What are your philosophies?
I am new to this site and would like to gain the lay of the land; the most significant part of which is the users.
You may answer however you like, partitioning it up as mostly unrelated philosophies, or by wrapping it all up holistically. You can be as detailed as you like; if you want to roughly sum it all up in one sentence, that's fine by me, and if you want to create a behemoth of text, that is also fine :)
EDIT: Forgot to add, your contribution to the thread can also be commenting, criticizing and asking questions of other posts.
You may answer however you like, partitioning it up as mostly unrelated philosophies, or by wrapping it all up holistically. You can be as detailed as you like; if you want to roughly sum it all up in one sentence, that's fine by me, and if you want to create a behemoth of text, that is also fine :)
EDIT: Forgot to add, your contribution to the thread can also be commenting, criticizing and asking questions of other posts.
Comments (49)
I have not privileged philosophy because I find the works mostly unappealing to read (I have tasted a lot of it) and don't believe I have innate capacity to develop useful readings of the texts.
Since most of us are not Kant or Wittgenstein, we are likely limited in our capacity to do original thinking and are relegated to acquiring a kind of history of ideas, with some allegiances to what others have thought before us.
I've said before - Humans seem to be machines for making meaning - drawing connections and telling stories. Hence, culture, art, entertainment, religion, literature, philosophy, science, etc, etc. We can't help ourselves. It's our thing. Some of us like our stories to be metanarratives - foundational and transcendent. Some of us (me) are happy with tentative accounts, subject to constant revision.
I never think of myself as having a philosophy. That way of putting it feels foreign to me. And in fact, I neither know how to describe my general philosophical position nor whether I even have one. But lets see how it goes
I started this site as a replacement for an older site that fell apart. I was a moderator there towards the end, and now Im one of three administrators here at TPF. Like Tom, I have no formal training in philosophy. Depending on how you look at it, Im a Renaissance man or a mere dilettante, but when Im into philosophyit comes and goesI take it somewhat seriously. After having read some Marx and Hegel in my late teens, when I was a member of a weird Trotskyist cult, I dropped philosophy until about fifteen years ago, when I joined the predecessor of this site. I taught myself some logic, read Plato, Descartes, Wittgenstein, Austin and Ryle, studied the Critique of Pure Reason for many months, read Foucault and Husserl and Merleau-Ponty and a bunch of other things. Now, after five years without much interest in philosophy, Im into early critical theory and may even come back around to tackling Hegel at some point.
On what there is, Im a non-reductive materialist. I also think theres always something left out of our perception and conceptualization, i.e., something that escapes the human world while also underlying it (though underlying seems like the wrong word), which could be described as the Real, the non-identical, or the unconditioned, depending on your theory. This is how I attempt to be a proper realist while giving Kant his due.
On perception, I sometimes describe myself as a direct realist, but sometimes I reject that label and advocate embodied cognition, enactivism, ecological perception and so on, in an effort to sidestep the interminable (on TPF at least) debate between direct and indirect realism.
On knowledge and the mind Im with externalism, enactivism, and embodied cognition, and Im a big fan of Wittgensteins contribution here too. Im aware that I just reduced epistemology and the philosophy of mind to one sentence.
Politically I tend to think in quasi-neo-Marxian terms but I dont like most Marxisms. Political and social philosophy is my main philosophical interest at the moment, where I feel most affinity with philosophers like Adorno. I think that capitalism is the most powerful and most flexible in a long line of social forms based on domination and exploitation and the curtailment of human freedom, creativity and flourishing. I also think that modernity has produced, and could still produce more, non-capitalist social forms that are similarly based on oppression. I believe this is a difficult problem.
Generally I believe that history is more important to philosophy than most philosophers have understood and I am impatient with philosophical theories that are clear outgrowths of their historical conditionslike Descartes and the centuries of representationalism that followedeven though I accept (sometimes) that in philosophy, theories cannot be rejected merely by pointing to their historico-ideological nature. I might start a discussion about this one day, i.e., about historicism.
On God and religion, again I think somewhat anti-philosophically about it: I take it for granted that its an anthropological and historical phenomenon, and I have no interest in debating or thinking about Gods existence. So by default Im an atheist, but I respect and value aspects of religious and spiritual thinking and see no need to fight against religion per se.
On meta-ethics I go for something like a social naturalist moral realism, which plays out normatively as virtue ethics. And I go back to early Marx here for some sort of humanism and a focus not only on the social nature but also on the essential (there I said it) creativity of human beings.
In general for: the body, society, history, creativity, human flourishing and endless criticism.
In general against: Cartesian theories of perception and the mind, ahistorical and asocial philosophy, idealism, greedy reductionism, and stupidity.
Ive avoided logic, truth, mathematics, science, and language, either because I havent decided where I stand or because I dont know the issues well.
Quoting Ø implies everything
Et voila.
I also find most philosophical texts unappealing in their formulation. However, underneath all of the unnecessary complex verbiage and syntax, there are sometimes very important points. Also, sometimes I find the text unappealing upon first reading, simply due to not understanding the nuanced demands that called for the more advanced vocabulary. Sometimes, this can also justify a cluttered syntax. Other times, it's like the author wants to give you a migraine.
Academic philosophy or literary philosophy is highly dialectical and should be understood as an acedemic discipline for its own ends.
Practical philosophy is when you're capable
to enter into the domain of the public and
social sphere as an agent of positive
change and a skilled worker at detection
of fundamental error or flawed reason.
A practice and evolving group of skill sets which
almost always needs retuning and continued
reinforcing from study and teaching.
I make no argument against the texts themselves, the problem sits with me as an inadequate reader of such texts - for reasons of capacity and temperament.
Keep it simple, "Live and let live"
I don't care what any of the great philosophers have said about anything, They were only guessing at things. Whilst many of them appear to logically be correct, it all comes down to one thing. If I stick my nose into someone else's life it gives them the right to stick their nose in mine. So, don't give a shit what others believe. Live your own life.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/profile/47/180-proof
I've come to understand that a philosopher (foolosopher) is a fool who recognizes his or her own foolery (NB: repetitively self-harming foolery I call "stupidity") and therefore seeks loves the wisdom which masters (reduces) foolery. Thus, for me at least, philosophy is the discipline of methodologically unlearning self-immiserating (meta-cognitive & moral) habits through a daily praxis of reflective study, dialectical discursive reasoning & aesthetic-moral engagement.
FWIW, I seem to wear all of these buttons / labels simultaneously:
[i] epicurean-spinozist
fallibilist-absurdist
economic democrat[/i]
:death: :flower:
(memento mori, memento vivere)
update: a recent post ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/791990
In response to your self-proclaimed behemoth of a text, I have a list of question of behemoth length. If you do not wish to answer some or all of the answers, due to the time it would take, I completely understand! Here they go:
1. Could you elaborate on your non-reductive materialism? Are you saying that there are propositions regarding the mental realm whose truth is undecidable from information about the physical realm, and vice versa? Yet at the same time, the mental and physical still exist as the same substance?
2. As an occasional direct realist, how do you respond to Cognitive Dynamics: From Attractors to Active Inference (Friston et al., 2014), and Objects of Consciousness (Hoffman & Prakash, 2014)? They argue that direct realism is impossible/implausible due to entropy and evolution, respectively.
3. As an externalist, where do you think your "justification" comes from? I use quotation marks because some externalists do not believe in justification; in that case, replaced justification with the most fitting analog.
4. As an enactivist, how do you account for metacognition? Is the contents of our mind also a part of our environment, thus relegating this sense of ourselves to be the consciousness itself, and not the mental structures around/attached to it?
5. What do you think of Wittgenstein's hinge beliefs?
6. How do you respond to the claim that some people make stating that communism and/or socialism has never been successful in practice?
7. As an historicist, do you counter The Death of the Author view, or do you try to reconcile it? If the latter, do you perhaps think it is largely irrelevant to historicism?
Sorry for taking a while to reply. I had time to reply to Tom Storm, but as I formulated my question to you, I was whisked away by mundanities.
Some other time perhaps. Each one deserves a main page discussion of its own and I dont currently have enough interest or knowledge to answer them all.
Questions 2, 3, and 4: those I cannot answer. For instance, I have not read those works that argue against direct realism, and when I said I was for externalism it seems I was bullshitting or perhaps was once in favour of it but have now forgotten the debate.
But Ill answer 6 directly: I agree.
I see :) If I get time, I will ask some questions outside of the Lounge and refer back to this conversation :)
That is completely understandable. Luckily however, I am not pointing a gun at your head.
:up:
My mind changes a lot. But I think that's a good thing. And I frequently find myself in between positions.
I have certain loves: Epicurus, Kant, Marx, Feyerabend, Camus, Levinas
But thems are just loves. And we aren't our lovers, much less the people we hold in admiration.
I'm pretty creative so I mostly like to explore different notions on the boards -- usually others' because it's easier to comment than to make an OP, but sometimes I get the gumption to start a discussion.
Welcome to the boards. Do you have a "lay of the land" you'd share about yourself?
Thank you :)
Regarding your question, I think my bio has a nice summary of the center piece of my philosophy:
I do not wish to go into too much detail regarding this theory before having published it in a far more mature form. As for that philosophical conversation outside of my theory creation however, I can elaborate a little further:
I'm pretty much interested in everything that has to do with science, philosophy and mathematics. To scratch the surface, I can mention that I really like Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus. The essay has helped me a lot, and I feel like the core idea acts as my safety netting in case my theory never works out. I also like Jung's theory of archetypes; I think I have had a relationship with archetypes since I was a kid, which I have expressed through my life-long habit of writing fiction. The idea of archetypes have taken on a new depth of meaning after I began learning about and experimenting with psychedelics in my teens. I also find a lot of ideas in Buddhism, and eastern spirituality in general, very interesting.
As for politics, I am mostly uninterested, given that any concrete discussion relies on information of which I have no faith that we possess. Society is corrupt at every level, and I somewhat lean towards the possibility that any societal structuring would fail to deliver on its promises. However, if there is any level of political discussion I could be interested in, it would be the philosophical level that merely pertains to figuring out what societal structuring is likely best given assumptions about human nature, since this kind of discussion is not contingent on assuming some political source (not) being credible.
I definitely agree with that.
Quoting Paine
I would disagree there. We would still have many fundamental differences left to have fun with, and at the same time, a lot of unnecessary (and sometimes deadly) conflict would have been removed through such a language.
I did say that the method has value. Maybe saying "too easy" sends the wrong message. I find a value in struggling and becoming familiar with a thinker that cannot be replaced by skillful summation.
Perhaps my perspective is a disability of sorts. I share many of the interests you mentioned but don't think of them as matters I have a clear relationship with. I feel most closely to what Kafka said:
"I am the problem, no scholar to be found, far and wide."
I find value in struggle too. A universal and precise language would not eliminate struggle; it would increase the fruits of it, however. And what is value in becoming familiar with a thinker if not the value of their ideas?
I hope I did not imply as much.
I did not mean to imply struggle had an intrinsic value in this context. Trying to read important thinkers is not easy because they are the ones handing out the difficult homework. Readers have to interpret a meaning to even have an inkling of what is being said. The movement from first guesses to better ones is a commitment to learn the lessons as they are presented. I have not had yet the experience of getting to the end.
That is different from settling upon a mark of what was intended. A mark that can be freely traded in the marketplace of ideas. Those two dimensions are entangled with each other. I propose that they cannot be dissolved into one.
There is definitely much value inherent in this process. It exercises many things; one's discipline, one's ability to comprehend and reason, one's ability to fluidly shift between semiotic mappings, etc.
However, in the aftermath of a widespread adoption of a precise and static philosophical lingua de franca, there would still be many exercises of discipline, comprehension and reasoning left. There would be little to no exercising of one's ability to fluidly shift between semiotic mappings (except for during one's learning of the language), though there would not be much need for this ability anyways, given that discourse would now happen with precision and clarity. Multi-layered and interpretative discourse could be relegated to art.
There is always the question of what the author was/is trying to say. I am not sure what the 'fluidity' you mention refers to. Is it the way academics talk amongst each other or are you saying that those original intentions are simply not available?
"Art" is treated very differently by different people. Do you have someone who frames this particularly well in your mind or do you have your own theory?
If you are very fluid in your ability to shift between semiotic mappings, then you are good at pushing aside previous groundings of signifiers so as to receive the stated grounding of the speaker. This allows for a far less interrupted flow of ideas from them to you.
I find philosophers are typically at either end of this spectrum. Some philosophers get caught up in the history and baggage of words, thinking it relevant to the actual conceptualization communicated by those words despite the speaker clearly redefining them. Other philosophers understand that words are intrinsically empty* vessels of meaning and that the concepts they carry are the target; unless you're a semantician, you don't care about the map, you care about the land!
*They may have phonaesthetic properties that factor in on what meanings are more likely to be given them; see the Bouba/Kiki effect. Even then, certain definitions of intrinsic in this context may relegate even phonaesthetic properties to the set of extrinsic properties of words.
I get the map versus terrain distinction. Where we disagree is if the efforts of thinkers are properly understood as:
"previous groundings of signifiers so as to receive the stated grounding of the speaker."
That makes it sound like you have gained a height above the others where you have a better view. The presumption does not offend me.
But you are taking the 'previous groundings' as something that can be accepted as such.
So, where are you going to put all those who object to the map drawn under those conditions?
What do you take as examples of 'previous groundings'?
Well, first I just want to ground your question; I think it is (ultimately) a response to this:
Quoting Ø implies everything
So, to answer the question as I interpreted it; the previous grounding is whatever referent(s) the listener tied to the term before the speaker stated their own definition. If the listener is then is able to switch perspective and communicate using the new definition that was established by the speaker, then they are demonstrating an ability to fluidly switch between semiotic mappings.
Now, what caused the previous grounding of the listener? That is a different, far more complicated question. It would depend a lot on the type of term/referents involved.
I belong to the group that likes metaphysics and epistemology. Metaphysically, that is, concerning the nature of the world, I am a Strawsonian "real physicalist". A real physicalist is one who takes consciousness to be a wholly physical phenomena, not reducible to what we can say about the brain in the sciences.
It's a very broad view that takes it that there is only one kind of stuff - physical stuff, and it incorporates everything: history, literature, stars, ideas - everything is physical. This goes to show how baffling the nature of the physical is.
When it comes to epistemology, which focuses on our knowledge of the world, I'd call myself a "rationalistic idealist", in the tradition of the British Neo-Platonists, Kant and Chomsky. I believe experience conforms to our mode of cognition and that we do not know, the inner nature of things, our experience being a partial exception.
Most of all, I'm a card carrying "mysterian", who believes that there are many aspects of the world and ourselves that we simply cannot know in principle, and from this it follows that, at bottom, everything is a mystery to us. The universe is what it is, but to us it's mysterious. We will never be completely satisfied in such a manner that we will cease to want to stop asking "why" questions.
I prefer to speak concretely on politics, instead of ethics. However, if there is a label I'd use for what I believe is a correct ethical view, it would be "universalism", the idea being that the standards we apply to ourselves, we should apply to others, or more importantly, the opposite formulation.
Quoting Manuel
Can you briefly comment on how real naturalism understands logical absolutes and math and how do we understand an idea as physical?
Quoting Manuel
How do you determine whether something can in principle not be known?
These things can only be grasped - so far as we know - by matter modified in a specific manner, which, when interacting with an environment, gives rise to these ideas.
Is there some other way to know about math and logic than through experience, which is at bottom a specific configuration of physical stuff? There may be, but if so, I don't know what it is.
Quoting Tom Storm
On the basis that we are creatures of nature and not supernatural beings. If this is the case - which can be debated - then it follows, that there are things we can perceive and understand and things we cannot.
A given nature - be it eagle nature, dolphin nature, moth nature or any other animal, must be quite restricted in order to arise. If these restrictions are lacking, no creature can develop any nature. Dolphins can't walk, moths can't help themselves from flying into lightbulbs, which is often suicidal, etc.
Something similar must be the case for human cognition. It could be the case that we are so constituted that we can do science and some arts, for instance, yet are unable to explain how the stuff science studies (particles, photons, energy fields) leads to the stuff we enjoy in a painting (say, Van Gogh's Starry Night or a majestic vista from the topic of a mountain).
Another creature might have no problem in understanding, intuitively, how colorless photons could lead to the blueness of the sky, or the redness of a rose, etc.
'My philosophy' has mainly consisted of these -isms:
i. ontological naturalism Whatever else the whole of reality consist in, reason is embodied in, or immanent to, an unbounded dynamic structure of causal relations and stochastic micro-events that constrains-enables its explicability to embodied reason. This immanently explicable, unbounded, causal-stochastic, dynamic structure aka "nature" (phusis, natura naturans, dao) is real in the maximal sense of manifesting the ineluctable conditionality, or contingency, of the totality of its constituents and, therefore, the entirety (such as it is) of itself.
NB: From this ontology I derive the epistemic concepts of "material" (re: non-formal data) and "physical" (re: formally modeled non-formal data); I use both terms as non-reductive interpretations descriptive-levels of "nature".
ii. ethical naturalism Humans suffer. As a member of the same species, each individual has the same defects as all other h sapiens, which are learned as the 'theory of mind' is acquired by each of us. Deprivation or neglect of these species defects (e.g. hunger, thirst, shelter, sleep, touch, esteem, personal-social bonds, relaxation, health, hygiene, trust, safety, etc) causes discomfort, even dysfunction suffering (or worse). These are facts of nature (re: h. sapiens); we cannot not know this. We can avoid, prevent or reduce deprivations & neglect; this fact we also cannot not know. Suffering itself solicits relief from, or help to reduce, suffering. Through practice sufferers develop habits which both help and do not help to reduce the suffering of other sufferers and/or themselves. Through reflective practice ethics sufferers can unlearn habits which tend not to help to reduce suffering, etc.
Given this (barely sketched) naturalized ethical framework (tailored for 'beasts, not angels'), my normative morality is Negative Hedonic Utilitarianism (Right personal judgment & conduct reduces harm) and applied morality is Negative Preference Consequentialism (Right public policy reduces injustice). Reflectively exercising these moral practices daily tends to both cultivate adaptive habits which help to reduce suffering (i.e. virtues) and unlearn maladaptive habits which do not help to reduce suffering (i.e. vices).
addendum:
Psychological suffering from maladapting (re: stupidity) to ineluctable, physical change (re: entropy)
iii. pragmatic naturalism It's an effin' kluge:
Popper's falsificationism (re: knowledge) +
Haack's foundherentism (re: belief) +
[s] Lakoff's embodied mind (re: cognition) +
Metzinger's self-modeling non-reductive physicalism (re: cognition) +
Hawking & Mlodinow's model-dependent realism (re: cosmology)[/s]
iv. ecological-economic democratism My secular, leftist critique of 'hegemonic neoliberalism' consists in proposing a hybrid of deep ecology + economic democracy or, in other words, This proposal is not a political action-plan, or manifesto; rather, it is a secular, post-marxist attempt at critically de-naturalizing subverting, even strategically sabotagizing the status quo 'paralysis' of neoliberal pollutionists & diversionary identity-politricksters.
v. antitheism An argument against the sine qua non claims of theism and not against g/G itself. I'm persuaded by the Apophatics: How is it that anything but silence with respect to a g/G-token of theism is not indistinguishable from idolatry (or even, in theists' own religious terms, "blasphemous")? I am, however, agnostic about any g/G-type that does not consist of theism's sine qua non claims (e.g. "Deus, sive Natura").
:death: :flower:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/843433
I've often though this latter one was a good metaphor for humans and the urge to find meaning through religions. :razz:
Quoting Manuel
Ok, but for me it seems impossible to determine when this 'could be' becomes an 'is'.
But the problem of how best to live is not answered by reading books. Also central to my practice is self knowledge and the examined life. What is required is honesty with myself about myself and the willingness to work on what I think and see and say and do.
anti-supernaturalism (ground)
ecological-economic democratism (path)
singularitarianism (horizon)
addendum to
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/798898
If I had to summarize a world-view, it's something like : Try to get through life as joyfully as possible while doing others and the planet as little harm as possible.
Okay, but why? :chin:
(that why is your philosophy)
I like the world.
:flower: