All brute facts about things in the world are subjective, relative and contingent.
— Joshs
Is this to be read as a stipulation? It doesn't correspond to, say, Searle's use of 'brute fact" as mind-independent, non-institutional and (at least usually) physical — Banno

It does correspond if we follow Husserl in taking concepts like mind-independence, non-institutionality and the physical as subjectively constituted idealizations. Understood naively in their non-reduced forms, in the way that Searle does, brute facts and subjectivity are external to each other. But when we bracket the presuppositions of the naive attitude, we reveal the genesis of brute facts in processes of subjective constitution. The same method of bracketing reveal Williamson’s analytic method to be mired in naive presuppositions concerning the logic of progress in analytic method, which when reduced reveal its genesis in subjective syntheses.

And yes, we can't address every problem, but must pick the most tractable and interesting. — J

Why does the question remain unanswered? Why is it ignored? — Banno

You don’t have to answer the question, but could explain why it will not be answered, why it should be ignored.

No. — Banno

Ok, ok. Fine. I’ll “do better” without you, and leave you to it. Enjoy.

It’s like a sub-forum inside TPF - they who shall not be questioned improperly or uninterestingly.

I
I'll have to leave you to it.

Thank you for the example.

could explain why it will not be answered... — Fire Ologist

You are basically painting with a roller rather than a brush.

Thanks for something.

You are basically painting with a roller rather than a brush. — Banno

Ok, fair. Hence my neighborhood analogy. I’m looking to see if I’m in the neighborhood as opposed to at a specific address, or sitting right across the table from you.

You and J both seem to be saying I’m not even in the neighborhood.

Is the picture I made with the roller at least grossly similar to something the artist with the brush is trying to paint?

Don’t answer. I’ll see if I can tighten up what I’m saying and asking.

↪Joshs I
I'll have to leave you to it.

Thank you for the example. — Banno

I admit that Husserl’s work is extremely arcane stuff without a proper introduction, but let me ask you this. Williamson is concerned with progress in method. What does a progress of anything presuppose? Doesn’t it assume that what it is that is presumed to undergo a progress be held still over the course of its development? I’m referring to the qualitative sense of meaning of the substrate for the progress. A progress implies the ability to to count differences of degree in something which doesn't undergo change in kind over the course of the counting. What would you say guarantees the fixity in qualitative sense of meaning of concepts and methods that we make use of, such that something as assured as a progress can be assumed?

One of the points here, about the way a lack of clear methodology (or at least an agreement that reason can adjudicate the question) leads towards authoritarianism, cults of personality, politicization, and power struggles is quite apt. This was one of my points in the "Two Ways to Philosophize" thread. It's also one that D.C. Schindler makes in his Plato's Critique of Impure Reason: On Goodness and Truth in the Republic and The Catholicity of Reason, which I've summarized before here.

Part of the problem is that it is often left unclear just how extensively a constraint is being challenged. A philosopher treats the law of excluded middle as if it carried no authority whatsoever but implicitly relies on other logical principles (perhaps in the metalanguage): exactly which principles of logic are supposed to carry authority? A philosopher treats some common sense judgement as if it carried no authority whatsoever but implicitly relies on other judgements that are found pre-philosophically obvious: exactly which such judgements are supposed to carry authority?

When law and order break down, the result is not freedom or anarchy but the capricious tyranny of petty feuding warlords. Similarly, the unclarity of constraints in philosophy leads to authoritarianism. Whether an argument is widely accepted depends not on publicly accessible criteria that we can all apply for ourselves but on the say-so of charismatic authority figures. Pupils cannot become autonomous from their teachers because they cannot securely learn the standards by which their teachers judge. A modicum of wilful unpredictability in the application of standards is a good policy for a professor who does not want his students to gain too much independence. Although intellectual deference is not always a bad thing, the debate on realism and anti-realism has seen far too much of it. We can reduce it by articulating and clarifying the constraints...

Philosophers who reject the constraints mentioned above can say what constraints they would regard as appropriate. Of course, those who deny that philosophy is a theoretical discipline at all may reject the very idea of such constraints. But surely the best way to test the theoretical ambitions of philosophy is to go ahead and try to realize them in as disciplined a way as possible. If the anti-theorists can argue convincingly that the long-run results do not constitute progress, that is a far stronger case than is an a priori argument that no such activity could constitute progress. On the other hand, if they cannot argue convincingly that the long-run results do not constitute progress, how is their opposition to philosophical theory any better than obscurantism?
— Timothy Williams

That said, it seems to me that Williams has a narrower vision in mind than I (or Schindler) might. I will also just add (and I say this as a great admirer of Big Heg), that philosophy that tends to be written in a more obscure fashion seems to be more prone to slipping into the cult of personality. At the limit, this gets every bit as bad as debates about esotericism, where no one who critiques the preferred master has ever "truly understood them."

Certainly, any thinker, particularly systematic thinkers, can become an authority figure in inappropriate ways, but the ability of people to read their preferences into obscure works, or to easily accuse others of misreading them, tends to make this worse.

To be fair, some topics lend themselves to more obscure formulations, so obscurity isn't necessarily blameworthy. Indeed, Heisenberg had a very interesting unpublished philosophy paper on a linguistic analogy to his famous Uncertainty Principle, where the key thesis is that, the more we try to lock what we are describing down with precision, the more the full ambit of reality is excluded and slips by us (and this explains why a Horace or a Petrarch can do so much with so little, or how Heraclitus' few fragments could spark so much thought millennia later). Plotinus or Dionysius could hardly have written otherwise (Hegel maybe could have at least tried though :rofl: ). But it's certainly a risk when one has to rely on less clear language. Being minable for aphorisms by people of all different persuasions is not necessarily a testament to one's philosophical legacy.

I could lament that we haven't answered or achieved agreement on a host of questions, but still acknowledge we've made progress in understanding them. For that matter, rather than lamenting, I could postulate that a lack of closure is a hallmark of what constitutes philosophy.

Right, one might see the open-endedness as a feature and not a bug, or one might also judge the complaint as being akin to condemning nutritional science because people still eat poorly, or condemning ethics and law because there are still miscreants and criminals. For instance, an advocate of "philosophy as therapy" can object that the failure of some to undergo therapy can hardly be taken as an indictment of the effectiveness of the therapy.

The Wittgensteinian Ur-picture, which I don't share, is that "philosophy leaves everything as it was." It is a diagnostic tool to help us understand where our language led us astray. Once we've done that, we'll be left with very little to worry about. Genuine problems will be assigned, or promoted, to the disciplines that study them, such as physics and politics. You can see why this is often viewed as a therapeutic understanding of philosophy -- or, less elevatedly, as plumbing out the pipes.

I think this is what Banno is describing. Again, he will tell us, I'm sure. Personally, I think a dose of Doctor Witt's therapy is a very good thing for all of us from time to time, especially when we get a strong hunch that our terminology is backing us into implausible corners. As I said to Banno above, I don't think all the important philosophical questions can be treated and dissolved in this way, but it's a fantastically useful technique to have at the ready. — J

Right, particularly the focus on language seems like it will leave some things out. Just for example, for a paper I had an idea for I'm reading Rowan William's book on Dostoevsky's philosophy and Harold Bloom and some other folks' analysis of Hamlet and King Lear, as well as Milton's Paradise Lost. These secondary sources all treat these literary works as being deeply philosophical. My paper idea uses them as examples of particularly modern "pathologies of reason," (i.e. the tendency towards a straight-jacket, procedural intellectualism, or else an ultimately groundless voluntarism) that largely express themselves in the history of philosophy and literature.

Maybe my paper will be tripe, but William's book is very good. Point being, this is certainly the sort of stuff that has historically be called "philosophy," even if some of it might fall into literary analysis. It isn't just literary analysis though, because it moves from fiction to universal statements about man and being. Yet I am not sure how a view of philosophy as beginning and ending in linguistic analysis doesn't have to cut out this sort of work, in which case, what is it? It still seems to be a sort of philosophy, and arguably it is more so, which seems to make the move to make all philosophy analysis a sort of equivocation.

Or more simply, on the narrow view, are Nietzsche and Dostoevsky even philosophers anymore?

Understanding Witt’s ‘therapeutic’ project in the context of consonant efforts in phenomenology and poststructuralism allows us to see that he doesn’t so much dissolve all philosophical questions as shows us that scientific , logical and mathematical domains are not self-grounding but instead are contingent and relative products dependent for their grounding on an underlying process of temporalization. Unlike writers like Husserl, Heidegger and Deleuze, Wittgenstein was reluctant to call the questioning that uncovers this process philosophical. He thought of philosophy as the imposing of metaphysical presuppositions (picture theories) on experience but not the self-reflexively transformative process of experiencing itself. — Joshs

Good point. Obviously, I interpret this differently. I see Wittgenstein the way I see Hume and Nietzsche, as great diagnosticians for the pathologies on modern thought, although I do not accept their conclusions. They follow out the dominant presuppositions of their era to their furthest (and IMO flawed) conclusions. Wittgenstein in particular shows the flaws of philosophy as a "system" and reason as wholly ratio, a sort of discursive rule-following. Here, reason ceases to involve ecstasis and an erotic Other, such that we become trapped within the fly-bottles of our own interpretations and systems, within human finitude. Procedural reason is raised up as the guarantor of ethics and political life (Rawls, Kant, etc.), but ultimately reveals itself to be groundless. Man is stuck within his own finitude, despite his natural "appetite for the infinite" (e.g. Leopardi).

I'd extend Przywara here and say that the situation of modern man is analogous to the way in which the creature is not the source of its own being. What it is does not explain that it is. The creature is always referred to something outside of itself. Even the what of a thing, its quiddity/essence, is not wholly intelligible in itself.

So too for reason. It is oriented outside of itself. We have come to see logos as a finite tool, the creation of man and his culture, but it is rather, I would argue, that man participates in Logos. The nature of logos is to transcend; it is always already past its limits and with the whole.

The relevance to the larger topic here is that modern philosophy is defined by its move to "bracket out" all sorts of considerations as irresolvable by reason, or beyond the limits of reason. The boundaries vary, it can be the phenomenal, the mind, language, culture, etc., but in each instance the bracketing involves a methodological move that assumes much about the world and reason.

In the reading, he's talking about theories of meaning that were supposed to be assessed by testing them against language use as we find it. He's saying no fleshed out theories ever appeared, so there's nothing to test. I think the progress he's talking about was just the fleshing out part. People sharpen their wits to express ever more refined versions of the hypothesis and stop there.

this is certainly the sort of stuff that has historically be called "philosophy," even if some of it might fall into literary analysis. — Count Timothy von Icarus

And we could find many other examples that illustrate how variously "philosophy" has been understood. I like keeping the umbrella open wide. @Joshs reminded us that Witt didn't view his later work as philosophy at all. (Or so he said! I wonder about his rhetoric sometimes.) (Witt's, not Josh's!). Would it matter? I'm Hegelian in the sense that I believe philosophy is constantly trying to understand its own nature, but using definitions and discriminations to try to winnow the field doesn't seem like the right way to get this knowledge.

To be sure, progress is a normative notion. So modal logic is an improvement on predicate logic, despite modal logic being in a formal sense reducible to predicate logic.

So nothing need "guarantee the fixity" apart from our own preferences. If we agree that modal logic represents an improvement on predicate logic, what more is needed?

You (or Tim) may argue that we need something external or absolute or a platonic form or some such to fix the judgement. But that there is such choosing to abide by such a thing is itself a normative judgement. And yet we judge.

You (or Tim) may argue that we need something external or absolute or a platonic form or some such to fix the judgement. But that there is such a thing is itself a normative judgement. — Banno

No, it's not. For example, Plato's belief that the Forms exist was not a normative judgment.

That's not what is suggested. Even if there were a platonic form, deciding to conform to the form is making a normative choice.

Deciding to conform to such a thing is a normative judgment, yes. That's not what you said. You said, "that there is such a thing is itself a normative judgement."

See the edit.

Thanks for pointing out the lack of clarity.

- Glad you've changed your mind. :up:

(The issue strikes me as substantial.)

So too for reason. It is oriented outside of itself. We have come to see logos as a finite tool, the creation of man and his culture, but it is rather, I would argue, that man participates in Logos. The nature of logos is to transcend; it is always already past its limits and with the whole.

The relevance to the larger topic here is that modern philosophy is defined by its move to "bracket out" all sorts of considerations as irresolvable by reason, or beyond the limits of reason. The boundaries vary, it can be the phenomenal, the mind, language, culture, etc., but in each instance the bracketing involves a methodological move that assumes much about the world and reason. — Count Timothy von Icarus

For Husserl reason returns to itself in the self-affecting presence to itself of the present moment, the speaking that hears itself speak in the same moment that it speaks. Once we bracket off all that consists of reference to all that which is not present and can never be present ( the idealizations of logic and empirical science) , what is left is the presence-to-self which grounds reason as pure self-identity.

You and J both seem to be saying I’m not even in the neighborhood. — Fire Ologist

I'm getting vague on what the "neighborhood" analogy was for. I think it was about whether linguistic/semantic philosophy can be likened to the most rigorous way of doing science? -- you were asking if seeing linguistic phil that way was "in the neighborhood" of what @Banno was talking about? I said I didn't think so, and tried to say how I saw it.

Well, neighborhoods aside, the thing to focus on here is probably that "language about language" is an essential tool. Philosophers from Witt to Quine to Banno to me will differ about its role. But it's always appropriate to call a time-out, so to speak, and say, "Now hold on. Notice how we're using the words here. Do we agree on terms, for starters? And is there something about the structure of language that may be influencing what (one of us) takes to be obvious, or capable of only one interpretation, or producing some necessary metaphysical inference?"

To me, that's just being a "disciplined" (to use Williamson's term) philosopher. I don't require such analysis to set the philosophical world aright, and as that hasn't happened yet, I doubt it will.

Appreciate the attempt at penetrating my thick skull.

is there something about the structure of language that may be influencing what (one of us) takes to be obvious, or capable of only one interpretation, or producing some necessary metaphysical inference? — J

See, I think I’m following you and can just say “I agree”. And be done.

But I also think if I rephrased what you seem to me to be saying, and questioned “metaphysical” above about the inference, and if I expounded on “the structure of language” being referenced here regarding what is obvious to only one of us, or addressed “capable of only one interpretation” - if I spoke about what you are saying you would probably say I was still getting it all wrong. Because I would say the following were in the same neighborhood and you didn’t.

the thing to focus on here is probably that "language about language" is an essential tool. — J

But language about language remains the clearest domain of the most scientific statements we can make. — Fire Ologist

“essential tool” similar to “clear…scientific”.

Not the same, but neighbors, or showing family resemblance, if you will.

Or here:

the measure of progress in science has emerged from sciences like physics, and not from analysis of language. We learned from physics how to be rigorous and how to measure progress, and then applied this as a tool to philosophy, — Fire Ologist

since physics is science par excellence — J

These are more distant, and I had to pull more context from my use to show what appears to me to be both of us recognizing physics as a prototypical science - the gold standard.

And this point you make:

But it's always appropriate to call a time-out, so to speak, and say, "Now hold on. Notice how we're using the words here. Do we agree on terms, for starters? — J

Fully agree. I am blathering on with terms and context and asking “am I in the neighborhood”, just to, paraphrase your words, check whether Hold on, how am I using my words, where is any agreement?

I’m hoping I’m close, explaining why and how I think that, and asking you to work with me to either dissect and clarify what I said, or agree and/or build on it.

To me, that's just being a "disciplined" (to use Williamson's term) philosopher. I don't require such analysis to set the philosophical world aright, and as that hasn't happened yet, I doubt it will. — J

I agree.

Someone says something.
The next one says something about what has been said to, for starters, form some agreement about terms.
The first one says yes or no to the second one’s reuse of terms. If saying ‘no,’ hopefully showing why not.
The second one can then say ‘ah, I see’ and hopefully shows what they now see.
The first one again says either yes or no (the no process starts the restatement process attempting to come to agreement for starters…)
Once they agree, they can either end the short conversation or one of them builds on the agreement forged.

To me too, that’s just being disciplined.

Where you just said “I don’t require [we] set the philosophical world aright…”

I also agree. I find it is a major achievement when agreement can be reached at all, ever, on just the word “neighborhood” for instance. (Insert jokes like “no wonder, given you have such a thick skull…”)

One tiny step at a time is progress enough.

But although I do not require we set philosophy aright either, I, personally wouldn’t say say I doubt it. Despite all odds against it, I nevertheless do believe it can happen, or I could not see the cost benefit of going through all of this painful rigor. I’d rather learn about rigor doing physics, or carpentry, or any other trade than philosophy, if setting the philosophical world aright was only doubtful.

My biggest philosophical interest and justification for all of the painful rigor, is something eternal. That’s the hope. To know something about being a person worth knowing. Anything permanent. Anything I can teach to a God or a person born 100,000 years from now, or an alien 10 million years advance, or that would make Siddhartha Buddha smile. Something like “is there something about the structure of language that may be influencing what (one of us) takes to be obvious.” If I follow your meaning. Something like “agreement on anything between persons is a miracle.”

The next few pages - from the bottom of page twelve - become more explicit about methodology. There's a suggestion from Grice that good philosophers are not just self-conscious about the methods they use, but seek to develop those methods. There's an acknowledgement of confirmation bias, with the suggestion that the way to counter this is by reducing obscurity. "Where the level of obscurity is
high, as it often is in current debates about realism and truth, wishful thinking may be more powerful than the ability to distinguish good arguments from bad, to the point that convergence in the evaluation of arguments never occurs."

There's the inevitable example of science. It'd be difficult to deny that scientific approaches do not lead to progress, but far more difficult to set out explicitly what those processes are and why they lead to progress. And this: "A small difference in how carefully standards are applied can make the large difference between eventual convergence and ultimate divergence."

Williamson apparently sees convergence as an indicator of progress. An interesting thought. While we might properly question if the methods of science are suitable for philosophical enquiry, we might admit that what is a problem for scientific method at least overlaps what is a problem for philosophical method, and we might further agree that convergence might indicate a good direction for further study.

The size of one's brush is not a bad way in to the next part of Williamson's essay.

Much even of analytic philosophy moves too fast in its haste to reach the sexy bits. — p. 14

Quite so, and not just with analytic philosophy. The temptation to jump ahead, to overgeneralise, to use the big brush, is great.

The fear of boring oneself or one’s readers is a great enemy of truth. — p. 15

Precise errors over vague truths. It would be a mistake to characterise this as marking some considerations as irresolvable, rather we should be open and explicit about our inability to formulate some issues clearly enough for due consideration, to put the effort into those areas that show the most promise.

I don't want to disrupt the discussion that is actually going on here. I hope that it is possible to ask a question in the margins, as it were, without doing so.

The present state of play, so far as I can make out, has the philosophers working in these areas developing a variety of formal systems that are able to translate an ever-increasing range of the aspects of natural language. — Banno

If I remember right, the original philosophical reason for the "translation" into logic was to clarify natural language, so that at least some philosophical problems could be resolved or dissolved. The other (possibly philosophical) project was the attempt to provide a foundation for mathematics. But I had the impression that both projects were abandoned, though to be honest I have forgotten exactly what the reasons were. My question is simply what is the aim of the translation project now? Is it the same, or something different?

Quite so, and not just with analytic philosophy. The temptation to jump ahead, to overgeneralise, to use the big brush, is great. — Banno

Or make unwarranted assertions.

we might admit that what is a problem for scientific method at least overlaps what is a problem for scientific method — Banno

Is one of those scientifics supposed to be philosophical?

It's worth noting that this paper was delivered at a conference on realism and truth. That likely accounts for why Williamson spends so much time on the realism-irrealism debate.

Williamson apparently sees convergence as an indicator of progress. An interesting thought — Banno

It is interesting. People can converge on a number of things. One type of convergence is an agreement on a solution to a problem. That's not always what happens in analytic phil, though sometimes it does. Another type is convergence on a question as being an important one. Yet another type is convergence on how to formulate that interesting question in the most precise and helpful way. I could go on, but just one more: Convergence can also mean increasing agreement on the right methods to use when inquiring into a problem.

My point is that "mere" convergence -- as opposed to some allegedly demonstrated answer -- can indeed be an indicator of progress, as long as we don't insist on the narrow type of convergence that means "problem solved."

Would divergence indicate a problem then?

It doesn't seem to indicate a problem for biological evolution.

Possibly Williamson, or Banno-interpreting-Williamson is thinking of a very specific convergence, of philosophical and scientific methodologies.

Would divergence indicate a problem then? — Count Timothy von Icarus

It could. Like "convergence," there are a lot of ways people can exhibit "divergence." To pick one of my examples, if there's no agreement on what the important questions are within a discipline, and the result is that there are many research programs that have difficulty talking to each other, that would be problematic, I should think.

Or, just as convergence is not a sure sign of progress, divergence may wind up being healthy. Sometimes you have to let a hundred flowers bloom, and see what happens. In the context of Williamson, I think we're talking about a kind of convergence we're all familiar with, when an intractable or muddy issue starts to gain form, and those in the field see daylight ahead and begin mutually to use new concepts and methods. Not infallible, of course.

My question is simply what is the aim of the translation project now? Is it the same, or something different? — Ludwig V

I don't know, but I know something I would like it to include, which is prior elicitation. It is usually thought of, as in that article, as capturing the knowledge of scientists or experts of some kind. A very different kind is to formalise what psychologists can tell us about what we all know. I recommend the book What Babies Know. Some AI researchers are on to it.

But I also think if I rephrased what you seem to me to be saying, and questioned “metaphysical” above about the inference, and if I expounded on “the structure of language” being referenced here regarding what is obvious to only one of us, or addressed “capable of only one interpretation” - if I spoke about what you are saying you would probably say I was still getting it all wrong — Fire Ologist

Help! Can't follow this, sorry.

the thing to focus on here is probably that "language about language" is an essential tool.
— J

But language about language remains the clearest domain of the most scientific statements we can make.
— Fire Ologist

“essential tool” similar to “clear…scientific”.

Not the same, but neighbors, or showing family resemblance, if you will. — Fire Ologist

Again, I'm not sure what's at stake with the "neighbor" analogy. If you're asking me, "When you say 'language about language' is an essential tool, do you mean that it resembles the clarity of science?" my answer is no, that's not what I meant. I tried to explain what I did mean.

I’m hoping I’m close, explaining why and how I think that, and asking you to work with me to either dissect and clarify what I said, or agree and/or build on it. — Fire Ologist

Happy to continue talking, but I admit it's often difficult for me to grasp your points. It helps me, when drafting a post, if I write it out first offline, and let it sit, and think about what I'm trying to get across, and then edit the shit out of it!

My biggest philosophical interest and justification for all of the painful rigor, is something eternal. — Fire Ologist

Are you open to the thought that the eternal something might inhere in the process, and not the (unreachable) result of certainty and eternal knowledge?

"When you say 'language about language' — J

I'm saying, we are both expressly saying "language about language" and both saying things about this like "essential tool" and "clearly scientific" which seem relatable to me, so we seem to me to be making similar observations in response to the article. Like we are in the same neighborhood (although I'm am starting to feel like I need to find a realtor.)

You don't seem to even see what I am saying. I see us saying a lot of the same things.

So your answer to whether I am understanding anything from the article or from what you said must be "no" (that is, if you, in fact, understand the article - we could both be misunderstanding each other and the article, and we might never know it from how this conversation is going).

I think this exchange between us is a performative example of what the article is trying to say: little to no advancement (be it of philosophy, science, this discussion, etc.) is the result of a lack of attention to rigor and standards, and is the result of leaps, using vague terms like "neighborhood" instead of building clear questions that, thanks to rigor in the building of the question, have possible resolution that two might be able to work on together.

I think I'm following the article just fine.
Be rigorous if you want to create something where progress can be marked. I could say much more, but... me talking continues to be a non-starter, too broad, and unhelpful.

I am a plain, natural language guy. I think, sometimes, not always, we can discern the rigor without strangling the discussion. I think we can tell who is rigorous and who is not without always repeating the ground rules. Sometimes we can't. You see what I am saying as too vague. So does Banno. I think we all see me trying to further clarify what I'm trying to say as not really helpful to the thread, and probably uninteresting to you all anyway at this point.
_______

This is the place where I sit when approaching philosophy. Struggling to move as high above the weeds as possible, often contradicting myself for sake of some even higher vantagepoint, something hypothetical, something yet to be disproved and begging some method to disprove it. I don't want to miss the forest for the sake of the tree stump; but that is precisely because everywhere I go are tree stumps so I know there is a forest that eludes:

Those who applaud a methodological platitude usually assume that they comply with it. I intend no such comfortable reading. To one degree or another, we all fall short not just of the ideal but of the desirable and quite easily possible. Certainly this afterword exhibits hardly any of the virtues that it recommends, although with luck it may still help a bit to propagate those virtues (do as I say, not as I do). Philosophy has never been done for an extended period according to standards as high as those that are now already available, if only the profession will take them seriously to heart.

So last attempt, hopefully, to point to something interesting I've gathered while reading the article (which is really a restatement of Banno's Two ways to Philosophize thread). Rigor is a tool, not an end. Maybe Siddhartha Buddha was not speaking with scientific rigor, but a deeply logical thinker, schooled in modal logic and analytics, can nevertheless glean useful data about the human mind from his words, learn of things worth further inquiry, and maybe even turn his words into something analytic for rigorous scrutiny.

It is important (I think) to note in all of this, that developing the virtues of rigor cannot simply be for sake of having rigor. The development of rigorous, analytic methods, like modal logic, are truly an advancement in philosophic tool-making; but these tools are new, and there is much work to be done before these advancements might salvage the profession from the basement of the humanities department at some crusty old university.

Dissolving has a finite half-life, and an end.

But again, as I've probably completely confused the issue for so many, none of this is meant to side-track or refute or downplay the more express lessons in the article. Lessons that, in the minutia, are clearly over my head (or that I am incapable of restating in my own terms). I agree, rigor is essential to anything approaching science, and if philosophy wants to be able to make progress and measure progress, the science of language, logic and rule-making is an essential part of it, in all of the ways raised in the article.

You don't seem to even see what I am saying. I see us saying a lot of the same things. — Fire Ologist

You're right that I'm having trouble seeing what you're saying. We may well be saying a lot of the same things.

So your answer to whether I am understanding anything from the article or from what you said must be "no" — Fire Ologist

Not at all. The fact that I'm having trouble grasping your thought is quite separate from what you do or don't understand.

I think I'm following the article just fine. — Fire Ologist

I'm glad of that. All I can do is repeat my suggestion that, for better communication, it can really help to pare down a post to a couple of carefully expressed questions or observations. But this is no reflection on your grasp of the article.