if there's anything that all philosopers can agree on

[Immanuel Can]

The problem lies in the fact that most people, including most philosophers, don't see a problem with saying philosophy can only be questions, never answers. They've drunk the popular kool-aid.

I don't know if you can fairly call the people who think that, if such exist, "philosophers." You'd have to define your term.

[Advocate]

[quote="Immanuel Can" post_id=475065 time=1602343656 user_id=9431]
[quote=Advocate post_id=475063 time=1602343521 user_id=15238]
The problem lies in the fact that most people, including most philosophers, don't see a problem with saying philosophy can only be questions, never answers. They've drunk the popular kool-aid.
[/quote]
I don't know if you can fairly call the people who think that, if such exist, "philosophers." You'd have to define your term.
[/quote]

I take philosopher to be a self-identified term, those who try can be a philosopher without being any good at it or having any potential for success. Many famous philosophers aren't any good and many great philosophers are forever unknown. If they have an ounce of goodness, they'll overcome such things. They'll believe Ayn Rand is sensible for a moment. They'll be nihilistic for a moment. Then they'll start to be good.

[Skepdick]

I take philosopher to be a self-identified term, those who try can be a philosopher without being any good at it or having any potential for success. Many famous philosophers aren't any good and many great philosophers are forever unknown. If they have an ounce of goodness, they'll overcome such things. They'll believe Ayn Rand is sensible for a moment. They'll be nihilistic for a moment. Then they'll start to be good.

Why isn't "good philosopher" a self-identified term?

[Immanuel Can]

I take philosopher to be a self-identified term, those who try can be a philosopher without being any good at it or having any potential for success.

You make it sound like there are no criteria at all, beyond somebody saying, "I regard myself as a philosopher". Can that be what you mean? If it is, then why do you wonder that they don't agree?

But you seem to have in mind that if they were "good philosophers" or "real philosophers," in some sense, that they ought to. Stop me if I'm wrong. But If you don't think that, then why is it even a problem, or even a minor criticism, if they don't agree?

[Advocate]

[quote="Immanuel Can" post_id=475070 time=1602344104 user_id=9431]
[quote=Advocate post_id=475066 time=1602343790 user_id=15238]
I take philosopher to be a self-identified term, those who try can be a philosopher without being any good at it or having any potential for success. [/quote]
You make it sound like there are no criteria at all, beyond somebody saying, "I regard myself as a philosopher". Can that be what you mean? If it is, then why do you wonder that they don't agree?

But you seem to have in mind that if they were "good philosophers" or "real philosophers," in some sense, that they ought to. Stop me if I'm wrong. But If you don't think that, then why is it even a problem, or even a minor criticism, if they don't agree? :shock:
[/quote]

There are disingenuous people as well, but isn't any attempt at deep thought actually philosophy? And can anyone else tell you whether you're legitimately searching for truth? Perhaps nacent philosopher is a better term. All i'm saying is that everyone has to start somewhere and even completely legit philosophers probably suck for a while because it's hard to develop filters against the world's ubiquitous bullshit, especially for those who have been long integrated. I don't wonder that philosophers disagree, but i wonder that those who have been doing it for awhile still disagree. No intelligent people ever disagree with their individual perspectives and priorities are accounted for. But it seems most philosophers don't spend adequate time on basic critical thinking or learning how to deal with hypotheticals or logical extremes. Then there are the logically necessary arguments that get wiped under the rug by academics with vested interests that then have to be found or independently derived by others to be useful because they'll only make an appearance in a book a new student will have brought to their attention in a sideline.

Too many words? TLDR: Yes, anyone can be a philosopher and there can be no particular criteria for what that means. No, certain beliefs are not compatible with "good" philosophy and any philosopher who wants to maintain that status and be taken seriously must find and accept the reality of those beliefs. There must be merit in philosophy and logical necessity must trump.

[Skepdick]

There must be merit in philosophy and logical necessity must trump.

Then how do you reconcile the Philosophical conundrum that logical is contingent?

A contingent necessity is an oxymoron.

[Advocate]

[quote=Skepdick post_id=475077 time=1602345168 user_id=17350]
[quote=Advocate post_id=475075 time=1602344700 user_id=15238]
There must be merit in philosophy and logical necessity must trump.
[/quote]
Then how do you reconcile the Philosophical conundrum that logical is contingent?
[/quote]

That's the difference between an answer and a solution. The answer to a question/problem can be "that's not meaningful". The solution must lead to actionable certainty. An answer is a framework for understanding. A solution is a customized directive that accounts for salience, perspective, and priority. I believe those three contingencies to be the necessary and sufficient Answer for how to find Solutions.

[Skepdick]

That's the difference between an answer and a solution. The answer to a question/problem can be "that's not meaningful". The solution must lead to actionable certainty. An answer is a framework for understanding. A solution is a customized directive that accounts for salience, perspective, and priority. I believe those three contingencies to be the necessary and sufficient Answer for how to find Solutions.

OK, but humans have been acting (and therefore arriving at actionable certainty) long before humans invented logic.

So it directly follows that logic is not necessary for actionable certainty.
So what is it that you are "Solving" (with a capital S) if you have made up the problem?

Trivially, you don't need to do logic to be alive, but you need to be alive to do logic.

[Immanuel Can]

...isn't any attempt at deep thought actually philosophy? And can anyone else tell you whether you're legitimately searching for truth?

Well, aren't those two criteria? You say, "deep thought," plus "search for truth." So is that what you mean by "philosopher"?

All i'm saying is that everyone has to start somewhere and even completely legit philosophers probably suck for a while because it's hard to develop filters against the world's ubiquitous bullshit, especially for those who have been long integrated.

Well, yes: but that's what philosophers, as some understand the term, ought to deal with, I think. They ought to provide methods for pursuit of wisdom, rather than mere conformity to the world's blandishments. I think it was in this sense that Socrates stated so famously that "the unexamined life was not worth living." That might be a little dramatic on his part, but I think it was his way of saying that "willingness to examine by rational means" was part of what a philosopher should be.

I don't wonder that philosophers disagree, but i wonder that those who have been doing it for awhile still disagree.

Ah, yes. That is a surprise, no? I mean, if they're REAL philosophers, shouldn't they all be committed to a single method or set of philosophers criteria that would incline them to agreement, inevitably?

But the problem is this: that reason (the key tool of real philosophers, as I would suggest) is a procedure not a set of conclusions. It's a method, we might say, not a set of axioms. And so what you assume at the beginning is going to change what you get out at the end.

You can see this point through that most "rational" of all disciplines, mathematics. If you have a rational equation, like 2X + 4 = Y, then the value of Y is going to change with the value of X. And it's not that your mathematics are bad...your procedure, your method is perhaps unimpeachably correct and reliable. But it makes all the difference what the assumed value of X is.

So let's see how this works in practice. Let's suppose that Materialism is true. (That's our X value, if you like.) If Materialism is true, then the objective reality value of, say, morality is zero, because reason tells us that nothing exists to impart to morality an objective value. That's what Materialism + reason gives us as a conclusion. But is everyone a Materialist, in the first place? What if somebody assumes the existence of the supernatural, or gods, or a God? Is then the rational outcome that morality has zero objective reality? Arguably not, right?

No intelligent people ever disagree with their individual perspectives and priorities are accounted for. But it seems most philosophers don't spend adequate time on basic critical thinking or learning how to deal with hypotheticals or logical extremes.

Agreed. But I think it's their ontological assumptions that they are not spending enough time on. Rather, they tend to take as a given that whatever they happen to see as "real" is also what every other sane person surely also sees as "real," and rush on from there. So they take the X value for granted, and then accuse people of being bad mathematicians, bad reasoners, when the Y value doesn't turn out to be the same as theirs.

And in a sense, they're right: IF the original ontological assumptions of all people were the same, and IF all people reasoned precisely, then it would be inevitable that all reasonable people would agree...should agree...could do nothing BUT agree. But the IF is wrong.

Then there are the logically necessary arguments that get wiped under the rug by academics with vested interests that then have to be found or independently derived by others to be useful because they'll only make an appearance in a book a new student will have brought to their attention in a sideline.

Yeah, that happens a lot.

Too many words? TLDR: Yes, anyone can be a philosopher and there can be no particular criteria for what that means.

Oh. Too bad. Then we're back to square one. We can't any longer wonder why all such "philosophers" fail to agree.

But then you insist:

No, certain beliefs are not compatible with "good" philosophy and any philosopher who wants to maintain that status and be taken seriously must find and accept the reality of those beliefs. There must be merit in philosophy and logical necessity must trump.

...which seems to suggest the opposite: that there are now two more criteria, particular "beliefs" that must be accepted, and "logic." Or did you not mean to suggest that?

[Advocate]

[quote="Immanuel Can" post_id=475082 time=1602345812 user_id=9431]
"stuff"
[/quote]

You wrote a book. I just woke up. BBL to respond.

[Immanuel Can]

You wrote a book. I just woke up. BBL to respond.

Sorry. Just trying to take you seriously. Didn't mean to 'go on.' Respond when and as you see best.

[Advocate]

Ok, i've got two tacos in my belly and some marijuana in my blood-stream. Let's continue!

>>...isn't any attempt at deep thought actually philosophy? And can anyone else tell you whether you're legitimately searching for truth? [/quote]

>Well, aren't those two criteria? You say, "deep thought," plus "search for truth." So is that what you mean by "philosopher"?

Non-testable ones? I don't know that even if we could narrow down criteria, such as above, that it would be possible to test whether someone merits them, so what would be the point? Even great philosophers sometimes play devil's advocate or stand by arguments they don't themselves believe in order to see what kind of response they get as a test of their conversation partner's abilities, and so forth. Searching for truth is inherent in philosophy but also religion, science, and pretty fucking woo. Isn't anyone who regularly thinks deep thoughts a philosopher?

>>All i'm saying is that everyone has to start somewhere and even completely legit philosophers probably suck for a while because it's hard to develop filters against the world's ubiquitous bullshit, especially for those who have been long integrated.[/quote]

>Well, yes: but that's what philosophers, as some understand the term, ought to deal with, I think. They ought to provide methods for pursuit of wisdom, rather than mere conformity to the world's blandishments. I think it was in this sense that Socrates stated so famously that "the unexamined life was not worth living." That might be a little dramatic on his part, but I think it was his way of saying that "willingness to examine by rational means" was part of what a philosopher should be.

That's why i don't agree with people who say there's no true Scotsman. We may not be able to know whether someone is a true Scotsman, but we can still choose criteria that a true Scotsman Ought to embody. In any case it's a semantic point, what work do the words do for us? Pragmatically, a philosopher must be above some indistinct point of understanding to be relevant. They must have overcome nihilism, for example, and not be a True Naysayer like so many here as those are self-defeating ideas.

>>I don't wonder that philosophers disagree, but i wonder that those who have been doing it for awhile still disagree.[/quote]

>Ah, yes. That is a surprise, no? I mean, if they're REAL philosophers, shouldn't they all be committed to a single method or set of philosophers criteria that would incline them to agreement, inevitably?

Committed to truth should be enough, n'est-ce pas? First you must admit there can be answers, then you have to figure out how to recognize them (epistemology), then what the basic ones are (metaphysics), and then add in contingencies (aesthetics (roughly salience), ethics (roughly priorities), politics (ethics + scale). But literally nobody comes at it so directly as that. There's typically a good deal of unlearning to be done, which is where many philosophers fail. I do agree it's inevitable for truth-minded people to actually converge, Bayesian style, regardless of their priors. The three contingencies are my attempt at bridging that gap. They're necessary, but are they sufficient or is there something else unaccounted for in that calculus?

>But the problem is this: that reason (the key tool of real philosophers, as I would suggest) is a procedure not a set of conclusions. It's a method, we might say, not a set of axioms. And so what you assume at the beginning is going to change what you get out at the end.

I'd like to see that broken down in spreadsheet form :) I haven't thought it out myself. My answer to all of philosophy is clearly a set of axioms, but i couldn't say how i developed them because it was all independently derived piecemeal. My only real tool is having an advanced bullshit detector. Not many of my ideas have changed because i've always tried to seat them in logical necessity rather than mere convenience or emotional salience or availability bias or whatever. The key procedure as far as i can tell is to be skeptical as fuck without giving in to nihilism or infinite regress. But again, i'm not at your level of thought on this point.

>You can see this point through that most "rational" of all disciplines, mathematics. If you have a rational equation, like 2X + 4 = Y, then the value of Y is going to change with the value of X. And it's not that your mathematics are bad...your procedure, your method is perhaps unimpeachably correct and reliable. But it makes all the difference what [i]the assumed value [/i]of X is.

Math is descriptive of relationships of quantity, insofar as we treat things as separate in space/time. Logic is equally rational/precise by dealing with other relationships between other base ideas. (in fact math is a subset of logic) It seems to me that here you're elucidating the difference between valid and true, which i would compare and contrast with my idea of answer v solution.

>So let's see how this works in practice. Let's suppose that Materialism is true. (That's our X value, if you like.) If Materialism is true, then the objective reality value of, say, morality is zero, because reason tells us that nothing exists to impart to morality an objective value. That's what Materialism + reason gives us as a conclusion. But is everyone a Materialist, in the first place? What if somebody assumes the existence of the supernatural, or gods, or a God? Is then the rational outcome that morality has zero objective reality? Arguably not, right?

That kind of strict materialism must be rejected because morality is a real thing that does real work for everyone on a daily basis. Thus, "spiritual" ideas are equally as real, just requiring additional interpretation into the physical/material realm. Emotions are certainly real and so far not correlated to biology. They do more work in the "real" world than rationality does, sadly. You're scraping up on the is/ought problem there, but Sam Harris has neatly answered that point, and i would more simply by saying "Oughts actually exist and the only possible source for oughts is ises."

If you're not a materialist at bottom you can't act effectively in the material world where you get material feedback. But since spiritual matters always have a material correlate, the Answer is to understand that it's different layers of metaphor for the same base stuff. That's not the typical compatibalism but it's the True one, the only logically possible one. Rationality must lead you to an understanding of the difference between internal and external ideas. It's too basic to be bypassed or ignored.

I didn't entirely follow your argument because i'm responding point by point but i hope i've addressed it above.

>>No intelligent people ever disagree with their individual perspectives and priorities are accounted for. But it seems most philosophers don't spend adequate time on basic critical thinking or learning how to deal with hypotheticals or logical extremes.

>Agreed. But I think it's their ontological assumptions that they are not spending enough time on. Rather, they tend to take as a given that whatever they happen to see as "real" is also what every other sane person surely also sees as "real," and rush on from there. So they take the X value for granted, and then accuse people of being bad mathematicians, bad reasoners, when the Y value doesn't turn out to be the same as theirs.

I agree with your initial point but.. Whatever seems real to someone must be their prior. This gets to the difference between appearance and apparance. It appears to everyone that their senses are accurate and their conclusions are therefore justified. It's apparent to them that they're not missing anything else, which is not as justified, because they're not accounting for unknown unknowns.. for example. Similarly two people can come to the same "conclusion" but if they approached it from different directions, their next thoughts are probably going to diverge. Just throwing points at the wall here. I feel i'm losing the larger context of your reply by responding train-of-thought, but it's what i can offer.

>And in a sense, they're right: IF the original ontological assumptions of all people were the same, and IF all people reasoned precisely, then it would be inevitable that all reasonable people would agree...should agree...could do nothing BUT agree. But the IF is wrong.

IF we can teach people how to think, what to think, and why, in that order (which isn't actually possible because it doesn't match brain development) we can bypass that stuff. Everything they're told will be filtered for evidential weight.

><Too many words? TLDR: Yes, anyone can be a philosopher and there can be no particular criteria for what that means.

>Oh. Too bad. Then we're back to square one. We can't any longer wonder why all such "philosophers" fail to agree.

Ahh, but no particular criteria need not mean that it's not possible to choose good ones, just that it hasn't happened yet. Personally i'm not sure how useful it would be because philosophy can apply to literally any idea if taken to it's logical extreme.

>>No, certain beliefs are not compatible with "good" philosophy and any philosopher who wants to maintain that status and be taken seriously must find and accept the reality of those beliefs. There must be merit in philosophy and logical necessity must trump.

>...which seems to suggest the opposite: that there are now two more criteria, particular "beliefs" that must be accepted, and "logic." Or did you not mean to suggest that?

I only meant that there are definitely criteria for being an effective or rational philosopher even if everyone can do philosophy, and to re-iterate that being a Good philosopher can't be a necessary criteria for being a True philosopher. And likewise that if you aren't rational/logical, you're not even doing thinking in any meaningful sense, much less philosophy.

>Sorry. Just trying to take you seriously. Didn't mean to 'go on.' Respond when and as you see best.

You always do. That's why you're on my friends list, or more to the point, not on my foe list. :) A True philosopher takes true attempts at truth seriously.

[PeteJ]

And others disagree with them.

Nobody disagrees with them as far as I know. They are not so foolish as to argue with the facts. The refusal of analysis to endorse a extreme metaphysical position is its most important result.

If you do not know this fact then you will never understand philosophy.

Please don't blame me. It's just the way the world is.

[Skepdick]

Nobody disagrees with them as far as I know.

Nobody, or nobody that you are willing to acknowledge?

They are not so foolish as to argue with the facts.

Metaphysically, there are no facts, only interpretations.

The refusal of analysis to endorse a extreme metaphysical position is its most important result.

If you do not know this fact then you will never understand philosophy.

Then you should practice what you preach. Surely before you "understand philosophy" or anything really, first you should come to understand what it means to understand?

Then you you will be able to understand anything that you want to understand. Be it philosophy, art, quantum physics or fishing.

Please don't blame me. It's just the way the world is.

I am not blaming the world, it is your philosophy I disagree with.

[Skepdick]

Scientism is popular among those who insist science is the best way of knowing because they don't understand that logical arguments are more certain.

You seem incredibly confused.

Science IS a logical argument. It just uses a different logic to the one you like. Science uses a probabilistic logic to perform hypothesis testing.

https://www.amazon.com/Probability-Theo ... 0521592712

Logical/deductive certainty is impossible in non-axiomatic systems such as reality. Induction is all you have.