Philosophy as a public service
nautil.us
nautil.us
As Chesterton said, philosophy is simply thought that has been thought out. We're going to work with thoughts either way, but if we haven't thought it out, we are sleepwalking, under the influence of a foreign presence we have not taken the time to identify and dissect.
I've only gotten through the first lecture—and it does take him ~20 minutes to lay out something like the full plan for the lecture series, but he also paints a pretty interesting picture by the time he gets to that point.
David Chapman has also been writing on this subject, apparently from a somewhat related angle, for years: https://meaningness.com/
The two of them try reconciling their approaches here: https://letter.wiki/conversation/209
Philosophy should be telling us that hierarchies are natural and playing the game is healthy, as even if you're on the low end there's still plenty of game to "win".
Being social animals, another more critical instinct is the need to cooperate. Indeed, eliminating cooperation from a human group will extinguish it faster than eliminating competition (assuming it's even possible). And when people have a choice in the matter, pecking order is based on amount of support the higher up people provide to the group, not the leaders ability to serve himself: people do not knowingly and freely back someone who has no interest in backing them.
Also instinctive is the sense of fairness[1] Of course those with an abundance of resources might want to convince others that this instinct is unnatural or somehow harmful. But it is clearly a well established instinct over a wide range of mammals and exists for a reason.
And while the meaning of life varies greatly from person to person, I suspect that a life lived solely to maximize one's own resources will be as comfortable as it feels meaningless. I image evolution has made it that way. At least so people will have children but also to work fairly with others. Otherwise we would have wandered completely alone in the jungles and been eaten out of existence by Pliocene tigers.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg&feature=youtu.be...
The biggest question philosophy should be answering is how can we ensure that everyone wins after we've self-sorted into our natural hierarchies.
That and arsonists. Sheesh, most of our troubles come from applied philosophy - ideas translated into memes that went viral, such as salvation, enlightenment, communism, environmentalism, etc. That's where you get really large scale disturbances of the mob.
Otherwise people would be chewing the cud peacefully, give or take a few bashings of the nearest tribe.
This is simply not true. What you are describing is religion. Outside of the realm of logic, much of philosophy is a neverending open-ended question.
Philosophy is great because it exercises the brain and teaches you to think rationally and try to see things from as many angles as possible. But it doesn't provide any answers to "is there life after death", "does life have any meaning", "do I have a soul", etc. Philosophy just helps you think about these questions meaningfully and rationally.
Religion provides certainty. Philosophy is more honest and does not.
I’m not religious, and I think I have fairly conclusive answers to those questions drawn from philosophy — there’s no soul or life after death and no inherent meaning to life.
If you’re going to argue that’s exclusively the realm of religion, then what were nietzche and Plato and Sartre doing?
I'm arguing that certainty is the realm of religion. "Religion provides certainty. Philosophy is more honest and does not."
When it comes to the meaning of life, good and evil, soul or the abyss, heaven or hell, religion provides certainty. There are 10 commandments and accept Christ. You have the rules laid out for you.
Philosophy is a neverending open-ended question when it comes to these questions.
In other words, you can keep asking questions in philosophy. In religion, you have the answers so there is no need to keep asking questions. You have certainty.
Every couple of weeks, we'd get a call from a student who had stumbled on us when trying to reach the Pharmacy, while simultaneously struggling with their Philosophy course. We liked to think we did provide a valuable public service.
A more apt title would be "How I Developed Several Public Art Projects".
Is putting a ring on a tree to measure its growth (and highlight the lack thereof) any more "art" than "philosophy"?
I normally wouldn’t be pedantic about this but because this is a discussion about philosophy I have to point out that it doesn’t “beg the question”. “Begging the question” is an informal logical fallacy where an argument’s premises assume that its conclusion is true so it ends up being circular. I think you mean it “raises the question”.
At this point I feel it has only survived as a form of shibboleth.
it does if you look at the etymology; beg comes begging off i.e. asking for exemption from something. it's archaic at this point of course but still fairly intelligible in that use; "he begged off doing his chores".
Physics, arguably the bedrock and most "certain" of the sciences, has long struggled with what the phenomena it studies actually are, leading to a "shut up and calculate" attitude popularized by Feynman, where physicists just throw their hands up and focus on the mathematics and abstractions rather than engaging with the ultimate what and why questions, which they leave (rightly) to philosophy.
The boundary questions (for example, what is physics, what is chemistry, what are their proper objects of study, and so on) are also philosophical questions, and not anything any amount of empirical study, hypothesizing, predicting, or model-making can solve.
Questions about what humanity as a whole, any subgroup of humans, or any individual one of us should do are also not amenable to scientific inquiry. Neither are questions of what is right and wrong. Science can only ever be descriptive, not prescriptive.
Philosophy goal is uncover truth where science is restricted mostly to the realm of facts and empirical truths.
An example would be the question of the meaning of life, science has little ability to answer this question other that to claim it doesn't actually exist or it's just a complex expression of atoms working together where with philosophy there are countless ways to answer this age old question.
But IMHO the best course of action would be to acquire logic proficiency first. And no, I'm not talking about the logic programmers usually know, but rather formal and informal philosophical logic.
Proficiency in logic is to philosophy like reading sheet music is to music. You can get by without it, but it will help you immensely.
I think non-academic people like me are served perfectly well by reading Spinoza's Ethics. Googling for more from there will cover almost all of post-dualism Western phil.
Wikipedia actually does a pretty good job of this. They have a section on the side bar for "Influences" (who influenced this philosopher and "Influenced" (who this philosopher influenced.)
Aristotle has this epic entry:
Influences: Plato
Influenced: Virtually all subsequent Western philosophy, Christian philosophy and pre-Enlightenment science (see List of writers influenced by Aristotle)
When I was in my first Philosophy seminar, our professor started off by saying, "all of western philosophy is a footnote to Aristotle."
He was a real one.
You could also google for philosophy course syllabi, but it's not always easy to know _why_ one philosopher influenced another or the significance in political theory, ethics, etc.
“So far as concerns philosophy only a selected group can be explicitly mentioned. There is no point in endeavouring to force the interpretations of divergent philosophers into a vague agreement. What is important is that the scheme of interpretation here adopted can claim for each of its main positions the express authority of one, or the other, of some supreme master of thought - Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant. But ultimately nothing rests on authority; the final court of appeal is intrinsic reasonableness. The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings. I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them. His personal endowments, his wide opportunities for experience at a great period of civilization, his inheritance of an intellectual tradition not yet stiffened by excessive systematization, have made his writing an inexhaustible mine of suggestion.”
https://www.age-of-the-sage.org/philosophy/footnotes_plato.h...
The Book of Bad Arguments[1] is a great way for a total beginner to get familiar with informal fallacies.
After that, I recommend jumping to basic symbolic logic. I tried several books on the subject, and found an excellent free resource that is not well know: Introduction to Logic[2], by professor Gary Hardegree. I was so grateful for this material that I even sent him an email to thank him for it. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Now you'll have acquired have a firmer grasp of how arguments work, and will also be able to understand at least some of the logical notation used in the SEP, Wikipedia, etc. Unless you wish to acquire comprehensive philosophical knowledge (something that takes many years of continuous effort), browsing IEP[3] and SEP[4] for subjects you're interested in can be a rewarding experience. SEPs search feature may not be Google, but it's pretty good. I tend to use IEP or Wikipedia to get an overview, and only go to SEP if I'm feeling fancy.
Here's an opinionated list of articles in semi-random order that might be adequate for a beginner (logic training will help, but it's frequently possible to get some understanding even without it):
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic
- https://www.iep.utm.edu/modal-lo/
- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-modal-origins/
- https://www.iep.utm.edu/socrates/
- https://www.iep.utm.edu/plato/
- https://www.iep.utm.edu/aristotl/
- https://www.iep.utm.edu/aris-log/
- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-rhetoric/
- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pseudo-science/
- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computer-science/
- https://www.iep.utm.edu/epistemo/
- https://www.iep.utm.edu/analytic/
- https://www.iep.utm.edu/lang-phi/
- https://www.iep.utm.edu/ord-lang/
- https://www.iep.utm.edu/frege/i
- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell/
- https://www.iep.utm.edu/russ-log/
- https://www.iep.utm.edu/wittgens/
- https://www.iep.utm.edu/consciou/
----------------------------------------------------------
[1] https://bookofbadarguments.com/
>But IMHO the best course of action would be to acquire logic proficiency first.
there is plenty of continental thought that isn't straightforward syllogisms (basically everything interesting kant).
imho the very short guides are really good for this
https://global.oup.com/academic/content/series/v/very-short-...
not too expensive, written by experts. i can speak for peter singers intro to hegel and intro to marx.
Please try and rely on expert resources, and not just people who are experts in some other area, or even sometimes in another area of philosophy. Experts on philosophy are just as capable as anyone else skilled in an area to explain ideas without too much jargon (or if there is, explanations of it!)
Some philosophers you can start reading primary material. For others it's more difficult. University textbooks should also be worth considering, at least. But the Crash Course videos may be the wrong approach. If you're looking for videos, I'd recommend Wireless Philosophy pretty much always.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/4de95h/why_d...
Philosophy is indeed a public service, even if it's rather a niche one. People have a large access to many kind of arts and activities. Some will enjoy reading etiology books or discussing ethical themes, some will visit museums, some will watch Scorcese's movies, many will watch Avenger entertainments. We all need some kind of artistic culture around us. So philosophy is a public service because some part of the public enjoys it to the point that it is important in their life.
This "public service" status is not restricted to arts and entertainment. For instance, the science on the human evolution has no practical goal — extending knowledge has no direct impact on us. Just like philosophy, it will not really influence the way we live. Yet many people want to know more about human origins, which is a excellent reason for continuing research.
And this is all so beautifully meta as well, because this too, is a philosophical statement.
Now imagine this brain twisting concept: The Philosophy of "The Philosophy of philosophy." Yes discussions about philosophy are in itself philosophy and that by induction causes an infinite chain to form where you can talk about the the philosophy of philosophy of philosophy ...
Let's get even more meta. What do we call discussions and debates about this infinite long chain of philosophy? Imagine a higher order description, a word that describes the nature of the infinite chain but is in itself above it.
Some people call this word "philosophy" as well but that will simply create another infinite long chain of meta definitions that never ends. Yes you can do this, and you can keep doing this, but let's again go a level higher above it all. What is the word that describes every possible usage of philosophy, every possible infinite chain of meta descriptions that could exist?
Believe it or not a word for it does exist that sits above all possible usages of philosophy, but the word and concept itself is so mind blowing that I can only give you the acronym for it and leave it up to you to deduce what it stands for.
The acronym is B. S.
Think on that.
Side note: If you have trouble figuring it out: I have found that some of my most novel ideas pop out when I'm sitting on the toilet. It's a quiet and safe area and thus a good place to think and find the answer.
The post is ultimately a trap. I introduce a bit of a simplistic but semi-mind-bending concept but then when you get to the end you realize my true thoughts about philosophy. It's for all the philosophers out there who always tell me that even though I don't know it I'm actually talking about philosophy. Well it's kind of hard not to talk about it given the fact that the word is defined to encompass everything.
I think your post hits the nail on the head. If you want to learn about these concepts formal math is the way to go. The layman description I wrote is really not that deep though, it's all pedantic.
The difference in philosophy is there are no pages full of integrals and infinite series, it's all just words, many of which look familiar to you, so you don't even realize that you don't have the prerequisites for it.
I'm not a chemist so if I open an advanced chemistry book, all the symbols are magic. But I do know that there's a hard science and logic behind chemistry and therefore I don't view it the same way I view the humanities. Philosophy is a humanity... an art.
These thought experiments are useful, interesting, and appealing to certain segments of people. There should be different ways to transmit the same message to others, instead of looking for 'one-size-fits-all'.
I actually think that once you're in the realm of implementation you're no longer in the realm of philosophy, which should, IMO, remain abstract. A book like "A Thousand Plateaus", "Being and Time", "The Critique of Pure Reason" are philosophical works of art but I wouldn't consider the pinecone clock a philosophical work of art but rather inspired, and clever, engineering.
No story survives contact with reality, and that is all Philosophy gives us - stories. A.k.a theories.
Risk management requires counter-factual reasoning.
* subjectively, from a person with a BA in Philosophy and a JD, FWIW.
His legacy, through Plato, was resurrected as a key element of the Renaissance and Enlightenment.
It makes modern philosophy look like a sad farce since this legacy of modern thought probably isn't taught in a single modern philosophy course (happy to be proven wrong).
If you are telling me that in the twenty centuries, no one has taken what Pythagoras/Plato said and has rewritten it in a better way, with modern exposition and examples and graphics and what not, I fail to believe you. Because that would mean philosophy as a discipline is not improving by building upon the works of those past, unlike every other intellectual discipline. I know this is not true, so stop suggesting old texts to beginners and start suggesting books written in the last twenty years.
Since Pythagoras never wrote and was an empiricist, Pythagoreanism needs continual interpretation. But the core ideas, of Oneness, of "all is number" and that of fundamental harmonies in the Cosmos and psyche/soul — those are are perennial ideas of great value.
No other field is philosophy. Philosophy, in some respects, is special - at least according to Socrates as relayed by Plato. As Socrates says, each science (or even activity) has its object, but what of the science which has science as its object? The trouble with many future reformulations of key ideas is that they can miss the intricacies and highly abstract arguments of the original texts. For that reason, it may be more appropriate to read Newton than it is to read Einstein, because Newton used much more natural language than equations. I would very heavily disagree with the idea that introductory textbooks necessarily have better contents and presentation than original texts, and any serious philosopher will tell you that too.
>If you are telling me that in the twenty centuries, no one has taken what Pythagoras/Plato said and has rewritten it in a better way, with modern exposition and examples and graphics and what not, I fail to believe you.
What do you mean by "a better way"? Is Plato really so difficult or obtuse or obscure that one needs to express Socrates' ideas in "a better way"? The text is perfectly readable to a modern audience, which is precisely why starting with Plato's actual dialogues is the hallmark of any good university philosophy programme.
>Because that would mean philosophy as a discipline is not improving by building upon the works of those past
No; you have it backwards. Many philosophers have agreed with or disagreed with Plato, but the point of a text on Plato's ideas should represent what he wanted to represent in those ideas, not say "well, that's what Plato said, here's my idea now!". Philosophy (according to some accounts, at least) does progress, but it's dubious that rewriting and "simplifying" texts is the hallmark of progress.
You end with the assumption that books written since 2000 are necessarily better than Plato. I fail to see why this is the case. If you want an overview of philosophy since Plato, then by all means, only the most up-to-date book will do. If you want to know Plato's (or Socrates') ideas yourself, there is no better source than Plato himself.
Philosophy explanations and short introductions (Peter Singer's one on Marx comes to mind) are riddled with errors, and for any such text you will find at least ten philosophers ready to lambast an "introductory" interpretation because it misses out on the intricacies of that thought. I'm not joking. Look at any intro book on Hegel, Kant, Marx, Pythagoras. Then look at the reviews published in philosophy journals.
"Progress" in philosophy does not and cannot mean shortening, rewriting and "simplifying" ideas.
Einstein was the first person to discover relativity, and how he stated those ideas is merely one way of countless different ways of expressing them. People learned what Einstein said, taught it to others and used those ideas in further development of physics. In the process they learned ways of expressing these ideas that are much more conducive to teaching novice physicists, and/or elegant to build upon. This is what I mean by better: faster learning, deeper understanding, mathematical and conceptual elegance.
This process is not unique to physics or Einstein. In most intellectual fields, people digest and reformulate the ideas of past intellectuals to make them better, at which point people stop reading the works of those past intellectuals (except historians or the super-experts), and start referring to the newer texts. In fact, if any field does not do this, I would dare call it an anti-intellectual field.
A field has certain goals, certain questions it tries to answer. In most intellectual fields, newcomers start by learning the best possible answers to those questions found till now, and then get to the research stage, where they start trying to do better. If they do find better answers, they teach the next generation those better answers.
If you are telling me that what Plato said is among the best answers to the questions that Philosophy asks, then that means the field has not progressed. You say that "short introductions ... misses out on the intricacies of that thought", but this indicates a deep problem with Philosophy. In every other field, experts of today express the ideas of those in the past with mistakes corrected, oversights fixed, and exposition improved. You also misunderstand me when you say 'rewriting and "simplifying" texts is the hallmark of progress.' Modern textbooks of General Relativity are far more intricate, and complex than what Einstein ever wrote, yet more understandable to the physics undergrad. Our answers today are far far better than Einstein's, so I won't waste an undergrad's time with Einstein's writings.
Where are the best answers that the field of Philosophy has come up with, and why were they not written in the past few decades?
Not so in philosophy. If philosophy has the aim (if one's idea is that science has some goal, or a goal outside of being done for the sake of being done) to create new answers to old questions, or create new questions which require new answers, one must know (1) what questions were previously asked, (2) why the questions do (or don't) have answers, or what the problems and advantages of the answers are, (3) what these answers were in their original form, such that we have the best access to the most complete argument.
Endless rephrasing of texts didn't get us from Newton to Einstein. Even if one accepts that philosophy makes progress (internally), it doesn't in any way imply that one can get away without reading both old (to see what remains uncovered, and there is plenty to this day) and new.
But as for courses dealing with presocratic philosophy, history of ancient Greek philosophy, mathematic and science ... They most certainly do exist and deal with exactly this legacy.
Modern philosophy hasn't "obviated" Plato, per se, but any competent philosopher today can discuss what Plato thought generally and how/why we think differently today. The philosophical method of analysis and argument remains, but no one talks seriously about Platonic forms except as part of the history.
Do you have a summary or link to one?
As for how and why we think differently today: any study of the history of philosophy is partly the study of refuting earlier philosophers. If you're aware of Plato, you're aware of criticisms of Plato and how that formed the basis of other ideas.
It is the foundation for Hawking’s model-dependent realism [1]; or more radically Dummett’s anti-realism [2].
Speaking purely about Mathematics - there have been great strides in constructive mathematics in the last 3-4 decades, and great overlaps with computer science (Curry-Howard-Lambek correspondence). A formalist might even say that the fields of logic, mathematics and computer science are identical.
The two, at least according to Hegel, are not so easily separable.
"The more the ordinary mind takes the opposition between true and false to be fixed, the more is it accustomed to expect either agreement or contradiction with a given philosophical system, and only to see reason for the one or the other in any explanatory statement concerning such a system. It does not conceive the diversity of philosophical systems as the progressive evolution of truth; rather, it sees only contradiction in that variety. The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter; in the same way when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant’s existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. These stages are not merely differentiated; they supplant one another as being incompatible with one another. But the ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes them at the same time moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other; and this equal necessity of all moments constitutes alone and thereby the life of the whole."
Not every course needs to discuss every facet of a topic, foundational or not.
1. Oneness 2. "all is number" 3. There are fundamental harmonies in the cosmos and the soul 4. Integration of the rational and the spiritual
It's philosophy as a scientific religious pursuit. I don't think that comes up much in philosophy 101
Descarte's Meditations on First Philosophy? That's quite a place to start.