According to Daniel Colonnese
"In a lot of philosophical-type debates I seem to have people are talking
past each other."
I completely agree. A lot of what we do in these philosophical debates is
aim a big words at our opponents. For example,
"The lexical constituents of phenomenal experience should be considered as
instrumental in the fashioning of consciousness."
Now, ain't that some bullshit? Why couldn't we say, "I think words help
shape our reality," and be done with it?
I think the reason is that we aren't interested in real communication.
Communication is related to the word commune. It really means to come
together as one. To reach agreement. But we aren't interested as
philosophers in reaching any kind of agreement. Instead, we are more
interested in publishing some obscure viewpoint surrounded by a whole bunch
of big words. This makes us look smart and feel smart.
Here is an example from comp.ai.philosophy:
"Of course I do grant you can make this thesis into an unfalsifiable
dogma by ad hoc and unconstrained posits in response to putatively
recalcitrant examples."
Is this a sentence of someone who is attempting to communicate, or is it a
sentence of someone who is trying to overwhelm the competition with words?
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