Is Philosophy the "Highest" Discourse?

all it does is show that an awareness of said relevance isn't necessary to produce a desired result. — KantRemember

Your first post, I see -- welcome to the Forum!

If I understand you, you're saying that (for example) the acoustician could be unaware that Western music theory is indeed relevant to their work. Therefore, we need another criterion of relevance that doesn't involve awareness of said relevance.

That's a good point, and my example was loosely worded. Better to have said, "An acoustician conducts their research in complete independence of what theory may do with it, and it will not be possible to find any relevance for that theory to their work." Is it still clear that relevance isn't symmetric? I suppose this wording is slightly more deniable, because by shifting modal ground and talking about what is and isn't possible, we have to meet a higher bar. But let's not get caught up in extreme and/or unlikely cases. The idea was to question whether relevance is symmetric in a much more powerful and common way -- so that @fdrake's conclusion about what we've calling the Q recursion is true. I think his argument necessitates a near-perfect match of symmetries in order to go through. But perhaps he'll weigh in on this.

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. — KantRemember

Well, that's the question, and I think you need to do more than restate it as a conclusion. At issue would be "the connection X has with it" -- how does that show the relation must be symmetrical?

Wayfarer

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. — Janus

thank you, fair assessement.

He doesn't want to accept that it is really just faith, even among those who are supposedly enlightened or "born again". — Janus

Well, for those presupposed to doubt it, there are plenty of grounds for doubt. For those predisposed to believe it, there are plenty of grounds for belief. The difficulty is, that it is not a question that is easily adjuticable, at least by objective measures. But I do say that, absent a real dimension of value, philosophy tends to devolve into disputes over the meaning of propositions, rather than a life-changing wisdom, which I believe was its original intent.

As the old saying goes "there is no accounting for taste". — Janus

Which entails subjectivism and relativism.

Janus

Well, for those presupposed to doubt it, there are plenty of grounds for doubt. For those predisposed to believe it, there are plenty of grounds for belief. The difficulty is, that it is not a question that is easily adjuticable, at least by objective measures. But I do say that, absent the 'dimension of value', philosophy tends to devolve into disputes over the meaning of propositions, rather than a life-changing wisdom, which I believe was its original intent. — Wayfarer

Right and the very fact that there seems to be to both sides "plenty of grounds for doubt and belief" respectively shows that it is not a subject which can be intersubjectively decided. Jaspers says that philosophy itself is entirely a matter of personal faith and I agree with that assessment. "To each there own philosophy" I say, because that takes proper account of human diversity. Would you have it any other way?

Ironically, considering what you say about "disputes over the meaning of propositions", it seems that it is only philosophy as conceptual analysis and clarification which could claim any intersubjective adjudicability or objectivity, and even there grounds for dispute still seem to exist...

In the welter of conflicting opinions which is human life there seems little room for absolute authority. All we seem to have is the relative authority of empirical fact.

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? — J

I believe so yes. I enjoyed your counterexample. Removing symmetry stops you from setting up a partition of things into that which is relevant and that which is not relevant to philosophy, on the basis of the relation, but you still end up having the sense of connection between ideas. As in, if X is relevant to Y, and Y is relevant to Z, then X is still relevant to Z. It's just you can't go "backwards" now.

I quite like the idea of dropping symmetry, since moves in disciplines tend to be autonomous of philosophy, whereas moves in philosophy do not tend to be autonomous of other disciplines. So things are relevant to philosophy, but philosophy is not always relevant to things.

That's an imprecise way of putting it, since the relevance relation is on assertions, but I hope that abuse doesn't do anything to what I'm saying.

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.

The possibility of making eventual connections seems to be the sense of relevance that iteratively asking a question as previously spelled out has, however. Which is to say, asking a series of relevant questions to a statement which must terminate somehow in philosophy would need a more precise demarcation of relevance to - and perhaps relevance of - philosophy to a claim or discipline of study. Otherwise I believe we're left the silly one I wrote down. At least, with reflexivity and transitivity intact.

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?" — J

:up:

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. — J

Yes. It is quite probable that you end up setting up a question which forces you to terminate in philosophy. But with perhaps no good reason to assume that philosophy has this unique termination property. Like @Srap Tasmaner's psychoanalyst example shows. There needs to be something about the sequence of questions that renders each of them somehow relevant to what they're asked, and the answer to be informative to what it's asked of. That is, the question has to be a "good" question in a nebulous sense and the answer has to be a "good" answer in a nebulous sense.

Repeatedly asking "What is your justification for X?" might be seen as relevant to any claim, as the reasons motivating a claim are ideally articulable by someone who knows them - not that they always, or often, are known or said. The question would need a guarantee that one would always end up in philosophy when asking it.

One way of fleshing that out would mean at some point questions about justification always become philosophical. About the meaning of justification. Here is @Srap Tasmaner again with "I speak English", which you'd also need to parry - why isn't it a good answer? Why isn't it a relevant answer?

If you asked "What is your justification for "I speak English?"?, one could very well answer "I speak English" as a demonstration. But that's not a philosophical remark, it's a statement of fact about the person.

There's another thing to be mindful of when making the question related to justification - if we already come in with pretheoretical intuitions that justification is philosophical in nature and that philosophy concerns itself largely with justification, our pretheoretical intuitions will just make us note a few things. Firstly, we might reject off hand that the chain could terminate with something that looks like a bad justification, like repeating yourself might be - that's a no go, bad justification. Secondly that good justifications resemble explanations of logical principles. And in that case of course you're going to end up with a termination in philosophy, since you've pruned any answers that don't terminate in philosophical justification chit chat away.

Perhaps there are other terminations. If an experiment demonstrated a theory conclusively, you might end up saying "The experiment demonstrated the theory" - which may be the final relevant word on the matter of justifying the claim if "The experiment demonstrated the theory" is justified by the standards of the discipline. In that case asking "What is your justification for (The experiment demonstrated the theory)?" and expecting something on the nature of justification as the only type of relevant answer will just pop you out of the discipline's context and perhaps no longer be a good question.

Thus there seem to be profound and shitty terminations. Profound terminations say something about the relationship of philosophy to other disciplines and vice versa, and perhaps even about the nature of ideas themselves. Shitty terminations will occur when we've set it up the termination in philosophy through unarticulated, or trite, presuppositions regarding what counts as a good answer and what counts as a good question.

But we can perhaps toss away the "good question" thing for now, and grant that "What is your justification for X?" will always be "good" in the appropriate nebulous sense. To gesture in the direction of that nebulous sense, I'll say that a question is good when it reveals something about how what it is asked of is known or supplementary information about what it is asked of. And perhaps we should assume that the answerer plays nicely and just answers truthfully, directly and sincerely every time. No frame shifting on their part.

↪fdrake

Great, I'll spend some time on this, but for now, let me just note that The Shitty Terminations would be an excellent name for a band.

KantRemember

↪J

[quote][/quote]

Thank you for your welcome!!

That's a good point, and my example was loosely worded. Better to have said, "An acoustician conducts their research in complete independence of what theory may do with it, and it will not be possible to find any relevance for that theory to their work." Is it still clear that relevance isn't symmetric? I suppose this wording is slightly more deniable, because by shifting modal ground and talking about what is and isn't possible, we have to meet a higher bar. But let's not get caught up in extreme and/or unlikely cases. The idea was to question whether relevance is symmetric in a much more powerful and common way -- so that @fdrake's conclusion about what we've calling the Q recursion is true. I think his argument necessitates a near-perfect match of symmetries in order to go through. But perhaps he'll weigh in on this.

I think the matter of contention isn't whether the relevance is symmetric or not, but more so the extent to which that symmetry is met. X having a relation with Y doesn't necessitate that Y is relevant to X to the same degree, denying @fdrake’s (6th) Premise, but I guess that sort of makes it a trivial matter.

Well, that's the question, and I think you need to do more than restate it as a conclusion. At issue would be "the connection X has with it" -- how does that show the relation must be symmetrical?

With regards to how it shows that a relation must be symmetrical, I'd have to think more on this - it seemed to me, prima facie, that X's connection w/Y indicated that Y was, in some regard, relevant to X - but upon fleshing out this practically, I'm not sure that this is the case. When we say relevant, I think a distinction needs to be made between a use of the word in ordinary language, if we mean ' important ' or something similar, then I'd have to agree with you and say that last statement of mine doesn't hold - even in a purely relational sense, I'm unsure I can prove this - and it seems like the awareness of such a relation is enough of a decisive factor to determine symmetrical relevancy or not, especially with conscious beings such as ourselves.

fdrake

Thank you for your welcome!! — KantRemember

I too welcome you! Great posts.

T Clark

But philosophy, as also zen, is a practiced discipline, a way of looking, more than a theory in a book. — 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. — T Clark

I'm surprised how hard thinking about philosophy as a practice, my practice, has struck me. I've been dancing around the idea for a while, but I never put it in those words. It changes things, makes it more three dimensional.

↪T Clark

This would be a good OP idea. Philosophy as practice, and perhaps praxis. When I try to explain to friends why I do phil., I usually wind up talking in those terms, but not with much clarity.

T Clark

This would be a good OP idea. Philosophy as practice, and perhaps praxis. When I try to explain to friends why I do phil., I usually wind up talking in those terms, but not with much clarity. — J

I have put this idea out there in previous discussions. The way I phrased it is that philosophy is a way of becoming more self-aware about how we think, how our minds work. I've never gotten much of a response to the idea. I'd be interested in a discussion, but I doubt many people would participate constructively. I think it would just devolve into another "what is philosophy" thread.

Srap Tasmaner

If an experiment demonstrated a theory conclusively, you might end up saying "The experiment demonstrated the theory" - which may be the final relevant word on the matter of justifying the claim if "The experiment demonstrated the theory" is justified by the standards of the discipline. — fdrake

This had occurred to me as well, that "justification" is not, as it seems we say around here now, univocal. So the question is, when philosophy demands of some science a justification, what does it get? Does it get a justification according to the standards of that science? Or something that would suit philosophy? I think the latter is never going to happen. Thus, even when agreeing to provide justification, a science that provides its kind of justification is still not venturing into philosophy.

And I want to say that's fine, not because I want to defend science from philosophy, but because philosophy shouldn't give a shit.

Philosophy has no business asking questions that can be answered by science. So it need have no interest in how science comes up with its answers.

That would make this whole discussion a little wrong-headed, although it is compatible with some of the observations we've made along the way.

Philosophy should be orthogonal to science, and to literature, and to any other form of discourse, if it's to be a distinct thing at all.

(I don't know if the same is true of other fields. I can see both sides.)

One of @J's first moves in the OP was to take philosophy and the sciences (and maybe history, I don't know) all together as "rational discourses," or something like that. I don't think that will work. I don't think philosophy can allow itself to be defined by some external perspective ― or, at least, it need take such a definition no more seriously than it takes philosophy's Library of Congress classification.

(We're in B.)

(We're in B ― "Philosophy, Psychology, Religion" ― between (A) "General Works" and (C) "Auxiliary Sciences of History".)

(Such a move is even more untenable if you think of "rationality" as one of the areas philosophy is concerned with, and perhaps is authoritative on. Presumably then it would be up to philosophy to decide whether philosophy falls within its own purview, to decide whether this discourse is rational ― but not if it's already defined as "rational".)

So, just as philosophy ought to leave science alone, it also needn't go begging to science. Science has nothing philosophy needs.

So yes what @J noticed, of philosophy setting its own agenda and sticking to it ― there's something to that, but it has nothing to do with philosophy being "higher" than any other discourse, just different, just a question of philosophy being itself.

goremand

The question was posed to J. — Janus

Yes sorry, I didn't see that at the time. What matters to me though is that it's a reasonable question to ask.

Well, for those presupposed to doubt it, there are plenty of grounds for doubt. For those predisposed to believe it, there are plenty of grounds for belief. — Wayfarer

In other words the believer and the doubter are both justified? This is very perplexing to me, I wouldn't feel comfortable doubting a justified belief or vice versa.

"To each there own philosophy" I say, because that takes proper account of human diversity. Would you have it any other way? — Janus

I certainly would. I mean, the theoretical end goal of philosophy is for everyone to believe the same thing, that thing being the truth. In my opinion this idea of private justification instead promotes a static kind of diversity, where a bunch of dogmatists each stay in their respective camp and engage in discourse only performatively.

fdrake

When I try to explain to friends why I do phil. — J

Madness.

One of J's first moves in the OP was to take philosophy and the sciences (and maybe history, I don't know) all together as "rational discourses," or something like that. I don't think that will work. I don't think philosophy can allow itself to be defined by some external perspective — Srap Tasmaner

This observation confuses two different things, doesn't it? On the one hand, we can certainly question whether phil. is constituted by something called "rational discourse," and whether it has that in common with other disciplines such as science. But on the other hand, would this be a case of phil. allowing itself to be defined by an external perspective? Perhaps it's up to phil. to define itself as "rational discourse" (or something else). Here we run up against the self-reflection again: Phil. is trying to look at itself, inquire about inquiry, and make a determination about its nature. The next quote directly follows from that:

(Such a move is even more untenable if you think of "rationality" as one of the areas philosophy is concerned with, and perhaps is authoritative on. Presumably then it would be up to philosophy to decide whether philosophy falls within its own purview, to decide whether this discourse is rational ― but not if it's already defined as "rational".) — Srap Tasmaner

That last clause is tricky. We're postulating a situation in which phil. is authoritative about two things: what rationality is, and whether philosophy is characterized, in a semi-definitional way, as being rational. So let's say that phil., armed with a concept of what rationality is, decides that its own discourse is indeed rational. I think your final clause is meant to suggest there's something dubious or circular going on. But why? There's nothing pernicious about defining something to be rational (though of course one may be wrong), and it's not the case that phil. has "already defined" itself as rational. That defining is precisely what is happening in the present moment of the postulated thought. It didn't happen earlier in the thought process, because it isn't analytic that the discipline that defines what rationality is must also be rational.

Interesting as all this may (or may not) be, your larger question about the marriage of philosophy and rationality, especially when it posits a certain kind of justification as essential to that rationality, seems like the important one.

And the "higher" thing again . . . , yeah, the metaphor just may not work here. Philosophy does something different from other disciplines, and that difference is procedural or formal as opposed to a question of subject matter -- that much I'd defend. My original question was, Is this formal something (aka the Q recursion) worth anything? Does it provide a perspective for thinking that is broader or more perspicuous than the other disciplines? I'm still nagged by the sense that it does, or should, but the discussion on this thread certainly highlights the difficulties of believing such a thing.

Srap Tasmaner

↪J

On the rationality thing.

If philosophy takes up the question of whether philosophy is rational, and even if it judges that it is, this is merely a result. It may even be descriptive of philosophy's practice in reaching that very conclusion, but it cannot be constitutive of that practice.

Consider mathematics. Here, unlike with the other sciences, you can point to axiomatizations of the results of mathematics, so it all seems very tidy. Instead of saying mathematics is the study of shape and number, you might say mathematics is the study of sets. (And there are other things you could say.) But those are all wrong, because these are all results of mathematics, not mathematics itself ― that is, not mathematics as an activity, as a discipline or a practice, but only as a body of knowledge.

Mathematics as a way of thinking, as an approach to solving problems, is not even mentioned in the axioms, nor is it identical to its most famous tools, like number. It is the activity, the movement of mind, that invents numbers, shapes, transformations, all the rest.

Philosophy is the activity that invents, for its own use, the very idea of rationality, invents ― you can almost watch this happening in Plato ― "concepts" as something non-psychological, invents logic, and so on. You can use its inventions to pick it out, as their source and origin, but those inventions are not constitutive of it.

Fire Ologist

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. — J

Interesting discussion.

I certainly recognize that philosophers attempt to address everything and anything that was, is, will be, actually or potentially, in reality and in illusion, for all persons and other things, be they mindless or omniscient Gods or somethings else; and philosophy incorporates logic (math and language), poetry (aphorism), fiction (thought experiments), physical objects and theoretical impossibilities, and more in order to do its work. But that said, there is no need to think of any type of discourse as "higher" or "highest". I think such gradations may actually get in the way of what philosophers are trying to do (so all of the many philosophers in history who placed themselves above, instead of just apart, from the rest of us, were wrong). Philosophy, in a sense, is a leveler of discourse, always relentlessly sifting through the illusory for the reality and trying (mostly failing) to speak of the sifting; philosophy makes all discourse "discourse" and recognizes only a rankings like "valid or invalid" or "true and false".

The subject of the philosopher is everything, just like separately, the subject of the philosopher can instead be anything; but the subject of the philosopher is not just everything or anything over there, it is these things as they relate to or include the relator, the subjective experiencer; everything that is for me, with me, from me, and not for me, but moving away from me, from somewhere else - it is all of these at once that makes the topic of philosophy.

That said, philosophy is the science of scientific thought and language. It is a science. Reason or logical process is nearby, if not thoroughly infused within, every word of the philosopher. It is the discourse on discourse. It is the science of the self-aware being, being self-aware about scientizing.

Philosophy cracks open and destroys everything in its path, from Gods to atoms, in order to see if anything must remain bound, indestructible. It seeks to know what knowing knowledge means.

Philosophy is also born of love and desire, intention and focus, and is creative. This is to say, philosophy is one of the arts. (Maybe discourse on "art" is the highest discourse then?) The poet sees the meadow and builds something new out of it, with words, that can find their way into the minds and hearts of other people (other poets), so that something of the meadow and of the poet might now exist in the words and further in those who cannot see the meadow. Like the poet sees the meadow, the philosopher instead sees "seeing" or "being" or "minding" or "speaking" and builds something new out of it, with words, that can find their way into the minds and hearts of other people (other philosophers), so that something of this "being" or "minding" now exists in the words and further, in those who can only see for themselves.

The philosopher constructs, or creates, something new, in order to reveal to others for the first time in their lives, something that already is.

Philosophy is a doing, and not just the words that are constructed. Priests, poets, politicians, nearly all of us at some point, do philosophy during our lives. But the philosopher proper does philosophy on the philosophic itself; philosophizing is a self-aware activity (which is why it can be skeptical of its own existence).

The philosopher who speaks is conducting a never-ending test on speaking itself; they subject everything to such tests, such as what priests say when they say "God is one" and test what poets say when they say "we have the infinite within us" and test what politicians say when they say "This is the way forward, towards 'the good' and 'the just'." Philosophers must test every word of every sentence before they will say that something has been said at all. Philosophy is a testing (that is the science of it).

But if all of the content and art produced by the philosophers, all of their words, might be empty and hollow (still talking about "everything" as you can see), there is still great value in doing philosophy. Say what you will about the content of Plato, of Kant, of Nietzsche, of Buddha, of Heraclitus, of Wittgenstein, of Russell, of Derrida, of Aristotle, Lao Tsu, Descartes and Hegel..., in doing philosophy, we learn how to think. We learn how to recognize bullshit (illusion) faster. We learn to probe for our own biases and learn ways to shatter them as well as anything can be shattered. We practice logic. We practice clarity in discourse and precision in focus.

Philosophy is rarefied scientizing, in need of no matter, no particular clay, as it carves and molds nonetheless.

In the end, I would say that philosophy is only the highest discourse to those of us who have fallen in love with the mysteries of human experience - philosophy is the only activity, the only discourse, that might requite this love. Physics and biology may in the end satisfy this love, but it would still take the philosopher to notice our philosophy has been mistaken all along, so the philosopher would remain, abandoned and alone. "Desire is the cause of all suffering." So by some accounts, the lovers of wisdom, the philosophers, are the sowers of their own suffering. Seems undeniable, given that after 3,000 years of advances in the science of all things, we still can't say anything about everything.

T Clark

I certainly recognize that philosophers attempt to address everything and anything that was, is, will be, actually or potentially, in reality and in illusion, for all persons and other things, be they mindless or omniscient Gods or somethings else; and philosophy incorporates logic (math and language), poetry (aphorism), fiction (thought experiments), physical objects and theoretical impossibilities, and more in order to do its work. — Fire Ologist

This is a good summary. I think I’ll save it and use it in all the various future discussions of what philosophy is. Don’t worry I’ll give you credit when I do.

Fire Ologist

good summary — T Clark

:cool:

As much as any idea could be mine alone, it’s all yours now.

If philosophy takes up the question of whether philosophy is rational, and even if it judges that it is, this is merely a result. It may even be descriptive of philosophy's practice in reaching that very conclusion, but it cannot be constitutive of that practice. — Srap Tasmaner

Philosophy is the activity that invents, for its own use, the very idea of rationality — Srap Tasmaner

I may not understand you completely, but isn't the second observation a partial answer to the problem posed by the first?

You're saying that, like mathematics, philosophy produces results which are conceptually distinguishable from phil. itself, understood as the process that led to the results. This seems relatively clear with the math example. But the moment you allow that a result within phil. can be "descriptive of philosophy's practice in reaching that very conclusion," you open the reflexive curtain that leads to the next stage, in which phil. gives itself the (rational) law, a la Kant. I don't know whether phil. invents rationality or discloses it within the world. But either way, we have the result that "philosophy is rational." To put it differently, we could say: Philosophy justifies its rationality at two levels of description -- by producing the "result" that phil. is rational, and also by demonstrating, in the very act of obtaining this result, that this is the only way philosophy can proceed.

Srap Tasmaner

demonstrating, in the very act of obtaining this result, that this is the only way philosophy can proceed. — J

Is it?

phil. gives itself the (rational) law — J

Does it?

we have the result that "philosophy is rational." — J

Maybe. I have my doubts. But even if it is so, have we shown that this is *all* philosophy is?

Honestly, these questions are, let's say, the other kind of rhetorical question. While I think my intuitions lean the other way from yours, I don't feel inclined to give answers here, so I'm asking the kind of question intended just to prompt thinking, to make you wonder if the answer that comes immediately to mind is right, to make you pause and wonder what other answers might be available.

That sounds either dumb or condescending now that I've written it. I'm just saying, I don't think picking sides and debating will do much good here. But maybe I'm wrong about that.

Srap Tasmaner

↪J

Better than the last thing I said:

Debating itself, the construction and use of arguments, what can be achieved with them and how, all of this is more stuff we get *from* philosophy.

In every case, I guess I'm just saying we should beware of letting the tail wag the dog. The old dog may have more tricks up its sleeve.

I'm asking the kind of question intended just to prompt thinking, to make you wonder if the answer that comes immediately to mind is right, to make you pause and wonder what other answers might be available. — Srap Tasmaner

Excellent; my favorite kind of question. I guess I should have made it clear that all of that post was to be preceded with a big IF: IF philosophy proceeds rationally, and can give a definition of what rationality is, THEN all of these consequences seem to follow. I'm more unsure than perhaps you imagine about whether the IF is correct. I'm trying to paint a certain picture, which I think is very common to philosophy both now and historically, and then see clearly what the picture shows.

Another way to approach this, maybe a better one, is to call a halt to the "philosophy of philosophy" questions, stop worrying about whether and how phil. and rationality overlap, and simply focus on rationality alone. We'll still have problems about how to define it, but probably all the questions of the OP can be asked of rational discourse per se, without claiming anything one way or the other for philosophy.

Srap Tasmaner

stop worrying about whether and how phil. and rationality overlap — J

I've thought of another way to think about it too.

Suppose we said that philosophy *aims to be* rational, but what that means continues to be in play. What I really wanted to resist was taking rationality as fully understood, as just given at this point, so that we could just glance at philosophy and say it is (or isn't), glance at religion and say it isn't (or is), and so on. That seems rather severely to underestimate philosophy's role in shaping rationality and shaping our understanding of it.

I was also particularly committed to not excluding ways of doing philosophy (much of Wittgenstein, phenomenology, a lot of other stuff) that may in some sense "present a case" but that aim at changing how you *see* and how you understand, rather than something that would obviously count as analysis and argument. I think there's something central to the philosophical turn of mind there, and I'm reluctant to see philosophy "reduced" to argumentation.

For all that, I do also have some considerable commitment to argumentation and to reason, which I may have given short shift to. I just want to situate reason within philosophy, rather than the other way around.

Janus

I certainly would. I mean, the theoretical end goal of philosophy is for everyone to believe the same thing, that thing being the truth. In my opinion this idea of private justification instead promotes a static kind of diversity, where a bunch of dogmatists each stay in their respective camp and engage in discourse only performatively. — goremand

You speak as though that purported "end goal" is a given. How would any philosophical truth ever be demonstrable such as to gain universal assent? I haven't spoken in terms of "private justification". If people have their own philosophies and recognize them to be personal preferences where would be the space for dogmatism? Discussion would still allow for folk to be influenced by others.

IF philosophy proceeds rationally, and can give a definition of what rationality is, THEN all of these consequences seem to follow. I'm more unsure than perhaps you imagine about whether the IF is correct. — J

What is rationality other than consistent thinking from some foundational premise or other? As to the premises, how are they to be justified?

What is rationality other than consistent thinking from some foundational premises or other? — Janus

OK, but specifying the premises, and determining how foundational they are, has been the longstanding task of philosophy, with no obvious right answer in sight. It's like saying, "Move the world? Sure, no problem, just give me a very large lever . . ."

Janus

OK, but specifying the premises, and determining how foundational they are, has been the longstanding task of philosophy, with no obvious right answer in sight. It's like saying, "Move the world? Sure, no problem, just give me a very large lever . . ." — J

To take one prominent example of long-standing metaphysical disagreement some say mind is foundational, while others say matter is foundational. The truth regarding that would seem to be undecidable apart from what seems most plausible in light of the whole of human experience. Unfortunately, there is no clear criterion that could determine what is most plausible, that is what the whole of human experience actually shows, so it seems to come down to personal taste.

Only once you have your preferred premise can rationality definitively enter the fray and it consists simply in being consistent with your premise in the elaboration of your thinking.

Srap Tasmaner

Only once you have your preferred premise can rationality definitively enter the fray and it consists simply in being consistent with your premise in the elaboration of your thinking. — Janus

Why even bother?

Janus

↪Srap Tasmaner

Because it is interesting? Why do you bother?

Also I think it may be possible to get clear about the alternatives and what they each presuppose, even though deciding between them cannot be definitively justified.

goremand

You speak as though that purported "end goal" is a given. — Janus

I'm sorry for implying that, it's just how I've personally always seen it. Philosophy is of course an activity, people might have different goals in doing it, I just can't understand what they are.

How would any philosophical truth ever be demonstrable such as to gain universal assent? — Janus

You'd have to show the truth to be a necessary consequence of a universally held set of assumptions. But well, I didn't literally mean "everyone", just everyone who participates in philosophical discourse.

Discussion would still allow for folk to be influenced by others. — Janus

What is desirable about "influence" per se? I mean that word runs the gamut from peer pressure to lobotomy. What is desirable to me is only the possibility of rational persuasion.

Srap Tasmaner

Because it is interesting? — Janus

So you're like - I don't know - a tourist?

Is Philosophy the "Highest" Discourse?

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