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Comment by Cybotron5000 | Hacker News Reader

Edward Feser doesn’t seem to me to be genuinely interested in challenging his own presuppositions through metaphysics or philosophy, or in communicating the work of others to a wider audience. If the posts that appear on this site are anything to go by, he seems to specialize in a specious species of polemic and obfuscation designed solely to justify and promulgate his political and religious views. If it lends a sense of purpose to his life, makes him a living or gives him a feeling of self-importance/bolsters his worth among his peers, who am I to criticize? Perhaps it is actually a deep satire with some ulterior motive. As an agnostic, one can only hope that a capital punishment for more catholic thinkers is never re-introduced. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Feser

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So you’ve just ad-hominemed him in a suspiciously suspect subscribed text. And by sheer coincidence, catholicism. Great.

…catholic with a small ‘c’: https://www.thefreedictionary.com/catholic (…sorry I couldn’t resist the pun…). Personally I think there have been many wondrous, uplifting and glorious achievements of the Catholic church/its followers …and, I’m sure you would agree, some not so much, as is the case with many human institutions… What is it I’m subscribed to? Edward Feser may be a wonderful fellow in person for all I know - I would like to think at least that he is a decent, upstanding, law-abiding, moral etc. citizen - he certainly comes across as erudite and indefatigable in his writing… I just get the feeling that the two blog posts I have read of his that have been posted on this site were both designed solely to reinforce his particular presuppositions? Perhaps I am judging him unfairly - would you recommend something else of his that I should read instead? As I say, if his philosophy/faith works for him, gives him meaning and hope and joy etc. and he genuinely believes in those ideas, I wish him all the best… I worry a little about (perhaps less enlightened) people wanting to apply those ideas to society at large though... You must surely also be aware of examples from history where things have not gone so well? (not least for Catholics at various points in time - incl. ancestors of my own). What do you think?

Your entire comment is an ad-hominem. And a nasty one at that. Frankly, it sounds like you're projecting all these negative things because you hate to see your assumptions challenged.

What do you consider to be my assumptions? As I said in the comment below, I am not attacking the guy personally (that’s what ad hominem means) - I’m sure he may be perfectly lovely and if he is genuine in his pursuits then I genuinely wish him (and you) all the best in life…

> What, pray tell, do you consider to be my assumptions?

I don't know, because you didn't engage with the content of the article at all. You merely casted nasty aspersions on its author.

> I am not attacking the guy personally

Yes, you are.

he seems to specialize in a specious species of polemic and obfuscation designed solely to justify and promulgate his political and religious views. If it lends a sense of purpose to his life, makes him a living or gives him a feeling of self-importance/bolsters his worth among his peers, who am I to criticize? Perhaps it is actually a deep satire with some ulterior motive.

So not only do you throw around unsubstantiated aspersions, but you are also dishonest.

Perhaps you’re right and I was overly harsh or critical of him personally. All I am trying to say, crudely put, is that it seems to me that the author has started from his prior positions and then constructed an argument that reinforces them. That’s fine by me (if he is honest about it), but I hope you can see it is hard to stomach if you don’t agree or can’t see the proof of those prior positions. Specious = “…plausible but false; based on pretense; deceptively pleasing: ‘His incorrect conclusion arose from specious reasoning.’”. For example, a statement like: “…an analysis that simply fails to capture what Aquinas is talking about is hardly rigorous…” (sorry taking that out of context) seems bizarre to me when I consider (the little I know of) the history of philosophical thought since Aquinas… I apologize if I have offended you or the author- that was not my intention - perhaps I am merely showing my ignorance…

You're casting more vague aspersions.

> the author has started from his prior positions and then constructed an argument that reinforces them

There are two ways to interpret this:

1. You're accusing the author of making an argument that is circular. If so, describe the argument, including its premises and conclusion, and specify which premise is the conclusion.

2. You're merely attacking the author for arguing their position. Hardly objectionable and also a red herring, since the soundness of an argument is independent of the author's "prior positions".

Furthermore, I see nothing controversial about the statement you quoted. It is indisputably true, and would be true for any other author.

So is Thomism(/forms of Neo-Thomism) the be-all-and-end-all of philosophical enquiry then? If an argument is based on unexamined prior positions how can it be considered sound? (I suppose there is a problem of infinite regress here/some form of ‘Russell’s teapot’ or something! :) Thomas Aquinas was/is an extremely influential and interesting thinker (especially for his time!), but I find that sadly I don’t necessarily see proof of/share his revelatory faith in the existence of a traditional Catholic God. When I try and boil down various arguments into comment form I cannot definitively argue against those ideas because, for all I know, they may be true, at least on some level... The problem is rather that, as I understand him at least, I see that equally they may not be true and that they derive in part from hefty presuppositions about the existence of god, denial of possible kinds of physical/metaphysical infinite regression (not sure I’m using that term entirely correctly, but what the hey…) /infinite universes/multiverses/even voidist/illusory universes, various other theisms (pantheism, panpsychism or ‘idealism’ for example), atheism and probably a lot more -isms that I can’t think of right now or am just not aware of… If your argument is that philosophy based on formal logic is devalued somehow because it is merely relative/can only express relations between ‘things’ and not ‘things’ in themselves, well, what’s to say that the universe isn’t entirely informationally constituted/‘mathematical’ and therefore able to be defined solely relationally in some form? (not putting that very well - but along the lines of: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Mathematical_Universe ). I don’t immediately see how ordinary language is any more potentially categorical than formal logic in such a context - though the power and beauty of words/mathematics is undeniable in a human context, is it not potentially dangerous arrogance to think that we currently/could ever hope to understand God/universal meaning on any definitive, ethically actionable or universally communicable level? Doesn’t the unchallenged adoption of such concretized beliefs invite inevitable abuse and corruption when flawed humans distort them and undesirable actions arise from calcified dogmatism/extremism/literal interpretations? Here’s some Kant, for good measure: “Thinking for one's self is to seek the chief touchstone of truth in one's self (id est, in one's own reason); and the maxim, to think for one's self at all times is Enlightening. Thereto belongs not just so much, as those may imagine who take knowledge, to be enlightening; as it is rather a negative principle in the use of one's cognoscitive faculty, and he, who is very rich in knowledge, is often the least enlightened in the use of it. To exercise one's own reason, means nothing more, than, relatively to every thing which one is to suppose, to question one's self.” — from ‘What it Means to Orient One's Self in Thinking’ ((& Monty Python’s Philosophical Football Match: https://vimeo.com/84600758 )

Why don't you stop soapboxing and address the comment you're replying to?

Ok - please forgive/correct/help me out here if I’ve got the sticky end of the stick, but both the premise and conclusion, very clumsily put, seem to me to be: ‘formal or classical systems of logic are more limited/not as rigorous/less useful/less challenging than some people believe them to be, especially when applied to Aristotelean/Thomist philosophy/conceptions, because of their ‘merely’ relational syntax/nature and because they cannot adequately express/encapsulate concepts/‘things’ that the author holds to be true or self-evident features of his perceived reality/received wisdom/everyday utility/a priori metaphysics. The author concedes its usefulness in certain contexts: particularly when combined/in conjunction with his favoured philosophical ideas, or used in support of them, but that it does not present a challenge/undermine the author’s ideas/beliefs in ways that presumably some prior/present critics might suggest.’

Is it wrong to be opinionated? Feser quickly remarks on a problem of math: some mathematical constructs reflect the system of math more than reality. If your philosophy never touches the political, the reality, aren’t you merely creating a system of reasoning for its own sake?

Moreover, does he need to challenge his own presuppositions? We can do that!

I think that sometimes being overly opinionated and incapable of changing your mind is potentially harmful to others, yes… Is it not potentially dangerous to advocate for various political realities based solely on unexamined/individual opinion-based constructs? Maybe I am wrong, though… I’m curious what you think of the ideas in this article?: https://aphilosopher.drmcl.com/2007/08/26/is-philosophy-just...

…and yes I think that challenging one’s suppositions ought to be the first task of any aspiring philosopher. Isn’t that the whole idea?

Having read a few philosophers, I don't really see any fundamental difference between Feser's approach and those of other philosophers. All philosophers have their positions and try to construct arguments to support those constructions. Feser's positions are traditional Roman Catholic positions, but your average atheist philosopher (such as Graham Oppy or J. L. Mackie) is doing the same basic thing.

I feel like your expectations for how philosophers ought to behave aren't based on any significant familiarity with the work of actual philosophers, just your suppositions about how philosophy ought to be done.

Good point: perhaps I have an unrealistic, dumb, ill-educated or otherwise malformed ideal/view that philosophers should somehow be constantly challenging their own ideas, using their writing/discourse as an instrument to help them reach better conclusions through statement/contradiction (something like constructing an academic essay using thesis/antithesis/synthesis I guess?) and disputing them internally… Actually, as you suggest, the ‘correct’ approach to philosophy, or at least the only realistically possible approach, is to repeatedly state prior beliefs in the most persuasive way possible and then presumably to defend your a priori views from any challenges by others - only ‘testing’ those ideas in reaction by engaging in external debate rather than an internal one… I wonder though, doesn’t the outcome/process of that debate have to register internally somehow, for one side at least, for it to have any point? …for an evolution of the thinkers involved’s ideas to take place, is it not necessary for one/both sides in a debate to have at least a somewhat open mind, even as they strongly debate their particular ‘side’? …to allow one side to change its mind when the arguments put forward by the opposition are significantly strong - otherwise the debate would inevitably become stale, never-changing and circular? If one side is fixed in its beliefs, why would the other side bother debating them at all? If they were interested in adopting those ideas they should merely ‘receive’ them, rather than engage in an inevitably fruitless debate? I suppose if you have an unshakable belief that there exists an eternal and ever-present truth that you are inalterably sure of, and others who don’t agree with you are simply less enlightened, then you may feel that you should never have cause to change your mind - why should you, as you are already privy to the ultimate truth? Your task then, if you are communicative/evangelical/missionary in some way at least, is only to expound that truth to others? Your writing becomes a vehicle to promote your ‘truth’ - truth informed by mystically or intuitively received wisdom, never conjecture… Your debate/writing etc. is not a way to clarify your own ideas, but rather to show others the folly of contrary thoughts?

But where does it end? Is all reason not based on a set of axioms? You can comment on your presuppositions, if you throw them all out then there is no (classical) logic.

Philosophy is a conversation, and valid argumentation is that starting point of any treatise. The work of contending philosophers is to challenge one another, so there should be no hesitation in using less-than-certain (that is to say, all) presuppositions.

Moreover, Feser does comment on his presuppositions in this very article.

> I would qualify this by saying that metaphysics is prior to logic if “logic” is understood in sense (b) described above, though not if understood in sense (a). Naturally, we have to presuppose certain canons of reasoning when reasoning about anything, including metaphysics. But it doesn’t follow that we have to presuppose the codification enshrined in some particular formal system – such as, for example, modern propositional and predicate logic rather than traditional Aristotelian logic, or rather than some system that tries to capture the best of both worlds (such as that of Fred Sommers).

I understand caution when stating opinions - it is a good instinct, but I'm not sure what you're arguing.

> I think that sometimes being overly opinionated and incapable of changing your mind is potentially harmful to others, yes… Is it not potentially dangerous to advocate for various political realities based solely on unexamined/individual opinion-based constructs?

How can I disagree with this? Yes there is hazard in advocating for anything. Moreover, there is hazard in doing anything. But I see what you're getting at. There is some line we draw in our own minds between philosophy, that is the pursuit of truth, and political - the realm of opinions.

Where is the line? Most would say that it is when the philosopher argues in good or bad faith. Thus, we are in the realm of the unknowable, the motivations of all around us. Also, not to comment on the notions of whether it's possible for an individual's to be "good" or "bad", but I don't want to digress.

To return, I think you're saying that making statements result in harm to individuals is bad. I agree, but this is a political question, not a philosophical one. Thus providing a philosophical justification or contradiction for your statement is moot.

Is it a good-faith, or bad-faith argument to point out that philosophers (myself included) don't know what they are talking about?

As in literally asking the question: What is Philosophy about?

The only answer we can give is political.

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