Notes on philosophy
August 15th 2006 10:38
Half the trick of being a philosopher is sensing when something is requiring to be explained.
Maybe the explanation is "philosophical", and maybe it isn't.
But the pressingness is there, the vagueness, the awaiting-clarity, the awaiting-systematization.
If someone says an email "looks hoaxy", you, being a philosopher, should automatically ask what they mean, and how they know, what provoked them to say this, what they're picking up on.
On good discussions: It's uninteresting talking to you if all I'm doing is reciting. I need to be explaining or defending or persuading -- and there has to be some investment in, some reason for, my task.
"Common sense is the metaphysics of savages." -- Bertrand Russell (I think)
Such questions as "Is cooperation better than competition?" and "Does copyright do more to suppress than to encourage creativity?" -- these are empirical questions, and not for the armchair. And they cannot be answered in the abstract, but only case by case.
This thing we do, this experience we have -- ask yourself how you'd explain or justify it to an alien and to a computer.
Either leads to inexplicability -- or rather, to the constant specificity of being human, to the particularity of our experience (in the former case), and to the limits of reason (in the latter).
These methods -- alien and computer -- can be used time and again to confront the mystery of life, to bring out the strangeness of the everyday.
Inability to explicate -- okay, sometimes this shows confusion in the explicandum, but sometimes the fault is with how to explain -- the model in the terms of which explication is desired.
I can't say what courage is. Does this mean I don't know?
And ditto for defining spirituality or consciousness or time.
Sometimes (always?) when you live in a house you feel the draught, you're very conscious of where the holes are.
Or will you pretend they aren't there, and stick around when there's only three walls and a fireplace?
What if philosophy, science, and all the disciplines were extensions of everyday conversation? They then could be as pleasurable as conversations are, depending on if you like talking.
… crazy old guys, bearded, who have come to philosophy late in life, lugging huge manuscripts with them, and always with some sort of mathematical conception of universal order, always talking about some connection, some hidden way to read…
The question of what is philosophy and what's not is only of interest to paymasters and librarians. -- Quine
The blight of contemporary philosophy is metaphilosophy. -- Goodman
Maybe the explanation is "philosophical", and maybe it isn't.
But the pressingness is there, the vagueness, the awaiting-clarity, the awaiting-systematization.
If someone says an email "looks hoaxy", you, being a philosopher, should automatically ask what they mean, and how they know, what provoked them to say this, what they're picking up on.
***
On good discussions: It's uninteresting talking to you if all I'm doing is reciting. I need to be explaining or defending or persuading -- and there has to be some investment in, some reason for, my task.
***
"Common sense is the metaphysics of savages." -- Bertrand Russell (I think)
***
Such questions as "Is cooperation better than competition?" and "Does copyright do more to suppress than to encourage creativity?" -- these are empirical questions, and not for the armchair. And they cannot be answered in the abstract, but only case by case.
***
This thing we do, this experience we have -- ask yourself how you'd explain or justify it to an alien and to a computer.
Either leads to inexplicability -- or rather, to the constant specificity of being human, to the particularity of our experience (in the former case), and to the limits of reason (in the latter).
These methods -- alien and computer -- can be used time and again to confront the mystery of life, to bring out the strangeness of the everyday.
***
Inability to explicate -- okay, sometimes this shows confusion in the explicandum, but sometimes the fault is with how to explain -- the model in the terms of which explication is desired.
I can't say what courage is. Does this mean I don't know?
And ditto for defining spirituality or consciousness or time.
***
Sometimes (always?) when you live in a house you feel the draught, you're very conscious of where the holes are.
Or will you pretend they aren't there, and stick around when there's only three walls and a fireplace?
***
What if philosophy, science, and all the disciplines were extensions of everyday conversation? They then could be as pleasurable as conversations are, depending on if you like talking.
***
… crazy old guys, bearded, who have come to philosophy late in life, lugging huge manuscripts with them, and always with some sort of mathematical conception of universal order, always talking about some connection, some hidden way to read…
***
The question of what is philosophy and what's not is only of interest to paymasters and librarians. -- Quine
The blight of contemporary philosophy is metaphilosophy. -- Goodman
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Comment by jon
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Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
The last category could be cached out in different ways.
For instance, some thing people (eg John Finnis) regard knowledge, or satisfying curiosity, as an intrinsic human good (ie it's good in itself, regardless of usefulness). And whether or not you believe in intrinsic goods, I think it's easy to believe that one might just happen to be the sort of person who's hungry for knowledge, who desires it and gets pleasure from it.
John Stuart Mill has this thing about the purpose of life being to improve oneself, to develop one's "higher faculties".
And Aristotle has this whole take on "What is happiness? Happiness is an activity that perfectly engages you, in which you're free from want, and which you can continue without tiring. So what best fits that description? Surprise surprise -- it's philosophy."
This doesn't address the question of how to balance knowledge with other things one might do, but I suppose it amounts to three opinions that you don't ever have to quit the quest.