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Comment by ogogmad | Hacker News Reader

(I like mathematical logic).

Continental philosophy eschews formal logic and focuses more on literature and the arts as the source of philosophical truth. Some insights from Emmanuel Kant are used to justify this ([1]). Can someone explain this stance better than [1] does?

While there has been a great deal of sympathetic interest among analytic philosophers in the idea that philosophy should be continuous in method and subject-matter with the natural sciences -- what is commonly referred to as "positivism" -- Continental philosophy has generally dismissed such ideas as no more than a reversion to a pre-Kantian conception of the philosophical enterprise.

[1] - https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/michaelrosen/files/contine...

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In the mid 1990s I wrote my Master's thesis about the difference between Analytical and Continental philosophy. To summarise it: The difference is more sociological (who quotes whom), historical (which are the classics you refer to, such as Kant vs. Hume, etc.) and a matter of style (a tendency (not more) to use formal logical to make something explicit or do without it) than actual philosophical differences.

For every content criterion that people have brought up to mark the difference between Analytical and Continental philosophy, one could usually find a prominent philosopher in either camp who match or does not match it:

Analytical philosophy: Formal logic? -- The early Wittgenstein is fond of it, but the late Wittgenstein moves away from it.

Analytical philosophy: Problems of philosophy as language problems? -- But Nietzsche and his fans (such as Mauthner).

Analytical philosophy: Importance of natural sciences for philosophy? -- But Cassirer.

Continental philosophy: Focus on hermeneutics? -- But Rorty.

Continental philosophy: Organic thinking (Hegel, etc.)? -- But Quine's holism.

Continental philosophy: Existentialism -- But many on the continent were not convinced. But many in the USA were interested. But Wittgensteins's mysticism.

...

I can give it a shot. I don't want to butcher it, but I feel like attention spans on here are pretty short for philosophy so here's the short version. Many continental philosophers appear to be skeptical of the separation of form and content necessary for logic to "work" in the context of another subject of study (Deleuze), interested in presenting tensions between ideas that do not clearly adapt themselves to exclusive truth or falsity (Derrida), or interested in presenting things that do not pretend to be particularly abstract or logical (Levinas).

On a personal note, I want to say that I drifted to continental philosophy in my undergrad after studying and appreciating formal logic. I realized that mainstream analytical philosophy had a lot less to do with logic than I had imagined (no symbolization, no commonly agreed upon rules of deduction), and at a certain point the question of "why logic" presented itself. I haven't found many opportunities in my writing to use the more technical concepts of modality or nth-orders, let alone anything from category theory.

e: Replaced induction with deduction, a typo

The irony is that "why logic" has been definitely answered... all sorts of highly technical formal logic found use in computer science!

I believe it! But I was talking about my philosophy research, in value theory and art history. I don't see the irony.

I think the irony is that all those weird logics turned out to not just be useful for logic... but literally actually really useful! Like people make lots of money based off of them

Intuitionistic and linear logics are good examples of "weird" logics that have had some relevance to computing.

Intuitionistic: Curry-Howard, Dependent Type Theory, formal methods.

Linear logic: Rust.

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