Are most solutions in philosophy based on pre-philosophical notions/intuitions? Is Philosophy useful
Had a conversation recently with TGW (The Great Whatever).
So, his story goes something like this:
Most of philosophy seems to be an endless inquiry into deep, mysterious and difficult questions that are never resolved and hopelessly debated. Here's his pitch: what are signs of charlatans and sophists? They argue for ages, use indeterminate sounding words to portray their position, its never quite clear what the ideas (systems) signify, and when backed into a corner, the answers they yield don't do anything most of the time. What is philosophy? Two-thousand and five hundred years of confusion, using indeterminate-sounding words, using systems that are generally aporetic, where there's endless arguing with no real resolution. It's never clear what's going to be resolved by many of their terms.
What does yield results? Literally a ton of domains that you see in the every day world. By all means, not all the sciences, not all arts, but a lot of them do progress in a way that philosophy just doesn't.
So, then here's the deal: Is investigating mereology, free-will (compatibilism/hard determinism, etc), the ontological structure of substances, essences etc, ever prove anything useful? Should we just rely on intuitions that pre-philosophical instead?
Here I don't think it'll do to say we're "always in philosophy" or "we can't escape philosophy so we have to do it" or "it's all philosophical." Everything's definitely not philosophy in the sense that when I put on a shoe, that's philosophy. Nor do I think it'll do to say many inquiries are aporetic in the same sense so we should give philosophy free reign. Lastly, it won't do to say that philosophy, according to him, even inquires into interesting questions. Any that aren't more interesting than ordinary scientific inquiry. If it did we should be able to provide many examples.
So, if there's nothing left. Is philosophy useful? Or with questions like free will (and such) do we just say what seems to be intuitively obvious? Are intuitions so bad? We seem to convince others with them all the time. What're you thoughts on this? (Personally, I believe ethics and theory has a strong case working for the philosopher.)
So, his story goes something like this:
Most of philosophy seems to be an endless inquiry into deep, mysterious and difficult questions that are never resolved and hopelessly debated. Here's his pitch: what are signs of charlatans and sophists? They argue for ages, use indeterminate sounding words to portray their position, its never quite clear what the ideas (systems) signify, and when backed into a corner, the answers they yield don't do anything most of the time. What is philosophy? Two-thousand and five hundred years of confusion, using indeterminate-sounding words, using systems that are generally aporetic, where there's endless arguing with no real resolution. It's never clear what's going to be resolved by many of their terms.
What does yield results? Literally a ton of domains that you see in the every day world. By all means, not all the sciences, not all arts, but a lot of them do progress in a way that philosophy just doesn't.
So, then here's the deal: Is investigating mereology, free-will (compatibilism/hard determinism, etc), the ontological structure of substances, essences etc, ever prove anything useful? Should we just rely on intuitions that pre-philosophical instead?
Here I don't think it'll do to say we're "always in philosophy" or "we can't escape philosophy so we have to do it" or "it's all philosophical." Everything's definitely not philosophy in the sense that when I put on a shoe, that's philosophy. Nor do I think it'll do to say many inquiries are aporetic in the same sense so we should give philosophy free reign. Lastly, it won't do to say that philosophy, according to him, even inquires into interesting questions. Any that aren't more interesting than ordinary scientific inquiry. If it did we should be able to provide many examples.
So, if there's nothing left. Is philosophy useful? Or with questions like free will (and such) do we just say what seems to be intuitively obvious? Are intuitions so bad? We seem to convince others with them all the time. What're you thoughts on this? (Personally, I believe ethics and theory has a strong case working for the philosopher.)
Comments (44)
This is not actually unique to philosophy though, because critical rationalism. The only progress that can ever be made in any field is showing what options are wrong, and so narrowing in further on those that might still be right.
But that doesn't seem to be the case because we're still debating the same questions two-thousand and five hundred years later. With more nuanced, sure, but it's still the same issues.
And we have all sorts of things that are right in the other fields. Take for example we can calculate the surface area of the ocean, or know whether or not Napoleon existed.
I don't see that being the case? There's plenty of committed individuals who have come up with proofs for the existence of essences, substances, mereological wholes, mereological nihilism, idealism, etc. Some of these views seem equally plausible as their alternative sometimes creating an antimony. I doubt a lot of people are in denial of the truth as much as they are convinced by the arguments.
I'm wondering if the problem is looking at philosophy from the "outside-in". There doesn't seem to be any large consensus in philosophy.
Sure, but it’s easier to remain convinced of a falsehood by a bad argument when there’s nothing at stake for being wrong.
Quoting Marty
Even if the correct philosophical answers end up being common sense, there is still value in exposing why all the alternative nonsense is wrong, to keep people from veering away from common sense.
Yeah, but that's beside the point.
But the problem is this doesn't usually occur. It rarely occurs, if ever, in philosophy.
And the way to come to a common sense point doesn't have to be philosophical.
This is the sort of thing I think is ripe for philosophical analysis, though "analysis" is a lousy word there. I even started a thread on a related phenomenon a couple weeks ago, but drew no interest.
What interests me about stuff like this is that to do it justice you need some basic logic and argumentation stuff, some more practical argumentation stuff, some psychology, some sociology, some economics, some biology, some linguistics -- you get the idea.
No one field is really equipped to handle this well. Traditional philosophy deliberately has tunnel vision for "just the arguments" but then exceeds its remit by pronouncing on which behaviors are rational.
Also I thought idealism was debunked.
Yeah, so, saying, "saying philosophy is useless is philosophical" is, I think, missing the point.
Your concern that philosophy is about deep, mysterious questions which remain unanswered points to the way in which even published philosophers often write very badly. It was as if they were trying to be clever by being unintelligible, which is a bit like the Sophists.
It is also possible to write and think endlessly about topics and go round in circles, never coming up with any answers. Perhaps it is about lack of commitment to and one way of seeing amidst a diversity of possible options. Or, perhaps it is about not seeing thinking to clear ends. It is easy to dabble with philosophical questions but not work hard enough at them.
I am not sure that the issue is simply that pre-philosohical solutions is a solution because I am not sure that such solutions are pre-philosophical in the first place. That is because philosophy goes back to ancient times and by using arguments so most ways of seeing life are rooted in some kind of roots in philosophy in the first place.
I believe that what is needed is clearer vision in philosophy rather than casting it aside. The twentieth century saw all the language games and then the postmodern writers came up with very sophisticated debates. But so many questions remain unanswered. Perhaps the best way forward would be philosophy which can engage with the debates of the past as well as the scientific knowledge of today. However, it could be one involving demystification.
While it is is unlikely that absolute answers could be established the challenge would be to explore any central arguments as fully as possible and come up with best possible answers which could enable people to not be lost forever drowning in the deep philosophical mysteries.
That's the perception of those who've read about it but never quite understood it.
Come on then, let's have the list, let us all be enlightened by your solomanesque wisdom on the matter.
You didn't claim you knew something. You claimed other people didn't. That's what pisses me off, the hubris in thinking everyone else has got it wrong. If you can't see the horrific places that thinking everyone else who doesn't follow your ideology is actually objectively wrong have lead to, then God help us.
Those are inseparable conditions. To think that something is correct is to think things contrary to it are incorrect.
Quoting Isaac
Do you think that those who think the places that leads to are not horrific are wrong about that? Or those who don't think it leads to those places? If so, aren't you guilty of exactly what you think is such a horrible crime?
I ask because one of those very things I think is an objectively wrong philosophical view is appeals to authority, faith, popularity, etc; as well as justificationism, telling everyone else that they must reject their beliefs until they can prove them from the ground up, in lieu of which (i.e. on my account, rejecting justificationism) differences of opinion are to be tolerated until proof one way or the other can be found.
No it isn't. No one in real life thinks things are correct or incorrect, it's a philosophical construct to engender ideological purity. People believe things with (ever changing) degrees of certainty, which means that no-one is 'wrong' they just have a different assessment of the degree of certainty.
I'd like to see a poll about that. Even one just here on TPF. Actually, I did one of those on morality already, and it seems like many people think otherwise. (But you know that already, you were there).
Also, given that a majority of people are religious, and the kind of violent opposition to disagreement religion often generates (that you yourself reference here), it seems pretty clear that many, many people "in real life" think things actually are correct or incorrect. If any thing, people seem to tend more astray in the direction that affirms that (but doesn't tolerate differences of opinion) than the other way (that rightly questions everything, but then denies there are any correct answers).
But just as I suspected, your whole thing underlying every view your espouse is "nothing is actually correct or incorrect". Which, FWIW, is precisely one of the philosophical views I think is objectively incorrect. As you know already, because you were involved extensively in the thread where I said what I think those things are.
It's not a polling issue, it's how the brain works.
Ha! I expect you do.
Maybe. But the point of this thread is to rid us of that anxiety. So for example,
If I turn my hand into a fist, does a new object appear? Or is it the same object as before? And how do you come to know that?
Well, I thought I addressed some of these concerns but I feel like these type of responses sorta don't get at my anxiety about these concerns that I raised.
The concern isn't just that we don't answer questions, but that the questions themselves aren't interesting because they unanswerable.
It's true that some more profound questions like, "Is there meaning in the world?" or "Is their a unity to it all?" can be asked without getting any resolutions, but I feel like a baker can ask these questions. And Bakers aren't philosophers in any relevant sense. (Because we'd be equivocating between philosophy as the philosopher does it, and just ordinary arguments or contemplations.)
And ordinary questions and actions go even further back. Before anything we can properly call philosophy. In that sense, bakers aren't philosophers, mechanics aren't philosophers, etc, etc.
I think that's a nice question, but not necessarily one that has an answer, and thinking it has to be answerable is probably a mistake.
Philosophy is often a way of asking ordinary questions about extraordinary things, or extraordinary questions about ordinary things. (Don't remember who said this.)
There is a difference between a hand formed into a fist and hand formed into some other shape, and that's worth understanding in a bunch of ways, but the "thing" approach looks like a mistake unless "thing" encompasses theoretical entities. But the impulse to look with fresh eyes, to see the very familiar as strange and worth exploring, that's the whole ball game.
I do care about life in its basic form and can relate to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but think that the philosophical quest is extremely important. Without the questions of ultimate meaning I think I would be feel like giving up. Perhaps I am a weirdo but I think that the philosophical quest is one of the important aspects of life.
I would not wish for philosophy to evaporate in a cloud, in which philosophical questions were seen as a useless relic of the past. Perhaps what is needed is for smart thinking and philosophy to converge to create the best possible thinking.
But mereology is a philosophical inquiry for the last 2,500 years. People in philosophy attempt to answer questions like these all the time.
It's fine to call "philosophy" just asking question as long as you know that's not what it is anymore, nor how any philosophers now practice it. I take it to be asking questions in a more precise way than that. So it's not really relevant to the question I'm asking. As I said, we'd be equivocating.
What's your point?
I do see what you are saying because philosophy has become more of a closed academic profession. I am not part of the academia so I feel able to open up beyond this.
The brilliance of this site is that it is beyond the fetters of the academic. I was in dialogue about this in another thread and we are not likely to be rewarded by prestige. Therefore, I would say that we can dare touch base with unknown territories and the optimist within myself says that in a world falling apart who knows what could happen to philosophy for worse or better....
Basically then the measurement of progress in philosophy is the degree in which a person has to start from square one. How many paths have already been taken, that other people can take themselves. If you want to climb a mountain, it helps to have a trail.
I guess the question then becomes, do any of these paths actually lead anywhere? I think sometimes it's enough to simply know what sort of question a question is. Wondering if closing your hand into a fist creates another object by itself is an odd question, but defining it as a mereological question, and clumping it together with other questions of a similar sort makes it less odd. I think eventually you can get to a point where it seems like just about all possible positions in a given domain have been explored, and no further progress is to be made apart from eliminating positions.
Well, if philosophy was pursuing wisdom, finding truth, and there's people that do it for thousands of years, wouldn't you see at least one sufficent answer to any problem in mereology? I mean, we can use other domains of inquiry. Like free will. But that seems somewhat equally confused doesn't it?
But isn't that just frustrating? And make the whole thing seem pretty pointless? I mean, if a problem is so extensive, and has made no progress in thousands of years, wouldn't that be a good reason to think it's irresolvable? Not a priori, but a posteriori evidence suggests it.
Quoting John Dewey, The Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy
But if I'm in the system, I start creating systems. And I'm sold to systematic philosophy.
I'd have to say that maybe that's partially true.
There's a sense of where logical positivism dropped away seemingly useless metaphysical language, but then, that failed. In came back in metaphysics. There's a sense where, personally, I think older claims like essences, teleology, etc are making some form of come-back in philosophy and aren't dropped away. Some professors in NYU are, you know, concerned with creating a notion of an essence that's nonmodal. They are concerned in ontological grounding. Powers, which are in Aristotle's philosophy, creep back up as a form of modality in-between necessity and possibility in, say, Mumford's theories of causation. There's a way of where philosophy just does cycle.
Are you familiar with the common sense philosophy of David Stone? Flawed man, morally speaking, but had some interesting perspectives on philosophy. A common charge he accused other philosophers of being was disingenuous; saying tongue-in-cheek they believe in something but not actually truly believing it, often from what he observed to be a desire to be as provocative and contrarian as possible, to draw attention to themselves, like a monkey flinging shit.
Yeah, I'm not sure if people often just pretend to believe in stuff, but that they do believe in stuff that works in a very confused way.
And no, I haven't read him!
Also, I think if we were to just imagine philosophy going down tube, say, 2500 years ago, I think a lot would have change today. Drastically. So, some might do that analysis of the present (as TGW has) where he asks us to imagine a counter-factual reality without philosophy from now. Is anything lost? I don't see a reason why a counter-factual situation like this would look as radically different as the one we just envisioned had we never had philosophy in the first place. He seems to think otherwise. But I don't think there's good a posterori evidence for that.
This is not just with philosophy, this is just generally the way it is with anything you learn, but it's more apparent with philosophy because nothing seems to get agreed upon in the way it does with facts and theories in the sciences, or best practices in the arts and trades. With math you might learn basic arithmetic, and later down the road you learn about calculus and differential equations, and finally perhaps some abstract algebra, which brings you right back to the basic arithmetic you learned in 1st grade, but this time you have a deeper understanding of things than when you were five.
With Western philosophy there sort of seems to be three different periods, the initial dawning of naive theorizing, the systemic, super-rational philosophy of the scholastics up to the idealists, and then the disillusioned, bitter deconstruction of the failure of everything that happened. I think maybe @180 Proof said something along the lines of this somewhere, but I don't really remember. I could see perhaps philosophy either entering a new phase, or looping back to its initial. Movements for both are happening right now. I think this gives philosophy a somewhat mystical fatalism though, and I've been reading Spengler, so take that with a grain of salt. I'm sort of just rambling right now anyway.
Then again [s]fucks[/s] folks like Feser think that underneath the history of philosophy resides a perennial tradition that more or less has got it right. In that case there is a more obvious sense of progress. Then again, maybe just stagnation.