Darth
I love your post! Seriously... even if it is a bit narcissistic?

In summary, philosophers start from their sensibility and project this onto an phantom exteriority. Yet is has not been shown that meaning has any reality beyond sensibility, nor that sensibility carves the limits of reality. It has not been shown that humans have the right to form beliefs about the world. It has not been shown that humans are in positions of observation. It has not been demonstrated that demonstrations are reliable indicators of Truth. — darthbarracuda

You are correctly asserting that human 'truth' or Philosophical truth. Is not the measure of all truth and that many truths are possible, particularly in a subjective sense. Nietzsche insists that we should and actually do value un-truth as much if not more than truth.

You are right!

However we humans are united in our humanity and we are united in our physiological interface with 'phantom reality'. In this sense there may well be ONE truth that may well be arrived at by the process of (human) deductive reasoning.

Do not despair. A grand theory of everything may well be upon the horizon, as soon as the philosopher and the quantum physicist get over the nuptials and eventually consummate the union.

M

Darth
I love your post! Seriously... even if it is a bit narcissistic? — Marcus de Brun

Yes, I anticipated this response. If philosophy is inherently narcissistic, then it's inevitable that what I write will be narcissistic as well. I already know that much of what I think is narcissistic just by nature of it being what I think, as if the fact that they are my thoughts makes them superior to others'.

It has not been shown that humans have the right to think about the world, let alone publish their crazy ideas. Philosophy should be seen as a form of self-idolizing graffiti.

However we humans are united in our humanity and we are united in our physiological interface with 'phantom reality'. In this sense there may well be ONE truth that may well be arrived at by the process of (human) deductive reasoning. — Marcus de Brun

Yes, in this case, objectivity is equated with inter-subjectivity. "Truth" is only conceptualized as Truth in relation to sensibility, because Truth is what Is rather than what is Not. Truth is constrained to the Law of Non-Contradiction, among other ad hoc presuppositions about the nature of reality.

Yet it has not been shown that truth has any relation to what makes sense to a person. — darthbarracuda

Truth is exactly what makes sense to a person. I think you're confusing criteria of truth with what truth is. Heidegger, here: "the essence of truth is the truth of essence." Meaning, truth comes into being by coming into being in the being for whom (the) truth is an issue.

Example: We might wonder what a dollar is, and any number of propositions might explain what a dollar is. But what is the truth of a dollar? What is the essence of a dollar? Dollars are that medium of exchange by which people obtain things. To have dollars is to enjoy (relative) security and comfort. Not to have them is to be threatened in both safety and comfort.

Or, a mother is a female parent. But this says nothing about what it is to be a mother. One is merely propositionally true, the other conveys - is - the understanding of what a mother is; in consequence, truth itself.

Still, whether criterion or essence, error is possible either way. Everyone, therefore, must be part philosopher.

Nietzsche — Marcus de Brun

Yes, Nietzsche. You beat me to it, and Nietzsche beat darthbarracuda to it.

I agree we can go down the pragmatic route Heidegger does and see the essence of things in terms of what they are for dasein.

My chief concern here is with dogmatic belief, i.e. any unwarranted confidence, beliefs in things that are not justified through the use of pure reason. Everything we think has reference to our own sensibilities. We cannot think the unthinkable. Yet the unthinkable is precisely that which philosophers aim to discover. This is one reason why philosophy satisfies the criteria for narcissism: only the best, only the perfect, only the ultimate is worthwhile. This is an obscene act of auto-fellatio, because discovering the edges of one's sensibilities is mistaken as discovering the thing in itself.

This is an obscene act of auto-fellatio. — darthbarracuda

Auto-fellatio deserves our respect, so let's not insult it by comparing it to philosophy.

I am always in favor of questioning the utility of philosophy, but I always expect that some justification will be offered. Do we philosophize merely to hear our heads roar? Are we so locked into our personal reality that nothing we say has any relevance to anyone else? Is it not ironic that you author an account of philosophy's self-absorption and offer it to an audience larger than one? Apparently you expect your views to resonate with other minds in a meaningful way (and that seems to have happened).

Perhaps you are trying to start a revolution in the Academy, or at least a brawl--either one of which would be worthwhile; but both suggest that we aren't altogether narcissistic.

I have little interest in discovering TRUTH. TRUTH is imaginary, but there are truths about x that we can discover.

I have little interest in discovering TRUTH. TRUTH is imaginary, but there are truths about x that we can discover. — Bitter Crank

Yes, I agree with this so long as we see these truths as relative to the terrain. They are not absolute propositions that humans must prostrate themselves in front of.

The only truth is that there is none. There are only relative truths, which may bring with them a relative objectivity.

Philosophy is an anthropocentric narcissism of the highest magnitude that entails an exceptional view of the power of reason. To hold any theoretical belief is to assert that one has a special place in nature, a privileged position concocted by the illusions called "knowledge" and "understanding". — darthbarracuda

Forgive me, but I haven't read past this point. That is more or less what Nietzsche and many since have claimed that philosophy was. But neither he, nor they, have had any inkling of Sophia in my book. Cast your mind back to the Greeks - the things they were able to conceive of and develop, due to the power of reason, ought to astound you. If they don't, then sure, abandon philosophy, it plainly holds no interest.

But neither he, nor they, have had any inkling of Sophia in my book. Cast your mind back to the Greeks - the things they were able to conceive of and develop, due to the power of reason, ought to astound you. — Wayfarer

What exactly, on your view, did they accomplish? Many of the pre-Socratics articulated beautiful and thought-provoking visions of the world and reality in spite of these visions being rationally and scientifically unsound. Socrates seems to me to have accomplished little beyond his kamikaze mission to destroy his own bodily existence while hastening the collapse of Athenian society. Aristotle is great insofar as he either simply articulated or categorized the biological, social, political, etc. forms of life he experienced from within the Greek normative framework he took for granted, but everything he did beyond this (e.g. the Physics) was an absolute disaster when taken up for rational articulation by the Medieval Christians.

Philosophy is an anthropocentric narcissism of the highest magnitude that entails an exceptional view of the power of reason. To hold any theoretical belief is to assert that one has a special place in nature, a privileged position concocted by the illusions called "knowledge" and "understanding". — darthbarracuda

I have been debating whether to try and dispute this post point by point. But I think that all of my concerns lead to this: Why do you take philosophy to be merely an exercise in rational knowledge, truth, and theoretical belief? This strikes me as a very sad and limited vision of the role and value of philosophy in the practice of our lives. Hence when you make assertions such as --

Yet it has not been shown that "understanding" has any relation to truth. — darthbarracuda

-- surely philosophy is characterized over and against other disciplines or modes of thought precisely in its being the pursuit of understanding, not knowledge. Just to extend this out a bit, this makes me think that your complaints, for example --

Reality is forcibly coerced into reason, subjugated by the ambitions of a finite being whose narcissism tells him that reality can be "understood", and that the limits of his faculties forms the limits of the world itself. — darthbarracuda

-- are reasonable objections to a certain sort of philosophy that I too hate (e.g. Continental Rationalism and huge swaths of analytic philosophy), but not, as you assert, philosophy as a whole; that is, not philosophy as a practice or as the whole history of a tradition.

I think there could be something to be said about the "spirit" of philosophy and its history. A. W. Moore calls the history of (modern) metaphysics as a history of sense-making. There is something noble and, as Descartes and Husserl (et al) noticed, an ethical dimension to the philosophical endeavor. That individuals have a duty to hold rational, well-informed beliefs is a core aspect of the philosophical spirit that differentiates it from rhetoric, sophistry or even science. It is this part of the philosophical spirit that I love, where nothing is held to be so sacred as to be beyond questioning.

But yes, I am less concerned with other forms of philosophy here than I am with others, you are correct about this. When speaking of philosophy I have in mind a certain kind of philosophy rather than "philosophy" in the abstract. Anti-philosophy is still philosophy, etc etc. I have in mind philosophers who evidently see philosophy as some kind of grand narrative that almost ought to be worshiped, its traditional problems as of utmost importance. Philosophy is used to banish evil ideas, solipsism, relativism, skepticism, "nihilism", etc. I think the general skepticism of this thread has not ever been refuted but simply passed by because there are "more important" things to do. There's no time for skepticism, it gets in the way of living. But for myself, at least, these sorts of things mean a lot. It's significant to me that we have no clear foundation for knowledge and that at the end of the day we really just have to hope that certain things are true.

Socrates seems to me to have accomplished little beyond his kamikaze mission to destroy his own bodily existence while hastening the collapse of Athenian society — John Doe

:sad:

I think there could be something to be said about the "spirit" of philosophy and its history. A. W. Moore calls the history of (modern) metaphysics as a history of sense-making. There is something noble and, as Descartes and Husserl (et al) noticed, an ethical dimension to the philosophical endeavor. That individuals have a duty to hold rational, well-informed beliefs is a core aspect of the philosophical spirit that differentiates it from rhetoric, sophistry or even science. It is this part of the philosophical spirit that I love, where nothing is held to be so sacred as to be beyond questioning. — darthbarracuda

That's how I see it. I think philosophy has a certain sensibility - more metaphysical than science, less dogmatic than religion, concerned with reasons for beliefs and ideas. But there's also a certain kind of continuity of ideas in philosophy, some over-arching themes which are explored from generation to generation. The Gilson book, The Continuity of Philosophical Experience, was good on that theme.

Philosophy is used to banish evil ideas, solipsism, relativism, skepticism, "nihilism", etc. — darthbarracuda

And how is that a problem?

There is something noble and, as Descartes and Husserl (et al) noticed, an ethical dimension to the philosophical endeavor. But yes, I am less concerned with other forms of philosophy here than I am with others, you are correct about this. When speaking of philosophy I have in mind a certain kind of philosophy rather than "philosophy" in the abstract. Anti-philosophy is still philosophy, etc etc. I have in mind philosophers who evidently see philosophy as some kind of grand narrative that almost ought to be worshiped, its traditional problems as of utmost importance. Philosophy is used to banish evil ideas, solipsism, relativism, skepticism, "nihilism", etc. — darthbarracuda

But it's not a trivial point. It strikes me as a particularly narrow viewpoint to reserve the title of capital-p Philosophy for the practice of attempting to give grand narratives of the ultimate truth of reality, then to denigrate the rest of philosophy as only counting in an "abstract" sense. It reads like someone who would perhaps have had a significant critique in 1805, but is now merely rejecting a certain sort of philosophy; namely, highly rational/logical/cognitivistic approaches. The concerns are a good contribution to philosophy (!) but surely misguided as a critique external to philosophy. Philosophy is practiced within our human forms of life and there's nothing skeptical about admitting this. It's not either capital-p Philosophy or naked skepticism. It's a false choice.

It's significant to me that we have no clear foundation for knowledge and that at the end of the day we really just have to hope that certain things are true. — darthbarracuda

Yup, I agree with the first clause. But surely I don't quit doing philosophy in any meaningful or valuable sense the moment I reject foundationalism, nor does this entail that I merely "hope" certain things are true. Meaningfully philosophizing about the world and truth(s) does not require an apodictic story about the ultimate ground of truth.

I think the general skepticism of this thread has not ever been refuted but simply passed by because there are "more important" things to do. — darthbarracuda

I think -- although I shouldn't speak for others -- it's because a lot of us agree with you that rationalism, grand narratives, foundationalism, etc. are wrong approaches to philosophy and life! But that doesn't condemn philosophy anymore than hating Hollywood filmmaking condemns film as art.

:sad: — Wayfarer

:smile:

(Edit: Cleaned up the text a bit.)

Good points, my critique of dogmatic philosophy is too vague.

The general idea is that rational demonstration has not been rationally demonstrated to be a reliable indicator of anything at all. That things "make sense" is a consequence of them cohering to the habits of thinking, such that when we feel as if we understand something, this has no relation to whether we actually do indeed understand something. Yet this is the final resting place for thought. We believe things because they make sense to us - but making sense to us may be and perhaps is a meaningless criteria for truth.

Divorcing understanding from truth makes things more relative. People believe things because of reasons and we have no way of knowing if any of these reasons are even good, because the criteria we use to evaluate other's reasons are based on our own reasons. Everything ultimately comes back to the person themselves and their impressions.

Furthermore because of this, any theoretical belief has to be dogmatic and narcissistic, because the person holds absolute trust in their own sense of reason. They trust themselves, they listen and heed their own voice of reason. They feel entitled to their opinion because it makes sense to them. But nowhere has anyone demonstrated that something making sense to you has any relationship with it being true. What is felt is what compels us to do things, but the experience of understanding could very well be only that, an experience and nothing more, signaling or meaning nothing beyond its immediate existence. "I understand" - but that literally means nothing but that you feel as if you understand. You have associated feeling a certain way with actually understanding and this has no necessary connection. There is no way of knowing at any given point in time whether what you think has any importance whatsoever.

I think you're right about the narcissistic self-aggrandising nature of certain types of philosophy. But I think there are a few caveats that I would add to your argument.

You'll find the association with personal sense-making and universal 'truth' is actually less dogmatic in academic philosophy than it is in places like this. In my profession I have cause to discuss matters with professional philosophers and almost exhaustively I've found them to be humble about their beliefs and accepting of their limited nature. Most published papers will use terminology like "it seems to me...", "I find X more persuasive because...", or "my feeling is that...". It's only places like this, where people are desperate to prove themselves that you will encounter the more dogmatic "so and so proves that...", "you've misunderstood what X means", "you don't know what you're talking about until you've read X..." etc. As I say, no academic philosopher I've ever met actually speak like that, but it seems entirely de rigueur here, and that's a disappointment.

I think you unnecessarily dial back your criticism in response to @John Doe's comment about the diversity of the philosophical schools. Nietzsche is just as valid a target of your argument as Kant, or Lewis. It doesn't matter what the target of his philosophical propositions were, nor the result of an 'understanding' of them, it is still your understanding of them, It is still monumentally narcissistic of Nietzsche to write (especially in such a obscure manner), with the intention that his understanding of the world (even Nihilistically), actually means anything other than as an insight into his own mental state. In addition, you still have to take account of the manner in which certain texts are used. In terms of critiquing Philosophy, the effects are what is relevant, not the intentions. If the effect of the presentation of certain existential texts is that they are wielded as evidence in a pseudo-analytical project, then they are as guilty of misleading as the analyst.

Again, this is more the case outside of academia where you here nonsense like "that's not Heidegger's point..." (which I read recently), like any of us actually have a clue what Heidegger's point actually is. I guarantee you that if you name any conceivable interpretation of Heidegger I will find you a published author who has proposed it.

I wouldn't go as far as to include all philosophy though. I'm personally convinced of the therapeutic interpretation of Wittgenstein's meta-philosophy (not necessarily convinced that that is what he intended, just convinced that it's right). I think there is value in philosophical propositions which aim to provide a story to help make personal sense of the world, and I think there is value in discussing these propositions in the way someone might try on clothes to see which they like. There's a value in showing how the angst that the 'big' philosophical questions can cause can be dissolved by proposing that they are mostly just linguistic misunderstandings, and lots of philosophy attempts to do that.

I guarantee you that if you name any conceivable interpretation of Heidegger I will find you a published author who has proposed it. — Pseudonym

Much the same could be said of Hegel. But then, they had something in common.

There's a value in showing how the angst that the 'big' philosophical questions can cause can be dissolved by proposing that they are mostly just linguistic misunderstandings, and lots of philosophy attempts to do that. — Pseudonym

I would be interested in your take on this analysis of Wittgenstein's overall project.

It's an interesting article, but it touches on much of the same problems as I think Wittgenstein was trying to avoid (certainly in his later works).

Take this rather disparaging comment about the Vienna Circle;

"...their doctrine is self-contradictory, and therefore must be false."

must be false?? Apparently several decades of argument about para-consitent logic have passed the author by, but aside from that, it is self referential, not self-contradictory, meta languages, modal logic all deal quite happily with such propositions. This is exactly what I'm saying in my posts above (and pretty much everything else I've written here to be honest). We have no cause to believe that there exists a priori knowledge simply on the grounds that, at times, it appears to us that there is. We simply cannot say "...must be false" about anything metaphysical.

I don't like the Logical Positivist project because of it's equation of metaphysical proposition which cannot be analysed with "nonsense". As I've said, the fact that metaphysical propositions cannot be meaningfully analysed in an inter-subjective sense does not make them "nonsense", but it does make them a very specific category of proposition which is rarely how they are treated.

The author continues his attempt to wield Wittgenstein to prove his own personal beliefs;

"...the thought of there being an unutterable kind of truth that ‘makes itself manifest’. Hence the key paragraph 6.522 in the Tractatus:

“There are indeed things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.”

In other words, there is a categorically different kind of truth from that which we can state in empirically or logically verifiable propositions. These different truths fall on the other side of the demarcation line of the principle of verification."

Wittgenstein specifically does not equate this unutterable awareness with 'truth' (in that sense of the word) at all. In fact he makes great pains to do the exact opposite, He makes it abundantly clear that, for him, these matters are of a completely different kind to the matter dealt with by the sciences. The truth of the empirically verifiable statement "it is raining", is not the same kind of thing as the truth of the metaphysical statement "there exists a god", just got at a different way, as the author seems to be implying. They are of fundamentally and entirely different types. The one entirely investigate-able and a fit topic for argumentative discourse, the other totally mystical, revealed only by it's existence (not by investigation) and not a fit topic for argumentative discourse.

Again with;

“6.41 The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value – and if there were, it would be of no value. If there is value which is of value, it must lie outside of all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental. What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental. It must lie outside the world.”

In other words, all worldly actions and events are contingent (‘accidental’), but matters of value are necessarily so, for they are ‘higher’ or too important to be accidental, and so must be outside the world of empirical propositions:

the author is simply trying to yield some quasi-religious certainty out of Wittgenstein which just isn't there. At no point does Wittgenstein refer to these values a 'higher' (which implies a hierarchical relationship), and therefore outside of empirical propositions, simply that they are outside of empirical propositions. There is no implication that they are so because they're 'higher'.

Wittgensteins later project demonstrates his thought on this. It is about the limits of what can be sensibly expressed, it has nothing to do with hierarchy, or the 'importance' of mystical revelation, only that they are not sensibly expressible.

The author then returns to his seemingly god-given certainty about the world;

"There is simply no objective truth to be had about a judgement of value. So it would be extremely odd if the values – be they moral, aesthetic, religious, or whatever – that manifest themselves to us as individuals were to be the same for everybody."

I'm presuming here that this is the author's own view, but many readings, even of the Tractatus, see it as ultimately a rejection of the a priori (Peter Sullivan, for example). Under these interpretations, surely we must say that there may or may not be objective truth about moral or aesthetic values, we simply don't know. Which is why I so strongly oppose attempts to somehow rule out positions like Ethical Naturalism on some a priori grounds as if the matter of a priori knowledge had been settled already.

The problem with the article though (as opposed to my problem with philosophy) is summed up nicely in the last paragraph;

“There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical” (6.522). None of these sayings could possibly be interpreted as the views of a man who had renounced metaphysics.

If this comment comes from a man who intends to continue discussing metaphysics, then what exactly is he going to talk about? The inexpressible?

the fact that metaphysical propositions cannot be meaningfully analysed in an inter-subjective sense does not make them "nonsense", but it does make them a very specific category of proposition which is rarely how they are treated. — Pseudonym

I think you’re actually saying that they are nonsense, but politely.

The one entirely investigate-able and a fit topic for argumentative discourse, the other totally mystical, revealed only by it's existence (not by investigation) and not a fit topic for argumentative discourse. — Pseudonym

You say you ‘don’t like’ the logical positivist project, but by golly, you sure sound like one, as you bascially admit.

At no point does Wittgenstein refer to these values a 'higher' — Pseudonym

I think it’s implicit in its description of values as ‘outside the world’. My interpretation is, it is contrasting values with contingent facts, which, as the statement says, have no value. So ‘something that has value’ would implicitly be ‘higher’ than something which doesn’t, would it not?

Anyway - thanks for your interpretation. I noticed that the article refers to Ray Monk, who has apparently written a well-regarded bio of Wittgenstein, which is on my ‘to read’ list.

Furthermore because of this, any theoretical belief has to be dogmatic and narcissistic, because the person holds absolute trust in their own sense of reason. They trust themselves, they listen and heed their own voice of reason. They feel entitled to their opinion because it makes sense to them. But nowhere has anyone demonstrated that something making sense to you has any relationship with it being true. What is felt is what compels us to do things, but the experience of understanding could very well be only that, an experience and nothing more, signaling or meaning nothing beyond its immediate existence. "I understand" - but that literally means nothing but that you feel as if you understand. You have associated feeling a certain way with actually understanding and this has no necessary connection. There is no way of knowing at any given point in time whether what you think has any importance whatsoever. — darthbarracuda

I like your ideas here about the unknowable nature of truth. What's even more interesting is despite this state, we are enmeshed in a system which creates for us pragmatic truths. There is the truth that you need to work to survive (well) or with a sense of "dignity" (as far as our society is concerned). There is the truth that you need to buy consumer goods to keep your comfort and survival needs and wants at a proper level. There are ways in which other people's truth, through the diffusion of cultural standards becomes your truth (in a literal-pragmatic way that you are compelled to do it). There is no way you can set rules for society or even influence it with a lot of impact, but you certainly follow the technological, social, and cultural standards that others have provided and set for YOU. However, I know this is a bit different than Truth as you mean it here in terms of metaphysical understanding. Just providing a different take.

In my profession I have cause to discuss matters with professional philosophers and almost exhaustively I've found them to be humble about their beliefs and accepting of their limited nature. Most published papers will use terminology like "it seems to me...", "I find X more persuasive because...", or "my feeling is that...". It's only places like this, where people are desperate to prove themselves that you will encounter the more dogmatic "so and so proves that...", "you've misunderstood what X means", "you don't know what you're talking about until you've read X..." etc. As I say, no academic philosopher I've ever met actually speak like that, but it seems entirely de rigueur here, and that's a disappointment. — Pseudonym

These are valid and interesting points, but I’m not sure that they are cause for disappointment. I think that most of your concerns reflect the limitations of an internet forum. Faceless people quickly constructing written posts back-and-forth can come across as much ruder or more arrogant than they are in reality. I recently joined, and I am still fairly shocked at how obnoxious many of my posts read, but I don’t belive that this reveals anything significant about my character. (I hope not!) People come across strange in email too.

I am curious about your profession and who you are dealing with, but if you are dealing with tenured professors I'll suggest that a lot of this might be age rather than career success. Over time, I think, philosophy humbles you. A lot of graduate students tend to think they're going to be the next canonical genius. Getting older often means coming to grips with the limits of philosophy and of one's own intelligence. It's why we can all use a good dose of the OP in our youth. :smile:

Nietzsche is just as valid a target of your argument as Kant, or Lewis. It doesn't matter what the target of his philosophical propositions were, nor the result of an 'understanding' of them, it is still your understanding of them, It is still monumentally narcissistic of Nietzsche to write (especially in such a obscure manner), with the intention that his understanding of the world (even Nihilistically), actually means anything other than as an insight into his own mental state. — Pseudonym

I guess that my concern is that you’re here presenting a very relativistic version of what @darthbarracuda has said, making it a far less effective criticism (to my mind) of rationalism et al. If a philosopher is narcissistic because they claim to have insight into anything whatsoever other than their own mental state then there is a lot of ground we will have to cover, but I suspect that such an extreme position will not hold up to extended scrutiny. It at least makes the OP less interesting to me, since I thought it was a beautiful and subtle critique of a certain style of thought, laying forward the sort of questions and concerns which led me to philosophy in the first place.

In terms of critiquing Philosophy, the effects are what is relevant, not the intentions. If the effect of the presentation of certain existential texts is that they are wielded as evidence in a pseudo-analytical project, then they are as guilty of misleading as the analyst. — Pseudonym

This strikes me as very broad as well. Do philosophers have to be so precise as to eliminate all possible misinterpretations?

Again, this is more the case outside of academia where you here nonsense like "that's not Heidegger's point..." (which I read recently), like any of us actually have a clue what Heidegger's point actually is. I guarantee you that if you name any conceivable interpretation of Heidegger I will find you a published author who has proposed it. — Pseudonym

Is that nonsense, though? I suppose you might be alluding to something I wrote, since I have been sticking my nose in several Heidegger threads. Anyhow, you seem to suggest that we can’t meaningfully discuss Heidegger — in the same manner you suggest earlier that we can’t discuss anything beyond our mental states — because no one knows anything for sure and all we have are a jumble of possible interpretations.

Again, this strikes me as committed to a sort of relativism I can’t stomach and I hope was not the meaning of the OP. I suppose I just think that it’s fair game, if someone is critiquing Heidegger, to retort that they are criticizing a position they seem to be incorrectly ascribing to Heidegger, and to offer what one takes to be something closer to his actual position. It would be rather uncharitable to suggest that everyone who writes this way reveals a narcissistic drive to prove themselves.

As I say, no academic philosopher I've ever met actually speak like that, but it seems entirely de rigueur here, and that's a disappointment. — Pseudonym

Very true, the internet is a hub of narcissism.

I'm personally convinced of the therapeutic interpretation of Wittgenstein's meta-philosophy (not necessarily convinced that that is what he intended, just convinced that it's right). I think there is value in philosophical propositions which aim to provide a story to help make personal sense of the world, and I think there is value in discussing these propositions in the way someone might try on clothes to see which they like. There's a value in showing how the angst that the 'big' philosophical questions can cause can be dissolved by proposing that they are mostly just linguistic misunderstandings, and lots of philosophy attempts to do that. — Pseudonym

Brilliant, making personal sense of the world is valuable. But making sense of the world, with the intention that this human perspective count as the cosmic perspective, seems to me to be outrageously narcissistic. That something makes sense to us, or to me, is all that matters, all that could possibly matter (to us, to me...). Excellent!

Nietzsche is just as valid a target of your argument as Kant, or Lewis. It doesn't matter what the target of his philosophical propositions were, nor the result of an 'understanding' of them, it is still your understanding of them, It is still monumentally narcissistic of Nietzsche to write (especially in such a obscure manner), with the intention that his understanding of the world (even Nihilistically), actually means anything other than as an insight into his own mental state. — Pseudonym

I suppose, although I would make the case that Nietzsche was extraordinarily self-aware and knew he was contradicting himself in places. But I like Nietzsche because he puts an emphasis on personal truth over any sort of contrived objectivity. In a sense, Nietzsche has spoken and I have listened and appropriated certain ideas into my own sense of life, meaning, etc. The fact that Nietzsche resonates with many people is not evidence that he is "objectively right" but that he simply resonates with a lot of people.

It's only when we assume certain parameters and rules in the games we play that we can start making any dogmatic claims about the universe at large, I think. That intersubjective agreement is evidence of objectivity, that a valid syllogism is an indicator of truth beyond the sensibilities, that thoughts have meaning and are not arbitrary, We get so caught up with the game of objectivity that we forget about these assumptions. But as long as we recognize that these are just games and that they're inescapable in some sense, then skepticism is without a clear target. The search for objectivity gets reinterpreted as the search for human-comprehensible truth, which is by no means necessarily human-independent truth.

I think that most of your concerns reflect the limitations of an internet forum. Faceless people quickly constructing written posts back-and-forth can come across as much ruder or more arrogant than they are in reality. I recently joined, and I am still fairly shocked at how obnoxious many of my posts read, but I don’t belive that this reveals anything significant about my character. (I hope not!) People come across strange in email too. — John Doe

I don't know if you read different threads to me, but I think that's overly magnanimous. I'd rather your generous optimism than my bitter misanthropy but I'm struggling to see how you're interpreting the sort of statements we regularly get here as quirks of the format and not the narcissistic excesses anonymity encourages. The Heidegger thread I referred to contained, for example, the weird accusation that the OP was "just making things up", as opposed to what alternative, I wonder.

If a philosopher is narcissistic because they claim to have insight into anything whatsoever other than their own mental state then there is a lot of ground we will have to cover, but I suspect that such an extreme position will not hold up to extended scrutiny. — John Doe

Entire books could, and have, been written about this of course, but the rejection of a priori knowledge (which, as I mentioned to Wayfarer) is what this is really about, is an existent philosophical position. Paul Horwich's most recent interpretation of Wittgenstein's meta-philosophy takes that exact position, so, whether you agree with it or not, it's certainly withstood scrutiny by the same standards any other philosophy has been subject to. I'd be interested to hear your particular objections though.

Do philosophers have to be so precise as to eliminate all possible misinterpretations? — John Doe

I wasn't intending to imply that the philosophers themselves should, nor even could, do anything about it, only that the project itself must be assessed by its results not its intentions. If the only method of communicating some insight is so open to interpretation that virtually any conclusion could be drawn from reading it, then nothing had really been achieved by studying it. There might be some proposition in there which really helps us understand our place in the world, but what justification do we have for thinking ourselves more likely to find it by determining what Heidegger really meant than by simply following through whatever we think he means?

I suppose I just think that it’s fair game, if someone is critiquing Heidegger, to retort that they are criticizing a position they seem to be incorrectly ascribing to Heidegger, and to offer what one takes to be something closer to his actual position. — John Doe

But the overwhelming evidence from decades of investigation is that it cannot be established whether an interpretation is "closer to his actual position". I'm no Heidegger scholar, but with Wittgenstein it is certainly the case that no amount of investigation has yielded any certainty as to what he was trying to say. Look at the thread currently running on the Tractatus, they can't get past the second proposition with becoming mired in uncertainty. That was the point of my, admittedly slight facetious, claim. Whatever anyone says (with any reasonable intellect) can be found to be a valid interpretation. Take a look at the work of William Clooney, or Michael Gelvin. They both take almost the exact position @Ciceronianus the White was taking, for which he was so lambasted.

In a sense, Nietzsche has spoken and I have listened and appropriated certain ideas into my own sense of life, meaning, etc. — darthbarracuda

Yes, this is how I like to treat philosophy, like a work of art, it either means something to you personally or it doesn't, but like art, there'll always be those who think that what it means to them had some universal applicability. Apparently most children have developed a theory of mind by the age of six, it seems in some fields it only lasts a few years before they abandon it.

as long as we recognize that these are just games and that they're inescapable in some sense, then skepticism is without a clear target. — darthbarracuda

Yes, I too think skepticism can be defeated this way. I think extreme relativism can be defeated similarly, there's so much agreement as to the rules of the game that progress can still be made within broad parameters, it just gets problematic when we try to overstep the limits of inter-subjectivity.

Very interesting stuff, would it be accurate to describe yourself as broadly Kantian? Objectivity defined as inter-subjective agreement with an agnosticism to the nature of the noumena? This is roughly where I see myself.

Yes, this is how I like to treat philosophy, like a work of art, it either means something to you personally or it doesn't, but like art, there'll always be those who think that what it means to them had some universal applicability. Apparently most children have developed a theory of mind by the age of six, it seems in some fields it only lasts a few years before they abandon it. — Pseudonym

As Nietzsche observed, the greatest failure of philosophers is their lack of historicity. Often they take the current position they hold as the position they will always hold. Or they mistake the current position with the final position.

Whereas philosophy is fluid, dynamic, relative, individualistic. A coming-to-terms-with-oneself, philosophy as autobiography. That philosophy be reduced to an either/or, right/wrong severely limits its potential. Dialectic is the medium in which philosophy exists, but not its essence.

It may be pointed out that this relativism is an absolutist position and thus self-contradictory. But I think a charitable interpretation is that it is less a belief and more of an attitude, or skillful orientation, to the world.

Yes, I too think skepticism can be defeated this way. I think extreme relativism can be defeated similarly, there's so much agreement as to the rules of the game that progress can still be made within broad parameters, it just gets problematic when we try to overstep the limits of inter-subjectivity. — Pseudonym

I don't know if they are so much defeated, or refuted, as much as they are overcome. The theoretical attitude that skepticism draws from is a complex spurring from a more basic attunement to the "world".

In other words, the Other is systematically disintegrated and assimilated into the Totality. The world is domesticated.

I don't know if you read different threads to me, but I think that's overly magnanimous. I'd rather your generous optimism than my bitter misanthropy but I'm struggling to see how you're interpreting the sort of statements we regularly get here as quirks of the format and not the narcissistic excesses anonymity encourages. — Pseudonym

I think it's not so much that I am more optimistic than you about the camaraderie on this forum than it is that I am far more pessimistic than you about the shockingly bad behavior of academic philosophers and theorists. This forum is far more cordial than the websites which cater to academics and graduate students.

the rejection of a priori knowledge (which, as I mentioned to Wayfarer) is what this is really about, — Pseudonym

This strikes me as precisely the type of narrow position I agree with darth is wrong-headed. I have no problem with rejecting the notion of a priori knowledge. But this doesn't banish philosophy to mere knowledge of our own 'mental states' as you said, perhaps with an intentionally polemic tone.

If the only method of communicating some insight is so open to interpretation that virtually any conclusion could be drawn from reading it, then nothing had really been achieved by studying it. — Pseudonym

But it's not so much that these works are merely "open to interpretation" as it is that they are inevitably "open to misinterpretation", so to speak. The same holds for art. Returning to an earlier analogy, someone might not understand or appreciate a Tarkovsky film because they lack any sense of film as art, and this says nothing about the film so much as the viewer. Or perhaps they have a sense of film but not for certain types of films. Roger Ebert, for example, criticizes a lot of films that became genuine classics because he failed to understand and appreciate them. But it would seem weird to say that it reflects negatively on these films because they were open to the sort of misinterpretation that gets articulated in Ebert's reviews. (Blue Velvet is not a misogynistic film about sexual fantasy, for example, but a very interesting and profound film which touches on many important themes. Yet it is simply not possible for a great work of art that touches on its themes to save itself from this sort of misinterpretation.)

but what justification do we have for thinking ourselves more likely to find it by determining what Heidegger really meant than by simply following through whatever we think he means? — Pseudonym

I am likely misinterpreting this, but I think it raises a very interesting and valuable point not touched on in the OP. I have often wondered why we take it for granted that we can so much as understand what the great geniuses of human history think. It's very strange that there are hundreds of universities in the US alone giving 18 year old students paper topics asking them to critique the thought of geniuses. Surely this must represent our epoch's egalitarian mindset in some sense. And this is not to denigrate 18 year olds. Perhaps all of us -- including academic philosophers -- are not so smart. I've been wondering a lot recently "Why do we talk so much about Nietzscche, Hegel, Heidegger, etc. like we actually understand? Perhaps we don't. Perhaps it's actually the case that they are much much smarter than me and those I talk with." Anyway, perhaps a useless aside here.

But the overwhelming evidence from decades of investigation is that it cannot be established whether an interpretation is "closer to his actual position". — Pseudonym

I guess that I just flat out disagree with this statement. We can't understand a great philosophical work for the same reason that we can't understand our best friend. It doesn't mean that our friendship is useless. It just means that a human being -- or a work of great philosophy -- is too enormously complex to be understood. And not complex through sheer "genius" in a sense of knowledge of truths, but complex in the sense as motivated in contradictory ways; presenting different faces to different people; providing an interesting or funny way of looking at things in different contexts. The mistake isn't to question the person or the work, the mistake is to think that you can devour the person or work like a geometrical proof.

Philosophy is an anthropocentric narcissism of the highest magnitude that entails an exceptional view of the power of reason. — darthbarracuda

I wouldn't say that. I would say philosophy is the very human and understandable attempt to make sense of the world and of human experience and of the relation between the two.

To hold any theoretical belief is to assert that one has a special place in nature, a privileged position concocted by the illusions called "knowledge" and "understanding". — darthbarracuda

I think "theoretical belief" is a tendentious term. Why not "speculative conception", for example? Must we "hold" them or merely entertain them? Perhaps (at least some of) the great philosophers were egoically invested in the systems they constructed; but that is a common human failing in all areas of human endeavour.

Why do you say that our "knowledge" and "understanding" are illusions? Are they not part of the flourishing of nature? They are surely a singular natural phenomenon, but what could it mean to say they hold a "privileged place"? The notion that humans in general (and not merely their "theoretical beliefs") hold a privileged place in nature has more to do with philosophical and religious conceptions such as Platonism, Judeaism, Christianity and Islam, and in some lesser respects Hinduism and Buddhism than it does with philosophy per se, or so it seems to me.

Perhaps it is natural and basic for humans to think they hold a privileged place, just as other species are exclusively 'preoccupied' with their own flourishing at the expense of all else, and will come to dominate their ecosystems if the ecological conditions allow, sometimes leading to their own demise through resource depletion.

I think your critique makes any sense only if you uphold an absolutist notion of a Truth that is so great, so unapproachable, that mere humans would necessarily be behaving narcissistically merely on account of imagining that they could even make the attempt. It's certainly not clear to me that all of philosophy has been a deliberate grandiose claim to have conquered such an impossible ideal of Truth, rather than a more humble search for understanding our place in nature and how best to live. It pays to remember that for the longest time philosophy has been dominated and hobbled by religious dogma. Now it seems to be more in danger of being somewhat (at least in the popular imagination) subsumed by science or formal logic.

would it be accurate to describe yourself as broadly Kantian? Objectivity defined as inter-subjective agreement with an agnosticism to the nature of the noumena? — darthbarracuda

In terms of the separation, yes, although, as I have mentioned in my responses to @John Doe, we yet again encounter the problem of interpretation. Before we even get off first base we have to decide if we're interpreting Kant in a 'Two Worlds' manner or a 'One World' interpretation. More than 200 years of analysis has not yielded any clearer understanding of what Kant actually meant by his Idealism, so I prefer to avoid associations with actual philosophical schools. In terms of epistemology in general though, yes I do prefer to remind myself of the distinction between the models we make of the world in our minds and the world itself from which those models are derived (if it exists at all).

As Nietzsche observed, the greatest failure of philosophers is their lack of historicity. — darthbarracuda

Yes. When I first encountered Nietzsche I hated his emphasis on historicity, impatient for him to get on with making the point. Decades later, I see how such an emphasis could be so important, but I think it's open to misinterpretation also. I like the conclusion of Collingwood, that metaphysics is an historical study.

I don't know if they are so much defeated, or refuted, as much as they are overcome. The theoretical attitude that skepticism draws from is a complex spurring from a more basic attunement to the "world". — darthbarracuda

Yes, that's a better way of putting it.

I think it's not so much that I am more optimistic than you about the camaraderie on this forum than it is that I am far more pessimistic than you about the shockingly bad behavior of academic philosophers and theorists. This forum is far more cordial than the websites which cater to academics and graduate students. — John Doe

I don't know what websites you've been visiting, but I'm not going to deny the evidence of your own experience. Maybe it's the internet, more than the academic/layman divide. The thing is, given your philosophical position (or at least that part of it that has become clear during our discourse), I don't doubt for a minute that you've received a cordial welcome here. Broadly speaking, your's is a mainstream position. The attitude I'm referring to is exactly that this mainstream position has some authority over and above any other which will not allow itself to be interrogated, but nonetheless is asserted with vitriolic passion. If you already hold a mainstream position, you're unlikely to encounter the problem.

This strikes me as precisely the type of narrow position I agree with darth is wrong-headed. I have no problem with rejecting the notion of a priori knowledge. But this doesn't banish philosophy to mere knowledge of our own 'mental states' as you said, perhaps with an intentionally polemic tone. — John Doe

I think, from here on, you've misunderstood what I'm aiming at. At no point do I intend to consign philosophy to the waste heap. I'm arguing that it recognise what it really is. If we reject a priori knowledge, then we cannot make any knowledge claims without empirical evidence (which is the job of the sciences really). That doesn't mean we can't discuss those human fields of investigation which are outside of the scope of the sciences, those for which no empirical evidence can (ever) be brought forward. But we must recognises the limits of what we're doing. No-one is 'right', no-one is even 'more right', no-one is better at it than any other, there can no markers of success, there is no measure that you have understood or failed to understand. These are definitely not the attitudes held by the majority of lay philosophers.

The same holds for art. Returning to an earlier analogy, someone might not understand or appreciate a Tarkovsky film because they lack any sense of film as art, and this says nothing about the film so much as the viewer. Or perhaps they have a sense of film but not for certain types of films. Roger Ebert, for example, criticizes a lot of films that became genuine classics because he failed to understand and appreciate them. But it would seem weird to say that it reflects negatively on these films because they were open to the sort of misinterpretation that gets articulated in Ebert's reviews. (Blue Velvet is not a misogynistic film about sexual fantasy, for example, but a very interesting and profound film which touches on many important themes. — John Doe

And this is a classic example of what I've just said. Just to pick apart your language here to get at what I'm meaning. What does a "sense of film as art" look like, and how do you know if someone's got one or not? On the face of it it look like a self-immunised question-begging position. One demonstrates a "sense of film as art" simply by articulating the sort of opinion the lack of which is held as evidence one lacks a "sense of film as art".

"... he failed to understand and appreciate them.". In what way could he possibly have 'failed' here. What is the task he failed at and what is the measure by which his sucess is being judged? Again, I can't see one that isn't question begging.

"Blue Velvet is not a misogynistic film about sexual fantasy, for example, but a very interesting and profound film which touches on many important themes". Is it though? How can you determine what the film is beyond the implications it creates in the minds of those watching it? You may not have felt it was misogynistic, Ebert clearly did. Do you have some mental faculty Ebert is lacking?

So yeah, I think you're right to draw the analogy with art. Just like art, there's a lot of judgements being made on entirely subjective levels masquerading as some measureable thing.

So yeah, I think you're right to draw the analogy with art. Just like art, there's a lot of judgements being made on entirely subjective levels masquerading as some measureable thing. — Pseudonym

The interesting thing about aesthetic judgements, as Kant pointed out, is that they include inherent claims about the universality of their ambit. The problem is that imputed universality cannot ever be confirmed by any empirical evidence.

Since philosophy seems to be most intrinsically an exercise in aesthetic judgement, the same inevitable assumption of universality without the possibility of empirical evidence would appear to be inevitably operating there.

Look at the thread currently running on the Tractatus, they can't get past the second proposition with becoming mired in uncertainty. — Pseudonym

Oy! I think I'm making progress! And the work is good for me.