It seems to me that you haven't read any Nietzsche. You should. You'd start to realize how ridiculous your methods of argumentation really are. There is no such thing as a logical proof of any philosophical idea, so why do you continue to argue in a manner like that? There are only perspectives that can be argued for and your method of argumentation is about as cold, dreary, and unpersuasive as I've ever seen. Hey, let's go form new terms and then produce some verbal wank with them. Yay! Here, I'll call this well-being and this happiness and this pleasure and blah, blah, blah blah blah.... And then worse, your type feel like you're doing something important!
Expand your mind beyond the old philosophy. Check out some continental.
Sorry about the polemical tone. I just read several of your posts and they are truly ridiculous. Have you not heard? Language was not given by God; it has no set meaning; it started as warning signals between monkeys about different types of predators that were in the area. All it can do is signal to phenomenon in the world. And when you debate like you and your friends do then you're just mixing around different definitions and playing games with language. You're not actually accomplishing anything but mental and verbal masturbation!
Hence the 20th century rise of phenomenology (and please don't even try to say that Kant was performing phenomenology) - the attempt to actually explain what's going on in the world, not just the mixing and matching of words and concepts with no real connection to the world. There is such fucking thing as a util!
The tradition had a crisis. Some people have dealt with it and learned from it and continued to push philosophy forward. And some people have just stopped dead in the water - not even realizing the utter absurdity they call "philosophical inquiry."
Once again, sorry for the polemic - but learn from it...
Scott
p.s. I wrote the above under the assumption that you were a grad student, but if this is incorrect then it explains everything. And in the latter case, please, before you graduate, expand your thought process beyond Kant and Mill - their days of credibility are long past.
What tripe - last I checked, analytic philosophy was flourishing in the English-speaking world (and even making some inroads into France, I believe). And was he trying to prove to me that there is "no such thing as a logical proof of any philosophical idea"? And if not, if it's just his "perspective", then why on earth should I listen to that? (Here we see that analytic philosophy is one of those invincible ideas I was talking about last month.)
And yes, I'm just an undergraduate, though I'm not sure how that "explains" my choice of discipline. The implication seems to be that anyone more familiar with the discipline would soon abandon it in favour of studying woolly-headed continental types. Though if Scott here is a representative product of this alternative "education", I'm sure you'll understand if I'm less than tempted to follow in his footsteps.
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Talk about verbal masturbation. This kind of talk is so counter-productive. What the hell does he mean by "Language was not given by God; it has no set meaning"? I guess we should all "expand our minds", abandon logic, follow Nietzsche, and stick to writing poetry - mind expansion is the real method of argumentation. He knows that no so-called analytic philosopher would buy his "argument". Argh. Anybody who thinks that analytic philosophers are not aware of the physicality of speech and/or have nothing to contribute to phenomenology need to read some Carnap and/or Quine. What a wanker. Phew.
Haha like a theoretical follower of Nietzsche he is unable to tell you his idea without making you want to oppose it. Thus one has to wonder why he even bothered.
He has a few points in there that I might agree with - but its obscured by his "verbal wanking".
Don't make the mistake of automatically dismissing ideas that you disagree with, even if they are not well formulated or presented.
I find this philosophical arrogance repugnant from both sides, even those arguing for more open mindedness.
I think the person errs in thinking logic has little to do with continental philosophy as well. While there clearly is a big difference between logical analysis and phenomenology, the differences aren't as big as what some suggest. Indeed they are often so similar that people can confuse the two. (The famous ongoing debate between John Searle and Herbert Dreyfus is a great example of that)
Further, as Ian says, many of the positions considered characteristic of Continental philosophy (especially various kinds of holism) can be found in figures like Quine or Davidson. Likewise "paradigms" are erroneously tied to postmodernism. Yet Kuhn himself was a neo-Kantian and not a postmodernist. Likewise Carnap's frameworks are very similar in many ways. (Unfortunately I'm not as versed on Carnap as I ought be - although friends keep bringing him up and I find his comments often intriguing)
That's good to know. (I'd actually be vaguely interested to learn more about continental philosophy at some point. Though of course receiving obnoxious emails like the one above does little to entice me. If my [admittedly ignorant] blanket dismissal of "woolly-headed types" does not really reflect much continental philosophy, then consider the insult to be more tightly directed at the likes of the emailer.)
Generally people who write obnoxious notes like this have either (a) been exposed to only a bit of Continental philosophy and simply are doing the "my team is best" thing or (b) are from some English or Lit department rather than a formal philosophy department.
I've found that a lot of people at Berkeley fall into the "my team is best" sort of shallow thinking. (Even if they have been exposed to more diverse thought than I let on) It's a common feature of people I've met from Berkeley. I don't mean to knock Berkeley. I came pretty close to going there for grad school and think a lot of it as a school. But there definitely are some annoying features of things over there.
I should also add that analytic philosophers outdo the worst of continental thinkers in this "my team is best" idiotic comments. I can think of one major blog praising the death of Ricoeur because he happens to be associated by some with postmodernism. (Even though he differed with Derrida and Heidegger on some of the issues that people find distasteful about postmodernism)
My first philosophy teacher said that Quine should have been shot before he published Two Dogmas. And I think he was a Christian. While there might not be outright idiots on either side of the divide, there certainly are people committed to idiotic claims.
I don't think it's just the "divide" (a concept I dislike since it obscures the diversity on both sides as well as the similarities of various positions such as holism, contextualism, etc.) I think positions like to disparage other positions. Thus almost everyone disparages the positivists. (I frequently think they deserve it, but friends have pointed out that Carnap is rather misunderstood and neglected) Lots of people tend to disparage Russell. I think that at times even in narrow topics with the structure of the discourse set up things can get heated. Whether it is internalism vs. externalism of meaning or justification or whatever.
Despite liking to portray themselves as rational well reasoning people, the mere fact that that our decisions of what position to take often entail subjective aesthetic decisions tends to mean that when logic fails heat enters in. We all recall the discussion of philosophy as a bloodsport from last year. I think there is a lot of truth to it. That gap beyond what we can prove is where the nastiness enters in. It's even worse when the "other" is relatively little understood by us.
What an annoying message directly above this one. I can't believethat crap exists.
Anyway. So hey everybody, I'm that crazy guy who wrote that email! Actually, considering our identity is not an unchaning thing, I'm really not the exact same person, but that's a matter for a whole nother discussion.
I'm sure, considering this post started almost a year ago, that no one will actually check this again, but, just in case, I want to justify what I wrote in that email. Funnily enough, my girlfriend googled me, found this site, and then told me on the phone last night. Random. I had almost forgotten about the whole happening. But that's beside the point.
Clark, you can have whatever feelings you have about Berkeley; they're generalizations whatever they may be. If you really feel that they hold to objective reality, then you're doing precisely what it was that I set out to criticize in my above email: namely, holding strongly to your claims about knowledge.
Funny thing is, as foolish as I feel some of the things in the above email were, and trust me I do, I still fully agree with why I wrote the above email. I had been googling some topic, ran into this blog, and started reading several of the topics. While I was encouraged by the fact that the internet was at least being used for some type of "intellectual" endeavor, I was frustrated at the utter ridiculousness of the discussion taking place.
As immature as my email was, as brash of generalizations as I threw around, and as inspired as it was by the fact that I was writing a paper on Zarathustra at the time, my central claim is still true: your epistemilogical arguments about utility (and whatever other bs you were throw words at) were utterly ridiculous. You sounded like me and my elementary school friends debating who would win in a fight between the Silver Surfer and the Jedi council.
And you just make yourself feel higher and more important than your counterparts in the comic-boy fan club world because your arguments have an intellectual edge about them. But what you don't realize is that, by engaging in philosophical discourse in such an immature and crude manner, you're exposing your inanities to the ridicules of people who are your intellectual betters, i.e. me and other people who realize how utterly ridiculous it is to debate nonsense about utils.
Go get laid! That's what you really want anyway...
But what I'm really amazed about is that I haven't heard Wittgenstein be name-dropped? For God's sake, for someone as central to analytic philosophy as Wittgenstein, how could he possibly not have been mentioned? Oh, let me think, maybe it's because he arrived at the conclusions about knowledge and our claims to it much more attuned with mine than with most posters on this blog. He would have thought your discussion was just as foolish as I did: language games.
And don't get me wrong: analytic philosophy can be cool - so long as it is tempered with a good dose of skepticism. I even like reading some things that Bertrand Russel has to say, although I hate the man's rationalism.
In the end, language fails. Frege knew it, tried to fix it, and duly failed; Russel tried to fix it, and failed; Austin picked up the ball and ran with it and, realizing that it couldn't be fixed in the way Frege and Russel wanted, just did his own thing with it. And Wittgenstein came to a similar realization.
As for now, I'm enjoying my time dabbling with Stanley Cavell. For those who haven't already read it, check out "The Claim of Reason." Especially the Australian fool who I handpicked as an undergrad. You know Richard, you sound just like my good Christian friend who, unfortunately, is a terrible philosopher. Holding to logic as if it's really a complete and omnipotent structure, when really that "omnipotency" all lies in his tenacity for excluding any contrary elements from his field of view.
One of you above did describe me very well though. My email was undoubtedly polemical; I needed to vent and my venting naturally would piss you off (with the peripheral desired outcome that maybe your anger would lead you to do something your ilk do all too little of: questioning). For God's sake, do you think I would have disagreed with your assessment that your kind naturally would oppose my criticisms of you? Doesn't a child pout and cry when told what not to do by those who know better?
But don't tihnk that just because you oppose what it is that Nietzsche says means that Nietzsche has nothing worthwhile to say, or that that's precisely the feeling Nietzsche wants to stir in you.
I remember the first time I read him, I opposed him. I came back to class and said that he was a drunken lunatic who rambled on incoherently from one topic to the next with no apparent order tying the whole together. What? Do you think it's impressive to hold such an opinion? haha. You're kidding, right?
I mean, "Genius", and I use quotes because you surely aren't a real one, do you think that I was trying to play to my audience? For Christ's sake, if that were my goal, I'm a good enough rhetorician to accomplish the task. The fact that you couldn't develop such a conclusion on your own speaks volumes about your true intellect.
Just realize, all philosophers after Nietzsche had to deal with the skeptical crisis that Nietzsche created. We all know that two schools developed. Clark was right, sort of; I've chosen my side. And my side is to be on no side. I question them all and see merits in each. I just can't stand listening to you fools masturbating over your foolish thoughts.
I truly don't think analytic philosophy is useless; I just think that many of its proponents are dogmatic little twats. They're nerds. They cling to logic as if it's their salvation, without properly questioning it's claims to knowledge. For an example of such a twat, see Ian. For an example of someone who's beyond said problem, see Clark.
But this isn't anything new and I'm not anything special for telling you people this. Back on May 25th I just stumbled upon some blog about philosophy where an absolutely ridiculous discussion was taking (or had taken) place, and I impulsively decided to send a flame email to one of the posters.
And at the time, I was a little too obsessed with Nietzsche and believed in the absolute groundlessness of all our claims. I still believe our claims have no ground, but my thoughts on the subject have become more complex and critical than they were before: precisely the quality that should be the goal for all of our philosophical endeavors.
p.s. Clark, you are by far the most intelligent person who wrote a comment about my email. I really have nothing to criticize about the things you said, and, in fact, I admit that you know more about 20th century philosophy than I do. Please continue to spread some light amongst these petulant little tools
p.p.s. To the whole group of people who might read this: please don't get me wrong. I come off as very abrasive. In part, I do this on purpose. I feel absolutely confident in my opinions on this topic of discussion. I don't really think you're stupid; I just think your discussions resemble children playing in a sandbox, thinking that they're engaging in worthwhile activity.
Now that's not to denigrate playing in a sandbox; as both Erasmus and Nietzsche hope we will realize, folly is deserving of praise!
I just think there is worthwhile discussion to be had, and arguing about utils is not where it's to be held.
p.p.s. Also, and once again in reaction to Clark, I don't really have a side, so I haven't really chosen one to be on. I'm more just a devil's advocate; when I hear a problem with what other people are saying, I try to point it out to them. Unfortunately, when it comes to philosophically dogmatic types, they tend to act in such a way that only the Marquis de Sade's approach to the religiously dogmatic serves any purpose: to throw shit at them.
Polemical discourse is the only way to unroot the dogmatic from their beloved logic, in the hopes that they may see a more mysterious and complex world than their mind currently allows/projects/fabricates/constructs.
p.p.p.s. And finally, to Richard, I'm going to send you this posting in an email since you probably don't check threads as old as this one. I understand that your type despises anything but clarity and the like, so I'll try to tidy up my language here and there. In the hopes of actually helping you and your little friends get beyond their current selves (assuming that, since last I read you, you have not ascended to a level worthy of both our time), I'll pain myself in actually rereading, editing, and writing a more tamed-down version of the above in more clearly stated verbiage.
Best,
Scott Bunton
- we're all just passing through time, living our lives. What games we play is all we are. So have fun. And don't take yourself, or most anything for that matter, too seriously
This is not uncommon. The incredible hostility that analytic philosophy recieves among students these days is deeply, deeply disappointing. The contemptible confidence with which these anti-analytic types, and many 'intellectuals', deride it, shows just how badly they misunderstand philosophy. They treat it like a branch of literature, and love to quote phrases, rather than aguments.
I think part of the problem is that very few people outside the philosophic community understand why, and in what way, philosophy is useful. They tend to read it very literally (and literary-ly), looking for final answers and rousing declarations, rather than clarity or analysis. Or they think philosophy is trying to compete with science, politics, psychology or the arts, and leap at what they think are incredible claims for a person with no laboratory, to make. The easy appeal of idealism and phenomenology is possibly a consequence of a most pernicious intellectual trap: that if an argument's form is valid, it's conclusion is true, and that premises are true if they can be thought.
I admittedly speak boldly in saying this, but I think the history of ideas (and the failures and successes of various ones) justifies the biases and methods of analytic philosophy very convincingly. Analytic philosophy did have its crisis, but I think the tradition has survived it chastened (though I do think there tends to be triviality in some of what's published). It's revealing about the lack of understanding of the types who make comments like this, that they often think anal. phil. is about semantics. I don't think any analytic philosopher today still treats language the way a geologist treats a rock. And even in the heyday of language-focus, it wasn't mere semantics.
Continental philosophy (specifically idealism and phenomenology) surely suffers more accutely from the faults it finds in Anglo-Saxon phil. I haven't studied a lot of Continental works in detail, but it all seems like a bunch of self-refential metaphors, to me. Useful ones, perhaps (well in the same way that a mnemonic is useful), but epistemically hollow and, metaphysically, much too extravagant. Yet some works are treated like scientific models by their more fervent adherents.
I've always viewed philosophy's role as being to clarify concepts, analyse beliefs, and address epistemic and exisential problems. I wonder if it can really do anything else, considering that other disciplines do the stuff that philosophers used to do, far better. But that in itself is a massive ambit, because it informs belief, possibly action, and critiques our epistemic certainties. The beauty of anal. phil's approach to this endeavour is that it consciously considers what we can take for granted as 'certain enough' before proceding to make claims.
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