Is pragmatism still philosophy? Rorty was mentioned, but we can go back to James. Is Nietzsche still a philosopher? It's my impression that philosophy has largely become its own target. I've enjoyed everyone's post, and I understand the attitude of the critic of philosophy. And yet I still treasure certain works (place them how you will) as the gossip of clever, creative personalities about 'life', politics, and themes that are too big and baggy in general for measuring effectively for effectiveness. The criticism of philosophy is a crucial life-philosophy (or folk philosophy) issue, even if it is decided against specialized academic philosophy.

Rorty is not a particularly radical figure, and he didn't see himself as such. His trajectory is clear from the tradition of Moore through the late Carnap & Wittgenstein. He's firmly in the mainstream analytic tradition.

I thought Rorty was pretty radical. Reading him and the pragmatists he led me to especially informed my anti-philosophical leanings. I ended up not majoring in philosophy. Reading him suggested to me that the game of armchair 'science' was dead. You mention Wittgenstein. He strikes me as anti-philosophical and is yet considered one of the 20th century greats.

Paul Graham makes some interesting points about W.

Have you seen this critique of philosophy?

http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html

No, I'll look at it, thanks.

I think Rorty is in the analytic mainstream, but that the analytic mainstream had an anti-philosophical wing, for about 30 years or so. I like Rorty too, 'spiritually,' I guess, but he's a sloppy thinker, which I think hurts the cause, because the 'anti-philosophy' view gets associated with that sloppiness. It would also be nice to eventually have people do this who were never in the philosophical tradition to begin with.

I like the Graham article. I don't agree with all of it, and I think he exaggerates the extent to which philosophical texts are unintelligible (he may not be the best reader). And I don't agree that the notion of a controlled experiment is metaphysical, etc. That experiments had to be performed was dragged kicking and screaming from the philosophers, and people have had to drag a lot of good things kicking and screaming from them.

But I like the idea that the inclination to philosophy doesn't match its aims – if it really were about the most general truths, or about how the world as a whole hung together, and it delivered on learning about those things, how exciting it would be! Who wouldn't be motivated to learn things like that! But no one in their right mind actually gets excited about philosophy in that way because it's apparent it doesn't actually do any of those things – I think even to people who practice it.

I agree that there's a sloppiness in Rorty. I don't know the analytic tradition well. I have looked into the empiricists, and even they strike me as anti-philosophical in some sense. Perhaps that was the decisive era.

But I read people like Nietzsche and Schopenhauer before all that. I see it as a literature of basic stances that one can take on existence. It's not essentially different than a different type of young man choosing a favorite rapper.

[just saw latest post, will now reply to that]

I don't agree with all of it, and I think he exaggerates the extent to which philosophical texts are unintelligible (he may not be the best reader). — Snakes Alive

I agree, and that's one of the tricky things about criticizing philosophy. To do it well, one has to read oneself into the tradition. But this costs time. Philosophy loves to hate itself articulately. I didn't major in philosophy, but I've spent way too much time reading philosophy in terms of time that could have been spent on marketable skills.

That experiments had to be performed was dragged kicking and screaming from the philosophers, and people have had to drag a lot of good things kicking and screaming from them. — Snakes Alive

I agree. There's a theoretical leaning that I have to fight in myself. O the fantasy of the magic words! James is pretty great on that theme. We'd like to climb out of time on a ladder made of spit.

But I like the idea that the inclination to philosophy doesn't match its aims – if it really were about the most general truths, or about how the world as a whole hung together, and it delivered on learning about those things, how exciting it would be! — Snakes Alive

To me it seems that some of the classics are actually successful as literature on grand themes. Pascal, Nietzsche, Hobbes. But this is technology that only works if one believes in it. It's personality on the market for consumption/adoption. And it's also in literature proper and pop culture in general. And there's no great chasm for me between Dostoevsky and Nietzsche. There's plenty of 'life philosophy' in The Possessed, embedded in the context of action and high stakes.

So theories of how the whole world hangs together are IMO to be found in certain 'philosophical' works, but those philosophical works aren't science. (I'm agreeing with how exciting it would be.)

For me science is something like technology that works whether one believes in it or not. It's not falsifiability that matters so much as the undeniability of its 'miracles', in war or peace, given our fragile and needy embodiment. Philosophy is 'just opinions.' Perhaps it can all be boiled down to the status of the average professor of philosophy these days. It's not terrible, but few look to them as sages.

Just curious: do you like Lee Braver? I've really enjoyed a couple of his books.

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. — 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). — Pfhorrest

haha, this is what I wanted to write, well actually something similar like, "where are we? in the philosophy forum, so we are doing philosophy!".

But I think that snakes is doing what he's accusing others of doing, these #2's I mean, for some reason thinking that his thinking is somehow exempt from the philosophical tradition, where in fact he never left it.

Come up with another response!

Never heard of him.

You're just doing #2, though. — Snakes Alive

I wouldn't lose sleep if I was - I don't particularly care for the whack-a-mole, spot-a-fallacy vibe that's developing here & don't think avoiding snake's three is a constraint worth keeping ever in mind - but I think a close reading of what you've described as two and what my post says reveals a signficant difference. If you're settling into whacking, you're probably gonna get a lot of false positives for moles, its almost unavoidable.

Don't you think it's weird no one can do anything but say the same thing over and over again, though? Don't you think that's a sign of a stale defense, or a discipline whose only recourse is to fall into pointless ruts again and again?

Why aren't there any novel or interesting ways of defending something that is clearly so defective? Why are its practitioners so complacent and boring? Aren't they supposed to be good at 'thinking?'

There's also the odd thing that it's not even true – it's like a robot shorting out and running a default message, even if it has nothing to do with what the interlocutor is actually saying. I mean, come on – 'a historical examination of the relation between rhetoric in the Athenian legal tradition as it relates to sophistry? That's just more philosophy!' It's not even a coherent objection!

There's also the odd thing that it's not even true – it's like a robot shorting out and running a default message, even if it has nothing to do with what the interlocutor is actually saying. I mean, come on – 'a historical examination of the relation between rhetoric in the Athenian legal tradition as it relates to history? That's just more philosophy!' It's not even a coherent objection! — Snakes Alive

But do think it's interesting and para-philosophical - I mean, I was the one who introduced the relationship between litigation and philosophy early on in this thread! I think we're on the same page on a lot of this. What I object to is something that seems like a motte-and-bailey shuttling between bona-fide meta-philosophy & historical examination.

I want to read your post more times and make notes on it before responding so that we can have a productive discussion without (1) me writing in a way where it suggests I'm doing this:

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

and (2) trying to stop you misinterpreting me as doing that, so we both don't get frustrated, snarkshout at each other, and lose what I imagine will be an interesting discussion out of it.

Well, I can't commit a priori to not accusing you of it, because you have to actually do something different...

Come up with another response! — Snakes Alive

Who me?

Do you object then? Alright then, objection sustained!

Tell you what snakes, I'm with you, with you all the way, I also believe that there is something wrong with philosophy, I said so myself, so maybe we can forge an alliance, albeit a temporary, an unholy one!

But, for argument's sake, and so that I can promote my own, I would like to play the devil's advocate, like they say. Should you have any objections, please take them to the judge and jury.

I mean, I don't want to show contempt of court, but you've been #2ing and traditionally folking around all over the place! We cats you know, we like our place clean!

Braver wrote a great historical exposition of anti-realism. He also did a book on the intersection of Wittgenstein and Heidegger, Groundless Grounds.

His general thesis is that, despite their differences, Wittgenstein and Heidegger both insist upon our radical finitude as human beings, and that there is an unsurpassable limit to the reasons we give as to why things are the way they are. In other words, reason as a ground-giving activity cannot ground itself, but arises out of our situation in a world that is always already "there" before the question of grounds or reasons can arise in the first place. — review

https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/groundless-grounds-a-study-of-wittgenstein-and-heidegger/

I mention him because I think his work plugs in to the theme here. A Thing of This World is one of my favorite texts.

Anyway, just waiting on drake's response, but I think there is a passage from Plato's dialogue, "Protagoras", that relates to what we nowadays call metaphilosophy, as it clearly shows a significant phase change in philosophy. It all starts with Socrates trying to analyze Simonides's poem.

Not long ago I picked up another copy of one of my first philosophy books, The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant. It's still a great book. I mention this because I think just about any intelligent person with the required intermediate literacy would have trouble setting this book down, at least if they hadn't been exposed to the great philosophers already.

Is it literature or science or history? To me it's the story of grand personalities embedded in histories doing a kind of pre-science or framework-deep hypothesizing/myth-making.IMV philosophy is connected with seeing dominant norms from the outside. That makes it dangerous and/or useless at times.

Regardless, what we are talking about here is "significant phase changes in philosophy". Having read Durant's book, what would you say these changes are? Does Durant notice of any changes?

I can't remember how much Durant goes into it, but he does end the book with American pragmatism. To me it seems that the professionalization of philosophy is the key issue. Personally I think scholars like Lee Braver are great.

I suppose I view strong philosophy as a kind of pre-science with indirect effects. At the very least it's a part of the conversation that we use when building our public-facing identities. As I see it, all of us here in this thread are comfortably within philosophy. And I count Paul Graham's essay as philosophy. At the same time, I understand the criticism of this or that philosopher as irrelevant or uninteresting. And then lots of forum philosophy strikes me as inferior to common sense. So I understand the frustration with language games that hardly pretend to be relevant. But that is as old as William James and surely much older.

I hope this thread continues. It's good stuff. In the meantime, here's James.

[A young graduate] began by saying that he had always taken for granted that when you entered a philosophic classroom you had to open relations with a universe entirely distinct from the one you left behind you in the street. The two were supposed, he said, to have so little to do with each other, that you could not possibly occupy your mind with them at the same time. The world of concrete personal experiences to which the street belongs is multitudinous beyond imagination, tangled, muddy, painful and perplexed. The world to which your philosophy-professor introduces you is simple, clean and noble. The contradictions of real life are absent from it. ... In point of fact it is far less an account of this actual world than a clear addition built upon it ... It is no explanation of our concrete universe (James 1907, pp. 8–9)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatism

Rorty mentions this thinker as he discusses the shift from a concern with afterlife to a concern with the world our grandchildren will inherit. I wanted to find that original quote but found a passage relevant to this discuss instead.

The early text "Paradigms for a Metaphorology" explicates the idea of 'absolute metaphors', by way of examples from the history of ideas and philosophy. According to Blumenberg, metaphors of this kind, such as "the naked truth", are to be considered a fundamental aspect of philosophical discourse that cannot be replaced by concepts and reappropriated into the logicity of the 'actual'. The distinctness and meaning of these metaphors constitute the perception of reality as a whole, a necessary prerequisite for human orientation, thought and action.
...
Reflecting his studies of Husserl, Blumenberg's work concludes that in the last resort our potential scientific enlightenment finds its own subjective and anthropological limit in the fact that we are constantly falling back upon the imagery of our contemplations. — link

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Blumenberg

Perhaps much of philosophy involves dominant orienting metaphors whose effect is indirect. One does not quantify the effect of metaphors very easily, though one can compare forms of life in a loose way.

And yet pragmatism is still a school of philosophy, aiming to do philosophy better than it had been done, not to stop doing it.

To some degree, yes, but with Rorty, for instance, that's not so clear. A certain grand role for philosophy is abandoned. I'm pro-philosophy, by the way, and I've suggested that anti-philosophy has simply been assimilated by philosophy. It's a big tent.

Is the world one or many?—fated or free?—material or spiritual?—here are notions either of which may or may not hold good of the world; and disputes over such notions are unending. The pragmatic method in such cases is to try to interpret each notion by tracing its respective practical consequences. What difference would it practically make to anyone if this notion rather than that notion were true? If no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle. — James

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5116/5116-h/5116-h.htm

That's a pretty radical move. It's a speech from the exit on the way out.

You might like this (and maybe already know about it).

On Rorty's account, modern epistemology is not only an attempt to legitimate our claim to knowledge of what is real, but also an attempt to legitimate philosophical reflection itself—a pressing task, on many accounts, once the advent of the so-called new science of the sixteenth and seventeenth century gradually gave content to a notion of knowledge obtained by the methodological interrogation of nature herself. Because the result of this kind of interrogation, theoretical empirical knowledge, is so obviously fruitful, and also carries with it seemingly uncontentious norms of progress, its mere presence poses a legitimation challenge to a form of thought, and claim to knowledge, that is distinct from it. Cartesian epistemology, in Rorty's picture, is designed to meet this challenge. It is sceptical in a fundamental way; sceptical doubts of a Cartesian sort, that is, doubts that can be raised about any set of empirical claims whatever, and so cannot be alleviated by experience, are tailor-made to preserve at once a domain and a job for philosophical reflection. Rorty's aim in PMN is to undermine the assumptions in light of which this double legitimation project makes sense. — link

And then from Rorty:

In short, my strategy for escaping the self-referential difficulties into which "the Relativist" keeps getting himself is to move everything over from epistemology and metaphysics into cultural politics, from claims to knowledge and appeals to self-evidence to suggestions about what we should try. — Rorty

Cultural politics.

FWIW the founder of pragmatism, Peirce, considered others nominally following after him to have deviated drastically from his project, so much so as to prompt him to rename it "pragmaticism" instead, and IIRC Rorty is reckoned among those going off of Peirce's path.

I reckon myself more a Peircian pragmatist, so much so that I keep using the word in its original sense instead of capitulating to the supposed necessity of renaming that sense to distinguish it from its false usurpers.

Ah yes, I'm well aware. But what's that got to do with issue at hand?

I realize that we are antipodes on some vague attitude level. I find the theme of usurpation way too earnest. It's a brand name. Who cares? 'False usurpers'? Seriously? But our issue involves the 'usurpers' of philosophy itself and not just pragmatism.

Let's compare 'no unanswerable questions and no unquestionable answers' (an excellent phrase) to what I quoted from a review of Groundless Grounds.

In other words, reason as a ground-giving activity cannot ground itself, but arises out of our situation in a world that is always already "there" before the question of grounds or reasons can arise in the first place. — review

In 'my' view, 'language is received like the law.' It's just one part of a world or form of life that we inherit that I might call a set of unquestionable answers --- which make a limited questioning possible in the first place. As to 'no unquestionable answers,' I'd be surprised if you didn't support the censorship or banning of various 'thought criminals' (you know, racists or homophobes or ..) But then any sane or decent person almost by definition refuses to question or even tolerate the questioning of certain norms. Unquestionable answers. And I don't see how one manages unanswerable questions without some systematic filter that calls most questions nonsense (like some positivist). Why is there a here here? I'd argue that that is unanswerable in principle.

I'm being an uncharitable reader of a fine phrase. I realize that. I guess I'm making the background of our little disagreement more explicit. But I'll agree that we are both in the same big tent known as philosophy. But I'll drag in Beckett and Shakespeare and Dostoevsky. And politics and theology...Where we draw line is a matter of context and particular purpose.

I think what you're doing is this:

(A) Look at how philosophy is practiced now.
(B) Look back into history to see how it came about.

Methodologically, this makes sense when philosophy's stipulated to have one character. Or alternatively, if you care only about the historical currents that lead to how philosophy is practiced now. When you fix philosophy as an object of study in this way, you can read off its content from what is studied in it.

Fixing it in this way, it's very plausible that Newton's Principia and Descartes' analysis of motion are not part of the tradition as it is currently practiced. Whereas Plato's Dialogues are.

One of your central claims on this basis is that:

(C) That philosophy is unchanged since Plato, and never does any work.

What I've been trying to do with the historical stuff is this:

(D) Look back into history to see what was philosophy then.
(E) Try to establish that natural philosophy was philosophy at the time.
(F) Conclude that philosophy has done work at some point.

Let's look at how (C) interfaces with the process of (D->E->F). If we find something that was philosophy in part (D), and assume (C), what is found in part (D) must be part of philosophy now. Therefore, assuming (C), if natural philosophy was part of philosophy, then contemporary philosophy must be able to do work. Alternatively, a weaker claim than (C) is required; you're focusing on a specific part of the tradition at a specific time, and want to understand what lead to this, bracketing any universal claims about philosophy as a tradition, or rendering them more speculative on the same basis.

Now you deny this claim on the basis that natural philosophy - the examples from Newton and Descartes - are not part of philosophy as it is currently practiced. Then you use (C) to read this back into the historical tradition; since it's not part of the tradition now, and the historical essence of it is unchanging, it must not been part of the tradition then.

.

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. — Snakes Alive

This commits you to a methodological break between Newton's Principia and Descartes' geometry from philosophy's canon; they are not part of the historical tradition now since their methods were so obviously different from that of philosophy. I will grant that the kind of reasoning employed by the mathematics in the Principia and in Descartes' analysis of motion are not part of the tradition now. Nevertheless, they were linked to Descartes' metaphysics and Newton's methodological insights at the time.

But I think that, in doing (A), you're filtering the history of philosophy for what is continuous, or conceptually/methodologically similar with, its current practice. As a perspective, it commits you to draw distinctions between the fields of study (philosophy, natural philosophy) from a contemporary understanding of the concepts and how they are classified, rather than how they were classified at the time and historically arose, how they were taught together, how they were integrated into the same field of study.

This, ultimately, is a conceptual retrojection rather than a historical interpretation; what is sufficiently similar to what we have now, what is continuous with it? As opposed to a perspective where we follow the history of philosophy forward in time, bracketing the contemporary classifications.

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).

What led Newton to write the Principia? Well, I presume you're looking for the answer "mathematics, and in the tradition of the mechanical/mathematical analysis of motion that goes from Galileo to Descartes to Newton". And the interplay between Descartes' philosophy of mechanical bodies and the bodies as he analysed them mathematically is bracketed as non-necessary for the development of his analysis of bodies; because it has a methodological break, it relies principally on mathematical arguments, definitions linked with syllogisms with constant appeal to intuition (at the time). The same story holds for the mechanical perspective on the world Newton had inherited from his predecessors, because the sciency bit relied upon mathematics and experiments, it had different character historically.

But I think that you've done a lot of work to distinguish natural philosophy conceptually from philosophy as it is practiced now (@Moliere's good points aside), but I don't think you've distinguished it sufficiently historically when you are also positing (C).

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. — Snakes Alive

If we assume (C), like you do, or if you conclude it, anything which was part of the practice of philosophy in the past must be part of it now!

I think that it is much more plausible to reject (C), or substantially weaken it, given the discussion that we've had. Studying philosophy (even studying in general) can lead to a methodological break with it (or previously established methods in general).