belonging to psychology, who believe that disciplines like philosophy of mind (and writers like Daniel Dennett) ‘psychologize’ philosophy, argue that psychology forces us to confuse the primordial underpinnings of being and existence with the contingent results of a science. They may argue psychological concepts like ‘mental’ , ‘physical’ , ‘value’ and belief’ are confused derivatives of more fundamental truths that no longer belong to psychology, but are instead ontologically prior to it. — Joshs

A couple of thoughts about this. It seems to me that the confusion of primordial underpinnings with science mostly come about by philosophers, including us, who come up with philosophical positions which aren't consistent with what we know from observation, including science. One prime example of this is the whole hard problem of consciousness. Some say that it is a problem that will never, can never, be resolved by a scientific approach. When I describe to them the kind of work psychologists, including cognitive scientists, are doing, they dismiss it out of hand.

Also, you point out that some say "psychological concepts like ‘mental’ , ‘physical’ , ‘value’ and belief’ are confused derivatives of more fundamental truths." I would put it differently. I think I can make the case that philosophical concepts like "truth," "ontology," "objective reality," and "morality," are high-falutin, often confusing, ways of talking about human thinking and experience.

I'll say here at the end what I said at the beginning, my main argument is against the arrogance of holding philosophy up as more important than it is.

It seems to me that the confusion of primordial underpinnings with science mostly come about by philosophers, including us, who come up with philosophical positions which aren't consistent with what we know from observation, including science. One prime example of this is the whole hard problem of consciousness. Some say that it is a problem that will never, can never, be resolved by a scientific approach. When I describe to them the kind of work psychologists, including cognitive scientists, are doing, they dismiss it out of hand — T Clark

Yes, I don’t believe there is any domain philosophy tackles
that science can’t venture into. I think we agree it’s just a matter of style of expression. The move from philosophical to scientific language is toward a thinner, more conventionalized and less synthetic account of the same or similar phenomena (Nietzsche vs Freud, Merleau-Ponty vs embodied cogntivism).

Also, you point out that some say "psychological concepts like ‘mental’ , ‘physical’ , ‘value’ and belief’ are confused derivatives of more fundamental truths." I would put it differently. I think I can make the case that philosophical concepts like "truth," "ontology," "objective reality," and "morality," are high-falutin, often confusing, ways of talking about human thinking and experience. — T Clark

I would add that empirical concepts are in their own way ‘high-fallutin’. But what does this mean? To me it means using terminology which doesn’t overtly take into account its linkage to meanings from other aspects of culture. The more richly and explicitly we reveal these interconnections, the less high-fallutin the language becomes.

The example I used was the assumption, what Collingwood calls an "absolute presupposition," that there is a conscious mind. — T Clark

In every discipline other than philosophy there are unallowed criticisms of the form, "You are presupposing X, but I deny X." For example, Parmenides cannot go to the physicist and say, "You are presupposing motion, but I deny motion." To offer such a criticism is to have stopped doing physics. In philosophy there are no such unallowed criticisms. In philosophy there are no such presuppositions. — Leontiskos

"You are presupposing a conscious mind, but I deny a conscious mind." So has this person stopped doing philosophy? Nope, in fact they haven't. The philosophy goes on.