tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post810080988345092560..comments2023-10-10T08:02:18.073-04:00Comments on Rationally Speaking: Considering some objections to philosophyUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger34125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-16749617591469871262011-01-13T04:27:14.359-05:002011-01-13T04:27:14.359-05:00To anyone still interested:
One of the better pape...To anyone still interested:<br />One of the better papers on The Purpose of Philosophy (Isaiah Berlin) can be found here:<br />http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=5038218142182541644&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&sciodt=0,5Baron Phttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04138430918331887648noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-39919738850813687502011-01-12T23:58:05.342-05:002011-01-12T23:58:05.342-05:00Michael darling,
If someone wants to ask me nicel...Michael darling, <br />If someone wants to ask me nicely I'll expand on my comments, just as I did with those who've already asked. Not only on this thread but previously. Those who require proof that I no longer beat my wife are not likely to get my cooperation. <br /><br />But why don't you tell me what the Stanford essay is about and disabuse me of the notion that it may be suggesting that meanings are more to be inferred from purpose than the reverse.<br /><br />And you're right that the dunce cap doesn't necessarily identify the dunce. Just makes you wonder what his purpose is for wearing it.Baron Phttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04138430918331887648noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-76855949968456374752011-01-12T22:53:36.551-05:002011-01-12T22:53:36.551-05:00Baron,
Thank you for playing the fool; it gives m...Baron,<br /><br />Thank you for playing the fool; it gives me great confidence in my assertions to see that you can only make pathetic attempts to insult my intelligence (and in a vacuum, nonetheless), instead of actually elaborating on what exactly the point you think you're trying to make is. Instead of, say, expanding on what you think Mr. De Dora missed out on (and no, a paragraph taken from Stanford's EoP is not an expansion of your argument), you make the weak insinuation that I don't "understand the material" - and then you go after my hat! Unfortunately, I think if I put on my fedora, you'd still be a troll. Have a nice life, sweetheart.Michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04124683199189659912noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-50674484817411505582011-01-12T20:12:09.899-05:002011-01-12T20:12:09.899-05:00Michael,
Thank you for playing the foil. I didn&...Michael, <br />Thank you for playing the foil. I didn't expect you would understand the material, and I can see you haven't let me down on that score. <br /><br />Maybe you should try on a different hat?Baron Phttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04138430918331887648noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-60319377482737919192011-01-12T18:32:38.564-05:002011-01-12T18:32:38.564-05:00Baron,
Well, bully for the Stanford Encyclopedia ...Baron,<br /><br />Well, bully for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and for your ability to quote it. You still haven't made a point or shown how your questions about purpose are anything more than inane and snarky pseudo-quips. It only demonstrates that you've framed your queries around a vague, broadly-defined word, of which your intended definition we're all supposed to guess at (not to mention your demand that the word "purpose" be used), which you then present as the issue of "purpose" being avoided - as well as somehow being unintelligible to me.<br /><br />As Massimo pointed out, you seem a bit obsessed with "purpose" - despite the fact that the general concept(s) associated with that word were already addressed in the essay! And I would hazard that you're being puckish about the whole thing (as I've tried to make clear); inventing faults in a well-written and coherent essay in order to be a nuisance. Quote an encyclopedia all you want; you're still not contributing to the discussion in any meaningful way.Michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04124683199189659912noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-88049443564423513012011-01-12T07:19:41.513-05:002011-01-12T07:19:41.513-05:00In my opinion, the problem with philosophy is that...In my opinion, the problem with philosophy is that it Platonifies abstract entities and attempts to discover their essences. Hence, you have endless debates over what is "truth" or "meaning" or "knowledge" etc. <br /><br />If, like the logical positivists, you adopt an anti-realist point of view and reject metaphysics and any notion of a transcendent realm of Being, then it seems to me that philosophy essentially boils down to a game or words, not necessarily pertaining to objective reality, but pertaining wholly to subjective human concepts and experiences.<br /><br />In other words, there might not be such a thing as a Platonic essence of Truth and hence philosophical theories of Truth don't qualify as an objective body of knowledge. However at the same time, philosophy allows us to engage in the relevant linguistic analysis necessary to clarify what we subjectively mean by concepts like Truth and how we use such concepts etc.Yan Shenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06626415549772069331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-68161616179480693662011-01-11T13:04:27.832-05:002011-01-11T13:04:27.832-05:00Michael, A better source for the meaning of purpos...Michael, A better source for the meaning of purpose as applied to philosophy might be, for one, the Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy. Lots of references to purpose there. Excerpt from The Meaning of Life, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/life-meaning/<br />"If talk about meaning in life is not by definition talk about welfare or morality, then what is it about? There is as yet no consensus in the field. One answer is that a meaningful life is one that by definition has achieved choice-worthy purposes (Nielsen 1964) or involves satisfaction upon having done so (Wohlgennant 1981). However, this analysis seems too broad for being unable to distinguish the concept of a meaningful life from that of a moral life, which could equally involve attaining worthwhile ends and feeling good upon doing so. We seem to need an account of which purposes are relevant to meaning, with some suggesting they are purposes that not only have a positive value, but also render a life coherent (Markus 2003), make it intelligible (Thomson 2003, 8-13), or transcend one's animal nature (Levy 2005), all of which connote something different from morality and also happiness."<br />Your purpose served of course is to be the foil that allows me to present this example to the readers here who actually can understand it.Baron Phttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04138430918331887648noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-5738426457909083332011-01-11T01:53:10.762-05:002011-01-11T01:53:10.762-05:00@ianpollock -
Did you really want to make the cas...@ianpollock -<br /><br />Did you really want to make the case that people have changed since the first century when in an age of our medical and cosmological knowledge people fly planes into buildings and blow themselves to bits in the name of an ancient superstition? I suspect that giving 1st century people our knowledge and technology would result in a world very much like the one we have now. Our toys and choices expand, but our basic desires and fears do not change nearly as fast.<br /><br />There was quite a sizable span between the Greeks and the big names in philosophy that we all know and love, Nietzsche, Kant, etc. At that rate of advancement we can expect something new and exciting in philosophy in only another couple hundred years or so by which time humans will likely be living in the Matrix or well on our way to another star system courtesy of the advancement of science. Either that or our species will have blown ourselves to bits. If I had to bet I'd put money on the latter.Thameronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05056803143951310082noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-75724638870031599922011-01-10T23:49:30.745-05:002011-01-10T23:49:30.745-05:00Baron,
My computer's New Oxford American Dict...Baron,<br /><br />My computer's New Oxford American Dictionary contains the following:<br /><br />"purpose: noun - the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists"<br /><br />"definition: noun - 1) a statement of the exact meaning of a word, esp. in a dictionary; also, an exact statement or description of the nature, scope, or meaning of something"<br /><br />Mr. De Dora was clever enough to say the following in the second paragraph: "Before moving on, I should define philosophy. ... In short: reason-based conceptual analysis of the human experience." It seems, however, that you weren't clever enough to read it, or to even consider what you mean by "purpose," and how the knowledge of a particular thing's (or idea's) "purpose" can often be gleaned from a clear statement of that thing's (or idea's) "definition."<br /><br />After all, it seems to me - and it would be my guess that it seems to most, as well - that "the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists" is contained in "an exact statement or description of the nature, scope, or meaning of something." In light of this, it also seems to me that "reason-based conceptual analysis of the human experience" answers any such questions before they can even be asked. We all get it; why don't you?<br /><br />I have a question for you: why are you wasting our time - and the good professor's allotted bandwidth - with such inane, snarky, trollish queries? Why are you making something out of nothing? And, would you mind being annoying somewhere else?Michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04124683199189659912noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-18454890686442297692011-01-10T17:13:24.026-05:002011-01-10T17:13:24.026-05:00Massimo, you've used the word and I suspect it...Massimo, you've used the word and I suspect it didn't hurt a bit. Perhaps it wouldn't hurt Michael and the other contributors to follow your example.<br />I'm not obsessed with the subject if that was your "fixation" implication. I'm naturally curious as to how a philosopher can proceed without considering it as a fundamental cause requirement.Baron Phttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04138430918331887648noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-28600575578312462112011-01-10T16:31:13.652-05:002011-01-10T16:31:13.652-05:00@Thameron:
>At their best engineering and medic...@Thameron:<br />>At their best engineering and medicine give us knowledge and choices where none existed previously... whereas philosophy seems to be more about finding more ways to consider a problem and not to make choices.<br /><br />Try a thought experiment. Imagine people living in the 1st century CE suddenly learned all of our scientific and medical knowledge. How do you think that would play out?<br /><br />If your answer is "Horribly*," then perhaps educated 21st century humans outstrip their mediaeval counterparts in scientific knowledge AND in some other area.<br /><br />(*I would still probably do it, though.)<br /><br />If you still doubt this, pick up the Tanakh, or the Norse Sagas, or the Vedas or Confucius' Analects, and ask yourself whether <i>all</i> they got wrong was the fact questions like cosmology and germ theory.ianpollockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15579140807988796286noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-53646892207820438932011-01-10T16:01:34.665-05:002011-01-10T16:01:34.665-05:00Baron, you must have a strange fixation with purpo...Baron, you must have a strange fixation with purpose. No, it certainly doesn't follow from anything I wrote that the negatives of philosophy are part of its purpose. The purposes of philosophy (there, I used the word!) are varied, and include to elucidate the meaning of concepts, to study the limits of our ability to know, and understand how other disciplines work ("philosophies of").Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09099460671669064269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-23985044548620246582011-01-10T15:51:26.565-05:002011-01-10T15:51:26.565-05:00Ritchie,
Massimo wrote (in response to my comments...Ritchie,<br />Massimo wrote (in response to my comments about purpose) that "If there are positives of philosophy, then that's what philosophy is for." Implying that's its purpose without using the word 'purpose' itself. Trying I suppose to show he doesn't use the word because he doesn't have to. <br />My then response was to show that it's not sufficient to signify the purpose by the results. Since IF philosophy had, as it can have, negative results, then by Massimo's logical example, those results would also be its purpose.<br /><br />Now here you come with your opinion of what philosophy is "meant" to deal with, but are you willing to say that's its purpose, or just where it's found by luck and accident an empty niche to fill?Baron Phttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04138430918331887648noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-11049432018574410572011-01-10T14:28:39.120-05:002011-01-10T14:28:39.120-05:00Baron P:
What negatives are we talking about? If ...Baron P:<br /><br />What negatives are we talking about? If philosophy cannot determine the size of some exoplanet, that's a-okay, because philosophy isn't meant to do that. Philosophy is meant to deal with foundational issues like metaphysics, epistemology, language, morality, etc. You're going to have to elaborate on your opinion here, because I don't get it.Ritchie the Bearhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10249784344018510589noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-3761619524179095452011-01-10T12:43:44.255-05:002011-01-10T12:43:44.255-05:00@Troy, you wrote:
"Without a theory, you jus...@Troy, you wrote:<br /><br />"Without a theory, you just have a pile of data that doesn't make any sense."<br /><br />Good point!Michael De Dorahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16054469707295070655noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-25227426727144001292011-01-10T12:42:13.366-05:002011-01-10T12:42:13.366-05:00@Lefaw, you wrote:
"Also, since you're a...@Lefaw, you wrote:<br /><br />"Also, since you're a political philosopher why not use rights in your example? Rights (in the sense we use them) are a fairly modern concept, and when they were originally conceived they were also theoretical and non-obvious, but now they're so well adopted even children understand them. Isn't this the course most great contributions from philosophy take? Sure, the great contributions may be far and few between, but I'd argue their impact can be so great that they're worth far more than their investment."<br /><br />You're absolutely right (no pun intended!). I just didn't happen to think of this example for the essay (and furthermore, since it's just an essay, I need to draw the word count line somewhere!)Michael De Dorahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16054469707295070655noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-4170289063175644582011-01-10T12:40:18.917-05:002011-01-10T12:40:18.917-05:00@ianpollock, you wrote:
"I might also have p...@ianpollock, you wrote:<br /><br />"I might also have pointed out the clarifying power of political & ethical philosophy in political debates. As a random example, I find a philosophical approach cuts skew to a debate like abortion and exposes 99% of what both sides say as irrelevance - both 'life begins at conception' and 'if you don't like abortions, don't have one.'"<br /><br />I alluded to this particular use of philosophy in my essay, but you present a good practical example of the point. Well done.Michael De Dorahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16054469707295070655noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-76362107746210765742011-01-10T12:36:00.077-05:002011-01-10T12:36:00.077-05:00@jcm, you wrote:
"You lost me on the basebal...@jcm, you wrote:<br /><br />"You lost me on the baseball analogy - perhaps because baseball (unlike, say, ethics or politics) really is a topic that I consider trivial and its commentators overly hair-splitting. (To be fair, you can also say this of analogies to pastimes that I prefer, like musical and dramatic entertainment.)"<br /><br />Fair enough. I often try to persuade others to care about ethics and politics, but never something like baseball.Michael De Dorahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16054469707295070655noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-21121175970167043842011-01-10T07:17:40.953-05:002011-01-10T07:17:40.953-05:00The baseball example is quite appropriate since ph...The baseball example is quite appropriate since philosophy is itself not very much more than an obscure intellectual sport where the combatants are judged on the aesthetics of their arguments not on any truth revealed by them. And of course one does not expect progress from sports. At their best engineering and medicine give us knowledge and choices where none existed previously (like the choice to fly to Australia or get a heart transplant). They are where the electron orbitals meet whereas philosophy seems to be more about finding more ways to consider a problem and not to make choices.<br /><br />Take heart though perhaps one day it will be as popular as curling.Thameronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05056803143951310082noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-84680138203443013932011-01-10T01:54:20.916-05:002011-01-10T01:54:20.916-05:00Two points.
Without a theory, you just have a pi...Two points. <br /><br />Without a theory, you just have a pile of data that doesn't make any sense. <br /><br />When people talk about the practical, etc., they are inevitably complaining that philosophy isn't reductionist. Well, they are right. It isn't reductionist. It's not supposed to be. Philosophy deals with the most complex issues, and thus is the most complex way of thinking, dealing with issues, etc. It is emergentist, not reductionist. The more complex the thing studied, the more like philosophy is necessarily must become.Troy Camplinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16515578686042143845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-311795466694903272011-01-09T17:58:20.109-05:002011-01-09T17:58:20.109-05:00By the way, if there are negatives in philosophy, ...By the way, if there are negatives in philosophy, then is that what philosophy is for as well?Baron Phttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04138430918331887648noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-85036870663774837042011-01-09T17:51:20.341-05:002011-01-09T17:51:20.341-05:00Not from the point of view of different purposes, ...Not from the point of view of different purposes, but I get the joke, truly I do.Baron Phttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04138430918331887648noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-5193814326589358512011-01-09T17:44:57.740-05:002011-01-09T17:44:57.740-05:00I truly don't see the difference. If there are...I truly don't see the difference. If there are positives of philosophy, then that's what philosophy is for. And the differences between it and science have been debated at length here.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09099460671669064269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-78260229967724833012011-01-09T17:28:06.542-05:002011-01-09T17:28:06.542-05:00Massimo.
But again it seems you've studiously ...Massimo.<br />But again it seems you've studiously avoided the use of the word purpose - such as in purpose why, purpose of, purpose for, purpose served, etc. <br /><br />The positives of philosophy have been discussed - the purposes, as they might differ from those of science for example, have not.Baron Phttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04138430918331887648noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-7878681647507998292011-01-09T15:48:44.750-05:002011-01-09T15:48:44.750-05:00Baron,
interesting how you seem to discount how t...Baron,<br /><br />interesting how you seem to discount how the positives of philosophy have been discussed quite a bit on this blog. Indeed, this blog *is* one long philosophical argument...Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09099460671669064269noreply@blogger.com