go and read the Stanford Encyclopedia entry on "comensurability" — RolandTyme

I know what the term means.

assessing what other people are trying to say — RolandTyme

I was assessing what you did say. Not only did you say that you can freely substitute things for each other, you went on to argue that doing so is moral, even though the example you give of converting everything to crystals seems to argue against that claim.

The most charitable thing I can do is to take what you said seriously enough to respond and give you the opportunity to explain what you said and why you think it correct.

Is it possible some philosophers when writing run out of ideas, but continue writing? — jgill

For some, it seems to me, it is as if their words are in search of ideas. If they keep writing sooner or later they will stumble across something to say.

And there are some who just recycle the same idea.

I agree that there are other factors involved, but there would be no game of chess without the rules that dictate how, for e.g., a bishop moves. — Sam26

It is clear that the game of chess is played by fixed rules. But what about PI 83:

We can easily imagine people amusing themselves in a field by playing with a ball like this: starting various existing games, but playing several without finishing them, and in between throwing the ball aimlessly into the air, chasing one another with the ball, throwing it at one another for a joke, and so on. And now someone says: The whole time they are playing a ball-game and therefore are following definite rules at every throw.
And is there not also the case where we play, and make up the rules as we go along? And even where we alter them as we go along.

If we ask the person who claimed they are following definite rules will he be able to say what the rules are? If we ask the people who were playing, what would they say?

I am not both Arne and Pantagruel. — Arne

My mistake. Sorry. You Arne did ask:

How can any of us even say philosophy went wrong without having some shared understanding of what we mean by philosophy? — Arne

And did say:

Such tensions have always been in philosophy. — Arne

...it would be unreasonable to expect me not to use the term "philosophy" when responding to a post about how philosophy "went wrong." — Arne

The point is, you used the term and did not see it as problematic. It is not a term you are not familiar with. We may have difficulty trying to come up with a definition but there really is no need to do that. There is enough of what Wittgenstein calls a "family resemblance" that we can talk about philosophy and discuss our differences.

And just to be clear, none of us is any more qualified than the other to talk about those philosophical contemplations that were not committed to writing. That is just kind of a non-starter. — Arne

That is not the case. Pierre Hadot has done just that using ancient sources. It is not as if no one back then said anything about contemplative practice.

But nobody's permission is required. — Arne

Permission? What does any of this have to do with giving permission?

How could I possibly speak to those that did not result in writings? — Arne

That is the point. You said:

The actual amount of historical time in which philosophy per se was about "contemplation of the beautiful and the good" is actually quite minimal — Arne

But philosophical practice and philosophical writing are not the same. The ancient practice of philosophy was not about writing but a way of living.

Plato had a great deal to say about beauty. It is one of his trinity: the just, the beautiful, and the good.

And as far as I know, aesthetics and ethics are still lively subject matter. — Arne

So then, not as minimal as you claimed? Aesthetics as a "subject matter" is to push it aside in that it is treated as something on its own. Ethics is not the same as the good. Both beauty and the good are for the ancients more encompassing terms integral to many different aspects of life.

Are you suggesting that philosophy should be more limited in its subject matter or that it would become so if not dominated by the academy and/or industrial forces? — Arne

I am suggesting that it has become more limited than it was for the ancients and that this is a loss. The article linked about by Moliere addresses this as well as the good.

How can any of us even say philosophy went wrong without having some shared understanding of what we mean by philosophy? — Arne

And yet it is a term you have been using. You even claim:

Philosophy is not an end in itself, it is a tool. — Pantagruel

This addendum would have made me appreciate the original OP more. — Pantagruel

This is something that has been under discussion for some days now in the threads on Heidegger. I started this topic based on just this problem.

The opening paragraph of the OP is about this.

I was using commensurable in the technical sense - able to be measured on the same scale. — RolandTyme

You said:

if things can be aggregated, and are commensurable, then you can freely substitute them for each other. — RolandTyme

Plato pointed to the attitude that philosophy is useless, but he did not attempt to make it useful.

Modern philosophy certainly is nothing new.

On what basis do you claim that contemplation of the beautiful and the good" is actually quite minimal? Philosophical practice did not always generate or result in writings.

As worthy as the "contemplation of the beautiful and the good" may be, it was never a philosophical paradigm. — Arne

Of course not! It is not about the establishment or use of paradigms.

there has always been philosophy as industry. — Arne

Socrates neither produced or sold anything. Plato criticized the sophists for teaching for money. He did not require payment to attend his school. Aristotle's school was also free of change. Descartes inherited wealth but died poor. Spinoza was a lens grinder. In none of these cases was there a demand by an administration to produce.

But I think that an argument can be made that original thinkers can be spoiled (not to say damaged) by going through the academic process. — Manuel

I agree. I almost added something along the lines of a Hippocratic Oath for thinkers and thinking.

I think philosophers have always written for philosophers but not only for philosophers. A significant change occurred when mathematical certainty became the model of reason. Theoria was replaced by theory. Contemplation of the beautiful and the good pushed aside as being of no practical use. The question of how best to live replaced by the problem of how to secure the right to live as one wants.

How would philosophy look different if philosophy had not "went wrong"? — Arne

For one there would be no philosophy industry cranking out its product. Less emphasis on the pretense of "originality" and more emphasis on teaching and open-ended thinking that had as its goal the pleasure of thinking.

how can we expect original work to arise? — Manuel

Original work comes from original thinkers. They are born not made. I would not be surprised if originality will be found outside the university. As much as I prefer to read philosophy rather than watch and listen, the cost and barriers to posting videos is low, and can reach a much larger audience.

unless the incentives of university departments change — Manuel

I think that change is not going to go in the direction we might hope to see. As tenured professors finally leave it is often the case that they are not replaced by tenure track new hires. New instructors are either hired without that assurance or replaced by adjuncts who do not earn a living wage and have no benefits. Or the size of the department and courses offered shrinks. Bottom line administrators see this as a good thing. The cost to maintain the department far outweighs the funds they generate.

Because that generalization clearly doesn't hold for the entire spectrum of philosophical writing. — Pantagruel

Yes, there are exceptions. I said as much. I speak from within academia as do the authors of the article @Moliere linked to above.

Because you haven't offered any suggestions for reconciliation or remediation of the issue — Pantagruel

The first step is to acknowledge the problem. I can offer no solutions at the institutional level. On a personal level I attempt to speak and write simply and clearly, and when discussing the writings of philosophers who do not write so simply and clearly try to make their work more accessible. When I was teaching I used primary texts, and by example, how to read these texts. I do something similar here in my discussions of the philosophers.

Thanks for the link to the article.

I like this phrase:

... a hyperactive productivist churn of scholarship ...

It is what I was talking about in my response to Ying above.

A few, such as this one:

Once knowledge and goodness were divorced...

made me curious about who the authors are. Robert Frodeman was a student of Stanley Rosen. The influence is apparent. In the threads on Heidegger's downfall I quoted Rosen:

Nihilism is the concept of reason separated from the concept of the good.

Criticism is only valid if it is balanced. — Pantagruel

Must it be balanced? What does this mean? Wherein lies the balance? The good with the bad? The positive with the negative? What is the balance that turns my claim that:

Philosophy has become in large part insular and self-referential. — Fooloso4

from something that is not valid into something that is?

Who in particular do you have in mind? — Joshs

Not who but what. The philosophy industry. This includes not only names we might recognize but thousands we may never hear about. Those who write books and articles as well as those who publish books and articles few will read. Readers who name drop and come to sound like those they name.

But with regard to the names you name. Why does Derrida write the way he does? Who is he writing for? What does he mean, for example, when he says:

Here or there we have discerned writing: a nonsymmetrical division designated on the one hand the closure of the book, and on the other the opening of the text. On the one hand the theological encyclopedia and, modeled upon it, the book of man. On the other a fabric of traces marking the disappearance of an exceeded God or of an erased man. The question of writing could be opened only if the book was closed. The joyous wandering of the graphein then became wandering without return. The opening into the text was adventure, expenditure without reserve.

(Writing and Difference, "Ellipses")

Given the title of the essay something is omitted. A deliberate omission or the fact that something is always left unsaid?

Somewhere I came across Hegel described as Spinoza plus time.

From the preface to the Phenomenology:

#17:

In my view … everything hangs on grasping and expressing the true not just as substance but just as much as subject.

It is instructive to compare this to what Spinoza says about substance.

By substance, I mean that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself: in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception. (Ethics , Part One, Definitions, III)

Hegel continues:

At the same time, it is to be noted that substantiality comprises within itself the universal, or, it comprises not only the immediacy of knowing but also the immediacy of being, or, immediacy for knowing.

The universal is unity of the immediacy, direct and unmediated, of knowing and being, of knowing and for knowing.

However much taking God to be the one substance shocked the age in which this was expressed, still that was in part because of an instinctive awareness that in such a view self-consciousness only perishes and is not preserved.

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.

I think philosophy got hijacked by the universities. — Ying

I agree. The demand is that philosophy be productive, AKA publish or perish. The proliferation of journals and university publishers arose in order for there to be somewhere to store all this unread work product. The pretense of originality results in more and more being said about less and less. Teaching is in many cases no longer the primary reason for the academic profession. It is often regarded as secondary, a burden to be avoided if possible.

Indeterminacy is as old as philosophy itself, but it seems as though some today think it is their job to create indeterminacy. As if trying to navigate a ship on stormy seas so as not to run ashore will be benefited by making the landmarks indistinguishable.

Thanks jgill.

Philosophy is not an end in itself, it is a tool. — Pantagruel

That is one view on the spectrum you mention. One that I do not agree with.

Thanks Tom.

I can't help but hold the view that reality is an act of constructionism - we can't identify absolute truth (which is likely a remnant of Greek philosophy and Christianity) and philosophical positions we might hold appear to be culturally located. — Tom Storm

Plato begins to look very different once we separate Plato and Platonism. A couple of quick points: in the Phaedo the Forms are identified as hypotheses. This is not a break with, but rather a continuation of what is said about hypothesis in the Republic and Parmenides. In the Timaeus the arche or origin and ordering of the cosmos is a "likely story". Here the Forms are criticized for being stable and unchanging and thus inadequate as a causal explanation.

Also important is the activity of the imagination. The term 'constuctivism' is not used but poiesis meaning to make is.

I think we can still create tentative notions of 'the good' based on secular mechanisms — Tom Storm

I agree. This is the antidote to nihilism.

We no longer have a place in the cosmos - science tells us (or at least so it is thought) that life originated by a fluke combination of chemicals clustered around geo-thermal vents and then evolved by chance rather than design (and no, I'm not promoting ID theory, but the sense of life as essentially a product of chance, with no purpose other than survival and procreation, is one of the characteristics of nihilism.) — Wayfarer

There was no place in the cosmos staked out by Plato or Aristotle. In Plato's
Timaeus there is something he calls the "chora". It is said to be the third kind in addition to the Forms and sensible things. It can be translated as place. Rather than discuss it here I linked to it. For Aristotle there is the fifth or accidental cause. The implication is that the cosmos cannot be understood simply as teleological. The world is not as it is because it acts to fulfill some end. Because there are accidental causes, the world is indeterminate and does not yield a final account If you would like to discuss it I started a thread a while back on Aristotle's Metaphysics In both texts chance plays a role.

Would not the concept of beautiful and how one sees it depend upon one's wisdom? — Tom Storm

More often on one's education and opinions. Most of us are not wise but we may be fortunate enough to have teachers who are wiser than us.

Beauty is often treated as the starting point. I would suggest that it is the end point aimed for. The question of the beautiful stands beside the question of eros. The philosopher desires wisdom and is drawn to the beautiful. Both are seductive and are for that reason problematic, requiring a degree of critical distancing.

In moral teachings the beautiful is often connected to the good. We aspire to be and desire to have what is beautiful and what is good, as if with one we get the other. What is at issue is not simply the aesthetic judgment of what is beautiful but the poetic making of the idea or image of what is beautiful. For the former is dependent on the latter.

I can tell myself or someone else that the self is a myth but the myth may be that the self is a myth.

Who or what is it tells me this and who or what is it being told to when I hear and think about this? Is "I" and "me" and "myself" something other than my self?

If the self is a myth then what remains when the myth of the self is rejected?

My intention was only to relay some information and context that has changed my perspective on AI as a whole. — Bret Bernhoft

Do you mean this:

One of these individuals claims to have made contact with some sort of super-intelligence; something far beyond our humanity and our tools. — Bret Bernhoft

Apparently you believe this individual, but why should we? People make all kinds of claims. Alien intelligence is a recurring theme.

If humanity does make contact with a higher intelligence ... — Bret Bernhoft

According to you and this individual we already have.

what sort of philosophical implications does that have for humanity? — Bret Bernhoft

If all we know is that this higher intelligence exists and makes contact with us, then we cannot draw any philosophical implications. If it is so far advanced will we be able to understand it if it is light years ahead of us? It being intelligent tells us nothing about what its intentions toward us will be.

Does vocabulary have negative connotations? — javi2541997

Yes.

Or are some people recklessly using language? — javi2541997

It is not either/or. The careful use of language does not result in a language free of connotations.

If something cannot be experienced and cannot be exactly defined, then we should not speculate about it. — ClayG

Too late. Claims about Heaven are part of our cultural history. It is not simply a matter of fact but of belief, or how people both in the past and present understand life and themselves, with an eye to their future.

This is all to say, that to speculate about something, we either need to be able to experience it or have an exact a priori definition of it. — ClayG

And yet, your proclamation has not and will not stop people from speculation about any number of things. One name for doing just that is 'metaphysics'.

More clearly, the philosopher using Hegel’s model does not have to struggle against it, like they would have to with the traditional model, to find a synthesis of both views. — ClayG

It is not clear whether you are interested in discussion Hegel or just looking to reconcile differences. With regard to Hegel, he is very critical of what you are proposing. From the preface to the Phenomenology. It is:

#7:
... to take what thought has torn asunder and then to stir it all together into a smooth mélange, to suppress the concept that makes those distinctions, and then to fabricate the feeling of the essence.
...
What it wants from philosophy is not so much insight as edification. The beautiful, the holy, the eternal, religion, and love itself are all the bait required to awaken the craving to bite. What is supposed to sustain and extend the wealth of that substance is not the concept, but ecstasy, not the cold forward march of the necessity of the subject matter, but instead a kind of inflamed inspiration.
...
Spirit has shown itself to be so impoverished that it seems to yearn for its refreshment only in the meager feeling of divinity ... That it now takes so little to satisfy spirit’s needs is the full measure
of the magnitude of its loss.

The movement of Geist (Spirit/Mind) is the movement of the whole to its self-realization. It is the working out of the internal logic of the concept.

#12:

... the whole which has returned into itself from out of its succession and extension and has come to be the simple concept of itself.

Returning into itself is to become what from the beginning it is to be. Each stage of this new whole no matter how different it is from earlier stages is not a move away from but within itself, adding to the completion of itself.

The actuality of this simple whole consists in those embodiments which, having become moments of the whole, again develop themselves anew and give themselves a figuration, but this time in their new element, in the new meaning which itself has come to be.

The moments in the development of spirit do not understand themselves and are not understood by subsequent moment until this moment when it has come to the simple concept of itself. It is in this new element that each of those moments is understood anew as part in the development of the whole.

I thought you studied Heidegger ? Doesn't everyone know at least this part ? — plaque flag

I am aware of your penchant and fondness for tangent, but try not to mistake your tangential excursions for something that has anything to do with the issue under discussion. If you want to take my question about what someone with little or no background in Heidegger would understand about a statement that was supposed to explain another statement as an opportunity to talk about the background of a text then go ahead, but don't mistake the one for the other.

In my opinion philosophy is a practice. "Philosophies" are opinions. My practice is informed by Socratic skepticism, knowledge of my ignorance and how best to live knowing I do not know. The interpretation of the work of the philosophers is central to my practice. The purpose of which is not simply to know what they think or even how they think, but for me to think with and against them.

But the problem of how best to live is not answered by reading books. Also central to my practice is self knowledge and the examined life. What is required is honesty with myself about myself and the willingness to work on what I think and see and say and do.

Two additional reasons why I think it important to put things in my own words.

First it is not always clear that we understand the terminology in the same way. We use Heidegger's or some other author's words but that does not mean we understand the concepts in the same way.

Second, putting things in my own words forces me to think through and articulate what I think is meant by a statement. What may seem clear to me upon reading it may turn out to need further work on my part if I am to understand it.

... à la "the holy ghost" or dao, no? — 180 Proof

Given his claim that philosophy is occidental then not dao. Or at least not until he cloaked it in a chiton.

Das Heilige Geist via Hegel and Holderlin is on target.

As with the question of Being, he strives to keep the questioning going. I suspect that if asked what he believes he would deflect and say that what is important is not his beliefs but thinking.

It has been a long time since I read Heidegger. I am probably also be in need of a refresher.

I don’t recall Heidegger ever talking about, let alone believing in, the notion of providence. — Mikie

I don't either. It was meant to be suggestive. It is not something I have looked into.

So I’m still not sure why you’re convinced he sees being as God. — Mikie

I am not convinced. In fact when I wrote it I considered adding that I would not insist that this is correct. This paper might be of interest. In addition, there is the Der Spiegel interview:

If I may answer briefly, and perhaps clumsily, but after long reflection: philosophy will be unable to effect any immediate change in the current state of the world. This is true not only of philosophy but of all purely human reflection and endeavor. Only a god can save us. The only possibility available to us is that by thinknig and poetizing we prepare a readiness for the appearance of a god, or for the absence of a god in [our] decline, insofar as in view of the absent god we are in a state of decline.
...
We can not bring him forth by our thinking. At best we can awaken a readiness to wait [for him].
...
It is not through man that the world can be what it is and how it is -- but also not without man. In my view, this goes together with the fact that what I call "Being" (that long traditional, highly ambiguous, now worn-out word) has need of man in order that its revelation, its appearance as truth, and its [various] forms may come to pass.

Temporality is the unfolding of Being, of what is present and what remains concealed in and through the space or openness of time. It is not simply the linear sequence of moments from what was but no longer is to what is to what will be but is not yet.

In what is present and what is thought there remains something that does not yet come to presence and is not thought. This is why Heidegger returns to the Greeks, to uncover and bring to light possibilities that had at that time remained concealed. Truth, or in Greek aletheia, is to bring out of concealment, to disclose.

The future is present in the sense of possibilities. We are oriented to the future in that we plan and act and hope for what might come to be. Man, or Dasein, is the disclosive being. That is, man plays a role in what comes to be and how it is thought, as well as what is remains concealed from man.

The past remains present insofar as our language and conceptual frameworks were here before us and we think within and strive to think beyond them.

Helpful. Thanks.

I will be posting my explanation soon.

Your definition of ‘simply and clearly’ is circular. — Joshs

If I explain the statement to someone and as a result they can now make sense of it, that is not circular.

He’s pretty clearly un-Christian. — Mikie

This is what I was referring to as "layers of meaning". He can't use the term without the association with some concept and meaning being attached to it.

... god as uncreated substance is simply more substance ontology — Mikie

Right. The term has a lot of baggage, including the idea of God as a being. Tillich picks up on this. Rather than a supreme being he says that God is the ground of being.

I think that Heidegger remained open to and accepting of what comes to be because he retained belief in the notion of providence.