Philosophical quality control
How do you know if a bit of philosophy is good? How do you discern good philosophy from bad? In science you can perform experiments to test ideas. Philosophers don't have such luxuries, they have to rely mostly on argumentation. So philosophies that provide good arguments are good, and philosophies that provide bad arguments are bad. I think I just answered my own question. Not so simple.
We need a criteria for good arguments. Arguments with true premises and that are logically valid, surely. How can you tell if those premises are true? By another argument, of course. But what about the new argument? And so on... You see where this is going? In the end your going to have to rely on assumptions, experiences, and intuition. The problem is that not everyone makes the same assumptions, have the same experiences, and intuition. So it comes down to your own subjective judgement. And thus you have to make your own quality control.
What do you think?
We need a criteria for good arguments. Arguments with true premises and that are logically valid, surely. How can you tell if those premises are true? By another argument, of course. But what about the new argument? And so on... You see where this is going? In the end your going to have to rely on assumptions, experiences, and intuition. The problem is that not everyone makes the same assumptions, have the same experiences, and intuition. So it comes down to your own subjective judgement. And thus you have to make your own quality control.
What do you think?
Comments (18)
Good point, and well said. You have to duke it out in the marketplace of ideas. There’s no court of appeal, no adjuticator - that’s part of the game. Sometimes its interesting, other times it’s frustrating. You never really know, and that is a big part of what makes it so interesting. Welcome to philosophy.
I would say that the most important thing is to learn how to read the material with the intent to understand. This is completely different from the intent to just get through the material, and somewhat different from attempting to memorize what you think might be important points. Understanding requires that you associate what is being said with your own experience, and with what you have read from other philosophies. You should be able to notice consistencies. Things consistent with your own experience you will accept on intuition. Things inconsistent with your own intuition should not be automatically rejected. You need to read multiple philosophers and find points of consistency between them. If these points of agreement between others are not consistent with your intuition, you may find reason to reject your own intuitions, filling the gap with a new understanding.
We are not, in general, given philosophy to study at an early age. We need to develop our capacity to understand before proceeding into this field, just like any of the other higher level fields of study. So we necessarily approach with preconceptions, biases, derived from a younger age. But as you indicate in your op, we need to learn how to question, understand, and judge these fundamental assumptions. In this way we learn how to get beyond our own intuitions, rejecting them where necessary, in order to create a real understanding.
I think that we ought to recognize that understanding is based in agreement. To understand a piece of writing you can look for simple points which agree with you, then you may work outward from these points, into the surrounding context to grasp the meaning of a whole passage. The meaning you derive from this passage must be related to surrounding passages, looking for the consistency intended by the author, to ensure that you have interpreted each passage correctly.
There is no such thing and it doesn't matter. If one is interested in understanding the nature of nature, everything becomes an integral observation. Nothing is discarded.
Most academic/written philosophy is repetitive and very limited. For the most part, geared for those who believe one can understand nature by reading about it. Once in a while there are some very creative ideas from those who have immersed themselves into exploring nature. In any case, one cannot make judgements about anything until one has explored it and I've learned to disregard crowd judgments which inevitably embrace average by its very nature.
One builds a philosophical perspective by exploration and observation of all, not some.
Patterns develop which provide insight, but the Universe is constantly evolving so there will always be something new. No need to feel bored. :-)
yes, in the same sense that art and works of fiction are persuasive - or perhaps i should say, "inspiring" or "therapeutic", since the word "persuasion" might be misinterpreted to imply the presence of an underlying absolute 'truth' in mind or nature to be persuaded of, a notion which I no longer find intelligible having studied the pragmatism of Wittgenstein, Quine, Pierce and Dewey, who together pretty much demolish the idea of epistemology.
For personal reading, it is my belief that somewhere in between 15 years and 25 years of age, most people have established their personal point of view about the world--whether they have articulated it or not. That doesn't mean their POV will never change, but it will take real effort to change it.
So, most people are going to read philosophy (and other literature) to help them articulate their inchoate beliefs, and to compare their more formulated beliefs to someone else's. To the degree that a philosophy book helps you uncover your unspoken ideas, beliefs, POV, good. If it doesn't seem to speak to you at all, read something else.
Suit yourself, but the greatest philosophies are all about nature and life.
No, I don't think such rejection would be justified. That would be like if you meet someone speaking a different language, and you reject what they say because you don't understand it. To understand requires the will to understand.
Yes, in part. As a recently converted pragmatist, I assess the "truth" of a philosophical statement, whether metaphysical, epistemological or ethical, firstly in terms of whether I can relate to it in some way that coheres with how its proponents apparently relate to it, and secondly whether upon relating to it I find it practically useful, ethically inspiring, or aesthetically appealing in some way.
But non-pragmatists don't see "philosophical truth" in that way, rather they see it as something akin to a feeling of psychological-compulsion. That they should feel forced by the throat to accept it, regardless of whether or not they like it, or even understand it - as if a philosophical statement was the same thing as an empirical proposition.
While I used to think like a non-pragmatist, the force of reason eventually compelled me (rather ironically) to ignore my psychological compulsions to think or behave dogmatically in a certain way, a general life-style I have found to be unhealthy, counter-productive and misguided.
Unfortunately, the notion of philosophical-veracity doesn't exist because we don't generally agree as to the meaning of philosophical statements, whose concepts are under-determined by our stated rules of language and which lack truth conditions in terms of public ostensive demonstration.
So I don't like to think of the "philosophical understanding" of a philosophical statement in the sense of knowing and adhering to a public fact. At most we can individually relate to a philosophical statement and decide for ourselves whether or not we like the statement and find it useful.
There is a saying that we, the fortunate ones, have the luxury of time to ponder such philosophical questions.