From: Ian Glendinning (ian@psybertron.org)
Date: Fri Jan 14 2005 - 23:37:21 GMT
Matt and Chin,
You are debating Matt's statement ..
"any philosophy that is inconsistent with knowledge you already have will be
rejected"
The problem is you are having a binary argument (a false dichotomy) where
there isn't one.
The available alternative are not just accept or reject.
Anyone with any dynamic quality would see any new "theory" inconsistent with
existing "belief" as an interesting problem, a challenge to be considered,
and be open minded enough to predict that either or both couild be modified
as a result.
That said "antifoundationalist, antiessentialist, pragmatist" is a pretty
apt tag for me too.
Though I see "essential" as a useful (pragmatic) aspect of ontological
choice, but nothing like as fundamental as the word might imply to some.
ie
Essential as most important, relevant, significant, useful, but not
Essential as fundamental, metaphysical.
Being "of the essence" is like everything, a matter of choice, motive,
context, purpose, pragmatism.
Ian
----- Original Message -----
From: "Matt Kundert" < >
To: < >
Sent: Friday, January 14, 2005 7:25 PM
Subject: Re: MD Reply to Chin
> Hi Chin,
>
> Matt said:
> I would never forward a radically conservative, static, conversationally
> debilitating idea like "any philosophy that is inconsistent with knowledge
> you already have will be rejected" (not to mention the idea is
incoherent).
>
> Chin said:
> Incoherent to you? -- or philosophy in general?
>
> Matt:
> Oh, to me, or rather, for people in my position, which is that of the
> antifoundationalist, antiessentialist, pragmatist. The idea is that, if
> anything new was rejected because it was incosistent with anything you
> already have, it's hard at that point to describe the process of gaining
> that original "anything" with which the new stuff is inconsistent with.
> Maybe it can be done, but the entire concept of "progress" goes right out
> the window and you'd have to toe a line like "everything we know is all we
> have ever known and all we will ever know," which is a real bummer. Maybe
> "incoherent" is the wrong word (a word I rarely use on the attack), but
the
> idea seems so obviously wrong and unwieldy that it just seemed handy.
>
> Matt said:
> The bonus of having worked through the Plato-Kant canon is that you will
> gain some measure of knowledge: you'll know which kinds of questions lead
to
> dead-ends and so be able to better see them elsewhere.
>
> Chin said:
> So if you do not have the knowledge to recognize good or poor
philosophical
> statements, and depend on philosophers of the past to build your knowledge
> base, and the questions which can be answered, then who offers the
answers?
>
> Matt:
> I'm confused by your question. I'm not really sure what your fears are or
> what you're getting at, so I'm a little confused as to what kind of answer
> you are looking for.
>
> When you say, "if you do not have the knowledge to recognize good or poor
> philosophical statements," are you talking about someone who hasn't worked
> through the philosophical canon or are you saying that I just denied that
we
> can just look at a philosophical proposition and know whether its good or
> bad? From the way your question is structured I would have to guess the
> latter, which is a little disturbing to me. Because that means you would
> either forward that proposition (the one you say I'm denying (which I
> absolutely would)) or you are simply wondering how I would say knowledge
and
> its progress hangs together. I'll simply offer an explanation of the
> latter.
>
> When it comes to dealing with the truth or falsity of any proposition, if
we
> don't want to accidentally work through the entire history of that
> knowledge, all we have to go on is the past ways of dealing with that kind
> of proposition. Our past knowledge, like the kind of knowledge our
parents
> have, is like a road map for dealing with those kinds of things. We can
> shun the road map, but that's when people start to say things like, "Why
the
> hell are you trying to reinvent the wheel?" I don't think we can just
> look at a proposition and "see" its truth or falsity. Even if you took a
> flying leap in the dark at it, that doesn't mean you'd be justified in
> believing it either.
>
> So, in a way we do depend on the philosophers of the past to build our
> knowledge base. They started out with a few propositions and the
dialectic
> of the history of philosophy has worked out some of the consequences of
some
> of these propositions. Some have died, some have lived, some should be
> killed, some should be resurrected. All depends on how you view the
history
> of philosophy. As Wilfrid Sellars, a prominent 20th century analytic
> philosopher (analytic philosophy being known for its shunning of the
history
> of philosophy), said, "Philosophy without the history of philosophy, if
not
> empty or blind, is at least dumb."
>
> So, in answer to your question, "who offers the answers?", we do and I'm
not
> sure who else would. We posed the questions, we might as well answer
them.
> The great thing about philosophy, and why the history of philosophy is so
> important, is that the rules of philosophy are always changing. In fact,
as
> my favorite philosopher, Richard Rorty, once remarked, "philosophy is the
> greatest game of all precisely because it is the game of 'changing the
> rules.'" None of the "answers" of philosophy are done deals, as in "we
have
> found an ahistorical truth that will never change." But that's one reason
> why I never said philosophy gives any "answers." When I say that it helps
> big time, when doing philosophy, to look over the history of philosophy,
I'm
> saying that the history of philosophy might provide clues about how to
> construct your own philosophy because, over the course of 2500 years,
> philosophers have followed a great many thoughts to their logical
> conclusion, have pushed them as far as they could. You can disagree with
> those conclusions ("that's not a consequence of that"), but if you follow
> the roads they traveled, it can provide you with a lot of advice and
wisdom
> about which roads you want to travel (or where you might want to start
> creating your own roads).
>
> Actually, I think one way of describing philosophy is the activity in
which
> answers are never given to questions, but which slowly kills off its
> questions and moves on to others.
>
> Matt
>
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