How to do Philosophy?
Philosophy written by philosophers is normally not very good...but philosophy written by non-philosophers is normally really crap. (Believe me, I hope this changes some day; I hope somebody can eventually do this stuff better than we can. We've certainly made a bloody hash of it...).
Here's an essay by Paul Graham (someone I'm not familiar with, apparently a computer guy), "How to do Philosophy." It's actually not bad by my perverse philosophical standards. There's a fair measure of kinda naive stuff in it, and a measure of BS--but less than the average amount IMHO.
Thing is, largely these same ideas have shown up in philosophy itself--notably with logical positivism. "Hey, kids, let's cut the metaphysical nonsense out of philosophy by making it more like science! My grandpa's got a big barn we can use!" Dang, if only it were that easy. But it turned out not to be...
But the general idea of sifting out the sense from the nonsense, in part by trying to anchor thought to action and determine which claims have empirical content is an idea that still has some life in it. This seems to be roughly one of the ideas that C. S. Peirce was trying to work out (and, interestingly, he seems to have avoided self-refutation problems of the kind that sunk logical positivism (though other problems remain)).
Anyway, no time to write in detail on this now, but thought I'd direct your attention to it. Should be taken with several grains of salt, but IMHO it fairly clearly articulates one of the positions that, according to me, ought to be on the table.
One quick comment: the point about the vagueness of ordinary concepts is one that I really do think should be taken seriously. It's something my colleague, the mighty Armenius, implanted in my noggin five or six years ago. Thing is, many philosophers spend lots of their time sitting around considering weird, liminal, sci-fi cases and trying to make judgments about them of the form "this is or isn't an instance of being F." But the terms and concepts being explored are generally ordinary, common-sense ones which are largely fuzzy. So we end up trying to find precise applicatoins of inherently fuzzy terms and concepts. Hilarity and tragedy ordinarily ensue...
The best philosopher I've ever known--by far--used to say that he thought that, in the future, the best work in philosophy wouldn't come out of academic philosophy departments, but, rather, out of the private sector.
Dunno, but it'd sure be great if we had another set of minds, coming from another type of institution, attacking the problems.
Bah, but what do I know?
Philosophy written by philosophers is normally not very good...but philosophy written by non-philosophers is normally really crap. (Believe me, I hope this changes some day; I hope somebody can eventually do this stuff better than we can. We've certainly made a bloody hash of it...).
Here's an essay by Paul Graham (someone I'm not familiar with, apparently a computer guy), "How to do Philosophy." It's actually not bad by my perverse philosophical standards. There's a fair measure of kinda naive stuff in it, and a measure of BS--but less than the average amount IMHO.
Thing is, largely these same ideas have shown up in philosophy itself--notably with logical positivism. "Hey, kids, let's cut the metaphysical nonsense out of philosophy by making it more like science! My grandpa's got a big barn we can use!" Dang, if only it were that easy. But it turned out not to be...
But the general idea of sifting out the sense from the nonsense, in part by trying to anchor thought to action and determine which claims have empirical content is an idea that still has some life in it. This seems to be roughly one of the ideas that C. S. Peirce was trying to work out (and, interestingly, he seems to have avoided self-refutation problems of the kind that sunk logical positivism (though other problems remain)).
Anyway, no time to write in detail on this now, but thought I'd direct your attention to it. Should be taken with several grains of salt, but IMHO it fairly clearly articulates one of the positions that, according to me, ought to be on the table.
One quick comment: the point about the vagueness of ordinary concepts is one that I really do think should be taken seriously. It's something my colleague, the mighty Armenius, implanted in my noggin five or six years ago. Thing is, many philosophers spend lots of their time sitting around considering weird, liminal, sci-fi cases and trying to make judgments about them of the form "this is or isn't an instance of being F." But the terms and concepts being explored are generally ordinary, common-sense ones which are largely fuzzy. So we end up trying to find precise applicatoins of inherently fuzzy terms and concepts. Hilarity and tragedy ordinarily ensue...
The best philosopher I've ever known--by far--used to say that he thought that, in the future, the best work in philosophy wouldn't come out of academic philosophy departments, but, rather, out of the private sector.
Dunno, but it'd sure be great if we had another set of minds, coming from another type of institution, attacking the problems.
Bah, but what do I know?
posted by Winston Smith at
10:47 AM
2 Comments:
Clear writing out of the private sector? Academia may have more incentives for obfuscation, though it's close either way. Hedge fund brokers can compete with pomos for the worst.
The private sector as I've experienced it puts little emphasis on clarity. When someone renders a pile of mumbo-jumbo into a clear form, everyone else looks shocked and befuddled, says "of course" as if the clear one just said the most naive and obvious truth, and then they all go back to the complex jargon that makes them feel more valuable.
They prefer Kant to Hume.
Hey, I prefer Kant to Hume, too!
Though the latter is certainly a better and livelier writer...
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home