It is another episode on TPF of Europe-bashing. — Lionino

Yeah that's it! We simply hate it.

Sorry that Europeans led the world in science and technology — Lionino

They only did for some time. During Roman rule perhaps and after the scientific revolution. Afterwards advances in technology were mostly made in the US and Japan. The problem as I see it, is that it is somehow threatening to your self perception to acknowledge the contributions of other peoples than Europeans. Now you are probably lamenting the demise of Europe and blame it on the dillution of European culture somehow. Only a Greek might feel pride when he/she sees the acropolis. That Greeks intermingled with the Turkish and other Balkan cultures and so probably there is no Greek person that can trace his heritage back to the ancient Athenians and Spartans is apparently of no concern. In your mind there is something essentially Greek and if you have 'it' then you can admire the acropolis otherwise you cannot.

Such notions are rather dangerous as history has proven, but they are also rather silly because what is European and is not, are not fixed categories. North Africa belonged to the Roman world, the Ottoman Empire belonged to what became known as the concert of Europe since 1856. Israel plays in European football competitions and sings in the Eurovision song contest etc.

Paris is a dump, London is beyond gone, Lisbon and Brussels are approaching a point of no return. Europe is busted. The belief that it is fine doesn't stand a one-week trip to De Hague. — Lionino

Compared to what? I live in the Netherlands and Den Haag (It is either Den Haag, or The Hague or La Haye as it is sometimes referred to, but not De Hague) was fine last time I visited.

The Mongolian Empire was more advanced than Eastern Rome and France in the 1300s? — Lionino

Advanced in what respect should be asked actually. I was unclear on that. I meant militarily more advanced, philosophically more advanced, economically, scientifically etc. Not in every respect medieval Europe lagged, but militarily and administratively it was behind the Ottoman Empire for centuries for instance. It held sway over the biggest city in Europe and had an advanced bureaucracy capable of fielding a standing professional army. The philosophical texts of the Greeks were studied mostly in the East, in North Africa and Spain.

I don't think you have any clue what you are saying.

That rarely happens.

It is a compliment, unless you want to admit to being a hypocrite, lightly bringing up the Mongol Empire "as more advanced" without any condemnation of Gengis Khan being a mass rapist and his reign killing off almost 20% of the whole population of Eurasia, estimated around 37.75–60 million. — Lionino

An empire can be militarily advanced, allowing it to kill of 20% of the population of Eurasia... That does not make the violence more or less abhorrent. Did you mean with advanced, morally advanced? Then Europe is in a bit of a pickle having colonized most of the earth. Unfortunately, technological advance is often coupled with conquest. That is why the Turkish and Mongols were capable of penetrating deep into geographical Europe and that is why Europeans managed to colonize other people. I am not talking morality here. I am not not in the business of giving compliments or condemnations, at least not here..

Europe overtook the East starting in Antiquity, it is not a recent thing. — Lionino

And you are basing that claim on what? Between 500 and say 1500 Europe was neither technologically, nor militarily or scientifically more advanced then China, Islamic Egypt, the Ottoman empire, the Mongolian khanate etc. The biggest cities and centers of learning were in the East, i.e. Constantinople, Baghdad, Cairo. In Europe only Italy had something of an urban culture. As far as I know my history, philosophy and sociology of course.

Thanks for the compliment :strong: :fire: — Lionino

Why is that a compliment? Only if you have some sort of normative commitment to violence being a good thing might this be construed as a compliment.

IIRC, there was no "Europe" until Charlemagne's reign. Several centuries later, in the wake of "the Black Death", my guess is Magna Carta (proto-republicanism) + plundering the Americas, etc + "The Renaissance" gave Europe its modern direction. — 180 Proof

The funny thing with history is that it creates while it describes. It reconstructs a story that presumably explains why things happened in such and such way, but in fact becomes an integral part of that history and constitutes the its very own object. The landmass may have been called Europe by some guy called Ptolemy, but so what? It is only relevant because we now through our construction of history hold Ptolemy in high regard. When we recount the story of 'Europe' we recount events that presumably sets it apart from other places. Magna Carta might be one, but I reckon other peoples experienced their 'magna carta' moment. It is through featuring in the historical tales of Europe that it had a place.

I doubt the history of Europe is dissimilar from the history of other places. It is through conquest that 'Europe' became a thing. Not by being a 'thing in itself' but an entity developed, adorned and embellished by Europeans and therefore important since Europeans held sway in huge parts of the world. If anything was important it is the emergence of the scientific method which allowed Western Europeans to develop better weaponry than its enemies, most notably the Ottoman empire. Before that it generally followed developments in the more advanced civilizations of the East. Scholasticism to me is not a candidate for any special status. Islamic and Judaic philosophers were more adapt at it, or at least equal.

Back in the day here on PF we would bash each other's heads in argumentatively over the continental analytic divide. I am trained in continental thought and remembering in my naivety wandering into a book store coming away with a book on Aristotle. I eagerly unwrapped it only to find that it was written in the analytic style and full of intricate predicate logic I did not understand. So much so for being accessible. However nowadays I feel both camps are reading each other with more charity.

I am now reading a book on Hegel's philosophy of right which is written in quite an analytic style (at least for me) with a lot of emphasis on untangling the argumentative structure of the book. I find it is written crisp, clear and indeed exposing holes in Hegel's arguments but never disparaging and reading charitable. I think both camps profited from the interaction and considered putting an end to mud slinging.

I think philosophy, in the end, is about questioning presuppositions and, what comes down to the same thing, discovering the rational in the real, as per Hegel. It might well not be there, but we like to understand the world we live in, understanding in a full sense, not merely explaining its mechanics. The branch of enquiry that does such a thing we call philosophy. It might well be idle chatter, but then, everything might be. It depends on the distinction between idle and useful and how that distinction is made, often implicit. Making the implicit explicit is however the bread and butter of philosophy.

Promises don’t exist; they occur. Obligations can exist. But I do not think a promise confers any. Can’t see any argument here from either yourself or Banno that gets close to satisfactory — AmadeusD

How can something that does not exist occur?

Ignoring the glibness of your other responses, this one shows I may not even need to address them. — AmadeusD

Of course you do not need to address them, only if you want to. My reply apparently drew you in, so you wanted to.

This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and anyone who thought this even constitutes a defense or a sensible thing to say regarding a charge around threatening to kill isn’t thinking, or has no clue what they’re talking about. — AmadeusD

Indeed. It shows that utterances, whether they are recorded or not, have actual legal consequences.

You’ve described a constructive trust. — AmadeusD

I have no idea whether I described a constructive trust or not. I am not familiar with common law legal terminology. I also do not know whether promissory estoppel "relates to a provable, recorded promise on which one relies.", but I take your word for it. Of course there might be legal facts the coming into being of which relies on them being registered. However, not all legal facts rely on them being recorded and entered into a registry of sorts. It is also wholly beside the point.

You’re discussing hearsay. “A judge would make short work of that defense”.
If your claim relies on a mere oral promise and you have no record of it, you will be ordered to pay costs. Having credible witnesses is a record. Best to read thoroughly ;) — AmadeusD

The point is this. You equivocate having evidence for a certain obligation with the obligation per se. The obligation is there, whether you have evidence for it or not. Let's say I am married, but the witnesses have died and I lost the certificate of our marriage. Of course I am still married, I just cannot prove it. My lack of proof may well lead to my claim being rejected in court, but courts are no arbiters of ontology. They adjudicate claims. If I cannot prove my claim, then it is tossed out of the window, it is as easy as that, but that does not mean my claim to being married is somehow false. That is what I mean with this:

What it shows is that when one view is being absolutized, it generally reverts to its opposite. Here this utter materialistic view of law reverts to an idealist view. — Tobias

Your materialist view, taken to its logical consequence, leads to idealism, 'to be is to be perceived' in your case, 'to be is to be recorded'.

Obligations can exist. But I do not think a promise confers any. — AmadeusD

Of course it does. If I would be a judge in a criminal court I might ask a witness to promise to tell the truth when she is being interrogated by me. When she in fact promises to do so, she is under oath. Her not telling the truth makes criminally liable. You merely thinking that this promise does not convey any obligation to tell the truth does not make it different. My hunch is that you are thinking of unrecorded promises. They are indeed unenforceable, because of the rules of evidence. That does not render them non existent though. The promise is there, the obligation has arisen, it simply cannot be proven. That is why I think your view comes down to a rather crude form of idealism.

It is best not to blur the real/imaginary divide. Even though Imaginary things do exist, and have real consequences. A man imagining a tentacle monster in front of him shouts and waves his arms in the real world.

A promise is just as imaginary as that monster. — hypericin

Of course not. That tentacle monster is not there, he merely thought it was. The promise may well not be a figment of his imagination, but a promise he made and is now bound to keep. One is unreal the other is real, quite simple.

If there is no record of your company existing, it doesn't exist. Fact. — AmadeusD

I love it when people put 'fact' after their statement. "Ohh, if you put fact, well now, clearly, it must be true...."

If you have time, could you tell us if a contract, marriage or mortgage ceases to exist if the documents on which it is written are destroyed?

Since in many cases a contract does not even need to be written down in order to be valid, it would be odd. Wills are an obvious exception.

Sorry to bother you with such trivialities. — Banno

No bother at all. Cic already commented so I do not have much to add but something interesting is going on here, so I will venture anyway.

In the Netherlands oral agreement can lead to obligations, just as a written contract can. Under Dutch law an agreement is reached when one person makes an offer and another accepts it and unless stated otherwise by law the form of both offer and acceptance are free, meaning oral agreement suffices.

Of course there are issues of evidence when one tries to enforce oral agreements. It may well be difficult to prove in a court of law. It is not impossible though, one may call witnesses for instance.

Of course, this does not mean that ownership is transferred immediately, That depends on the successful delivery and some deliveries entail the registration of a deed, for instance when buying and selling real estate.

In marriage witnesses are especially crucial because they may vow for the marriage in case one loses the necessary documentation.

So indeed, obligations can come into existence without any material pendant of the agreement.
The question to ask is why some people feel so uncomfortable with that

What bizarre, magical thinking. As if, *poof!*, a newly minted promise, shiny and golden, floats down from The Land of Ought.

The promise exists in the mind of the promiser, and their audience. That's it. — hypericin

Yes indeed a newly minted obligation emerges and binds me, because of the communicative connection between the parties to the agreement. This obligation exists in the sense that it can be a subject of communication (hypokemenon), it can be considered, it can be fulfilled, I can, in the worst case scenario, be incarcerated for not delivering on it and the other party, might when he has a court order to that extent, take my goods to make good on the obligation.

Modern society is in fact based on the existence of stuff without a material counter part, take money for instance. Money in our day and age does not have material pendant necessarily.

My feeling is that people who insist on the necessity of a material part to anything that exists, do so out of both some passed on Aristotelian intuition but also because they feel that immaterial things are somehow fleeting, they are 'less real' because they seem less durable.

But if the records are destroyed those things do not persist. They are the record of “promise” as you put it. — AmadeusD

It is interesting to see that apparently 'persistence' is the issue. Amadeus position comes down to, 'existence means to persist and persistence happens if there are physical records of it'. So that which is not recorded does not persist and that which does not persist does not exist. This is actually our beloved bishop Berkeley making an appearance on Christmas day... ;) What it shows is that when one view is being absolutized, it generally reverts to its opposite. Here this utter materialistic view of law reverts to an idealist view.

This isn't the case with plain promises though. AS far as i'm concerned, promises don't exist in an of themselves and confer no obligation. — AmadeusD

In a court of law you are not really of concern. "Hey I solemnly promised to kill my father in law at the Christmas table, but you see the promise does not really exist so sentencing me for threatening murder is not warranted". A judge will make short work of that defense.

"Of course I offered to sell you the house for E200.000 and you accepted, but you see, it was only an oral promis and no obligation occurs from purely oral promises and so yeah, I sold it to my cousin instead". Well, I suggest not dealing with a Dutchman as you might well find yourself paying indemnification because of your rather outlandish views on promises and obligations.

Disclaimer: apologies if all of this has already been dealt with in this 40+ page threat or when it derails more than enlightens. Merry Christmas all of you!:flower:

But it all still doesn't make it true.
It's just delusions, illusions, fantasy, wishful-thinking, & human's futile hope, wishes, imaginations, dreams, expectations, theories, etc etc etc — niki wonoto

What makes you assertions anymore true than theirs? Give a bit more of an argument otherwise it is just a silly rant.

I read an article about Hegel, the author stated that "synthetic a prior knowledge regards the formal cognitive structures which allow for experience." is this really right??
My reading of Kant....I never thought that "synthetic a priori knowledge" “makes experience possible,” but basically gives us (makes possible) a lot of human knowledge (mathematical, geometrical, and metaphysical judgments, etc.). — KantDane21

The quote is correct as far as I know. synthetic apriori knowledge makes experience possible. It is what is pre-given in every possible experience. Time, space, quantity, quality, etc are necessary for us to have experience at all though the categories themselves are not analytic. That is the whole Copernican turn no? (Sorry to jump in)

edit: maybe I should say "makes experiential knowledge possible". I do not know if that is the same as experience per se. Kant does ground his empirical realism in his transcendental idealism. The ideality of the categories allows us to acquire knowledge and ascertain its truth at least intersubjectively.

Therein lies the rub. Should I be compelled to rescue a child being attacked by a small dog that doesn't really pose a threat to me but still might bite me? Save a person dangling from a cliff where I might break a leg if I fall too? Pull someone out of a burning car that might explode? Give some of my extra food to starving people? Give some of my money to uninsured people who need a life-saving expensive operation? By being a member of society we kind of do that with our taxes, but that's a step removed from out-and-out punishing someone for not being a good Samaritan. — RogueAI

The legal technical issue should be separated from the normative one I think. The Dutch article (Art. 450 DCC) stipulates that only if there is no danger for yourself or others one should do so, only in case of an immediate danger and one can only be prosecuted if the situation led to the actual death of the person to be rescued so it is a very conditional duty. Circumscribed like this, It will not be prosecuted very often.

The legal normative issue is whether a person should be punished by the state if he does not help. I think the issue can be tackled in two ways. One way is to state that the potential helper bears no guilt in the situation. Her actions have not brought about the dangerous situation and since punishment requires guilt there is no ground for punishment.
One could however also see it as an extension of the rules of care and negligence. Firstly, we are required to aid people entrusted to our care, even when the dangerous situation arises without us having brought it about in any way. This article extends the circle of people to care for to those in the immediate vicinity and in immediate danger. One has to witness and be aware of the danger to which the other is exposed.
Secondly, negligence also involves a very small level of guilt. This situation could be considered as a case similar to negligence. You are not helping even though it comes at no fundamental cost to you while an important legal good (Rechtsgut in German) is being endangered, the life of your fellow man, then and there. Not helping in such a situation manifestly displays a callous attitude towards the well being of those around you that the legal order is upset with such a negligent attitude towards the other. In such situations we may have a legitimate expectation that we will receive aid.

I can see reasons for both ways to deal with the issue, but narrowly formulated I do not consider such a duty to be manifestly unreasonable. Most of your examples would not lead to prosecution but not rescuing a child from a shallow pond might, and yes perhaps not rescuing a small child from a dog that you might easily handle, aiding someone who had an accident etc. But then, how much on an onerous duty is that compared to the endangered life at stake?

I thought it was just if you were a member of certain occupations. Looking it up, I see California, the state I'm in, has no "duty to rescue". Only three states require you to help someone (beyond calling 911): Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Vermont. — RogueAI

That merely says that duties of care in the criminal sense are rare in the US, not that they are rare in most legal systems. Perhaps the US is the odd man out. I think here the difference shows between continental (civil law systems) and Anglosaxon (common law) systems. There are problems of jurisprudence with the notion of good samaritan duties though because it is difficult to establish what behaviour is required exactly.

1), I'm not sure you should be forced to save a drowning kid. It would be nice if you did, but do we want government compelling charitable acts?
2) Forcing a woman to give birth is not even close to risking an ear infection. It entails months of pregnancy and birth has all sorts of complications and a non-trivial mortality rate. — RogueAI

There are plenty of states that compel a duty of care actually. The Netherlands and most continental European countries have this. Penalties are relatively mild though up to 6 months if I remember correctly. Tobias maybe you remember more details? — Benkei

I believe it is three months max penalty, if one does not aid a stranger who is in direct danger of losing his or her life. If it is someone who is in your care though, like your child or pupil then the penalty may be two years.

The max penalty is I think not that relevant though. It is indeed a signal that the criminal law sends that we expect of you to aid someone who's life is on the line. I do not like criminalization in general, but how terrible is it that one should aid someone in need if one can? Some sort of self ownership argument but I feel those arguments are bollocks anyway. You live your life aided all the way by society and its order, why not expect from people to give something back? Of course it should not impinge on autonomy, but arguably being able to count on the aid of others increases the autonomy of individuals overall.

Thanks Hailey, that is nice to hear! :)

A Leonard Cohen triple inspired by the short stories and poems...



Dreamlike, such as many stories are and poems are, the reflection of thinking is a jumbled, topsy turvy of images...



Loss and love. That where all the images lead us.



And this is for the stories yet to come.

Touching on the question raised by Tobias, the dialogic nature of philosophy means that one should not simply accept or reject the work of the philosophers, but rather to remain open to what they might teach us, and to the possibility that there may be questions without answers and problems without solutions. — Fooloso4

Well put! :100:

If a method guides and shapes the inquiry then how confident should we be that this method does not occlude free and open inquiry? — Fooloso4

What is 'free and open enquiry'? We are always shaped, whatever method we choose even if we do not choose one. Seems to me to be part of the human condition. I do not know anything that is 'free and open'.

I've been wondering about this for some time. I've decided that many people have a philosophical imagination and are fond of asking philosophical questions and this may of itself be doing philosophy. But I suspect in most cases, this will also be 'entry level' philosophy - having fun in the shallow end of the pool. Nothing wrong with it, but I suspect unless one is a Wittgensteinian level genius, one is going to continually reinvent the wheel, become lost in one's independent investigations and generally fail to benefit from significant extant philosophical wisdom. — Tom Storm

:up: :100: exactly!

You've missed my point. I spent my career as an engineer formally and rigorously making and defending arguments very similar to the ones I do here on the forum. I didn't have to do professional level philosophy in order to gain that experience and skill. — T Clark

Sure, but I never challenged you on that... There must be some kind of misunderstanding. I never addressed you in my posts as either a philosopher or not.

I make rigorous arguments about mysticism here on the forum all the time. It is one of the main subjects I'm interested in. Equating mysticism with faith is either a cheap rhetorical trick or a display of lack of understanding. — T Clark

Yes exactly... you make rigorous arguments about mysticism. At such moments one practices philosophy, not mysticism. I am a lawyer and I also write about law sometimes from a philosophical perspective. When I am practicing law I am not doin philosophy but law. When I write about a certain presupposition in the law I a doing philosophy of law. Philosophy of religion is a very worthy philosophical subject.

As the comment you quoted from my post notes, DingoJones did present a thesis and argue for it. — T Clark

The only posts of his I saw in this thread contained only a couple of lines and came down to the idea that whenever you wonder about a philosophical question you are doing philosophy. You can take that position, but I think it is inadequate. It makes everyone that wonders about some phil question from time to time a philosopher which makes the term as a term with which we differentiate among people and practices rather meaningless. It is like calling everyone who sometimes wonders about law a lawyer. Since we all wonder about law from time to time we are all lawyers.

I think the best way forward is to consider what philosophy consists of as opposed to other branches of thought and other disciplines, such as mysticism, art, religion, science, law etc. Then the question became whether philosophy is by necessity social. Well, philosophy had its origins in social praxis and dialogue. Early philosophical texts were set up as dialogues. A reason I guess why Banno referred to the symposium as its natural home. Of course we have drifted from it now and it is possible of course to have a truely natural talent who manages to think up everything from scratch. It is highly unlikely but of course possible. Normal human beings though need introduction to the practice just like they need introduction to the practice of law and of scientific enquiry. That was what the OP asked for, a method to do philosophy. Is sitting in your cave all by yourself adequate? No, unless you are the philosopher Hercules.

What is necessary is to engage with philosphers or at least an audience and explain your ideas in argumentative form. An oracle or a prophet is not a philosopher. A mystic gaining access to the truth by meditation is not a philosopher. Of course all these people can be philosophers as well as mystics. That happens when they translate their mystical experience in argumentative clear language and offers them to the community of philosophers for scrutiny and analysis. Again, it may be that someone produces PhD level work alone in a cave, but how likely is it? My thesis is that just pondering philosophical questions is not enough to qualify as a philosopher. You need to conform to some extent to the standards laid down in the philosophical community. Just like a child who draws is not yet an artist just by engaging in the artistic practice of drawing.

Are we talking about whether I am a philosopher - I've never claimed to be. I was talking about whether Taoism is philosophy. — T Clark

No, I was not referring to you specifically. Taoism may be philosophy. I do not know enough about it to say so.

Philosophy is not the only method for learning how to think rigorously. — T Clark

That is the same fallacy as Dingo committed. I am not saying that philosophy is the only discipline that requires rigorous analysis. Law, mathematics, actually every scientific endeavour does. I am saying rigorous analysis is a part of philosophy. It is actually what sets it apart from mysticism or faith. Mysticism does not require argumentation, but revelation.

This is clearly not true. You say "My claim is that philosophy needs dialogue..." DingoJones gives counter-examples, which is a valid method of argumentation. You may be unconvinced, but I've heard that isn't the standard by which we should judge philosophy. — T Clark

What standard can we agree on to judge what is philosophy and what is not? At the very least a a kind of thesis has to be presented and argued for. People who contemplate life universe and everything on their own without engaging in argument do not do that. Sure Yogis, monks, bishops can and often were philosophers, but they were when they engaged in philosophy. Not when they contemplated on their own. It may be a definition question. You might say "everyone who thinks about philosophical questions is a philosopher". Fine, but completely unhelpful because everyone at one time or other thinks about philosophical questions.

Gregor Mendel's studies on genetics were never published until after he died. Would you say he was not a scientist? Emily Dickenson's poems were never published while she was alive. Would you say she was not a poet? I think your opinion of what it takes to be a philosopher is a bit high-falutin. — T Clark

He wrote them down didn't he? If he never wrote his ideas down then no, he was not a scientist. He did and preserved them for others to read, presented arguments, proofs and what not and sure, because it made sense what he wrote, he was a scientist. Same with Dickenson, mutatis mutandis.

Not if your are trying to convince me. You aren’t making an argument, you are asserting something about philosophy: that its defined by dialogue. So that would mean that no matter the philosophical brilliance a solitary person has they aren’t doing philosophy if no ones there to dialogue with. That doesnt make sense. — DingoJones

No convincing you is not the main point. We are writing on a forum, we write for a whole group of people. What I am trying to do is teach a bit, because convincing someone is very difficult. People tend to stick to their own positions even if the cause is hopelessly lost. I am arguing, you on the other hand are not. You are speaking from opinion: "I do not buy it". Well that indeed is irrelevant. It is about the arguments you provide. Arguments have a certain structure. My argument can be written down in the basest form as follows.

"Philosophy needs dialogue, because philosophy is a discipline that requires making arguments for your claim. Arguments are made in response to someone else or at least are provided to other people orally or in writing. That is my argument. An objection you could then make is: "But what if someone plays out all the arguments in their head?". I would then say "That is nigh impossible to do, because it requires a brain that would outmatch all these brains that one could bring into play when one would conduct philosophy in a social group". That is why also philosophy was developed in conversation with others.

Secondly I would say that philosophy is a certain discipline with certain marks of the trade, just like law is or medicine. One of the criteria for being considered a philosopher is that you have displayed a certain level of rigor in your analysis of philosophical questions. Now if you never offer these arguments for scrutiny there is no way the community of philosophers can assess them and you cannot be considered a philosopher.

That rigor is important can be shown by pointing to your own post: "So that would mean that no matter the philosophical brilliance a solitary person has they aren’t doing philosophy if no ones there to dialogue with. That doesnt make sense." Here you confuse having a certain property, philosophical brilliance, with performing a certain act, doing philosophy. Indeed the philosophical brilliance a person has does not matter one iota if they are not doing philosophy.

Acquiring a certain rigor in analysis requires training and that training is I think impossible to obtain on one's own. Even empirically it is shown that for thinking to develop one needs to be in a social environment that stimulates it. Feral children who live with animals in the formative years of their life almost without exception do not learn language, let alone the alone the ability to pick apart a philosophical text.

Comtemplating God the universe and everything is a practice too. It is called mysticism. There are of course mystics who were also brilliant philosophers. Thomas Acquinas for instance of Ibn Ghazali, Lao Ze maybe also but I do not know enough about him. What sets them apart from other mystics is precisely that they adhered to the philosophical requirements of sound argumentation offered to others, as against mere assertion.

Logically unsound in what way. Not wrong, you arent saying Im wrong you are saying what I said is not logically sound. Point out to me where ive been logically unsound.
Also, get your head out of your ass, youre not a mind reader. Me saying “sorry” was a sincere way of trying to tell you I was not convinced. And what do you think “conceited” means? Please explain this bizarre relation between conceit and insincerity. — DingoJones

Spoon feeding is such boring work...
Well my assertion was that philosophy required dialogue. In your rather short not very thoughtful, but still condescending reply you stated this:

Ya and if someone else comes in and starts dialogue it becomes philosophy instead? Sorry, that just makes no sense to me. Not buying it. — DingoJones

You infer from my assertion that philosophy needs dialogue that I apparently also hold that if someone starts a dialogue then it becomes philosophy. That is unsound reasoning. That I think that for philosophy dialogue is required does not mean I hold that dialogue is the only condition that must be met. That I consider that all X must have property Y, does not imply that everything that has property Y is necessarily an X.

Ya and if someone else comes in and starts dialogue it becomes philosophy instead? Sorry, that just makes no sense to me. Not buying it. — DingoJones

Whether you buy it or not is completely irrelevant. My claim is that philosophy needs dialogue but not that every dialogue is philosophy. Your objection is logically unsound. Your apology is conceited because it is not meant.

Like, “hey Roger, do you think we have free will” is philosophy, but “hmmm, I wonder if we have free will” isnt? Huh? — DingoJones

This is a good example. In this particular example both are not yet philosophy, because just asking a philosophical question does not make you engage in the discipline of philosophy. However the first sentence is at least on the way. Roger will give an answer, something in the vein of "hey I do not know, what do you think?" Then the person asking the question must make her position explicit and articulate the reasons and arguments for taking that position. Since philosophy is an argumentative practice we are at least getting somewhere. Ruminations that just run around in someone's mind are not philosophy, only arguments are because they can be countered by other arguments.

If that's true, then you don't consider Taoism and Buddhism philosophies, is that correct? — T Clark

I do not know enough about them. I also do not know if they are in the same boat. I know that thinking in solitude about life the universe and everything does not make you a philosopher yet. There needs to be rigor in that thinking and that is hard to acquire on your own. Nigh impossible I would think.

Gurus, yogi’s, monks…contemplating the universe and life's deep meanings and questions without a dialogue. Thats not philosophy? What is it then? — DingoJones

Mysticism.

Descarte wasnt doing philosophy in his solitary meditations? When you say “inherent”, wouldnt that make it a pre requisite for philosophy? So what was Decarte doing in his cave, if not some kind of philosophy? — DingoJones

You think Descartes lived in a cave? He corresponded with the greatest minds out there. I agree with Banno that philosophy is social. All those ruminations of Descartes drinking his cognac in front of the fireplace starting to doubt stuff is just a literary device...

Then:
1. Read novels and watch movies that ask philosophical questions. Not explicitly, that's boring but implicitly. Stuff like The Matrix, Sophie's World, Memento, Dune. Next up is Borges, Ursula Le Guin, Kafka, Catch 22... In any case, literature first.
2. Read a philosophy text and attempt to understand it, but not from a primary source, a text about the history of philosophy or Phil of Science, of language, political phil. anything really but not primary.
3. Read a primary source, something like Descartes, Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Habermas, Rawls...
4. Read a different philosophy text, and attempt to understand it.
5. Compare and contrast the two texts. If able write some things down to attempt to solidify your thoughts. Share it with anyone interested! Repeat 3 and 4 a couple of times. Go to Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Popper, Gadamer or some of those wildly obscure analytics ;)
6. Find a mentor, a 'demon' who you can spar with but is above your level
7. Read more, different texts, compare and contrast but most of all discuss.
8. Dispute with your mentor, question him or her. Find your own inspiration.
9. become a mentor for someone else.
10. Repeat, if desired, or add a rule. (Purposefully ambiguous)[/quote]

So….it’s fine to disbelieve in Kantian transcendental logic, which presupposes a fair understanding of what it is, but how is Hegel’s logic any less transcendental?

Heh. You're asking the wrong person. Tobias would be a much more sympathetic voice if he's willing to pipe up on Hegel.

Hegel is certainly a German Idealist. — Moliere

I have not read all of the thread, actually only this question because of Moliere's mention. I do not know if it is relevant and if not just ignore the spam. There is a big difference between Kant and Hegel though. Kant considers that the world we see is a world shaped by our mind in the sense that the mind holds the categories by which we mould the manifold intuitions granted by sensibility. We do get these intuitions from somewhere though, even though we have no access to it. This 'noumenal world' remains hidden to us, it is the thing in itself.

Hegel on the other hand is an absolute idealist, meaning that there is no 'thing in itself', that is itself a contradictory idea. There is nothing laying 'behind' our sensibility and the distinction sensibility and understanding cannot be made. Instead the world as it is necessarily confirms to the world as we understand it. The understanding is what is the world (The rational is the real). That is oftentimes read as something very exalted or esoteric, but I think it means nothing less than that something can be a certain something at all is because the way we understand, perceive, handle, interact with that certain something. Saying for instance that a door knob is not really really a doorknob, but instead a bundle of intuitions from some noumenal world, is nonsense for Hegel. A doorknob is a doorknob is a doorknob. There are just no god given doorknobs, they are a product of our interaction with the world. That is not a transcendental but an immanent logic.

I can imagine a better analogy with a relationship to the perpetrator's belief, not merely what he said in an operational sense. Consider someone who sells a medicine that is actually is a chemical that makes people sick. He is accused of fraud and tried in court. Evidence is presented that he was given data, repeatedly, demonstrating that the medicine didn't make people better but made them sick. Yet he kept selling it and advertising it as a medicinal cure. Those who worked for him and demonstrated this were fired or resigned. He sought out people to work for him who would tell him what he wanted to hear about how the medicine worked. Meanwhile, more and more people got sick from his medicine as he got wealthy from selling it. His defense in court is that he "really believed" it was medicine, and so he wasn't lying he was simply exercising his free speech by advertising what he believed was true.

It depends on the specific crime, but I think in common law legalese this would fall under 'knowledge' or 'recklessness', a category of crime just below 'intent' but above negligence. It is reckless to disregard the evidence presented and if any reasonable person should have known that the medicine would cause illness it may be 'knowledge', for some crimes a higher form of intent then recklessness. Common law doctrine on intent and on justifications and excuses is not very precise and not uniform unfortunately.

A Universal is the Idea, which is Concept, which is Absolute by way of Notion. — Gregory

The absolute cannot be simply universal because that would leave particulars as somehow unreal. It goes against the grain of the dialectic. In the logic the idea becomes more and more concrete, while a universal without concretization remains abstract. Also I remember his discussions about sugar cubes from the 'Pheno' and how both taking a nominalist view of a sugar cube as an essence misses the point as well as the view of a sugar cube as a collection of universal properties.

I think statements like: "The world is universals and we are idea" are quite meaningless. I am obviously not the idea, only perhaps some sort of instantiation or I partake in it, or whatever. I tend to read Hegel far less metaphysically thick as I just think that makes matters too obscure. Hegel's point is I think much more simple: through the history of philosophy, culminating in Spinozist, Kantian and Hegelian thought, we have come to see the development of thought as a process in which is enriches itself, but always also returns from where it came, a consideration of what is most abstract and general. That is still a bold statement but at least loses all the exalted religious metaphorism. By reading him as such, it is also easier to place him in the history of philosophy. He 'historicized' thought and made it possible to think about the way we think historically.

"But what we have here is the free act of thinking putting itself at the standpoint where it is for its own self, producing its own object for itself thereby, and giving it to itself." Spinoza, as for as I know, never said we were God. So my question on this thread is how we can know whether we are finite or infinite and what this means. — Gregory

I think throughout your post you equate spirit with God. I think that is incorrect. God, (or religion) as far as I know in Hegel, is thought in the form of its presentation (Vorstelliung). God is thought posited as something outside of us, thought not grasping itself, but its image. Spirit is thought and this thought does not arise wily nilly. Thought, in spirit, captures its own history. It follows its own trail so to speak and understand itself as something with a trail and with turns and twists in its history. The history of spirit, which is actually none other than spirit, is the realization of thought for itself. Essentially it reaches past 'God', because it needs no representation outside of itself when it has spirit, i.e., itself.

We are not 'God', but we realize we have created him, he is a thought determination. In essence Hegel already proclaims the death of God much more dramatized by Nietzsche.

Now the absolute, something that spirits culminates in, is, I think, nothing else than the here and now. The here and now that thought always tries to comprehend and put in a process in history. The now is immediately taken up by thought and translated as a moment in a chain. For me for instance the 'now' is in the post I am not typing, the touch of my fingers on the key board, the exact sensation of contemplating the now, while writing. I put this 'now' immediately within the story of Tobias on this forum, of this forum in general, of its place in philosophical literature and so on. In that sense the now is infinite, your life is a history of infinite 'nows', passing by too quickly to comprehend, nothing really and still... it is always now, the now is inescapable and infinite until thought itself disappears. Is that possible? Well ... if thought is there than it is not dead and if it is dead there is no thought to consider its demise, see Epicurus. Likewise, thought, for better or for worse, is the infiinite, the measure of all things and all there is.

Thanks Banno, that is really nice to read :) and like Ciceronianus, I will mention that I also really appreciate yours.

I have been gone a bit these days, a lot of work...

Yes. In large populations, that can't be helped. In small ones, each person can be considered individually, as can each situation. But even in a systemic procedural, the prosecutor has a degree of autonomy in considering each case on its merits and some flexibility is accorded to the jury in its deliberations and to the judge in sentencing. In a very large, unwieldy, badly designed and corruptible justice system, people of good will can still apply the law more fairly than people with axes to grind. — Vera Mont

Yeah, but what is the point? There is indeed flexibility, which creates a tension with legal certainty. That is why a ' perfect' justice system is at least in practice unreachable. Legal principles sometimes contradict one another. Of course everything can be helped by creating a rule of exception in each individual case, but that renders law rather moot. It is actually a perennial tension in any legal system, you ideally want to be able to make tailor made decisions, but you also want a code of law that provides for general guidelines of conduct in broad terms.

No, and that can be helped. As immigrants need to take a fitness test for citizenship, so could all prospective voters. Unfortunately, that, too, is corruptible. Of course, civics should be a standard subject in school anyway. — Vera Mont

No idea if that would solve anything, that is an empirical question. But giving everyone exams before allowing a certain competence is highly inefficient. That is the tension I highlight between fairness and efficiency. Fairness is not the only interest that the law upholds.

That's nothing to do with meritocracy or equality under the law. — Vera Mont

Yes it does. The law might even sanction differential treatment, for instance in cases of positive action. As again, fairness in individual cases is not law's only concern. Justice on a collective level may not be in line with fairness on an individual level.

As stated earlier, I don't think punishment is the correct answer at all. I'm in favour of putting a lot more effort into preventing the causes and occasions of crime before damage is done. — Vera Mont

They are not mutually exclusive, but most importantly you dodge the question. You held that equal treatment according to a certain category is What justice and fairness meant.

Justice and fairness require that persons be classified into groups and judged according to a uniform standard for each group. A child, or adult with the mental capacity of a child, would be judged according one set of criteria; fully competent adults by a stricter one; the mentally ill, differently again. — Vera Mont

I challenged you with a thought experiment that shows that more is needed than just equal treatment. That still stands. As for your preference to prevent crime, there is a limit at which prevention becomes itself an injustice. Sure we can prevent lot of crime when we institute a police state subjecting everyone one to invasive monitoring. That would be a huge violation of the right to privacy though and therefore illegal.

So yes we blunder about, but law is about blundering about according to the best justifications we have for our blunders. It does need clear headed reasoning though. It is not 'anything goes'. That is why philosophy of law is a mature philosophical subject.

Justice and fairness require that persons be classified into groups and judged according to a uniform standard for each group. A child, or adult with the mental capacity of a child, would be judged according one set of criteria; fully competent adults by a stricter one; the mentally ill, differently again.

It doesn't require that people within a legal category be equal in any other way; only that they be treated the same under the law: accorded the same rights and burdened by the same degree of responsibility for their actions - which also mean, being tried by the same legal process, by the same rules of evidence, and given the same amount of leeway for mitigating circumstances if they're found guilty. — Vera Mont

Yes, but there is always some kind of arbitrariness in group classification. Many 17 year olds are very capable of casting votes, many 19 year olds are not. Is it than fair that those 17 yos cannot vote? You seem to conflate justice, fairness and law. It might very efficient to make those crude categorizations, because it saves us time. We do not need to assess competence in every given case. However, whether it is fair or just in all cases remains to be seen. Even people in the same legal category get treated in different ways. You have two people, A and B, who committed a crime for instance. The same kind of crime, not a big one, a rather mediocre one, the same criminal circumstances, the same personal circumstances etc. The only difference being that in case A evidence was very easy to procure, in case B it turned out to e very difficult. The prosecutor may prosecute A and dismiss B. Here concerns of time get in the way of justice. It is in theory possible to treat everyone equally, but practically it is not for two reasons: first we do not know with certainty where to draw the line of our legal categories and B there are societal reasons that hold us back from going all the way to assure equal treatment.

That said, if the core of your argument is that law at the very minimum, to be considered a system of law, needs to at least try to treat people equally, then I agree. Equal treatment means at least providing the same treatment to people within the same legal category as much as possible, however the question is, what are the reasons to make distinctions to begin with. Here I think more is needed than just a procedural guarantee of equal treatment. I will try to illustrate:

Say we indeed make classifications between children adults and the mentally handicapped and what not. We have these three categorizations. When a crime is committed, say murder, we punish the children least severe. They have not yet reached a level in which they can make choices and they can still be corrected into doing the right thing so a light punishment is preferred and laid down in law. Next come the adults. They have their full mental faculties and they can be corrected, since they understand the nature of punishment. They are punished harsher then children because we assume they made their choice more deliberately. The mentally handicaped are punished most severely. Their act is not an act of choice, but therefore they are all the more dangerous. Apparently their mental illness makes them violent and not in control of their actions. Moreover there is no reason to assume the sentence will have the corrective effect. Therefore they should be punished most severely. Would you think that criminal law is fair or just? People are treated the equally according to their legal category after all...

I think you would not accept this and rightly so, but it presents us with a problem. If, as you and I agree, justice is about equality, it cannot just be a procedural requirement, but it has a material component. I think next to equality there is another fundament and that is giving account, recognizing each other as equals in that the other is a meaningful protagonist in a debate or argument. Law is the historical prectice or arguing again again and again and through these arguments it is historically edified.

You would think this should be obvious, but it isn't, even to some lawyers. O.W. Holmes, Jr. famously noted that we have courts of law, not courts of justice. — Ciceronianus

:100: Indeed although I remember you being a bit more of a positivist then I was. I remember rehashing the Hart Dworkin debate here with you. All in all though we have quite a broad measure of agreement. :grin:

In this thread I will aim to distill in this broad topic of what constitutes justice, its basic operation in society, implications and its deliverance by laws.

1. Is Justice part of Natural Law (John Locke), Divine Command, Social Contract, or Utilitarian Agreement (John Stuart Mill) or combination of all four of these ?

2. Is justice karmic in nature or does injustice highlight a discrepancy in man made laws?

3. How should retribution be applied through court of law in secular society for punishable crimes such as murder? Would capital punishment be fitting for the most serious of crimes? (Genocide, serial killers etc)

The above principles are the main points for which most justice systems are based upon including international courts of law with the added ambiguity of remaining neutral in regards to the sovereignty and claims of state actors.

In the eyes of the philosopher is the existence of a perfect justice system possible or are all such systems unable to provide the deliverance of perfect justice either because of technicalities or other factors? — invicta

Difficult questions and hard to answer without assuming some sort of apriori definition of justice. Justice would, in some sort of Kantian vein be the capability of distinguishing between right and wrong. I reckon it is a category of thought, that is, an intrinsic part of what 'being in the world' entails. We add a 'coloring' of right or wrong to the world we perceive. Now if justice is a capability it does not as yet tell us what to consider right or wrong. That exact determinitation is I think a product of history. However, that does not make it relative. Justice, at the very minimum, has to do with equal treatment. If person A gets praised for deed X, person B will expect to be praised for a similar deed. Unequal treatment violates our sense of justice, a sense that we all have, because it is a category of thought. (If you accept this assumption, as I do).

That means, at its minimum, it is bound up with natural law, but this minimum is itself not saying so much as it does not ascertain whether deed X deserves praise or condemnation, only that if deed X is praised both A and B deserve praise. However, if we also accept that equality is a minimum standard, then justice implies some sort of capability to recognize others as equals, that is to say, to overcome a certain strangeness in the other. That allows us also to ask the other for reasons regarding his or her conduct. Because we see the other as equals and because justice entails equal treatment we ask the one who is judged to give an account of the reasons for the action. Is it a reason we find reasonable, i.e. recognizable for ourselves as just, being in a position of equality, then we will treat the other lik we want to be treated, that is, not inflict pain and suffering.

The infliction of pain and suffering as prima facie unjust is a product of equality as well. Equality and recognition means we can relate to others and feel the same pain. We can therefore ascertain that most probably acts that produce pain and suffering are unjust. Probably, because of the same principle of recognition we can also deduce that in situations in which one might expect oneself to commit pain and suffering, say in self defense, we can also estimate others to react in similar fashion. Likewise, many people see gross harm done by someone as worthy of harm caused in retribution. It might be possible to overcome that intuition, but I am not sure.

Therefore, justice does not equate with a system of law. There can be different interpretations of deeds, and these interpretation may be historically grown. However, a bedrock of justice may be deduced, at least in the form of the negative. When we see unequal treatment, we perceive it as unjust, unless the actor provides a reasonable explanation for his or her conduct. What does reasons are eventually form the code of laws, after having been written down, rewritten, and shaped over time.

The above allows us some answer to the questions posed, but not much as some of these are unanswerable and some bound up with the law and tradition of the land.

As for question 1. The bedrock of justice resides in natural law in as far as the principle of equality goes, but that is far from informative. The outcome of proceedings reside in the law of the land, a law that will try (if the legislator is benevolent) to approximate the ideal of equal treatment.

2: I do not know what is meant. Karmic in nature... maybe but in as far as justice is aimed at equal treatment so if someone is wronged the person is compensated because we feel he has suffered unequal treatment. Justice of course can also be an ideal. IF someone says: "this is unjust", he in fact says: "people are not being treated as equals!" but whether that is true entirely depends on motivation and reason giving.

3 I think the death penalty violates the idea of equal treatment or at least of recognition. It tells someone he or she is completely alien, not worthy to be considered and therefore it is allowed to put him or her to death. I am not sure though if that is not the outcome of the trajectory of European history in which I have been trained and brought up.

Treating everyone as equals is not possible, over disagreements of what equal means in such respect. Even if that difficulty could be overcome, it might not be socially efficient to do so and sometimes efficiency concerns trump concerns of justice.

In that sense then there exist in society nuanced forms of unfairness such as unmeritocratic achievements when it comes to job access or a good environment to live in. — invicta

Sometimes justice even gets mixed up with efficiency. A meritocratic system may well be efficient, but why does it also entail equal treatment to reward some people who are talented more than others? I am not saying meritocracy is unjust, just that historical reasons play a part in our assessment of justice. It is an illustration to make my point that justice is a category of thought, that at its core lays the principle of equality, but that the concrete stipulations of what is just and unjust are historically grown.

Insofar as "Hegel may have been trying to update Spinoza", I think he reconceptualizes one of Spinoza's infinite modes ("the world") as a 'meta-historicizing teleology' according to his own idealist dialectic ("Geist"). — plaque flag

Well, I am not 180 but I can take a stab at it. One of the critiques of Hegel is that he totalizes. For Hegel things move. He considers the 'movement of the concept' in the 'Logik', the coming to be of the modern state the the philosophy of right, the appearance of the spirit in the Phenomenology. During this movement described, the concept, spirit, the state acquire higher levels of self awareness and self articulation. Until with Hegel himself spirit manages something it did not manage before, namely its self awareness and therefore its identity as self thinking substance. Substance has managed to articulate itself as thinking being through taking into account its historicity in the sense of the many articulations it had to go through to reach that point.

If true that would be a real feat. His thought would in one go solve Descartes problem of duality between res extensa and res cogitans. Within the world thinking is at work. What we determine as duality is such because it is determined so by thought. The appearance of those dualisms is historical and also solved historically by pointing to their historical origins. They are unmasked, not as absolute dychotomies, but as dichotomies produced by our antinomical way of thinking. We think in dualisms, but also in their overcoming.

Not only would he have solved Descartes' problem, he would also solve the tensions between two of the greatest influences of his time, Kant and Spinoza. While for Kant the thing in itself (the world as it is) remains forever unreachable and separated from thought it is there. Relegated though to a position of mere intuition as matter. It is thought that forms it and makes a world out of it, but forever knowing that pure knowledge is out of reach. For Spinoza the world, is as 180 put it, one of the infinite modes. His great achievement in Hegel's eyes is the identification of substance and world. The realization that substance is absolute, there is nothing outside of it, there is no God that makes it work, it is all one thing. But Spinoza's world is blind, an infinite without rhyme or reason, in which we cannot be at home. Self consciousness has no place in Spinoza, as it also has no place in Deleuze or Spinoza's materialist followers. It follows that we are a stranger in a strange land.

Hegel solves it by stating, we cannot think substance other than as subject, as something with a history, a reason, a rationality attached to it necessarily that same as hours. The identity of thinking and being. The same as with Descartes. There is no res cogitans and res extensa, they are the same. Hegel's name for it is spirit.

One can see why this is totalizing. A movement culminating in the realization that there is nothing outside of the thinking historical subject whose history seems to have a rational unfolding. An unfolding even culminating in Hegel himself, so what bigger hybris might there be? Some point to Hegel to proclaim the end of history, how much more totalizing and teleological does it become?

I think this reading is too unnuanced though, at least in regard to the Hegel that wrote the Pheno and the Logik. Inside his thought is also the principle that blows up this picture, an ironic image. The phenomenology of spirit is completed in the realization that being is historical, aka 'being is time' as put by later thinkers and that is a momentous insight, but it is not over yet. Thinking progresses for Hegel by the negation, so also by the negation, or at least the seeming negation of his own thought. The chapter on absolute knowledge in the Pheno is short, short and anti climatic. What is absolute knowledge other than the knowledge that thought moves and produces deeper more refined articulations in which the older axioms are rejected? Absolute knowledge is the knowledge that one should not asbolutize because the moment that happens the thesis becomes subverted, what moves becomes dogma, dogma for its rigidity is antithetical to thought.

So yes, one can read him teleologically @plaque flag, but I think his thought is much more enriching and fruitful for the thinkers we are in our time when we do not. Than we learn something about the features of thought, an insight we may take with us, a ladder to climb and to throw away after we climbed it.

I take this is a direct reference to Spinoza’s God. Hegel thinks it shocked the age not because, as is commonly assumed, threatening the status of God as distinct and separate, but because it threatens the status of man as distinct in his self-consciousness. — Fooloso4

From my post above I think it follows that I hold that it is not about man as much as that Spinoza threatens self consciousness in general. There is no knowledge, also no slef knowledge possible in an infinite word permeated by God. It is all a thousand plateaus and nothing up or down. A rhizome without rhyme or reason to read Spinoza anachronistically.

I blame 180 proof, Hegel and red wine for this post...

It starts by introducing the idea that philosophy deals with opposites and then resolves those oppositions in various ways. Monism collapses the opposites into one another, dualism maintains them. Hegel's method is one of triads. — Toby Determined

Yes, maybe. Triads in the sense that a waltz moves in triads, the last step is never final, but part of the same movement. (Hegel talks of the movement of the concept). It is not as much thesis - antithesis - synthesis as it is often described. More like position, negation and then negation of the negation. This movement can be seen in many things, including religious experience. In Christianity, God was negated when he became men, he showed himself as non-god, but by rising from the dead he negated this non-god and became God, but now not ineffable, paving the way for a human god. (And then perhaps also its demise as the dance progresses further).


[quote="Toby Determined;d14036"I had a thought while reading this. Which is that perhaps Hegel's approach is to overcome opposition without losing the vitality of opposition. It would be contrary to the critical method to allow oppositions to stand without being overcome but the life of Hegel's system comes from the power of the negative so some element of opposition must remain.[/quote]

Yes it does. Concepts evolve and unfold into more complex (and concrete!) ones. They are never stable though. Even the concreter ones, such as 'here' and 'now' obtain their meaning from context. Concepts take their meaning from a web of concepts, which themselves keep engendering oppositions so they keep unfolding and changing. Most controversial I think, is that I do believe Hegel considered this movement to have a certain direction, namely towards freedom and self understanding, but I could be wrong.

Compare with the quote from the Phenomenology "The life of God and divine intelligence, then, can, if we like, be spoken of as love disporting with itself; but this idea falls into edification, and even sinks into insipidity, if it lacks the seriousness, the suffering, the patience, and the labour of the negative." — Toby Determined

As it stands I cannot make heads or tails of it. Would you mind providing the section from which it is taken? I can then look it up, read the context and read the German, which for me might be more understandable than the English.

Philosophy struggles to define its own field and methodology. This presupposes that the model of other disciplines, like mathematics and science. But that model doesn't necessarily apply There is a version of the history of philosophy that identifies it as the chaotic starting-point of all other disciplines, which have spun off from it as they have developed through the chaotic discussions of philosophers.

Philosophy is not unlike mathematics or science in some ways. But it is also like disciplines such as Literature or History, and like them, a small number of texts function as canonical. These texts open the field of philosophical discussion and show what it is like; they also provide common reference points for discussion as well as a mine of philosophical mistakes - and since there are so few philosophical successes, the mistakes are all the help we are going to get. I have even heard it said that in philosophy, getting it right is less important than being wrong in interesting ways. — Ludwig V

Can we not approach the subject of the value of philosophy in a different way than done usually in the forum? Usually the question asked is what philosophy is. Then discussions degenerate into some defense of philosophy's claims against some objecting that philosophy has made so little progress in comparison to science. The question then turns to whether philosophy should adopt some sort of scientific method or abandoned altogether. What if we just accept that philosophy is as philosophy does, that its method is what defines it? Just entertain the thought and accept for a moment that philosophy is actually its method. That browsing the ancient texts up to the new ones and that picking apart the arguments made and retracing the lines of thought is philosophy and that it is immutable.

What then can we expect from philosophy? If approached in this way we can see affinities with law, with history and theology. Its method is scholastic. It takes concepts to their extremes, using conventional points of view in various hypothetical situations and tests their limits. it uncovers assumptions we have to make when settling disputes about truth, beauty, justice and what not. When we consider its method immutable we see that it is not an empirical science and will never be. It therefore cannot yield any observable empirical truths about the world. What it can do is examine the concepts we use to think about the world. It can show us their relations, their mutual support or their antinomies. Philosophy then, is thinking about thinking, because the concepts we use to examine the concepts are the very same concepts themselves. It is a circular activity of reflection.

What is the worth of such an activity? The answer to that question depends on whether one holds on to the identity of thinking and being. i.e. the proposition that all that is, must be able to be thought and that being thought entails in any case the potential to be. If one holds on to that notion, the conceptual world is the same as the material one and by conceptual analysis philosophy explores the world as it is. The empirical sciences are simply the other eye which we use to look at the world. I would call this the idealistic position.

If one does not accept the assumption the role of philosophy is much more limited. Philosophy simply cures us for our bewitchment by language and works tirelessly to clear the debris of our thinking. The material world though is broader and always escapes our thinking about it. The more we discover the material world, the richer our concepts become. I would refer to that as the materialistic position.

I think both approaches may well be viable. I think it is illusory though to want something from philosophy that it cannot provide, empirical knowledge of the world. That claim is significant. For instance. Philosophy may teach us how we use the concept of justice, but cannot provide us with empirical knowledge of whether an act is just or not, not in the idealistic conception of in the materialist one. The idealist would maybe hold that justice exists and that some acts indeed are just and unjust. A materialist would have to either fold on the question or translate justice to some sort of material term like benefit. Such an excercise, here undertaken in a very ramshackle and shorthand way about justice, does reveal something though. It reveals the origins of our commitments and ay explain different usages of the term and therefore also the miscommunications surrounding it.

That is what scholastic science may do, retrace the history of our thoughts and our arguments. The exact value you attach to such an activity rests on your commitments, but it can only clarify itself and noting else. If that is enough for you, by all means do philosophy. If not, go ahead and do research in the laboratory or society at large and become a scientist.

Consciousness
Mental imagery/mental representations/thought
Qualia particularly pain
Infinities particularly the infinite past
The nature of meaning/rationality/intelligibility — Andrew4Handel

Mine are:
jails
Merry go rounds
My hand writing at the age of six
nipples
That person at the party who always behaves as if you have been best of friends for a long time.

This list is satire of course, though all of these also puzzle me in some respect or other. That is the point. Things aren't puzzles in themselves. They are puzzles in certain contexts. They become apparent in certain constellations and appear puzzling. The way we question creates the puzzle. What philosophy does, at least according to me, is unpack the questions we ask and reflect on why we have come to ask them, with what motive and how our asking reveals the assumptions we hold about the world.

IIRC, the last major change was over fifteen years ago – a radical shift in my thinking about and comprehension of metaphysics (thanks again, Tobias) — 180 Proof

:cool:

Oh, shut up. — frank

I guess you do score extra points for being both concise and to the point :rofl: