Discussions about stuff with the guests
Mark Dennis:I'm assuming that we are all expected to remain within our individual discussions with Pigliucci too? While I'd definitely like to look in on the others I don't want them to worry about me infringing upon their direct time with the Professor, but if we feel one of our counterparts raises a point with Pigliucci that is relavent to our own discussions; can we quote one another within our own threads?
@Mark Dennis @Baden @StreetlightX @jamalrob @Amity@Wallows
I believe that the intention was that only the question asker responds in thread in the guest topic? If another person talking to the guest, or the guest, makes a point in another discussion topic that seems relevant, I'd imagine it's OK to bring it into the discussion with the guest by rephrasing it (insofar as it is relevant) and then linking to the post.
So if Massimo makes a point in my thread, and you want to reference it in yours for some reason, I imagine it is OK to rephrase what he said in my thread insofar as it relates to your discussion with him, then write about it. Possibly with a link to the post in the other discussion topic for reference.
We don't want duplicate content, or everyone to be chiming in on the same discussion, or the guest to be responding to the same thing over and over again.
I also think that, per discussion topic with the guest, there's going to be a forum wide version that any person can respond in to discuss the discussions with the guest.
Comments (87)
I'm a bit hesitant about that being OK by itself, I think it would be OK so long as the quoted bit is contextualised explicitly by you in your discussion. Want to hear what the other mods and questioners think, hence putting this in feedback.
Of course, naturally. I fully intend to use my better judgement and best foot forward on this and do my best for our community. I won't embarrass you guys. Extremely grateful for this opportunity!
However I will still attempt to converse with Professor Pigliucci (side bar; How would he prefer we address him?) In as authentic manner as is respectfully possible by what I believe to be the highest standards expected. I want to have a meaningful and fruitful conversation and collaborative discussion, but I think we can all agree that I shouldn't pull well framed punches if I feel I see inconsistencies in his approach, so long as I relay these respectfully, charitably and in a steel man fashion.
Message I sent to Baden. Sorry I just thought I'd let the other mods know just in case one of you can sort this issue for me. Sorry I got excited and shared too early so I fucked up the title :/
Title's too long. Not just editorially. It hits the character limit for a thread title.
Done.
Deleted the personal remarks from your question. Also PM'd them to you in case you wanted to keep them anyway.
Please just abide by the rules anyhow.
It was to deal with some stuff that came up. I think there will be separate forum wide threads for each discussion with the guest.
Cool. That's what I thought, but haven't paid enough attention. I like the professor. I'm very glad that he was chosen and accepted the invitation. I'm looking forward to reading his input.
Updated to:
It is unfortunate that this doesn't seem to be happening, for whatever reason.
Perhaps it would have been better for any Guest Speaker Questioner to start the forum-wide thread ?
Or a moderator ? Admin ?
Thoughts, anyone ?
Dr. Prof. Pigliucci perhaps expected other types of questions, questions that probed and sought true enlightenment. He may have been taken aback by the verbosity and overstylization of some of the questions. A little less overt politeness and adoration also may have been in order... he did not come here, and he expected others also to not come here to hear praising of Caesar, but to have Caesar speak himself.
In effect, I think he declined the answering of the questions for these reasons. I could be wrong in this assessment, but I see it this way at this point.
I posted this only because direct questions were asked of the audience, "thoughts, anyone?"
If you're gonna ask a long question, you need to set up context. It's probably more to do with question length / complexity / number and how much time Pigluicci wanted to spend.
All the questions had good points and bad points, but some were somehow imbalanced and / or unanswerable; some had the questions too deeply buried, under too many layers of pre-explanations, is the feeling I got from them.
Nevertheless, I praise all questioners, because we all had honest aspirations to have answers for our questions; they were not vainly asked, but indeed had purpose in the asking.
Mismatch of expectations I think. I'm guessing we need a word limit.
When I first heard of the Guest Speaker event, I didn't know what to expect
If anything, I thought that the Guest would 'speak' first and then choose questions from the audience.
Guess no more @Wallamity...
:sad:
'There is no member with that name.'
But we will always have the concept :wink:
:blush:
I'm hesitant to speculate about another's motives, but as I don't suppose the professor will have any interest in divulging his reasons (nor should he) we will be left guessing, nonetheless, why it didn't work out as we'd expected.
I was concerned from the start about how much Prof. Pigliucci might actually know about the Internet's top philosophy forum (according to Google). It certainly wasn't what I was expecting when I first joined. Take a look at the discussions currently on our front page. Many are banal, childish and deeply insulting to the topic. I don't want to get involved with them, and I'm not even a philosopher. Did we really expect a professional (and well-known) philosopher to get involved with the kind of crap that seems to inevitably dominate even the most promising of discussions?
The questions themselves, I thought, were mostly very well thought out, but I'm not in the least surprised about the professor's lack of enthusiasm for the project as a whole. Answering serious questions is one thing, getting involved in a discussion which (for all he knows) is likely to deteriorate into the sort of nonsense exemplified by the "what is truth" discussion, is another matter entirely.
I know it's not my place to say, it's not my forum, but if there's a desire to attract involvement from serious academics then somehow (and I understand it's a lot of work) there's going to need to be more control over post quality.
It could, of course, just be that he's busy, and all this is just completely off the mark, but I've wanted to mention my concerns about quality for a little while and this seemed as good an opportunity as any.
Nothing to do with anything you said. The modding standard here is pretty much as it was at the old place and we had plenty of guest speakers there. In fact, Massimo complimented the content but was worried about the volume despite our reassurances he wouldn't have to answer everything. Anyway, we'll plough on.
Quoting Isaac
As far as I know, we'll continue to vet content which will be submitted to guest speakers. And we'll have a think about what to do to make guest speaker engagement more long lasting in the future.
Increasing the standard for content isn't particularly worthwhile in my view as: (1) users can selectively respond and read, like the under used "following" posters option in profiles (2) people's interest in philosophy usually starts long before researching much of it, and it's a valuable space for learning for that user type (3) less restricted posting stimulates discussion (4) increasing content standard to make the place more attractive to seasoned academics would simultaneously reduce our attractiveness for having a large and relatively high standard (for the internet) of discussion.
Well put. For which reasons we're not going to make dramatic changes in moderation, but we do miss stuff or don't get to it quickly enough, so if you, @Isaac, or anyone wants to help increase quality, please flag discussions you feel are unworthy of the place.
It's not discussions that I'd propose to moderate. I'll send you a file that shows how the deterioration of the site could be prevented, by a specific example. I'll send it to Baden, and he can distribute it among the mods.
Always open to feedback.
As I said, I'm only speculating in the absence of any evidence to the contrary. If you're happy with Massimo's given reasons then I stand corrected. I should say that I'm talking about a very recent deterioration in the quality of threads, so whilst I'm pleased that such a luminary found some of our posts engaging, but it's not really the same content I'm primarily concerned about.
Quoting Baden
Yeah, tried that. If advocating the murder of adultresses isn't going to make the grade I don't think me flagging Bartricks' childishness, for example, (which seems entirely benign by comparison) is going to achieve anything.
Quoting fdrake
Well, I should enjoy my conversations with the two spambot's currently following me... Just waiting for them to post something...
Seriously, I get what you're saying here, but what I was suggesting might be a problem was more about community than individual posts, after all, if there's no filter we might as well just be Twitter.
Quoting fdrake
This may well be true, but that's not the problem here. The problem is with people who don't seem to have any interest in learning at all, the recent spate of threads have just been increasingly shrill versions of am-I-right?
Quoting fdrake
You'd have to explain how you see that working, I'm not sure I get it.
Quoting fdrake
Not sure I get this either. Are you saying that increasing standards would reduce involvement to a level that would be more detrimental than the improvement in the first place?
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It's not really a big deal, it's your forum (meaning the owners/mods in general) so I'm not here trying to convince you to run it one way or another, probably should have just kept my mouth shut. It's just that, flawed as it is, this place seems to be the best of its kind. The few email and slack groups I'm involved in professionally don't have anywhere near the breath of interest somewhere truly open like this place does, so I've some interest in it's standards, but, if it's going to continue the way it's then I'll just have to put up with it.
Nah. Well thought criticism is welcome.
This has been proven in practice, Isaac. If you weed out all the Shtuppoids, then the site comes to a grinding halt insofar as dynamic exchanges (however nonsensical they may be at times) are concerned. Please visit the ScienceChatForum's philosophy section. There are ten currently active users on the site, and the entire community of those users generate on the average 3 posts a week. They have moderated all the Shtuppoids out of existence there, everyone is actually smart and reasonable, and therefore have nothing to say to each other.
I was kicked out of there because of insurgency. The head moderator there could not tolerate my tone. The basic rift started when they would not listen to me that "some" in syllogisms means "at least one". I had to raise my voice at them badly to be heard, by way of using huge letters in red, and that escalated, through a series of ego-hurts on both sides, to my getting expelled.
That's fine. We're glad you are here. :smile:
It’s just a matter of keeping in faith in the sensible folk here and believing the power of one reasonably stable individual outweighs several other more dubious attitudes.
We’ve clashed and bickered a little if I recall? Even so, we manage to drop it and move on hoping to engage again in more amicable circumstances. We’re all susceptible to our egos every now and then, and some have a larger time of it from time to time.
Leave the door open a crack and maybe the most ridiculous character may actually rouse something interesting in you ... or maybe not. The internet is general a pit of filth and by most standards this place ain’t all that bad and it’s certainly preferable to banning too many people too quickly.
I get what you're both saying. I don't know if my comment came across the way I intended it, but I didn't necessarily mean we should ban a load of people (although I can think of plenty...!). I really just meant exactly what Sushi said...
Quoting I like sushi
When I talked about control over post quality, I didn't mean to imply the mods should swoop in and delete, or ban, anyone who transgresses a strict code of standards. I'm quite sure I'd have been banned if that were the case. I meant exactly what is mentioned above, I just don't find it to be happening.
Recently I flagged a post which, in no uncertain terms, endorsed the murder of women who commit adultery (as the just the latest in a string of heavily misogynistic posts). The mods decided the post was not inflammatory enough to break the rules - which was their call to make, but more worryingly everyone else just carried on engaging with the guy as if he were just normal. It's the lack of reaction from the community as a whole that concerned me, not the lack of policing.
Same for Bartrick's threads (which I'm sure we all know about). His childishness is not ignored to the point that he gets the message that this is a more mature forum for discussion than that. People still engage with the argument, as if there was anything more than massaging a narcissist at stake.
Maybe I'm just getting less tolerant in my old age (I hate to be a cliche, but it's a known trend). On the off-chance that I'm not, however...
@Baden,@fdrake - Feeling bad about complaining without any concrete suggestion. So... Would it be possible, and desirable, to create a section/category for discussing actual papers or works of philosophy (or perhaps even papers on closely related topics)? As far as I'm aware, every post has to be put into the right category anyway, so policing this would not take much more moderation effort? It would be easy then for ornery old grumps like me to simply turn off all the other categories (as I already have done with Philosophy of Religion), and have a forum which appears dedicated to discussing more serious matters than the latest 'proof' of God from our seemingly endless supply of undiscovered geniuses.
Basically we'd have a way of pushing the less serious posts to one side without having to delete or ban anything or anyone. Just in the way that the less serious posts are already pushed to the lounge, anything not discussing the paper in question can be gently pushed over to one of the 'general' categories.
Check the section called "Learning Centre".
Not quite what I had in mind, not so much requests for help with papers, or guidance with reading. I was more thinking about grouping those threads which are based on a paper or book and, crucially, intend to stick to the discussion of it.
I think, on reflection, the idea wouldn't work anyway. It's just another way of saying the same thing - namely I've lost enthusiasm for trawling through the garbage to find the content. Probably more my problem than anything wrong with the forum. It is what it is, it's just maybe not for me, that's all.
All it takes is for a few people to dedicate their effort and time. There have been lots of suggestions for reading groups over the past few months, mainly by Wallows, but nothing has come of them.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/categories/16/reading-groups
There's been a good Philosophical Investigations reading group within the last while. We never finished the book, though.
However, the strength of this forum, in my opinion, is that it can be a testing ground for ideas. Like any testing ground, a lot of the experiments might go haywire or wrong. Making this about reading only academic papers from other people, would take any personal creative element out of the mix. Its not your thoughts now, but someone else's. There is a balance. In order to gain better understanding of all relevant ideas, it is best to read prior literature. However, to exclusively dwell on other people's thoughts without creating one's own ideas, would be to restrict oneself to being an audience member to one's own show. Why not be the performer as well?
Academic philosophy is basically using prior concepts from other philosophers, giving the relevance of it, history of its usage in past debates, and then providing a modification or simply an agreement with past concepts. Sometimes, an original concept is thrown in. Often times there is use of symbolic logic to provide "sound reasoning" to the concepts.
Personally, I don't mind just reading people's own ideas on issues. Most times, I disagree with academic philosophers despite the fancy logic tables and formalized conceptualizations they provide.
I don't mean to be overly pessimistic here (it's a known character flaw), but doesn't the second sentence rather just indicate that there's simply no one available (for whatever reason) to put in the requisite 'time and effort'? If that is indeed all it takes, then the groups would not have come to nothing if there were such people here would they?
I've already dug myself too deep here so I might as well see it through now, but my take would be that there is a sufficient number of interesting, dedicated people to carry off a great discussion going through some text, but such discussions just seem to get wearyingly hijacked by a certain kind of post (chiefly of the the 'I've not read the text but here's wot I rekon' type, followed closely by the '...and so there is a god' type). The main contributors get fed up and just stop.
Stopping that requires a lot more moderation (not just by official moderators) and I can see now good reasons why that can't happen, so we have already, perhaps, the best compromise.
Quoting fdrake
Yeah, I took part in that. It was quite good in places, but I'm thinking here about the reasons why such a promising start seemed to fade out. The people involved didn't just stop posting, so it's not a matter of their having trouble setting the time aside. I very much doubt such passionate people simply decided they were no longer interested in Wittgenstein. If we want to keep threads like that going it would be useful to know why they stopped wouldn't it?
Two things. Firstly, I'm not talking about making anything 'only' about academic papers, I was only suggesting a category dedicated to it. Secondly, I think the sort of personal creative element you're talking about here just doesn't lend itself very well to forum discussion. You may well have a perfectly lovely idea about the way the world is (or should be) but there it will stop. Discussion either goes to "oh that's nice", or "I don't think so" (often less pleasantly put).
Any matter where there's real depth to be gotten into, 99% if the time someone's already written about it.
I tell you why I wouldn't start it, and mine is a unique case, but perhaps it is becoming less and less unique.
I can't read. Period.
My focus, not the visual but the cognitive, gets blurred, my attention vanes, my boredom increases.
I can take a couple of pages of magazine articles, or maybe up to five, which is about 2000-3000 words. Beyond that I am not "not interested", but indeed incapable.
My uncle gave me a book called "Saul". Not fiction, but historical investigation into the life of Jesus. It is incredibly well written, well-paced, the ideas are brilliant in it. I could not read past 20 pages. It's about 400 pages long.
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That said, and that sad, I would enjoy reading / discussion groups that have topics that are written in 2000-3000 words.
In my experience we lose the energy to continue it. It takes a lot of effort to write exegesis and discuss it in spare time. I keep coming back to a similar exegetical thread on Das Kapital, sitting down to write and reading previous notes, but it's a lot of stuff to do to do right - in spare time it's hard. In my experience everyone wants high quality and in depth content, but it's rare that we have the energy or time to produce lots of it.
I don't think failing to complete such ambitious projects (or similarly in depth discussions in threads) is a bad thing though, I've certainly learned a lot from starting and participating in them over the years. We have an outstanding discussion on conceptual schemes and Friston's paper to progress, after all.
I can get on board with that.
Quoting Isaac
While I recognize that there is "nothing new under the sun", there are always nuances to how an individual thinks about an issue. Going through the dialectic process could be good in and of itself. It is an elaboration on a thought. There is no finality like, "Oh it is now written in an academic paper, and thus it is crystallized into truthdom". It is simply a formalized version of what people should be doing anyways, which is examining life, the world, and their own understanding of it.
Try to publish on academia.edu or arxiv.org depending on the content type. You're more likely to be able to upload philosophy things on academia.edu than otherwise. arxiv.org has limited peer review and generally requires technical/scientific content.
Yeah, you're probably right, you've more experience with this community than I have. Having the good fortune to be (semi-)retired I've a bit more freedom to indulge in whatever interests me at the time. Having said that, I like to think there's a happy medium between operose exegesis and some of the ad hoc reckons that seem to so inexcusably annoy me. I thought something like that might still be worth filtering out into one place, but not if the disadvantages you mentioned are going to be too onerous.
How about you try making a thread like that? Pick something that interests you, start doing exegesis for the general reader. Set some requirements for discussion in the OP that keep the thread on the track you want.
What happened is that we got to the difficult part. Not necessarily difficult to understand, but difficult to accept the reality of what was to be exposed. That's the problem with the approach that many here have to philosophy, they are not looking for the truth, rather they are looking for material to support what they already believe. So when articles of philosophy approach the truth, and it is not what these people already believe, they tend to turn away.
That sounds a tad bit religious.
Thanks for the suggestion, @FDrake. My experience with (some) of these sites is that they have a prerequisite before even considering any paper, and that is an academic designation or advanced degree. I have no such things in philosophy. They wouldn't even touch me with a ten-foot pole.
In a way I understand their stance. Should they consider unsolicited submissions from laymen, then they would be overinundated by crazy bat shit. So they save themselves the trouble, and they shut out the baby with the bathwater from their waters.
Socrates, Aristotle, would have been equally rejected by these publishing authorities. That's my only consolation.
But that sounds like my performance in the fiction writing field. When I was younger and more involved in trying to get published, some authorities and critics compared me to Shakespeare. Yep. They said, "This guy ain't Shakespeare."
I agree with this, I find there is both great and poor philosophy coming from both academic circles and random thinkers.
Quoting god must be atheist
I agree with this too, he runs a blog so he is already used to spreading his own ideas to a bunch of people who listen, maybe he was hoping here for his ideas to be really challenged. I’m still working on the thread on science vs pseudoscience where I disagree with his conclusions and will critically address a paper he wrote, maybe he will want to participate in that one.
Quoting god must be atheist
I think anonymity can be a blessing, in the sense that you can spread your ideas and they can be criticized without your ego getting too much in the way. Ego gets in the way on this forum even though we only have nicknames, so when you use your real name it can be worse, because then your reputation is on the line and people want to defend their reputation at all costs even when they’re wrong, they take things too personally and that hinders clear thinking. And in the grand scheme of things personal recognition isn’t that important, the ideas themselves are more important.
That being said have you tried philpapers.org?
Yeah, I'd thought about doing one on Ramsey's 'Truth and Probability' (seemed pertinent to some of the discussion we'd recently had), but the problem is still that which opened this discussion. Although, as Baden pointed out, my concerns were apparently wrong with regards to Massimo, they still apply in my own case. Good exegesis is hard work and, in my case more than likely to be wrong in many places. I've been extremely fortunate in my career to have access to, and in some cases worked with, some philosophy professors, and in such a community my first pass at a text has been thoughtfully (and occasionally entirely!) corrected. Such commentary makes the effort worthwhile (as has been very much the case in a select number of discussions here, I should add). But, whether reasonably or not, I baulk at the effort of posting such work here only to have it flooded with a series of banal one-liners barely related to the subject... or that God did it... or some other variation on the ever-popular delusion that because a thing seems that way to someone it must therefore be the case.
Unlike in the academic world, no one here has directly asked anyone's opinion, so anything written is in the realm of "...what do you think?", it's like asking a room full of people for their thoughts on your understanding - it matters who's in the room (or at least, it does to me), not in terms of the nature of the response, but in terms of the self-justification for the effort in the first place.
Anyway, too much psychology already and not enough philosophical content. Tl:Dr Maybe one day, but heavily dependent on the types of response I think I'm likely to receive.
The truth is massively overrated.
You can ignore or report the posts. Also, maybe it's a personal thing, but I gain a lot from going through something, even if I'm making loads of mistakes.
So you're one of them then. When the evidence points to the truth of something other than what you believe, you dismiss the truth as "massively overrated".
isn't this a "banal one-liner" in the exact sense you were lamenting Isaac?
Yes, probably. I'm not lamenting the entire existence of banal one-liners, I'm just explaining how some of them in certain contexts seem out of place in the sorts of discussions we might reasonably want to encourage.
This has also worked for me.
I guess the dream is to discover an island of sanity in the chaos of online attitudes. A subset of energetic minds that have already digested a lot of interesting books in a lot of interesting areas. Novel and substantial perspectives. Instead there seems to be almost exclusively polemics, punctuated by quite a bit of dark and off-colour humour. Maybe something I'd expect in a satirical movie, but not in a thread of any serious philosophical intention.
Then again, it is the internet. Such is the lot of all serious thought in the online world. What can you do? The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and there seems to be no shortage of greasy commentaries.
I know. I was talking to a woman about a really fascinating book she found at a used bookstore called 'The Weight of Ink.' We talked about it for a while and she asked me what I'm reading. I said it was a book about the science of consciousness.
Crickets.
There's a little higher chance of finding someone here to discuss things with. A little?
[b]The Physics of Metaphysics
1. Facts are solidified opinions.
2. Facts weaken under extreme heat and pressure.
3. Truth is elastic.[/b]
The premise of this thread stinks of elitism and fallacy of authority. If I was to take this perspective to the most logical conclusion, I would have to be published in an academic journal or university press book in order for my thoughts to be taken seriously. That is ludicrous when philosophy should be able to be exercised by anyone and everyone.
Don't get me wrong, I love a good book club and analysis of other's works, but to pretend that because someone published something in a journal or book form, or because someone is a professor of philosophy, this confers expert philosophizing ability is going too far.
I think @Baden was doing a better service by providing examples to raise up the level of writing and analysis of those who have their own thoughts. This to me seems more beneficial than simply retreating to being a glorified academic book club. That all being said, I think the best thing to come from this thread is to put in a section for book/journal analysis. That would be great. But this "holier than thou" commentary is elitism masquerading as reform.
Firstly, I don't see what's elitist about wanting to have a section where matters are taken a bit more seriously. We have already split off 'the lounge' in recognition of the fact that some conversations are less serious than others. Ideally, we'd just judge the more serious conversations on their merits, but, that being too subjective, anchoring the discussion to an academic paper which participants will be expected to have read is a more objective way of separating these types of discussion out. I'm not trying to denigrate other types of conversation. I'm just saying that, for me, it would be nice to have a conversation that was more heavily moderated in favour of the more serious approach.
Secondly, I think you're confusing the notion that "philosophy should be able to be exercised by anyone and everyone" with the posts I was being derogatory toward. Philosophy, if taken seriously, is quite hard, it's not, in my opinion, just 'reckoning some stuff'. This means that a) you'd be crazy not to read at least a summary of what people before you have already thought on the matter, b) it's very unlikely that you'll be so confidently right about any of it as to make the kind of 'you're wrong' single line pronouncements I'm referring to, and c) anything you do think is likely to need to stand on the shoulders of others as explaining the whole thing from first principles would require a book, not a 150 word post.
Given the above, I find it very unlikely that serious philosophy could be done in few short posts without reference to previous work. That's not to say that a jolly good chat can't be had that doesn't do that, but that there is a categorical difference there.
Conversely though, those with less knowledge on a subject than others in the discussion should refrain from pontificating authoritatively about their unfounded opinions, and instead ask questions that might lead in the direction of the answers they think are right (or at least away from those they think ate wrong) in a Socratic way. The great thing about the Socratic method is you don’t have to just pretend to know nothing to use it: you can actually know nothing and still contribute to learning between both yourself and your interlocutors just by asking insightful questions.
I think that's very well said. What I was trying (but I think ultimately failing) to come up with was a way of separating out a category of discussion where posts which don't fit that mould would be be removed (to some other category).
There seems to be a reluctance to be too heavy handed in moderating posts for quality, tone etc. forum-wide, and I'm just going to accept that the moderation team have good reasons for that related to their vision of what this place should be. So I think, if there is a way, it would have to be by category and it would have to be moderated by the people involved (politely reminding the offending poster that this is not the right category for that type of post). I suppose, post hoc, I'm wanting to see what interest there would be in such an approach because without a significant portion of the community willing to police it, such a category would never work.
Before answering you specifically, I'd like to add that I have a problem with academic philosophy in general. To me, academic economics and philosophy programs are the most egregious versions of elitist. Much of economics is so desperately trying to be a "harder" science because they use statistical econometrics or mathematical models, and thus believes that they are more than a social science. Often "laws" of economics are taken as more seriously than what they are, etc. Also, older forms of thinking in that department don't want to be misconstrued as psychological or philosophical-based, and thus also dig themselves deeper in the rabbit-hole of preserving economics as some more "real" descriptivist social science as opposed to the rest which is less amenable to math. That is my take on how I encounter this department anyways. Anecdotally, the economic students were usually business-oriented and just seemed to accept that if economics said "law of this or that" it must be a real law that is "proven" rather than an accepted methodology. The "curtain" isn't really pulled back until grad school that these laws are essentially just that- accepted methodologies, one of many to be used and arranged.
Philosophy has a similar problem to economics as an academic program in trying to justify itself as "legitimate" content. However, it has a more uphill climb and in a more basic way. Where economics has a more-or-less agreed upon methodology as to how to analyze data (or the fact that it even has data to look at), philosophy has to define what it actually is that it is trying to do. Universities seem to have approached it in various ways. There is the historical approach where one learns the development of thoughts over time- Ancient Philosophy, Medieval, Eastern Philosophy, Enlightenment Philosophy, 19th century Philosophy, 20th century Philosophy, etc. Then there is the "category" approach where certain "basic" categories are thought of as required areas of knowledge in the "field". Metaphysics/Epistemology, Ethics, Aesthetics, Symbolic Logic, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Math, Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, etc.. There are movements: Existentialism, Logical Positivism, Analytic Philosophy, Marxism, Postmodernism, Critical, Frankfurt School, Pragmatism. Then there are niche philosophy topics one can break down from there. But it is kind of a hodgepodge and coordinated much more locally by department heads and committees.
So philosophy is not so cut-and-dry as to what is agreed upon as basic concepts, other than perhaps historical understanding of concepts and perhaps categories like metaphysics, ethics, and symbolic logic. But unlike some other topics, philosophy is on shaky ground as far as what counts as legitimate "philosophizing". It has always been an open field. If you were to tell me professors of philosophy are more "wise" I'd laugh my ass off. We are now at the level of how thought thinks of itself. We are at the definitions of things like "What is existence", "What is real", "What is consciousness", "What is right action?" Things like that. There is no cut-and-dry data on this. Actually, in true philosophical spirit, you can even argue if data itself is even called for, because again, it's an open field! You are at the level of existence and thought thinking of its own thinking. There is no right or wrong! Science has available evidence in repeated experiments and technology that comes from it. Not so in philosophy. There isn't even a defined methodology as in other social sciences (like the always striving-to-be-more-than economics department!).
Now I agree with you, it is good to be informed as to the "telephone game" of historical thought. But this makes philosophy an exegesis exercise only. It is not teaching thinking critically in its own right. If you think philosophy should just be about engaging previous thinkers on issues, then you are not getting a full view of philosophy. Rather, if Socrates was right, that it is about examining life, it should be about thought process and examining givens. The best philosophers not only studied great thinkers, but blazed their own path. They had their own unique thoughts and patterns of thinking. The biggs
So, if you want to put your money where your mouth is, when you engage someone, and want them to be more historically-engaged, give them a reference or passage to read from a philosopher that pertains to the subject at hand. If you yourself are not able or willing to do that, then perhaps you are just complaining to complain. You have to be willing to do what you are asking of others. Perhaps balance out people's own "crazy" ideas by providing relevant articles from other philosophers and then ask them to compare their own thoughts to that author's ideas. That is a good midway point between simple exegesis of someone else's thoughts, and being creative and thinking for oneself. If you are simply always analyzing someone else's work, you are not philosophizing, but being a book club participant.
As to you specific points:
a) Yeah I agree, you should read about topics at hand by others. When discussing antinatalism or philosophical pessimism, the main proponents are David Benatar (and authors critical to him) and Schopenhauer. I have read people like Joshua Foa Dienstag, Julio Cabrera, Zapffe, Mainlander, Hartmann, sources from newspapers, popular articles, and all sorts of places. I agree and disagree in various places. However, the most interesting part is critically examining my own thoughts by having to defend them. Its tiring, but the dialectic is the main part that is enriching. I've brought these authors up over time on this forum, but I would never let them speak for me or only use quotes to defend any argument. That is insane.
b) There is no right and wrong! There is agree or disagree! You can be "wrong" about what a previous thinker thought, but you are not "wrong" on whether this or that ethical argument is good or bad. You can have arguments that "better" or "worse" reasoning, but even that is subjective. I'd say that this is not known until the dialectic process is played out. You don't know if someone's argument is bad until they fully develop their reasoning. If at the end, their reasoning fails to hold up, even to themselves, then you can say that the argument was not fully thought out, and thus not very good. Or you can say that the argument needs more details as it cannot overcome certain objections.
c) If you want to use prior thinkers, that's great, but if you ONLY use prior thinkers, you are a hack. There is no originality. Let's take someone like Kripke. He's always thrown around as a modern "great" in philosophy and logic. He is definitely drawing on the debates of Russell and Frege and later on Wittgenstein. However, though he is informed, his thoughts are original to all of them. I see nowhere in his lecture notes pages and pages of exegesis, but rather original thinking. Taking the concepts and moving with it.
Now don't get me wrong. I love history. I think people should be more informed on historical thinking. In fact, I think the hard sciences and math should be taught in a historical approach, not separating the thinkers from their end results (the mathematical or scientific concepts we now have). However, philosophy is not just about understanding other people's thoughts. It's about being able to examine the world using one's own ideas and applying it using relevant methods at hand. Other people's thoughts should be a jumping off point, not an end to themselves when it comes to philosophy.
I'll add @Pfhorrest @frank @Metaphysician Undercover@god must be atheist@Pantagruel @fdrake
Yes, you might want to weigh in on my Lounge thread "What constitutes Philosophy?" I think it is valuable to occasionally re-establish a fundamental lexicon, so to speak.
I was of the same opinion as Schopenhauer regarding academic philosophy,
Quoting schopenhauer1
and thought that it would somehow hinder my ability to freely explore my own ideas. Practically speaking though, I could have been paid to read and write about all the books I have had to squeeze into my free time in the last thirty years. Biggest mistake of my life.
Please read my own opinion on the matter. I am NOT against reading historical thinkers or "academic" philosophy!
Isn't this an example of taking one passage out of context. If you read the whole thing, I then go into what I mean by that, and it isn't simply saying "don't read other thinkers or academic philosophy at all".
Ok, I wasn't quite sure what you meant by biggest mistake of our life. Can you elaborate?
Oh gotcha. Well, if you read my passage, you can see what I am trying to get at with it. I'm glad if others find it satisfying, though. I always thought academic philosophy students were the most arrogant. I always appreciated the few engineers forced to be in there to round out their major requirements.. They seemed to be less of a show-off types. Again, that is completely anecdotal. I always gravitated towards straight-up history or other subjects as the other students were less blowhard types, and the content was less escoteric. Escoteric thinkers, thinking they are superior to others in their escoteric thinking in some hard and fast "academic" way bothers me.
I would agree with you in most other fields, but not so much philosophy being that there is no "cut-and-dry" concepts that must be "validated". It is not grounded at all. It is escoteric built on escoteric wanting to be taken seriously as more concrete. I am fine with that, if it is recognized for what it is, and not more. I think philosophical thinking is the root of all other branches of knowledge really, so I am not opposed to philosophy, just opposed that there is a "hard and fast" philosophy.
Nice! Personally, I kind of liken it to writing music. When an artist say's my influences are...that generally means that one takes a lot of relevant information and internalizes it making it their own. That, as apposed to simply regurgitating someone else's information all the time.
Everyone has unique perspectives and experiences to share. While certain things don't need to be overthought to be effective, there are absolutely truly novel ideas that can come from being willing to think outside the box as it were.
With a little generosity, Isaac and others are just frustrated that they arent having higher quality conversations and they want the ability to police their own threads.
It would be easy enough to set up a second philosophy forum for that purpose.
That's really all it is. It seems to have got blown up into a debate about the qualities of academics in social sciences and philosophy and I don't quite know how.
I have some sympathy for what you're saying, with a few caveats, but I don't want to get into that. All my suggestion ever amounted to was a means of policing a slightly higher standard of discussion using the need to have read and engaged with a text as a filtering mechanism.
I'm not implying that philosophy without a text is pointless, it represents the vast majority of my comments here. I've just become weary of the type of predictable, hubristic omniscience, or failure to grasp the issues that seems (to me) to drown out some otherwise really interesting potential discussions. I thought I had an idea of a way I (and anyone else feeling that way) could just filter that out from time to time and focus on something. Academic texts were just a tool to help with that. Not an arbitrary tool (hence my argument as to why I think anyone taking the matter seriously shouldn't have any trouble sticking to the restriction), but just a tool nonetheless.
I’d say fundamentally there is such a thing as right or wrong, true or false, but uncovering it is not a straightforward process, I liken it to one big adventure, one big enigma, one big puzzle, one big maze we find ourselves in and that we try to solve to see what’s hidden beyond, that’s how I see philosophy. I believe there is a solution to the puzzle, we just haven’t solved it yet, we’re trying all kinds of approaches, we manage to solve one small part and then we get stuck, so we go back and try other ways, other paths, sometimes we put different parts together and they fit perfectly, but they don’t fit with the rest so we keep trying, and the more we solve the more we see, the clearer we see, and I believe that the clearer we see the more mind-boggling it will be.
Philosophy is an important tool to get there, but it’s not the only tool, it must not be focused on thought alone, disconnected from everything else, it must take into account everything else, piece by piece and then everything together. Even practicing a sport or an art or a trade can be seen as a piece of the puzzle, because as we get better at these activities we discover ourselves, we discover how some subset of the world behaves and reacts to what we do, and then some people become able to do amazing things, things that seem like miracles, for instance the guy who climbed the nearly 1km high vertical face of El Capitan without a rope, or the things we have achieved with technology, these things seem like magic to people who do not understand how they work. And so I believe that as we solve the puzzle further we will be able to see, do, and create things that we would consider today as magic, as miracles, and the truth will be way more amazing and mind-boggling than we can imagine now.