If there is an air of insubstantiality about this thread, it is because it is concerned with the philosophy of philosophy. This makes it particularly liable to disappear up its own fundament.

Accordingly, I propose, firstly, that philosophy is always parasitic; one might try a 'philosophy of nothing', but it wouldn't get very far. Rather, one first starts to talk or write about something and at some later stage, one starts to examine the verbiage philosophically. as philosophy of religion, or knowledge, or psychology or whatever.

And secondly, I suggest an inversion. Philosophy is what one has recourse to when the edifice of one's talk has become sufficiently 'high' that it is in danger of falling into ruin. Thus it is the foundations of a topic that philosophy is concerned with, the very lowest.

If possible, (ideally sic) the best foundation is bedrock, If one has reached bedrock, as Wittgenstein would have it, one has reached the end of that portion of philosophy, the questions are resolved or dissolved, and the superstructure is as sound as it can be.

By contrast, spiritual talk is untethered, lighter than air and floats higher and higher until it reaches such height that it attains outer space, where there is no longer any up or down, and no one can hear you pontificate.

I think it might be better to ask first why we might think the interaction of philosophy and other discipline might be particularly revelatory. What do we expect an examination of those interactions to show? — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, good. I was suggesting only one possibility, the one that shows phil. on the defense, interacting with other disciplines to deny assimilation into one of them. Another familiar picture is "philosophy as critic," stepping in to adjudicate matters of logic and clarity. I'm not crazy about that one, though sometimes it's helpful.

The general point that "discourse" focuses on "why" and "how" questions about what philosophy does, is a good one.

Saying you are "criticized for suggesting" your ideas makes it sound like you're being persecuted, is that how it feels to you? — goremand

Not at all, although I suppose it came across like that. It's more like the idea of 'higher' cuts against the grain of popular opinion. By a vertical axis, I mean an axis against which the idea of 'higher knowledge' can be assessed. (This is why I asked @J why the scare quotes in the OP!) Science typically provides no such axis, as it is generally assumes that the universe is devoid of intrinsic meaning and/or value, so a claim to 'higher knowledge' is often challenged on the grounds that there is no objective justification for it.

For example:

what do you mean by "highest"? Most comprehensive or overarching. most critical, most meta-cognitive? Or most spiritual, most enlightening, wisest? — Janus

I gave as an example, Robert M. Pirsig's work of popular philosophy, Zen and the Art... which is concerned with 'a metaphysics of quality'. He says it stands outside the typical dualisms of subject-object, science-religion, or fact-value. He says quality isn't merely an attribute or characteristic but is the root from which all experiences and understandings emerge. It is dynamic and intrinsic to life itself, a force that gives meaning and value to existence. Quality represents a basis of values that we recognize intuitively but cannot fully capture within language or logic. But as it challenges 'subject-object duality' then it can't be characterised in objective terms - which generally means it is often regarded as being religious. Hence, a matter of faith - and subjective!

Really, I agree too. That's why I said that I was "being hard on OL folk" by claiming they lack nuance or subtlety. What they often do, though, is claim, or at least imply, that anything outside OL philosophy is therefore a misunderstanding about words, or about meaningful concepts. There doesn't seem room for nuance and subtlety except within the strict parameters of OL phil.

Anyway, the point was to push back on the idea that any philosophy could be somehow purged of being nuanced and subtle. The OL comment was half-kidding.

To start, could you run "Q recursion" by me again? — T Clark

Yes, sure. Read fdrake's post here: , and his exchanges with me that followed. The Q recursion would be some formalization of a reiterated "Why?" question that, he suggests, may be what I was calling "an argumentative gotcha!" The follow-up on a formalization of "relevance" is also important, I think. I'm still working on a reply to that.

the attempt to separate philosophy from other disciplines on the basis of any formal properties or logics is ill-conceived. I think this attempt to fix a sovereign standpoint for philosophy is the flip-side of the equally ill-conceived attempt to locate a sovereign ground for empirical truth in the ‘facts of nature’. In fact, the two tend to imply each other. — Joshs

I'm not as pessimistic as you are about this, but you make an important point: This question is inseparable from the other "foundational" question about the world, and its stability as an object for inquiry. (Habermas v. Gadamer comes in here as well: I read Habermas as optimistic here, Gadamer less so. Not that either would talk about anything being "sovereign.")

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.
— Joshs

Really? Unless you include both math and metaphysics within science, I don't see how this could be true
— J

What do you mean by metaphysics? You dont consider a scientific paradigm to be a metaphysical stance? And given that logic and mathematics have been developed by both philosophers and scientists, I would say that their status can’t easily be placed with respect to the latter disciplines. — Joshs

Perhaps the disagreement hinges on "venture into." Taken loosely, sure: Science and phil. can venture at will. But no, I don't think that the scientific paradigm is an item within any scientific discipline. It is part of philosophy of science -- a fuzzy boundary, but a boundary nonetheless. As for math, same thing: When a physicist expands a mathematical concept, they're doing math. When they apply the math to QM, they're doing physics. And same comment -- yes, it's fuzzy, but I think we have an idea of the difference between a language and an interpretation.

We don’t first concoct linguistic concepts and then impose them on the world. . . etc. — Joshs

With respect, I don't think there's any common agreement about this. The relationship among language, concepts, and the world is highly contested, and always has been.

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. — J

I see philosophy as being concerned with understanding the human condition in the broadest and most comprehensive ways. It is different from psychology in that it looks, not just at human motivation, but at the human relationship to the human-created world, and to nature as a cosmic whole.

So I don't see it as a matter of levels but of comprehensiveness. All the other fields of inquiry feed into philosophy, provide it with its subject matter and, if we are lucky, correct its excesses.

If there is an air of insubstantiality about this thread, it is because it is concerned with the philosophy of philosophy. This makes it particularly liable to disappear up its own fundament.

Accordingly, I propose, firstly, that philosophy is always parasitic; one might try a 'philosophy of nothing', but it wouldn't get very far. Rather, one first starts to talk or write about something and at some later stage, one starts to examine the verbiage philosophically. as philosophy of religion, or knowledge, or psychology or whatever. — unenlightened

As disciplines go, it is by far the wordiest, in inverse proportion to its effectiveness perhaps.

If possible, (ideally sic) the best foundation is bedrock, If one has reached bedrock, as Wittgenstein would have it, one has reached the end of that portion of philosophy, the questions are resolved or dissolved, and the superstructure is as sound as it can be.

By contrast, spiritual talk is untethered, lighter than air and floats higher and higher until it reaches such height that it attains outer space, where there is no longer any up or down, and no one can hear you pontificate. — unenlightened

Some philosophers don't know when to stop. A millennium and a half ago the bedrock was sighted and reached in some aspects.

I think of category theory when I read this. It seems to hover over the roughly 30,000 mathematical topics (on Wiki) on angelic wings. A principle component of modern mathematics.

Is there a "modern philosophy", and, if there is, what are its principle components? From Wiki:

Modern philosophy is philosophy developed in the modern era and associated with modernity

:roll:

Great post @unenlightened :up:

If there is an air of insubstantiality about this thread, it is because it is concerned with the philosophy of philosophy. — unenlightened

Leaving aside the possible insubstantiality for a moment, what do we make of the fact that there can even be a "philosophy of philosophy"? Isn't this an instance of the recursive, self-reflexive nature of phil. that I began with? Is there a "science of science"? A psychology of psychology? Interestingly, a literature of literature sounds more promising, or at least a literature about literature.

I didn't mean for this thread to get too wound up in definitions of what philosophy is, though I see how that's become an inevitable topic here. But "philosophy of philosophy" is reminiscent of one of the best definitions of phil. that I know: "inquiry about inquiry". This too captures the self-reflection, which the OP posited as perhaps important or characteristic of phil.

Insubstantial? Not to me. The danger is more of ambiguity, I would say -- people talking past each other because they don't share the same concepts and/or language.

Interestingly, a literature of literature sounds more promising, or at least a literature about literature. — J

Philosophical Plumbing

one of the best definitions of phil. that I know: "inquiry about inquiry" — J

I've never heard philosophy defined that way. I would grant that inquiry about inquiry is philosophical, but not that philosophy is inquiry about inquiry. It's also not clear to me that inquiry about inquiry is going to be as useful or fruitful as one hopes. It certainly didn't turn out well for Vizzini:

one of the best definitions of phil. that I know: "inquiry about inquiry" — J

Isn't that what meta-philosophy is?

Metaphilosophy is the self-reflective inquiry into the nature, aims, and methods of the activity that makes these kinds of inquiries. — Wikipedia

This whole thread is metaphilosophical.

Well, on one view critiques of philosophy along the lines that it is "useless," might be taken as a complement. It is among the few pursuits that is rightfully "pursued for its own sake, making it "higher" in another sense.

At first he who invented any art whatever that went beyond the common perceptions of man was naturally admired by men, not only because there was something useful in the inventions, but because he was thought wise and superior to the rest. But as more arts were invented, and some were directed to the necessities of life, others to recreation, the inventors of the latter were naturally always regarded as wiser than the inventors of the former, because their branches of knowledge did not aim at utility. Hence when all such inventions were already established, the sciences which do not aim at giving pleasure or at the necessities of life were discovered, and first in the places where men first began to have leisure. This is why the mathematical arts were founded in Egypt; for there the priestly caste was allowed to be at leisure. (981b)

[W]e do not seek it for the sake of any other advantage; but as the man is free, we say, who exists for his own sake and not for another's, so we pursue this as the only free science, for it alone exists for its own sake. (982b) — Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book Alpha

- :up:

The modern instrumentalization of science was probably the biggest shift for the "monozygotic twins," and it is probably why there are now tensions between philosophy and science.

Given the way scientific specialization has occurred, philosophy probably represents "science" conceived as an undifferentiated totality. — Leontiskos

Without wanting to hijack the thread, this is where the big debate about the decline of scholastic metaphysics and the ascendancy of nominalism and empiricism figures. I often cite an essay What's Wrong with Ockham?, Joshua Hochschild. It's a dense and difficult piece but I think you might appreciate it. He quotes:

Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. Have we forgotten our encounter with the witches on the heath? It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universals. The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence.

Well, on one view critiques of philosophy along the lines that it is "useless," might be taken as a complement. It is among the few pursuits that is rightfully "pursued for its own sake, making it "higher" in another sense. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don’t find philosophy useless at all. I use it all the time.

Science typically provides no such axis, as it is generally assumes that the universe is devoid of intrinsic meaning and/or value, so a claim to 'higher knowledge' is often challenged on the grounds that there is no objective justification for it.

For example:

what do you mean by "highest"? Most comprehensive or overarching. most critical, most meta-cognitive? Or most spiritual, most enlightening, wisest?
— Janus — Wayfarer

In this case a more innocent framing would perhaps be that Janus is asking questions because he doesn't understand what you mean? The way I see it, what you're saying is that you shouldn't have to explain yourself because we would automatically understand you if only we hadn't grown up in scientistic western society.

I don’t find philosophy useless at all. I use it all the time. — T Clark

My first thought was to report you to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Philosophy, and then I remembered this, which has appeared in this forum before:—

A Zen Koan
The Zen master Mu-nan had only one successor. His name was Shoju. After Shoju had completed his study of Zen, Mu-nan called him into his room. "I am getting old," he said, "and as far as I know, Shoju, you are the only one who will carry on this teaching. Here is a book. It has been passed down from master to master for seven generations. I also have added many points according to my understanding. The book is very valuable, and I am giving it to you to represent your successorship."

"If the book is such an important thing, you had better keep it," Shoju replied. "I received your Zen without writing and am satisfied with it as it is."

"I know that," said Mu-nan. "Even so, this work has been carried from master to master for seven generations, so you may keep it as a symbol of having received the teaching. Here."

The two happened to be talking before a brazier. The instant Shoju felt the book in his hands he thrust it into the flaming coals. He had no lust for possessions.

Mu-nan, who never had been angry before, yelled: "What are you doing!"

Shoju shouted back: "What are you saying!"

http://www.ashidakim.com/zenkoans/67whatareyoudoing.html

There is theory; and sometimes there is practice. Philosophers are perhaps like architects; they draw plans of buildings or ways of life that do not exist; and sometimes builders and others make use of the plans.

1 ) Take a philosophical claim X which does not have relevance to a claim in any discipline.
2 ) Take the collection of statements of which X has relevance to and call it Q.
3 ) Relevance is transitive, if X is relevant to Y, and Y is relevant to Z, then X is relevant to Z.
4 ) Relevance is symmetric, that is if X is relevant to Y, then Y is relevant to X.
5 ) Relevance is reflexive, X is relevant to X.
6 ) Relevance is an equivalence relation.
7 ) Then anything relevant to X cannot be relevant to any philosophical claim.
8 ) Then all of Q is not relevant to philosophy. — fdrake

I want to return to this loose end. Am I right that we can avoid the conclusion in (8) by denying (4), the symmetry of relevance? Apart from it being a good thing not to have to conclude (8), I think there are independent reasons for denying (4). Consider this example: The natural acoustic properties of tones are relevant to Western music theory, but the reverse isn't true. An acoustician can conduct their research in complete independence of what theory may do with it. The only way I see that we can get "relevance" to be symmetric here is to define it as such, so it means something like "possibility of making eventual connections." But that seems much too broad, and misses the interesting questions about why we care about relevance in the first place.

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?" 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? — fdrake

First, just some housekeeping: We considered whether "Why?" was the actual recursive question, and raised some problems about that. But the way you've formulated it here is better, and still allows a robust sense of relevance, unlike the "What would Kant have thought of that?" example. So let's say that Q( X ) asks, "What is your justification for X?"

The idea, then, is that the Top-Level Theory would first have to show that the (undefined but described) C (context) is always philosophical, when the Q recursion takes place. You're willing to grant that, as am I, but the problem comes in the next bit, where we'd have to additionally show that there is a particular kind of uniqueness about this termination in philosophy. I have questions about that, and about uniqueness.

You point out the danger that we've done some definitional fast-footwork here. Philosophy (or the context Phil) is being construed as "the demarcation between a fixed set of Q and other sets." Does this mean that the fixed set of Q is only unique in this way? "Why does asking [the Q question] eventually lead to philosophy?" you want to know, and the suspicion is that is does so because we have defined it thus; there is no other reason.

Let me stop there and ask if I've understood you well enough, and if we're on the same page.

A Zen Koan
The Zen master Mu-nan had only one successor. His name was Shoju. — unenlightened

So, am I Mu-nan or Shoiu?

Mu.

But philosophy, as also zen, is a practiced discipline, a way of looking, more than a theory in a book. Burn all the books and start again fresh. That's what we do here at pf, apart from burning all the books.

one of the best definitions of phil. that I know: "inquiry about inquiry". — J

I agree. Whenever philosophy moves away from being self-reflexive it loses its bearings.

Socratic philosophy - self-knowledge, knowledge of ignorance, the examined life, is not simply inquiry but inquiry into the act, findings, and limits of our inquiring.

I want to return to this loose end. Am I right that we can avoid the conclusion in (8) by denying (4), the symmetry of relevance? Apart from it being a good thing not to have to conclude (8), I think there are independent reasons for denying (4). Consider this example: The natural acoustic properties of tones are relevant to Western music theory, but the reverse isn't true. An acoustician can conduct their research in complete independence of what theory may do with it. The only way I see that we can get "relevance" to be symmetric here is to define it as such, so it means something like "possibility of making eventual connections." But that seems much too broad, and misses the interesting questions about why we care about relevance in the first place.

This is an interesting take, although I'm not sure it denies relevance, or atleast the reflexivity of such. As far as I can tell, all it does is show that an awareness of said relevance isn't necessary to produce a desired result.
Insofar as Y exists, and X is relevant to Y, Y will always be relevant to X due to the connection X has with it.

But philosophy, as also zen, is a practiced discipline, a way of looking, more than a theory in a book. Burn all the books and start again fresh. That's what we do here at pf, apart from burning all the books. — unenlightened

Funny you should mention that. After I wrote the post you responded to, I realized that what philosophy is for me is a practice, like meditation or exercise.

I started a thread once - "You don't need to read philosophy to be a philosopher." I had to cajole Jamal to move it out of the Lounge and back to the main page where I'd originally placed it.

Hey carful there, we are in danger of reaching an understanding if not Gob forbid, agreement!

Hey carful there, we are in danger of reaching an understanding if not Gob forbid, agreement! — unenlightened

I'm sure we must have agreed on something in the past 7 years.

In this case a more innocent framing would perhaps be that Janus is asking questions because he doesn't understand what you mean? The way I see it, what you're saying is that you shouldn't have to explain yourself because we would automatically understand you if only we hadn't grown up in scientistic western society. — goremand

The question was posed to @J. I know how @Wayfarer thinks of "higher". He thinks we moderns have lost, not merely an older set of cultural attitudes, beliefs and dispositions, but some actual higher knowledge and understanding of a transcendent nature—an understanding of reality itself which has been lost to the modern psyche.

Many today think this life is all there is. Wayfarer thinks the sages somehow were able to know that this is not true, that the truth is we may be resurrected to eternal life or reborn into more favorable circumstances depending on our karma. The obvious problem for this supposition is that those two main supposed paradigms of spiritual knowledge are not compatible with one another, which rather casts doubt on their status as knowledge. He doesn't want to accept that it is really just faith, even among those who are supposedly enlightened or "born again".

Quality represents a basis of values that we recognize intuitively but cannot fully capture within language or logic. But as it challenges 'subject-object duality' then it can't be characterised in objective terms - which generally means it is often regarded as being religious. Hence, a matter of faith - and subjective! — Wayfarer

Quality is aesthetic or ethical, something felt to be beautiful or good or true (in the restricted sense of "ringing true") or else ugly, bad and false. There definitely are commonalties between what folk generally consider to be "of quality" but there is no strict determinant of quality. As the old saying goes "there is no accounting for taste".