Two ways to philosophise.

Banno

When I participated in the profession, as a student or as a tutor, folk would often ask me what I do. When I said I studied philosophy, more often then not the question would be asked “Well, what’s your philosophy, then?”

And this was always a puzzle to me, because although that is how philosophy is often seen by the public, it didn’t match my own perspective. Not only did I not have a philosophy, I wasn’t even looking for one.

“Having a philosophy” is commonly seen as having some set of beliefs, hence “doing philosophy” must be developing such sets of beliefs. Philosophy, on this view, consists in developing a certain sort of narrative, one that is presumably coherent and logical and explains various things from the practical to the esoteric.

This is reinforced in the bookshops were the very few books on “philosophy”, on the single labeled shelf between “religion” and “self help”, suggest in their titles that they are texts on how the customary historical figures insist we ought live our lives.

But in my studies, I spent very little time making stuff up about how things are. Instead, I found myself reading many, many papers, delving in great detail into the logic and language of each, looking for where what was said hung together and where it fell apart, and how it sat in relation to all those other papers. I was not learning a set of beliefs so much as learning to apply various tools, tools for conceptual analysis, logical scrutiny, and linguistic clarity. My task was choosing the right one for the task and learning how to use it to the best effect, prising apart the various bits and pieces of each text and examining them for their beauty, utility and faults.

Much the same difference can be seen in the threads of this forum. There are those who arrive with their Philosophy, and expound it at length, explaining The Way The World Is, to the benefit of every one of the unenlightened. They often seem shocked into incomprehension when someone comes back with a quibble about how their story doesn’t quite follow, contradicts itself, doesn’t match what is plain to all, or derives an “ought” from an “is”. They will complain of straw men, of trolling, or simply of rudeness, apparently being astonished that folk could be so discourteous as to be critical of their work.

But this is a philosophy forum, not a Vanity Press. If you present your thoughts here you must expect them to be critiqued. In a very central and important sense, this is what we do.

What I want to propose is that there are two different ways of doing philosophy. There are those who do philosophy through discourse. These folk set the scene, offer a perspective, frame a world, and explain how things are. Their tools are exposition and eulogistics. Their aim is completeness and coherence, and the broader the topics they encompass the better. Then there are those who dissect. These folk take things apart, worry at the joints, asks what grounds the system. Their tool is nitpicking and detail. Their aim is truth and clarity, they delight in the minutia.

The discourse sets up a perspective, a world, a game, an activity, whatever we call it. The dissection pulls it apart, exposing its assumptions, underpinnings and other entrails. Perhaps you can't have one without the other, however a theory that explains any eventuality ends up explaining nothing, and for a theory to be useful it has to rule some things out.

Further, a theory that explains, for anything that is the case, why it is the case, can't by that very fact take anything as granted - to do so would be not to offer an explanation. If it takes nothing as granted, how does it link into the world? So, if for instance the theory can explain why my wasabi plants are thriving, doesn't it have to take it as granted that my wasabi plants are thriving? There has to be something outside the theoretical construct in order that the activity of explanation has a place... along the lines of hinge propositions. A difference between the explanation and the explanandum that cannot happen in a theory that explains everything. Gödel showed us that no sufficiently complex formal system can be both complete and consistent. If we apply this insight philosophically, we see that striving for a complete worldview may not only be impossible—it may be misguided.

Completeness for it's own sake is a problem. Much better to have an incomplete theory that is right that a completely wrong theory...

Philosophy is not marked and differentiated from other subjects by it's making shit up. It is marked and differentiated by knocking things down. The better Socratic dialogues are those early disagreements in the market that end without a conclusion. Philosophy is not about amassing propositions, but about unearthing presuppositions—often to reject them.

And this difference can be seen in the difference of approach between various threads around the forums. There are those that set out almost uncritically to explain the finer points of the Doctrine of this or that philosopher, and there are those that mention an issue and seek to examine it by bringing to play the may critical tools developed over the years.

I hope it’s clear that my preference is for dissection over discourse.

I’ve been discussing this with @Moliere and @J for a few weeks. Thanks to both of you for your thoughtful responses.

_______________________________________
Added: See also this post and the discussion of The Great List. On reflection it was @Count Timothy von Icarus who made the most interesting - troublesome - critique of this essay. The conversation goes somewhat astray after about page eight, but the discussion of philosophical methodology continues in a thread about Williamson's paper Must Do Better, as well as in @Moliere's thread on the aesthetics of philosophy, A Matter of Taste.

180 Proof

↪Banno

:clap: Thanks for this. Even though I don't agree philosophical practice is strictly binary, I find the case you make quite strong and convincing. The plumbing matters.

Dogbert

Iain Mcgilchrist Moment

I like sushi

If we apply this insight philosophically, we see that striving for a complete worldview may not only be impossible—it may be misguided. — Banno

I think it is deeply misguided too. As you may have noticed I get a little concerned when philosophy ignores scientific evidence, or is simply ignorant of it. That said, it can serve us to look twice and rethink how we look at certain pieces of evidence rather than just taking them at face value.

With many advances today in various fields it is probably asking much for anyone to fully understand the intricacies of each field of interest. I have always felt that if there is one particular use of philosophy it is its ability to narrow this gap of understanding between widely dispersed areas of study.

This seems more and more important as technology propels us onwards with increasing speed.

Hanover

↪Banno

Knowing you these many years, I have learned your worldview to be deeply religious, leaning heavily upon mysticism, enjoying Continental philosophy, although having an admiration of Descartes and wanting to better understand qualia and metaphysics.

As in, of course you have a cohesive worldview, and it's not close to what I've said. Worldview is not a philosophical concept as much as a psychological one, and despite one's belief that the intellect of a philosopher can trascend the limitations of others, we needn't kid ourselves.

A definition of worldview: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/worldview

So what is your worldview? Heavily analytic, later Wittgensteinian, formally logical, atheistic, progressively liberal (as Americans use that term), academically biased. This isn't meant as psychoanalysis, but simply to point out where you find truth, meaning, and value.

I just find the very concept of anti-worldviewism hopelessly paradoxical because it's a worldview unto itself.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quietism_(philosophy)

Wayfarer

As I’ve said many a time, my interest in philosophy grew out of my search for enlightenment. This is partially because of when I came of age in the 1960’s, one of the Woodstock generation. Acid had some bearing. But there were also cultural and counter-cultural icons who embodied it, or seemed to (I was given a Krishnamurti book for my 17th birthday) Sgt Pepper’s was a bellwether moment (‘but first, are you experienced? Have you ever been experienced?’) When I (belatedly) went to University as an adult student, it was off the back of an old-fashioned ‘comprehension text’, the main body of which was a large slab of Betrand Russell’s Mysticism and Logic, which was right up my alley. Which misleadingly led me to believe that there was an interest in ‘enlightenment’ amongst the various sources I was going to study, when of course, the only instance of that word had ‘European’ in front of it - a vastly different thing, I was to find out.

Nevertheless I persisted (I’m reminded of Alan Watts’ frequent invocation ‘a fool who persists in his folly will become wise’ - a vain hope, in his case, as it turned out.) The idea being that not only was enlightenment real but that it would arrive as a kind of lightning bolt which would blast all of the residue of cultural conditioning off of one’s inherent ‘Buddha nature’. Not so easy, I was to learn. But that, anyway, was what was behind it.

Where that fitted in to philosophy per se, was ‘not at all’ - at least, since David Hume. David Stove, a well-known lecturer, took me aside after class one day, and said ‘you won’t find what you’re looking for in this Department, son.’ (‘Some healing thing’ was how he perceived my quest.) Sure enough, I soon absconded to Comparative Religion (emphatically not ‘divinity’, as I would tell anyone who asked.) I think that’s where I discovered classical philosophy and also what I know of Hegel, who was better represented in that department than in Philosophy proper.

But I still hold to the view that philosophy proper is or ought to be therapeutic - that it is aimed at ameliorating or healing or seeing through an ‘error in consciousness’, a deep, pervasive and widely-accepted misunderstanding as to the meaning of being in which practically all of us are unknowingly immersed. I think the nearest source to that in the modern canon is probably Heidegger, although Being and Time wasn’t on my curriculum and I’ve only read parts of it since. But overall existentialists, phenomenologists, and Buddhists speak to me much more than Anglo philosophers in that regard, as they’re concerned with the meaning, not of properly-formed sentences, but being as such.

eulogistics — Banno

No such word, according to my dictionary, although I suppose it could be the disciplined study of things said at funerals.

Tom Storm

And this difference can be seen in the difference of approach between various threads around the forums. There are those that set out almost uncritically to explain the finer points of the Doctrine of this or that philosopher, and there are those that mention an issue and seek to examine it by bringing to play the may critical tools developed over the years. — Banno

Interesting OP. It does often seem like there are people here who are trying to understand what others think, and others who want everyone to think like them.

ChatteringMonkey

What I want to propose is that there are two different ways of doing philosophy. There are those who do philosophy through discourse. These folk set the scene, offer a perspective, frame a world, and explain how things are. Their tools are exposition and eulogistics. Their aim is completeness and coherence, and the broader the topics they encompass the better. Then there are those who dissect. These folk take things apart, worry at the joints, asks what grounds the system. Their tool is nitpicking and detail. Their aim is truth and clarity, they delight in the minutia. — Banno

Yeah, people seem confused about language and the process of abstraction.

Knowledge is only possible through abstraction. That is trying to go beyond the world of particulars we sense to more encompassing general concepts. Without that there is no knowledge, only particulars. The flipside is that in this proces of generalisation and abstraction we lose information about particulars... and so it tends to become less useful the further we push it.

Since the beginning of philosophy there have been those misvaluating the highest concepts to the point that they were considered more real than the world of the senses, when in reality they were merely the most general, the 'highest' abstractions of that world, and consequently also the most empty.

Those that don't really understands this proces, or the implications thereof, tend to overvaluate what can be done with it.

Ramifications... Reifications and rationalisations.

Wayfarer

↪Tom Storm

There's also constructive criticism - those who are willing to have their ideas criticized so as to better understand both them and their critics, which I think is nearer the true spirit of philosophy.

Fire Ologist

This is well-put as usual, which is why you are such an interesting thinker.

There are those who arrive with their Philosophy, and expound it at length, explaining The Way The World Is, — Banno

I don’t have a philosophy, but this describes me pretty much. I have some beliefs about what the world is and what human experience is, and why we in fact care to discuss it.

So despite your basic denigration of those who might ask and care about “what is your philosophy?”, and despite the lack of any complete system that is yet to give an answer, I am most interested in pursuing an answer to this precise question. What is your world view and why, despite all of the difficulties with saying such.

Instead, I found myself reading many, many papers, delving in great detail into the logic and language of each, looking for where what was said hung together and where it fell apart, and how it sat in relation to all those other papers. — Banno

This is the aspect of philosophic study that makes it a science. Descartes, the mathematician, was skeptical, to the point of seeing nothing certain. He salvaged the seeing. But tried to dissect it all. And Sextus Epiricus, the physician, didn’t buy any of it.

This is an important spirit towards rigor in what I see as the science which is philosophy.

Perhaps you can't have one without the other, — Banno

This was said in passing. But is the heart of the matter to me. You cannot say what the world is without inviting rigorous dissection of what you said, but there is nothing to dissect without human experience spoken of.

Philosophers MUST care about both, or there is no subject of our study.

however a theory that explains any eventuality ends up explaining nothing, and for a theory to be useful it has to rule some things out. — Banno

I don’t understand the first part of this. Seems like it is missing something. “…a theory that explains any eventuality ends up explaining nothing [unless it…does what?].”

I agree with the second part - useful theories rule things out. But the first part says explaining eventualities always explains the same thing, namely, nothing.

Gödel showed us that no sufficiently complex formal system can be both complete and consistent. If we apply this insight philosophically, we see that striving for a complete worldview may not only be impossible—it may be misguided. — Banno

It may be. But isn’t that a complete and consistent reason not to say what Gödel just said. I am happy to be 50% uncertain in the hopes of being accidentally right about the world and human experience, and keep testing and testing the theories. This forum is a laboratory.

Much better to have an incomplete theory that is right that a completely wrong theory... — Banno

“Theory that is right”.
Interesting invocation. Theory about what? Right about what? Theory about theorizing, or about the world theorists need and use to exchange their ideas and theories?

“Better” to have a theory about theorizing or a theory about the world that is incomplete?

Isn’t Godels theory (completed in the sense that it is a theory) simply that theorizing about the world is never complete? That says something universal about human experience. I’m interested in that, not just the proofs and analytics that back it up.

I don't agree philosophical practice is strictly binary, — 180 Proof

Me neither. I think this all overlooks philosophy’s relationship to the mystical. There are forces begging our questions even after one concludes the questions cannot be answered.

Human nature is an absurdity. But that is still a nature. That can still be a metaphysical truth of interest to the scientist.

others who want everyone to think like them. — Tom Storm

I am interested in what others think, what I think, and most importantly what we all think is the truth. I don’t want others to think like I do. That belittles everyone involved. But I do humbly think there are truths all rational people must accept. That, can seem like I want others to think like I do, but it is not. It’s like saying Einstein was psychologically trying to get others to think like he thinks about energy, when psychology was not not of any interest.

↪Banno

Well done! I'm looking forward to responding soon . . .

Fire Ologist

↪Banno

As a person more interested in discussing world views and seeking truth, another response to this great post might be:

I’ll admit I might be full of shit, if you’ll admit you contradict yourself in saying I can’t be full of truth.

Count Timothy von Icarus

↪Tom Storm

↪Wayfarer

If philosophy is the love of wisdom, it is presumably the love of something in particular, and it would seem that not all philosophical positions are wise.

This is not the same thing as "interesting." Hume and Nietzsche are interesting. I am not sure if they are wise.

But, supposing that one thought that all philosophical positions were equally wise (and unwise), that there were no ethical, metaphysical, aesthetic, etc. truths, and thus that "understanding" should replace critique and argument—wouldn't this itself be the demand that everyone else conform to the beliefs/preferences of the skeptic/anti-realist? That is, a sort of declaration of "victory by default?"

It does often seem like there are people here who are trying to understand what others think, and others who want everyone to think like them.

I don't think these are mutually exclusive categories. If truth is preferable to falsity, wisdom to being unwise, then obviously one will want to lead others to the possession of whatever wisdom and truth they have. Wisdom and knowledge are not goods that diminish when shared, but goods that grow the more people partake in them. Hence, the motivation for "conversion" (as Rorty puts it).

But note that someone seeking conversion still has motivations for understanding other's positions. First, because believing one is likely correct is not the same thing as thinking oneself infallible or in possession of the total picture. Hence, in fearing error, and in wanting to round out their position, they have reason to understand other positions. Indeed, where different, disparate traditions agree, there is something of a "robustness check" on the underlying ideas.

Second, conversion requires understanding opposing positions, both for translation and counter argument. Indeed, I can see how it might be the case that these might be some of the stronger motivations for understanding. If one believes positions are undecidable, more something akin to a matter of taste then truth and falsity, I don't see how this wouldn't, at least potentially, lead to being more close-minded, not less. Afterall, if one is challenged on one's own position, one can simply say that all positions have their own inconsistencies. Why learn about another position when all positions share a sort of equality? If you're enjoying your Flaming Doritos just fine, and you cannot be in error in enjoying them, why try to Extreme Nacho variety in the first place?

Now there are difficulties here. Commitment to any one tradition necessarily takes time away from others, and it is difficult to become conversant in many different traditions, particularly when some are very (perhaps intentionally) obscure. Yet it is worth the time, if only because all traditions tend to rely on at least some implicit presuppositions. These are often inherited, a sort of historical residue, and knowing their source is informative. Within a tradition itself, these sorts of presuppositions tend to be transparent.

Just for example, from 400BC to 1600AD a lot of philosophy was done. A lot of skeptical philosophy was advanced. Yet no one introduced a skeptical position all that similar to that of Descartes. St. Augustine had reason to formulate the Cogito before him, but it was in response to a quite different type of skepticism. The idea that all we know are our own ideas, and that even other people might be figments, hadn't occured to anyone. One might suppose from this then that other changes were necessary to pave the way for such a thesis.

This is important in that, for many people, this has become the philosophical issue: securing the "external world." A lot of contemporary thought is based around resolving this very issue. But, stepping behind it helps to reveal some of the common assumptions in play, even if one remains convinced that it is not a problem that can be "dissolved" because the presuppositions in play are valid.

Likewise, any philosophy of history that includes the history of ideas must traffic in the unfolding of such ideas. This is why Hegel's philosophy of religion must at least try to understand all religions, even dead ones.

Harry Hindu

Completeness for it's own sake is a problem. Much better to have an incomplete theory that is right that a completely wrong theory... — Banno

Which is just saying that to have a theory that is right is to have a theory that acknowledges all the relevant information and excludes all the irrelevant information.

There has to be something outside the theoretical construct in order that the activity of explanation has a place... along the lines of hinge propositions. — Banno

What exactly does this mean - that the universe needs something external to it to be able to explain the universe? What if there is nothing external to the universe?

Fire Ologist

There has to be something outside the theoretical construct….
— Banno
What exactly does this mean — Harry Hindu

It certainly sounds metaphysical. It sounds like there certainly has to be something outside of language. Which I would agree with.

Srap Tasmaner

It does often seem like there are people here who are trying to understand what others think, and others who want everyone to think like them. — Tom Storm

One of those camps is dramatically larger than the other.

I remember a little cartoon, taped to a terminal on the checkout counter at the college library. A guy, resting his head in his hand and gazing at a computer terminal, and he's saying, "Gee, I wish you could talk. I'd love to know what you're thinking." And there's a thought bubble for the computer, which is thinking, "I wish you could think. I'd love to know what you're saying."

Leontiskos

we needn't kid ourselves — Hanover

We needn't kid ourselves, but so many do. So many pat themselves on the back, "He is so sure of himself with his truth-claims and propositions. I am unsure of myself, and I just knock things down. I take nothing for granted. How much better I am!" They do not understand that the wrecking ball presupposes its own truth-claims and foundations, but when the goal is virtue-signaling it doesn't much matter.

I just find the very concept of anti-worldviewism hopelessly paradoxical because it's a worldview unto itself. — Hanover

I would call it a performative contradiction rather than a paradox.

If we apply this insight philosophically, we see that striving for a complete worldview may not only be impossible—it may be misguided. — Banno

But what's interesting here is that the religious thinker usually holds that God is inexhaustibly intelligible, and therefore they actually have a reason for openness to reality. Hence the reason why secular thinkers like Banno's Logical Positivists are so enclosed upon themselves and parochial: their premise is that there is nothing in-principle inexhaustible about reality; and their failure leads to a despair that then leads to vacillation between various forms of irrational optimism and various forms of despair and deflationism. Note too that the formalistic and theory-laden approach to explanandum and explanation has already trapped itself before it has begun. In reality there are no hard and fast divides between the so-called "object language" and the so-called "meta language." Both are artificial constructs needed to uphold a Great Divide that in truth does not exist.

Even the pragmatist should be able to see that in order to avoid both despair and presumption one needs a legitimate object and reason for hope. One needs movement afresh without cynicism towards the past or despair of true progress in the future. In today's climate what is needed is philosophy rather than diatribes, ideology, and virtue signaling (i.e. the reduction of thinking to public moralizing - the "comprehensive views are naughty" propaganda of liberalism).

Leontiskos

↪Srap Tasmaner

The horseshoe effect connects megalomania solipsism and Carl Rogers listening-relativism. In both cases one arrives at a flattened and arid landscape, just by different routes. With the first the whole class listens to one person who expounds their ideas, and no one else gets to talk. With the second it is exactly the same, except that each person is given their solipsistic opportunity to speak before everyone walks home in isolation and silence. The choices are "monism" or "pluralism," where the common individualistic rule is that argument and contention is not permitted. No distinction between argument and imposition is possible. To argue is to impose, and to do this is to be an immoral exclusivist who does not judge all ideas equal. It is to fail the criterion of democracy in the realm of ideas. Influencing another individual's thoughts and beliefs is off-limits, because it presupposes the inequality of ideas.

Of course, thankfully most of the resident "pluralists" do not do this consistently. But if Banno's philosophical summum bonum of disagreement is to function, then there must be a legitimate motive for disagreeing. If we do not presuppose that error exists, then we would never disagree; and error cannot exist without truth going before it.

Tom Storm

If philosophy is the love of wisdom, it is presumably the love of something in particular, and it would seem that not all philosophical positions are wise.

This is not the same thing as "interesting." Hume and Nietzsche are interesting. I am not sure if they are wise.

But, supposing that one thought that all philosophical positions were equally wise (and unwise), that there were no ethical, metaphysical, aesthetic, etc. truths, and thus that "understanding" should replace critique and argument—wouldn't this itself be the demand that everyone else conform to the beliefs/preferences of the skeptic/anti-realist? That is, a sort of declaration of "victory by default?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

Maybe. But I'm not sure anyone believes that all philosophy is equally wise. I'm not familiar enough with the literature to make any assessments on behalf of others.

It does often seem like there are people here who are trying to understand what others think, and others who want everyone to think like them.

I don't think these are mutually exclusive categories. If truth is preferable to falsity, wisdom to being unwise, then obviously one will want to lead others to the possession of whatever wisdom and truth they have. Wisdom and knowledge are not goods that diminish when shared, but goods that grow the more people partake in them. Hence, the motivation for "conversion" (as Rorty puts it).

But note that someone seeking conversion still has motivations for understanding other's positions. First, because believing one is likely correct is not the same thing as thinking oneself infallible or in possession of the total picture. Hence, in fearing error, and in wanting to round out their position, they have reason to understand other positions. Indeed, where different, disparate traditions agree, there is something of a "robustness check" on the underlying ideas. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think Rorty is probably right that philosophy is essentially a discursive project. The history of philosophy resembles a conversation in slow motion, one marked by fashions and phases, as well as by committed reactionaries and revolutionaries. But it is also a fairly sheltered discourse, since most people take little interest in it and are effectively excluded by barriers such as literacy, time, education, and inclination. As a result, there tend to be two conversational groupings: the intellectual 'elite', and the rest of us, who paddle around in the shallow end with the slogans, fragments, and half-digested presuppositions that trickle down.

Philosophy as a distinct activity doesn't seem to be widely practiced outside of hobbyists and academic settings. Where do you think it shows up in today's world (as a practice) and can you point to a demonstration of its efficacy?

Hanover

How much better I am!" — Leontiskos

I would agree that advocates of a worldview that hold skepticism in high regard would be better received if they portrayed their position as aspirational as opposed to already being on a higher plane. As in, they can believe skepticism is the best approach, although they admit the standard is rarely fully achieved.

I still don't find the position sustainable just due to the impossibility of not having bias toward certain foundational standards, but direct declarations of superiority while claiming no one standard inherently superior strikes me as facially inconsistent as well.

Tom Storm

This is not the same thing as "interesting." Hume and Nietzsche are interesting. I am not sure if they are wise. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What counts as wise in your assessment. What are the indicators?

Leontiskos

I would agree that advocates of a worldview that hold skepticism in high regard would be better received if they portrayed their position as aspirational as opposed to already being on a higher plane. As in, they can believe skepticism is the best approach, although they admit the standard is rarely fully achieved. — Hanover

I agree. And it may be that their thesis of skepticism is so broad that it is hard to produce concrete arguments in its favor, but I nevertheless think that we want rational arguments rather than moral preferences when deciding whether skepticism is the best approach. The skeptic can be construed as humble or at least as possessing "epistemic humility," and that is deemed morally valuable within our culture, but presumably on a philosophy forum we want to ask whether skepticism is rational, rather than asking whether it is moral.

I still don't find the position sustainable just due to the impossibility of not having bias toward certain foundational standards, but direct declarations of superiority while claiming no one standard inherently superior strikes me as facially inconsistent as well. — Hanover

:up:

a theory that explains, for anything that is the case, why it is the case, can't by that very fact take anything as granted - to do so would be not to offer an explanation. — Banno

Your OP has already generated a lot of the good discussion it so richly deserves. I'll chime in on two points. The first relates to the quote above. A Theory Of Everything, in philosophy, would naturally have to include a theory of explanation itself -- what counts as explanatory, how explanations do in fact make sense of things, how we recognize an adequate justification, and much more. So to avoid circularity, a TOE will have to provide this account on a different level than the theory-internal explanations of other things. One of my main difficulties with this kind of grand theorizing is that not enough attention is devoted to recognizing this problem and giving a straightforward account of the necessary postulates or intuitions for explanation. And you can't just name them: Such an account must include the reasons why these postulates or intuitions are free from interpretation by the theory itself -- no easy task.

The second point concerns the discourse vs. dissection idea, which is a very helpful way to think about phil. It overlaps with the idea that philosophy is about some kind of wisdom or understanding. I got to take a class once with Richard Bernstein, and I remember his credo, which was something like this: "You have to restrain your desire to respond and refute until you've thoroughly understood the philosopher or the position you're addressing. [And boy did he mean "thoroughly"!]. You really don't have a right to an opinion until you're sure you've achieved the most charitable, satisfying reading possible. Otherwise it's just a game of who can make the cleverer arguments." I forget this constantly, as we all do, but I still hold it as ideal. You can't start being wise until you first understand. And yes, quite often the wisdom is aporetic, but that should teach us something about the nature of philosophy, not make us look forward to some glorious day when all the questions will be answered correctly, as demonstrated by superior argumentative skill.

Tom Storm

"You have to restrain your desire to respond and refute until you've thoroughly understood the philosopher or the position you're addressing. [And boy did he mean "thoroughly"!]. You really don't have a right to an opinion until you're sure you've achieved the most charitable, satisfying reading possible. Otherwise it's just a game of who can make the cleverer arguments." — J

Nice quote. My mum held a similar position. Great way to promote silence. It strikes me that a thorough understanding of anything is rare.

↪Tom Storm

Glad you liked it. And a thorough understanding of a difficult position you're pretty sure you won't end up agreeing with is really hard! But if you don't try for it, you're just creating little straw figures in your head to call "wrong" -- or worse, to file away under convenient labels ("modern," "religious", et al.) so as to avoid doing the hard work of thinking through another person's mind.

Tom Storm

↪J

Yes, and it's instructive to observe the disagreements here, how often people talk past each other, battling presuppositions rather than engaging with the actual arguments.

Leontiskos

I got to take a class once with Richard Bernstein, and I remember his credo, which was something like this: "You have to restrain your desire to respond and refute until you've thoroughly understood the philosopher or the position you're addressing. [And boy did he mean "thoroughly"!]. You really don't have a right to an opinion until you're sure you've achieved the most charitable, satisfying reading possible. Otherwise it's just a game of who can make the cleverer arguments." — J

There are at least two problems with Bernstein's advice. The first is that there are thousands of philosophers, and if we could not critique and dismiss any of them until we had "achieved the most charitable, satisfying reading possible," then we would be bound to read only a handful of them, precisely the ones we were accidentally introduced to first.

The second is that the quality of philosophical engagement is a mean, not an extreme. Bernstein errs in thinking that it is merely a function of the philosophical author, but in fact it is a mean between the reader and the philosophical author. Thus someone who is less intelligent ought to have a less stringent criterion for critiquing. To deny this is to misunderstand the nature of quality philosophical engagement, and it is also to hamstring the development of philosophy students. To simplify, if you are reading something that seems really dumb, then you should call it dumb and go find something that you find more intelligent. There is no need to lie to oneself and pretend that it isn't dumb. Maybe you will later find out that it wasn't dumb, but the better decision is still to admit what you believe to be the case and move on for now. To cling to that which has no rationale that you are able to articulate is a form of intellectual dishonesty. The capacity to admit that a position is irrational—whether your own or an author you are reading—is crucially necessary for intellectual honesty. If one cannot identify such irrationality in others, then, a fortiori, they will be blind to it in themselves. As always, there are errors on both sides: it is erroneous to fail to give credit where due, and it is also erroneous to give credit where it is not due.

What Bernstein is trying to do is to get his students to avoid sophistry, and that is a noble cause. If we pick up an author who we have reason to believe is worthwhile, then any refutation we give must be the refutation of a substantial thesis. If the author is worthwhile, then for anything we refute, it must be understandable why the author would hold to it.

Banno

I don't agree philosophical practice is strictly binary... — 180 Proof

I'm happy to mix the two. Glad you can see the line of thinking here, and you are right to link it with Midgley. A related point came up in another thread only yesterday:

Multiple true descriptions can emerge, provided that they are mutually interpretable and answerable to the same worldly constraints. That preserves both Davidson’s realism and the possibility of plural, non-relativistic perspectives. — Banno

Midgley argued that different explanatory modes (say, biological, psychological, sociological, or aesthetic) are not competing for the title of The Truth, but are each illuminating different aspects of reality, as long as they remain answerable to the shared world—that is, not solipsistic or fantastical, but rooted in experience, practice, and evidence.

Banno

↪I like sushi

Yep. See the mention of Midgley, in my reply to @180 Proof.

Where we - you and I - may lock horns is where I occasionally see science has having made certain conceptual assumptions, or as having presumed that it's conclusions apply where they do not. But it is incumbent on the philosopher to first understand the science before critiquing it.

I recall an argument that raged in a University Magazine between an old Kantian Ethicist and an agricultural scientist, many years ago. The Scientist claimed to have a way to ensure that beef was "good", involving certain measurements of the animal before slaughter. The Kantian of course could not resist pointing out at length that this was not "good", and in particular that the slaughter did not deserve the affirmation.

Never the twain, as I recall, both leaving the conversation perplexed as to what the other meant. Midgley would say the philosopher’s task here is not to discredit the science, but to situate it—morally, linguistically, and existentially—within the wider network of human concerns. Not to refute the scientist, but to enlarge the conversation so that words like “good” are not silently reduced or misappropriated.

Banno

Knowing you these many years, I have learned your worldview to be deeply religious, leaning heavily upon mysticism, enjoying Continental philosophy, although having an admiration of Descartes and wanting to better understand qualia and metaphysics. — Hanover

I'm flattered that you have paid me so much attention. :wink:

You read me as denying that I have a worldview. I presume you got that from

Not only did I not have a philosophy, I wasn’t even looking for one. — Banno

And you are right, this is an overreach. I recall dithering between existentialism, Popperian falsification, and a half-understood utilitarianism, then finding a way to bring these together by looking closely at the language used.

In my defence, the aim of those who's engagement with philosophy is primarily a discourse is completeness, while whatever world view I accept is certainly incomplete. My aim, in writing on these forums, and in applying the analytic tools we have at hand, is to achieve some measure of coherence. Those of us who see philosophy less as a doctrine and more as a practice of clarification—of untangling the knots in our shared language—inevitably work with fragments, revisable insights, and partial alignments.

While some approach philosophy as a quest for a complete worldview, my interest is in the practice of philosophical inquiry itself—how our language reveals, limits, or reshapes the positions we take. In that sense, coherence—not completeness—is my measure of success.

So, point taken. Thank you.

Banno

eulogistics
— Banno

No such word... — Wayfarer

:wink: Indeed - although there is now such a word, created self-consciously. Good on you for noticing. I did indeed want something that portrayed an obsession with the dead, but thought "necromancy" a bit much. So I invented a term for the study of eulogies. The threads hereabouts on Kant, Aristotle, Plato, Descartes, yes and Wittgenstein and Kripke, too, as evidence.

It's not the topic that is problematic, so much as the approach.

And we have some agreement that philosophy ought to be therapeutic, although while you take that as placing it on the shelf alongside the self-help books, I want a therapy that prevents and cures obsessions with complete narratives at the cost of coherence, in which we might accepting that understanding may sometimes consist in living well with contradiction, rather than resolving it. It’s also a kind of ethical stance—valuing honesty, humility, and the capacity to dwell in uncertainty over the satisfaction of final answers.

And it would be fair to accuse me of virtue signalling here. But you have seen my work, and know that I don't live up to this ideal.

Two ways to philosophise.

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