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I'm not a big fan of analytic philosophy, quite the opposite. Continental philosophy is much more my speed (though there are plenty of parts of even that that I have big problems with).

I consider analytic philosophy to be a blight upon philosophy in general. It started off dominating universities in mainly English speaking countries, but has moved on to gain control over many others. It's even started to co-opt philosophers traditionally considered to be in the Continental tradition, such as Nietzsche and now even Heidegger (who used to be absolutely despised as analytics, but now is seen by some as almost one of them).

As a result many if not most philosophy students now see all of philosophy through an Analytic lens. They usually come out of their training thinking Analytic philosophy is the only "true" or "serious" way to do philosophy, and even when they encounter Continental thinkers, they view them effectively as being Analytics, usually completely missing the point.

It's not clear how much non-Analytic philosophy will still be taught in another 50 years, perhaps not very much. I think that will be very sad.

As someone famous once said, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Many Analytics seem not to have learned that lesson. To be fair, neither have many famous Continentals (a certain degree of arrogance and myopia seems too often to be a prerequisite for fame in philosophy), but at least they're not taking over the world with their rather narrow perspective. I'd like it just as little, for example, if everyone who got a philosophy degree was a Heideggerian.

That said, I don't want to come off as saying that I consider training in analytic philosophy to be useless. Training in logic especially (which many analytics consider a prerequisite for doing any kind of philosophy) can certainly help to "make your mind like a razor". I'd just be careful that all that probably exclusively analytic training doesn't make your mind like a hammer and everything you see like a nail. There are other ways of looking at the world (and of doing philosophy). Some of them might even be just as valid and useful.

You have lots of metaphors and how analytical thinking is "narrow", but I didn't found your argument why continental philosophy would be better to study than analytical tradition.

I'm suddenly reminded of an acquaintance whole called me "narrow-minded" when I said chakras and horoscopes are maybe fun, but have not much to do with the observable scientific reality, so you should not be serious about them.

I mean, I reviewed the wikipedia dictionary definition [1] of major trends in continental philosophy to see to refresh my mind what it was about, again, and I'm not terribly impressed. If analytical is "narrow" viewpoint, then fine, in my opinion it's very needed right kind of narrow a rigorous and honest study of philosophy needs.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_philosophy

I haven't made an argument for why I saw analytic philosphy as narrow or why I prefer Continental philosophy. And, really, it takes a lot more than a little post HN or a Wikipedia article to make that argument. It takes an education.

Also, as much as I love Wikipedia, and use it every day for all sorts of things, it's not very strong on philosophy. There are tons of misrepresentations, and possibly because it's primarily an English-language encyclopedia and Analytic philosophy utterly dominates English-speaking academia, you're rarely going to get a fair or informed view of Continental philosophy from it.

You really need to go to the primary sources, at the very least. And, if you're coming from the Analytic perspective, you'll probably also need guidance from a teacher who can break you out of the Analytic blinders that will tend to make you see all of philosophy from an Analytic perspective.

Neverthelsess, here's really quick summary of what I find problematic about analytic philosophy: I see it as mostly full of mere language games and really trite analysis of various puzzles analytics prefer to focus on. And whenever they do happen to deal with issues I consider important, they do so on a superficial level (sometimes an exhaustively enumerated level, but rarely getting to the heart of the problem or addressing it as more than a puzzle).

I have my own issues with Continental philosophy, and some of it (like Derrida, who, incidentally, most Analytics despise) have somewhat a similar language-game attitude towards philosophy. But Derrida doesn't play by the same rules as the analytics, so the latter usually opine that he's not doing philosophy at all.

But be that as it may, I find both of the language-game approaches to be narrow and blinkered in that they rarely admit that there are other valid ways of approaching philosophy. It's really this exclusivist, small minded approach that I object to most, whether it comes from Analytics or Continentals. It's just most grating from the Analytics, as they are by far the most dominant and therefore usually manage to steer the discourse by just outnumbering and dismissing other perspectives.

If Derridians ruled academia, I'd have many of the same objections against them. But at least most Continentals don't have assume the pretense of being "objective" or "scientific", which are sometimes used to justify the dominance of Analytic philosophy over other approaches.

But these days Analytics rarely bother to justify themselves at all, as there often isn't anyone to justify themselves to (except maybe people not trained in philosophy, who are sometimes still impressed by the veneer of science). In the English speaking world Analytics are almost all there are, so they rarely feel the need to justify their approach to other Analytics. They all feel their approach is self-evidently correct and the only real way to do philosophy. They're like fish who are blind to the existence of water or the possibility of walking on land. It's really annoying to try to communicate with them if you do happen to be one of the few land-dwelling creatures left, as they'll either ignore your existence or deny that walking on land is possible or proper. </rant>

Your razor of a mind could use a lubricating aloe strip.

Looking at the website in his profile, I'm fairly sure this guy is having a laugh.

This is one of my favorite hacker news comments ever.

Maciej, you’re a treasure.

He's a good guy. Some people aren't getting that my sibling comment is a homage to his blog.

Lubrication is for the weak.

And the efficient.

    Analytic philosophy has made my mind a razor. [...]

Formal mathematical training (graduate) will do that to you too. I often find myself thinking with abstract algebra ideas (groups, vectors, vector spaces, commutation relations, etc).

I studied both. They're great.

I'm well trained in mathematics. It's certainly healthy. However, I often find that outside of their professional work, mathematicians are more willing to part with rigueur than the philosophers across the hall. Notice how most mathematicians aren't particularly interested in foundations of mathematics, for example.

I'm not sure if that's really true about mathematicians lacking rigour.

I do recall a logic professor of mine jokingly say that mathematicians were afraid of logicians, and (more seriously) that the former thought the latter were unnecessarily precise. (I hope I'm remembering this right and not misrepresenting what he said)

I'm not sure about the superiority in rigour in the rest of philosophy (even if we narrow the meaning of that term to just analytic philosophy, some of whom sure are fond of their logic, symbols and attempting to sound "scientific" or rigorous). If anything, I'd say those analytic philosophers have math (or hard science) envy.

You're right about mathematicians not being very interested in the foundations of math. That's a consequence of the failure of the great foundational project in the early 20th century. From what I understand, most mathematicians have decided that such a foundation is not possible, and view themselves as moving on to doing the very practical business of math anyway. After all, the lack of a foundation has not prevented them from achieving many interesting (and often useful) results.

That said, there has continued to be interest in foundations for math from some logicians, and (at least according to my logic professor) it still might be possible to found math on logic yet. That's quite a bit out of my league, however, so I'm afraid I can't elaborate much. But if you're interested in that, I do recommend taking some courses in symbolic logic and in the philosophy of math.

I can only assume his persona and commentary is an elaborate satirical parody of the snooty narcissistic philosopher (but you never know.. Poe’s Law and all that). To quote from saintzozo’s website:

Mathematics is easy.

If you think it's hard, you are retarded.

proof

Any true mathematical statement is logically equivalent to the axiomatic framework within which it occurs. If you do not understand such a statement, there are only two possibilities:

1. You do not understand the axioms.

Axioms are chosen so that they are evident a priori (eg. the probability of all disjoint events must sum to unity). If all the axioms are not clear to you, there is something seriously wrong with your reasoning faculties.

2. You do not understand logic.

If you understand the axioms, then the only thing that could prevent you from understanding a true mathematical statement is an inability to reason logically. Such a crippling deficiency defines what it means to be retarded.

This case analysis exhaustively proves that if you don't understand math, you are retarded. ■

corollary

Now one must be wary of students formally enrolled in programs of study devoted to mathematics (and its bastard child, computer science).

These people misunderstand mathematics (read: are retarded) to such an extent that they have resorted to paying other people money for instruction in the obvious. [...]

Axioms are chosen so that they are evident a priori

Wonder why it took 2000 years to came up with alternatives to the 5th postulate, if all three variants (Euclidean, elliptic, hyperbolic) is so evident apriori?

Sir, I own the copyright to this material and I would appreciate if you do not reproduce my work without permission. For some reason, this site no longer appears to function with my original account.

I wouldn't say there is maths envy in analytical Phil.

Stuff like modal logic , ontology and descriptive logics , a large variety of para-logical systems and epistemically logical systems, etc are all philosophy proper.

Lots of professors have a background in maths, even continentals (e.g Husserl).

I think mathematical rigour is the holy grail but the objects of the philosophical world are often not easy to coerce into such a form hence the piecemeal visage.

I don't know about willingness. There's one way to back up your point though. Philosophers learn to apply rigor in very broad situations, getting used to usisng it everywhere.

Mathematicians apply it very rigorously, but mostly in math. Applying that to other areas without specific training is difficult. For this reason, academic philosophy makes a person more rigorous in life generally.

Until you meet a math problem, of course.

Not that learning anything as rigorous and precise as math won't teach you clearer thinking - of course it will.

I'm a mathematician working in industry and I'm not at all interested in foundations. That's partly because I trust that all that stuff was worked out in the last century, and partly because there's so much more exciting stuff in math to be interested in instead.

Your belief that foundations were worked out in the last century is completely mistaken. Very serious and concerted efforts at foundations were made then, but they famously and dramatically failed when apparently unreconcilable contradictions were found at the core of these foundations. Then the foundational effort was largely abandoned and mathematicians moved on.

I suppose back around that time and up to a certain time after this happened, most mathematicians were aware of this history, but perhaps they aren't any more, if yours is a representative view.

So then it comes down to interest.

But many mathematicians were interested in foundations around the early part of the 20th Century. Now they're generally not.

This shift makes me wonder how much of mathematical foundations are actually "inherently interesting" (if there is such a thing) to mathematicians and how much has to do with fashion, and if it foundational projects among mathematicians will ever become fashionable (or "interesting") again.

Can you name three unreconcilable contradictions in ZFC?

"The most comprehensive formal systems yet set up are, on the one hand, the system of Principia Mathematica and, on the other, the axiom system for set theory of Zermelo-Fraenkel (later extended by J. v. Neumann). These two systems are so extensive that all methods of proof used in mathematics today have been formalized in them, i.e. reduced to a few axioms and rules of inference. It may therefore be surmised that these axioms and rules of inference are also sufficient to decide all mathematical questions which can in any way at all be expressed formally in the systems concerned. It is shown below that this is not the case, and that in both the systems mentioned there are in fact relatively simple problems in the theory of ordinary whole numbers which cannot be decided from the axioms."

From "On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica And Related Systems" by Kurt Gödel, 1930

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

http://www.csee.wvu.edu/~xinl/library/papers/math/Godel.pdf

I am aware of Godel, thanks, and of course that choice / Zorn's / well ordering (not to mention CH) are independent of ZF (and in particular that's why I mentioned ZFC). I'm also willing to accept the existence of an inaccessible cardinal, which bears on ZFC's consistency.

Ultimately my belief is this: there was a very real crisis in foundations at the end of the 19th century and over the next several decades this was fixed as best as it could be. The edges of the foundation are not perfect, the edges of the foundation cannot be perfect, but the edges of the foundation have been pushed back so far that for nearly every working mathematician they're good enough. (and if the algebraic geometers need Grothendieck universes, I'm ok with that)

Comments like that are lost on Reddit. Reddit isn't about discourse, it's about upvotes. The whole "just find good small subreddits" also doesn't work unless you subscribe to their specific early-stage cults mentality. And each sub has one.

That has been my experience, unfortunately.

Question -- you say that you are a person who is able to learn in solitude. Would you have been able to pursue your dive into Philosophy without the environment that Brown offered you?

I ask this for a few reasons.

1) I have a fairly strong interest in the discipline, but have found rigorous self guided study to be a challenge, beyond cursory readings of the classics and a smattering of modern theorists like Singer.

2) I feel that a fortunate circumstance today that the fastest growing, lucrative profession is programming, which now has a wealth of online resources for new entrants to get started and become proficient. Many other technical disciplines require prohibitively expensive lab equipment to learn the craft. I wonder if philosophy is a discipline within the humanities that is more difficult to cultivate in a self-directed fashion than others.

You certainly don't need expensive lab equipment to do philosophy. But a lot of philosophy is about interacting with others, about learning other people's ideas, considering them, coming up with your own reactions to those, and getting feedback as they consider your reactions. That kind of feedback loop is difficult if not impossible to do on a deep level without going to school for philosophy.

I'm sure there are people who have a very deep knowledge and understanding of philosophy despite being self taught, but I would be surprised if there were very many of them these days. It used to be a lot easier in the past, when there wasn't as much to learn. But even going back 2500 years to Plato's time, there was a great role for learning in the Academy, from which modern universities descend.

Of course, it doesn't take a university education to "do philosophy". You could certainly "philosophize" without any education (and a lot of people do, often not realizing that that's what they're doing). But I guess it all depends on what your goals are, and how deep you want to go.

I've personally found discussing what I'm learning with other students and with professors to be critical for my own education. I think philosophy is often as much of an oral tradition as it is a written one.

Finally, it requires an enormous amount of self-discipline to read and write as much as you would in getting a university education in philosophy, if you're going to try to teach yourself. A lot of people think they can just teach themselves, but later find to their regret that they can't without the structure provided by classes, schedules, graduation requirements, and teachers.

I'm not the guy you're asking, but I've spent some time 'in solitude' studying without an academic institution. I'd read philosophy books whenever I have down time. Consciously replacing entertainment with books works as well.

Philosophy to me is less about studying philosophy itself as a topic but encountering different people's various personal philosophies about things. Kierkegaard's "The Present Age" and Glenn Gould's perspective on anxiety helped me a lot.

I like Gould's music, but didn't know about his writing. Perhaps you could provide a pointer or two for an anxious fellow? :)

[0] "Anxiety gives way to pleasure and a passion for creative work for which the only condition is solitude."

[1] "I do feel quite convinced that one's creativity is enhanced primarily by the more-or-less single-minded pursuit and development of one's own resources without reference to the trends, tastes, fashions, etc. of the world outside."

[0] Glenn Gould - Selected Letters, page xx.

[1] Glenn Gould - Selected Letters, page xxii.

Who studies philosophy in school when graduates becomes a historian of philosophy, not a philosopher. Requirement of a diploma to philosophise contradicts philosophy itself. One can be a historian of philosophy and a philosopher at the same time, but the former does not require the latter and viceversa.

Philosophy is not a job, it's a personal trait, like honesty, faith, generosity, aggressiveness, asocialness, timidity, etc. If you want to enhance your philosopherness, then you think about things systematically, and learn as much as you can so that you have more raw material to use as proofs --pro and contro-- your ideas when you think. Reading others' philosophy is always useful as it expands your toolbox and knowledge.

Philosophy is love of wisdom. Just like love of your significant other is not a job, philosophy is not too. No-one gets to determine whether you're a lover of wisdom or not, just like no-one gets to determine whether or not you're a lover of your s/o.

So you don't need the school nor to quit your job to philosophise.

> Who studies philosophy in school when graduates becomes a historian of philosophy, not a philosopher.

No, when they graduate, they become a degree holder in philosophy. What they do afterwards determines if they become a historian of philosophy, a philosopher, or something else entirely (or some combination.)

> Requirement of a diploma to philosophise contradicts philosophy itself.

Perhaps (though I think its more accurate to say that it contradicts some particular philosophies), but pursuing a diploma to improve your ability to do something doesn't mean that there is a diploma requirement for that task.

I mean, "requiring a diploma to do science contradicts science itself" is at least as accurate, and probably more accurate, than the version with "philosophy" in place of "science", but few people would dispute that, in many fields of empirical science, the education which goes into a diploma, particularly at certain schools, is useful to one wishing to do science well.

Similarly, formal education in philosophy can be useful to those wishing to do philosophy well.

> Philosophy is not a job, it's a personal trait, like honesty, faith, generosity, aggressiveness, asocialness, timidity, etc

No, its not. "Philosophy" has at least two related senses, one of which is a thing one does (perhaps as a job, perhaps not), and the other of which is an a label for a class of belief systems, the holding of one of which is a personal trait, but philosophy itself is not a trait that you have more or less of like the ones you named, but instead something which you have one or another specific version of. (The first sense of "philosophy" discussed previously is approximately developing, refining, and critiquing instances of the second sense.)

> Philosophy is love of wisdom.

The English word "philosophy" derives from Greek for the love of wisdom, but that's not what it means. Etymology is distinct from definition.

>> Who studies philosophy in school when graduates becomes a historian of philosophy, not a philosopher.

> No, when they graduate, they become a degree holder in philosophy.

No, what they become is a historian of philosophy. Because what they learn is the eminent philosophers and schools from the past, and the philosophical methodology. This is like studying hittitology, they get to learn the hittite language, the hittitle literature, and they practice their writing on actual stone tablets, but at the end they become hittitologist, not hittites. What the education system in a given country considers a graduate from a philosophy course of a university is irrelevant, that's just a bureaucratic title.

>> Requirement of a diploma to philosophise contradicts philosophy itself.

> Similarly, formal education in philosophy can be useful to those wishing to do philosophy well.

My words agrees yours. I don't say a diploma is futile, just that it's not a requirement, and it cannot be one. Nor do I say that it's useless.

>> Philosophy is not a job, it's a personal trait [...]

> No, its not. "Philosophy" has at least two related senses, one of which is a thing one does (perhaps as a job, perhaps not), and the other of which is an a label for a class of belief systems, [...]

>> Philosophy is love of wisdom.

>The English word "philosophy" derives from Greek for the love of wisdom, but that's not what it means. Etymology is distinct from definition.

A personal trait is a group of things one does anyways. If one is timid, he does things that makes him timid. Philosophy is such, it includes thinking, doubting, searching, discussing and deciding.

You are mostly describing a western, originally-catholic, formal and academic sense of philosophy. I do not stay within that confining context, and think that the first and foremost task of a philosopher --and a task that continually shows up in whose life-- is to define what philosophy is, a task unachievable if one just opens some dictionary's P section and accepts whatever he finds there.

> No, what they become is a historian of philosophy.

No, they don't. If they go on to practice history of philosophy, sure, they become that, but many holders of philosophy degrees don't do that.

> Because what they learn is the eminent philosophers and schools from the past, and the philosophical methodology.

That's no more true than it is to say that what a person learns when taking a science degree is the eminent scientists of the past and their scientific results. Which is to say, that is a large and important part of what they learn, but hardly the whole thing, and there is utility in knowing what others have done in the space to doing new work in it. (Obviously, knowing the past of the field is also useful to people who wish to practice as a historian of the field, but its certainly not the only thing a degree is useful for. Holding a philosophy degree makes you neither a philosopher nor a historian of philosophy, both of those describe things you might do, with or without a degree, to which a degree might be useful.)

I've done both self study and school in that order. Exposure is the problem in self study. You need some way of giving yourself a balanced representation of ideas. You may do well to pick a syllabus from s strong Uni and follow it right through .

The other thing of course is someone to call bullshit on you... Phil is a great subject with which to convince yourself that you are a genius . Especially when the people you talk to about it (friends et al) are in awe of your expositions since it's hardly common parlance . Keeping the narcissist in check is difficult for some.

Is this satire? This is pretty much the perfect expression of all the most insufferable moments and people I knew during my own analytic philosophy education. It's even wrapped up in the fondest delusion of philosophy undergrads: that you, through the sheer strength of your intellect, rose above your surroundings.

Your shit ain't that great, man. If anyone goes through four years of philosophy and is talking about their worldview like this, run away from them.

Edit: agh I read his blog and I regret to inform you all that this person really has his stuff down pat definitely a true scholar here

Huh. Their website (http://soixante-neuf.homosexual.horse/veritas/) does seem at least somewhat satirical, and yet, if they are trolling, they are quite committed to it. They do seem to post a lot on reddit about Brown: https://www.reddit.com/user/saintzozo. Although those posts seem like a lot of trolling as well. Ah, I dunno. It's difficult for me to figure out exactly the dynamics of trolling vs. other forms of satire vs. sincerity that are in play here.

ETA: Ah, and here's the referred-to original post on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BrownU/comments/50xjy7/another_alar...

> Their website (http://soixante-neuf.homosexual.horse/veritas/) does seem at least somewhat satirical

How far through the URL did you read before realising that?

Honestly? Still not sure myself. The "leave a comment for my secretary" form is either some Grade-A douchebaggery or trolling perfected. But if this whole thing is intentional satire then it's too many layers deep to make its point.

Right?? I think trolling and satire are different, now that I'm looking at this bud — satire needs to be obvious lest it further the goals of the thing it's making fun of. Trolling actually needs you to buy into what it's saying, which seems to be the goal here.

I'd guess trolling, which is even more unfortunate than genuine pomposity. Not the only personality in this thread where it's legitimately difficult to tell, either.

I spent some time reading his reddit posts. I'm pretty sure it's not satire.

I think you can be excused a bit, it does read a little like Tony Robbins at first glance

From his website (http://soixante-neuf.homosexual.horse/veritas/privacy.html):

"Consider that my penis is nine inches long with a girth I am unwilling to divulge even here — a characteristic with strongly positive social consequences.

I have to have my pants specifically tailored to obscure the size of my genitals in public, lest women follow me home, send me unnecessary gifts, and assemble with cameras outside of social venues in which I am spotted."

> Is this satire?

Yes. What I can't tell is whether it is intentional or not.

After this, its clear that the time has come for philosophy departments to offer seminars in trolling.

Troll or textbook narcissist, so engage at your own peril. See e.g. [1].

[1] https://www.reddit.com/domain/soixante-neuf.homosexual.horse...