Is Philosophy the "Highest" Discourse?

Inquiry stops with philosophy because being -- what there is -- does not extend beyond what can be reflected upon.

Philosophy could be called highest because it is without presuppositions.

You seem to want to say that philosophy has to do with thinking qua thinking, and that if all being can be thought, then philosophy has a relation to all being in a way that other disciplines do not. That seems right. Or we might say that there is no thinking or knowledge that is non-philosophical.

From biology to philosophy isn’t a lateral move, on this view; we’re going up the ladder a rung, looking down on our previous viewpoint from a higher and more perspicuous and more general one. And, completing the picture, once we’re at the philosophy level, there are no more rungs.

I am uncomfortable with viewing the presuppositionaless-ness of philosophy as "an argumentative trick."

(Is "presuppositionaless-ness" translated from the German? :wink: )

Oh, I didn't realize that's what you meant.

I was referring merely to the "gotcha" aspect, where any questioning of philosophy becomes yet more philosophy. Do you think this has to do with the lack of presuppositions? I'd like to hear more about that.

I'm not sure what it even means to be without limits? Is this a capacity we have ...

More an attempt to tease out some possibilities as we consider what, if anything, is special about philosophical discourse.

Other disciplines have fairly clear starting points, but not philosophy.

there is nothing unique that all philosophical discourse has in common that distinguishes it from other modes of discourse.

Except, as above, that all philosophical discourse resists being absorbed/reduced into a different discourse. Or at least that's the possibility we're looking at here.

I will sometimes argue that there is such a thing as the philosophical ascent, generally understood as moving from a state of ignorance to insight or enlightenment. And also that there are degrees of knowledge, the 'analogy of the Divided Line' in the Republic being a paradigm for that.

much of philosophy is modeled on the success of science.

The division between philosophy and literature is not so clear.

The question of the OP is, in part, can we find the path to these qualities by examining the peculiar nature of philosophical reflection?

you've made me think of Ian Hacking's Elevator Words in The Social Construction of What?. Take a gander at page 31* of the pdf and page 21* of the printed page numbers and tell me what you think.

If philosophy is only reflection then clearly there's something "higher" than philosophy -- action, life, experience, whatever you want to call it.

Or, at least, I see action as a part of philosophy

This is going to sound paradoxical, but perhaps the starting point of philosophy is in fact the realization that its inquiries cannot be brought to an end by absorption into another discipline.

Clearly we couldn't know that reflection is endless until we'd discovered it to be so, which is a process in time, but having learned this, we can posit that feature as the feature which makes philosophy unique...

If an inquiry requires support and presuppositions are the ultimate supports, then an inquiry without presuppositions cannot ultimately be brought to an end in any obvious way.

But one could speak about "bringing an inquiry to an end" via justification or via termination. I am thinking about justification, where an answer to a question is definitively justified.

Yes, that's an important distinction. I think the problem I'm proposing in the OP is more about termination than justification. Self-reflection -- that is, the ability of philosophical discourse to always reply with more questions that can only be answered philosophically -- is literally interminable. That's the aspect that I said cannot be brought to an end, and that many philosophers regard as evidence of something important and special about such discourse.

(...) true teaching is based on an authority which legitimizes itself by the exemplary life and charismatic quality of its exponents.

I’m suggesting that this be downrated to an argumentative pinnacle because of a particular characteristic it reveals: The philosopher can automatically trump any card played against them. Suppose some surly neo-Freudian interrupts me at the point where I assert that “there’s nowhere else to go.” Nonsense, he says. “I’ll give you a psychological-slash-reductive explanation of why philosophers do what they do, and this explanation will have nothing to do with ?ideas’ or ?reasoning,’ and everything to do with culturally determined modes of expression mixed with individual depth psychology.” Ah, but I can reply, “Indeed? And what is your justification for asserting that such an explanation is true?” We see where this has to go: We’re back to doing philosophy. My surly interlocutor has been trumped. My question doesn’t arise out of any real insight or depth, but he can’t very well deny that it’s reasonable and meaningful. And nor can he claim that it has an answer within his discipline.

When Hegel compares this image to the way a philosophical idea develops, he points out that nature must exist in time, so this development is necessarily time-sequential. But he emphasizes that, again, being last in a sequence is not what he means by “highest” or “last” philosophy. We are speaking of a dialectical process in which each stage retains or “sublates” the former one. Ideas reveal themselves as a theoretical unity, they do not grow or develop in time, like a plant. That would be like saying that 3 “comes before” 4 according to a clock measurement. This coming-before is surely not temporal. Rather, we perceive the sequence in one glance, so to speak, and can recognize that what is last has to be last, but not in the way that events in time are last.

At this point, if we want to, we can shrug our shoulders and declare nothing of interest here. Or we could keep the Hegelian glasses on and speculate that philosophy is “last” or “concluding” because it represents a true limit of something beyond mere argumentation. If we go full-on Hegelian, we would describe this something as Idea, or Spirit. But we could also say, more modestly, that the limits of inquiry may also show us the limits of being. As mentioned earlier, this requires a monistic turn, a suspicion that what is true of thought must be true of being as well. We have all read Irad Kimhi by now ( :joke: ) so we know how complicated this can get. But, again more modestly, all I’m pointing to is this: If there is an important connection between what can be thought and what exists, then it must include a thesis about self-reflection, and the limits of inquiry, and how these limits are related to what exists.

I suppose I am wondering what you meant when you talked about an inquiry being, "brought to an end by absorption into another discipline."

... science cannot absorb philosophy into its inquiry, whereas philosophy can set the terms for discussing how science is done.

3. … the subject matter is not exhausted in its aims; rather, it is exhaustively treated when it is worked out. Nor is the result which is reached the actual whole itself; rather, the whole is the result together with the way the result comes to be.

… differentiatedness is instead the limit of the thing at stake. It is where the thing which is at stake ceases, or it is what that thing is not.

Instead of dwelling on the thing at issue and forgetting itself in it, that sort of knowing is always grasping at something else.

5. The true shape in which truth exists can only be the scientific system of that truth.
The truth exists only in the system of knowledge of the truth.

To participate in the collaborative effort at bringing philosophy nearer to the form of science – to bring it nearer to the goal where it can lay aside the title of love of knowing and be actual knowing – is the task I have set for myself.

The inner necessity that knowing should be science lies in the nature of knowing, and the satisfactory explanation for this inner necessity is solely the exposition of philosophy itself.

However, external necessity, insofar as this is grasped in a universal manner and insofar as personal contingencies and individual motivations are set aside, is the same as the internal necessity which takes on the shape in which time presents the existence of its moments. To demonstrate that it is now time for philosophy to be elevated into science would therefore be the only true justification of any attempt that has this as its aim, because it would demonstrate the necessity of that aim, and, at the same time, it would be the realization of the aim itself.

Roughly what this claim states is that asking for justification eventually terminates in philosophy, but there's no particular argument for the uniqueness of the termination.

If you showed that for every initial X there existed an n such that C(Q^n ( X ) ) = Phil, you would have some kind of "termination in philosophy".

But the relationship between the termination of the sequence of contexts in Phil and any properties of the recursive function Q remains unspecified. Why Q has the (alleged?) properties it has is something hitherto unexamined.

I do notice a bit of a landmine in this discussion, however.

So if X is "Frodo bears the ring", Q( X ) would be the answer to "How do you justify that Frodo bears the ring?", which would be "I read it in the book"... And someone asks you why... And you assert you read it in the book. And someone asks you why. And you assert you read it in the book.

What ensures that Q( X ) has this convergent property? And what ensures the convergence always goes to philosophy?

What I suspect is producing the termination in Phil, if it indeed happens, is that it is a property of Q itself rather than any of the assertions it is applied to.

I was referring to a situation such as the one involving the neo-Freudian. He attempts to short-circuit philosophical discourse by explaining it in terms of his discipline, abandoning any philosophical vocabulary about reasons, arguments, or truth. Another example might be a theological coup, in which someone insists on translating all talk of reasons, truth, etc., into a discussion of the speaker's salvation status (i.e., "You're only saying that because you're saved/damned"). It's a kind of ad hominem argument, but more general and potentially sweeping because it claims to invalidate not only a particular argument but all the premises of philosophical discourse. Many positivist/ordinary-language attacks on metaphysics also have this same characteristic, I think. And I'm claiming they can all be answered with more philosophy.

I say that the dialogue would go differently. After the first reply of “I read it in the book,” the next recursion is not “Why?” but rather, “Tell me how reading it in the book justifies your answer.” The interlocutor would then need to give an account of fictional realities, and how they may relate to truth and justification, etc. etc. More philosophy, and very interesting philosophy at that. So it’s not just reading comprehension. What it “says in the book” is far from a concluding moment in the dialectic.

How do you argue that the convergence goes to philosophy without already arguing that philosophy interrogates the context of all contexts.

contexts tend to relate to each other even if they are distinct (but have fuzzy boundaries)

If at the end of our cogitating, all we have is the Q recursion as our "termination in philosophy," that’s not much of a result. The problem is how to shape it into something more significant, something actually about the nature of philosophy as a pursuit of wisdom, or at least knowledge.

But the study of being qua being will be implicated in every other study of being (qua X).

Why though?

Why does the study of being qua motion (physics) implicate the study of being qua being (metaphysics)? Because motion is a kind of being.

The two latter studies are co-implicative with the former.

The analogy of course limps given the sui generis character of being.

A ) If X is a subdomain of Y, then studying Y is studying X.

it leaves unexamined how context would need to distribute over the nesting of contexts

And I would say that these cases like the neo-Freudian rely on philosophical thinking to debunk philosophical discourse, and therefore result in a kind of performative contradiction.

I'm not opposed to that, but what I said was the opposite.

And I would say that these cases like the neo-Freudian rely on philosophical thinking to debunk philosophical discourse, and therefore result in a kind of performative contradiction.
— Leontiskos

Yes, though many an honest scientist is probably unaware of doing this until it's pointed out.

the "right" answer to Q . . .

I have bolded "would" there since it seems modal. But in my view it's the wrong modality for the question - I think the dialogue must go differently than I suggested in order for it not to count as an counter example. So we'd be left requiring an account of why the flippant repetition cannot count as an answer. It strikes me that it could count as one, even if it is a bad one.

(...) true teaching is based on an authority which legitimizes itself by the exemplary life and charismatic quality of its exponents.
— Wayfarer

I have to ask, is this what you yourself believe?

Scientific theories can and do in fact put into question presuppositions passed down through the history of philosophy.

Scientific theories can and do in fact put into question presuppositions passed down through the history of philosophy.
— Joshs

They do, and the issue here is the nature of how they "put into question" those presuppositions. Is it possible to do this without invoking further philosophy -- as opposed to some allegedly pure scientific approach? That's what I'm doubting (and I bet you'd agree), though as I say, I don't think most scientists are engaged in some nefarious conspiracy to demolish philosophy with bad arguments. They're just doing their thing, and rarely get the chance to reflect on their presuppositions.

Isn't there a relationship between not entertaining presuppositions, and the epoch? of ancient skepticism, revived by Husserl? Recall that ancient and Pyrrhonian skepticism differed from modern skepticism by simply 'withholding assent from that which is not evident' and strictly attending to the quality of phenomena as they appear.

?Joshs Probably not obscurantist enough for him to blather about

He only seems obscurantist because you don’t understand him

In any case, I stand by the initial point - that the absence of presuppositions is what was intended by epoch?, both in Husserl and in the original skeptics.

Philosophy could be called highest because it is without presuppositions. But could it be called highest for a more substantive reason?

I recognise that it is something often exploited by the unscrupulous to exploit the gullible

It's yet another field where we the plebs must defer to the experts, like we already do with scientists, doctors, lawyers etc.

I think what we’re talking about here isn’t a dichotomy between something called science and something called philosophy , but a spectrum of explication.

It's yet another field where we the plebs must defer to the experts, like we already do with scientists, doctors, lawyers etc.

I would say that there is no such thing as a presuppositionless philosophy. If philosophy begins with questioning, it is also the case that to question is to already have in mind the matter about which one is inquiring.

Emptiness is a mode of perception, a way of looking at experience. It adds nothing to and takes nothing away from the raw data of physical and mental events. You look at events in the mind and the senses with no thought of whether there's anything lying behind them.

This mode is called emptiness because it's empty of the presuppositions we usually add to experience to make sense of it: the stories and world-views we fashion to explain who we are and the world we live in.

the observation that this discourse appears to allow endless recursion?

Why is it the case that philosophical discourse can question, and reflect upon, the discourse of physics, but the reverse is not the case?

But also notice the significance of aporia in those dialogues

It would be bleak if you take such a bleak view. If you were a piano student, presumably you would select a teacher who was an expert in teaching piano, and you would admire and hope to emulate excellent pianists.

For Hadot, famously, the means for the philosophical student to achieve the “complete reversal of our usual ways of looking at things” epitomized by the Sage were a series of spiritual exercises. These exercises encompassed all of those practices still associated with philosophical teaching and study: reading, listening, dialogue, inquiry, and research. However, they also included practices deliberately aimed at addressing the student’s larger way of life, and demanding daily or continuous repetition: practices of attention (prosoche), meditations (meletai), memorizations of dogmata, self-mastery (enkrateia), the therapy of the passions, the remembrance of good things, the accomplishment of duties, and the cultivation of indifference towards indifferent things (PWL 84). Hadot acknowledges his use of the term “spiritual exercises” may create anxieties, by associating philosophical practices more closely with religious devotion than typically done (Nussbaum 1996, 353-4; Cooper 2010).

I have expressed before the idea that the role of philosophy is to 'take you to the border' - the border of what can be said, explained, expressed in words. Of course the influence of Zen Buddhism is perceptible in that, but the same intuition is expressed in other philosophers.

Those insights are communicated to the student by the teacher. As well as what is learned by their deportment and presence.

Of course it's radically un-PC for liberal democracy

agree that philosophy begins with a problem or with questions that need to be asked. I suppose amongst the problematics of Platonism was the nature of knowledge, the good, the true, the beautiful, the just, and such large and difficult-to-define questions. But also notice the significance of aporia in those dialogues - questions which can't be answered and for which no easy solution presents itself

philosophers have no business offering opinions within a scientific discourse

Their super-power, if any, lies in their ability to defend themselves from challenges that would redirect their discourse into other disciplines.

He is talking about wise men with a "rare faculty" whose teachings are based on authority, not personal understanding.

philosophers have no business offering opinions within a scientific discourse
—

Dope.

Or in insight. That was, for instance, the basis of the Buddha's authority - one which was never imposed on others

I was thinking that the tradition of the "top-level" idea casts philosophy as specifically "the queen of the sciences"

Gauss, who termed mathematics as that

go with Gauss

I think Conze makes it very clear: insight can not be transmitted or taught to people who lack it

That (i.e. 'sciential philosophy' a.k.a. 'scientism') has the following features: [1] Natural science, particularly that dealing with inorganic matter, has a cognitive value, tells us about the actual structure of the universe, and provides the other branches of knowledge with an ideal standard in that they are the more "scientific" the more they are capable of mathematical formulation and the more they rely on repeatable and publicly verified observations. [2] Man is the highest of beings known to science, and his power and convenience should be promoted at all costs. [3] Spiritual and magical forces cannot influence events, and life after death may be disregarded, because it is unproven by scientific methods. [4] In consequence, "life" means "man's" life in this world, and the task is to ameliorate this life by a social "technique" in harmony with the "welfare" or "will" of "the people." Buddhists must view all these tenets with the utmost distaste.

Have you ever read Phenomenology of Perception?

(3) Are you sure this is anything more than a dirty rhetorical trick? Another "heads I win, tails you lose" sort of thing?

I would distinguish between a view of philosophy as (either) the highest (or the most fundamental) science, and a view that philosophy holds some particular and special place precisely by not being science.

Are you sure that no other discipline has this "super-power"?

go with Gauss
— Srap Tasmaner

Hmmm. Is this how Catholic mathematicians say "See you later"?

That was an excerpt. The entire essay is Buddhist Philosophy and Its European Parallels, Philosophy East and West, 1963.

Aside from Conze, the principle of monastic lineage in Buddhism and other spiritual traditions assumes the transmission of insight.

I think you're very much viewing it through the lens of the rejection of dogmatic Christianity and its 'blind faith'

Oh for Gödel's sake.

That's quite presumptuous, I think my reading is pretty straightforward.

there is in every soul an organ or instrument of knowledge that is purified and kindled afresh by... studies when it has been destroyed and blinded by our ordinary pursuits, a faculty whose preservation outweighs ten thousand eyes; for only by it is reality beheld. Those who share this faith will think your words superlatively true. But those who have and have had no inkling of it will naturally think them all moonshine. For they can see no other benefit from such pursuits worth mentioning.

the desire to find something better, more interesting, than what I called "an argumentative gotcha!" Maybe it can't be found, but that's not yet clear. I repeat that, if that's all there is, it's not much of a result.

How would chemistry, for instance, defend itself strictly within the discourse of chemistry from the challenge that it is really a form of physics?

Suppose some surly neo-Freudian interrupts me at the point where I assert that “there’s nowhere else to go.” Nonsense, he says. “I’ll give you a psychological-slash-reductive explanation of why philosophers do what they do, and this explanation will have nothing to do with ?ideas’ or ?reasoning,’ and everything to do with culturally determined modes of expression mixed with individual depth psychology.” Ah, but I can reply, “Indeed? And what is your justification for asserting that such an explanation is true?” We see where this has to go: We’re back to doing philosophy. My surly interlocutor has been trumped.

Does this have to be an argument, if I can put it this way, that philosophical maximalism is equivalent to philosophical minimalism?

Does it also function as an argument that no boundary between philosophy and the sciences (and possibly other empirical disciplines, and possibly the arts, ...) is definable much less enforceable?

7 ) Then anything relevant to X cannot be relevant to any philosophical claim.

there is in every soul an organ or instrument of knowledge

there is in every soul an organ or instrument of knowledge

My understanding of the thread was that philosophy does something different from science. What it does different might turn out to be not so interesting ? and we have some idea in what sense it might not be interesting, if it's just a cheap "gotcha" ? or it might be interesting, only it's hard to characterize what it might be doing that's interesting.

But now you're talking about reduction, which I didn't think was on the table, and which surely we don't want to get into here.

Their super-power, if any, lies in their ability to defend themselves from challenges that would redirect their discourse into other disciplines.

Aye. It's an argument that if you make philosophy the most expansive and the most foundational discipline, you end up making philosophy able to be done without philosophical reasoning and also have its foundations refuted by non-philosophical reasoning.

if chemistry had this ability, it would be able to respond to a physicist's attempt at reduction using only the arguments available to it qua chemistry

Interesting. What must not happen, or at any rate what we don't want to happen on pain of triviality, is the "flippant repetition" version. I think we need to be more precise. Did you mean your repeated "Why?" to be shorthand for "Why is what you just said a justification for what you said before that (eventually recurring back to X)"? Or does the "Why?" question change its character and possibly its reference depending on where we are in the chain of reason-giving? I'm trying to figure out if we're absolutely stuck with what we might call the "2-year-old's version" of "Why?" I think this makes a difference, but say more about how you were using the repeated why's.

Well, not quite that bad, but I think we have good reason to want to draw back from this conclusion. Before I talk about that, could you say whether your premises concerning relevance relations (3 - 7) are accepted logical truths? I don't know alternative logics well enough myself.

I don't believe they are. I stipulated them based on my intuitions.

IE, there must be something in the nature of questioning itself which allows it to alchemize any input into relevant philosophical concepts. And we'd need to put that in as a constraint on the series of questions to ensure the termination. What would it be?

And there is no natural science which constrains physics

Eventually, the chemist himself will have to reach for physics, because while reduction is a myth, and the laws of physics are not enough to do biochemistry, biochemistry is constrained by physics and you can eventually reach a level where the explanation for what happens and what doesn't comes not from chemistry but from physics.

Imagine that X is relevant to Y and that Y is relevant to some philosophical claim P, then X is relevant to Y, Y is relevant to P, then X is relevant to P.

I don't think your sentence here is grammatically coherent. Not sure what it is supposed to mean. Same with your argument given earlier.

There are many other important and useful discourses besides the rational/philosophical. They may even lead to vital truths.

Does this have to be an argument, if I can put it this way, that philosophical maximalism is equivalent to philosophical minimalism?

Does it also function as an argument that no boundary between philosophy and the sciences (and possibly other empirical disciplines, and possibly the arts, ...) is definable much less enforceable?

Assume X isn't relevant to any claim whose context is philosophy, then X cannot be relevant to any Y which is related to a Z whose context is philosophy, since then X would be relevant to that Z through transitivity.

1 ) Take a philosophical claim X which does not have relevance to a claim in any discipline.

Philosophy could be called highest because it is without presuppositions.

Collingwood says that for every question there is at least one presupposition. Collingwood also talks about "absolute presuppositions" which are the underlying, often unrecognized, assumptions that are the foundation of a way of looking at the world. Is this what you're talking about?

That gives you two choices about how disciplines are organised based on relevance. Either philosophy is related to all domains, and thus co-extensive with each of them it is related to. Or philosophy is not relevant to some domains - that is, philosophy is of no relevance to any claim in them.

But we don't get to decide which is which, based purely on the notion of relevance. If you can show that some claim is related to some claim which is relevant to philosophy, you would show that it is thereby relevant to philosophy assuming relevance is an equivalence relation.

There are two conceptions of philosophical foundationalness in this thread. The first says that philosophical justifications are the linear foundation of all justification-claims. The second says that philosophy (in terms of logic or metaphysics) permeates all justification-claims or domains of study. The difference is very similar to Aristotle's difference between a per accidens causal series and a per se causal series.

I think both are defensible, but I am more interested in the latter.

Either philosophy is related to all domains, and thus co-extensive with each of them it is related to.

In philosophy there are no such unallowed criticisms. In philosophy there are no such presuppositions.

I don't believe they are. I stipulated them based on my intuitions. It captures a sense of relevance, but you might prefer to think of relevance differently. Like if relevance was thought of causally, you might want to relax symmetry (since if X is a cause of Y, then Y cannot be a cause of X, perhaps).

Either philosophy is related to all domains, and thus co-extensive with each of them it is related to. Or philosophy is not relevant to some domains - that is, philosophy is of no relevance to any claim in them.

1 ) Take a philosophical claim X which does not have relevance to a claim in any discipline.

There is no such X.

Arthur Koestler's definition of philosophy: "the systematic abuse of a terminology specially invented for that purpose."

Assume X isn't relevant to any claim whose context is philosophy, then X cannot be relevant to any Y which is related to a Z whose context is philosophy, since then X would be relevant to that Z through transitivity.

1 ) Take a philosophical claim X which does not have relevance to a claim in any discipline.
2 ) Take the collection of statements of which X has relevance to and call it Q.
...
7 ) Then anything relevant to X cannot be relevant to any philosophical claim.
8 ) Then all of Q is not relevant to philosophy.

1 ) Take a philosophical claim X which does not have relevance to a claim in any discipline.
...
5 ) Relevance is reflexive, X is relevant to X.
...
7 ) Then anything relevant to X cannot be relevant to any philosophical claim.

Austin:One might almost say that over-generalization is the occupational hazard of philosophy, if it were not the occupation.

Austin:One might almost say that over-generalization is the occupational hazard of philosophy, if it were not the occupation.

What I was imagining, and trying to describe, was a refereed situation, so to speak, where each of the interlocutors agrees to the rules of rational philosophical discourse. Playing by these rules, the philosopher always trumps, and always wins.

If the bearded Viennese tries his "Interesting. Do you always . . . " response, the referee steps in and says, "Out of bounds. Please answer the question."

we know what the rules are for rationality

Does the Freudian get to claim that his path is rational, that we are wrong about knowing the rules?

In short, the Freudian may be right, but what he can't do is justify a claim to being right, without engaging in more philosophy

And what is your justification for asserting that such an explanation is true?

Are you saying that philosophy is different because everything is on the table - open to questioning? I'm skeptical of that, but I'll have to think about it more.

Yep, pretty much.

Suppose some surly neo-Freudian interrupts me at the point where I assert that “there’s nowhere else to go.” Nonsense, he says. “I’ll give you a psychological-slash-reductive explanation of why philosophers do what they do, and this explanation will have nothing to do with ?ideas’ or ?reasoning,’ and everything to do with culturally determined modes of expression mixed with individual depth psychology.” Ah, but I can reply, “Indeed? And what is your justification for asserting that such an explanation is true?”

I think it is reasonable to say that philosophy is the study of thought, beliefs, knowledge, value, which are mental phenomena - the structure and process of the conscious mind. As such, it is a branch of psychology. Anything you claim as the province of philosophy can be trumped by a psychological interpretation. The overarching absolute presupposition of philosophy is that there is a mind which is knowable.

Here's my problem. I'm pretty interested in what I intuit as the substantive issue in this thread. I would like to get to discussing that, and I don't know what I would say ? which for me is a big reason to have that conversation.

But I keep getting stuck on what, in my mind, I'm still treating as "preliminaries," just trying to clear up your framing of the issue. That framing keeps failing to make any sense at all, so I keep putting off getting to the supposed substance...

Solipsism would be but one example of a philosophical position which denies the claim that there are independent minds, and therefore that there is any such thing as the field of psychology.

The fruit contains all the previous moments, it could not be what it is without them. If a plant could be aware, it would see that all its earlier stages were a necessary progression to arrive at the conclusion of what it is. It would also see that what it is can’t even be understood without reference to each stage of its dialectic.

When Hegel compares this image to the way a philosophical idea develops, he points out that nature must exist in time, so this development is necessarily time-sequential. But he emphasizes that, again, being last in a sequence is not what he means by “highest” or “last” philosophy. We are speaking of a dialectical process in which each stage retains or “sublates” the former one. Ideas reveal themselves as a theoretical unity, they do not grow or develop in time, like a plant. That would be like saying that 3 “comes before” 4 according to a clock measurement. This coming-before is surely not temporal. Rather, we perceive the sequence in one glance, so to speak, and can recognize that what is last has to be last, but not in the way that events in time are last.

But there is a question of fact about whether the Freudian psychologist is making use of what J would call "philosophical" thinking on order to deflate the philosopher's claim. I think it should be recognized that what the Freudian psychologist sees himself as refuting and what @J sees as "philosophy" are probably two different things.

there are many other useful
discourses WITHIN philosophy besides that of rationally generated consensus and the primacy of rationality itself.

When you try to make substantial metaphysical points with a formalism or set theory, you are baptizing the formalism and the set theory into metaphysics. It is natural enough that by limiting your thought to such forms you limit your conclusions to formalisms.

the initial pitch was for philosophy as the ultimate backstop or bedrock, because philosophy can force any discipline ? or even any claim ? into a philosophical discussion, but once there, any further probing and questioning is just more philosophy. Among the many overlapping ideas in this setup was that philosophical ideas are simply impervious to any but philosophical counters.

Only now it turns out you don't intend to show that this is so, but enforce it, by fiat. You just define the discussion as philosophical from the start.

So this was indeed the key word in the original post:

And what is your justification for asserting that such an explanation is true?
— J

and this word [justification] is the private property of philosophy.

unless fdrake or his evil twin were to come along and claim that this is the only way of understanding the issue I raised in the OP.

Let's say this: the philosopher believes questions of justification are always legitimate and appropriate; the psychologist believes questions of "motivation," say, are always legitimate and appropriate.

If the philosopher believes he's on firm ground demanding to know how the psychologist knows what he claims to know, the psychologist believes himself to be on ground just as firm in examining the philosopher's motives for demanding justification.

I prefer to think of it as using a powerful tool to help make discriminations among ideas that are often too vague in English

As I noted, psychology is the study of minds.

As I noted, psychology is the study of minds.
— T Clark

No, you didn't. And if you want to say something like that then I would ask you what philosophy of mind studies. I don't think your arguments are very clear at all, and part of the proof is that you think you said things that you haven't said.

I think it is reasonable to say that philosophy is the study of thought, beliefs, knowledge, value, which are mental phenomena - the structure and process of the conscious mind. As such, it is a branch of psychology.

The post you quote does not say what you think it does.

Lots here. I'll have to do this piecemeal

What you describe could also be taken as showing that philosophy is a trap: inquiry is in danger of getting stuck there, no longer producing knowledge. (Which, let's be honest ...

I think it is reasonable to say that philosophy is the study of thought, beliefs, knowledge, value, which are mental phenomena - the structure and process of the conscious mind. As such, it is a branch of psychology.
— T Clark

Also, are you arguing that there is not a philosophy of mind and a psychology of mind? Given my position, why would that be a contradiction

have you considered that you might be misconstruing what you've discovered?

What you describe could also be taken as showing that philosophy is a trap: inquiry is in danger of getting stuck there, no longer producing knowledge. (Which, let's be honest ...)

You describe philosophical thought as united by a "mode of discourse," that features certain attributes, whereas psychology is characterized by "a set of presuppositions." This is quite similar to an idea Leontiskos was talking about earlier, that the lack of presuppositions may be what makes phil. unique. Are you also trying to make this distinction?

Philosophers arise out of a contingent culture which shapes the sense of the questions they ask and how they interpret the answers. For me the distinction between philosophy and psychology has only to do with the how richly and comprehensively those presuppositions are articulated.

And what you're inclined to say about what goes on down there, and about what people are doing who study what's on the ground, it's more and more likely to be bullshit, something that sounds good to you, all alone, a thousand feet above them, when you can no longer see what's down there in any detail

Where I think I'd disagree -- I'm not sure how to differentiate, but I feel that both philosophy and science articulate their presuppositions in a rich and comprehensive manner. This is part of why they look similar.

Give me any scientific theory, and I’ll show you how philosophical questions can reveal the metaphysical presuppositions making its assertions intelligible

In my view, philosophy in its most general sense refers to a mode of discourse melding comprehensiveness, unity, and explicitness.

So a psychologist can become more philosophical, more ‘meta’, by moving from cognitive psychology to philosophy of mind. Does this mean that philosophy is a branch of psychology? No, because there are many philosophers who define psychology as an empirical discipline, the scientific study of mental phenomena in all its guises and levels of focus ( cognition, emotion, sociality, biological ecology, neuroscience, genetics, etc).

Those philosophers who don’t consider their mode of inquiry as belonging to psychology, who believe that disciplines like philosophy of mind (and writers like Daniel Dennett) ‘psychologize’ philosophy, argue that psychology forces us to confuse the primordial underpinnings of being and existence with the contingent results of a science. They may argue psychological concepts like ‘mental’ , ‘physical’ , ‘value’ and belief’ are confused derivatives of more fundamental truths that no longer belong to psychology, but are instead ontologically prior to it.

It seems to me that the confusion of primordial underpinnings with science mostly come about by philosophers, including us, who come up with philosophical positions which aren't consistent with what we know from observation, including science. One prime example of this is the whole hard problem of consciousness. Some say that it is a problem that will never, can never, be resolved by a scientific approach. When I describe to them the kind of work psychologists, including cognitive scientists, are doing, they dismiss it out of hand

Also, you point out that some say "psychological concepts like ‘mental’ , ‘physical’ , ‘value’ and belief’ are confused derivatives of more fundamental truths." I would put it differently. I think I can make the case that philosophical concepts like "truth," "ontology," "objective reality," and "morality," are high-falutin, often confusing, ways of talking about human thinking and experience.

The example I used was the assumption, what Collingwood calls an "absolute presupposition," that there is a conscious mind.

In every discipline other than philosophy there are unallowed criticisms of the form, "You are presupposing X, but I deny X." For example, Parmenides cannot go to the physicist and say, "You are presupposing motion, but I deny motion." To offer such a criticism is to have stopped doing physics. In philosophy there are no such unallowed criticisms. In philosophy there are no such presuppositions.

The move from philosophical to scientific language is toward a thinner, more conventionalized and less synthetic account of the same or similar phenomena (Nietzsche vs Freud, Merleau-Ponty vs embodied cogntivism).

I would add that empirical concepts are in their own way ‘high-fallutin’. But what does this mean?

"You are presupposing a conscious mind, but I deny a conscious mind." So has this person stopped doing philosophy? Nope, in fact they haven't. The philosophy goes on.

As I noted, for me, high-fallutin language grasps for an exalted level of significance, which I reject.

By high-fallutin do you mean technically complicated language, such as that used by educated professionals? Or do you mean bullshit masquerading as insight?

By high-fallutin do you mean technically complicated language, such as that used by educated professionals? Or do you mean bullshit masquerading as insight?
— Tom Storm

There's no reason it can't be both. In this particular case I think "bullshit masquerading as insight" is probably a bit strong. How about gilding the lily

my primary argument is against setting philosophy up as some sort of pinnacle of human inquiry. I don't see it as all that special. For me, it is an exercise in self-awareness - more a practice than a study.

In my view, philosophy in its most general sense refers to a mode of discourse melding comprehensiveness, unity, and explicitness.

I don’t believe there is any domain philosophy tackles that science can’t venture into. I think we agree it’s just a matter of style of expression.

I don’t think Conze says or implies that.

The purpose of my quoting the Edward Conze text was simply an illustration of the idea of there being a higher truth - something for which I am generally criticized for suggesting. But to get down to basics, this is because I don't think our culture possesses a vertical axis along which the description of 'higher' makes any sense.

It would help if you could give some concrete examples of highfalutin language in philosophy.

Many of my favorite philosophers (Heidegger, Deleuze, Derrida) have been accused of writing in an obscurantist style. It has been suggested that this is a deliberate strategy to attract a cult-like following of initiates into what appears to outsiders as a secret society.

more precise than the engineering vocabulary associated with your profession.

Now that I think about it, I don't think the ideas we bounce around in philosophy need to be all that nuanced and subtle.

If so, then as Srap pointed out, I've stacked the deck heavily against, e.g., the Freudian who wants to opt out of that sort of discourse.

Srap's second point follows from this. He said, with disappointment, that what seemed to him the interesting issues raised by the OP never really got discussed.

For me, the deeper interest here is good old "thinking and being." The OP ended by bringing in Hegel and his dialectical concept of refutations, as an example of how an innocent recursion might point us to some very important truths. This was a gesture.

What we want to know, I think, is whether phil.'s lack of specialness is because a) the Q recursion isn't special to phil. at all, or b) this kind of recursive argumentation is indeed merely a gotcha! generated by a type of formalism we can look at and understand.

But can you think of anyone other than the OL philosophers whose ideas are not nuanced and subtle?

I think a lot of people were more interested in shooting down other planes than trying to fly their own.

In my view, philosophy in its most general sense refers to a mode of discourse melding comprehensiveness, unity, and explicitness.
— Joshs

I like the sound of this, but I have to ask for more clarity. A great novel can be shown to meld all three of these qualities, but does that make it philosophy? What about a beautiful prayer? Perhaps you would say that the missing element in both examples is explicitness. What, then, are the discursive tools by which explicitness comes to be? I'm nudging you toward taking the "rational inquiry" idea a bit more seriously. And let's remember that rationality is not univocal. Two of the philosophers I've gotten the most from, Gadamer and Habermas, spent their lives trying to formulate better versions of what it means to be rational, versions that would provide an escape from the crushing scientific rationalism of the 19th century

I don’t believe there is any domain philosophy tackles that science can’t venture into. I think we agree it’s just a matter of style of expression.
— Joshs

Really? Unless you include both math and metaphysics within science, I don't see how this could be true

my primary argument is against setting philosophy up as some sort of pinnacle of human inquiry. I don't see it as all that special. For me, it is an exercise in self-awareness - more a practice than a study.
— T Clark

This is the question of the first part of the OP, and your answer may well be true. What we want to know, I think, is whether phil.'s lack of specialness is because a) the Q recursion isn't special to phil. at all, or b) this kind of recursive argumentation is indeed merely a gotcha! generated by a type of formalism we can look at and understand.

The final thing I find interesting about these quoted responses is that they all shy away from the idea that phil. is distinguished by its subject matter.

It is hardly outside the mainstream to think philosophy's mission might be principally if not exclusively critical. Starts with a guy called 'Socrates' ...

Supposedly Einstein said that if you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't really understand it. II know that if I can't put an idea in my own words, I don't understand it. Now that I think about it, I don't think the ideas we bounce around in philosophy need to be all that nuanced and subtle. Clearly you don't agree with that

The final thing I find interesting about these quoted responses is that they all shy away from the idea that phil. is distinguished by its subject matter.

If so, then as Srap pointed out, I've stacked the deck heavily against, e.g., the Freudian who wants to opt out of that sort of discourse.
— J

As I said earlier, he holds that theories of motivation require justification, so he hasn't opted out.

an argumentative pinnacle

We're not on different pages, we're in different books.

In the example Srap imagined, he did opt out. Rather than supplying the justification for his theories of motivation, he puts on his Freudian hat and says, "Very interesting . . .Tell me more about the sorts of occasions you feel the need to justify yourself" or some such. The distinction matters, because what the Freudian holds, and would have to defend, is different from what he has to do. I would say that, if he continues in reason-giving, then you're right, he's doing philosophy with us. But what he may hold to be true is different from what he may or may not choose to justify. If he doesn't make that choice, then . . . well, I want to say he's no longer doing philosophy, but certainly others on this thread would disagree.

If the philosopher believes he's on firm ground demanding to know how the psychologist knows what he claims to know, the psychologist believes himself to be on ground just as firm in examining the philosopher's motives for demanding justification.

Aquinas does talk about the way that the intellect and the will are both infinitely recursive and intermixed, and you could think of "motive" as pertaining to the will and "justification" as pertaining to the intellect. That's fine as far as it goes, but that deep analysis of the will strikes me as philosophical, not psychological. It is certainly not psychological to the exclusion of being philosophical. The dispute between intellectualism and voluntarism has not historically been construed as a dispute between philosophy and psychology, even though it can truly be said that modern and contemporary philosophy are excessively intellectual.

In happy moments, I see this restlessness as philosophical.

I participate in discussions like this one, in some part, in hopes of figuring out what hold philosophy has on me, why I keep doing it, what it is I'm doing.

If the philosopher believes he's on firm ground demanding to know how the psychologist knows what he claims to know, the psychologist believes himself to be on ground just as firm in examining the philosopher's motives for demanding justification.

I think it might be better to ask first why we might think the interaction of philosophy and other discipline might be particularly revelatory. What do we expect an examination of those interactions to show?

Saying you are "criticized for suggesting" your ideas makes it sound like you're being persecuted, is that how it feels to you?

what do you mean by "highest"? Most comprehensive or overarching. most critical, most meta-cognitive? Or most spiritual, most enlightening, wisest?

To start, could you run "Q recursion" by me again?

the attempt to separate philosophy from other disciplines on the basis of any formal properties or logics is ill-conceived. I think this attempt to fix a sovereign standpoint for philosophy is the flip-side of the equally ill-conceived attempt to locate a sovereign ground for empirical truth in the ‘facts of nature’. In fact, the two tend to imply each other.

I don’t believe there is any domain philosophy tackles that science can’t venture into. I think we agree it’s just a matter of style of expression.
— Joshs

Really? Unless you include both math and metaphysics within science, I don't see how this could be true
— J

What do you mean by metaphysics? You dont consider a scientific paradigm to be a metaphysical stance? And given that logic and mathematics have been developed by both philosophers and scientists, I would say that their status can’t easily be placed with respect to the latter disciplines.

We don’t first concoct linguistic concepts and then impose them on the world. . . etc.

I don't want to be seen as naively endorsing the idea of "highest" as "best" or "most perspicuous" that is often associated with philosophy. But also it was an attempt to capture the ambiguity of "highest," which I discuss in the OP. "Highest" can mean what I just wrote -- "best," more or less -- or it can mean "up a level, beyond which there are no more levels," without comment on value. I raised the possibility that phil. discourse is only highest in this sense.

If there is an air of insubstantiality about this thread, it is because it is concerned with the philosophy of philosophy. This makes it particularly liable to disappear up its own fundament.

Accordingly, I propose, firstly, that philosophy is always parasitic; one might try a 'philosophy of nothing', but it wouldn't get very far. Rather, one first starts to talk or write about something and at some later stage, one starts to examine the verbiage philosophically. as philosophy of religion, or knowledge, or psychology or whatever.

If possible, (ideally sic) the best foundation is bedrock, If one has reached bedrock, as Wittgenstein would have it, one has reached the end of that portion of philosophy, the questions are resolved or dissolved, and the superstructure is as sound as it can be.

By contrast, spiritual talk is untethered, lighter than air and floats higher and higher until it reaches such height that it attains outer space, where there is no longer any up or down, and no one can hear you pontificate.

Modern philosophy is philosophy developed in the modern era and associated with modernity

If there is an air of insubstantiality about this thread, it is because it is concerned with the philosophy of philosophy.

Interestingly, a literature of literature sounds more promising, or at least a literature about literature.

one of the best definitions of phil. that I know: "inquiry about inquiry"

one of the best definitions of phil. that I know: "inquiry about inquiry"

Given the way scientific specialization has occurred, philosophy probably represents "science" conceived as an undifferentiated totality.

Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. Have we forgotten our encounter with the witches on the heath? It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universals. The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence.

Well, on one view critiques of philosophy along the lines that it is "useless," might be taken as a complement. It is among the few pursuits that is rightfully "pursued for its own sake, making it "higher" in another sense.

Science typically provides no such axis, as it is generally assumes that the universe is devoid of intrinsic meaning and/or value, so a claim to 'higher knowledge' is often challenged on the grounds that there is no objective justification for it.

For example:

what do you mean by "highest"? Most comprehensive or overarching. most critical, most meta-cognitive? Or most spiritual, most enlightening, wisest?
— Janus

I don’t find philosophy useless at all. I use it all the time.

1 ) Take a philosophical claim X which does not have relevance to a claim in any discipline.
2 ) Take the collection of statements of which X has relevance to and call it Q.
3 ) Relevance is transitive, if X is relevant to Y, and Y is relevant to Z, then X is relevant to Z.
4 ) Relevance is symmetric, that is if X is relevant to Y, then Y is relevant to X.
5 ) Relevance is reflexive, X is relevant to X.
6 ) Relevance is an equivalence relation.
7 ) Then anything relevant to X cannot be relevant to any philosophical claim.
8 ) Then all of Q is not relevant to philosophy.

I don't think it follows that one discipline is more primordial/foundational than another based on the "what is your justification for this?" question's recursive nature. I will spell out why.

Asking the question "What's your justification for this?" is recursive. Call asking that question of an assertion X the function Q( X ), which I'll just assume maps to another assertion X'. Every assertion occurs in a context, and call the mapping from an assertion of X to its context C( X ). I'm going to leave 'context' undefined for now, and just assume that every assertion has a context of utterance that makes it understandable, and some rules that characterise that context.

Some contexts will have properties that make their rules philosophical. If a context is characterised by rules of philosophy - again stipulate that such rules are comprehensible and recognisable -, say that that context has the property Phil.

The quote says that for every statement X, there exists a number of recursions of Q^n ( X ), mapping an assertion to its justification, such that Q^n( X ) has a context C characterised by Phil. You can grant that, but you might wonder why such a thing would render philosophy the "top level". Roughly what this claim states is that asking for justification eventually terminates in philosophy, but there's no particular argument for the uniqueness of the termination. The statement in the quote construes Phil as the demarcation between a fixed set of Q and other sets. There's a question about the uniqueness of the fixed set - why does asking that question eventually lead to philosophy?

A Zen Koan
The Zen master Mu-nan had only one successor. His name was Shoju.

one of the best definitions of phil. that I know: "inquiry about inquiry".

I want to return to this loose end. Am I right that we can avoid the conclusion in (8) by denying (4), the symmetry of relevance? Apart from it being a good thing not to have to conclude (8), I think there are independent reasons for denying (4). Consider this example: The natural acoustic properties of tones are relevant to Western music theory, but the reverse isn't true. An acoustician can conduct their research in complete independence of what theory may do with it. The only way I see that we can get "relevance" to be symmetric here is to define it as such, so it means something like "possibility of making eventual connections." But that seems much too broad, and misses the interesting questions about why we care about relevance in the first place.

But philosophy, as also zen, is a practiced discipline, a way of looking, more than a theory in a book. Burn all the books and start again fresh. That's what we do here at pf, apart from burning all the books.

Hey carful there, we are in danger of reaching an understanding if not Gob forbid, agreement!

In this case a more innocent framing would perhaps be that Janus is asking questions because he doesn't understand what you mean? The way I see it, what you're saying is that you shouldn't have to explain yourself because we would automatically understand you if only we hadn't grown up in scientistic western society.

Quality represents a basis of values that we recognize intuitively but cannot fully capture within language or logic. But as it challenges 'subject-object duality' then it can't be characterised in objective terms - which generally means it is often regarded as being religious. Hence, a matter of faith - and subjective!

all it does is show that an awareness of said relevance isn't necessary to produce a desired result.

Insofar as Y exists, and X is relevant to Y, Y will always be relevant to X due to the connection X has with it.

I know how Wayfarer thinks of "higher". He thinks we moderns have lost, not merely an older set of cultural attitudes, beliefs and dispositions, but some actual higher knowledge and understanding of a transcendent nature—an understanding of reality itself which has been lost to the modern psyche.

He doesn't want to accept that it is really just faith, even among those who are supposedly enlightened or "born again".

As the old saying goes "there is no accounting for taste".

Well, for those presupposed to doubt it, there are plenty of grounds for doubt. For those predisposed to believe it, there are plenty of grounds for belief. The difficulty is, that it is not a question that is easily adjuticable, at least by objective measures. But I do say that, absent the 'dimension of value', philosophy tends to devolve into disputes over the meaning of propositions, rather than a life-changing wisdom, which I believe was its original intent.

I want to return to this loose end. Am I right that we can avoid the conclusion in (8) by denying (4), the symmetry of relevance?

The only way I see that we can get "relevance" to be symmetric here is to define it as such, so it means something like "possibility of making eventual connections." But that seems much too broad, and misses the interesting questions about why we care about relevance in the first place.

First, just some housekeeping: We considered whether "Why?" was the actual recursive question, and raised some problems about that. But the way you've formulated it here is better, and still allows a robust sense of relevance, unlike the "What would Kant have thought of that?" example. So let's say that Q( X ) asks, "What is your justification for X?"

You point out the danger that we've done some definitional fast-footwork here. Philosophy (or the context Phil) is being construed as "the demarcation between a fixed set of Q and other sets." Does this mean that the fixed set of Q is only unique in this way? "Why does asking [the Q question] eventually lead to philosophy?" you want to know, and the suspicion is that is does so because we have defined it thus; there is no other reason.

That's a good point, and my example was loosely worded. Better to have said, "An acoustician conducts their research in complete independence of what theory may do with it, and it will not be possible to find any relevance for that theory to their work." Is it still clear that relevance isn't symmetric? I suppose this wording is slightly more deniable, because by shifting modal ground and talking about what is and isn't possible, we have to meet a higher bar. But let's not get caught up in extreme and/or unlikely cases. The idea was to question whether relevance is symmetric in a much more powerful and common way -- so that @fdrake's conclusion about what we've calling the Q recursion is true. I think his argument necessitates a near-perfect match of symmetries in order to go through. But perhaps he'll weigh in on this.

Well, that's the question, and I think you need to do more than restate it as a conclusion. At issue would be "the connection X has with it" -- how does that show the relation must be symmetrical?

Thank you for your welcome!!

But philosophy, as also zen, is a practiced discipline, a way of looking, more than a theory in a book.

Funny you should mention that. After I wrote the post you responded to, I realized that what philosophy is for me is a practice, like meditation or exercise.

This would be a good OP idea. Philosophy as practice, and perhaps praxis. When I try to explain to friends why I do phil., I usually wind up talking in those terms, but not with much clarity.

If an experiment demonstrated a theory conclusively, you might end up saying "The experiment demonstrated the theory" - which may be the final relevant word on the matter of justifying the claim if "The experiment demonstrated the theory" is justified by the standards of the discipline.

The question was posed to J.

Well, for those presupposed to doubt it, there are plenty of grounds for doubt. For those predisposed to believe it, there are plenty of grounds for belief.

"To each there own philosophy" I say, because that takes proper account of human diversity. Would you have it any other way?

When I try to explain to friends why I do phil.

One of J's first moves in the OP was to take philosophy and the sciences (and maybe history, I don't know) all together as "rational discourses," or something like that. I don't think that will work. I don't think philosophy can allow itself to be defined by some external perspective

(Such a move is even more untenable if you think of "rationality" as one of the areas philosophy is concerned with, and perhaps is authoritative on. Presumably then it would be up to philosophy to decide whether philosophy falls within its own purview, to decide whether this discourse is rational ? but not if it's already defined as "rational".)

We’re all familiar with the idea that philosophy operates at a level of discourse than which there is no higher, in some structural sense. What does this claim actually amount to?

First, a clarification: The idea I’m referring to doesn’t denigrate poetry, or fiction, or prayer, or paying compliments, or any other non-discursive uses of language.

I certainly recognize that philosophers attempt to address everything and anything that was, is, will be, actually or potentially, in reality and in illusion, for all persons and other things, be they mindless or omniscient Gods or somethings else; and philosophy incorporates logic (math and language), poetry (aphorism), fiction (thought experiments), physical objects and theoretical impossibilities, and more in order to do its work.

good summary

If philosophy takes up the question of whether philosophy is rational, and even if it judges that it is, this is merely a result. It may even be descriptive of philosophy's practice in reaching that very conclusion, but it cannot be constitutive of that practice.

Philosophy is the activity that invents, for its own use, the very idea of rationality

demonstrating, in the very act of obtaining this result, that this is the only way philosophy can proceed.

phil. gives itself the (rational) law

we have the result that "philosophy is rational."

I'm asking the kind of question intended just to prompt thinking, to make you wonder if the answer that comes immediately to mind is right, to make you pause and wonder what other answers might be available.

stop worrying about whether and how phil. and rationality overlap

I certainly would. I mean, the theoretical end goal of philosophy is for everyone to believe the same thing, that thing being the truth. In my opinion this idea of private justification instead promotes a static kind of diversity, where a bunch of dogmatists each stay in their respective camp and engage in discourse only performatively.

IF philosophy proceeds rationally, and can give a definition of what rationality is, THEN all of these consequences seem to follow. I'm more unsure than perhaps you imagine about whether the IF is correct.

What is rationality other than consistent thinking from some foundational premises or other?

OK, but specifying the premises, and determining how foundational they are, has been the longstanding task of philosophy, with no obvious right answer in sight. It's like saying, "Move the world? Sure, no problem, just give me a very large lever . . ."

Only once you have your preferred premise can rationality definitively enter the fray and it consists simply in being consistent with your premise in the elaboration of your thinking.

You speak as though that purported "end goal" is a given.

How would any philosophical truth ever be demonstrable such as to gain universal assent?

Discussion would still allow for folk to be influenced by others.

Because it is interesting?

I'm sorry for implying that, it's just how I've personally always seen it. Philosophy is of course an activity, people might have different goals in doing it, I just can't understand what they are.

You'd have to show the truth to be a necessary consequence of a universally held set of assumptions. But well, I didn't literally mean "everyone", just everyone who participates in philosophical discourse.

What is desirable about "influence" per se? I mean that word runs the gamut from peer pressure to lobotomy. What is desirable to me is only the possibility of rational persuasion.

So you're like - I don't know - a tourist?

Insinuating what? That I'm not really a player but a spectator?

So yeah, it must all be just a matter of curiosity for you, and there aren't really any stakes.

I'm not sure what you mean here. If you mean that metaphysical attitudes can influence how folk think about ecological, economic and political issues then i agree.

I suppose I'm speaking in favor of philosophy so I really do mean it the other way about: that philosophy doesn't influence but is the beginning of those thoughts, and so metaphysics and all the rest cannot be dismissed as a game else all the rest is a game.

It doesn't stop there, though—the most salient question for me then would be "how best to live?"

The only potential universally held assumption (or is it a realization?) that I can think of is that we know and can know very little.

Once this is realized we still need to work with provisional hypotheses in order to live

I would include as rational persuasion both practical and pure reason

we are so far from being on the same page as to make responding pointless.

Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. 308-9:The question arises of the degree to which the dialectical superiority of reflective philosophy corresponds to a factual truth and how far it merely creates a formal appearance. . . . All these victorious arguments have something about them that suggests they are attempting to bowl one over. However cogent they seem, they miss the main point. In making use of them one is proved right, and yet they do not express any superior insight of any value. . . . Thus the formalism of this kind of reflective argument is of specious philosophical legitimacy. In fact it tells us nothing. We are familiar with this kind of thing from the Greek sophists, whose inner hollowness Plato demonstrated. It was also he who saw clearly that there is no argumentatively adequate criterion to distinguish truly between philosophical and sophistic discourse.

I want to return to this loose end. Am I right that we can avoid the conclusion in (8) by denying (4), the symmetry of relevance?

From (1) and (5) we get , and this contradicts (7).

Why might this neutralizing of truth claims be desirable? The point seems to be, above all, not to deny any particular truth claim outright, in the sense of taking a definitive position on the matter (“It is absolutely not the case that leaves are green, and anyone who says that they are is therefore wrong.”), but, just the opposite, to avoid taking an inflexible stand on one side of the question or the other. We want to allow a particular claim to be true, but only “as far as it goes,” and as long as this does not exclude the possibility of someone else taking a different view of the matter.13 Gianni Vattimo, the Italian philosopher-cum-politician, has advocated irony as the proper stance of citizens in the modern world: democracy works, he believes (ironically?), if we are sufficiently detached from our convictions to be capable of genuine tolerance of others,whose convictions may be different from our own.14 Such a stance is what Charles Péguy took a century ago to be the essence of modernity. According to him, to be modern means “not to believe what one believes.”15 Along these lines, we might think of the status of truth claims in terms of the so-called “right to privacy,” as analogous, that is, to private opinions. A thing is permitted to be true, as true as it wants to be, as long as that truth does not impose itself on others. Its truth is its own, as it were, and may not bear on anything beyond itself, may not transgress its particular boundaries. It is a self-contained truth,and, so contained, it is free to be perfectly “absolute.”


Let us call this a “bourgeois metaphysics." 6“Bourgeois” is an adjective meant to describe any form of existence, pattern of life, set of “values,” and so forth, that is founded on the principle of self-interest, which is posited as most basic. To speak of a “bourgeois metaphysics” is to observe that such an interest,such forms, patterns, and values, are themselves an expression of an underlying vision of the nature of reality, namely, a view that absolutizes individuals, that holds that things “mean only themselves”; it does not recognize things as belonging in some essential manner to something greater, as being members of some encompassing whole, and thus pointing beyond themselves in their being to what is other, but instead considers them first and foremost discrete realities.On the basis of such metaphysics, it is perfectly natural to make self-interest the basic reference point for meaning, the primary principle of social organization.17 In fact, given such a view of the nature of reality, nothing else would make any sense. This principle of social organization does not in the least exclude the possibility of what is called “altruism.”18 Quite to the contrary, we just articulated an expression of the “bourgeois metaphysics” precisely as a kind of concern for others: we are willing to affirm something as true only on the condition that we leave open the possibility for others to take a different position. We thus seek to give others a special respect. Toleration is, at least in our postmodern era, essential to this view of reality. In a certain respect, then, there is nothing preventing our judging that the “bourgeois metaphysics” is radically altruistic or other-centered.

Nevertheless, this judgment demands two qualifications. First, insofar as it is founded on a “bourgeois metaphysics,” it follows necessarily that any altruistic act will be equally explicable in purely self-centered terms. In this case, altruism will always be vulnerable to the “hermeneutics of suspicion,” such as we find,for example, in Friedrich Nietzsche: there can be no rational disputing the charge that what appears to be done for altruistic reasons is “really” motivated by the prospect of selfish gain.19 Second, the affirmation of the other inside of a"bourgeois metaphysics” is inevitably an affirmation of the other specifically as a self-interested individual. Altruism is not in the least an “overcoming” of egoism, but rather the multiplication of it. This is the essence of toleration: “live and let live” means, “let us agree to be self-centered individuals; we will give space to each other so that each may do and be what he likes, and will transgress our separateness only to confirm each other in our own individuality, that is, to reinforce each other’s selfishness.” One thinks here of Rilke’s famous definition of love, which may indeed have a deep meaning in itself, but not so much when it appears on a refrigerator magnet: “Love consists in the mutual guarding,bordering, and saluting of two solitudes.”20

I'm tempted now to say that the "trap" that science (or "physics") must avoid falling into is not philosophy but sophistry, and that it's better to see science also as a type of ongoing reasoned discussion (or "logic"). (Talking about the lab and the field, as I did, might be just an intuition pump, suggesting that scientists need only share the knowledge they acquired using their special techniques, rather than seeing science as a type of discussion.)

Which means science is only in the same position as philosophy.

The last couple days I kept finding myself thinking about the Phaedo, because there's a passage there about losing faith in arguments. The way I remembered it was something like Socrates saying, don't let my death cause you to lose faith in discussion and argument

Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. 308-9:We are familiar with this kind of thing from the Greek sophists, whose inner hollowness Plato demonstrated. It was also he who saw clearly that there is no argumentatively adequate criterion to distinguish truly between philosophical and sophistic discourse.

Argument and discourse are only issues for those beings that have souls ? logic arises in the context of ethics.

we might consider here Nagel's ironic response to absurdity

What distinguishes the philosopher from the sophist, according to Gadamer, is a matter of intent. A difference in a way of being. (The Idea of the Good, 39.)

ethical motivation for arguing properly

then there's increasing specificity, in terms of subject matter.

It fits very well with the above speculations about the ethics of philosophical discourse

The other is to move from sound arguments to the soundness of the soul and sound judgment, in a word phronesis

Gadamer's word here, "hollowness", is really interesting.

Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. 308-9:The question arises of the degree to which the dialectical superiority of reflective philosophy corresponds to a factual truth and how far it merely creates a formal appearance

We spend so much time arguing about how strong particular arguments are -- are we missing something?

There needs to be something about the sequence of questions that renders each of them somehow relevant to what they're asked, and the answer to be informative to what it's asked of. That is, the question has to be a "good" question in a nebulous sense and the answer has to be a "good" answer in a nebulous sense.

If you asked "What is your justification for "I speak English?"?, one could very well answer "I speak English" as a demonstration

One way of fleshing that out [a guarantee that one would always end up in philosophy when asking justificatory questions] would mean at some point questions about justification always become philosophical. About the meaning of justification.

I'll say that a question is good when it reveals something about how what it is asked of is known or supplementary information about what it is asked of. And perhaps we should assume that the answerer plays nicely and just answers truthfully, directly and sincerely every time. No frame shifting on their part.

Socrates doesn't offer a distinction among types of arguments, but among people who hear them or make them.

It's reminiscent of that Wittgenstein quote about "working on yourself."

Another point is how radically different Socratic philosophy is from "the view from nowhere".

When Socrates asks for a definition of a term that he and all the interlocutors believe is important but disagree about, he is surely trying to find the view from nowhere, the place where we transcend doxa and perhaps, eventually, dianoia as well, and can see the Good itself...

The Forms are expounded upon in Plato's dialogues and general speech, in that every object or quality in reality—dogs, human beings, mountains, colors, courage, love, and goodness—has a form. Form answers the question, "What is that?" Plato was going a step further and asking what Form itself is. He supposed that the object was essentially or "really" the Form and that the phenomena were mere shadows mimicking the Form; that is, momentary portrayals of the Form under different circumstances.

"the view from nowhere" is a more modern term, I think, though maybe I'm wrong there.

But see how the analogy has a place, rather than being a "view from nowhere"?

When Socrates asks for a definition of a term that he and all the interlocutors believe is important but disagree about, he is surely trying to find the view from nowhere, the place where we transcend doxa and perhaps, eventually, dianoia as well, and can see the Good itself.

One day I heard someone reading, as he said, from a book of Anaxagoras, and saying that it is Mind that directs and is the cause of everything. I was delighted with this cause and it seemed to me good, in a way, that Mind should be the cause of all. I thought that if this were so, the directing Mind would direct everything and arrange each thing in the way that was best. If then one wished to know the cause of each thing, why it comes to be or perishes or exists, one had to find what was the best way for it to be, or to be acted upon, or to act. On these premises then it befitted a man to investigate only, about this and other things, what is best.

Nagel's ironic response to absurdity,

In another thread Socratic Philosophy I argued that because the Good is beyond being it cannot be known.

I think what it means is 'beyond the vicissitudes of existence' i.e. not subject to birth and death and arising and perishing.

Which means science is only in the same position as philosophy.

As regards its modus operandi, then, all analysis is metaphysical analysis; and, since analysis is what gives its scientific character to science, science and metaphysics are inextricably united, and stand or fall together.
~R.G. Collingwood, Essay on Metaphysics

First, a clarification: The idea I’m referring to doesn’t denigrate poetry, or fiction, or prayer, or paying compliments, or any other non-discursive uses of language. Whether such uses represent anything “higher” than philosophical discourse is a separate question, though of course a related one, and interesting in its own right. Here I’m sticking to the discourses of rational inquiry.

First, a clarification: The idea I’m referring to doesn’t denigrate poetry, or fiction, or prayer, or paying compliments, or any other non-discursive uses of language. Whether such uses represent anything “higher” than philosophical discourse is a separate question, though of course a related one, and interesting in its own right. Here I’m sticking to the discourses of rational inquiry.

languages of art and of faith

Similarly, I think I know what you mean when you talk about the early-modern quest for certainty; there's no doubt that epistemological concerns have characterized much of philosophy since Descartes.

Cartesian anxiety refers to the notion that, since René Descartes posited his influential form of body-mind dualism, Western civilization has suffered from a longing for ontological certainty, or feeling that scientific methods, and especially the study of the world as a thing separate from ourselves, should be able to lead us to a firm and unchanging knowledge of ourselves and the world around us. The term is named after Descartes because of his well-known emphasis on "mind" as different from "body", "self" as different from "other".

such talk is no longer philosophical discourse, in my understanding

Unless he means that we can't take our seriousness seriously?

The unity of thinking and being described by Plotinus challenges the prevailing view that knowledge is a sequential accumulation of information.

As regards its modus operandi, then, all analysis is metaphysical analysis; and, since analysis is what gives its scientific character to science, science and metaphysics are inextricably united, and stand or fall together.
~R.G. Collingwood, Essay on Metaphysics

Yet it falls into the common trap of: "wow, philosophy is hard and we don't get the same sort of certainty the early moderns decided should be the gold standard, thus nothing really matters."

For the greater part of Western cultural history, philosophy was woven into a fabric which included poetry, theology, fiction, art and drama

But again, resolving a bad case of Cartesian anxiety is probably not on anyone's agenda, philosophically -- if by "resolving" we mean actually finding certainty of the sort Descartes longed for.

There is no one obviously correct story.

Science relies for its practice on no particular metaphysical beliefs.

I might say something like "Trying to find a reasonable middle ground between unsustainable foundationalist claims about knowledge and the complete abandonment of rationality and values."

Science relies for its practice on no particular metaphysical beliefs.

Doesn't it rest upon a metaphysical presupposition that reality can be understood?

If you're familiar with philosophy of science, E A Burtt's Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, in particular, you will see that this is completely mistaken. The 'metaphysical belief' in question being early modern science's division of primary and secondary attributes, overlaid on the Cartesian separation of mind and matter.

I don't see why it needs such a presupposition. Humans have found that nature is intelligible.

I don't see why it needs such a presupposition. Humans have found that nature is intelligible. — Janus

Interesting. Does nature include quantum mechanics and consciousness?

Interesting. Does nature include quantum mechanics and consciousness?

Give it time and it might explain these phenomena.

Give it time and it might explain these phenomena.
— jgill

Is that a faith based position? :wink:

Quantum mechanics seems to be intelligible via mathematics and it certainly seems to be based on observations of phenomena.

I think they already do explain their respective phenomenal fields, although perhaps not to the satisfaction of some who demand total unity and comprehensiveness.

Ok. I'm not a science guy but I am reminded of the famous Feynman quote, "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics."

Is there not also a difference between science's predictive success versus knowing why?

Yes, I suppose this works. I'm curious what others might say. It seems to be a tendentious area.

It's not a matter of resolving it in the sense of providing the longed-for certainty, but critiquing the conceptual and cognitive framework which gave rise to it.

I began my academic career as a philosopher. Many people are drawn to philosophy after encountering work by some great thinker who heroically tackled huge questions and tried to wrestle them to the ground as best they could. These works tend to be thrilling and mind opening— ambitious in their scope and argumentation. But when you become an academic philosopher in the United States, you quickly discover that producing work like this is not something you are practically permitted to do. Your readings will focus narrowly on secular, analytic, Western (white) liberals. The work that gets published tends to be extremely narrow in its focus— for example, here’s my interpretation of Martha Nussbaum’s response to Joseph Raz’s critique of John Rawls’s Theory of Justice. I literally published a paper like that.10 It’s pretty good, as far as these things go. But it’s not the kind of work that anyone goes into philosophy to do, I suspect.

because on many philosophical views the goal of a philosophy teacher is not going to be publication, but teaching (really more mentoring), which of course certainly happens, but in academia there is the whole "publish or perish" thing that can often backload this.

The work that gets published tends to be extremely narrow in its focus— for example, here’s my interpretation of Martha Nussbaum’s response to Joseph Raz’s critique of John Rawls’s Theory of Justice. I literally published a paper like that.10 It’s pretty good, as far as these things go. But it’s not the kind of work that anyone goes into philosophy to do, I suspect. (Al-Gharbi)

Is this more an academia problem?

It’s a cultural issue. That excerpt basically says that academic philosophy is no longer concerned with deep philosophy, but with the minutia of technicalities.

I've found current academic philosophers whom I think have philosophically profound things to say, and a genuine passion for saying it. But the demands of the profession are such that they have to withstand the scrutiny of their peers, which often makes them very difficult for the lay reader

I got drawn to philosophy for what would generally be considered the wrong reasons - something like ‘mankind’s search for meaning’. When I actually enrolled in undergraduate philosophy, I was taken aside by a kindly lecturer, David Stove, who said ‘I can sense what you’re looking for, son, but you won’t find it here

Did he mean that there are great living philosophers but they are tucked away in departments other than philosophy, or that contemporary philosophers in general are not interested in mankind’s search for meaning?

. . . or that contemporary philosophers in general are not interested in mankind’s search for meaning?

What I mean about the difficulty of contemporary analytic philosophy, is that it's often extremely dense, written by and for those who can draw on a great deal of specialised scholarship

What I mean about the difficulty of contemporary analytic philosophy, is that it's often extremely dense, written by and for those who can draw on a great deal of specialised scholarship

Someone else out there has to do the mind numbing work on logic and language as well.

When the kids visit, they're either bemused or bewildered that almost nothing has changed.

the main thing they talk about is what they or someone else, not present at the moment, has already said.

...

It's all we've ever done

Socratic philosophy is rooted in opinion. The examination of opinion does not mean the transcendence of opinion.

Lots of us still do philosophy the older way, where the object is reality ...

and not primarily the text of some dead guy.

And what you quoted from me was written with Socratic practice in mind.

But an examination of opinion is not an attempt to find a view from nowhere. It is an attempt to find the opinions that seems best. It is the view from where we are, in our ignorance of transcendent truths. The questions remain open, to be looked at again from another limited point of view.

The view from nowhere is a forgetfulness or disregard for the human

have I completely mischaracterized Socrates, who swore up and down that he did not inquire into the heavens and the earth like some others, but only asked people questions?

I think Socrates and most philosophers since are committed to the idea that there is an ideal convergence point, involving rational inquiry, where we can reach consensus based on what is the case, not simply on "how it looks to us."

have I completely mischaracterized Socrates, who swore up and down that he did not inquire into the heavens and the earth like some others, but only asked people questions?

This is the tension that Thomas Nagel and others say we have to live with. Of course the view from nowhere is an unreachable idealization that no one ever achieves. But it's a spirit that can't be exorcized. Consider: "an attempt to find the opinion that seems best." From what viewpoint would we make this judgment? From our own, and from our culture's, certainly. But is that the final word? What happens when two opinions make competing claims to be best, and give their reasons? I think Socrates and most philosophers since are committed to the idea that there is an ideal convergence point, involving rational inquiry, where we can reach consensus based on what is the case, not simply on "how it looks to us."

historically philosophers have inquired into reality in a way similar to but deeper than what we now call "science," and if they did talk about what someone else has already said, it was only in service to this inquiry into reality. Lots of us still do philosophy the older way, where the object is reality and not primarily the text of some dead guy.

Without knowledge I do not see how we can get beyond "how it looks to us." In many cases inquiry ends in aporia.

Is this Socrates as variously encountered through Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes (probably not the latter I assume), and then "reconstructed?" Or the Socrates of the Platonic corpus?

And possibly also it's Socrates stating his creed about how wisdom is to found: in dialectic, not in armchair inquiry.

Philosophy is a peculiar discipline: it's almost entirely conversation. It's not much like science, for the most part, because you don't do research

we still sit around and talk, and a lot of it is rehashing the same old disagreements we've always had. When the kids visit, they're either bemused or bewildered that almost nothing has changed

. . . or that contemporary philosophers in general are not interested in mankind’s search for meaning?
— Joshs

Perhaps that task has been relocated in psychology and psychiatry. Or where its been for eons, religion

aporia as a possible gateway to something better.

the Socrates (or Plato) of the Republic

Here we specifically examine the difference between knowledge and "how it looks to us."

I see him advocating a positive doctrine about knowledge that is meant to be independent of what Athenians, or anyone else, think of it.

One of the reasons I posted that, was that I've been mulling this over for the past few days:

have I completely mischaracterized Socrates, who swore up and down that he did not inquire into the heavens and the earth like some others, but only asked people questions?

But the Socrates (or Plato) of the Republic is doing more than this. Here we specifically examine the difference between knowledge and "how it looks to us." Our modern talk about convergence etc. would be foreign to Plato, but I see him advocating a positive doctrine about knowledge that is meant to be independent of what Athenians, or anyone else, think of it.

Well, that's a broader academia problem, and I think it is often even worse in other fields...

But then when it comes to practice it's sort of the polar opposite, because in the earlier period a great deal of the thinkers are monastics whose entire lives revolve around practice.

I think Socrates and most philosophers since are committed to the idea that there is an ideal convergence point, involving rational inquiry, where we can reach consensus based on what is the case, not simply on "how it looks to us."

But the Socrates (or Plato) of the Republic is doing more than this. Here we specifically examine the difference between knowledge and "how it looks to us." Our modern talk about convergence etc. would be foreign to Plato, but I see him advocating a positive doctrine about knowledge that is meant to be independent of what Athenians, or anyone else, think of it.

Great philosophy is very much concerned with research. The fact that it does not partake of anscientific method of research doesn’t invalidate philosophical methods as less rigorous , ungrounded or mere conversation

We have only each other to talk to, whether it leads it to anything, whether we hope it does, we're all the company we have.

historically philosophers have inquired into reality in a way similar to but deeper than what we now call "science," and if they did talk about what someone else has already said, it was only in service to this inquiry into reality.

This is the common view, and the way Fooloso reads Plato looks to be idiosyncratic.

The rational part of the soul has proper authority because it can unify the soul, and move past what merely "appears to be good," (appetitive) or "is said to be good," (spirited/passions) in search of what is "truly good."

In the Republic after Socrates presents the image of the Forms Glaucon wants Socrates to tell them what the Forms themselves are. Socrates responds:

You will no longer be able to follow, dear Glaucon, although there won’t be any lack of eagerness on my part. But you would no longer seeing an image of what we are saying, butthe truth itself, at least as it looks to me. Whether it really is so or not cannot be properly insisted on.(emphasis added)
— 533a

He does advocate a positive doctrine but it is made to persuade the Athenians not would be philosophers.

aporia as a possible gateway to something better.
— J

Aporia means impasse, the opposite of a gateway.

A major key to understanding the Republic is the making of images

In the Republic after Socrates presents the image of the Forms Glaucon wants Socrates to tell them what the Forms themselves are. Socrates responds:

You will no longer be able to follow, dear Glaucon, although there won’t be any lack of eagerness on my part. But you would no longer seeing an image of what we are saying, but the truth itself, at least as it looks to me. Whether it really is so or not cannot be properly insisted on.(emphasis added)
— 533a

but I am thinking in terms of centuries and millennia. It helps prevent one from falling into fads.

Anyone paying attention to the scholarship for the last fifty years or more knows that that there have been significant changes in the way Plato has been interpreted

Today's culture often deprecates metaphysical claims, especially those that verge on mysticism or spirituality.

Not being divine beings they do not presume to know anything about matters of divine wisdom or a reality that transcends reality hear and now in our comfy cave.

I’m reminded of a clause in the founding charter of the Royal Society of London, which explicitly prohibited the consideration of ‘metaphysik’ on the grounds that it was in the province of churchmen, not natural philosophy as such (and in those days, one really had to stay in one’s lane.)

(I learned of Eric Perl’s book Thinking Being from John Vervaeke’s lecture series Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. As you know, he is attempting to critique some of these naturalist assumptions from within a naturalistic perspective and what he has called ‘transcendent naturalism’.)

If the divided line isn't for would-be philosophers, I can't imagine who else it's for.

... the idea that we are meant to go through aporia is so enticing.

I suppose we could view Socrates as trying to block rational thought at these points of aporia, but I'm not sure that's his purpose

We could look at specific dialogues for that, but we'd need a new OP.

I don't see this as being about the Forms themselves.

But that there is some such thing to see must be insisted on.

And should we not also insist that the power of dialectic alone would reveal this, to someone with experience in what we have been describing just now, and that this is not possible in any other way?

... making the hypotheses not beginnings but really hypotheses - that is, steppingstones and springboards - in order to reach what is free from hypothesis at the beginning of the whole.

With that said, we both know Plato well enough to be aware that, like the Bible, you can find support for diametrically opposed positions depending on what you quote!

Which is why I'm sceptical of the suggestion that philosophy and science are the same in essence.

I think the grammatical and spelling mistakes are an indicator of what your thesis does to Fooloso's temperament.

I guess I don't see science and scientific objectivity as separate from philosophical virtue, even in the realm of "reality as lived." It seems like a lot of the same virtues underlie both philosophy and science.

Surely. I suppose a traditionalist way of putting it, would be the relationship of scientia and sapientia, which don’t conflict, but have a different focus. It’s one of the things I admire in Aquinas, with this view that science and faith can’t be ultimately in conflict

we also understand that there is a difference between disputes over matters of interpretation and personal attacks.

It’s because there’s a kind of unspoken prohibition on certain topics or attitudes in the consensus view. I’m reminded of a clause in the founding charter of the Royal Society of London, which explicitly prohibited the consideration of ‘metaphysik’ on the grounds that it was in the province of churchmen, not natural philosophy as such (and in those days, one really had to stay in one’s lane.)

The conflict, if it is a conflict, between secular and sacred readings of traditional and pre-modern culture, is also a factor in Buddhist modernism. It's a sort of tectonic plate.

By the way Book 1 of Awakening from the Meaning Crisis has just been published.

It’s because there’s a kind of unspoken prohibition on certain topics or attitudes in the consensus view.

Do you have a link to an article?

Some like Parmenides worked to put the puzzle together, not seeing the pieces once he saw the whole picture, while today we are told the pieces are all there is to talk about and must not talk about any whole picture. And the consensus today is that we aren’t being scientists anymore when we think we see a whole.

Buddhists would have us empty out even the science and the metaphysics to experience truth, and let the whole be whole, where none of the pieces even exist anymore.

Well, ??nyat? is often misinterpreted as a kind of monstrous void, but in reality it's much nearer to the phenomenological epoch? of Husserl (who commented favourably on Buddhist Abhidharma.)

I like to think of it as 'going beyond the word processing department' i.e. going beyond the part of your brain that encodes everything in language

I rather like to think that philosophy is concerned with reality as lived. It's in that sense that it is concerned with the nature and meaning of being rather than the study of what can be objectively assessess and measured.

This is an interesting strand. I suspect that philosophy is unattainable for most people who lead lives where the barriers to philosophy are significant and sometimes insurmountable.

Where Parmenides says “it is the same thing to think and to be.”

There is something essentially elitist about philosophy,

Speaking of 'elitism', did you ever happen upon John Fowles foray into philosophy, The Aristos? I only read it once, many years ago, but it left an impression.

That is true and that’s a shameful failure of philosophy. The way I see it, wisdom can and does come from anywhere, from anyone at any moment. It’s always a surprise. Wisdom is not merely some reward for the philosopher, or even the mystic.

There is something essentially elitist about philosophy...

I wonder if philosophy is too sprawling an enterprise...

But to be fair, in this case Wayfarer asked you about metaphysics and mysticism.

Plato’s metaphysics is not systematic. It is problematic. It raises questions it cannot answer and problems that cannot be resolved. It is important to understand that this is a feature not a defect or failure.

Plato’s concern is the Whole. Forms are not the Whole. Knowledge of the Forms is not knowledge of the whole.

In the Philebus, Plato raises the problem of the “indeterminate dyad” . The limited (peras) and unlimited (apieron) is, as Aristotle called it, an indeterminate dyad.

These dyads include:

Limited and Unlimited

Same and Other

One and Many

Rest and Change

Eternity and Time

Good and Bad

Thinking and Being

Being and Non-being

Each side stands both together with and apart from the other. There is not one without the other.

Ultimately, there is neither ‘this or that’ but ‘this and that’. The Whole is not reducible to One. The whole is indeterminate.

And yet we do separate this from that. Thinking and saying are dependent on making such distinctions.

We informally divide things into kinds. Forms are kinds.

Forms are both same and other. Each Form is itself both other than the things of that Form, and other than the other Forms.

The Forms are each said to be one, but the Forms and things of that Form are an indeterminate dyad, one and many.

The indeterminate dyad raises problems for the individuality and separability of Forms. There is no “Same itself” without the “Other itself”, the two Forms are both separable and inseparable.

Socrates likens the Forms to originals or paradigms, and things of the world to images or copies. This raises several problems about the relation between Forms and particulars, the methexis problem. Socrates is well aware of the problem and admits that he cannot give an account of how particulars participate in Forms.

Things are not simply images of Forms. It is not just that the image is distorted or imperfect. Change, multiplicity and the unlimited are not contained in unchanging Forms.

The unity of Forms is subsumed under the Good. But Socrates also says that the Good is not responsible for the bad things. (Republic 379b)

The Whole is by nature both good and bad.

The indeterminate dyad Thinking and Being means that Plato’s ontology is inseparable from his epistemology.

Plato’s ontology must remain radically incomplete, limited to but not constrained by what is thought.

The limits of what can be thought and said are not the limits of Being.

I was taken aside by a kindly lecturer, David Stove

I suppose we could view Socrates as trying to block rational thought at these points of aporia, but I'm not sure that's his purpose

But isn't it also possible that traditionalist interpretation of Plato - the mystical side of Plato, if you like - has been deprecated by secular culture?

I'm not really sure what this reply is supposed to mean. Is the claim that Plato doesn't really buy into the psychology and means of self-determination he lays out across several dialogues (not just the Republic, but the chariot of the Phaedrus, the Golden Thread of the Laws, etc.)?

move past what merely "appears to be good," (appetitive) or "is said to be good," (spirited/passions) in search of what is "truly good."

The lowest level of the divided line is not transcended or abandoned.

I suppose we could view Socrates as trying to block rational thought at these points of aporia, but I'm not sure that's his purpose.
— J

It is not that he blocks rational thought but that it has reached its limit.

I don't see this as being about the Forms themselves.
— J

It is about knowledge of the forms, or lack of such knowledge.

And Socrates does not know it either. He knows only how it looks to him.

it seems a strained reading to say that therefore nothing he goes on to teach can be taken as true, or as different from what we see in the city/cave.

It [the Line] shows that reality extends far beyond anything the practical man ever dreams and that to know it one must use faculties never recognized by the practical man."

... or else give it a reading in which the one who returns brings back only another image.

I think the aporia is often constructed by Socrates himself, as a teaching tool.

I read back, starting from the discussion about astronomy et al., and I can't find this. Where do you see the forms fitting in here?

... leads what is best in the soul upwards to the sight of what is most excellent among things that are ...

And Socrates does not know it either. He knows only how it looks to him.
— Fooloso4

Begging the question, no? It's the very thing we're debating.

Bloom wanted to get out to see them. He asked: "Do you think they'll attack if I got out and approach them?" And Rosen said: "I don't think they've read Closing of the American Mind".

I appreciate Bloom's scholarship while deploring his politics.

Within allegory, of course we have nothing but images -- as you say, what else could there be?

But this is not an allegory about images; it's a story that uses images to try to explain how knowledge may be attained.

I suspect that philosophy is unattainable for most people who lead lives where the barriers to philosophy are significant and sometimes insurmountable.

No, it was a gradual change, which is why I have insisted here that the difference between philosophical and other modes of expression has to be understood in terms of a spectrum involving qualities auch as depth and comprehensiveness of articulation.

As for wisdom - most of the really wise I have known have not been big readers. They have tended to have a disposition that allows for accumulating wisdom directly through personal experience.

As in Stove’s Gem notoriety, I presume.

Allan Bloom's commentary sounds about right to me: "It [the Line] shows that reality extends far beyond anything the practical man ever dreams and that to know it one must use faculties never recognized by the practical man." To doubt this, I think, is to doubt the cave allegory as well -- or else give it a reading in which the one who returns brings back only another image.

Is there a realm of Forms? Are there philosophers who know these Forms? Do you know the Forms themselves?

In contrast to contemporary philosophers, most 17th century philosophers held that reality comes in degrees—that some things that exist are more or less real than other things that exist. At least part of what dictates a being’s reality, according to these philosophers, is the extent to which its existence is dependent on other things: the less dependent a thing is on other things for its existence, the more real it is. Given that there are only substances ('substantia', ouisia) and modes, and that modes depend on substances for their existence, it follows that substances are the most real constituents of reality.

If science is a virtue...

The chapter on Plato in particular, in which he criticizes the customary idea of there being the 'separate realm' of Forms.

What is given to the senses, then, and hence the entire realm of the sensible ...

... in the realm of reason, relates to reason and whatever is known by reason, so does the sun, in the realm of sight.

due to the fact that modern philosophy and culture has no concept of there being degrees of reality

Have you looked at the book I have mentioned, Eric Perl Thinking Being? The chapter on Plato in particular,

If you are objecting to my use of the term 'realm' both Plato (in translation) and Perl use it. Perl says:

Frankly, I am surprised there are as many grants for philosophy as there are.

My revisionist interpretation is that forms can be understood as logical principles, arithmetical truths, and all the many elements of thought that can only be grasped by reason.

For it appears to me that, if anything else is beautiful except beauty itself, then it is beautiful because it partakes of that beauty and for no other reason. And I say the same about all the others. Do you accept this sort of cause?

... the form of the good bestows truth upon whatever is known, and confers the power of knowing on the knower.

... it is reckoned to be the actual cause of all that is beautiful and right in everything ...

With regard to mysticism - there is a lot of different stuff called mysticism.

In the Phaedo, Socrates attributes causal power to the Forms:

With regard to mysticism - there is a lot of different stuff called mysticism. If we regard mysticism as the experience of a reality that transcends our everyday reality, that is something I know nothing about.

This is an interesting strand. I suspect that philosophy is unattainable for most people who lead lives where the barriers to philosophy are significant and sometimes insurmountable. We're never going to understand the difficult problems or comprehend works by significant thinkers. The barriers might be culture, time, priorities, available energy, disposition, lack of education, capacity to engage with the unfamiliar and the complex, etc.

In their second chapter Gaius and Titius quote the well-known story of Coleridge at the waterfall. You remember that there were two tourists present: that one called it 'sublime' and the other 'pretty'; and that Coleridge mentally endorsed the first judgement and rejected the second with disgust. Gaius and Titius comment as follows: 'When the man said This is sublime, he appeared to be making a remark about the waterfall... Actually ... he was not making a remark about the waterfall, but a remark about his own feelings. What he was saying was really I have feelings associated in my mind with the word "Sublime", or shortly, I have sublime feelings' Here are a good many deep questions settled in a pretty summary fashion. But the authors are not yet finished. They add: 'This confusion is continually present in language as we use it. We appear to be saying something very important about something: and actually we are only saying something about our own feelings.'1

Before considering the issues really raised by this momentous little paragraph (designed, you will remember, for 'the upper forms of schools') we must eliminate
one mere confusion into which Gaius and Titius have fallen. Even on their own view—on any conceivable view—the man who says This is sublime cannot mean I
have sublime feelings. Even if it were granted that such qualities as sublimity were simply and solely projected into things from our own emotions, yet the emotions
which prompt the projection are the correlatives, and therefore almost the opposites, of the qualities projected. The feelings which make a man call an object sublime are not sublime feelings but feelings of veneration. If This is sublime is to be reduced at all to a statement about the speaker's feelings, the proper translation would be I have humble feelings. If the view held by Gaius and Titius were
consistently applied it would lead to obvious absurdities. It would force them to maintain that You are contemptible means I have contemptible feelings', in fact that Your feelings are contemptible means My feelings are contemptible...

...until quite modern times all teachers and even all men believed the universe to be such that certain emotional reactions on our part could be either congruous or incongruous to it—believed, in fact, that objects did not merely receive, but could merit, our approval or disapproval, our reverence or our contempt. The reason why Coleridge agreed with the tourist who called the cataract sublime and disagreed with the one who called it pretty was of course that he believed inanimate nature to be such that certain responses could be more 'just' or 'ordinate' or 'appropriate'to it than others. And he believed (correctly) that the tourists thought the same.The man who called the cataract sublime was not intending simply to describe his own emotions about it: he was also claiming that the object was one which merited those emotions. But for this claim there would be nothing to agree or disagree about. To disagree with "This is pretty" if those words simply described the lady's feelings, would be absurd: if she had said "I feel sick" Coleridge would hardly have replied "No; I feel quite well." When Shelley, having compared the human sensibility to an Aeolian lyre, goes on to add that it differs from a lyre in having a power of 'internal adjustment' whereby it can 'accommodate its chords to the motions of that which strikes them', 9 he is assuming the same belief. 'Can you be righteous', asks Traherne, 'unless you be just in rendering to things their due esteem? All things were made to be yours and you were made to prize them according to their value.'10

If Plato was indeed an initiate it makes him a textbook example.

... sound-mindedness, justice, courage, and wisdom itself are purifications ... And the Bacchae are, in my view, none other than those who have properly engaged in philosophy.

In Plato, truth is supposed to be hidden until it is disclosed (alethia). Does it mean truth is mysticism in Plato?

Well, this is partly why, for Plato, most people have to be left inside the cave, even if the philosopher must descend to recover the whole (since the Good inherently relates to the whole).

What Lewis focuses on is the way in which, traditionally, a major goal of education was a proper orientation towards what is truly good, beautiful, etc., and the development of freedom as self-determination and self-governance.

If I could bring one bit of older philosophy back into curricula it would be the tradition of the virtues (originally given the boot on theological grounds at any rate).

At any rate, I don't necessarily think "good readings" will always align with authorial intent. And we can also have readings where someone takes an authors work to its "logical conclusion," even if the author wanted to avoid that conclusion (e.g. Fichte and Kant).

My sympathy has always been with those in the cave. Why leave? You have everything you need there, including predictability. Ignorance has its charms and there is something dismissive of the real world (where most of us live) built into the allegory.

But it's somewhat traditionalist and conservative isn't it? Which doesn't bother me too much, but I can certainly imagine an elaborate critique.

I understand this project and it will help with certain matters and probably enrich civic culture, but will it help us get a useful reading of Derrida or Kant? My concern lies with the often impenetrable complexity of philosophical discourse and literature.

Who do we have up there? A more benevolent ruler along the lines of Ceasar Augustus or Trajan, or a Stalin?

Right, there is also the question of people's aptitudes and interests too.

But I think that in philosophy, as in science, a bulk of the work is digesting a new paradigm and making it easily intelligible and seeing how it can be applied (e.g. the whole Patristic period, with lots of great thinkers, is in a way synthesizing and digesting Plato, Aristotle, and Stoicism). If you want to read Hegel or Kant, great, but something like Pinkhard's version of Hegel is particularly valuable in that it isn't really a struggle to get through.

On my reading the philosopher does not possess such knowledge. It is reserved for the gods.

What do you mean by "such knowledge"?

Why is it reserved for the gods?

Which gods do you mean here?

Knowledge of a reality that transcends our everyday reality. In line with the Republic it would be knowledge of the Forms.

In Plato's Apology Socrates makes a distinction between human wisdom, which is knowledge of our ignorance, and divine wisdom. Socrates says he knows nothing noble and good, (21d) It is reserved for the gods because they know such things and we don't.

Is the gap between the knowledge of the Forms and everyday life bridgeable by any actions or methods?

The third level of the divided line, if we are working out way up, is dianoia, rational thought. Reason functions by way of ratio, that is, understanding one thing in relation to another. The singularity of the Forms means that they are not accessible to reason. They are grasped at the fourth or highest level directly by noesis, by the mind or intellect, as they are each itself by itself.

Or are they two distinct entities which are inaccessible to each other?

So it seems clear that they are claiming the existence of the gods, and the knowledge of the gods.

Whatever the case, doesn't it sound like some sort of mysticism on their part?

I don't think so. Knowledge of the Forms is a matter of direct, unmediated apprehension. From and earlier post:

The Forms are hypotheticals.

if the gods are noble and good then we are wise to know that we do not know anything about them.

On whose part? On my reading the transcendent realm of Forms from the Republic is Plato's philosophic poetry. An image to compel the lover of wisdom to continue to journey.

Others believe it exists and that there are some who have direct knowledge of it.

Who are the "Others"? Any verification details on their beliefs of the existence via their direct knowledge?

Whose direct, unmediated apprehension?

Are we able to apprehend them via direct unmediated apprehension

If we can apprehend them, then it seems to be a bridgeable gap between the world of the Forms and the world of materials. Why was your reply a negative?

The Forms are hypotheticals.
— Fooloso4
In what sense? Is it what Plato said?

... I feared that my soul would be altogether blinded if I looked at things with my eyes and tried to grasp them with each of my senses. So I thought I must take refuge in discussions and investigate the truth of beings by means of accounts [logoi] … On each occasion I put down as hypothesis whatever account I judge to be mightiest; and whatever seems to me to be consonant with this, I put down as being true, both about cause and about all the rest, while what isn’t, I put down as not true.

We don't know if the gods are noble and good.

Right. You said:

[/quote[quote="Corvus;949715"]So it seems clear that they are claiming the existence of the gods, and the knowledge of the gods

The transcendent realm of Forms from the Republic were the founding principles of the later occultism, Gnosticism, mysticism, and the Hermetic Kabbalists in the medieval times. There seems to be far more implications to the concept than just a philosophical poetry.

Who are the "Others"?

Don't those you just listed believe in a transcendent realm that can be known directly? Isn't that a feature of mysticism?

I should have asked who they are. I don't think there is anywhere in the dialogues that Socrates makes any claim about the gods. He does, however, refer to common beliefs about the gods.

Plotinus spoke of having the experience of being present to the source from which our souls descended. The move is accompanied by a cosmogony where the veil between our lives and the "eternal" is very thin.

Plato did not describe the limits of knowledge that way. Neither did Aristotle.

I meant was the others from the philosophers, not from the mystics.

Have you read the other Plato such as Timaeus? It is filled with cosmogony and the Gods.

Plotinus, Ennead, translated by Armstrong, IV. 3.1. 26: But surely, too, the soul must have memory of its own movements, of what it desired, for instance, and of what it did not enjoy and the desired object did not enter the body. For how could the body speak of what did not come into it? Or how will it remember with the help of the body something which the body has been in no condition to know at all? But we must say that some things, all that come through the body, reach as far as the soul, and others belong to the soul alone, if the soul must be something, and a distinct nature, and have a work of its own. If this is so, it will have aspiration, and memory of its aspiration, and of attaining or not attaining it, since its nature is not one of those which are in a state of flux. For if this is not so, we shall not grant it self-awareness or consciousness of its own activities or any sort of power of combination and understanding.

Paine pointed to Plotinus. They are mystic philosophers.

A helpful starting point is how Plotinus talked about memory.

I have. I started a thread on it here.