I think the best that can be done with this is to acknowledge that if you're a Christian who believes in the resurrection, and you do not believe in the resurrection, then you are not a Christian who believes in the resurrection. — tim wood

Brilliant stuff here, lol.

So I am a Christian. I believe I am the first Christian to post in this thread. There are a lot of folk around here who are not Christians, know very little about Christianity, and love to opine on Christianity. Indeed, I have literally never seen more ignorance of Christianity anywhere else in my life than on TPF. So your question is much better suited to a theology forum or a Christian forum given that many people on this forum are hostile to both religion and Christianity. With that out of the way...

I specifically am interested in two questions: 1) If Jesus did not rise from the dead, can there be a rational belief in Christianity? and 2) If one is not sure if Jesus actually rose from the dead, can they still have a rational belief in Christianity? — Brenner T

First, in 1 Corinthians 15 St. Paul is not making a primarily epistemic point. This is the lynchpin of his argument:

If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. — 1 Corinthians 15:17-18, RSV

We could put it this way: <Jesus is the conqueror of sin and death; the definitive conquering of sin and death occurred in the resurrection; therefore if the resurrection is a lie, then Jesus has not conquered sin and death but has instead been conquered by them, and Christians hope in a lie. They hope in a conqueror who is in fact not a conqueror>.

Christianity historically requires the belief that Jesus conquered sin and death, and that we therefore are (or will be) saved from sin and death (by Jesus). But maybe by "belief in Christianity" one means something entirely different, like, "Trying to be a nice person." Certainly you can try to be a nice person even if you do not believe that Jesus was raised; you just can't hold that Jesus conquered sin and death.

-

Note particularly the claim, "...your faith is futile." Suppose your island is on fire and you are forced to flee. There is a man selling boats. He tells you that the boat he is selling is a sturdy vessel, capable of navigating on the sea and easily able to reach the mainland. You believe him; you have faith; you buy the boat from him. You take the boat and complete the first nautical mile of your journey, and your companion says, "If this boat is not seaworthy, our faith is futile. Our faith is in vain." That's what St. Paul means. "If Jesus has not been raised then the guy who sold you this boat was a liar, and you were a fool to believe him."

In happy moments, I see this restlessness as philosophical.

I participate in discussions like this one, in some part, in hopes of figuring out what hold philosophy has on me, why I keep doing it, what it is I'm doing. — Srap Tasmaner

Fair enough. And I don't think it is necessary to reflect on what philosophy is in order to do philosophy. Perhaps the best philosophers are not self-consciously concerned about what philosophy is.

In the example Srap imagined, he did opt out. Rather than supplying the justification for his theories of motivation, he puts on his Freudian hat and says, "Very interesting . . .Tell me more about the sorts of occasions you feel the need to justify yourself" or some such. The distinction matters, because what the Freudian holds, and would have to defend, is different from what he has to do. I would say that, if he continues in reason-giving, then you're right, he's doing philosophy with us. But what he may hold to be true is different from what he may or may not choose to justify. If he doesn't make that choice, then . . . well, I want to say he's no longer doing philosophy, but certainly others on this thread would disagree. — J

But psychologists don't opt out of giving justification for their psychological theories of motivation. So it seems to me that we're talking about a fictional character. Or we're talking about a psychologist who is doing something stupid or stubborn qua human, not qua psychologist. Just as the philosopher bent on the 'gotcha' is doing something stupid or facile qua human, not qua philosopher. Humans do stupid things, and there are a few philosophers and psychologists who are also human. But not everything a real or fictional psychologist/philosopher does is representative of psychology/philosophy.

Note too that even the psychologist you envision would justify his diagnosis to a fellow psychologist who challenges him on it. He is not altogether refusing justification when talking to the philosopher; he is merely condescending on the basis of the premise that the philosopher lacks self-knowledge (whether that premise is true or false). He is intentionally talking past the philosopher, but this capacity for "talking past" is not unlimited, such that he refuses the notion of justification itself.

See also:

If the philosopher believes he's on firm ground demanding to know how the psychologist knows what he claims to know, the psychologist believes himself to be on ground just as firm in examining the philosopher's motives for demanding justification. — Srap Tasmaner

Aquinas does talk about the way that the intellect and the will are both infinitely recursive and intermixed, and you could think of "motive" as pertaining to the will and "justification" as pertaining to the intellect. That's fine as far as it goes, but that deep analysis of the will strikes me as philosophical, not psychological. It is certainly not psychological to the exclusion of being philosophical. The dispute between intellectualism and voluntarism has not historically been construed as a dispute between philosophy and psychology, even though it can truly be said that modern and contemporary philosophy are excessively intellectual. — Leontiskos

The final thing I find interesting about these quoted responses is that they all shy away from the idea that phil. is distinguished by its subject matter. — J

I think part of the difficulty here is that philosophy and science began as monozygotic twins. Given the way scientific specialization has occurred, philosophy probably represents "science" conceived as an undifferentiated totality.

If someone thinks Socrates' gadflyishness captures a manner in which philosophy is highest or unique, then they should argue that thesis. They should say, "Philosophy is highest because because it is the critical discipline par excellence," or something to that effect.

One relevant example of "Shooting down planes," would be, "It is elitist to say that philosophy is highest, therefore I will try to argue against anyone who gives an argument for philosophy being highest." There is too much moral bleed into this thread for my taste. Some are arguing about the relations between disciplines, some are arguing against elitism, and some are arguing around "gotchas" or bad actors. We're not on different pages, we're in different books.

It is hardly outside the mainstream to think philosophy's mission might be principally if not exclusively critical. Starts with a guy called 'Socrates' ... — Srap Tasmaner

But that's a plane, not a shot. If the substance of philosophy is criticism then you're on the runway.

If so, then as Srap pointed out, I've stacked the deck heavily against, e.g., the Freudian who wants to opt out of that sort of discourse. — J

As I said earlier, he holds that theories of motivation require justification, so he hasn't opted out. Beyond that, philosophy doesn't have a single answer to the question of ultimate justifications. There are many different epistemological approaches, and all of them are philosophy. The point here is not that philosophy is bound to a position of infinite justification claims (the classical philosophical position opposes this claim). The point is that there is no in-principle limit to philosophical inquiry or argument.

Srap's second point follows from this. He said, with disappointment, that what seemed to him the interesting issues raised by the OP never really got discussed. — J

I doubt we all agree on what the interesting issues are. I see the OP as essentially asking whether there is a substantive manner in which philosophy is highest. I think a lot of people were more interested in shooting down other planes than trying to fly their own.

For me, the deeper interest here is good old "thinking and being." The OP ended by bringing in Hegel and his dialectical concept of refutations, as an example of how an innocent recursion might point us to some very important truths. This was a gesture. — J

Right.

What we want to know, I think, is whether phil.'s lack of specialness is because a) the Q recursion isn't special to phil. at all, or b) this kind of recursive argumentation is indeed merely a gotcha! generated by a type of formalism we can look at and understand. — J

Okay, so what do we mean by "recursive argumentation"? Some candidates are: philosophy can offer infinitely recursive justifications for its claims; philosophy must offer infinitely recursive justifications for its claims; philosophers can debate endlessly. The philosophy/philosophers distinction is important.

You seem to have this set piece in mind: A philosopher and a psychologist are arguing about whether philosophy is useful. The philosopher continually says to the psychologist, "But you are doing philosophy here! How can you say that it is useless?" You want to say that this is a "gotcha," which turns the whole thing pejorative and subjective. The only way to address this set piece is to define what we mean by 'philosophy' and 'useful' (or whatever alternative for 'usefulness' we deign appropriate). Or else you could try to define what counts as a 'gotcha', but I doubt that will go far.

-

For me these sorts of issues come back to something like Srap's claim elsewhere, which says that different kinds of justification are incomparably different. If that is right then there is no such thing as logic in the older sense of 'the art of correct reasoning' (or the study of justification which you are associating with philosophy).

Some folk need there to be only two genders — Banno

Some folk need there to be more than two genders. Let's do philosophy instead of polemics. The question is whether beliefs have an impact on behavior.

- Rogan is a bit of a goon, but I do agree with the premise behind his long interviews. "If you want to understand who Elon Musk is, watch this 2-3 hour, unedited interview." That personalization is very helpful, and to have that contextualizing device available should be a great boon to society. A long, unedited interview is one of the least fakable portraits conceivable.

• November 4, 2024 Rogan-Musk chat
• June 27, 2024 Rogan-Musk chat
• February, 2021* Rogan-Musk chat
• May 7, 2020 Rogan-Musk chat
• September 6, 2018 Rogan-Musk chat

...So that's about 13 hours of unedited Elon Musk over the span of six years, on Rogan's podcast alone. Obviously you're not going to watch all of that, but it's not hard to compare Elon before and after his Twitter acquisition in 2022. It's not hard to get a very clear picture of who Musk is if one wants to do so.

Musk himself posted it. — Wayfarer

I know. Have you ever listened to Musk himself? There is lots of video interview footage available online. I think he recently did a long interview with Joe Rogan. It's worth taking advantage of an age where we can get it from the horse's mouth, and we don't have to take CNN's word for everything. Musk is eclectic, and has always been. I don't think he has changed much over the years.

generally sounding off on everything and nothing. — Echarmion

He's been doing that for a long time. Why has everything changed all of the sudden?

Be afraid. — Wayfarer

Be afraid? This was a photoshopped joke post on Twitter/X captioned, "Let that sink in." Musk was a [left-leaning independent] just three years ago. Now he has been demonized for political reasons, and many have been taken in by the propaganda.

The first time Musk voted Republican was 2022. (Business Insider) He opposed Trump in 2016 and in 2022. He has given political donations to both sides.

- We're not. It's fairly obvious that the philosophy goes on. If someone posts a thread arguing that conscious minds do not exist, we do not close the thread because it is non-philosophy. Your claim about the presupposition of philosophy is just incorrect. But your definition of psychology is also incorrect, which is why I would suggest that you try to clean up your argument altogether.

It's perfectly & easily feasible to believe the bones of dinosaurs were placed by Satan to trick creationists into believing in evolution. You just need to revise all your beliefs. — Sirius

Revising all one's beliefs is not perfectly easy.

I said changing a societal belief from X to Y would have radical implications. You replied that "one could believe" Y without moving into those implications. This is a modal notion which is quite foreign to reality. Beliefs have implications, just as knowledge does, and changes in belief will involve changes in behavior.

Once again. Harder according to whom ? — Sirius

Revising all one's beliefs is hard for everyone. It's not as if there is no commonality between humans, here.

I don't think this is true. Let's take someone who holds my view expressed above & also happens to believe in biological essentialism. He can still believe its possible to divide the essence of "male" or "female" or any other gender into different combination of biological essences. — Sirius

"Can still believe" is not a good test. For example, someone who does not believe that humans have greater dignity than animals "can still believe" that human rights trump animal rights, but it is a helluva lot harder.

I think Americans are tired of institutional capture, faceless politicians, and demagoguery. Harris is a creation and puppet of the DNC; Trump is a thorn in the side of the RNC. Harris doesn't seem to have a mind to speak, and tries to placate everyone simultaneously; Trump speaks his mind regardless of how stupid or ostracizing his thoughts are. The most interesting race in this respect is Trump vs. Sanders, but the DNC put the kibosh on that one.

The example I used was the assumption, what Collingwood calls an "absolute presupposition," that there is a conscious mind. — T Clark

In every discipline other than philosophy there are unallowed criticisms of the form, "You are presupposing X, but I deny X." For example, Parmenides cannot go to the physicist and say, "You are presupposing motion, but I deny motion." To offer such a criticism is to have stopped doing physics. In philosophy there are no such unallowed criticisms. In philosophy there are no such presuppositions. — Leontiskos

"You are presupposing a conscious mind, but I deny a conscious mind." So has this person stopped doing philosophy? Nope, in fact they haven't. The philosophy goes on.

1. Regardless of whether idealism or realism is true, our phenomenological experience of the world would remain unchanged. We would still believe in the existence of the same number of objects. In other words, the idealist and realist would live life behaving in similar manner. — Sirius

Why think this? Different beliefs often lead to different behavior. A pragmatist could argue for a belief on the basis of a desired behavior, as you suggest, but a non-pragmatist could argue for a belief on the basis of the truth and the consequences of believing the truth.

To take a common issue, realism or anti-realism with respect to sex or gender will have radical societal implications. "Realists and non-realists with respect to sex or gender would live life behaving in a similar manner," is not at all a plausible claim. Other examples would be less obvious, but still true, and would play out over a longer time scale.

Believe it or not, over 50% of the population voted Republican because they are Republican. — Hanover

Nah. It has to be [insert ad hominem here].

But it's worth remembering that not everyone votes. Historically speaking, voter turnout was high, but less than 2020.

- The post you quote does not say what you think it does.

I do not see a way around making some kind of distinction here. Either only mathematics (and logic) gets knowledge and deduction ― and everything else gets rational belief and probability ― or there are two kinds of knowledge, and two kinds of deduction. Pick your poison.

Mathematical knowledge and empirical knowledge differ so greatly they barely deserve the same name. Obviously the history of philosophy includes almost every conceivable way of either affirming or denying that claim. — Srap Tasmaner

Good post. This is a clear representation of the variety of univocity that I would oppose. I don't think we have to pick a poison. They are different but not altogether different. I only would have been happier if you had said, "...[they] differ so greatly they don't deserve the same name."

But this should be bookmarked as a jumping-off point for a substantive thread. [Do they deserve the same name?]

As I noted, psychology is the study of minds. — T Clark

No, you didn't. And if you want to say something like that then I would ask you what philosophy of mind studies. I don't think your arguments are very clear at all, and part of the proof is that you think you said things that you haven't said.

I prefer to think of it as using a powerful tool to help make discriminations among ideas that are often too vague in English — J

@fdrake has tried to force things into his set theoretic paradigm. It is unnatural but also unreflective, given that it fails to consider why set theory must be the controlling narrative or paradigm, or where such "tools" are located metaphysically. There is no reason to assume that set theory will be able to capture the nature of philosophy vis-a-vis other areas of study, so why assume that? I see this as the mathematical version of the Freudian psychologist.

And the argument that tries to run with such assumptions is not only invalid, it is contradictory.

Let's say this: the philosopher believes questions of justification are always legitimate and appropriate; the psychologist believes questions of "motivation," say, are always legitimate and appropriate. — Srap Tasmaner

Does the psychologist think theories of motivation need to be justified? If the answer is "yes," then the psychologist is involved in performative contradiction.

If the philosopher believes he's on firm ground demanding to know how the psychologist knows what he claims to know, the psychologist believes himself to be on ground just as firm in examining the philosopher's motives for demanding justification. — Srap Tasmaner

Aquinas does talk about the way that the intellect and the will are both infinitely recursive and intermixed, and you could think of "motive" as pertaining to the will and "justification" as pertaining to the intellect. That's fine as far as it goes, but that deep analysis of the will strikes me as philosophical, not psychological. It is certainly not psychological to the exclusion of being philosophical. The dispute between intellectualism and voluntarism has not historically been construed as a dispute between philosophy and psychology, even though it can truly be said that modern and contemporary philosophy are excessively intellectual.

Here's my problem. I'm pretty interested in what I intuit as the substantive issue in this thread. I would like to get to discussing that, and I don't know what I would say ― which for me is a big reason to have that conversation.

But I keep getting stuck on what, in my mind, I'm still treating as "preliminaries," just trying to clear up your framing of the issue. That framing keeps failing to make any sense at all, so I keep putting off getting to the supposed substance... — Srap Tasmaner

I can sympathize with this. @J has an interest in how debates ever come to an end and how intersubjective agreement is ever established. These dialogical and epistemological questions are a heavier part of the OP than I first recognized. The trouble for me is that this "preliminary" topic is very difficult to maintain at a substantive level.

But there is a question of fact about whether the Freudian psychologist is making use of what @J would call "philosophical" thinking in order to deflate the philosopher's claim. I think it should be recognized that what the Freudian psychologist sees himself as refuting and what @J sees as "philosophy" are probably two different things.

The epistemological avenue reminds me of Nagel's Last Word, which @J introduced me to. I don't think what Nagel does in that book is unimportant, but it's hard to improvise over that vamp for very long, especially without someone to take up the contra.

I think it is reasonable to say that philosophy is the study of thought, beliefs, knowledge, value, which are mental phenomena - the structure and process of the conscious mind. As such, it is a branch of psychology. Anything you claim as the province of philosophy can be trumped by a psychological interpretation. The overarching absolute presupposition of philosophy is that there is a mind which is knowable. — T Clark

Solipsism would be but one example of a philosophical position which denies the claim that there are independent minds, and therefore that there is any such thing as the field of psychology.

One might almost say that over-generalization is the occupational hazard of philosophy, if it were not the occupation. — Austin

The deeper truth here is Aristotle's mean. One can run from "over-generalization" to the opposite error, but the truth lies in neither over-generalization nor under-generalization. We have to look both ways before crossing the street, even if we are more fearful of the North.

Assume X isn't relevant to any claim whose context is philosophy, then X cannot be relevant to any Y which is related to a Z whose context is philosophy, since then X would be relevant to that Z through transitivity. — fdrake

Your argument seems to say something very different:

1 ) Take a philosophical claim X which does not have relevance to a claim in any discipline.
2 ) Take the collection of statements of which X has relevance to and call it Q.
...
7 ) Then anything relevant to X cannot be relevant to any philosophical claim.
8 ) Then all of Q is not relevant to philosophy. — fdrake

(7) does not seem to follow. Indeed the opposite would follow, where "philosophical" is replaced with "non-philosophical."

In fact there is a contradiction in your own proof:

1 ) Take a philosophical claim X which does not have relevance to a claim in any discipline.
...
5 ) Relevance is reflexive, X is relevant to X.
...
7 ) Then anything relevant to X cannot be relevant to any philosophical claim. — fdrake

From (1) and (5) we get <X is relevant to X, and X is a philosophical claim, therefore something relevant to X is relevant to a philosophical claim>, and this contradicts (7).

(I thought that in (1) the omission of "any other discipline" was innocuous, but it may not be. You seem to be involved in a contradiction in (1), for you are simultaneously treating philosophy as a discipline and a non-discipline.)

Either philosophy is related to all domains, and thus co-extensive with each of them it is related to. Or philosophy is not relevant to some domains - that is, philosophy is of no relevance to any claim in them. — fdrake

Note too how your logic here is invalid as it hitches up to your argument. "If philosophy is not relevant to some domain, then philosophy is not relevant to any claim in that domain."

You want this to support your:

1 ) Take a philosophical claim X which does not have relevance to a claim in any discipline. — fdrake

But irrelevance to some domains is different from irrelevance to all domains. In fact:

There is no such X. — Leontiskos

- Yep, pretty much.

Either philosophy is related to all domains, and thus co-extensive with each of them it is related to. — fdrake

This is a good example of the problematic set-theoretic assumptions you are working from. Is the engine car related to the train? Is H20 related to biological life? Relatedness/relevance is not a univocal notion, as you have made it.

There are two conceptions of philosophical foundationalness in this thread. The first says that philosophical justifications are the linear foundation of all justification-claims. The second says that philosophy (in terms of logic or metaphysics) permeates all justification-claims or domains of study. The difference is very similar to Aristotle's difference between a per accidens causal series and a per se causal series.

I think both are defensible, but I am more interested in the latter. — Leontiskos

Collingwood says that for every question there is at least one presupposition. Collingwood also talks about "absolute presuppositions" which are the underlying, often unrecognized, assumptions that are the foundation of a way of looking at the world. Is this what you're talking about? — T Clark

Something like that.

In every discipline other than philosophy there are unallowed criticisms of the form, "You are presupposing X, but I deny X." For example, Parmenides cannot go to the physicist and say, "You are presupposing motion, but I deny motion." To offer such a criticism is to have stopped doing physics. In philosophy there are no such unallowed criticisms. In philosophy there are no such presuppositions.

Assume X isn't relevant to any claim whose context is philosophy, then X cannot be relevant to any Y which is related to a Z whose context is philosophy, since then X would be relevant to that Z through transitivity. — fdrake

Sure, but why in the world would we assume that X isn't relevant to any claim whose context is philosophy?

1 ) Take a philosophical claim X which does not have relevance to a claim in any discipline. — fdrake

There is no such X.

Does this have to be an argument, if I can put it this way, that philosophical maximalism is equivalent to philosophical minimalism?

Does it also function as an argument that no boundary between philosophy and the sciences (and possibly other empirical disciplines, and possibly the arts, ...) is definable much less enforceable? — Srap Tasmaner

I don't see these as problems.

There are two conceptions of philosophical foundationalness in this thread. The first says that philosophical justifications are the linear foundation of all justification-claims. The second says that philosophy (in terms of logic or metaphysics) permeates all justification-claims or domains of study. The difference is very similar to Aristotle's difference between a per accidens causal series and a per se causal series.

I think both are defensible, but I am more interested in the latter.

What is the sort of characteristically philosophical claim that is required by the first conception of philosophical foundationalness? This would be a deep metaphysical or epistemological claim, such as the idea that reality is intelligible, or that motion exists, or that sense data is reliably informative. Even on this first conception, the philosophical claim has relevance to claims in other disciplines, but it is distinctly philosophical rather than simultaneously philosophical-and-something-else. In this case its relevance lies in constituting the foundation for more specific kinds of knowledge.

Imagine that X is relevant to Y and that Y is relevant to some philosophical claim P, then X is relevant to Y, Y is relevant to P, then X is relevant to P. — fdrake

I don't think your sentence here is grammatically coherent. Not sure what it is supposed to mean. Same with your argument given earlier.

When you try to make substantial metaphysical points with a formalism or set theory, you are baptizing the formalism and the set theory into metaphysics. It is natural enough that by limiting your thought to such forms you limit your conclusions to formalisms. Philosophy qua thinking, as @J has described it, cannot be captured in terms of set theory or formalisms. What is probably happening in your posts is that subtle form of question-begging that we often see on TPF: Everything must be capturable in formalism (such as set theory or equivalence relations); what @J is saying isn't capturable or sensible when viewed through the lens of formalisms; therefore what @J is saying isn't substantial or sensible. This is the sort of petitio principii that tries to exempt certain methodologies from relevance or scrutiny, as if everyone would just agree that if it can't be captured in terms of equivalence relations then it must be insubstantial. (And yet I don't yet perceive validity or even grammatical coherence, which would need to come first.)

The point you were responding to had to do with the U.S. electorate's view of a DNC which moves left. You responded with a non-sequitur about European standards. — Leontiskos

- Fair points on the whole. :up:

Not economically no. Now, or as of the removal of Roe, not even socially. If they manage to get Roe back in, then we can speak about the Democrats being left on world standards. — Manuel

Who cares about your "world standards" (which conveniently and arrogantly exclude most of the world)? The point you were responding to had to do with the U.S. electorate's view of a DNC which moves left. You responded with a non-sequitur about European standards.