The colloquially normative sense is just to treat a command as a truth-apt proposition. — Michael

As I said:

Michael is presumably saying that obligations don't exist, because you can't place yourself under an obligation, because there is nothing about the past that can oblige one to act in any particular way in the present. He wants to rewrite all future claims about one's own behavior in terms of strict conditional logic, and because conditional logic cannot represent the inner dynamics of things like promising and obligation, for Michael they must not exist at all.

So for Michael promises don't exist, and what he calls a "promise" is a promise shorn of all obligation. — Leontiskos

1. You ought do this — Michael

The backstop here is the way you will also claim that terms like 'ought' and 'should' make no sense to you if they are interpreted in their colloquially normative sense. See our conversation where you do precisely this: link.

- ...And the abuse continues. Put me on ignore. I would love that.

- It's obvious that you haven't given the topic of negligence much thought. I'm going to focus on those who are willing to put in some work in order to discuss things at a higher level. Take care.

Anscombe talks of obligation as if it functions only under a law, citing medieval etymology. From what I understand the word derives from obligationem, "a binding". It's the "counts as" that is peculiar, binding and worthy of consideration. — Banno

In the past Michael has said that God would not change things, but there is good reason to doubt Anscombe's etymological inferences. William Diem, in addressing the Medieval sense of obligation, says:

In short, the law must have the ratio of due, and it is due in the same sense in which we say that something is due to someone else, i.e., some sort of debt. This is simply to say that, for Aquinas, debitum encompasses both the notions of ‘moral duty’ and ‘debt to another.’ Consequently, law, by its nature, regards our duties to others and their corresponding rights.

It may appear that Aquinas is incorporating an accident of Latin into his account of obligation: Debitum can mean either something owed (i.e., a debt) or something that must be done (a duty). It is worth remembering that debitum—though most frequently used to mean due or debt—is just the passive participle of debeo, which can be used with moral signification to mean ‘must.’ Aquinas in his treatment of law and justice is taking debitum and cognate terms with both senses at once. He is essentially treating these two meanings of debitum not as two discrete meanings—which would render these passages equivocal—but as two interrelated, and mutually implicative concepts.

This identity of debitum ad alium with moral obligation or moral duty, as perceived by reason, is the principal contention of the paper, so let us pause a moment to consider the plausibility of this point. — Diem, Obligation, Justice, and Law: A Thomistic Reply to Anscombe

They are not unrelated. One performs an algorithm by following set rules - principles. — Banno

They are not the same. To utilize a principle while reasoning is not to "perform an algorithm." You are creating a caricature.

You equate rational thought with following a principle. — Banno

No, I don't. In fact no one does that. A computer or a robot is equated with following a principle. Humans apply principles in acting.

it is often the case that we must act despite not knowing which principles to apply — Banno

And nevertheless when we do act we apply principles in so acting. That one can apply post hoc rationalization does not mean that rationality was not involved in the decision itself. You seem to keep falling into this invalid inference.

When the child chooses a cookie they apply a principle, "I want to eat a cookie, therefore I will flip a coin." They need not say it out loud or say it to themselves in order for the practical syllogism to be operative. When you sit down at the restaurant you apply a principle to your tastes, "I like duck therefore I will choose the roast duck from the menu." More difficult choices require more complicated principles and interactions of principles.

Practical reason is the general human capacity for resolving, through reflection, the question of what one is to do. Deliberation of this kind is practical in at least two senses. First, it is practical in its subject matter, insofar as it is concerned with action. But it is also practical in its consequences or its issue, insofar as reflection about action itself directly moves people to act. — Practical Reason | SEP

That is the law of non-contradiction. What I said is a more formal way of saying the same. — TonesInDeepFreeze

The first page of the thread contains two basic ways of defining contradictions. You gave a third: mere negation and the attendant inverted truth table. That's a legitimate extrapolation, but still different from a non-formal assessment of contradiction.

@Michael is presumably saying that obligations don't exist, because you can't place yourself under an obligation, because there is nothing about the past that can oblige one to act in any particular way in the present. He wants to rewrite all future claims about one's own behavior in terms of strict conditional logic, and because conditional logic cannot represent the inner dynamics of things like promising and obligation, for Michael they must not exist at all.

So for Michael promises don't exist, and what he calls a "promise" is a promise shorn of all obligation.

Are you serious? You don't know how to prove it yourself? — TonesInDeepFreeze

Rather, I'm interested in you doing something more than making curt pronouncements from on high. This is a philosophy forum, after all.

Here is the alternative notion of contradiction that you are overlooking:

“opposite assertions cannot be true at the same time” (Metaph IV 6 1011b13–20) — Aristotle on Non-contradiction | SEP

and "imply ¬A" as the proposition being True means A is False — Lionino

Yes, this was my concern. Tones requires the assumption, as I thought he must.

- See

- Yes - I wasn't sure, but it fortuitously solved my conundrum as well.

- Thanks - I concede your point. I keep reading the OP in terms of a dialogue between two people, probably because of some reading I have been doing on non-deductive reasoning.

They imply ~A. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Then give your proof.

- In your concision you conflated 'algorithmic' with 'principled', and ended up confusing an exception with a rule (by using "Buridan's Ass" as the foundation for your theory of choice). Even decisions which are, "often biased, or heuristic, or made under pressure, [or] not the result of optimal rational deliberation," are still the result of rational thought, the result of thinking according to principles and practical rationality. The principle of double effect is one such principle that can be used in reaching decisions.

No.

What relevance is this question? — Michael

It is relevant because, like you so often do on these forums, you whip up an imaginary problem. You have no difficulty understanding the obligation that a promise creates in real life, but when you hop on the philosophy forum you magically forget what you know. It's no wonder that philosophy is so often associated with foolish pretense. "A promise means not only that you intend to fulfill it at the moment it is made, but also that you intend to fulfill it up until the time it is fulfilled, barring the intervention of unforeseen impediments" ().

Nowadays, if a philosopher finds he cannot answer the philosophical question ‘What is time?’ or ‘Is time real?’, he applies for a research grant to work on the problem during next year’s sabbatical. He does not suppose that the arrival of next year is actually in doubt. Alternatively, he may agree that any puzzlement about the nature of time, or any argument for doubting the reality of time, is in fact a puzzlement about, or an argument for doubting, the truth of the proposition that next year’s sabbatical will come, but contend that this is of course a strictly theoretical or philosophical worry, not a worry that needs to be reckoned with in the ordinary business of life. Either way he insulates his ordinary first-order judgements from the effects of his philosophising.

The practice of insulation, as I shall continue to call it, can be conceived in various ways. There are plenty of philosophers for whom Wittgenstein’s well-known remark (1953 §124), that philosophy ‘leaves everything as it is’, describes not the end-point but the starting-point of their philosophising. — Myles Burnyeat, The Sceptic in his Place and Time

That seems of no use to people who write/philosophise in other languages. — Lionino

I'd go farther and say it is of no use to anyone, period. :grin:

Dictionaries should solve it, but they won't for Michael. Michael will sooner deny every form of future accountability rather than abandon his strange position. He will deny promises, oaths, contracts, marriages - you name it. The more reductio that is applied, the muddier he is willing to get.

A contradiction is of the form "P ^ ~P" — Moliere

Your presupposition here straddles the two definitions of a contradiction in an interesting way. Using the same example I gave privately:

"The car is wholly green." "No, the car is not wholly green."

This is a contradiction on all definitions.

"The car is wholly green." "No, the car is wholly red."

This is a contradiction classically but not according to symbolic logic, and your method would not find it to be a contradiction.

I think the third way to give a contradiction, besides the two already noted, is to use symbolic logic and say, "Assume P and suppose Q. If an absurdity results on Q, then P and Q are contradictory." This gets closer to the classical definition. It shows that they cannot both be true, but it does not show that they cannot both be false, and it does not show that the trueness or falseness of one results from the falseness or trueness of the other.

The two statements are not contradictory. They simply imply ~A. — hypericin

You think the two propositions logically imply ~A? It seems rather that what they imply is that A cannot be asserted. When we talk about contradiction there is a cleavage, insofar as it cannot strictly speaking be captured by logic. It is a violation of logic.

It is troublesome to talk about these things if one is not using very specific terminology. What does "contradictory" really mean? — Lionino

Yours is the best post in the thread imo. It is especially interesting that what I called fallacious your source explicitly calls a contradiction (). There are two different notions of contradiction occurring in the thread.

But OP is asking are the two contradictory with each other?

I think what is being asked here is whether one is the denial of the other. And the answer is no. Putting it in logical tables, denial would be whenever (A → B) yields True (A → ¬B) yields False. — Lionino

A classical definition says that two propositions are contradictory if the denial of either entails the affirmation of the other, and vice versa. So there are materially four different relations, given that each of the two propositions can be denied or affirmed. This is what I was trying to get at in my first post.

What's interesting is that it is not possible to contradict a material implication even on the classical understanding of contradiction. This is why I think the more interesting question prescinds from material implication:

NB: Given the way that common speech differs from material implication, in common speech the two speakers would generally be contradicting one another. — Leontiskos

Depends on what is meant by 'negligence'. — Janus

Well here is the first sentence of the article I linked above:

The moral significance of negligence is regularly downplayed in the legal and philosophical literature. — Shiffrin, The Moral Neglect of Negligence

You seem like someone who just hasn't thought or read about this topics much at all, to the extent that in order to discuss them on a philosophy forum you would need to do some homework first. I'm happy to talk after you do some homework. If you don't want to, that's your call.

My promise was sincere because I intended to fulfil it when I made it. I was being honest at the time. I just happened to change my mind after the fact. — Michael

And that is the sort of thing you tell your professional clients?

Sufficient for what? I don’t really understand the question or how it relates to my comments to Banno. — Michael

Sufficient to avoid the conclusion that your promise was insincere.

No, because I may choose not to. — Michael

So you responded, "No, because I may be prevented from doing so." But then you deleted that post and wrote a different one after thinking more carefully about my parenthetical remark. That's good.

Now a promise means not only that you intend to fulfill it at the moment it is made, but also that you intend to fulfill it up until the time it is fulfilled, barring the intervention of unforeseen impediments.

So suppose that yesterday you told a client that you would meet with him today at 2:30. But today comes around and you "choose not to." You choose not to, and instead go golfing. Your client waits for you at the coffee shop and eventually leaves, frustrated. On his way home he drives past the golf course and sees you teeing off on hole #3. What will he say to you? What will you say to him? Will it be sufficient to tell him that you "chose not to" meet with him?

Because a promise is sincere only if one intends to do as one promises. — Michael

Right, and is it not also true that if a promise is sincere then one will do what they promised (unless some unforeseen impediment intervenes)?

↪Michael Do you think that one can sincerely say "I promise to answer you but I intend not to answer you".

I'll let you work through it. — Banno

No. — Michael

Why can't you? Why do you answer, "No"? Banno is right, you need to work through it. The problem with your position is found in those two little letters you would sweep aside unnoticed. They show that you are not as ignorant of promises as you pretend to be.

('s karmic law requires me to agree with Banno here for disagreeing with him elsewhere.)

- :up: ...and now a forgotten pm comes to mind. :blush:

A contradiction is of the form "P ^ ~P" — Moliere

Presumably you could also run a truth table on this form. If neither conjunct is inherently fallacious and yet the truth table comes out fallacious (i.e. the composite proposition is always false), then presumably there would be a contradiction. The composite proposition would be:

(A → B) ^ (A → ~B)

Two propositions contradict if the truth or falsity of one entails the falsity or truth of the other (i.e. (P ↔ ~Q) ^ (~P ↔ Q))*. Formally, then, they contradict if it is true that:

((A → B) ↔ ~(A → ~B)) ^ (~(A → B) ↔ (A → ~B))

...Which turns out to be false (link). Given material implication, they do not contradict when A is false, and therefore the two are not full-on contradictory. There would only arise a contradiction supposing A.

(NB: Given the way that common speech differs from material implication, in common speech the two speakers would generally be contradicting one another.)

* I think the second conjunct is redundant, but it illustrates the principle of contradiction.

So if I've understood, what the ass does should not properly be called making a choice, because the ass does not indulge in ratiocination or deliberation.

And yet we would say that, for instance, the ass chose the trough on its left.

So I'm suspicious. It looks to me as if you are obliged to discount the ass's choice in order to avoid your thesis being falsified. — Banno

Why are we still talking about asses? We could say that the earthworm made a choice to cross the road, and yet we would clearly be using the word 'choice' in a highly metaphorical sense. The most basic confusion would be cleared up if we started talking about humans rather than non-rational animals. I don't know if Buridan ever actually spoke of an ass, but the idea seems a non-starter for our purposes.

But maybe that's just me. Or just you. — Banno

Yes, I think so. But you missed the heart of the post where I noted that the temporal aspect is unnecessary.

I suggest that we do make decisions - even most of our decisions - without such "deliberation or ratiocination". — Banno

That's an interesting assertion, but you didn't really engage anything I said in that last post.

Our justifications tend to be post hoc. — Banno

It's odd that you would peruse an ethics forum if you think practical rationality is post hoc.

-

When speaking to Banno, I would just clarify that by "choice" I am referring to what they call "deliberate choice". At the end of the day, I don't think such a dispute amounts to anything but semantics, but maybe I am misunderstanding. — Bob Ross

I would say that the substance of the dispute lies in whether rationality is involved in choice. For Banno it would seem that we make choices no more than donkeys or earthworms make choices, and that deliberation does not even exist except as post hoc rationalization. This is an exceedingly odd view.

Banno latched onto the part of my post where I spoke about deliberating "for a number of seconds" (I had in mind a child and their grandmother). He ignored the latter part of the post where I explicitly noted that extended deliberation is unnecessary. We choose for reasons, even when we make a fast choice. In the example I gave we swerve away from the deer for reasons, and our habits and actions are informed by our rationality. For instance, we know that by turning the steering wheel the car will turn, and that by turning away from the deer the car will turn away from the deer, and that by pressing the brake the car will decelerate. The way we use tools is highly rational, pertaining to ratiocination. Further, a person who has had a stroke or who is very old may press the gas pedal instead of the brake pedal, and this is a rational failure on their part.

In modern English we would not usually say that we deliberated in order to swerve the car, but we would say that the swerving was a deliberate choice. This is the kind of thing Aristotle is concerned with: deliberate choice. And it is the kind of thing that differs from the cookie situation. With the deer a choice was made for reasons, and the choice is potentially justifiable via those reasons. With the cookie none of this holds, and consequently there is no real responsibility that attaches to the "choice" between the two cookies. Whether grandma makes the "choice" for me or I make it myself, that 'opting' is not something that comes from anything within me.

Many on this forum labor under the idea that where there is no duration there is no ratiocination, and this is why they conflate humans and animals. For Aristotle or Aquinas even a human act which is not preceded by a temporal duration of deliberation is a rational act and the consequence of a deliberate choice. In essence, our inferential apparatus can be instantiated into habit, and this is the heart of virtue ethics.

-

To some extent it underpins my preference for virtue ethics over deontology. — Banno

I don't think it has anything to do with virtue ethics vs. deontology. Virtue ethicists don't generally deny rational deliberation. The idea of deliberation that I am positing comes from Aristotle, the father of virtue ethics.

You are now claiming that hardly any of our choices involve deliberation (before they are made). I think you are just being contrarian, as is sometimes your way.

--

E.g., I find it hard to envision how a person could deliberately cultivate a character such that they are kind, if it were not for the fact that they knew that they generally or absolutely should be kind (which is itself a moral principle). Likewise, e.g., having instilled a disposition (i.e., a habit) of being kind is not enough to know how to act kindly in every situation; or, if it is, then it is impractical for the common man with an average intelligence. It seems like, to me, a person who holds moral compasses primal over principles still will have to, as a secondary aspect of their theory, accept the necessity of the latter. — Bob Ross

Strong points. :up:

Bringing up abortion to make one's point is akin to bringing up Hitler to accomplish the same thing. — LuckyR

You're a shill. :roll:

I've put you on ignore. You reek of the ideology of OnlinePhilosophyClub.

You are conflating the legal with the moral. — Janus

So you think negligence pertains to the legal order but not to the moral order?

That's not a definition of the concept of good — Bob Ross

Here's J. A. K. Thomson's translation:

Every art and every investigation, and similarly every action and pursuit, is considered to aim at some good. Hence the good has been rightly defined as 'that at which all things aim'. — Nicomachean Ethics, I.1, tr. J. A. K. Thomson, Penguin 1976

Here is W. D. Ross:

The keynote of the Ethics is struck in the first sentence: ‘Every art and every enquiry, every action and choice, seems to aim at some good; whence the good has rightly been defined as that at which all things aim.’ All action aims at something other than itself, and from its tendency to produce this it derives its value. — W. D. Ross' Aristotle, Routledge 1995

Secondly, even if he would have elaborated on what is supremely good... — Bob Ross

The Nicomachean Ethics is precisely this elaboration.

Aristotle makes zero attempt to define what the concept of good refers to — Bob Ross

Again, it's pretty clear that Aristotle does this at the very beginning of the book. You may take exception to his definition, but it is there all the same.

Aristotle's definition straddles the line between "objective" and "subjective" and this rubs us the wrong way, but to fault him for involving what we call "subjectivity" in his definition would be anachronistic.

I didn't follow this part: what do you mean by that? — Bob Ross

The word "abortion" is for ideologues what a squirrel is for dogs. When they see the word they forget themselves immediately and are compelled to make a pro-choice argument. It cannot be denied that they have been well trained. Yet it's at least lucky Lucky didn't launch into a violin solo. :grin:

There is a more serious and pertinent quandary underlying this recent discussion with @Joshs and @Janus, one closely tied to the moral decay of our age. It is that we have largely forgotten how to philosophically justify moral fault. The rejoinder to blame is not so much, "I was trying my best," as, "I didn't do it on purpose," which in a more technical sense is the idea that the evil which resulted from their action was not aimed at. The stumbling block here is the Thomistic doctrine that evil is never aimed at per se, and in seeing this truth our age erroneously concludes that moral fault is impossible. For Aquinas the key is to understand that moral fault is always ultimately a matter of negligence (i.e. culpable ignorance).

I say this more as a bookmark than anything else, for I do not want to enter into the topic here, but an example would be the man who is pulled over for speeding, and who attempts to make an excuse for himself, "I wasn't speeding on purpose!" "I wasn't trying to break the law!"

Are you arguing that rationality consists in following rules? — Banno

I am saying that a choice or a decision only properly exists when it is a consequence of deliberation or ratiocination.

More generally, I am saying that the argument I am attributing to you fails, <Buridan's ass makes a "choice" without a principle, therefore our choices require no principles>. I think we can opt for an alternative without that opting being a consequence of deliberation or ratiocination.

Buridan's ass always strikes me as a bit off given that we are almost always concerned with rational agents in these sorts of discussions, not donkeys. I am saying that in such a situation a rational being is capable of flipping a coin, either literally or metaphorically, and that they are so able to opt without ratiocination does not prove that choices do not involve ratiocination. Strictly speaking I would not call such a thing a choice, but if it is a choice it is a meager shadow of what we usually mean by the word 'choice'. The argument which uses this idea to make a generalization about choices or decisions surely does not hold.

As for 's point, for me it is not a matter of conscious deliberation. Suppose grandma asks me to pick one of two cookies that she offers, and they appear to me identical. I enter into deliberation or ratiocination for a number of seconds, trying to decide. In the end there is nothing to decide given that there is nothing to differentiate the two. I say, "Grandma, I can see no difference. Give me whichever one you like." I am letting grandma flip the coin in this case, but whatever form the coin flip takes, it is not a consequence of deliberation. The deliberation had no effect on the outcome (except perhaps in an indirect way, by failing as an exercise of deliberation).

To use an example I have given before, suppose I am driving and I quickly swerve when a deer darts out in front of my car. Was I involved in deliberation or ratiocination? For the Thomistic school of Aristotelianism, I surely was. Perhaps it was not conscious, but there was deliberation and the discursivity of the rational intellect. It was "quick thinking," perhaps a kind of rationality infused into my driving habits. In this case a choice or decision was truly made, and this is different from the case of the cookie because in the case of the deer there is legitimate matter for the rational intellect to fasten and work on, albeit quickly. In the case of the cookie there is ample time but insufficient material for a true decision to be taken. So the question is not so much one of whether there is time for reflection or self-conscious mental activity occurring. Bona fide choices or decisions do not require such things, even though it is often helpful to have them.

I'm not sure how helpful this is if the question is the adequacy of Aristotle's moral philosophy. The Ethics and Politics make it fairly clear what is meant by "happiness." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right. The objection seems to be, "Someone could say that they do not desire happiness so long as they use the word 'happiness' in a way that is not in accord with what Aristotle means; therefore it is false that everyone desires happiness." This sort of objection would only make sense in a non-Aristotelian context. But this thread is literally about Aristotle and among other things Aristotle's approach to happiness and our final end.

(@J)

Upon thinking about it more, I updated the OP: now it resembles the traditional PDE. — Bob Ross

Very good. It now seems much better to me. :up:

3. My PDE still finds comparing the alternative means (towards the end) necessary (because if there is a means that has no bad side effect to bring about the same good, then that is the best option even if the good effect significantly outweighs the bad effect of the currently selected means) — Bob Ross

Good point.

4. The good effect must significantly, as opposed to merely, outweigh the bad effect—otherwise, it resembles too closely (although it is not) directly intentionally doing something bad as a means towards a good end (e.g., if there are two sick people and there is a means which could cure the one but kill the other, then it seems immoral to use that means).

Number 4 gets me into dicey waters, because I am uncertain if I can still hold my expounded position on the hysterectomy: is saving the mother of cancer significantly outweigh the death of an unborn child? I am not sure. — Bob Ross

This is the sort of ambiguity that seems to always follow the PDE, namely cases which are hard to decide. So this is in line with the tradition of the PDE, and I think it is good to recognize such limitations.

Your approach here is quite obtuse. You appear to be pretending that going to this trough, rather than that, is not making a choice... An odd way to think about it.

No principle can be used by Buridan's Ass to choose which trough to go to. Yet it would be irrational not to make the choice. Therefore it is sometimes rational to make choices that are not governed by principle. — Banno

I think you just need to think a bit harder about what it means to make a choice. You can of course think of a choice as whimsical opting for no reason, but that is not how we usually use the word. Regardless, your argument seems rather silly, <Buridan's ass makes a "choice" without a principle, therefore our choices require no principles>. You are trying to form a rule out of a bizarre thought-experiment exception which is probably physically impossible, and such an approach follows the methodology for bad philosophy:

A very bad way to do philosophy is to take extremely controversial cases and begin there. If someone begins with controversy then the foundations that inevitably get laid to account for the controversy are biased in favor of the emotional-controversial cases. This is a poor approach because controversial cases are by definition difficult to understand, and one should begin with what is easy to understand before slowly moving to what is more difficult. If the mind does not have the principles and the easier cases "under its belt" then it will have no chance of confronting the difficult and controversial cases. This is perhaps one of the most basic problems with modern philosophy, but I digress. — Leontiskos

Whether or not we want to say that you are equivocating on 'choice', your inference is not at all plausible.

This question is reminiscent of the age-old question about the number of the stars:

Of course, it is a good philosophical question whether it is not possible in some circumstances to decide or will to believe something, but these will have to be circumstances more auspicious than those I have described, where one can literally see nothing to choose between p and not-p. To quote Epictetus (Diss. i.28.3), just try to believe, or positively disbelieve, that the number of the stars is even.35

I repeat: try it. Make yourself vividly aware of your helpless inability to mind either way. That is how the sceptic wants you to feel about everything, including whether what I am saying is true or false. . .

35. The example is traditional, i.e. much older than Epictetus. It is a standard Stoic example of something altogether non-evident, which can be discerned neither from itself nor through a sign (PH ii.97, M vii.393, viii.147, 317; cf. vii.243, xi.59). It occurs also in Cicero’s reference (Acad. ii.32) to certain quasi desperatos who say that everything is as uncertain as whether the number of the stars is odd or even, a reference which is sometimes taken to point to Aenesidemus: so Brochard (1923) 245, Striker (1980) 64. — Myles Burnyeat, Can the sceptic live his scepticism?, p. 223

If Gerson is absorbing all of Platonism into his understanding of Plotinus, he does not need the Ur-Platonism for his own purposes. — Paine

Again, maybe he has two (or more) purposes: explicating Plotinus and defending philosophy.

It is no help in distinguishing the difference between Klein and Burnyeat. — Paine

Gerson is very clear that his thesis is not supposed to do such a thing. You seem to be faulting Gerson for failing to do something he says he is not trying to do.

That is more important to me than rooting out miscreants from my City. — Paine

You seem to fall into a strawman on this point again and again, and your caricature here is more evidence of that. If you are unwilling to consider the value of defending philosophy then of course you will not be able to truly assess Gerson's project. And as I said, Plato himself was not above defending philosophy.

Let us agree to disagree. Have the last word if you wish. — Paine

I will just reiterate the central unanswered questions I have already asked you. Have another word if you wish:

But is a proposal to close already an error on your view? I think that both Plato and Gerson seek to bring about a recognition of what is beyond the pale and what is not vis-a-vis philosophy, and I think the only legitimate objections to either of them will be objections to where they draw a line, and not that they draw a line. — Leontiskos

For example your claim was highly Gersonian when you said, "That is a predominantly psychological observation. Where does the philosophy start? Or not?" (↪Paine). If philosophy is important then it is important to understand what philosophy is, and it is particularly important to be able to ferret out false claims to philosophy. This all seems true to me.

...

I think this methodology is incredibly sound, and that we utilize it in all sorts of ways, namely elucidating what something is by reference to clear examples of what it is not. We elucidate justice by way of injustices; we elucidate truth by way of falsehood; we elucidate beauty by way of ugliness; we elucidate health by way of sickness. This isn't to say that we should stop there. Of course there should also be positive accounts of the essence of things like justice, truth, etc. Still, I don't really see the critique you are giving.

Further, even if we reject Gerson's account of philosophy I believe we will still need to engage in the same project he is engaged in, and that it is an important project. The alternative seems to be either committing ourselves to the view that philosophy isn't important or else to the view that there is no such thing as philosophy (and therefore nothing which is necessarily not philosophy).

...

The modern and post-modern landscape complicates things, but I don't think it invalidates Gerson's thesis. Gerson is drawing up the boundaries of the playing field of philosophy, and you keep pointing to philosophical bouts. Gerson has no problem with philosophical bouts. The question is whether they are within the boundaries.

I am wondering if a cultural anti-authoritarianism is impeding Gerson's thesis. This anti-authoritarianism says, "Who are you to say what counts as philosophy!?" I don't see this as a substantial critique. Again, the deeper matter for me is the alternative between either committing ourselves to the view that philosophy isn't important or else to the view that there is no such thing as philosophy. It's not hard to read Gerson's thesis as a proposal rather than an imposition, or as an invitation to think through a necessary problem rather than an overbearing authoritarianism.

...

I think we struggle against sophistry in much the same way that Plato struggled against sophistry. — Leontiskos