The redefinition of Philosophy as a purely rigorous logic applied to speculative fields is well, exactly what I called it. It's fine if that is what you want to do in the modern era, but it does not square well with the entire history of what are conventionally called "philosophers." Many of them had rigor and logic, some not so much, in either case it wasn't the only significant thing they were doing, and not the sole reason they are still honored today.
If you go that route, then why don't you call scientists "philosophers"? What they do was for millennia considered a part of philosophy. Fields evolve. Modern philosophers are more rigorous in general than ancient ones because standards of rigor have improved. Although Aristotle did basically invent logic. That was pretty cool.
Well, language is the means which society uses to describe reality, so it is naturally one of the best places to begin when wanting to change reality.
This does not follow. A description is dependent on the thing it's describing, not vice versa. If you change the description, you're not changing the thing described; you're just describing it wrongly.
Historians and publicists often use this type of reality shaping to have events or personalities become something new.
We just had this conversation in one of the religion threads: the idea of a thing is not the thing itself. That people think Barack Obama is Muslim does not make Barack Obama Muslim.
...that is all reality truly is, a perception of something unknown.
Reality is by definition everything that's real. The "something unknown" is itself real. Therefore the something unknown is part of reality. Therefore reality is more than our perceptions.
Reality is not set up in this way, a series of two-sided concepts which one is right and the other wrong.
We've already had this conversation. I've already pointed out why this statement defeats itself. You are saying that it's wrong to think of concepts as wrong.
Reality is no fixed thing and as we we progress into the post-modern age the mutability of exitence becomes more and more apparant.
That existence is mutable has been apparent throughout history to basically everyone except Zeno. You change reality every time you move furniture or eat food or draw breath or do anything at all whatsoever. But if you mean to say that it's mutable in more than this perfectly mundane sense, then no, that is not apparent at all.
My work with the severely Autistic has led me to beleive that they are beings perceive who reality in a completely different way than non-autistics, with comepltely differerent rules. Though our two realities overlap with some commonality, they are interacting in a different realm as it were.
That autistic people perceive reality differently does not imply that there are two different realities. It just implies that there is one reality that they perceive differently. Furthermore, the possibility stands that one party or another could be perceiving reality wrongly.
I fully advocate that physical spaces should not only be designed for people that experience reality in the way we do, but also be designed with people, like those with Autism, who live in a different reality.
I really don't want to be snide here. I am very sympathetic to those with mental disabilities and am entirely behind anything that would make their lives easier. But I have to ask: if autistic people live in a different reality, how can we, designing things in our reality, help them? The fortunate fact that what we do affects what they perceive means we and they inhabit the same reality.
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. So as long as it is addressing those issues and helping people come to a personal understanding of existence, it can't really be pseudo.
It is when that "personal understanding" is false or meaningless.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
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For this, will you just grant that I don't accept "bigness" to be a valid measure of philosophical rigor, and that I don't want to fight the whole analytic-continental battle here and now?
We're going to have to settle on a definition of "big," because I was using the word big to mean "relevance" (translation: poor word choice on my part). I.e. "Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy are relevant to the topic of being a lyrical/literary philosophers" is similar enough to "Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy were big lyrical/literary philosophers too" that I would consider them interchangeable. But otherwise, I agree, Continental vs. Analytic is not a battle to be fought here (or probably at all since I consider them to be like peanut butter and jelly: having merits of their own, but why rank them when you can just eat the best of both philosophies together?).
Well, language is the means which society uses to describe reality, so it is naturally one of the best places to begin when wanting to change reality.
The problem is (besides what Blinking Spirit said) is that reality continues without language. Leaving "society" and human agents altogether, a tiger in India witnesses a rock slide but does not have any language to describe it, did it happen? Well... I'd hope so.
Historians and publicists often use this type of reality shaping to have events or personalities become something new. Some aspects of reality are more fixed in their being, so they are resistant to change in this manner.
Publicists and historians don't shape reality, they shape the way that people interpret what they were not present to witness... or lie to those people. It does not make it true. Let me give an example, if every Russian historian tried to pass Anastasia as historically accurate to the point where everyone believed it, I do not think that would make it historically accurate all of a sudden.
Much of it is based in getting people to change perceptions of something, because that is all reality truly is, a perception of something unknown. ... It is not the quickest or even most powerful way to change reality, but it works.
I don't know, but this seems like a dubious use of language to me because I've always viewed language as a means to clarify the unknown to something knowable. From there, Blinking Spirit's point of a description being dependent on the thing it is describing takes over. And furthermore, what are these quicker and/or more powerful ways of influencing reality?
The reason Derrida focused on texts is because texts are where philosphers lay down the foundations that people use to lay the laws of existence.
Well, texts are where everyone lays down everything as a means to share. But I suppose since I haven't read very much of Derrida, I don't know how broader or narrowly we're defining "texts" for this discussion to understand exactly what your saying.
Reality is no fixed thing and as we we progress into the post-modern age the mutability of exitence becomes more and more apparant. I was introduced to Derrida through litarary criticism, but I realized he was linked to other philosophers I admire, Lacan, Hegel, Heidegger, and he led me to discover Lyotard and Focault. Those writers have really helped me attain a sort of mastery over the Post-Modern environment, harnessing its raw contradictions as tools and rising above its dystopian elements.
Perhaps I'm not qualified to comment on this because I've only scratched Heidegger, but I'm relatively sure Heidegger would say (and as someone studying Existentialism, one of the uniting factors of Existentialism is) that reality is not mutable, we and what we impose on reality is what is not real. If this is incorrect, please feel free to correct me.
Actually, now that I'm thinking Existentialism more directly, I'm getting an impression of the philosophical position you've been suggesting so far as perhaps Reverse-Existentialism, or perhaps the more straightforward way of saying it would Anti-Existentialism? (Unless there's a name you'd like to make up)
But you seem to be trying to take relativism much further than I've ever seen taken, and the biggest flaw I can see, to reiterate Blinking Spirit, is that I am not the only agent in whatever you define reality to be. If reality is so relative that I can change it to whatever I want it to be, then what about everyone else that is not me in my reality? Given that we can all communicate with each other, then it seems that I'm not the only one in reality or at the least we're sharing realities somehow. And seeing all the influence that not only I put out, but that also comes back in on me (or in the sense that Blinking Spirit is going for, I'd think he'd use the word us) from other human agents and non-human experiences, I don't see how an individual has much control over reality at all beyond the things Blinking Spirit labeled as "mundane."
If you go that route, then why don't you call scientists "philosophers"? What they do was for millennia considered a part of philosophy. Fields evolve. Modern philosophers are more rigorous in general than ancient ones because standards of rigor have improved. Although Aristotle did basically invent logic. That was pretty cool.
That's a good question: Why don't we call scientists philosophers anymore? It's not like they don't try to do the role to varying degrees of good and badness. I mean the glaring go to example is how biology is now heavily involved in debates surrounding philosophy of religion. And heck, I consider plenty of literary writers and poets to be philosophers of some kind, so bringing scientists back doesn't sound that terrifying.
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. So as long as it is addressing those issues and helping people come to a personal understanding of existence, it can't really be pseudo.
It is when that "personal understanding" is false or meaningless.
Question for both of you: how many people does a "personal understanding" have to be false or meaningless to be considered pseudo?
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
We're going to have to settle on a definition of "big," because I was using the word big to mean "relevance" (translation: poor word choice on my part). I.e. "Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy are relevant to the topic of being a lyrical/literary philosophers" is similar enough to "Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy were big lyrical/literary philosophers too" that I would consider them interchangeable.
It is possible for a writer to be relevant to understanding a certain field, to that field's detriment. For example, imagine the writings of Erich von Däniken somehow captivated many in the field of Egyptian history, while their colleagues over in the Egyptian archaeology department remained largely unimpressed by his nonsense because they'd been trained more rigorously. We would have to say that Däniken was relevant to understanding the historiography concerning ancient Egypt. But this would be a sad admission of a fault in that field, not an assignation of genuine academic value to Däniken. And we'd have to say further that one would be best off ignoring Däniken-influenced historians and turning instead to the archaeologists.
Thus the situation with Derrida and continental philosophy. The difference being that Däniken makes factual claims which are untrue, while Derrida is much fonder of very slippery claims that can't really be analyzed as true or false but sound cool in front of a lecture hall.
That's a good question: Why don't we call scientists philosophers anymore?
Interesting fact of biology: a crocodile is more closely related to a chicken than it is to a turtle. You cannot genetically define "reptile" to conform to our commonsense perception of the category without making an ad hoc exception for those creatures we call "birds". The distinction is purely functional: birds have feathers and wings; reptiles don't. Science is a particular branch of human inquiry that has, as it were, taken wing. We feel obliged to give it a distinctive name because it is so spectacularly successful in its function, not because of any genetic reason.
It is possible for a writer to be relevant to understanding a certain field, to that field's detriment. For example, imagine the writings of Erich von Däniken somehow captivated many in the field of Egyptian history, while their colleagues over in the Egyptian archaeology department remained largely unimpressed by his nonsense because they'd been trained more rigorously. We would have to say that Däniken was relevant to understanding the historiography concerning ancient Egypt. But this would be a sad admission of a fault in that field, not an assignation of genuine academic value to Däniken. And we'd have to say further that one would be best off ignoring Däniken-influenced historians and turning instead to the archaeologists.
Chariot of the Gods is about up there with Human Devolution: A Vedic Alternative to Darwin's Theory and Light and the Glory. I never really understood why people are into that stuff. Sure Light and the Glory is easy enough to get, but the other two never got the popularity out of that stuff.
If quantum mechanics is solipsism, why was I able to use it this week to correctly predict spectroscopic data in lab? If you don't realize what this means about the legitimacy of quantum mechanics, you really don't understand science.
So how do you predict spectroscopic data with a cat?
The title of pseudo-philosophy (or sometimes labeled "x's 'so called' philosophy of ...") is thrown around from time to time to disparage/discredit certain views or thinkers. A common example is Ayn Rand*, (her "so called" Philosophy of Objectivism for example). I think this title of pseudo-philosophy is meant to demarcate something that sounds philosophical but that lacks the proper argumentation of support. Is this a correct characterization of pseudo-philosophy? If so, what is the status of seminal philosophical works such as Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus? For I think that this work lacks 'arguments' in favor of pronouncements. So does philosophy itself have a Popperian "demarcation problem"? Otherwise, can someone give me a good example of pseudo-philosophy, or exactly what people mean by this, and further, what distinguishes it from philosophy proper? Any other thoughts or questions?
*I am not a Rand fan/apologist, it is just a common title or remark for her works. I've only read "Anthem" when I was heavy into dystopias in high school.
Philosophy has a demarcation problem. But Wittgenstein's Tractatus doesn't lack arguments; each 'pronouncement', or proposition, is supposed to flow logically from the ones that precede it in the decimal hierarchy.
Rand's thought is often not considered philosophy because of how flimsy it is as a set of arguments. It contradicts itself too often to present a clear-cut structure of ideas. Furthermore, it is discounted because the very use of the word 'Objectivism' is a rhetorical trick; it is as if to say, 'if you see things as they truly, objectively are, you will come to all of these conclusions about economics, society, ethics and so on.' It is sort of an appeal to the majority.
2UURRniv mizzet, the firemind endless fiery mind wheels of death 3WRjor kadeen, the prevailer weenies and extra combat forever 3RRzirilan of the claw dragons and damage doublers 4:SymRG::SymRG:wort, the raidmother burn is now EDH viable 2WUkangee, aerie keeper birds 1UBRjeleva, nephalia's scourge spellslinger/storm
here are the mana costs of generals i no longer play: 2BR3BB3UBG4UB:SymUB::SymUB:2URRG3WWU2UU2GGUUBGG
That's a generalization I wouldn't make.
If you go that route, then why don't you call scientists "philosophers"? What they do was for millennia considered a part of philosophy. Fields evolve. Modern philosophers are more rigorous in general than ancient ones because standards of rigor have improved. Although Aristotle did basically invent logic. That was pretty cool.
This does not follow. A description is dependent on the thing it's describing, not vice versa. If you change the description, you're not changing the thing described; you're just describing it wrongly.
We just had this conversation in one of the religion threads: the idea of a thing is not the thing itself. That people think Barack Obama is Muslim does not make Barack Obama Muslim.
Reality is by definition everything that's real. The "something unknown" is itself real. Therefore the something unknown is part of reality. Therefore reality is more than our perceptions.
Yes, that's what it means for something to "look like". Do you have an alternative?
We've already had this conversation. I've already pointed out why this statement defeats itself. You are saying that it's wrong to think of concepts as wrong.
That existence is mutable has been apparent throughout history to basically everyone except Zeno. You change reality every time you move furniture or eat food or draw breath or do anything at all whatsoever. But if you mean to say that it's mutable in more than this perfectly mundane sense, then no, that is not apparent at all.
That autistic people perceive reality differently does not imply that there are two different realities. It just implies that there is one reality that they perceive differently. Furthermore, the possibility stands that one party or another could be perceiving reality wrongly.
I really don't want to be snide here. I am very sympathetic to those with mental disabilities and am entirely behind anything that would make their lives easier. But I have to ask: if autistic people live in a different reality, how can we, designing things in our reality, help them? The fortunate fact that what we do affects what they perceive means we and they inhabit the same reality.
It is when that "personal understanding" is false or meaningless.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I want hair like that when I'm old.
We're going to have to settle on a definition of "big," because I was using the word big to mean "relevance" (translation: poor word choice on my part). I.e. "Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy are relevant to the topic of being a lyrical/literary philosophers" is similar enough to "Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy were big lyrical/literary philosophers too" that I would consider them interchangeable. But otherwise, I agree, Continental vs. Analytic is not a battle to be fought here (or probably at all since I consider them to be like peanut butter and jelly: having merits of their own, but why rank them when you can just eat the best of both philosophies together?).
***
The problem is (besides what Blinking Spirit said) is that reality continues without language. Leaving "society" and human agents altogether, a tiger in India witnesses a rock slide but does not have any language to describe it, did it happen? Well... I'd hope so.
Publicists and historians don't shape reality, they shape the way that people interpret what they were not present to witness... or lie to those people. It does not make it true. Let me give an example, if every Russian historian tried to pass Anastasia as historically accurate to the point where everyone believed it, I do not think that would make it historically accurate all of a sudden.
I don't know, but this seems like a dubious use of language to me because I've always viewed language as a means to clarify the unknown to something knowable. From there, Blinking Spirit's point of a description being dependent on the thing it is describing takes over. And furthermore, what are these quicker and/or more powerful ways of influencing reality?
Well, texts are where everyone lays down everything as a means to share. But I suppose since I haven't read very much of Derrida, I don't know how broader or narrowly we're defining "texts" for this discussion to understand exactly what your saying.
Perhaps I'm not qualified to comment on this because I've only scratched Heidegger, but I'm relatively sure Heidegger would say (and as someone studying Existentialism, one of the uniting factors of Existentialism is) that reality is not mutable, we and what we impose on reality is what is not real. If this is incorrect, please feel free to correct me.
Actually, now that I'm thinking Existentialism more directly, I'm getting an impression of the philosophical position you've been suggesting so far as perhaps Reverse-Existentialism, or perhaps the more straightforward way of saying it would Anti-Existentialism? (Unless there's a name you'd like to make up)
But you seem to be trying to take relativism much further than I've ever seen taken, and the biggest flaw I can see, to reiterate Blinking Spirit, is that I am not the only agent in whatever you define reality to be. If reality is so relative that I can change it to whatever I want it to be, then what about everyone else that is not me in my reality? Given that we can all communicate with each other, then it seems that I'm not the only one in reality or at the least we're sharing realities somehow. And seeing all the influence that not only I put out, but that also comes back in on me (or in the sense that Blinking Spirit is going for, I'd think he'd use the word us) from other human agents and non-human experiences, I don't see how an individual has much control over reality at all beyond the things Blinking Spirit labeled as "mundane."
***
That's a good question: Why don't we call scientists philosophers anymore? It's not like they don't try to do the role to varying degrees of good and badness. I mean the glaring go to example is how biology is now heavily involved in debates surrounding philosophy of religion. And heck, I consider plenty of literary writers and poets to be philosophers of some kind, so bringing scientists back doesn't sound that terrifying.
Question for both of you: how many people does a "personal understanding" have to be false or meaningless to be considered pseudo?
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
It is possible for a writer to be relevant to understanding a certain field, to that field's detriment. For example, imagine the writings of Erich von Däniken somehow captivated many in the field of Egyptian history, while their colleagues over in the Egyptian archaeology department remained largely unimpressed by his nonsense because they'd been trained more rigorously. We would have to say that Däniken was relevant to understanding the historiography concerning ancient Egypt. But this would be a sad admission of a fault in that field, not an assignation of genuine academic value to Däniken. And we'd have to say further that one would be best off ignoring Däniken-influenced historians and turning instead to the archaeologists.
Thus the situation with Derrida and continental philosophy. The difference being that Däniken makes factual claims which are untrue, while Derrida is much fonder of very slippery claims that can't really be analyzed as true or false but sound cool in front of a lecture hall.
Interesting fact of biology: a crocodile is more closely related to a chicken than it is to a turtle. You cannot genetically define "reptile" to conform to our commonsense perception of the category without making an ad hoc exception for those creatures we call "birds". The distinction is purely functional: birds have feathers and wings; reptiles don't. Science is a particular branch of human inquiry that has, as it were, taken wing. We feel obliged to give it a distinctive name because it is so spectacularly successful in its function, not because of any genetic reason.
I can't parse this question.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Chariot of the Gods is about up there with Human Devolution: A Vedic Alternative to Darwin's Theory and Light and the Glory. I never really understood why people are into that stuff. Sure Light and the Glory is easy enough to get, but the other two never got the popularity out of that stuff.
So how do you predict spectroscopic data with a cat?
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
Philosophy has a demarcation problem. But Wittgenstein's Tractatus doesn't lack arguments; each 'pronouncement', or proposition, is supposed to flow logically from the ones that precede it in the decimal hierarchy.
Rand's thought is often not considered philosophy because of how flimsy it is as a set of arguments. It contradicts itself too often to present a clear-cut structure of ideas. Furthermore, it is discounted because the very use of the word 'Objectivism' is a rhetorical trick; it is as if to say, 'if you see things as they truly, objectively are, you will come to all of these conclusions about economics, society, ethics and so on.' It is sort of an appeal to the majority.
3WR jor kadeen, the prevailer weenies and extra combat forever
3RR zirilan of the claw dragons and damage doublers
4:SymRG::SymRG: wort, the raidmother burn is now EDH viable
2WU kangee, aerie keeper birds
1UBR jeleva, nephalia's scourge spellslinger/storm
here are the mana costs of generals i no longer play: 2BR3BB3UBG4UB:SymUB::SymUB:2URRG3WWU2UU2GGUUBGG
3UWR numot, the devastator of [the spirit of edh]