Are humans bad at philosophy?
This is based on TGW's comments in the "What do you care about?" thread.
Are people bad at philosophy? This would include professional philosophers as well as the rest of us.
First of all, what would it mean for everyone to be bad at philosophy? It would mean that even our most celebrated philosophers make fundamental mistakes, and that long standing philosophical problems remain contentious and unresolved, despite centuries of our best philosophical minds giving it a go. Or it could mean that some of those issues have been solved a long time ago, but most fail to recognize this.
If this is so, why is the human race poor at philosophizing?
One possibility is that it's hard. But it's not the only hard subject. Math is hard, or at least being good at it is difficult. But some people are good mathematicians, and mathematical problems do get solved over time. And if something has been solved a long time ago, mathematicians are aware of it. But maybe philosophy is hard in a way that math is not.
Another possibility is that we're not really interested in philosophizing properly. Rather, we're more interested in being right. The point is to win arguments, not find the right philosophical solution. We're all sophists.
Or maybe it's that humans tend to be deeply invested in the views we hold, and thus make arguments work in favour of the views we hold. The whole smart people believing dumb things that Michael Shermer based a book on. The smarter you are, the better you are at defending your views.
A Wittgensteinian proposal would be that language bewitches us, fooling philosophers into thinking there are deep issues to be resolved, when it is really language being taken out of its proper context.
Another alternative suggested by Colin McGinn is that humans are cognitively closed to certain answers, and philosophical reasoning is where we come up against those questions. This would be the hard problem of philosophy.
Or perhaps there are some people who are good at philosophy, and we just need to pay attention to their arguments.
Are people bad at philosophy? This would include professional philosophers as well as the rest of us.
First of all, what would it mean for everyone to be bad at philosophy? It would mean that even our most celebrated philosophers make fundamental mistakes, and that long standing philosophical problems remain contentious and unresolved, despite centuries of our best philosophical minds giving it a go. Or it could mean that some of those issues have been solved a long time ago, but most fail to recognize this.
If this is so, why is the human race poor at philosophizing?
One possibility is that it's hard. But it's not the only hard subject. Math is hard, or at least being good at it is difficult. But some people are good mathematicians, and mathematical problems do get solved over time. And if something has been solved a long time ago, mathematicians are aware of it. But maybe philosophy is hard in a way that math is not.
Another possibility is that we're not really interested in philosophizing properly. Rather, we're more interested in being right. The point is to win arguments, not find the right philosophical solution. We're all sophists.
Or maybe it's that humans tend to be deeply invested in the views we hold, and thus make arguments work in favour of the views we hold. The whole smart people believing dumb things that Michael Shermer based a book on. The smarter you are, the better you are at defending your views.
A Wittgensteinian proposal would be that language bewitches us, fooling philosophers into thinking there are deep issues to be resolved, when it is really language being taken out of its proper context.
Another alternative suggested by Colin McGinn is that humans are cognitively closed to certain answers, and philosophical reasoning is where we come up against those questions. This would be the hard problem of philosophy.
Or perhaps there are some people who are good at philosophy, and we just need to pay attention to their arguments.
Comments (65)
-Wittgenstein
How would you decide that people were either "good" or "bad" at philosophy? Would one look for "progress"?
Are people bad at literature? Literature has made little "progress" beyond the achievements of the first surviving works we have (just my opinion). Greek tragedy is pretty good (ref: the Oresteia), and Greek comedy is pretty funny (Lysistrata, for example). Some of the Psalms date back 3000 years and are still in daily use. We have lost most of the ancient literature; only a fragment remains. The quantity of literature we have since 1400 is much, much larger -- because we haven't lost much of it, yet. Is it "better" because there is more of it?
Then, nobody is good at everything. Some people are great poets and lousy physicians. Some people are great at making money but bad at ethics. Some individuals were on the right track in science over the last few millennia, but they were frequently one-off insightful geniuses. It took us a long time to accumulate enough insight into biology, physics, chemistry, geology, etc. to ignite the scientific revolution.
What we are really not good at is overcoming our biological and mental limitations. We don't seem to be able to plan for the long run--50 to 100 months, let alone 50, 100, or 1000 years into the future. We don't seem to be able to perceive the desperate straits we get ourselves into until about 15 minutes after it is too late.
No, we're great at philosophy, and a dozen other fields. Sadly, it may not save us.
The mistakes they make when philosophizing.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Ability to correct our mistakes over time.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Is literature a field that progresses? I don't think it's the goal of writing to advance the field. It's like asking whether art progresses. New forms are introduced, and people may or may not value the new over the old, but there isn't an objective criteria for what counts as progress. Maybe the accumulation of works could be considered a sort of progress?
If philosophy is an art form, then okay, progress doesn't matter. Landru from the old forum argued that philosophy isn't about resolving issues, it's about generating new discourse, or something along those lines.
But then again, philosophy does utilize logic to make arguments. If it's more of a math or science, then we would expect progress. The question of free will should have been put to rest by now, for example. Dennett would claim that surely there is an answer to the problem of free will within all permutations of 50 pages of writing or less.
Reminds me of NY Times article on Wittgenstein's philosophy. The author wasn't sure whether Witty was right or not, but he thought professional philosophers should give his arguments more consideration than they have.
Rational thought is very difficult for humans to sustain, let alone express coherently, even for short intervals (as this or virtually any other forum or Comment section on the internet evidences.)
So, humans are not bad at philosophy--they are terrible at philosophy.
Most people just skip the effort altogether. And, as discussion sessions even at professional philosophy conventions attest, there is virtually unanimous agreement among those who try to do philosophy, that there remains much muddled confusion and unintelligible nonsense.
I think the Wittgenstein answer would start here. Is to say that 'everyone is bad at philosophy' meaningful? How is it meaningful? To what or whom are you comparing 'everyone'? - This 'what or whom' needs to be better at philosophy than us. And who is doing the comparing? This 'who' needs to be independent of 'everyone' and accepted as capable of judgment.
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But we're able to determine progress in math or the sciences. The who is the human race. Our collective effort at philosophizing, with professional philosophers representing our best effort. But anyone can contribute.
So philosophy is harder than math or physics.
If they gave them any more, nobody would study anything but Wittgenstein.
Jesus.
My first post in months, and the first response is a complete non seq.
Which, I might note, supports my assertion that rational thought is very difficult for humans to sustain even for short intervals.
I'm asking whether rational though qua philosophy is harder than in fields like math or physics, which people generally acknowledge to be challenging subjects.
Is philosophy difficult in a way that those sorts of fields are not, seeing as how progress is made in them?
So professional philosophers do agree with the contention that humans aren't very good at it?
It seems to me that they don't even think very many other philosophers are very good at it.
I don't know if philosophy is harder than physics or math.
Not clear to me what the metric for such a comparison would be.
That you don't hear mathematicians and physicists saying that kind of thing about the entire field that Witty was quoted above as saying, and that although they may not respect a certain physicist or mathematician, and their particular field of study, they don't think the entire field is a confused muddle that is still grappling with the same issues the Ancient Greeks were.
And if you asked a group of mathematicians or physicists whether a currently difficult, unresolved problem will be solved at some point in the future, they are likely to say yes, and express optimism that humanity can solve such challenges.
Some philosophers are praised by one group and excoriated by another. Some people think some philosophers are RIGHT and others think the same philosopher is NOT EVEN WRONG. So, when you say "mistakes they make" are we to suppose they make glaring errors that even their admirers would call mistakes?
Quoting Marchesk
Correct 'old mistakes' or catch and correct 'new mistakes'? Haven't the old mistakes been pretty well identified and corrected? Or not? If not, what the hell has philosophy been doing for the past 2500 years? If philosophy had progressed, wouldn't the number and gravity of new mistakes be quite minor by this time?
Quoting Marchesk
Some people think that literature is a field that progresses. I'm not one of them. Successful literature changes with and satisfies the readers of the author's time, and if its very successful, it satisfies centuries afterward--Dante, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, et al. What pleases people in literature doesn't "progress" it changes, and of course some people's standards are higher than others. Some people like trashy bodice ripper romances, others like a novel by Henry James or Dickens.
Some people think philosophy is a complete waste of time, let alone it being able to progress.
Once upon a time, but not recently, philosophy was the hot zone of human thought. The various fields which philosophy spawned (like physics, chemistry, biology, etc.) over time became the new and current hot spots.
To what extent can one live a full, productive, intellectually rich life without studying philosophy beyond knowing something about its classic works? Had philosophy "progressed" wouldn't it still be the keystone of human thought? It isn't. New "arches" have been built above the ancient arch, and new keystones are holding up these much larger arches.
Sure, physics and math can demonstrate more progress and more promise, but this does not imply that philosophy is harder.
Perhaps philosophy can't demonstrate such progress because it's just wasting its time asking questions that can't be answered, or that don't even make sense in the first place. And, of course, there's the fact that physics was spun off of "natural philosophy." That is, it was philosophy until enough people figured out a way to pose and actually answer certain categories of questions, largely leaving the meta speculations behind for the philosophers to amuse themselves with.
Philosophy is the rock against which progress is measured. Oh, you know how it all works? You know what you're here for? You know how to live? You know who you are? At last. Really? Well done.
Philosophy is not exactly a collective correction and accumulation of a body of knowledge and belief like science; it consists more in an individual inquiry into how to live well or what to believe. What would you expect of philosophy that it has not delivered? Haven't the "big questions" and ever-new variations on them been adequately expressed and re-expressed?
Since it is a logical fact that for every answer to a philosophical question there is its dialectical counterpart; why would you be surprised that there are still no definitive answers in philosophy? Isn't the purpose of philosophy on the broad scale to achieve a better understanding of the questions and to discover new variations and connections between them and even new questions? Do you think philosophy has really failed to do that?
On the other hand, what if the very best that is possible in philosophy has already been achieved by Spinoza, say, or Kant, or Hegel? How would you know? You might believe the best was achieved by Spinoza, but won't it always be possible that I could disagree with you, just as I might disagree with you that Mozart's music is greater than Bach's or Beethoven's, or Miles Davis'.
I think this whole idea of TGW's that humans are bad at philosophy, that a great philosopher like Kant, for example, really just believed stupid things, is itself a very stupid, facile, even childishly petulant response, that consists essentially in wanting to believe that without making any genuine contribution or effort one could raise oneself to a level above those who are generally considered to be the greats.
I believe the example of Kant making a fundamental mistake was that we can and do get outside our conceptual schemas to check them against the world, even merely in our interactions with one another. Or if you prefer Davidson's critique, conceptual schemas are an incoherent notion.
But not everyone agrees, which seems to be a big problem in philosophy: the lack of agreement over what constitutes a good or bad argument, outside of an accepted logical proof.
If philosophy is an artform like literature or music instead of math or science.
So, you believe that we can and do understand the world in ways that are completely free from any conceptualization whatsoever?
And why would you expect everyone to agree since, presumably, different people have different life experiences? Do you imagine that, if it was great, philosophy's greatness would consist in bringing everyone to exactly the same view of, and set of beliefs about, the world?
Yeah, well I happen to believe that philosophy is more an art than a science; although it obviously has elements of the latter.
No. It all depends on what is meant by being trapped inside our conceptual schemes. But then that leads down the paved road of endless semantic dispute.
So maybe we would need to get clear what Kant and others of a similar mind mean, and what people using Kant to make such arguments mean.
I've taken it to mean that we can't check our concepts against the world (or how others think), and thus revise them accordingly. Which seems patently false.
The funny thing here is that there's a sense in which answering the question is to participate in the activity of philosophy. Only a sense -- I could see approaching the question in a manner which is a-philosophical; perhaps sociological, as a for instance. But it's worth noting here because if we answer in either direction that answer will sort of confirm itself, in a way. Yes, we are bad at philosophy -- look at how we answer the question. No, we are not bad at philosophy -- the same. The answer is recursive to the topic being asked about.
I'd take out the 'everyone' here and ask -- what would it mean for anyone to be bad at philosophy? Can we point to one act of bad philosophy? What about several bad acts of philosophy? Then it's just a matter of checking 'everyone' in some fashion.
Sophistry comes to mind here as the sort of arch-enemy of philosophy. We may appear to be philosophical, but we are only using the same tools of philosophy in a bad way -- to teach the well-to-do how to do well in court and congress so that they continue to pay our wages. (though said criticism came from one whose wages were not a concern due to already being aristocratic, it should be noted)
Then poor reasoning also comes to mind. It's not so much the specifics of our beliefs and arguments, but rather the 'form' of arguments which we propose do not hold up to rational scrutiny -- they are rhetorical ploys or make basic errors in reasoning.
I think it also comes down to the way we look at philosophy, too -- not just what counts as good or bad philosophy, but what counts as philosophy at all. Sophistry comes to mind here, too, but I've already touched on that. The institutions of philosophy, at least, change as do the particular focuses and concerns. And with that change in focus it seems that philosophy's goals change. Some have sought to improve upon the soul of the leaders of society, others to cure the soul of its ailments, others to change society at large, others to gain understanding or wisdom for themselves, others to build a science out of the classical philosophical questions, others to preserve what is naturally human in the face of a society which threatens that...
Goals are an easy way to determine good or bad, in general. Or, generally speaking rather. But with philosophy this isn't quite right. Debating, or considering, or at least thinking about the various goals and their methods and conclusions is itself the philosophical project. Or, even phrasing it like this seems to poison the well -- is philosophy even a project? Or is it just an inclination which humans have, like art and religion?
I think we are bad at reasoning. I think this has been empirically demonstrated, at least for our culture (as most empirical studies on reasoning are performed on bribed/coerced undergraduates ;) ). But I'm uncertain that I'd say this means we are bad at philosophy, per se. I think we can be bad at philosophy -- that's not what I mean. I don't mean to make philosophy something which can't be judged. It can be. But the very judgment is an act of philosophy, and it seems to me that philosophy, while very much concerned for reason and argument, is more than reason and argument.
I dunno. :D
Definitely this would be a sign that we're bad at it, particularly if professional philosophers fall prey to the same poor reasoning.
Kant said: "Thoughts without intuitions are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind."
I take this to mean that intuitions ('Intuitions' for Kant means 'sensings') without conceptual shape are 'invisible' to us. This means that our experience of the world is ineluctably conceptually shaped. That is what it would mean to say that Kant thinks we cannot 'get outside our conceptual schemas', although I doubt he ever expressed it exactly like that. ( Well he obviously didn't, if only because he wrote in German).
I think that philosophers are more honest, and I think that honesty is the true mark of intelligence. They don't have to be right all the time, or about everything, but no ones doing any better. Everyone is pretty much just saying the same stuff as the Greeks too, with small novel divergences and or just simple inversions on various points.
It's still the highest ends of what's going on in human thought. How it relates to some non-human reality is always secondary to me.
Novices are generally not good at any activity; so this wouldn't seem to support the idea that practiced philosophers are bad at philosophy. In fact if they were not good at it they would not be able to recognize how bad undergraduates are. There is no absolute good and bad; expertise is relative only to the range of expertise within any field.
Did Kant mean it in the broadest sense that we can't get outside of some form of conceptualizing the world, or that we can't get outside of specific fundamental concepts?
Beyond Kant, the anti-realist argument would be that we can't get outside our thinking about the world to see what the world is actually like, and adjust our concepts accordingly. But that flies in the face of history and most fields of knowledge, were humans do revise their concepts based on new knowledge and experiences.
What we moderns think about the world is different in many ways than what various ancient groups though, because our knowledge and experiences of the world has grown quite a bit.
Yes, and the question is what non-human scale of values could it possibly be related to, in any case?
I changed my post, because that would need to be expounded on to say that if professional philosophers made the same fundamental mistakes as students, unlike with other professions, then there would be reason to think humanity is just bad at philosophizing.
So Humeans are howler monkeys, and Kant is the monolith from 2001? j/k
Quoting Wosret
What does it mean for thought to be objective and universal? Does that just mean for all humanity? Or any thinking being? I take it Kant wasn't endorsing Platonism.
Some concepts do seem to be fundamental; space, time, causality, materiality, form, function, quantity, quality, relation, modality. I just thought of those off the top of my head; I'm sure there are more. Do you think we can do without any of those?
Quoting Marchesk
Our thinking about the world is produced by the world, so as the world changes our thinking changes without our ever having to "get outside of our thinking".
What it means is that we can think the same thing, and it isn't dependent on the material that instantiates it, but on principles of form, which are universal, so that I and you, can construct the same idea, or thought, or meaningful thing out of any material whatever, and as long as the form is right, then we can obtain the same meaning, or idea.
Necessarily then, none of that form or meaning can be dependent on the material that is used in forming it. It can't be found in it, but in order for it to be meaningful, to be "rational" it has to be universal and the same precisely in all instantiations. This is just how reason works, and no material that instantiates anything does.
Perhaps not. But we can revise our thinking on them. And we can propose concepts without one or more of those categories you listed.
The idea that time and space arise from something more fundamental, or that the cosmos is massively contingent and without any prescriptive laws of nature. Or that time doesn't really flow, and the future already exists. Stuff like that.
Did Kant think those things couldn't exist in the world? Was carving nature at its joints incoherent to him?
Here's the suggested evidence that humans perform poorly at philosophy:
1. Errors in reasoning affecting even professional philosophers.
2. Failure to resolve issues explored by the ancient Greeks.
3. Failure to reach consensus on almost anything.
4. That professional philosophers generally agree with the assessment that their colleagues are poor at doing philosophy.
The evidence can be contested, but if it is correct, then we'd have reason for thinking humans aren't that great at philosophizing.
That is a thing, I've heard of that... from now on whenever things don't work out I'll take it as a compliment from the universe.
That's odd. I saw a study that suggested just the opposite: Smart people tended to be more crooked.
Quoting Wosret
Your study, my study, and your statement that philosophers are more honest (than horses, say) and that honesty is the true mark of intelligence are all groundless. It may be the case that stupid people are crooks, or that smart people are, but I'm pretty sure this hasn't been proved to the satisfaction of even a C+ GPA undergraduate psychology major.
What principles of behavior would link intelligence (a lot of it or only a little) to honesty? What is it about honesty and intelligence that connects them? Is it not more likely that a very smart person would think of successful ways to lie, cheat, and steal? Stupid people would trip themselves up and be discovered--dumb and dishonest, wouldn't they?
You may be right that philosophers are more honest (than horses, say) but why? Are they honest because they have nothing to lose? Maybe they know they are too unimaginative to lie and get away with it? Could it be that they took their ethics class seriously? Maybe they are merely afraid of getting caught in a lie -- which is different than valuing the truth highly.
Together we have reinforced the idea that people are not very good at philosophy, and that we may not be very good at psychology either. What the hell are we good at? Homo mediocriter. I'm poor at math, gardening, housekeeping, astronomy, Sanskrit, and bicycle maintenance, just for starters. I am also slightly dishonest.
Telling stories. Maybe we should put philosophy into literary form. Or just have undergrads watch The Matrix and Fight Club.
I said "I think" rather than that's a fact. I think it for various reasons, but mostly because philosophy is supposed to be about the true and the good. I also think that it deals with the most problematic areas of life. Call me biased, or bad at psychology.
I don't think that we can consistently tell whether people are lying, no one can demonstrate an ability to consistently greater than chance, and seven year olds can pull it off. It takes trust, not intelligence to fool people. They have to be willing to trust you, and there are various reasons why they would or wouldn't, mostly based on your known and reputable trustworthiness, and agreeableness. I maintain that it doesn't takes intelligence to deceive, it takes trust, and the consequences of deception are the same risks to the idiot as the genius.
Better is not the word to use for things like philosophy and art. Mozart's music was created and appreciated by a civilization that had never heard of Miles Davis. Jazz was created and sustained by a civilization that appreciated Mozart.
Quine and Davidson are philosophers who inherited the legacy of Kant (and everything that Kant inherited), modern science and the logic of Frege. Kant did not live to see post-Newtonian physics or modern logic.
It is not exactly the same thing for science. As remarked by Bouveresse, there are Aristotelian philosophers today, but no Aristotelian physicists.
Dolphins are better at it.
Can you give an example of any concept "without one or more of those categories"?
Spinoza, for example proposed that time and space arise form substance, which is infinite and eternal. So he has given us a concept "without one or more of those categories", except that the subject of the concept is said to give rise to all of them. I think this is quote similar to Kant's idea that the noumenal gives rise to the phenomenal. Spinoza actually says that God is the "efficient cause" of both the existence and the eternal essence of things. But this kind of metaphysical stuff is beyond the purview of science.
If the cosmos were "massively contingent" it would be unintelligible, so we can put that one to rest, I think. Does time flow or do things move (change) in time? The idea that the future "already exists" seems unintelligible. But from the point of view of eternity, all that is past, present and future is eternally present. "Already exists" suggests a before and after though, and yet there is before and after only in time, not in eternity. None of this stuff is decidable by science, though; it is all metaphysics.
So, Kant would be right, I would say, if he thought such things couldn't exist in the world. I believe he thought we do "carve nature at the joints", though.
Substance isn't a casual state. God does not exist and act to create states of the existence and the form. Rather God is a logical expression, the infinite which existence never without, expressed all the time. When Spinoza says "God causes," he's talking more like a manner of "final cause," of necessary logical expression, of the infinite which nothing is ever without, only he recognises it as a necessary truth rather than an action of the world which creates meaning where there was none.
Spinoza's philosophy is dedicated to showing the opposite, to how the necessity of eternity isn't at all opposed to the contingent and the possible. The future might always "already exist," but is still need to be made. To get there events still have to occur and people have to make choices. Without those entirely contingent moments, the future which "already exists " would never arrive.
In terms of states of the world, is all decided by "science." All the events that occur are a function of the existing states themselves and their relationships. The possible outcomes which are actual are defined by states of the world, by their causal relationships, by the states of the world and how they interact.
Everything you say here presents nothing more than the assertions of TWOD, it does not represent the philosophy of Spinoza.
Ethics Part I
PROPOSITION 16,
Corollary I: Hence it follows that God is the efficient cause of all things that can come within the scope of the infinite intellect.
PROPOSITION 2 5
God is the efficient cause not only of the existence of things but also of their essence.
Proof: If this is denied, then God is not the cause of the essence of things, and
so (Ax. 4) the essence of things can be conceived without God. But this is absurd
(Pr. 1 5). Therefore, God is also the cause of the essence of things.
Scholium This proposition follows more clearly from Pro 1 6; for from that
proposition it follows that from the given divine nature both the essence and the
existence of things must be inferred. In a word, in the same sense that God is said
to be self-caused he must also be said to be the cause of all things. This will be
even clearer from the following Corollary.
Corollary Particular things are nothing but affections of the attributes of God,
that is, modes wherein the attributes of God find expression in a definite and determinate
way. The proof is obvious from Pr. 1 5 and Def. 5.
All I can say is that if you have read Spinoza, you have obviously not understood him.
You are missing this key definition. Spinoza is talking about the infinite intellect here, not finite states of the world (i.e. "efficient causality" as is commonly used).
It's made clear a couple of propositions down:
You have not understood Spinoza, John. You're cherrypicking his thought to confirm what you think he should be saying.
The misunderstanding and the "cherrypicking" is pretty obviously yours, as I see it.
Firstly. Spinoza would say that both the existence and the essence of all things would "come within the scope of an infinite intellect.
Secondly, by differentiating between transient cause and indwelling cause, I think Spinoza should be understood to be pointing out that since God is the efficient cause of all things, that efficient causation is not a transitive matter, as it is usually thought to be.
Everything proceeds from the utter necessity of God's nature; and the notion of contingency and, correlatively, contingent causation is only coherent and applicable insofar as we are unaware of the totality of the causal determination of things and events.
Thirdly, you are conveniently ignoring PROPOSITION 25:
and its exact agreement with what I had said that you based your disagreement upon:
Quoting John
Now, I am not arguing that Spinoza is right about this, that is a separate question; but it is very clear to me that it is what he thought. If you can provide some clear textual evidence to the contrary, either from Spinoza or from an expert interpreter, or even a decent argument explicating a plausible alternative interpretation, then I will be prepared to listen, but mere assertions will not do.
Yes. To say that humans are poor at philosophy assumes some ideal way of doing philosophy that humans are not attaining. It's like saying that all humans are poor at basketball, despite players such as Michael Jordan. It presupposes some ideal philosopher (or basketball player) that no human can match.
To err is human. Again, who else does philosophy?
All of them or some of them? Perhaps some are unresolvable.
Really? The subject of philosophy has evolved over the millenia and many of its questions have been subsumed by science, which has provided much consensus on many of its branches. Philosophy will continue to evolve, of course, and there is no reason to expect that all of the various issues that it has raised or will continue to raise should have been resolved by now.
Perhaps most philosophers are just inherently pessimistic and/or hypercritical (compared to other humans, that is).
Yes, I was going to ask too: Are humans bad at philosophy compared to who or what? By what yardstick do we measure the skilful or unskilful carrying out of philosophy except the humans that do and have done it? It's like saying humans are bad at reasoning. No, we're very bloody good at it actually compared to every other life form we know of.
Edit: (Maybe it's a trivial point as the OP does address the more sensible question as to why we make the mistakes we do when philosophizing. Still, it irks me slightly.)
Some cognitive scientists have stated that we are bad at reasoning. That we're better than other animals is like saying I'm better at playing the violin than a dog.
But if no humans mastered playing the violin, despite putting in the effort, then we would conclude that humans are bad at playing the violin. What would be the comparison? Other instruments.
But it's easy enough to find things we are uncontroversially bad at. Crunching big numbers, memory accuracy, repetitive perfection - stuff that computers are very good at. Now you might argue that there's the comparison, but computers were made because we're bad at those things. Computers used to be human calculators. It wasn't impossible with lots of people to do heavy duty calculations, it's just inefficient and error prone.
I'm not, unfortunately.
I'm not considering the ideal. It's a comparison with other human abilities. We're naturally good at language and storytelling. Math and logic are harder for us to be good at. Memory recall is rather poor, when it comes to accuracy.
Colin McGinn in discussing the possibility that we're cognitively closed to certain philosophical answers mentioned that we're very good at technology, but there could be another intelligent species out there that's the reverse. Where they're as good at doing philosophy as we are at tool making. It's not that they would be perfect philosophers, just good at it.
Yeah, me too.
It's really hard to get the damn dog to hold still even when I tune him, let alone when I try an arpeggio.
>:O
I am as certain as I can claim to be, that given it is possible to be better at philosophy - a species that identifies as human is almost certainly going to be at a disadvantage to another species of somehow preciously the same IQ and EQ that differs just by way of having a gender fricken neutral species name...
It is in some ways ludicrous to think of ourselves capable of correctly interpreting existential layer stuff when thinking about the sheer amount of crossed wires firing off from the disaster that is 'man'kind.
(TLDR if that was confusing - Gender is irrelevant. Everything is Energy. - To such a point, that when we cut the shit on defending our attachment to 'man'kind, we can note quite clearly that to call ourselves something so utterly sexist is to basically set ourselves up as either a joke or a facepalm for other species.)
It will get down to belief system issues.
As started in the OP "Rather, we're more interested in being right.". This really mixes well with the saying "Correct a fool and he will hate you, correct a wise man he will appreciate you". We are wrong, so often while thinking, that to embark on the thinking about thinking journey correctly implies an increased amount of 'being wrong'. This is discouraging, particularly for belief systems that haven't done some meta work on learning from mistakes.
Keep going.
<3
lol, I think it is exactly the other way around. But the classical thought section is not as popular as the Dr. Oz self help aisle. So if it were a matter of vote, I would lose.