Pedantry and philosophy
In common parlance, pedantry is an excessive concern or focus on minor details. It is loosing sight of the forest for the trees. It is generally considered a pejorative term, and I think that we can agree that it is to be avoided.
Philosophy is the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence. It seeks to "dig deeper", and often questions the premises and underlying assumptions of our conceptions of these things. A common complaint about philosophy is that it seems pedantic to the common man. "If a tree fell in the forest, then it fell in a forest, who cares who heard it?".
So what's the difference? Both are basically taking an unusually reductive approach to subjects that are normally left unspoken. I think we'd probably agree that when Bill Clinton protested "It depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is, he was being pedantic. We could, however, also note that figuring out what the meaning of "is" is, is basically shorthand for the whole enterprise of metaphysics. So why do we chide Bill Clinton, yet praise Heraclitus, Spinoza, Frege and Russell? Where is the line between the one and the other, and if not a bright line (because how often is it ever a bright line?), what accounts for the differences, and how do we go about distinguishing between them in the grey areas?
I have some thoughts on the matter, but I'd like to see what others have to say on the subject.
Philosophy is the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence. It seeks to "dig deeper", and often questions the premises and underlying assumptions of our conceptions of these things. A common complaint about philosophy is that it seems pedantic to the common man. "If a tree fell in the forest, then it fell in a forest, who cares who heard it?".
So what's the difference? Both are basically taking an unusually reductive approach to subjects that are normally left unspoken. I think we'd probably agree that when Bill Clinton protested "It depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is, he was being pedantic. We could, however, also note that figuring out what the meaning of "is" is, is basically shorthand for the whole enterprise of metaphysics. So why do we chide Bill Clinton, yet praise Heraclitus, Spinoza, Frege and Russell? Where is the line between the one and the other, and if not a bright line (because how often is it ever a bright line?), what accounts for the differences, and how do we go about distinguishing between them in the grey areas?
I have some thoughts on the matter, but I'd like to see what others have to say on the subject.
Comments (31)
If the answer to any of those questions is "No," then we often look for an easy way to dismiss the person in question, and calling them "pedantic" is one such way.
Sorry, but your response seems a little over-simplistic to me.
Whether someone is detrimentally "pedantic" or not, yes.
That's fine, but I'm telling you how people actually use the word in conversations. You can choose to ignore that if you want to, and it's no skin off my nose.
Also, the idea that community or social standards aren't personal opinion/taste is ridiculous.
Either I'm not understanding you or vice versa, because I have no idea where this response is coming from. I know people use the word in conversations. I'm not sure why you bring that up.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I don't think that it makes sense to call them opinions, even though they aren't objective. The word opinion usually implies that you're talking about the feelings of one individual.
My first response in this thread was explaining why people use the word "pedantic" when they do, especially when they use it with normative connotations.
Re the other thing, I don't know why we'd call it something other than opinion just because people have the same one.
I don't think there's a distinction between them, but what do you see as the distinction? Are you simply talking about the fact that at present, one happens to be illegal in the U.S., say, and the other isn't? What else is the distinction?
Which is precisely why some have alleged that Western Metaphysics is inherently phallogocentric ;-)
That would have made more sense if your gin example had been, "I don't like gin," or "this gin tastes bad." "Gin is bad" is just as often meant normatively as "walking around naked in public is bad."
Really? If I say "Gin is bad" I wouldn't expect you to stop drinking it. I would assume you interpreted it as being synonymous with "I don't like gin". I wouldn't have the same expectation about the same sort of utterance about public nudity.
I look forward to hear what your ideas are.
My view is that pedantry, or the tendency to engage in it, is an intellectual vice that doesn't (usually) reflect badly on the intellectual character of the 'pedantic' individual as much as it does reflect on deficiencies of the theoretical paradigm that she occupies. To consider only the example of scientific paradigms, for sake of illustration: if the apparent hair-splitting is actually done in the context of the search for better foundations and/or solving persistent puzzles over the course of an episode of 'normal science' (in Kuhn's sense) then it's not a vice at all so long as the research programme remains productive (and the paradigm is valid). In that case we say that the researchers are being thorough and conscientious. If, on the other hand, the paradigm is pathological (as is the case with pseudosciences) or is in the process of being over-extended beyond its proper domain of application, then the arguments adduced for defending it in the face of anomalous results or reasonable theoretical objections will rightfully be deemed pedantic by outsiders who can clearly view the limitations of this paradigm.
We may thus rightfully view the pedantry of the practitioners of a degenerating research programme as a vice; but it is a circumstantial vice, as it were, that they manifest only so long as they remain captives of the deficient paradigm, and it only is a vice, also, if indeed the paradigm *is* deficient or is being over-extended.
Well, we agree about much, based on your post. I think that context, and specifically what is the goal or benefit of a particular analysis, is central to the issue. How we frame things matters. We don't use quantum mechanics to build bridges, or classical physics to make a highs boson.
Having said that, I think there's value in general inquiry, and philosophy is often not guided by practical concerns, so I'm not sure that the normal ways of framing discussion work well in all areas of philosophy.
You might not have that expectation, but some people would. For example, people who supported prohibition for moral reasons.
Likewise, maybe some people wouldn't think "You shouldn't parade around in public naked" via just saying that they think that is bad.
Yes, I agree that domains of inquiry in philosophy are quite different from scientific paradigms. There are paradigms in philosophy but there isn't much of a counterpart to 'normal science' and the different fields are much less separable, and of course much less 'practical', than the various 'special sciences' are. But there are clear analogues to degeneracy and to over-extension, and a common quest for understanding.
Is this ironic performance art? I'm asking, because this response strikes me as being pedantic. We can absolutely imagine cases where what I said wasn't true, but I think that in general what I said is true. Do you disagree?
Could you give me a "for instance"?
You mean statistically a la what most people would have in mind? I have no idea, and you don't either. No one has done surveys about this. But why would such a thing be determined by what most people have in mind anyway?
Of course each example will reflect my own views since adherents of those programmes aren't going to agree to my offensive pigeon-holing of them. But it seems to me that, for instance, the post-Gettier attempts to analyse knowledge as belief + truth + (internal) justification + 'some complicated missing element' is some sort of a degenerative research programme in contemporary epistemology. A case of over-extension might be the subsumption of mental states and events, as well as actions, under a Humean metaphysics of event-causation rather than a metaphysics of substances and powers. But in that case I am unsure the over-extended paradigm has so much as a proper domain of application. I might try to think of a better example...
Coming to think of it, most attempts to naturalize stuff (e.g. 'naturalize the mind', 'naturalize epistemology', etc.) in analytic philosophy may be best characterized as cases of scientific paradigms being over-extended and encroaching into properly philosophical areas of inquiry. Of course, proponents of the extension will view the resistance from people who object to their scientism as reactionary.
They're being philosophical, which is fine, as long as everyone understands the distinction, although if a way can be devised to test different interpretations, then it goes from philosophical to scientific.
Which raises the question as to what is the line between theoretical physics and metaphysics. Because the multiverse, 11 dimensional Branes colliding, and creation from quantum vacuum states certainly sound metaphysical.
Losing, not loosing.
Too easy.
We chide/mock/ridicule Clinton in part because his remarks were made in the context of his back-peddling from denials he had earlier made about his relationship with a young White House intern. His statements were entirely self-serving.
Philosophy, at its best, has entirely different motivations and objectives.
Just showing that something isnt perfect, or throwing the baby out with the bathwater usually doesnt go well... unless you hate babies... you dont hate babies do you?
But the case I had in mind was not scientists essaying to do philosophy, which they are perfectly entitled to do, well or badly, of course (and some are actually pretty good; e.g. J. J. Gibson, Amartya Sen and George Ellis). Rather, I was talking about naturalizing paradigms within analytic philosophy. In that case, it is the methods of empirical sciences that encroach, not the scientists themselves.
I agree. Against this, I like Williamson's notion of 'knowledge first' - knowledge as foundational and in a separate zone from belief. But I've read Williamson, and even been to a little seminar run by him, and he's the nicest bloke - but every tiny possibility has to be explored by him too, footnote after footnote, and then there's the argument by Sproggins (2014) although Hackface (2015) would disagree...all that! I am a bit of a nit-picker by nature, I think that's why I enjoy the analytic approach mostly, but sometimes you've just got to see the bigger picture or you'll get awfully lost.
Off topic:
I had greatly enjoyed Williamson's Knowledge and its Limits, OUP (2000). Though rather daunting in places, it doesn't suffer as much from the excessive narrowing down in focus that afflicts some later papers by him. Surely, the book format helps. But I am mostly indebted to John McDowell for the 'knowledge first' approach, expounded in a variety of papers including, most relevantly, Criteria, Defeasibility and Knowledge (usefully read in conjunction with John W. Cook, 'Human Beings', in Peter Winch ed., Studies in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein, Routledge & Kegan Paul, (1969), that McDowell is indebted to for the idea of indefeasible criteria). The best elucidation of the big picture afforded by McDowell's own account of the 'knowledge first' approach that I encountered is the second chapter -- 'Belief and the Second Person' -- in Sebastian Rödl, Self-Consciousness, HUP (2007). Lastly, I've bought recently Andrea Kern, Sources of Knowledge: On the Concept of a Rational Capacity for Knowledge, HUP (2017). I haven't read most of it yet, but it looks fantastic!