Interesting OP. It does often seem like there are people here who are trying to understand what others think, and others who want everyone to think like them. — Tom Storm

Sure. I would also draw attention to the extra step of casting a critical eye over what is being thought. A shift from hermeneutics to critique. The best philosophical conversations seem to hold both in tension: sympathetic understanding and critical scrutiny.

Added: Yep.

Since the beginning of philosophy there have been those misvaluating the highest concepts to the point that they were considered more real than the world of the senses, when in reality they were merely the most general, the 'highest' abstractions of that world, and consequently also the most empty. — ChatteringMonkey

Yep. That's the poison for which critique is the antidote.

If philosophy is the love of wisdom, it is presumably the love of something in particular — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't see that this is so.

Why should we limit wisdom to being either a particular, or a thing?

And see how even here, at the first step, so much is presumed?

We need not assume the dilemma that either there is one true narrative, or else all philosophical positions were equally wise.

Hubris, to presume on has access to the one true narrative. That, and a certain deafness. One might cultivate a sustained discipline of remaining open to what calls for thought. One might work with others on developing a coherent narrative while not expecting to finish the job. Something to sit between "I have the truth" and "Anything goes".

Banno's Logical Positivists — Leontiskos

Oh, Leon. Already misrepresenting. You are a liar. You know better, but you do this sort of shit. And repeatedly and to others as well as to me.

It's a shame, really. You can do better.

I think Rorty is probably right that philosophy is essentially a discursive project. The history of philosophy resembles a conversation in slow motion, one marked by fashions and phases, as well as by committed reactionaries and revolutionaries. But it is also a fairly sheltered discourse, since most people take little interest in it and are effectively excluded by barriers such as literacy, time, education, and inclination. As a result, there tend to be two conversational groupings: the intellectual 'elite', and the rest of us, who paddle around in the shallow end with the slogans, fragments, and half-digested presuppositions that trickle down. — Tom Storm

Nice.

On it's face, this has always appeared the case to me and it didn't take getting into any professional capacity to note it.

There's a clear difference between 'academic' philosophy and then like "Here at InGen, our philosophy is....".
The former being what we (supposedly) do here, and the latter being what laypeople take to be their general worldview. In the example, its specific to for instance, employment, but is clearly not something gleaned by any kind of attentive consideration (in most cases).

There is definitely an ignorance to the former. Seems to be the reason why most philosophers are considered pointless or superfluous (then again, the examples usually cited for that are absolutely pointless, superfluous philosophers lol).

So to avoid circularity, a TOE will have to provide this account on a different level than the theory-internal explanations of other things. — J

This put me in mind of the use of metalanguage in Tarski, a hierarchy in which the truths in each language are set out in it's metalanguage, and infinitum.

There's an alternative, from Kripke, in which instead of assigning "true" or "false" to every sentence, we assign "unknown"; then we proceed to assign values of "true" and "false" as we interpret the language.

We thus avoid assigning a truth value to "This sentence is false".

Interestingly, this approach provides a theory that is consistent at the cost of not assigning a truth value to every sentence.

Run that alongside Midgley's idea of plumbing. Both find fixed points in an interdependent web. Both are partiality, interdependent, and rely on the practical need to patch leaks as they arise.

Knowledge is only possible through abstraction. — ChatteringMonkey

:up: It's abstractions all the way down.

the discourse vs. dissection idea, which is a very helpful way to think about phil. — J

Cheers.

got to take a class once with Richard Bernstein, and I remember his credo, which was something like this: "You have to restrain your desire to respond and refute until you've thoroughly understood the philosopher or the position you're addressing. [And boy did he mean "thoroughly"!]. — J

Trouble is, we have to act. We don't always have the time, fortitude or inclination to understand someone - especially when their view is well removed from our own.

There are views that look to be not worth the effort. And we have to make judgements as to where we start our efforts and what to look at in detail.

There are posts in this thread to which I have chosen not to respond simply becasue I want to go have breakfast. I made a choice between those that seemed to progress the discussion, and those that don't. Others may make a different choice, and hopefully take this thread in directions I find unexpected.

I appreciate the Richard Bernstein account. Trouble is, there are limits on our resources. But also, responding and refuting can be a part of developing an understanding.

And there is this: we are involved in

a fairly sheltered discourse — Tom Storm

Doing philosophy is a human endeavour. While it reaches for glory and joy, it stands in mud, puss and entrails. :wink:

If philosophy is the love of wisdom, it is presumably the love of something in particular
— Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't see that this is so.
Why should we limit wisdom to being either a particular, or a thing? — Banno

I see what Count Timothy is getting at, though I don't think it's well expressed. (So I’ll agree with the impulse while questioning the formulation.) I submit that there is an actual good — the good, in Platonist terms—and that being able to orient oneself toward it is essential to philosophy qua "love of wisdom." Naturally, there will be objections: “Who knows what that is?” or “How can there be such a thing in a pluralistic culture?”

But this doesn’t negate the point. Mary Midgley, whom you mention, was concerned to rescue morality from scientism and evolutionary reductionism. She writes about far more than just “philosophical plumbing.” In Evolution as Religion: Strange Hopes and Even Stranger Fears, she criticizes those who take evolutionary theory not just as biological explanation, but as a total account of human nature, ethics, and meaning—a trend she rightly sees as both philosophically naïve and culturally dangerous. Yet this reductionism, tacitly accepted, still underlies much philosophical discourse.

So what is the metaphysics of meaning? Of the good? Of what distinguishes the good from the merely useful? These are questions philosophy must engage with — indeed, they are what make philosophy more than intellectual hand-waving. And it must be holistic in some genuine sense.

Doing philosophy is a human endeavour. While it reaches for glory and joy, it stands in mud, pus and entrails. — Banno

The Pāli Buddhist texts acknowledge this very fact with clinical clarity:

In this body there are: head-hairs, body-hairs, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, bone marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, intestines, mesentery, stomach contents, feces, bile, phlegm, pus, blood, sweat, fat, tears, skin grease, saliva, mucus, joint fluid, and urine. — Majjhima Nikāya (MN 10) — Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta

Yet this frank realism does not cancel out the fact that Buddhism offers a transcendental philosophy—one that seeks liberation from precisely this embodied condition, not through denial, but through insight into its impermanence and lack of inherent selfhood.

I recall, back when I meditated, long sessions in which my teacher had us focus in great detail on various entrails. A confronting reality that for me at least fed in to an empathy for the bungled and botched.

I see what Count Timothy is getting at, though I don't think it's well expressed. — Wayfarer

I had to smile at this, since Tim prides himself with some justification on his erudition.

I submit that there is an actual good — the good — Wayfarer

I've been chasing Tim on this very issue in the recent thread on aesthetics. Here's what I asked:

I've made the claim that aesthetic assessments are a construct of human culture, built by an interaction between the object, the speaker and those in the community.

How are assessments made, in a world that features your "sui generis source of beauty in the cosmos"?

My hands are open: If your assessments in your account are made in the same way as are assessments in my account, then deciding if something matches the "sui generis source of beauty in the cosmos" is a construct of human culture.

If so, like Wittgenstein’s beetle in the box, , the "sui generis source of beauty in the cosmos" drops out as irrelevant. a placeholder for something that makes no practical difference in our shared practices of judgment. — Banno

Supose that there is an actual good. Now supose that we are in a position to pass a judgement on some act - kicking a puppy or stealing a loaf of bread to feed one's children or what ever - is that act Good? We look to the circumstances, to the consequences, to the intent of the participants. How would what we do in making that assessment differ, if there is no "actual good"?

Do we really need to understand the nature of being, to have the whole and complete truth before us, before we decide that the sunset is beautiful, or that kicking a pup is wrong, or that stealing to feed one's children is forgivable?

God, I hope not. 'cause if we do, we're pretty much fucked.

Supose that there is an actual good. Now supose that we are in a position to pass a judgement on some act - kicking a puppy or stealing a loaf of bread to feed one's children or what ever - is that act Good? We look to the circumstances, to the consequences, to the intent of the participants. How would what we do in making that assessment differ, if there is no "actual good"?

Do we really need to understand the nature of being, to have the whole and complete truth before us, before we decide that the sunset is beautiful, or that kicking a pup is wrong, or that stealing to feed one's children is forgivable? — Banno

All the examples are artificial. It's like those endless discussions of the trolley problem. God knows what you would *actually* do in that circumstance. Useful for stimulating classroom discussion, but still artificial, because it's not a real trolley, and no actual lives are at stake.

Unlike our actual existence.

Even 'understanding the nature of being' sounds artificial, when expressed in such bald terms, but to see a real master at work, in whatever capacity or occupation they are engaged in, is to see what that understanding means.

I can't help but post this, the mods will probably remove it, but it's only 2:25 and there are actual philosophers (some since deceased) discussing this very point.

I appreciate the Richard Bernstein account. Trouble is, there are limits on our resources. — Banno

Yes, and consider the context: He was speaking to students, young minds, and urging us to develop good habits, not necessarily to practice this kind of thoroughness on every conceivable occasion.

There are views that look to be not worth the effort. And we have to make judgements as to where we start our efforts and what to look at in detail. — Banno

Especially if such views aren't those of a historically important or well-regarded philosopher, but just some folks like us on TPF. So, often the best alternative for me is to not get involved. But if I do want to respond (and again, I wish I lived up to this as well as I should), there's really no excuse for not doing my best to construct that charitable account first.

I think too that Bernstein had in mind an approach to take with major philosophers. It's one thing to slight someone's opinion -- perhaps for good reason -- in a dorm-room bull session, and quite another to get the barest glimpse of Kant or Aristotle or Wittgenstein and then believe you're in a position to refute some key point. This is especially egregious when the refutation is scornful, implying that K or A or W must have been really unintelligent because you have shown them to be wrong! Such arrogance.

All the examples are artificial. — Wayfarer

Sure.

And the guitarist practices outside of the performance.

What I want to propose is that there are two different ways of doing philosophy. There are those who do philosophy through discourse. These folk set the scene, offer a perspective, frame a world, and explain how things are. Their tools are exposition and eulogistics. Their aim is completeness and coherence, and the broader the topics they encompass the better. Then there are those who dissect. These folk take things apart, worry at the joints, asks what grounds the system. Their tool is nitpicking and detail. Their aim is truth and clarity, they delight in the minutia.

The discourse sets up a perspective, a world, a game, an activity, whatever we call it. The dissection pulls it apart, exposing its assumptions, underpinnings and other entrails. Perhaps you can't have one without the other, however a theory that explains any eventuality ends up explaining nothing, and for a theory to be useful it has to rule some things out. — Banno

A well thought through piece Banno. I have long thought of the two broadly different ways of philosophizing as the analytic and the synthetic. I see the analytic approach as a critical approach that really begins with Kant and his critique of traditional metaphysics, which had been based on the idea of intellectual intuition yielding the highest form of knowledge, as yielding wisdom. So, I see the traditional view as relying critically on the belief that there is a god or higher power that inspires the philosopher in their best moments of intuitive intellectual insight.

If this is right, then the traditional approach is a synthetic approach. That said I don't think all synthetic approaches rely on the authority of God or a higher power―for example some philosophers such as Peirce, Deleuze, Merleau-Ponty Whitehead and some of the semiotic thinkers attempt to create cohesive philosophical pictures which are consistent with modern science.

Such endeavors overstep, as you rightly point out, if they purport to explain everything about human, or even animal, life, or actually, even existence itself.. It seems inevitable that our pictures will always be adumbrations, sketches, incomplete and never wholly adequate to their subjects.

The critical analytic approach has also opened up new and different ways of thinking, and it could thus be said to have its own synthetic dimensions, which means as @180 Proof points out that philosophical practice cannot be neatly categorized in a strictly binary manner.

There are also, of course, philosophers such as the Stoics, the Epicureans and the existentialists who are concerned with discovering how best to live, that is with ethics, much more than they are with metaphysical system building.

There is also philosophy as the study of the history of ideas, not necessarily as a tendentious attempt to find authoritative confirmation for the enquirer's own beliefs, but just for its own sake.

You have opened up a fascinating topic, and there is much more I would like to say, but I am out of time right now and will have to come back to it.

, , all good stuff. Can I draw your attention to how these posts are now about evaluating what we do so that we can improve? and not just that, but what it is to become better?

I like how this is panning out.

Thanks, Janus. Join us when you can.

...analytic and the synthetic... — Janus

Part of the thinking that went on before posting here was a rejection of those very terms, and the selection of 'discourse' and 'dissection', in the hope of leaving behind the baggage of the term "analytic". And don't mention "continental".

Another part was my trying to put a finger on what I find distasteful about Peirce, Deleuze, Merleau-Ponty, Whitehead and others.

I'd also like to consider the early socratic dialogues as dissections rather than discourses. Perhaps the move to discourse came as Plato moved from telling us what Socrates said to telling us what Plato said.

as 180 Proof points out that philosophical practice cannot be neatly categorized in a strictly binary manner. — Janus

Again, I'm happy with that, but still think the distinction worth some consideration.

And the guitarist practices outside of the performance. — Banno

Right - hence the distinction in ancient philosophy between praxis and theoria.

Might I suggest (pace Hadot) that in modern philosophy, the former is generally neglected.

(Incidentally, from what very little I know, Richard Bernstein was not one of those who neglected it.)

What I want to propose is that there are two different ways of doing philosophy. There are those who do philosophy through discourse. These folk set the scene, offer a perspective, frame a world, and explain how things are. Their tools are exposition and eulogistics. Their aim is completeness and coherence, and the broader the topics they encompass the better. Then there are those who dissect. These folk take things apart, worry at the joints, asks what grounds the system. Their tool is nitpicking and detail. Their aim is truth and clarity, they delight in the minutia. — Banno

For me, philosophy grows out of the attitude attributed to Socrates - The unexamined life is not worth living. This way of seeing things has been growing in me over the past six months or so, although it is consistent with things I've been writing on the forum since I joined. Again, for me, philosophy isn't about the nature of reality, it's about how the human mind, and my mind in particular, sees reality, creates it, examines it. About the structure of thought and experience. About how the mind works looking at it from the inside. About the processes of reason and other ways of knowing. About self-awareness. About one of the tools, I would say the most important tool, used to make Socrates' examination - introspection. Finally, this way of thinking about philosophy sees it as a practice; like meditation, prayer, or Tai Chi, as opposed to a subject for study.

My question I guess - Is this phenomenology? That's an ology that has always confused me. Beyond that, is this a third way of seeing philosophy beyond the two you have identified above? One thing it's clear to me is that it is not is psychology, cognitive science, or any science.

The discourse sets up a perspective, a world, a game, an activity, whatever we call it. The dissection pulls it apart, exposing its assumptions, underpinnings and other entrails. Perhaps you can't have one without the other, however a theory that explains any eventuality ends up explaining nothing, and for a theory to be useful it has to rule some things out. — Banno

You wrote something similar in another thread recently. I responded - you're just talking about metaphysics. And you agreed with me. You and I were both amazed you and I agreed on something.

Right - hence the distinction in ancient philosophy between praxis and theoria. — Wayfarer

So let's go back to my question to Tim. If we are to focus on praxis, then what does the Grand Theory Of All provide? Why do we need an analysis of being in order to say that the flower is pretty?

My suspicion is that it provides a rhetorical tool for authoritarianism. It's the elite philosopher kings who really understand which flower is beautiful and which plain.

The flower is pretty not because we’ve deduced it from a theory of beauty, but perhaps because it calls something in us to attention—and we respond. The work of philosophy might be to keep that response from being stolen by those who would pretend it isn’t real until it’s been certified.

A Theory Of Everything, in philosophy, would naturally have to include a theory of explanation itself -- what counts as explanatory, how explanations do in fact make sense of things, how we recognize an adequate justification, and much more. So to avoid circularity, a TOE will have to provide this account on a different level than the theory-internal explanations of other things. — J

More clarity. Cool.

Explanation has to be on a different level than the thing it explains. Always leaving the explanation itself lacking an explanation.

This put me in mind of the use of metalanguage in Tarski, a hierarchy in which the truths in each language are set out in it's metalanguage, and infinitum. — Banno

Is this a positive observation, or does it point to some kind of deficiency to the language process?

After understanding these features of explanation, do you now possess some kind of tool when doing philosophy, or is this another example of the impossibility of metaphysics?

I'd count introspection as a tool rather than a method. And not a good one.

Your threads tend to be dissections rather than discourses. Those "What is..." questions, together with the way you like to dig in to detail.

So we don't just agree on what is metaphysical...

Even 'understanding the nature of being' sounds artificial, when expressed in such bald terms, but to see a real master at work, in whatever capacity or occupation they are engaged in, is to see what that understanding means. — Wayfarer

I agree. It is difficult to sound genuine when speaking of being qua being - sounds like word salad from a history nerd who probably couldn’t hang for one minute with Aristotle or Wittgenstein or any of the real thinkers.

But philosophy, to me, is the meta language of all doing.

So philosophy is too immediately both self-aware and bound to its language. It is unlike playing music or any other act that we do. One cannot make doing philosophy a meditative act, like one does other things.

There is something utterly non-physical about doing philosophy. This builds no groove or rhythm that might facilitate true mastery.

And there is something essentially dialectic about philosophy that forever distracts one from such a rhythm.

No good philosopher believes they know enough to call themselves a master. (You can master academia and history, but not master thinking such that you would discover any of the ideas that those philosophers discovered.)

At least I have not seen it. Even a poet or prose writer can probably allow the muses to carry one towards a mastery of language unlike a philosopher engages language.

The closest one can get to being consumed in doing philosophy, the way a master is consumed while practicing his trade, is the moment when philosophizing becomes mystical contemplation. Words and self-awareness dissipate at that point, so you are not really doing philosophy anymore, though you may be thinking about being, or self, or language qua language, or the thought of nothingness.

So I agree, practice makes perfect, where more meaning can be found in the practice than in the perfection. But I did not learn this from philosophy. I analyze it when doing philosophy, but can’t be as such while philosophizing.

Does that track anything with you?

The closest one can get to being consumed in doing philosophy, the way a master is consumed while practicing his trade, is the moment when philosophizing becomes mystical contemplation. Words and self-awareness dissipate at that point, so you are not really doing philosophy anymore, though you may be thinking about being, or self, or language qua language, or the thought of nothingness. — Fire Ologist

Plotinus wishes to speak of a thinking that is not discursive but intuitive, i.e. that it is knowing and what it is knowing are immediately evident to it. There is no gap then between thinking and what is thought--they come together in the same moment, which is no longer a moment among other consecutive moments, one following upon the other. Rather, the moment in which such a thinking takes place is immediately present and without difference from any other moment, i.e. its thought is no longer chronological but eternal. To even use names, words, to think about such a thinking is already to implicate oneself in a time of separated and consecutive moments (i.e. chronological) and to have already forgotten what it is one wishes to think, namely thinking and what is thought intuitively together.

‘Thought’ is a deficient term, though, as it seems so quotidian; we all think incessantly, often to not much effect. I don’t know if there’s a proper English term for the kind of insight being referred to but it seems more a reference to a visionary insight, noesis, perhaps, or gnosis, or something of the kind.

And these may be ‘beyond discursive thought’ and so ‘philosophizing’ in the sense of verbal formulation. But it is still part of the broader territory of philosophy (or at least used to be.)

In any case, Plotinus, the fountainhead of much of ancient philosophy, and even of much since, dwelt between those two worlds of mystical insight and philosophical exegesis. So too did many a classic philosopher. So the boundary is more a border, and a porous one at that.

If we are to focus on praxis, then what does the Grand Theory Of All provide? Why do we need an analysis of being in order to say that the flower is pretty? — Banno

I think a ‘grand theory of everything’ is a mischaracterization. It's insight into the nature of things. It may show itself in a gesture or an artwork.

The discourse sets up a perspective, a world, a game, an activity, whatever we call it. The dissection pulls it apart, exposing its assumptions, underpinnings and other entrails. Perhaps you can't have one without the other, .... — Banno

I can't see why you allow the "perhaps". Socrates would not get started without Laches and Euthyphro and Alcibiades. Equally, Plato needed Socrates to get started on his journey.

If we apply this insight philosophically, we see that striving for a complete worldview may not only be impossible—it may be misguided. — Banno

I hesitate to express a view about world-views in general; it smells strongly of hubris. Perhaps one should remember that if you set out to answer all possible questions, you are likely forgetting that any worldview will generate questions of its own, so a worldview can never be complete in that sense.

You really don't have a right to an opinion until you're sure you've achieved the most charitable, satisfying reading possible. — J

I'm very sympathetic to that idea. But I don't see how one could ever be sure that one has achieved the goal and even less sure that every idea deserves the same charity. On the other hand, I don't see how one could even move towards the goal without claiming the right to opinions from the beginning; what one should not claim is the right to claim exemption from the messy business of dissection and critique.

…more a reference to a visionary insight, noesis, perhaps, or gnosis, or something of the kind.

…But it is still part of the broader territory of philosophy (or at least used to be.) — Wayfarer

That was my point about there being a third way to philosophize.

Which is making me realize a fourth way might be seen as naive common sense. Non- analytic, non-metaphysical, immediate like mystical, but the opposite of transcendent.

still part of the broader territory of philosophy (or at least used to be.) — Wayfarer

Philosophical type activity moves from naive common sense, to the analytic dissection Banno enjoys, to the metaphyisical more constructive type (building more things to be dissected), then to more mystical transcending type (completely not worth the analytic’s time as it intentionally uses illogical gibberish (paradox and seeming contradiction) to make itself known in language.)

Why should we limit wisdom to being either a particular, or a thing?

"Something in particular," not "some particular thing." Which is just to say, the term wisdom has to have some determinant content or else philosophy, the love of wisdom, would be the "love of nothing in particular."

And see how even here, at the first step, so much is presumed?

We need not assume the dilemma that either there is one true narrative, or else all philosophical positions were equally wise.

Hubris, to presume on has access to the one true narrative. That, and a certain deafness. One might cultivate a sustained discipline of remaining open to what calls for thought. One might work with others on developing a coherent narrative while not expecting to finish the job. Something to sit between "I have the truth" and "Anything goes".

Well, in ruling out, "anything goes," you are denying some positions. So, considering that you are also ruling out: "I have truth," in virtue of what are you ruling out all those views which, according to you, "don't go?" What's the standard? Apparently it cannot be truth. Is it wisdom? How can wisdom be a standard by which some positions are excluded lest it be determinant?

Second, by rulling out some positions, you have already committed yourself to a "true narrative." Is this hubris? You've said in clear terms in the past that the "true narrative" cannot contain Plato's forms, metaphysical notions of truth, Aristotle's essences (however you understand that), the "view from nowhere," opposition to abortion, etc. You seem to have lots of comments about the true narrative you feel comfortable making. But what are they made in virtue of given that a grasp of truth is denied?

Further, you might ask, can truth contradict truth? Claiming to know that "truth cannot contradict truth" is not claiming to know everything. It's a fairly limited position. But supposing any reasonable confidence in knowing any truths, these truthswill necessarily rule out contradictory truths (or else require finer distinctions).

Now, if truth can contradict truth, when and how is this so? An answer to this question is needed for anyone who countenances dialtheism, because if there is no limit then it follows that "anything goes" (and "doesn't go").


Finally, I would just point out that an embrace of pluralism or the claimed undecidability of "metaphysical" questions doesn't stop people from making strong metaphysical claims. Instead, because any opposing positions cannot be "wrong" it merely shifts the discussion over towards declaring the opposing view a "pseudoproblem," "not truth-apt," or else accusing opposing positions of being "meaningless" or "incoherent." Now, positions might be based on pseudoproblems, or they might be incoherent, but this charge is hardly a panacea and often seems to lead to bad faith argument. For, what makes something a "pseudoproblem" that cannot even be engaged with tends to depend heavily on epistemic and metaphysical presuppositions, and the move to focus on identifying pseudoproblems certainly seems to trend towards making these presuppositions transparent, since they are no longer a focus (indeed, they are assumed not to exist). And so you get broad, cursory dismissals of vast areas of philosophy as dealing in pseudoproblems. Rorty, for instance, in his chapter on Wittgenstein pragmatism, swipes away millennia of philosophy in a few sentences as a non-issue.

Interestingly, this approach provides a theory that is consistent at the cost of not assigning a truth value to every sentence. — Banno

I hadn't thought about the Tarksi/Kripke angle. The "cost," when it comes to a philosophical Theory of Everything, may be something very much like this. Not every sentence can be given a truth-value, though such sentences may be needed for consistency. At the least, do we know that a truth-value in a metalanguage -- say, my "different level" in which we'd give an account of explanation -- has to be constructed differently from one within the target language? Logicians invited to weigh in here.

Can I draw your attention to how these posts are now about evaluating what we do so that we can improve? and not just that, but what it is to become better?

I like how this is panning out. — Banno

Indeed. Sometimes opening a meta-discourse such as your OP will draw people into a frame of reference that's fresher than their usual ones -- or at least that's how I experience it.

(Incidentally, from what very little I know, Richard Bernstein was not one of those who neglected [praxis, in favor of theoria]. — Wayfarer

Right. He was kind of a genius at theoretical thinking, but his background in the Frankfurt School and Aristotle never deserted him. The majority of his books turn at some point to the question of praxis, asking what philosophy, and philosophers, are doing. What is the good that we hope to accomplish? This was also why he was such great friends with Habermas, I think.

Explanation has to be on a different level than the thing it explains. Always leaving the explanation itself lacking an explanation. — Fire Ologist

Well, it leaves it lacking for the time being, within the target level. I didn't mean to imply that there might not be satisfactory, non-circular resolutions of this. @Banno has some ideas about that, above. There is also the idea that some version of "explanation" may be non-discursive, non-rational, a kind of showing or demonstration.

You really don't have a right to an opinion until you're sure you've achieved the most charitable, satisfying reading possible.
— J
I'm very sympathetic to that idea. But I don't see how one could ever be sure that one has achieved the goal and even less sure that every idea deserves the same charity. — Ludwig V

Yes, as I replied to Banno above. Maybe amend the Bernsteinian credo to "the most charitable, satisfying reading possible for you, as best you can tell." We'll never get it exactly right; we just want the good habit, the good intention.

It certainly sounds metaphysical. It sounds like there certainly has to be something outside of language. Which I would agree with. — Fire Ologist

That is obvious. Why would we need Godel to explain something so trivial?

Is linguistics, the study of languages, outside of language? If not then what are linguists doing?

Witt said that many philosophical problems occur when "language goes on holiday", I agree. I think many "philosophers" tend to misuse and overuse language unnecessarily. It's more like they aren't trying to solve any problems or to express any realistic (useful) idea. They are simply using words in artful ways - scribble showmanship - almost like a battle of who can use scribbles in more unique and complex ways. It is a social game they are playing. But don't conflate the game with what language is primary designed to do - to inform. Language on holiday is like colors and shapes on holiday in a surreal painting.

"You have to restrain your desire to respond and refute until you've thoroughly understood the philosopher or the position you're addressing. [And boy did he mean "thoroughly"!]. You really don't have a right to an opinion until you're sure you've achieved the most charitable, satisfying reading possible. Otherwise it's just a game of who can make the cleverer arguments." I forget this constantly, as we all do, but I still hold it as ideal. You can't start being wise until you first understand. — J

"By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is the bitterest."
- Confucius

The issue I have experienced is that in trying to understand the other's position you find that the person doesn't appear to understand it themselves because they haven't bothered questioning it themselves (reflection). In trying to understand another's ideas I am trying to adopt them as my own, but I naturally reflect upon it, testing it by integrating it with other things that we know or that the other has said and find issues. When I show the discrepancies it is ignored - as if I didn't say anything (and if I didn't then why not explain why it isn't relevant if your intent is to help me understand?). I'm not asking a rhetorical question. I'm asking a question you should be asking yourself about your own position if you reflect honestly upon your own position.

It seems to me that many simply think that wisdom comes only by imitating - by referring to the group or an authority - the easy things, but does not lead to wisdom on its own.

Honestly questioning your own positions (reflection) and facing reality (experiences) are difficult. It means you have to accept that you might be wrong. I try to criticize my own position before actually submitting it for others to criticize so as to not waste time going back and forth on the trivial things. Using others to help you reflect on your own position can help you achieve a more objective view of the argument and evaluate whether it integrates well with the rest of what we know or not. This is where the experience comes in and why it is bitter. It can show you that you may have been wrong and you need to start over and reflect.

And yes, quite often the wisdom is aporetic, but that should teach us something about the nature of philosophy, not make us look forward to some glorious day when all the questions will be answered correctly, as demonstrated by superior argumentative skill. — J

If the conclusion you have reached is aporetic then you've made a wrong turn somewhere in your thinking and would need to reflect.

Philosophy is not intended to answer questions, but to ask them. The question enters the domain of science when it becomes testable, and it is here where we end up answering the question. I would just end with another quote from Confucius:
"The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones".