Give it time and it might explain these phenomena. — jgill

Is that a faith based position? :wink:

Give it time and it might explain these phenomena.
— jgill

Is that a faith based position? :wink: — Tom Storm

I think they already do explain their respective phenomenal fields, although perhaps not to the satisfaction of some who demand total unity and comprehensiveness.

That they might achieve comprehensiveness and unity in the future doesn't seem to be a faith-based position but merely an acknowledgement that we don't know what the future possibilities are.

On the other hand it seems unlikely that we will ever have an explanation that will satisfy everyone.

Quantum mechanics seems to be intelligible via mathematics and it certainly seems to be based on observations of phenomena. — Janus

Ok. I'm not a physicist, but I am reminded of the famous Feynman quote, "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics."

Is there not also a difference between science's predictive success versus knowing why?

I think they already do explain their respective phenomenal fields, although perhaps not to the satisfaction of some who demand total unity and comprehensiveness. — Janus

Yes, I suppose this works. I'm curious what others might say. It seems to be a tendentious area.

Ok. I'm not a science guy but I am reminded of the famous Feynman quote, "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics."

Is there not also a difference between science's predictive success versus knowing why? — Tom Storm

Right, quantum mechanics is not intelligible if we try to understand it in macro-world terms and scientific explanations can never be certainties in any case.

Yes, I suppose this works. I'm curious what others might say. It seems to be a tendentious area. — Tom Storm

I agree it is a tendentious area because there are many who purport to use QM to support dubious metaphysical speculations, and this is only possible because in macro-world terms we really don't know what is going on and I think that is what Feynman was getting at. Different paradigms.

It's not a matter of resolving it in the sense of providing the longed-for certainty, but critiquing the conceptual and cognitive framework which gave rise to it. — Wayfarer

Yes, and the Bernstein book you referenced does a brilliant job of that. Consider the title: Beyond Objectivism and Relativism. The conceptual framework of "EITHER certainty OR it's the end of the rational world!" is what produces a dichotomy like objectivism/relativism.

Yes, I'm painting with an extremely wide brush and vastly overgeneralizing. The article might not even be a particularly good example, I haven't read it in a bit. Obviously, a great deal of philosophy avoids these issues, runs counter to this claim, or is focused in such a way that it need not touch on them.

I am mostly thinking of advice I've personally received or complaints PhDs have written on the internet (some strongly discouraging anyone from considering a philosophy PhD). I don't think too many people would want to publish such a view, for obvious reasons. Might this just be the incredibly bad job market? I think that is probably the main driver. People often say as much. But then we might consider why the job market is so incredibly bad. Lots of "more unemployable" majors still draw in a lot of undergraduate students (generating jobs). NCES unhelpfully lumps philosophy in with religious studies, but given religious studies likely has more than half the numbers there, it's pretty slim (there is a more general slide in the liberal arts to consider as well here). I've worked with people who abandoned graduate programs in the social sciences who say somewhat similar things, so part of it is perhaps academia, but I don't think "how academia is" is totally separate from issues of philosophy.

Rather than digging, I'll just throw out something from "We Have Never Been Woke," which I just read:

I began my academic career as a philosopher. Many people are drawn to philosophy after encountering work by some great thinker who heroically tackled huge questions and tried to wrestle them to the ground as best they could. These works tend to be thrilling and mind opening— ambitious in their scope and argumentation. But when you become an academic philosopher in the United States, you quickly discover that producing work like this is not something you are practically permitted to do. Your readings will focus narrowly on secular, analytic, Western (white) liberals. The work that gets published tends to be extremely narrow in its focus— for example, here’s my interpretation of Martha Nussbaum’s response to Joseph Raz’s critique of John Rawls’s Theory of Justice. I literally published a paper like that.10 It’s pretty good, as far as these things go. But it’s not the kind of work that anyone goes into philosophy to do, I suspect.

And of course al-Gharbi is an Ivy League graduate with a tenure track position writing for public consumption.

Is this more an academia problem? I could certainly see the case for that, because on many philosophical views the goal of a philosophy teacher is not going to be publication, but teaching (really more mentoring), which of course certainly happens, but in academia there is the whole "publish or perish" thing that can often backload this.

because on many philosophical views the goal of a philosophy teacher is not going to be publication, but teaching (really more mentoring), which of course certainly happens, but in academia there is the whole "publish or perish" thing that can often backload this. — Count Timothy von Icarus

We had a small anthropology/philosophy department where I taught. Actually, if I recall, one or two philosophers.

In the larger universities, especially in the sciences, the reason the institutions put pressure on faculty is to get grants that, for instance, release the member from teaching to do research and procure more grants, with the school sharing the incoming money. I see there are several large grants available to philosophical studies, including theology. But probably little coming from the department of defense where the big bucks reside. Correct me if I am wrong.

So Publish or Parish while enhancing an institution's reputation has a stronger motive.

Frankly, I am surprised there are as many grants for philosophy as there are.

Yes, reading what you said as a view of current U.S. academia makes it much more colorable, to me. I got out of academia for different reasons, but was there long enough to observe the emphasis on "criticism of criticism" and the never-ending search by scholar-squirrels for some nut that hasn't been published-upon already.

(Just realized you could take "nut" in either sense! :smile: )

The work that gets published tends to be extremely narrow in its focus— for example, here’s my interpretation of Martha Nussbaum’s response to Joseph Raz’s critique of John Rawls’s Theory of Justice. I literally published a paper like that.10 It’s pretty good, as far as these things go. But it’s not the kind of work that anyone goes into philosophy to do, I suspect. (Al-Gharbi)

I’m not sure what al-Gharbi is bitching about. That sounds like a potentially interesting paper, dealing as it does with concepts articulated by leading thinkers in that area of philosophy. Introducing original thinking through the critique of established writers is an important way to connect readers to your ideas. As long as there is some community out there somewhere whose thinking overlaps one’s own approach, and who are represented by a journal, there should be no problem getting one’s work published if it is of high enough quality. I’ve never had any problems doing so.

Is this more an academia problem? — Count Timothy von Icarus

It’s a cultural issue. That excerpt basically says that academic philosophy is no longer concerned with deep philosophy, but with the minutia of technicalities. Myself, I got drawn to philosophy for what would generally be considered the wrong reasons - something like ‘mankind’s search for meaning’. When I actually enrolled in undergraduate philosophy, I was taken aside by a kindly lecturer, David Stove, who said ‘I can sense what you’re looking for, son, but you won’t find it here’ after which I majored in comparative religion (although I never looked like having any kind of academic career). That was nearer my interests in some respects. Over the ensuing decades I have learned to discern certain threads in the tapestry of philosophy which I continue to pursue but I admit my overall orientation is not academic.

It’s a cultural issue. That excerpt basically says that academic philosophy is no longer concerned with deep philosophy, but with the minutia of technicalities. — Wayfarer

This may well be accurate, but it seems to me that the word philosophy is an umbrella term for a range of activities, from the liberating and poetic, to the stultifying and administrative. But most of it probably needs to be tackled and not everyone has the disposition or capacity to embrace each domain of the disciple.

Oh of course. I've found current academic philosophers whom I think have philosophically profound things to say, and a genuine passion for saying it. But the demands of the profession are such that they have to withstand the scrutiny of their peers, which often makes them very difficult for the lay reader. (I find Lloyd Gerson like that, I very much like what I can understand, but his books are so dense with allusions and references to competing interpretations that they're a really hard slog.) On the other hand, there are some breakout popular philosophers who write from outside the halls of academia - Ryan Holliday, Jules Evans, Alain de Bouton and Bernardo Kastrup come to mind. They manage to combine erudition with popular appeal (lucky them!)

I’d bet that the percentage of deep and original work in academic philosophy, compared to less meaningful writing, hasn’t changed since there were universities. We revere the past because the only ones we’re still reading are the ones who have survived their times. But everyone wasn’t that good.

For someone like me, philosophy can only ever be a type of curiosity about what others might be thinking - esp metaphysics and epistemology. I am unlikely ever to get a worthwhile reading of Heidegger, say, or the aforementioned Gerson (whose lectures I have enjoyed). So for me, it's about getting a better overview, especially regarding the ideas which don't instantly resonate with me. I am really keen to better understand ideas I am not drawn to as this may be a clue about what I might need to develop. Someone else out there has to do the mind numbing work on logic and language as well.

I've found current academic philosophers whom I think have philosophically profound things to say, and a genuine passion for saying it. But the demands of the profession are such that they have to withstand the scrutiny of their peers, which often makes them very difficult for the lay reader — Wayfarer

Nietzsche didn’t have to worry about that, since he wrote outside the confines of academia. Does that make him easy to read? Yes, if you dont want to understand him. If you do want to, he is just as difficult as any philosopher who is subject to the demands of the profession, although frankly I’m not sure what that means. All of the original thinkers I know chose the language they use because it was the best way to explain themselves, using themselves and an imagined readership as their primary audience rather than the tastemakers of the profession . Some dumb down their thinking in interviews for the lay reader , but these end up being more difficult to decipher, in my opinion, than their work which is not dumbed down.

I got drawn to philosophy for what would generally be considered the wrong reasons - something like ‘mankind’s search for meaning’. When I actually enrolled in undergraduate philosophy, I was taken aside by a kindly lecturer, David Stove, who said ‘I can sense what you’re looking for, son, but you won’t find it here — Wayfarer

Did he mean that there are great living philosophers but they are tucked away in departments other than philosophy, or that contemporary philosophers in general are not interested in mankind’s search for meaning? Or maybe he was just speaking for himself, which I wouldn’t doubt given what I know of his work.

Did he mean that there are great living philosophers but they are tucked away in departments other than philosophy, or that contemporary philosophers in general are not interested in mankind’s search for meaning? — Joshs

I think he thought that the Department, which was then under the professorship of one D M Armstrong, would not provide the kinds of answers I was seeking.

What I mean about the difficulty of contemporary analytic philosophy, is that it's often extremely dense, written by and for those who can draw on a great deal of specialised scholarship. Not all of it, but a lot of it. Still, I've learned quite a bit since I started on Forums, due to researching names and ideas that are mentioned here. (Including from you, who introduced me to Dan Zahavi, and who's writing I find generally pretty approachable and lucid.)

. . . or that contemporary philosophers in general are not interested in mankind’s search for meaning? — Joshs

Perhaps that task has been relocated in psychology and psychiatry. Or where its been for eons, religion.

What I mean about the difficulty of contemporary analytic philosophy, is that it's often extremely dense, written by and for those who can draw on a great deal of specialised scholarship — Wayfarer

Certainly in logic and foundations of mathematics this is true. "Clarity of thought", as Wikipedia states, may arise from the use of well defined symbols and operations thereupon rather than poorly defined words.

What I mean about the difficulty of contemporary analytic philosophy, is that it's often extremely dense, written by and for those who can draw on a great deal of specialised scholarship — Wayfarer

I was thinking about the fact that a good thread or argument must be strong but not vacuously true, and therefore it must be contentious and yet not overpowering (and I was also considering the way that various posters will carelessly reduce their position to that which is vacuously true).

This contentiousness is a hallmark of philosophy, and this is especially true in the Analytic tradition. For some reason we think it boring to agree with someone or sympathetically develop someone else's idea. It is more exciting and attention-drawing to disagree, and disagreement is also the more obvious path to intellectual progress. This dynamic can lead quickly to abstruse hair-splitting that requires specialization to understand, and it often feels that in philosophy contrarian-ness is the horse leading the carriage, rather than more noble or intentional motives.

Is this avoidable? At first glance it is not, because disagreement forms the basis of philosophy in a way that it simply does not form the basis of other disciplines. And yet the way to circumvent this problem is to place philosophy into the context of a common goal.* Pierre Hadot does something like this when he shifts the focus from individual philosophers to schools of philosophy and ways of life, which groups of philosophers mutually contribute to and upbuild. Without a common goal, philosophy quickly degenerates into unfocused acts of disagreement.

* As I tried to do in my thread on argument.

Someone else out there has to do the mind numbing work on logic and language as well. — Tom Storm

Philosophy is a peculiar discipline: it's almost entirely conversation. It's not much like science, for the most part, because you don't do research. It's also not much like literature or the arts because people respond directly to you about your work and you're expected to answer those responses.

It's a strange thing, a field that mainly consists of people talking to each other, and the main thing they talk about is what they or someone else, not present at the moment, has already said.

Along the way, people got very picky, picky about exactly what someone said, or didn't say, picky about whether the different things people say are consistent, whether all the things someone says go together to make an argument, and so on. And people notice this, and then talk about it.

And there's no stopping, because we don't do anything about any of it, we just talk. Or I guess you could say, that's what we do.

It's all we've ever done, even before the sciences one after another left the nest. Now that they're gone, there are some topics we don't bring up much, because those were things we talked about when the kids were still at home. But we still sit around and talk, and a lot of it is rehashing the same old disagreements we've always had. When the kids visit, they're either bemused or bewildered that almost nothing has changed.

When the kids visit, they're either bemused or bewildered that almost nothing has changed. — Srap Tasmaner

A funny picture, but perhaps mistaken:

the main thing they talk about is what they or someone else, not present at the moment, has already said.

...

It's all we've ever done — Srap Tasmaner

I don't think it's all philosophy has ever done. I think it's a very recent phenomenon. To argue about what someone else has said brings an objectivity to the discipline that it feels it needs in light of modern scientific objectivity. But historically philosophers have inquired into reality in a way similar to but deeper than what we now call "science," and if they did talk about what someone else has already said, it was only in service to this inquiry into reality. Lots of us still do philosophy the older way, where the object is reality and not primarily the text of some dead guy.

One of the reasons I posted that, was that I've been mulling this over for the past few days:

Socratic philosophy is rooted in opinion. The examination of opinion does not mean the transcendence of opinion. — Fooloso4

And what you quoted from me was written with Socratic practice in mind.

Lots of us still do philosophy the older way, where the object is reality ... — Leontiskos

― So the pre-Socratics? Or ―

and not primarily the text of some dead guy.

have I completely mischaracterized Socrates, who swore up and down that he did not inquire into the heavens and the earth like some others, but only asked people questions?

And what you quoted from me was written with Socratic practice in mind. — Srap Tasmaner

But an examination of opinion is not an attempt to find a view from nowhere. It is an attempt to find the opinions that seems best. It is the view from where we are, in our ignorance of transcendent truths. The questions remain open, to be looked at again from another limited point of view.

The view from nowhere is a forgetfulness or disregard for the human. If, however, the unexamined life is not worth living then surely it cannot be a view from nowhere.

But an examination of opinion is not an attempt to find a view from nowhere. It is an attempt to find the opinions that seems best. It is the view from where we are, in our ignorance of transcendent truths. The questions remain open, to be looked at again from another limited point of view. — Fooloso4

This is the tension that Thomas Nagel and others say we have to live with. Of course the view from nowhere is an unreachable idealization that no one ever achieves. But it's a spirit that can't be exorcized. Consider: "an attempt to find the opinion that seems best." From what viewpoint would we make this judgment? From our own, and from our culture's, certainly. But is that the final word? What happens when two opinions make competing claims to be best, and give their reasons? I think Socrates and most philosophers since are committed to the idea that there is an ideal convergence point, involving rational inquiry, where we can reach consensus based on what is the case, not simply on "how it looks to us." We may all be wrong about this, of course.

The view from nowhere is a forgetfulness or disregard for the human — Fooloso4

So it needn't be this. What could be more human than this passion for truth, objectivity, understanding? I suppose, if someone were to claim, first, that they had actually reached the endpoint of inquiry on a particular subject, and second, that this endpoint dissolved all subjective or intersubjective concerns, we might deplore this as a disregard for the human. But I think that's a straw man.

have I completely mischaracterized Socrates, who swore up and down that he did not inquire into the heavens and the earth like some others, but only asked people questions? — Srap Tasmaner

Socratic irony? And possibly also it's Socrates stating his creed about how wisdom is to found: in dialectic, not in armchair inquiry.

I think Socrates and most philosophers since are committed to the idea that there is an ideal convergence point, involving rational inquiry, where we can reach consensus based on what is the case, not simply on "how it looks to us." — J

I don't think the Socratic philosophers agree with this. Certainly it involves rational inquiry, but where do they affirm anything like an ideal convergence point or consensus that is not provisional? Without knowledge I do not see how we can get beyond "how it looks to us." In many cases inquiry ends in aporia.

have I completely mischaracterized Socrates, who swore up and down that he did not inquire into the heavens and the earth like some others, but only asked people questions?

Is this Socrates as variously encountered through Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes (probably not the latter I assume), and then "reconstructed?" Or the Socrates of the Platonic corpus?

Where does the Timaeus, etc. fit in such a view?

I've considered that even if the Clouds is farce and parody, it has to capture at least something of the man or else it wouldn't actually be funny to his fellow citizens.



Well, that's a broader academia problem, and I think it is often even worse in other fields. Provocative and "novel" arguments get citations, and there is a sense in which, particularly in the algorithm driven information era, "no press is bad press."

You see this fairly often in economics. Perhaps nowhere is it more obvious than in Biblical scholarship, where theses rise and fall without the underlying evidence shifting much. And the results for popular understanding are particularly dire there, as this forum can attest, because people will repeat with theses like Bart Ehrman's without understanding the massive amount of caveats introduced to allow them to pass the smell test, or that they are incredibly speculative. And if you are doing popular work and trying to sell it, this almost always gets worse, e.g. in interviews you get straightforward claims like "I have successfully psychoanalyzed the essentially anonymous authors of these Biblical texts and determined that they decided to 'make Jesus God' because of insecurities related to the deification of Roman emperors," or "I have successfully recovered what the Disciples really thought of Jesus before his death from the Gospel narratives," ("but also we don't have a single authentic scrap written by them.")

This is the tension that Thomas Nagel and others say we have to live with. Of course the view from nowhere is an unreachable idealization that no one ever achieves. But it's a spirit that can't be exorcized. Consider: "an attempt to find the opinion that seems best." From what viewpoint would we make this judgment? From our own, and from our culture's, certainly. But is that the final word? What happens when two opinions make competing claims to be best, and give their reasons? I think Socrates and most philosophers since are committed to the idea that there is an ideal convergence point, involving rational inquiry, where we can reach consensus based on what is the case, not simply on "how it looks to us." — J

This is the way philosophy thought before Wittgenstein, and before Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, and before Nietzsche (I could name many others not stuck in Nagel’s retro position). They believe the work of philosophy is not to reach consensus concerning what is the case in terms of a correct correspondence between thought and the world, since they argue that there is a reciprocal dependence between thought and world such that each continally changes the nature of the other. They are instead interested in determining ‘what is the case’ in terms of the structural dynamics of this reciprocal self-world movement. What are the irreducible features of worldmaking experience? They all cite such features as temporality, relevance, relationality and interpretation as primordial.

You're quite right. Rather than "most philosophers," I should have talked about "a continuing engagement with this question among philosophers who aren't happy to draw the conclusions that Witt. and Heidegger drew about this." I suppose you feel Habermas is retro as well? To me, he's the best exponent of how to live in the Nagelian tension between the search for objectivity and the realities of intersubjectivity and the necessity of hermeneutics.

historically philosophers have inquired into reality in a way similar to but deeper than what we now call "science," and if they did talk about what someone else has already said, it was only in service to this inquiry into reality. Lots of us still do philosophy the older way, where the object is reality and not primarily the text of some dead guy. — Leontiskos

All of my favorite philosophers (who are overwhelmingly contemporary) engage in texts of ‘dead guys’ (and girls) as an essential complement to the presentation of their original ideas. I have never encountered any other motive for this besides trying to describe reality.

See above in my reply to @joshs concerning my careless use of "most philosophers."

Without knowledge I do not see how we can get beyond "how it looks to us." In many cases inquiry ends in aporia. — Fooloso4

Indeed, and in many Platonic cases it did not. As was said by Count T, there are a lot of versions of Socrates to choose from. I agree that sometimes he seems to merely be a gadfly trying to reduce false positions to rubble and use aporia as a possible gateway to something better. But the Socrates (or Plato) of the Republic is doing more than this. Here we specifically examine the difference between knowledge and "how it looks to us." Our modern talk about convergence etc. would be foreign to Plato, but I see him advocating a positive doctrine about knowledge that is meant to be independent of what Athenians, or anyone else, think of it.