Comments

  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    The critical aspect of philosophy in regard to religion, and in general, has been helpful but to what end? I think ancient philosophies had a more general purpose- to live well. I'm reminded of Hadot's What Is Ancient Philosophy? The idea that the primary function of philosophy is its function to critique is an anemic one. But I do think much contemporary philosophy works under that assumption. At least, critique is part and parcel of the refining of arguments that is so much of the literature (in the analytic branch, at any rate). If the primary function of philosophy is not to help us live well, then it should be. Critics are a dime a dozen. How many of them know how to live? — public hermit

    It’s curious that both you and @Banno associate critique with analytic philosophy, because until now (and probably still, not sure yet) I’ve been thinking of other kinds of philosophy as critical, and analytic much less so.

    We might be using the word differently. What I mean by “critical” has more in common with ancient philosophy than it does with the anemic approach. In fact, I almost used the word “anemic” in reply to @Ciceronianus, the sensible no-nonsense pragmatist, but decided it was too rude.

    Critique and the philosophy of living well are bound together in Socrates and Plato, also I would argue in Nietzsche and Marx. To ask how best we should live is to criticize how we do live, which in turn is to question beliefs that usually go unquestioned.

    Last night I happened upon this comment from a lecture by Adorno. It seems relevant to the (anemic) philosophy-as-toolkit idea:

    I might point out here that the widespread positivist notion of a neutral form of thought, in contrast to one supposedly based on more or less arbitrary value systems and particular standpoints, is itself an illusion, that there is no such thing as so-called neutral thought, that generally speaking this alleged neutrality of thought with regard to its subject matter tends to perform an apologetic function for the existent precisely through its mere formality, through the form of its unified, method­ological and systematic nature, and thus possesses an intrinsically apologetic or - if you like - an inherently conservative character. It is therefore just as necessary, I would say, to submit the concept of the absolute neutrality of thought to thorough critical reflection […] — Adorno, Introduction to Dialectics

    EDIT: I think what it comes down to is that I’ve often been talking about social critique, whereas others are talking about the critique of the philosophical concepts, systems, and arguments of other philosophers. I think I want to bring both of these under my idea of critique, as part of the same pre-eminent function of philosophy. (Although I don’t really like the word “function” here)
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    ↪Banno
    They’re the same thing.
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    Quick one-liner, or so…..what did you get out of The Eclipse of Reason? What is it the author wants to say, bottom line kinda thing? — Mww

    The bottom line is that reason can become merely instrumental, such that rationality leads to outcomes that are irrational when viewed under a richer notion of reason. For example, it was instrumentally rational for the US and the USSR to each create nuclear weapons, but irrational in terms of the interests of human beings in general.

    Reason as the mere domination of nature entails the domination of people by other people.
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    If doing philosophy is like plumbing, then it probably should avoid any pretensions of making discoveries. — Banno

    Family resemblances, language games, alienation, positive and negative freedom, sense and reference. These concepts are at least useful. I happen to think they allow us to make discoveries too.
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    Industrialism puts pressure even upon the philosophers to conceive their work in terms of the processes of producing standardized cutlery. — Horkheimer, The Eclipse of Reason
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    That might just be my bias, which is towards critique rather than making shit up — Banno

    By “making shit up” I’m guessing you don’t mean anything like the “coining of concepts” proposed by Moeller in the video as one of the things philosophy is for?
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    Did you notice The Philosophical Toolkit? There was a bit of discussion around it. Several tools are listed.

    I suspect that the (self-conscious?) use of such heuristics is more common amongst the failed mathematicians than amongst the failed writers. That might just be my bias, which is towards critique rather than making shit up.     — Banno

    I just read it. Fell asleep. I doubt those heuristics are self-consciously used by either. Continentals might say they’re trivial and obvious at best, rigid and constraining at worst.

    What I think philosophers do self-consciously use are concepts such as those described in a nice little book called Philosophical Devices: Proofs, Probabilities, Possibilities, and Sets by David Papineau.

    Part I: Sets and Numbers
    1. Naive Sets and Russell's Paradox
    2. Infinite Sets
    3. Orders of Infinity

    Part II: Analyticity, a prioricity, and necessity
    4. Kinds of Truths
    5. Possible Worlds
    6. Naming and Necessity

    Part III: The Nature and Uses of Probability
    7. Kinds of Probability
    8. Constraints on Credence
    9. Correlations and Causes

    Part IV: Logics and Theories
    10. Syntax and Semantics
    11. Soundness and Completeness
    12. Theories and Godel's Theorem     — Table of Contents
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    Interesting...I'd broaden the 'questioning' part to questioning tradition and established values — Janus

    Yes, that’s what I did in the OP and have been doing in the discussion since. The video made me think, and the resulting thoughts diverged from anything in the video.

    I'm familiar with the 'creating new concepts' idea from Deleuze (see What is Philosophy co-authored with Guattari). — Janus

    I thought about that too, but in the video Moeller mentions Hegel rather than Deleuze.
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    ↪Count Timothy von Icarus
    Great post, thanks. I agree.
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    ↪Christoffer
    I've read the whole of your post and that's what I'm responding to, but I'll just quote this bit and go from there:

    Since the dawn of writing, has not the pen been developed to be a better pen? A tool is constantly being improved upon and philosophy has undergone iterations of improvements to sharpen its ability to help conceptualize. And just like a pen or any tool for writing, it has the shape of the time it is used in. — Christoffer

    Philosophers who are critical of the idea of progress in history point out that while humanity’s ability to control nature or achieve freedom from nature, and to make the tools that make that possible (technology), has indeed improved steadily, the same cannot be said for anything else humans do. In living memory there were genocides and famines, and despite having a really cool philosophical toolbox, humanity is as stupid as ever (QAnon, white supremacy, nationalism, and so on and on).

    If philosophy is such a great mental technology, as you imply, wouldn’t we expect society to have become more rational over time, just as it has become more technological? Why hasn’t that happened?

    The view I'm sympathetic to, from Adorno & Horkheimer, is that societies have become more rational, but only instrumentally so; the very concept of reason has been impoverished. You echo this state of affairs in describing philosophy as an instrument.

    So we have the instrumental reason in science and technology that leads to vaccines, dentistry, washing machines, Zyklon B and weapons of mass descruction. This is based on the use of tools from out of the philosophical toolbox that you describe. So philosophy is there to "guide thoughts and ideas through a forest of confusion" towards ... genocide?

    To me it follows that philosophy, as eminently critical, has to step in and say wait a minute, do we really want to be doing that? Philosophy often doesn't do that, I realize. I guess I'm emphasizing and celebrating the times when it does, thereby saying it ought to do more of it. This amounts to an attempt to form a richer notion of rationality than the one we have.

    All of that's not so much a rejection of your position as an addition to it.
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    ↪unenlightened
    :ok:
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    ↪unenlightened
    I’m not so sure they can be so neatly separated.
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    ↪unenlightened
    But that’s too neutral and aloof for my taste and I want more.
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    Any time one has a use for philosophy, one is not doing philosophy, but rhetoric. The tool-maker makes the tools he uses to make tools, but he is never using the tool he is making while he is making it. — unenlightened

    I’m very sympathetic to this. The instinct to identify a use or function might be associated with the instinct to commodify, to put a price on it. Philosophy is attractive partly because its usefulness is at the very least non-obvious.

    Even so, I don’t think it’s contradictory to look at some period in history and say that philosophers were important in particular ways that led to good outcomes, or that the philosophical thought of the period sets an example of how to think independently and critically.
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    ↪Janus
    Ok, I’ll go along with that. In the video, Moeller actually identifies three things that philosophy is for: questioning religion, coining concepts, and giving jobs to failed poets (continental philosophers) and failed mathematicians (analytic philosophers).
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    ↪Christoffer
    That’s a good argument, and I think @Ciceronianus and @Banno were saying roughly the same thing. I think it’s basically in line with the OP, in which I generalize the questioning of religion to the role of critique.

    Still, there’s something about it that makes me suspicious. The idea that philosophy is an independent ever-expanding toolbox, ready to apply to whatever exists—this is surely a fantasy. Philosophy is itself always historically situated, and part of what it does is to apply its tools to itself, even to its own tools, depending on the social conditions.
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    post-secular — Wayfarer

    Interesting. Seems reasonable.

    My own interest in some sort of secular sacredness is in a different direction: immanent and earthly rather than transcendent and heavenly, more like magic than mythology or religion. Art is probably the model here, though it’s notable that even that model may have been lost, since the rise of postmodern, conceptual art.
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    By 'nihilism' I understand the belief that nothing human (i.e. mortal, finite, caused, contingent, imperfect) is meaningful or significant or real. Thus, I interpret 'supernatural religions' (e.g. Abrahamic, Vedic, pantheonic, shamanic, animist, ancestral, divine rightist, paranormal, ... cults) as manifest 'nihilisms' which, as Freddy points out, devalue this worldly life by projecting – idealizing (i.e. idolizing, disembodying) – 'infinite meaning, significance & reality' as originating with and/or only belonging to some purported 'eternal otherworldly life' — 180 Proof

    Yes, I like this way of putting it. Feuerbach’s critique was similar.

    What we see then are different kinds of nihilism: from the devaluation of earthly life in traditional societies to morality and reason as purely subjective under capitalism. Roughly speaking.
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    As noted, I agree with him that a major role of philosophy is questioning, even interogating, religion. He says that doesn't mean rejecting it. — Wayfarer

    Yes, it’s a liberal view that’s hard to disagree with, namely that philosophy helps us moderate our ideas and prevents the descent into fundamentalism. It could even be argued that it’s conservative, in that it positively helps prevailing beliefs to continue prevailing, since moderate beliefs are easier to live with, more stable, less open to attack (motte-and-bailey again).

    Even so, I wanted to highlight the basic critical role of philosophy. It’s another matter whether the aim of this criticism is to maintain or destroy existing belief systems. As to that, I tend in a more radical direction than Moeller.
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    ↪Janus
    It may be a modern conception, but philosophy has been doing it since ancient times.
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    thanks for the opportunity of holding forth on one of my favourite themes. — Wayfarer

    You’re welcome, I enjoyed it.

    The only thing I’ll say at the moment is that neither I nor Adorno would go along with the alternative to nihilism described by Nagel, since (a) it’s not a realistic alternative so much as a worldview of former times that cannot be retrieved, (b) it is myth, which is as irrational as nihilism, and (c) the notion that human life without a universal soul is “merely human life” is anathema.
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    The failed mathematician bit will fall flat — Banno

    I appreciated it.

    I'll get all analytic and point out that the arguments and strategies philosophy provides to us have a more general application than just the critique of religion, and cite the threads on Trump, Covid and the invasion of Ukraine as evidence. — Banno

    Sure, these arguments and strategies help, not least in allowing us to ask the right questions. But where I’m coming from is that there is a critical and subversive force in philosophy, that it shouldn’t just be the handmaiden to science or theology. As it happens this is the thrust of The Eclipse of Reason.
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    The Eclipse of Reason — Wayfarer

    Damn you for adding to my reading list. The prose looks... interesting — Banno

    I read it recently. I quite liked it and broadly agree with a lot of it, but it’s ranty, dated, and often shallow. So far I’ve found Adorno more subtle and interesting, and their joint Dialectic of Enlightenment a better presentation of the position, even though it’s not as clear.
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    ↪frank
    That is quite interesting.
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    Note that the word is questioning, not combating. You can question X without being anti-X, just as, for example, Adorno and Horkheimer questioned enlightenment without being anti-enlightenment.

    That’s not to say it’s necessarily bad or unphilosophical to be anti-X. Nietzsche and Marx went further than polite questioning, and I regard their thought as extremely philosophically interesting. So there’s a spectrum of intensity and motivatedness in criticism, but it’s just criticism as such that I was emphasizing in the OP.

    By the way, “criticism” in my usage is just a synonym for “questioning”.
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    ↪praxis
    ↪frank
    Enough bickering chaps.
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    I am always interested in new arguments to combat what I consider the more pernicious aspects of religion so as I commented to 180 Proof, I am musing on what philosophical counter points they might come up with against your 'maybe sometimes, probably often, but not always.' — universeness

    Ah, ok. I’m not interested in that.
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    ↪universeness
    I don’t really understand your questions, but I have a feeling they boil down to this: are religious philosophers philosophers at all? On one level Of course they are, yes. Some of those philosophers who questioned religion the most have been religious. All philosophers have their prior commitments, and sometimes that’s religious faith.

    Is this somehow against the spirit of philosophy? Maybe sometimes, probably often, but not always. In any case, philosophers can be great philosophers in some ways and still have blind spots.
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    ↪universeness
    It’s a fact that history is full of arguments for the existence of God and all that, but this is still consistent with the OP.

    Religious philosophers exist in a philosophical milieu in which questions about religion have come up, a context in which the inquiry into religious concepts has become normal. So I’m inclined to look at the big picture rather than the orientations of individuals: that there are religious philosophers shows that religion is being questioned.
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    And religion has been questioning religion from the start. The formation of new religions typically carry with them an implicit critique of older established ones ( Protestant reformation, Conservative, reform and reconstructionist Judaism, etc). Meanwhile, the history of Western philosophy has mostly consisted of questioning one religious metaphysical system in order to prepare the ground for a different religious metaphysical system. — Joshs

    Although I may have implied that the history of philosophy is one of inevitable progress towards the banishment of religion through the advance of thought, another way to see it is just that philosophy is always there to question religion, not especially as part of a destructive plan but to help religions move with the times, or as you say, lay the groundwork for different religious systems. Or, to prevent the descent into fundamentalism.

    One of the other functions of philosophy mentioned in the video is the coining of concepts, and I guess this has been part of how philosophy prepares the ground for new systems.
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    For me as a layperson, there's philosophy I can use or learn from and philosophy for academics who relish jargon saturated, recondite deliberations about thinkers so intricate or verbose, no one can seemingly agree about the correct reading of their work. — Tom Storm

    I was watching Rick Roderick the other day and he pointed out that the best books, whether in philosophy or not, are those that produce the most, and the most diverse, interpretations. I agree with him. The idea that philosophers, by means of clarity and brevity, can pin down the meaning of their works, has not stood up to scrutiny.

    That’s not to say all interpretations are equally good though.
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    ↪frank
    Yes, I agree. I was careful not to say that philosophers were the central cause of enlightenment.
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    But some philosophy points not to upward dialectic of Man but of the inherent perennial suffering nature of existence. See: Schopenhauer (suffering Will), Kierkegaard (angst), Siddhartha Gotama (dukkha), Hartmann (social despair), Mainlander (cosmic suicide), Zapffe (over-evolved self-awareness), E.M. Cioran (resigned indifference, disappointmentism), etc. etc. — schopenhauer1

    As I implied, philosophers like to criticize. Maybe those guys were freeing us from our illusions and thus contributing to enlightenment. And Siddharta was quite big on enlightenment, I hear.

    As we move through cultural history, we are given more chances for sophisticated reflection of the intractable problems of human existence. — schopenhauer1

    Ah, history as progress … towards antinatalism. :wink:
  • Philosophy is for questioning religion
    ↪Pantagruel
    I’ll include the next sentence this time:

    Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance of thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters. Yet the wholly enlightened earth is radiant with triumphant calamity. — Adorno & Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment

    Their answer to why this is so is that enlightened reason itself tends to go wrong, and we end up dominating nature and each other to the detriment of both. And in becoming aware of this dialectic we might be said to reach something like a more holistic perspective.
  • Transgenderism and identity
    I really don't get this obsession with bathrooms. There's a nightclub I sometimes go to where all the toilets are unisex. It's really no issue. It's a just a room with private cubicles and a shared sink to wash hands. — Michael

    Yeah, I don't get it either. Where I am, most of the bathrooms are unisex. Nobody cares or thinks it's a big deal as far as I can tell.
  • Transgenderism and identity
    And I do believe in the concept and value of righteous anger. The question then is which side is right to be angry and why? And it is a case of who is angry and determined and persuasive enough to get the most attention and influence. — Andrew4Handel

    Then this is the wrong place for it, because TPF is explicitly not the place for campaigning. It’s in the guidelines.
  • Do People Value the Truth?
    ↪Andrew4Handel


    The next paragraph is important, because that’s where he answers the question:

    The moment pragmatism asks this question, it sees the answer: True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot. That is the practical difference it makes to us to have true ideas; that, therefore, is the meaning of truth, for it is all that truth is known-as.

    This thesis is what I have to defend. The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth happens to an idea. It becomes.     — William James
  • Do People Value the Truth?
    ↪Andrew4Handel
    :up:

    If I’m not mistaken, @T Clark agrees with James on truth, so maybe he’ll say something about it.

    this seems to be saying that the truth is instrumental in so much as it serves a purpose and not whether it is intrinsically true — Andrew4Handel

    Maybe you could say what you think is wrong with that.
  • On love and madness. Losing ones mind, to find ones heart.
    ↪javi2541997
    Weird response.

    Anyway, note that some people choose to put their discussions in the Lounge, so don’t assume that they’ve all been put there by staff.
  • Transgenderism and identity
    fatal conflict — Andrew4Handel

    drastic mistake — Andrew4Handel

    gross misogyny — Andrew4Handel

    flagrantly giving away — Andrew4Handel

    makes me very angry — Andrew4Handel

    It’s clear that you’re angry. The rhetoric is a sign that you can’t think clearly about this issue. If you’re so angry about it, this is not really the place for you to talk about it.

    Otherwise you’re not really arguing for all of these melodramatic phrases. Mostly it’s obvious straw men.
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