Wow, I think I understood Prof. Pigliucci

ZhouBoTong December 04, 2019 at 04:37 1225 views 2 comments

Just wanted to thank the site for finding a philosopher that we can all learn from.

When I heard about the site asking the professor to join, I was happy for the site, but figured I would just be scanning through those threads to confirm that it was all over my head. I expected every answer to reference 3 philosophers and 4 books that I have not read yet.

I just want to say I was pleasantly surprised by Prof. Pigliucci's first post. There was hardly a line in it that required a second read, yet perhaps a few that deserved one.

So while I am still too ill-informed to offer a serious response, I just wanted to let the less academically inclined around here to know that his writing is very accessible.

Thanks to the forum for the great addition :smile:

Comments (2)

frank December 04, 2019 at 18:00 #359037 0 likes

Quoting ZhouBoTong

I just want to say I was pleasantly surprised by Prof. Pigliucci's first post.

Me too. He's awesome.

I like sushi December 12, 2019 at 09:02 #362139 0 likes

I wish I could agree. I do at least have a better understanding about his views of science. I was expecting more depth in the answer and hoping for a follow up. He basically said there are limits to heuristics - nothing special about that point.

The thrust of my point was that ‘objectivity’ and ‘subjectivity’ are false dichotomies and that framing these terms as ‘dichotic’ is convenient for experimentation, but not really a clear demarcation. That said I didn’t do the best job of framing Husserl’s view as I had limited time and was gambling on him knowing something of Husserl given his prominence in this area (limitations of science and his influence that runs through Heidegger to Sellars).

Fro my narrow understanding he seems to be more inclined to frame items as ‘scientism’ and avoiding ‘philosophism’ (probably because he is more bound to a ‘philosophical’ perspective). I asked the question I asked hopeful he’d read Husserl in depth - it doesn’t appear he has and I cannot blame him for not doing so as no one has time to read anything about every single philosopher. Husserl was very much about how objective perspectives relate to consciousness and what subjectivity does in terms of psychology.

I’m not at all inclined to look much more into what he says unless I suddenly feel the need to explore the modern sense of ‘stoicism’. I was looking forward to hearing more about that, but I guess - as has been said - he simply doesn’t have time to contribute more.

I doubt I’d participate in discussions on stoicism much but if you’ve gained interest in this person’s work I hope you can create some threads about it for discussion :)

Hopefully we’ll get another figure to contribute something in the near future?