Except that it is; we point to the shed on the map and say "that shed is too small for what we need".

Naming stuff gives the illusion of understanding it. — Banno

What are you suggesting? Out with it. Are you suggesting that I don't understand what I claimed to understand? That would be presumptuous of you, not to mention premature.

Not at all; after all, it was Wayfarer who did the naming...

That's about where we are. Clearly we allow posts and OPs that question or do not adhere to academic orthodoxy, but academic norms are also clearly relevant here. There is a lot of space between those two poles in which to maneuver, it's true, and that may result in some uncertainty, but no set of guidelines of reasonable length is going to explicitly and unambiguously cover every moderating context anyway. The feedback forum comes into play here in helping both to clarify and guide our decisions as does our own mod forum and discussions like this one, which are welcome. — Baden

Glad I'm not beating a dead horse.

I've said before, I think the moderators do a fair job, and I'm personally satisfied with the balance in application of community standards, at least from what I've happened to catch wind of.

I expect many potential participants are turned off by the balance we happen to strike in conversation. Among those who stick around, the margins of dissatisfaction with our current balance indicate various segments we're boxing out. I know some people who would be more inclined to participate in a forum like this if we were more open to traditional religious dogma; others if we were more open to free-wheeling new-age possibilities; and others if we were less tolerant of such tendencies and more in line with academic norms.

If that's right, then it's reasonable to expect that who we are and how we behave has some influence on the direction of change in our community over time. The character of our discourse is appealing to some and unappealing to other prospective members.

I think it's preferable to face that fact responsibly by addressing the issue explicitly. And I think that conversation hinges on questions like "What is philosophy?".

I do. I observe that academics is a business onto itself and it's designed around what can be taught in a classroom. Philosophy can only be learned outside of a classroom by experiencing and observing life as it unfolds. This is something that can be discussed post-graduation, but by this time the academics are so ingrained that people are unwilling for unable to change the habit. Philosophy takes lots of work and time as the ancients practiced it. — Rich

One day when I was still a boy, I went to see a professor in his office to ask for an extension on a Hegel paper. By way of reply he told me, "Philosophy is about enhancing your power to question. Only life will give you answers." Which was his way of saying, just write the thing and move on, young man.

Many philosophy professors would agree that book learning is only one way to approach philosophy, that much academic work is more of a distraction than a help, and that our civilization suffers from its inability to cultivate an integrative and enduring practice of philosophy as a way of life.

I think of Pierre Hadot in this connection. Works like his What Is Ancient Philosophy? and Philosophy as a Way of Life show they way in which concern for practical philosophy, personal well-being, and spiritual community can be integrated into academic work.

A rather different approach with an arguably similar tendency is found in the work of Alain de Botton.

I think philosophical pragmatism is an option only when there is no scope for rationalism however. So its use is very limited indeed.

I would like to put this a bit more strongly. I would require that a philosophy department not hire charlatans. To translate this to our community, any post or thread that is not removed gains the status of being deemed at least worthy of consideration by the community. What we as a community refuse to give house room to, is more definitive of who we are and what we stand for than anything we do consent to argue about. — unenlightened

I agree with your stronger formulation of hiring policies. I also agree that our decisions here about what discourses to exclude are most definitive of the character of our community.

I like to say there was a tendency among mainstream 20th-century philosophers, exemplified in the work of titans like Quine and Wittgenstein, to make it seem as though any discourse inconsistent with strict materialism, or inconsistent with a naturalism barely distinguishable from strict materialism, were "irrational" or "meaningless".

I think there's a repressive or negligent tendency in that sort of philosophy. It's irresponsible, in that it shuts down engagement with too many segments of society. It marginalizes itself and makes academic philosophy irrelevant to the people. What's at issue here is not inclusivity for inclusivity's sake, it's not merely a matter of respect. When you choke off engagement with so much of society, you cease to make yourself responsible to and responsible for the hearts and minds of the people. When the experts in reasonable discourse cease to have influence on the public conversation, the zeitgeist spirals out of control and becomes unreasonable.

Rorty's variation on the tendency is more negligent than repressive, and he makes his policy explicit. He just won't talk about some things, and he'll tend to associate with discursive communities that share the same dispositions to ignore and decline conversations. That negligent disengagement with alternative points of view is divisive. It erodes the foundations of democracy and undermines the coherence of public discourse.

I suggest we're paying the price today for a few generations of philosophical repression and negligence. If they won't do it in the schools, I guess a free and open space like this is the next best thing.

I might argue that trend of disengagement delegitimizes the whole enterprise of academic philosophy as a social institution. If the professors refuse to shape the hearts and minds of the people, then what the hell are we paying them for?

Dennett is an 'eliminative materialist'. His strongest statement of this radical position appears in his book 'Darwin's Dangerous Idea'. This book argues that the 'acid' of the idea of natural selection 'dissolves' traditional ideas about the nature of freedom and the meaning of human life. One of the casualties of his criticism is, in fact, the subject of philosophy itself, as understood and practiced by its advocates from the time of Plato forward. Dennett wishes to show that humans are not really agents in any meaningful sense, and that the mind itself is an illusion, generated by and explicable in terms of the activities of organic molecules. So what I mean is that he deploys the techniques and rhetorical skills of philosophy to argue against the very possibility of what has always been understood as 'philosophy'; he's literally an anti-philosopher. (It is of note that one of his earlier books, 'Consciousness Explained', has been satirically titled 'Consciousness Ignored' by his many critics including John Searle and Thomas Nagel.) — Wayfarer

A rhetorical call to radically reform the practice of philosophy sounds like philosophy to me. What a social practice "used to be" is not an authoritative or definitive guide to what it is, what it shall be, what it should be.

Accordingly, I reject the claim that Dennett is not a philosopher.

I also reject Dennett's eliminative materialism, insofar as I understand it. I much prefer the discourse of Nagel and Searle.

Much - if not all - of what goes on in these forums is mere knots in language that can be readily straightened out; understanding psychoceramics is important because some crackpots get elected. — Banno

Well put. I strongly agree about the political and cultural value of the art. That justification makes it entirely practical, and also gives a standard by which to assess the success or failure of the institution.

Perhaps there's no better justification and characterization of the art of philosophy than Plato's Gorgias.

He's not the only scientist to dismiss this question, either. Tyson did so at the end of an otherwise very likable interview. I think they can't help associating it with religion. Any hint of mystery is suspicious. "We must know. We will know. "

Also funny that Dawkins would talk about all the fascinating entities that are here to non-fatously wonder at. As if "why is there something rather than nothing" didn't include every such entity. He can't really mean wonder at the existence of such objects. He must mean wonder at their structure or their way of existing. But the philosopher is amazed that they exist in the first place. The "how" is admittedly a more practical and objective concern, and that's probably why he shifts toward the how. — t0m

I'm not sure such dismissals are motivated merely by practical concerns about the utility we might expect from pursuing such questions.

I think it's wrong to speak as if all philosophers ask such questions, as if all philosophers think such questions are useful or meaningful, as if all philosophers think such questions can be answered informatively. Clearly many of them do not.

This is one of those lines, where naturalistic philosophers will tend to say the question is out of bounds, and spiritualistic philosophers will tend to say the question is in bounds. Of course it doesn't clear up anything when people on one side point across the line and say the others aren't "philosophers".

I say the question is in bounds, and the answer is out of bounds. Or rather, the answer is an answer about the boundaries, about the limits of rationality. Of course the question is meaningful, it makes sense to ask. It seems there's no reason to expect that minds like ours have the capacity to provide a definitive answer to the question in the sense it's intended. But we'll never come to recognize that limit if we don't ask the question in the first place and spend some time thinking it through.

Such questions twinkle for all time on the horizon of reason, eternally accessible to anyone who speaks an ordinary language. As free speakers, we can fill in the blanks mapped out by those stars with exercises of rational imagination, but in the end it seems there's no way to prefer any one of those dreams more than the others.

To me that sounds like the most mysterious alternative: The question makes sense, and it's destined to remain mysterious for all time. Supernaturalists who reject this point of view tend to want less mystery, not more. They want to superimpose their favorite fantasies on the heavens to quiet once and for all the rational doubts we recognize in common.

Paradise island is surrounded by shark-infested waters. But we need a few wild boars in the jungle to keep things interesting. Just don't break Piggy's glasses. (I'm regretting this metaphor already.) — Baden

I'm cracking up. But I'll leave it alone.

A rhetorical call to radically reform the practice of philosophy sounds like philosophy to me. — Cabbage Farmer

I suppose. But Dennett does call himself an 'anti-philosopher':

There are two kinds of philosophers, says Daniel Dennett: the usual kind and what he calls anti-philosophers, those whose first response to the field’s classic conjectures is often a kind of outrage, accompanied by an impulse to “knock heads and straighten people out.”

Dennett, the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy and co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies, is clearly a deep-dyed anti-philosopher. He recalls that his first episode of philosophical outrage occurred during a college course when he encountered Descartes’ argument that the mind is an immaterial thing separate from the body. “I was sure he was wrong,” Dennett says, “and that I could show why in an afternoon or two. Fifty years later I think I’ve succeeded.”

As a matter a fact, I agree that the notion of mind as 'substance' is completely mistaken, but there is an error involved which I think ought to be made explicit. And it's a crucial error. This is derived from the fact that the use of the word 'substance' is completely different in philosophy than in normal discourse. The Aristotelian term which was translated as 'substance' was 'ousia' which is much nearer in meaning to 'being'. So if Descartes' original dualism had been described as the distinction between two kinds of 'being', extended being and thinking being, then it would be nearer the mark.

But even so, the fatal mistake in Descartes' formulation was to 'objectify' the notion of 'res cogitans' in a naturalistic manner. This is where the myth of the spooky, ethereal 'ghost in the machine' got started.

Descartes' revolutionary breakthrough to subjectivity lost its original impetus….by interpreting the transcendental ego as a thinking thing, res cogitans, or a thinking substance, substantia cogiitans. Descartes correctly identified the ego as the 'greatest of all enigmas' but unfortunately went on to misconstrue it in a naturalistic fashion as an objective substance in the world

Dermot Moran, Husserl's Crisis of the European Sciences, p 232

So the idea of 'thinking substance' was misconceived from the outset - and this is what Dennett has spent most of his career denying the existence of. So it amounts to the denial of a misconception, which then culminates with the declaration that there are no minds, and not even any agents, as such:

Love it or hate it, phenomena like this [i.e. an organic molecule] exhibit the heart of the power of the Darwinian idea. An impersonal, unreflective, robotic, mindless little scrap of molecular machinery is the ultimate basis of all the agency, and hence meaning, and hence consciousness, in the universe.

Daniel Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life 202-3.

But, arguably, he has arrived at this radical rejection of the basic tenets of Western philosophy, on the basis of the rejection of a misconceived notion of 'mind', conceived of as one half of Descartes' dualistic model, while positing that the only real substance is its counterpart, res extensia. It really just distills down the logical error at the heart of much modern materialism into its most pristine form.

Supernaturalists who reject this point of view tend to want less mystery, not more. They want to superimpose their favorite fantasies on the heavens to quiet once and for all the rational doubts we recognize in common. — Cabbage Farmer

What this doesn't acknowledge, is the role of not knowing in religious philosophies. That is also not something that is understood by many religious fundamentalists, who are similarly ill at ease with an unknown God. But many religious practitioners are sharply aware of what it is they don't know; so faith, for them, is not an assertion regarding 'a proposition for which there is no empirical evidence', as it is invariably misconstrued, but a sense of an unseen source of order, and the belief that it might be possible to draw closer to it. And that's why symbolism plays such a role in the religious imagination; the subject matter doesn't yield to precise description and quantitative analysis, as does that of the empirical sciences. It's generally 'through a glass darkly'.

I think philosophical pragmatism is an option only when there is no scope for rationalism however. So its use is very limited indeed. — Jake Tarragon

I have to disagree. We can turn the crank of the machine of formal logic. We can work within the norms of normalized discourse and make slow, steady process. But the biggest, deepest enframings are by definition abnormal. What is rationality? In my view, this is almost the whole question. It's a word that's thrown around virtuously, but does it really have some stable meaning? Or is it more often a compliment we pay to the reasoning we find persuasive?

hat is rationality? — t0m

The weighing up of evidence.

I suppose. But Dennett does call himself an 'anti-philosopher': — Wayfarer

It's an apt turn of phrase from a skilled rhetor.

McDowell is a warm and fuzzy naturalist compared to Dennett. My impression is McDowell intentionally aims at the sort of engagement I've been indicating here, for reasons similar to those I've indicated. McDowell's brand of therapeutic philosophy aims to set heads straight by relieving them of unwarranted philosophical anxieties rooted in outmoded intellectual prejudices, where Dennett is more imperious, aggressive, and bare-knuckled in his push to "knock heads and straighten people out". Different temperaments, different rhetorical styles, different discourses, different appeals to different market segments. But I'd say every effective philosopher tends to "straighten people out", beginning with himself, no matter what doctrine he prefers and no matter what style of engagement he adopts. Philosophy is a sort of intellectual exercise or therapy. There is such a thing as philosophical fitness or unfitness. To aim at fitness in our discourses is to pursue right views.

As a matter a fact, I agree that the notion of mind as 'substance' is completely mistaken, but there is an error involved which I think ought to be made explicit. And it's a crucial error. This is derived from the fact that the use of the word 'substance' is completely different in philosophy than in normal discourse. The Aristotelian term which was translated as 'substance' was 'ousia' which is much nearer in meaning to 'being'. So if Descartes' original dualism had been described as the distinction between two kinds of 'being', extended being and thinking being, then it would be nearer the mark. — Wayfarer

It's hard for me to resist temptation to proceed by exploring the concept of ousia. I expect that would take us rather far afield.

I gather this turn is relevant to your conception of what counts and what doesn't count as "philosophy". I think I've said enough already about why I reject that sort of posturing. But perhaps you'd like to press the issue more explicitly: How does the dispute you've brought to our attention, between Dennett and Descartes, or between Cartesian dualism and eliminative materialism, inform our view of the boundaries of philosophy?

One may prefer Aristotle's conception of ousia, or more inflated variations from Neo-Platonists, Islamic and Christian theologians, or classical Western Cartesians and rationalists. One may favor Heidegger's beautiful romantic interpretations of pre-Socratic fragments, or one may find it more reasonable to dismiss the whole jumble as outmoded and misleading confusion. I see no reason to call any position in that range of attitudes unphilosophical.

What this doesn't acknowledge, is the role of not knowing in religious philosophies. That is also not something that is understood by many religious fundamentalists, who are similarly ill at ease with an unknown God. But many religious practitioners are sharply aware of what it is they don't know; so faith, for them, is not an assertion regarding 'a proposition for which there is no empirical evidence', as it is invariably misconstrued, but a sense of an unseen source of order, and the belief that it might be possible to draw closer to it. And that's why symbolism plays such a role in the religious imagination; the subject matter doesn't yield to precise description and quantitative analysis, as does that of the empirical sciences. It's generally 'through a glass darkly'. — Wayfarer

I'm often struck dumb at the way most theists seem to neglect this aspect of theology where it counts. They use it as a charm to wave off doubts in the face of the problem of evil, for instance, but never seem to wonder if it may apply as well to their own prejudiced conceptualization of mystical experience.

An emphasis on profound ignorance is a keystone of many great religious traditions which, having filled the peasant's imagination with colorful dramatic tales, warn those who can hear it against the natural hubris of the finite mind, the dangers of clinging to intellectual abstractions like the avaricious clutch at precious jewels. This keystone shows a juncture at which theism is consistent with skepticism, a compatibility the early modern Christians put to use as soon as they discovered Sextus.

I count experiences like the "sense of an unseen source of order" you mention as prima facie reasons for a wide range of beliefs, including theological, mystical, or metaphysical beliefs, among others. I say they are items of empirical evidence. They are phenomena. They are among the appearances that inform us about the world on the basis of experience.

The appearance is not the same as the judgments we make about it and the inferences we draw on the basis of those judgments. The appearance does not settle all disputes involving conflicting accounts of the appearance and its connection to the rest of the world.

You and I point to the same phenomenon and give different accounts. Each of us may have more or less faith that his own account is more apt. Each of us may nonetheless acknowledge the limits of his own point of view, and grant that his account may be more or less incorrect, as a matter of rational principle, regardless of the intensity of his faith.

The phenomenon does not settle such concerns, or disrupt the compatibility of rational belief and rational doubt. The skeptic acknowledges that the appearance of his own faith, his own belief, his own expectations are not evidence of the correctness of his opinion. The dogmatist who claims that the intensity or character of his belief make it impossible and inconceivable that his opinion is mistaken, seems to stray beyond the bounds of reason and break the path to rational conversation. It's hardly more reasonable to claim that the power of my belief is itself evidence, if perhaps inconclusive evidence, of the truth of what it is I believe: "I believe it" is no warrant for the claim "It's true". The experience of faith is not itself an account of faith, and is not itself an account of what one believes by virtue of his faith. The experience of faith does not interpret itself. Subsequent description is compatible with a wide range of conflicting interpretations.

Metaphysicians of various stripes dispute each other with no definitive criterion, no conclusive warrant, to settle the dispute. Metaphysicians who align their discourse with skepticism acknowledge there's no resting point for that carousel of metaphysical speculation, and make the most room for ignorance and mystery while they pursue their inclination, as it were hypothetically.

Metaphysicians who think it's possible to finally halt the carousel at the point of their own precious speculations want less mystery, not more.

The weighing up of evidence. — Jake Tarragon

That's a reasonable answer, but I'll test that answer in a friendly spirit. What evidence did you weigh to determine that rationality is the "weighing up of evidence"?

But I'd say every effective philosopher tends to "straighten people out", beginning with himself, no matter what doctrine he prefers and no matter what style of engagement he adopts. — Cabbage Farmer

I very much agree. I think "straightening out" has sufficient generality to include just about everyone. A person straightens himself or herself out and generally experiences this 'cure' as one-size-fits-all. Or the philosopher feels on-the-way to being straightened out, and part of being on-the-way is taking others by the hand along the same way. We will be straightened out, if only we walk in the right direction.

Metaphysicians of various stripes dispute each other with no definitive criterion, no conclusive warrant, to settle the dispute. Metaphysicians who align their discourse with skepticism acknowledge there's no resting point for that carousel of metaphysical speculation, and make the most room for ignorance and mystery while they pursue their inclination, as it were hypothetically.

Metaphysicians who think it's possible to finally halt the carousel at the point of their own precious speculations want less mystery, not more. — Cabbage Farmer

I like this position. It's close to my own. But isn't the denial of closure itself a form of closure? As a skeptic, I have a certain faith in doubt, a belief in the virtue of not otherwise being fixed. Is public speech intrinsically "faithful" and "self-important" to some degree?

What evidence did you weigh to determine that rationality is the "weighing up of evidence"? — t0m

Since when did definitions require evidence??!!

There is such a thing as philosophical fitness or unfitness. To aim at fitness in our discourses is to pursue right views. — Cabbage Farmer

There is indeed, but please let's not consider 'fitness' in Darwinian terms, and instead contemplate the fact that philosophy qua philosophy is not concerned with the propagation of the genome, but the understanding of lived existence as a plight - something quite out-of-scope for Darwinism.

I think the primary need of any philosophy nowadays is to provide a remedy for what philosopher Richard Bernstein referred to as our 'Cartesian anxiety':

Cartesian anxiety refers to the notion that, ever since René Descartes promulgated his influential form of body-mind dualism, Western civilization has suffered from a longing for ontological certainty, or feeling that scientific methods, and especially the study of the world as a thing separate from ourselves, should be able to lead us to a firm and unchanging knowledge of ourselves and the world around us. The term is named after Descartes because of his well-known emphasis on "mind" as different from "body", "self" as different from "other".

Richard J. Bernstein coined the term in his 1983 book Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis.

(As an aside, it is significant that the first item on the Buddhist 'eightfold path' is actually 'samma ditthi' - meaning 'right view'.)

How does the dispute you've brought to our attention, between Dennett and Descartes, or between Cartesian dualism and eliminative materialism, inform our view of the boundaries of philosophy? — Cabbage Farmer

Because it illustrates the sense in which Dennett critiques philosophy of mind from an instinctive and unreflectively naturalist position. And what is 'a naturalist position'? Well, it assumes 'the subject in the world;' here, the intelligent subject, there, the object of analysis, be that some stellar object, or some form of nematode worm - or 'mind', the purported ghostly ethereal stuff of idealist philosophy!

What I'm saying is that treating the mind as an object, is a consequence of taking Descartes' philosophy as something that it never was, namely, a scientific hypothesis. It's more like an economic model, a conceptual way of carving up the elements of experience. Interpreted literally, it is no less absurd than creation mythology. But that massive misconception has now become foundational to the 'scientific worldview' as exemplified by the likes of Dennett. It is akin to a form of religious fundamentalism (as many have noted about Dennett) in that it is built on the foundation of metaphor interpreted as reality and then rejected on that account. That is why in a good deal of the new atheist polemics, there are many arguments against something which never really existed in the first place; they're not quite 'straw man' arguments, as the matter is more subtle than that; but they're arguments against a misconception of the subject (hence Terry Eagleton's eviscerating review of The God Delusion being named 'Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching'.)

In reality, 'mind' is never an object of cognition. Many people seem to regard this as a radical claim, but I think it is an obvious fact. Behaviourism (of which Dennett will admit to being a proponent) deals with this problem by bracketing mind out of any consideration whatever; Watson, the founder of behaviourism, said that the very notion of 'mind' was a 'relic of a superstitious past'. But the fact is, nobody knows what the mind is; so at the heart of the Cartesian cogito, there is, as Husserl said above, an enigma. And it is, therefore 'woo' - to talk about it at al is to engage in 'hand-waving', which is the worst thing any modern philosopher can do, especially when it comes to 'woo'. It makes Dennett and his ilk incandescent with rage; perhaps because deep down they really understand they're actually made of woo.

So treating mind as a kind of phenomena, the output of neurons, the product of evolution, is the foundational move of current philosophical materialism, the 'new clothes' which Penrose's book says clothe the emperor. Husserl covered all of this in his work and it's spelled out in the Crisis of the European Sciences - arguably, is the crisis.

I count experiences like the "sense of an unseen source of order" you mention as prima facie reasons for a wide range of beliefs, including theological, mystical, or metaphysical beliefs, among others. I say they are items of empirical evidence. They are phenomena. — Cabbage Farmer

They are phenomena as far as they are the subject of study of 'those who talk of religious experience'. So a scholar of comparative religion might talk of them 'as phenomena', but their real significance might only be disclosed in the first person. So locating them among phenomena is the very same naturalising tendency.

Metaphysicians of various stripes dispute each other with no definitive criterion, no conclusive warrant, to settle the dispute. — Cabbage Farmer

Often because they don't have skin in the game; it doesn't really mean anything to them.

Perhaps there's no better justification and characterization of the art of philosophy than Plato's Gorgias. — Cabbage Farmer

Which is to say philosophers must suffer for their art.

If philosophical problems are knots in one's thinking, then philosophy becomes the straightening out of those knots, and so release from philosophical suffering.

Critics of silentism see it as deciding to ignore philosophy. Perhaps it is just what is left when the knots are undone.

The skeptic acknowledges that the appearance of his own faith, his own belief, his own expectations are not evidence of the correctness of his opinion. — Cabbage Farmer

A philosopher may also come to understand faith and belief as being entirely outside the context of "correctness of opinion".

If rationality is weighing evidence and the definition of rationality involves no weighing of evidence, then rationality is itself defined irrationally, arbitrarily. Of course I know that we all inherit a fuzzy notion of the rational, so I'm really stressing this fuzziness. Pragmatism is one attempt to control this fuzziness, but there are lots of different attempts.

My definition of rationalism as "weighing up the evidence" (actually Bertie Russell's) needs expansion, of course. For a start, in order to be rational one must be prepared to change one's mind; to be flexible; to be not wholly committed to any particular opinion unless it is truly watertight. A rational person should enjoy being shown to be wrong!

Which is to say philosophers must suffer for their art. — Banno

Like other artists and devotees of truth.

If philosophical problems are knots in one's thinking, then philosophy becomes the straightening out of those knots, and so release from philosophical suffering. — Banno

In my view that's close to the heart of it, sorting out or untangling conceptual confusion. Not only in one person's thoughts, but throughout the whole community.

Critics of silentism see it as deciding to ignore philosophy. Perhaps it is just what is left when the knots are undone. — Banno

I see no reason to suppose that the process is the sort of thing that can be finished, even in one head. We don't achieve a state of physical fitness once and for all, remaining fit forever more even while neglecting principles of nutrition and exercise. A great boxer or dancer who doesn't keep training doesn't stay great for long.

Empirical and formal sciences are only some of philosophy's branches, on their own insufficient to inform a worldview adequate to guide the action of individuals and communities.

It doesn't take much philosophical discipline for a single person to prefer his own thoughts and his own way of life. I suggest the quietist can't remain at ease for long. The conversations he's turned his back on will change shape while he's not listening and overtake him from behind.

A philosopher may also come to understand faith and belief as being entirely outside the context of "correctness of opinion". — Janus

What does it mean to say "I believe it, but my opinion is not correct", or "I believe it, but I don't care whether my opinion is correct", or "I believe it, but there's no fact of the matter about whether such opinions are correct"?

Or how else might we unpack your suggestion that faith and belief are entirely outside the context of correct opinion?

The way you are framing the question is appropriate enough for beliefs concerning empirical matters. Your questions imply the notion of 'truth as correspondence', where a belief is true if it corresponds to or with some objective state of affairs.

On the other side, for example, you might believe that some work of art or music is the greatest work ever produced; but it is not that you would be thinking there is some objective fact of the matter that could ground such a belief. Religious beliefs are generally, unless they are fundamentalistic, somewhat analogous to this latter aesthetic kind, I would say.

In relation to the OP, to the question as to whether information is physical, what scrutable state of affairs, or kind of state of affairs, can you imagine that could make a negative or positive answer to that "correct"?

Edit: sorry wrong OP! O:)
But I'll leave it as it stands as an example, in any case.

Actually the problem of the distinction between doxa, belief, and episteme, knowledge, was central to the Platonic dialogues. There is a sense in which 'doxa' is held to be deficient, because it is merely belief, and something that is merely believed is practically by definition, not something which is known.

But then, the subjects of the debates about knowledge usually revolve around knowledge of principles such as justice, virtue and the good. There are long debates as to whether in these matters, 'man is the measure of all things', or there really are true goods; and if so, how are these known?

Many of these dialogues are aporetic, i.e. they don't end in definite conclusions so much as suggestions or conundrums. But it's worth considering that, in respect of such questions, nowadays we are nearly always inclined to frame such questions in terms of what can be objectively known. If considering if there really is justice, or if there really is virtue, one will often ask: are these proposed as objective realities, or are they instead social constructions, or subjective ideas. And they seem to be the two choices - some property is really there, meaning, objectively the case, or it's in some sense within the mind, or minds, of those who propose such principles.

I very much agree. I think "straightening out" has sufficient generality to include just about everyone. A person straightens himself or herself out and generally experiences this 'cure' as one-size-fits-all. Or the philosopher feels on-the-way to being straightened out, and part of being on-the-way is taking others by the hand along the same way. We will be straightened out, if only we walk in the right direction. — t0m

I suppose treatment depends on diagnosis of each interlocutor's position in the communal discourses, even taking style and character into consideration. Conversation is more effective when it's personalized, responsive, adaptive, sympathetic, not a recitation of canned speeches prepared for all audiences on the same subject. This view is in keeping with Socratic method and constructivist pedagogy. We might say the "right direction" depends on what conversation we're having and who we're speaking with. Aiming at truth and agreement isn't the same as having arrived.

We straighten out our discourses by using clear and careful speech to test them from diverse points of view. Sincere and open philosophical discourse prepares the practitioner for effective conversation in a wide range of discursive contexts, and has an integrative tendency in the community. The aim of integrative philosophy is not to convert everyone to the same point of view, but to engage everyone in a common practice of reasonable conversation.

I like this position. It's close to my own. But isn't the denial of closure itself a form of closure? As a skeptic, I have a certain faith in doubt, a belief in the virtue of not otherwise being fixed. Is public speech intrinsically "faithful" and "self-important" to some degree? — t0m

I distinguish my skepticism from that of the straw man enlisted as "the skeptic" in the schools, who's made to utter antiskeptical absurdities like "No knowledge is possible".

It seems to me I know my way from here to the market. It seems to me I know I have two hands. There are ways to problematize such knowledge claims with practically unreasonable but nonetheless rational doubts. Such doubts indicate theoretical limits of certainty, but certainty is not required for knowledge. It may be that I have no hands or twenty hands, but I have no reason to suppose that I have none or twenty, and good reason to say I have two in keeping with the balance of appearances. If this view of mine happens to line up well enough with the way things are in fact, then my seeming knowledge of the seeming fact that I have two hands is knowledge of the fact that I have two hands, whatever that fact may consist in, and however more aptly it may be paraphrased in epistemic contexts unlike my own. It seems to me that's all the certainty I need, and the only knowledge I can reasonably expect to acquire.

Positing hypothetical contexts to hypothetically reframe the knowledge claim, the fact, the perceiver, and the appearance may help us characterize the bias, partiality, uncertainty, and incompleteness of the knowledge we seem to have. If I am a brain in a vat, the knowledge I call in partial ignorance my knowledge of the fact that I have two hands is not quite what I suppose it to be, but is nonetheless knowledge of something, knowledge of a state of affairs, which I would reconceptualize accordingly were I better informed about my context. My actual conceptualization of the fact in partial ignorance coheres with a range of logically possible reconceptualizations.

A lot of talk about "closure" seems to take an awful lot for granted about what's entailed by ordinary knowledge claims. I'd say my claim to know that I have two hands doesn't entail anything about whether I am a brain in a vat, and more generally is neutral with respect to hypothetical recontextualizations, and neutral with respect to future shifts in the stock of concepts or evidence.

The knowledge each of us seems to have from his own limited point of view is secured in part by guarantees to reconceptualize facts and revise judgments from time to time in light of new evidence. At bottom those guarantees are not promises we make as free agents, but consequences of our constitution as rational agents. Or so it seems.

The skeptic's exercises in hypothesis don't show that knowledge is impossible. They push us to clarify our conception of the knowledge we seem to have, and to deflate our conception of the relation of knowledge and language. They alert us to unreasonable expectations that rely on logical projections unsupported by evidence. They inform a custom in keeping with which we may aim to quietly follow appearances, in the manner of Sextus, Gassendi, and the full-grown Hume.

The way you are framing the question is appropriate enough for beliefs concerning empirical matters. Your questions imply the notion of 'truth as correspondence', where a belief is true if it corresponds to or with some objective state of affairs.

On the other side, for example, you might believe that some work of art or music is the greatest work ever produced; but it is not that you would be thinking there is some objective fact of the matter that could ground such a belief. Religious beliefs are generally, unless they are fundamentalistic, somewhat analogous to this latter aesthetic kind, I would say. — Janus

When a speaker's utterances seem unclear to me, I ask what he means. When I feel I've got a grasp on his assertion, but the assertion seems unreasonable and his reasons insufficiently clear to me, I ask what reasons he has to say it's true. I'm not sure this habit of reasonable discourse commits me to any particular "theory of truth".

What do you mean by your suggestion that "religious beliefs" are somehow different from "empirical beliefs" and somehow analogous to aesthetic judgments? How do you propose we distinguish religious judgments, empirical judgments, and aesthetic judgments from each other? On what basis do you say that religious, aesthetic, and empirical judgments are "true" or "false"? And how, on your account, are all these judgments related to language and perception?

What is an aesthetic judgment? What sort of reasons do we give in support of aesthetic claims? What sort of objects are objects of aesthetic judgment? How do we identify those objects? What sort of concepts do we apply in aesthetic judgment? On what sort of bases do we define or refine those concepts? How do we resolve disputes about the definition or use of aesthetic concepts? How do we resolve disputes about the identification of aesthetic objects? How do we resolve conflicts of aesthetic judgment?

What does any of that have to do with religious beliefs?


I might say that aesthetic judgments are a special class of empirical judgment, that they're grounded in perception, as is suggested by the origin of our word "aesthetic". Perhaps the common basis of aesthetic and ordinary perceptual judgments is clearest when we make judgments about the materials and methods employed by artists as they produce works of art.

At some fuzzy boundary, judgments about materials, methods, and producers blend into judgments of style and genre. Concepts of style remain fuzzy and fluid and resist attempts at precise definition, but retain an objective character. Pigeons can be trained to distinguish paintings by Matisse from paintings by Picasso. Similarly, each of us may learn to use terms like "cheesy" and "funky" to sort out musical performances. When we disagree in our use of such terms, we can nevertheless come to grasp each other's uses and to sort objects accordingly. Such terms are in common use, but there is no common standard for use of such terms. To say there is no standard use of such terms is not to say there is no objective basis for the aesthetic judgments in which each of us applies the terms to perceptual objects in his own way at a particular time in his life. Likewise, to say there is no standard use of the terms "dull apple", "shiny apple", and "very shiny apple" is not to say there is no objective basis for judgments in which each of us may apply such terms to the same perceptual objects in his own way on any given occasion.

Judgments of taste express something like the affect, preference, or attitude of a particular perceiver in response to an aesthetic object. The better acquainted we are with a perceiver's taste, the more reliably we can predict which works of art would suit his taste. There is an objective character to judgments of taste in each perceiver, despite the fact that perceivers may differ in affect and attitude with respect to the same work of art. There is an objective character to judgments of heat in each perceiver, despite the fact that perceivers may differ in affect and attitude with respect to the same temperature.

Trends of artistic production, style, and taste pass in waves through cultural contexts and shift in the same person through the course of one life. Shifting customs are no reason to suppose there's no objective basis for aesthetic judgments. Judgments about "good" or "bad" art are like judgments about "cheesy" and "not cheesy" music. The words mean nothing in themselves. Though they're in common use, there is no standard for use of the terms in these applications. Each of us uses them according to his own principle, and refines his concept by giving examples of good and bad art, or cheesy and not-cheesy music. We can learn to grasp and compare each other's uses. We can request and provide reasons to support the concepts we carve out, and reasons to support the application of those aesthetic concepts in judging particular cases.


According to the way I use the relevant terms, I see no reason to suppose there's such a thing as "the best piece of music ever". It seems likely to me that someone who claims there is such a thing, and who claims to know which one it is, is suffering from a sort of conceptual confusion. I expect such a speaker has been led astray, for instance by the formal possibilities of grammar, or by the strength of feelings, or by the customs of others before him who were misled by language and emotion.

In keeping with my own custom, I don't turn my back on such speakers, but invite them to clear up their meanings and support their claims with reasons: Why do they suppose there's such a thing as "the greatest music"? What does it mean to say there is such a thing? What standards do they use to evaluate musical performances in their preferred terms, and why do they think their favorite pieces satisfy their own criterion better than any other?