it is more likely because the technique simply doesn't inquire into things in an effective way or yield any results. — Snakes Alive

What are you imagining as an effective inquiry? The kind of thinking that ended up in the steam engine?

Compare the Jehova's witnesses saying the world did end in 1914, but what we meant by that was... This is a classic pattern of these practices that don't have any efficacy. — Snakes Alive

And this comparison holds because doctrines in philosophy and religion don't tend to be involved in the production of steam engines?

Philosophy as a tradition, much like religion, doesn't have its character determined by being inefficacious in the above sense. Though, this may be a reason why philosophy and theology receive less funding and focus in education than science and technology. More importantly though, this lack of efficacy doesn't help describe philosophy as a tradition, speaking to its conceptual/behavioural structure, the appropriate question seems to me why philosophy lacks efficacy in that sense.

Part of the answer seems to me to be that efficacious reasoning in the above sense usually gets described, and is involved institutionally, with science, engineering and technology. Natural philosophy turned into the sciences as a theoretical study, mix it with the tradition of tinkering and you get engineering. It seems at some point, people who practiced philosophy were indeed doing such efficacious reasoning, and it's a retrojection of contemporary categories to describe it otherwise. Given the premise that the nature of philosophy is a historical invariant, it seems strange that it lost its capacity to be efficacious at some point.

I think that means you would need to paint with a less broad brush; what is it about philosophy as it is currently practiced that ensures it lacks efficacy? Rather than appeal to a historical invariant of aporia and courtroom style reasoning (which are rooted in the previously discussed idea of using language to transfer behavioural commitments (blocking derivation of behavioural commitments from posits and deriving them respectively for aporias and otherwise)).

Part of the answer seems to me to be that efficacious reasoning in the above sense usually gets described, and is involved institutionally, with science, engineering and technology. — fdrake

Not at all. I think, for example, that many historians ask questions of no technological value, and with no obvious utility. But nonetheless, those questions are real ones that can receive interesting answers.

what is it about philosophy as it is currently practiced that ensures it lacks efficacy? — fdrake

It attempts to inquire about 'anything' by a conversational method, and there's no reason at all that just talking about basic features of the world should yield any insight into them.

You can think of philosophy as a kind of ritual miming of serious inquiry. Doing what it does no more gets at the basic features of the world than playing house supports a family, or doing a rain dance makes rain fall.

I'm sympathetic to the idea that the Socratic method invariably involves itself in linguistic confusions, too, but I guess that's a separate hypothesis. You'd need a more sophisticated metasemantics to understand why philosophy in particular is so ripe for linguistic confusion, but I think it is (and I think this fact is not only part of why it survives, but also why it arose in the first place – out of sophistry, which was a way of exploiting linguistic confusions for profit in court, to impress people, etc.).

It attempts to inquire about 'anything' by a conversational method, and there's no reason at all that just talking about basic features of the world should yield any insight into them. — Snakes Alive

I'm sympathetic to the idea that the Socratic method invariably involves itself in linguistic confusions, too, but I guess that's a separate hypothesis. — Snakes Alive

Now I'm at a loss. So philosophy doesn't get at how things are. This failure doesn't derive from insufficient similarity to the natural sciences or engineering/technology. Nor does it derive from linguistic confusion. What does it derive from then?

It attempts to inquire about 'anything' by a conversational method, and there's no reason at all that just talking about basic features of the world should yield any insight into them. — Snakes Alive

You're right, there's no necessary reason why any inquiry in any style should yield substantive/efficacious insights. That is quite a different claim from there being no examples of reasoning yielding substantive/efficacious insights. In fact, there are examples in the history of philosophy of precisely this sort; see my previous point about natural philosophy for an example.

The same transcendental game regarding the lack of sufficient reason philosophy exhibits for producing efficacious/substantive results can be played with the fact that it has produced those results on some occasions; reading the capacity for substantive insights back into the essence of the tradition as a possibility.

So philosophy doesn't get at how things are. This failure doesn't derive from insufficient similarity to the natural sciences or engineering/technology. — fdrake

I'm not some kind of chauvinist for the natural sciences, no. I think plenty of areas of inquiry ask and answer interesting questions. Philosophy does not, and it's not unique in this regard (neither does New Age, for example), but it is also its own historically contingent thing, defective for its own historically contingent reasons.

It does involve itself in semantic confusions, but I think this has more to do with its origin and survival. I doubt it would be efficacious even if it did not (what would it do, exactly, even if it dispelled these confusions? There is nothing for it to do).

You're right, there's no necessary reason why any inquiry in any style should yield substantive/efficacious insights. — fdrake

The point is that philosophy doesn't really inquire – it mimes inquiry through a kind of conversational ritual that mimics the courtroom, but without witnesses, evidence, or point.

Actual inquiry involves observation, participation in a skill, past experience, showing by example, feedback from successes and failures, and so on. Philosophy doesn't have any of these, and so lacks the hallmarks of ordinary effective inquiry.

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

1) "I was just pretending to be retarded" – Philosophy doesn't actually seek interesting substantive answers to question, but does something else more esoteric / rarefied / unfalsifiable, or actually serves some ill-defined function in "the questioning itself."

2) "Everything is philosophy, actually" – Philosophy is necessary because even questioning or trying to be critical of it is a philosophical move.

3) "Everything else came from philosophy" – Historically, the natural sciences / engineering / having sex / hair trimming / etc. came from philosophy.

I think all these are awful attempts at a defense, and you employed #3. It's a historical hypothesis, and in my opinion, not true. I guess we could argue about specific cases if you really wanted to.

#1 is a coping mechanism used by religious beliefs, as I noted above; #2 is a vacuous 'transcendental' move that is symptomatic of a discipline just not being able to see anything outside itself, and merely reiterates, rather than shows, that everything must conform to its own flawed techniques.

I have seen all three of these responses so often that I'm used to all the ways they occur and how people bring them up and defend them. Surely there's something better than that!

Philosophy does not, and it's not unique in this regard (neither does New Age, for example), but it is also its own historically contingent thing, defective for its own historically contingent reasons. — Snakes Alive

Defective as compared to what?

The point is that philosophy doesn't really inquire – it mimes inquiry through a kind of conversational ritual that mimics the courtroom, but without witnesses, evidence, or point. — Snakes Alive

Besides the lack of historical justification you're using to make a historical claim, I think you're missing something obvious; to the extent that styles of reasoning are commonplace and shared, the courtroom is those shared norms of reasoning; expectations of behavioural conduct and belief propagation given a starting point. In that regard, the only difference philosophy has from reasoning simpliciter when understood as a historical tradition (we do have to learn how to reason after all) is a mild constraint on topics of interest (just enough so that philosophy doesn't become something which is not philosophy) and a historical particularity.

This doesn't mean there are no distinctly philosophical moves though, I mean something like a transcendental argument, or understanding something as a folk tradition for philosophical purposes, won't make sense outside of a philosophical context.

3) "Everything else came from philosophy" – Historically, the natural sciences / engineering / having sex / hair trimming / etc. came from philosophy. — Snakes Alive

My use of natural philosophy wasn't intended to be that. It was a counter argument.

(1) What I understand as a claim of yours: philosophy hasn't changed meaningfully since its inception. It has always been defective (not efficacious in some unspecified sense).
(2) Something which is a historical fact: natural philosophy did produce efficacious results (in the specified sense of providing a predictive and instrumental understanding of nature).
(3) Natural philosophy was part of philosophy at its time.

Surely you can see the contradiction. Combined, throughout its history philosophy could never have produced a predictive understanding of nature if it was always not productive of efficacious insights, therefore either the character of philosophy has changed over time (and you can't construe it in just one way that entails it does nothing and is useless forever) or it always has the potential to produce efficacious results (if its character actually hasn't changed).

Defective as compared to what? — fdrake

History, chemistry, linguistics, asking where the bus stop is, learning to play chess, beauty school, football coaching...

Besides the lack of historical justification you're using to make a historical claim, — fdrake

Do you want to go into the history, then?

to the extent that styles of reasoning are commonplace and shared, the courtroom is those shared norms of reasoning; expectations of behavioural conduct and belief propagation given a starting point. In that regard, the only difference philosophy has from reasoning simpliciter when understood as a historical tradition (we do have to learn how to reason after all) is a mild constraint on topics of interest (just enough so that philosophy doesn't become something which is not philosophy) and a historical particularity. — fdrake

This is not true, though; philosophy is removed from ordinary reasoning by that fact that it has no subject matter, nor any method other than conversation, and that conversation does not run up against anything, because it has no empirical content, and does not track anything outside of itself.

or understanding something as a folk tradition for philosophical purposes, won't make sense outside of a philosophical context. — fdrake

It's not for philosophical purposes (you just did #2).

(2) Something which is a historical fact: natural philosophy did produce efficacious results (in the specified sense of providing a predictive and instrumental understanding of nature). — fdrake

So your argument is that natural philosophy = science = philosophy? That's not how words work, I'm afraid!

This is a complex historical question, but you can't address it like that. The claim that natural science somehow 'came from' philosophy is probably not right, though I don't think we can address the issue adequately here.

Surely you can see the contradiction. — fdrake

Your line of attack, you see, was to catch me in a contradiction, without historical evidence – but how, one might think, can this be possible? How can I be shown to be in error on a historical matter, with no appeal to history? If we look back through the conversation, we find the answer – your 'argument' turns on an equivocation, and you slipped from 'philosophy' to 'natural philosophy,' which is an old-timey word for science.

And so the illusion that you've discovered something continues. Do you see how it works?

Do you want to go into the history, then? — Snakes Alive

Sure! I'd like to see what you've written on it.

So your argument is that natural philosophy = science = philosophy? That's not how words work, I'm afraid! — Snakes Alive

No, not at all. I hoped that you would read me with more charity.

Your line of attack, you see, was to catch me in a contradiction, without historical evidence – but how, one might think, can this be possible? How can I be shown to be in error on a historical matter, with no appeal to history? If we look back through the conversation, we find the answer – your 'argument' turns on an equivocation, and you slipped from 'philosophy' to 'natural philosophy,' which is an old-timey word for science. — Snakes Alive

OK, let me rephrase.

(1) Natural philosophy was philosophy.
(2) Natural philosophy was efficacious.
(3) Then some philosophy was efficacious. (1,2) (you mistook existential generalisation for equivocation)

(Same argument form as:

(1) Apples are a fruit.
(2) Apples are tasty.
(3) Some fruit are tasty.)

(4) Philosophy has not changed in any relevant respect since Ancient Greece (what I understand as one of your claims).
(5) Philosophy was not efficacious in Ancient Greece (what I understand as part of your characterisation of philosophy)
(6) Philosophy is never efficacious (4,5, if something does not change over time and it has a property at some time, then it has that property for all times)

(6) and (3) contradict each other.

So it seems you want to deny (1):

and you slipped from 'philosophy' to 'natural philosophy,' which is an old-timey word for science. — Snakes Alive

And claim that somehow natural philosophy was not philosophy. Why wasn't natural philosophy philosophy? If you say "because philosophy is not efficacious whereas natural philosophy (by equating it with natural science!) was", this is a textbook example of begging the question.

Which, no doubt, you will frame as an observation of conduct rather than an error in reasoning. Which I can agree with, so long as you also accept that you've been painting with too broad a brush, and you're not talking about philosophy simpliciter, or about an unchanging historical essence, but about a much more particular practice of it that you've not articulated.

Sure! I'd like to see what you've written on it. — fdrake

I don't write on it, since I'm just a layman that thinks about this as a hobby (I 'believed in' philosophy when I was younger, got a degree in it, and later slowly came to my present views on it), but I wouldn't mind discussing it. I'm interested in the history of how philosophy arose, and think the Greek rhetorical tradition (as traced through the quasi-legendary Corax of Syracuse, in his bid to school landowners to defend their claims from Syracusan tyrants) is an interesting place to start. I also think people ought to know more about the sophists and their contribution, and I think a historical survey comparing the Greek legal tradition to the earliest philosophical dialogues could prove fruitful (to see how the actual rhetorical techniques are employed similarly or dissimilarly in each case).

A really ambitious person would, I think, then compare the Greek socio-historical situation to analogous ones in India, and so on, to see whether there are certain social conditions that precipitate the rise of something like 'philosophy.'

I don't think you can get very far explaining what philosophy is without this historical angle on it, but 'histories of philosophy' simply take for granted its own internal mythology about what it is, so we don't have that (as far as I know – I would be delighted if anyone could point me in a promising direction as to a 'real' history).

I'm not responding to the rest of the post – can't I just leave it as an exercise for you as to why it doesn't work? [Again, deductive arguments that don't involve historical facts can't make historical claims.]

I'm not responding to the rest of the post – can't I just leave it as an exercise for you as to why it doesn't work? [Again, deductive arguments that don't involve historical facts can't make historical claims.] — Snakes Alive

The following are historical claims:

(1) Natural philosophy was philosophy.
(2) Natural philosophy was efficacious. — fdrake

Natural philosophy was understood at its time as philosophy. At that point the systematic study of nature wasn't its own thing. Sure, there are changes in understanding on the long road from Thales through the Islamic Golden Age to the Enlightenment, but it was still understood as philosophy at the time. And as a description of a historical practice, natural philosophy was philosophy.

Natural philosophy also included the study of planet motion, the study of time in the abstract...

(4) Philosophy has not changed in any relevant respect since Ancient Greece (what I understand as one of your claims). — fdrake

This is your historical claim.

(5) Philosophy was not efficacious in Ancient Greece (what I understand as part of your characterisation of philosophy) — fdrake

This is also your historical claim.

I don't write on it, since I'm just a layman that thinks about this as a hobby (I 'believed in' philosophy when I was younger, got a degree in it, and later slowly came to my present views on it), but I wouldn't mind discussing it. I'm interested in the history of how philosophy arose, and think the Greek rhetorical tradition (as traced through the quasi-legendary Corax of Syracuse, in his bid to school landowners to defend their claims from Syracusan tyrants) is an interesting place to start. I also think people ought to know more about the sophists and their contribution, and I think a historical survey comparing the Greek legal tradition to the earliest philosophical dialogues could prove fruitful (to see how the actual rhetorical techniques are employed similarly or dissimilarly in each case). — Snakes Alive

This is just mime history. AKA: a philosophical historiography of philosophy that gives itself the ability to pronounce its interpretations of things as facts. You're still doing philosophy! You don't get to play the :I'm not playing that game: game!

deductive arguments that don't involve historical facts can't make historical claims — Snakes Alive

How are things like "Philosophy has not changed in any relevant respect since Ancient Greece" and "Natural philosophy was efficacious" not claims of historical fact?

What would be a hypothetical example of "involving historical facts" in an argument here?

This relates to a point I made earlier that you never replied to. Scientists, who are appealing to empirical facts, still write arguments to each other. They report on observations and then derive conclusions from those observations. That's "just conversation", except for the part where the conversation is about something in the real world. But the things you're saying are most characteristic of philosophy, the "litigious" format of it, is still present. Even in an actual courtroom, parties present evidence, and then talk about that evidence, draw conclusions from it... or dispute the relevance or reliability or admissibility of it, and so on. Philosophy in its ancient conceptions, which included natural philosophy, which we now call "science", included all of that. Nowadays, we call the discovery and presentation of evidence and drawing conclusions from it something separate from philosophy ("science"), and only call the discussion of its relevance and reliability and admissibility (what counts as evidence, who has the burden of proof, etc) "philosophy". But it's all part of that same "litigious" "conversation".

You're just playing with definitions.

And it's not philosophy, it's the history of how a certain social practice arose.

That's a historical claim, yeah. fdrake's arguments are just shuffling about definitions to try to make it seem like 'natural philosophy' is 'philosophy,' analytically, I guess. But obviously you can't establish anything historically by doing that.

Are you disputing that natural philosophy was historically considered a part of philosophy?

If so, what can we possibly do here to resolve the disagreement over that claim of historical fact, besides talk about it, or point to other people talking about it, pointing to sources we agree are reliable reporters of historical facts?

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

This book is of interest for those interested in the history of sophists, and how they interacted with the philosophers:

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-sophists-9780715636954/

There is also an article in there that discusses the historical origin of the idea that the sophists and philosophers were distinct, which is said to be introduced by Plato, and to have little grounding. Interesting for how the notion that philosophy was a domain of inquiry grew out of the tradition of teaching rhetoric (which included courtroom defense for educated young men in Athens).

It's just a definitional issue. If you want to talk about history, do so. — Snakes Alive

OK. Natural philosophy should be considered part of the history of philosophy (and as philosophy in that context). Why?

(1) Historical argument of its classification; it was understood at the time as being part of philosophy. Universities teaching it as such should carry about the same weight as the Pope declaring someone a Catholic.
(2) Commonalities in methods at the time; conceptual argument, employment of mathematics and syllogisms, generalisations from experience, thought experiments, interweaving of all of them. Newton's Principia was a work of natural philosophy, it uses all of these at once without the rigour of mathematics expected from the later mathematical sciences, though it was an important precursor to them. Can you tell where Descartes study of the soul stops and where his study of sensation begins? Probably not. Boundaries between natural philosophy and philosophy were blurry as hell, though crystallised more and more as natural philosophy became natural science.

Why should natural philosophy be considered distinct from modern day science?

(3) Conceptually: testability and predictability of theories (how does the theory of humours predict rather than post-hoc explain? Still counts as natural philosophy.) and the necessity of theoretical generalisations and conservative extensions of theory was not as emphasised.

Why would anyone that doesn't believe in 'conversation', that it won't lead to a definite conclusion, indulge in such a practice, defending their own conclusions?? :lol:

Love jazz, hate jazz-ism - the assumption that there are this and that musical natures or essences, and we should care whether this instance or kind is part of that kind (except insofar as doing so does happen to enhance musical appreciation; but thinking the kinds are natural isn't going to make that more likely).

Love philosophy, hate philosoph-ism, the assumption that we should care whether this instance or kind of thinking should be considered part of that.

Love critiques of essentialism...

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

(1) Newton's work is not considered a work of philosophy generally, so if popular classification matters, this should tell us something;
(2) The methods of that work have nothing to with philosophy as traditionally practiced;
(3) In philosophy programs, the work is not typically assigned or read by philosophy students, whose training would not equip them with the skills to read and understand it anyway (since philosophers do not learn the principles of mathematics or mechanical motion that would make them conversant in 17th c. physics, or any era of physics).

Note the same for Descartes – his philosophy, what is read by philosophers and taught in philosophy programs, actually is fairly well cordoned off from his scientific work, which is not read in philosophy departments (nor is his geometry), and which philosophy students would not be able to understand, since their disciplinary training doesn't teach them any mathematics either.

So if you're serious about this line of thought, you should ask yourself – why, if there really is a progression between the two, is this progression not, against your insinuation, institutionally reflected, in what anybody thinks philosophy is, or in the way anyone practices it?

In general, I think you're retrojecting inappropriately a lot when this is allegedly a historical discussion, and not just a way to shit on philosophy from an alleged exterior vantage point. The things which made Newton's mechanics efficacious are not so easy to split from the innovations/re-emphasis that he made methodologically. In Descartes' case, his understanding of bodies mechanically is intimately tied up with his understanding of souls as not bodies. You may claim that these are merely philosophical distinctions, as if the flow of ideas within the tradition of philosophy suddenly did not matter for studying its development as a tradition.

Edit: clarifying note, please treat this post as attempting to provide a historical justification for

(1) Natural philosophy was philosophy. — fdrake

(link to post here)

(1) Newton's work is not considered a work of philosophy generally, so if popular classification matters, this should tell us something; — Snakes Alive

This is a contemporary classification, a retrojection. It was published as a work of natural philosophy. It's literally in the title. It's also not just about the word, it's not like I'm saying "it has an adjective in front of
"philosophy", therefore it's rightly considered a work of philosophy". Its methods and concepts now are obviously part of... Newtonian mechanics. Which is in maths, physics and engineering. Does this mean that it was not philosophy in relevant senses at the time of publication? No.

What evidence was there that it was philosophy at the time of publication? Well, here are Newton's principles of reasoning in his own words (doubtless inspired by others of his ilk):

]Rule 1: We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

Rule 2: Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes.

Rule 3: The qualities of bodies, which admit neither intensification nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever.

Rule 4: In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions inferred by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, not withstanding any contrary hypothesis that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions. — Newton

He's not working in an established discipline of science, he's working on the very edge of a nascent concept of science, in which he still has to care about borderline metaphysical and properly epistemological issues, and not appeal to established tradition of the discipline you're retroactively claiming him to be a part of. It's like calling The Taming of the Shew a rip off of the movie adaptation, or calling Aesop another of those bed time story writers.

It's surely appropriate to see the work as part of the sciences when considering scientific history. But at the time? Nah. This was philosophy turning into something else. It wasn't the Scientific Revolution because there was science close to as we understand it today before then... At the time Newton was expounding his theories of mechanics, his chief academic competitor was Aristotle's physics for crying out loud. There's a whole development going through Aristotle (who was still relevant for his physics at the time of Newton), Galileo, Avicenna; Alhazen and others from the Islamic Golden Age, Descartes, Newton, and there are points of continuity, points of disagreement, and different framings of what it means to study the natural world.

"Is X a case of Y"? It's fuzzy in this case. Development of ideas is. I think you're treating the distinction between natural philosophy and philosophy as much stricter than it actually was in this historical context.

(2) The methods of that work have nothing to with philosophy as traditionally practiced; — Snakes Alive

See the rules he stipulated. What kind of principles do they look like to you? Even if you understand his work as science, there is still a substantial component devoted to the development of scientific methodology in the abstract; what we'd categorize now as philosophy of science.

I'm not saying that Newton was doing exactly the same thing as contemporary philosophers do(you're actually committed to that claim on pain of consistency if philosophy has a historically invariant character involving not being efficacious and natural philosophy rightly counts as philosophy ...), I'm saying that understood historically and conceptually, it's appropriate to consider natural philosophy as a type of philosophy due to continuity of reasoning styles and institutional practices (teaching, common study topics, having Aristotle's physics as an academic competitor within the same field) going back through the tradition.

(3) In philosophy programs, the work is not typically assigned or read by philosophy students, whose training would not equip them with the skills to read and understand it anyway (since philosophers do not learn the principles of mathematics or mechanical motion that would make them conversant in 17th c. physics, or any era of physics). — Snakes Alive

Perhaps philosophy as it is currently practiced has little continuity with things that budded off it much before - even within the Newton example, it looks like optics was much more developed as a separate field than mechanics was at the time... But yeah, you're the person claiming that it always has and always will be out of touch with how things are as a historical invariant, despite the continuity with something we agree with as efficacious reasoning I've highlighted above.

Note the same for Descartes – his philosophy, what is read by philosophers and taught in philosophy programs, actually is fairly well cordoned off from his scientific work, which is not read in philosophy departments (nor is his geometry), and which philosophy students would not be able to understand, since their disciplinary training doesn't teach them any mathematics either. — Snakes Alive

Is Descartes' conception of the soul cordoned off from his mechanics because undergrads don't get readings about the interplay between the two?

That's really not enough of a historical justification for drawing a hard line between Descartes' mechanics, in which he considers the human body as an example (it's extended and follows its own laws of motion), and the soul (it isn't extended, it can't be a body in his sense), almost like the distinction between souls and bodies was something he spent a lot of time writing about.

There may be a reading where you consider a radical methodological break - when he starts treating extended bodies using his algebra to study their motion vs his maybe less grounded use of mechanism to distinguish mind from body. But I'm not buying it. Could probably make the same move with Newton.

It's literally in the title. — fdrake

You need to stop that.

You need to stop that. — Snakes Alive

Take it you didn't read the rest of the post then.

I did, but I'm going to wait before responding. I don't want to make the post too long, because it just encourages yet longer posts (with a lot of blind alleys). So I'm trying to find a way to respond that's actually productive and cuts through the noise.

Oh, goodie. I look forward to it then. I did try to meet your want for historical justification for the claim head on. Hopefully something interesting comes out of it.

I, for one, am very appreciative of historical methods. You've given me a lot of good thoughts to chew on @Snakes Alive, and for that I am appreciative -- especially in times such as these where I have time, and find myself continually returning to philosophical quietism in my own loop of thoughts.

In the interest of the historical method I decided to look up whatever happened to be published in Nous. I'm not sure where to get a copy of the article, but they at least post abstracts. Two abstracts popped out for me.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nous.12259
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nous.12272

In the first we have some of the tools you identify as philosophy. And we also have useage of other concepts. A lot of philosophy of science, and related, is like this in my experience. So, for instance, we have the author asking after an analysis of biological function -- which is a conceptual request on a discipline. What is wanted is the form you posit -- "What is X?" -- however we can arrive at some concept and have it be productive. We can, of course, say what is productive is definitionally not philosophy. But then I'd say we're not staying true to our historical roots -- we have an artifact of philosophy, a philosophy journal, and what we see are the use of classical tools being put to use.

The second link is an example of what I'd say is something of the normative dimension of philosophy that your account misses. Even Plato had normative concerns. One can even fairly read his ouevre in that vain -- that the death of his teacher at the hands of sophists was the monumental injustice that spurred on his philosophy, and that all other concerns are tertiary to his desire for justice in the world. I thought of bringing up late antiquity to highlight this too, as they emphasize this element much more strongly, but the concern is right there in Plato. Which isn't to say your account his wrong, here, since this is actually a through-line back to Plato -- but that drive for knowledge of what is good is a major part of a lot of philosophy, and is missing from your account. It is, in part, a kind of literature dedicated to wisdom.


Second, and others have noted this too, I'd say that as interesting as your account is it might be more local than you're putting out, and that philosophy -- while it may not follow the usual lines put forward -- may also have a more general impulse. I'd say that I'm inclined to think in this direction, simply because philosophy as arisen in other parts of the world other than Greece. So, like money, religion, art, and politics philosophy comes about seemingly spontaneously, and this is even confirmed in everyday sorts of conversations on philosophical topics -- such as "how do you know?", "Do we have freewill?", or "Does God exist and what is he like?". There's one particular story and pseudo-lineage we call Western Philosophy that draws from Greece, and it likely picked up, along with that influence, the blind-spots from which that tradition draws -- in your thesis, the litigious aspect of ancient Athens. And it would be a very interesting historical exercise to see in what sorts of conditions philosophy finds itself -- does it find itself in similar circumstances, where argument in court is given such importance, and then these same language-games then get applied more generally to other subjects? Or does it arise in times of despair, such as when Plato despaired humanity? Or is it merely the mark of powerful and great civilizations, employing artisans and priests and philosophers to demonstrate their superior civilization, thereby giving them empirical proof of their right to conquest?


Third -- I'd hesitate a little in putting too much stock into historical methods. Not because I don't prefer them. I do. But because they also end in aporia! :D The same with art. The same with religion. The answers are ambiguous and always will be, in these disciplines. Yet, somehow, they mutate and become something different along the way, they add on new creations while assimilating the old.

So it's important to recognize how far down the dialectic we are. This is in response to a version of the #3 defense of philosophy: it may not do anything interesting itself, but it does (at least) produce other things that do. I take it this is the idea – correct me if I'm wrong.

We've admitted this because you haven't objected to the claim that contemporarily, Descartes' geometry or mechanics, and any of Newton's work, are not considered philosophy. They do not employ primarily philosophical methods; philosophers, in general, lack the competence to read and understand them (unless specially schooled in a particular historical period, or in a particular branch of the philosophy of science); they are not the subjects of textual introductions to philosophy; they are not taught to philosophy undergraduates; contemporary philosophers do not engage with them argumentatively, or attempt to refute or augment them. There is no reasonable criterion on which, then, these works are philosophical in any contemporary sense. Notice that none of the above is true of Descartes' Discourse on Method, or Meditations: philosophers can understand those, they do argue with them, they do write about them in textbooks and teach them to undergrads, and so on.

The reason for this is clear – the methods employed in the Discourse and Meditations are different from those employed in the geometry. And what's more, these methods match the methods of prior works of philosophy, all the way back to the Platonic dialogues, and later works, all the way to articles in the journals today. So it is clear at present that there is a continuity between these works, precisely the ones you are not willing to defend as interesting natural science, and philosophy, but it is not clear that there is any interesting continuity between those works you are willing to defend as interesting natural science and philosophy.

So you must be making some weaker claim – they are not philosophy as contemporarily understood, but maybe at one time they were thought to be? Or maybe even though they're not philosophy in any sense, at least they resemble philosophy in some interesting way? Or what I think you are likely saying, and which is really what #3 is getting at: historically, they developed out of philosophy in some interesting way, though they're distinct.

Unfortunately, this is a much harder historical claim to prove. It is obvious that works of philosophy develop out of each other, because they cite each other, and their sole reason for existing is the fact that the author read some other works of philosophy. This is not at all obvious for Newton's work, because, as you admit, most of it has little to do with what philosophers were doing at the time, or even had done in the past. Are a couple principles appealing to notions like 'cause' enough to establish a historical connection? I would hope not – or else philosophy 'wins' by default, since it talks about everything, so everything is philosophy (#2).

So let's ask a more productive question – what led Newton to write the Principia? What methods did he employ in framing the principles he did? Was reading philosophers the primary motive behind this? Would the work have been writable in the absence of those philosophers? Are his goals or results philosophical in any interesting sense, by either contemporary standards or 17th c. standards? And no, it's not enough to say 'ah, but Newton had so many philosophical implications!' etc. This is because since philosophers can talk about anything, this move can be used to trivially claim that anything is philosophically relevant and therefore philosophy (#2).

We also need to ask why, even if somehow we thought this was 'philosophy turning into something else,' philosophy's historical core always defaults to what's present in the Platonic dialogues, and nothing else.

I like a lot of what you've been saying in this thread if taken in a weak, rhetorical sense. 'Agree' isn't really the right word, but I mean taking what you've said as conceptual offerings or rhetorical moves that help shake off some bad ideas, or limiting ways of thinking. (I don't mean 'weak' in a perjorative way but 'weak' as in 'not an overly rigid conceptual claim')


At the same time, It feels like the line of thought you're pursuing will culminate eventually in (or at least require) a method of canonization where certain philosophers and works are considered part of the tradition, while others, who may seem to be philosophers, are actually doing something else. Newton & Natural Philosophy is one example of this, but I'm sure we could quickly multiply examples. But what is this? It's asking a 'what is x' question and then determining which things are and aren't x on the basis of whatever the answer is (if you're not doing that, and are simply looking at what's taught in philosophy classes today without establishing an essence, then all you can say is that only those things that are taught as philosophy today are taught as philosophy today.) You mentioned a religious analogy where philosophers will backpedal or re-cast their claims so they can never be shown wrong. There's also a robust religious tradition of editing received tradition (almost always baggy, multiform, all over the place) in order to draw out a single thread of continuity that links it all together with reference to the present state of affairs.This could look like Josiah justifiying his reign, but it could also look like showing a throughline from Jereboam to his descendants to trace an inherited corruption.

there's a thin line between leaving philosophy 'standing up because you're tired of sitting' and a sons-eating-the-father thing which is a matter of wresting control through laying claim to a higher-order narrative. Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, UG Krishnamurti, Richard Rorty, Heidegger, Derrida and Laruelle all come to mind as people who it's unclear to what degree they're doing one vs the other.

Another way to say this: It's possible that most of what's going on in this thread is well within the folk tradition. It increasingly seems that way to me.

Another way to say this: It's possible that most of what's going on in this thread is well within[/] the folk tradition. — csalisbury

Yeah, I think that what we're doing here is unambiguously metaphilosophy (I mean, it's in the title! ;)), which on my account at least is the philosophy of philosophy, a subfield of philosophy, and not something outside of it. (I'm aware that there is historical disagreement about whether metaphilosophy is within or outside philosophy, or even if there is such a thing).

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