Snakes Alive

Never heard of him.

Come up with another response!

I like the Graham article. I don't agree with all of it, and I think he exaggerates the extent to which philosophical texts are unintelligible (he may...

No, I'll look at it, thanks. I think Rorty is in the analytic mainstream, but that the analytic mainstream had an anti-philosophical wing, for about 3...

Rorty is not a particularly radical figure, and he didn't see himself as such. His trajectory is clear from the tradition of Moore through the late Ca...

You're just doing #2, though. All I've recommended is historical – if it's within the tradition, why have I never seen anybody doing it?

So it's important to recognize how far down the dialectic we are. This is in response to a version of the #3 defense of philosophy: it may not do anyt...

I did, but I'm going to wait before responding. I don't want to make the post too long, because it just encourages yet longer posts (with a lot of bli...

You need to stop that.

But this is just talking about a word – yes there were positions in 'natural philosophy,' and yes Newton's work has the word 'philosophy' in the title...

This book is of interest for those interested in the history of sophists, and how they interacted with the philosophers: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk...

The point is it doesn't matter. It's just a definitional issue. If you want to talk about history, do so.

That's a historical claim, yeah. fdrake's arguments are just shuffling about definitions to try to make it seem like 'natural philosophy' is 'philosop...

You're just playing with definitions. And it's not philosophy, it's the history of how a certain social practice arose.

I don't write on it, since I'm just a layman that thinks about this as a hobby (I 'believed in' philosophy when I was younger, got a degree in it, and...

History, chemistry, linguistics, asking where the bus stop is, learning to play chess, beauty school, football coaching... Do you want to go into the ...

Also, there are three reactions that almost invariably arise when people defending philosophy are confronted with the fact that it doesn't work: 1) "I...

I'm not some kind of chauvinist for the natural sciences, no. I think plenty of areas of inquiry ask and answer interesting questions. Philosophy does...

Not at all. I think, for example, that many historians ask questions of no technological value, and with no obvious utility. But nonetheless, those qu...

A word on aporia above: It's possible that aporia was used as a clever literary and intellectual device by Socrates, and to some extent maybe by Plato...

Definitely. I think that part of the fun of doing philosophy is that its participants implicitly know they aren't really arguing about anything, so it...

It's worth noting that, through the mouth of Socrates, Plato pleads that philosophers are different from lawyers because they have as much time as the...

Yeah, philosophy is closely related to rhetoric and sophistry. It's not even really clear that there is a clear distinction between the three – the id...

That's off the mark – but then, it's not like there's anything wrong with peasants. It's a kind of conversational play plus cognitive loop that was di...

A folk tradition is highly particular to a certain civilizational circumstance, that's all. There is nothing derogatory about the term. The reason it'...

I guess I believe in something like that, but that it's not worth discussing with other people.

Thales doesn't have much of anything to do with Socrates. The only connection seems to be that in the Phaedo Socrates fictionally reports purchasing a...

I think this survives in the way 'western civilization' in general seems to simply value talking, even to no end. There is some bizarre idea that no m...

It looks like we disagree.

I think the pre-thoretical ideas are attractive, sure, which is part of why philosophy 'happened' in the first place. But I don't think philosophy its...

Oh, sure, so if you ask people whether they have free will, or whatever, then they're often interested. Sometimes in their fumbling attempts to discus...

I don't think that's true. Do you have any examples? I've never met anyone outside of academia or philosophy forums that cared about philosophy (to th...

Don't what? Have that interest? I agree with that. I think this whole discussion is something the vast majority of people will never have to worry or ...

My interest would be an anthropological ad historical one. Why the tradition arose, and how, interests me. I think for someone that doesn't have this ...

Those to things aren't mutually exclusive. The analogy with hadith here again is good – it's a technical discipline that few people understand. People...

I don't think those people actually know much of anything about philosophy. That would extend to a lot of people on this forum.

That's not true, though – substantive inquiry is certainly not just a conversation. Philosophy puts on some of the superficial trappings of inquiry, w...

Yep. The lack of self-reflection comes in part from the fact that only natives study the tradition. People outside of it either suspect it is what it ...

The latter, I think. I'm not sure what an effort like that would look like, but I wouldn't rule it out as impossible a priori. The point is, whatever ...

To be clear, the 'Is X a case of Y?' question is a characterization from the outside. I doubt that philosophy self-consciously understands itself to b...

Something like that, but I wouldn't put it in the form of an argument. The reason is that there is no deep logical reason that things happened this wa...

There is no general field of inquiry.

If the best defense you have of philosophy changing is the existence of string theory, who can convince you? My posts aren't for the true believers. T...

This is just non-philosophical things changing, and philosophy talking about them, because it has an empty form and so claims to 'talk about anything....

The questions discussed in philosophy today are the same as those discussed by Socrates via Plato, and those discussions are conducted in much the sam...

You were probably expressing an adolescent malaise of some sort, which may have had genuine impulses, but got routed through the appropriate channels ...

I don't think so. Anyone familiar with the tradition isn't going to see anything new in Kant. Remember, the 'Copernican Revolution' line is his own pr...

I already answered that above ^ In the Socratic / Western tradition, the basic practice of philosophy is to do something like say 'Imagine scenario X....

No. Read a book.

The ascetic ideal is certainly central to (certain varieties of) religion. Not so much to philosophy. I don't see all that much difference. What the p...