thirdin77

What an incisive question Obviously you didn't read the first post of this thread. I wasn't asserting, I was pondering and asking for the opinions of others on the matter. But well.. nevermind.

thirdin77

Thanks for posting an answer to the question that I had originally intended to be the topic of this thread. Your words are good food for thought.

I replied to hugo holbling as I did because I thought he was being condescending and dismissive. I didn't want a thesis, nor have I given one. I only wanted some expounding from a person who seemed to know something but, as he has made clear, this thread is simply beneath him. Oh well.

The posts made by most of the others, though, have been appreciated.

thirdin77

No way did I react inappropriately. I started this thread asking for responses and I didn't react poorly to contributors. However, I was condescended by one person and I responded to him. That's it.

It is you who are being vicious. It seems you think you are being "appropriately" vicious by putting me "in my place" which makes things "right". How ridiculous.

I humbly admit that our post is thorough and I do admit that there is plenty here that I hadn't seen before- yes, you do know more than I do and yes, I do have plenty to learn. Your motivation for posting, though, is disgusting.

Clutch

My initial post contained a couple of snippy turns of phrase, for which I apologize. After my first return to the computer after sober second thought, I moderated these. The remarks you quoted were deleted, and I noted specifically that this was because I'd reconsidered the tone of the post. I am concerned to point out your errors, but if this can be done with an 'ego-contest', I'm all for it. Of course, this is at least half up to you.
Of course the length of your post is not the problem, but rather its accuracy.
I showed the error of your claim that philosophy was stagnant to a "huge degree" following Wittgenstein. Popper's influential work was predominately completed before the death of Wittgenstein; hence citing his work is not the clearest example of a vibrant philosophical community following Wittgenstein. (The same goes for Ayer. FYI.) As for Marcus, her work in logic, and especially on the theorems of modal logic that bear her name today, was indeed groundbreaking, and is central to the study even now. She also had a great influence on Kripke, and to a lesser extent Putnam, in the 60s and 70s. She certainly counts as an example of important work done following Wittgenstein.

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Dennett is muchly a lone figure in philosophy for his non-academic cachet and sales figures, not for his interest in Darwin. Scads of philosophers are working on evolutionary explanations of ethics, emotion, and cognition; go to a library and try a search of Philosophers Index on CD-ROM.
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I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. Your claim was that Dennett is singular in his application of evolutionary notions to philosophy. I pointed out that he is only the most famous such philosopher. (Indeed, he's one of the best-selling philosophers altogether, irrespective of research area.) This has nothing to do with snobbery, and is a simple statement of fact. Dennett is a friendly acquaintance, whose ability to write accessibly I much admire. That you read some nastiness into this comment is baffling.

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And Alvin Plantinga is one of the more exciting figures in philosophy?
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By these two standards, Burton Dreben was an even more exciting figure! But that's not what you'd claimed, anyhow. What you claimed is that Plantinga is so exciting because philosophers cat respond to him. The literature contains many prima facie quite comprehensive responses to Plantinga, on various matters.

Try what again? You made some errors in your characterization of philosophy. I acknowledged the truth in what you'd said, but noted the mistakes. No big deal; end of story.

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Originally posted by Clutch
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As for philosophy in relation to other disciplines -- all I'll say is, don't confuse the institutional division of a university into departments for some deep carving of intellectual inquiry at its joints.
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In my post to thirdin77, I discussed this in some detail. So your claim here is surprising.

In practice, the departmental divisions did isolate philosophy from other disciplines, just as they isolated most disciplines from one another. In practice, however, concrete steps have been taken to overcome this over the past two decades. It is a simple fact of academic life that almost every university has some sort of specific resource for interdisciplinary study and research. One of the most popular innovations has been programmes or even departments in Cognitive Science, one of the participants in which is philosophy. Interdisciplinary work, including with empirical sciences, is a familiar fact of life in contemporary North American and British philosophy departments. Of course, there is still a long way to go, on all sides.

quote:
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Originally posted by Clutch
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[edited for tone]
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As noted above, this would not be the first instance of your finding bad motives where none exist.
Agreed. I'll go one further, in fact: It was always a mistake to have regarded philosophy as "above". (Excepting centuries ago, when the term was more or less intended to exhaustively apply to all intellectual inquiry.
True of many disciplines, including philosophy. And including biology, for that matter. I don't see biology as a special case of philosophical ignorance, though. Lots of philosophers work in Phil. of Biology, and many others explicitly apply biological notions. There's always more to learn, but then, philosophers need to pay more attention also to computer science, to psychology, to cognitive ethology, to cosmology...
Some new ideas have come from outside, and it's important that this continue. I can't see any reason to think that most have, though, nor even that the most interesting have. Habermas and Singer are more "exciting" than Nozick and Rawls? I dunno. Again, this is pretty clearly a matter of what you (or I) find "exciting", however it is that you intend the term to apply here.
Agreed, with an exclamation point! Again, the same is true of virtually every discipline -- psychology continues to work at integrating insights from computation theory into models of cognition; linguistics the insights of neurology (and philosophy); cosmology the insights of biology! (Thinking of Lee Smolin, here.) Is a general struggle in no way particular to philosophy.
For the third time. And for the third time, all I can do is tell you that I edited my post to soften its tone. It is extravagant and simply mistaken for you to elevate the edited phrases to the status of "personal insult". But what is certainly clear is that I in no way evaded anything; I clearly pointed out where I agreed, and where I disagreed, why you were in error. Let me add that, were you to go over your own recent posts here and remove the accusations and vitriol you have included, I would not regard it as disingenous, nor dishonest, nor otherwise unimpressive. I would regard it as a welcome if belated sign of courtesy. If you would extend the same attitude to my own moderation of my post, we'd be better situated for useful discussion.

[edited to replace IIDB's mysterious vanishing quotation marks --C]

tk

Oh OK. Well... my take is, since philosophy is supposed to be about life, there's no good reason why one shouldn't use words from philosophical fields in daily life.

There are of course those who seem to have the idea that philosophy should be totally distanced from our day-to-day experiences. Oh well.

Gurdur

Woo-hoo ! Is this the most pointless flamewar I've seen for a while or not ?

Let's dance.

Without apology at first. Tsk ! Insults first, then edit them out long afterwards, without apology. Tsk !
Not impressive !

Hypocrisy. Unconvincing. You could have easily PM'ed me, now you're attempting a retreat once I've drawn attention to your behaviour. Your apology comes rather late, wouldn't you say ?


Poppycock. Twaddle. [i]All you did was point out a few exciting initiatives within philosophy, without necessarily demonstrating any great progress --- and my point abouts stagnation is not unshared within the community --- while still evading the point that it is no longer the ruling discipline it once was and was claimed to be in the OP --- nor have you done anything so far to rebut my claim that most exciting initiatives these days come from cross-disciplinary works, not philosophy-internal ones.

heh, already anticipated this one, you left out the fact that Popper's and Ayers's work received their greatest effect long after Wittgenstein. And once again, tsk.



ooooooo, I dunno, the fact that oyu try injecting unnecessary vitirol all over the place might play a role in interpretation ?
You're really desperate to squeeze some win in points out of this, aren't you ?
We could debate this, since I'm of the opinion that the most comprehensive rebuttals of Plantinga come from biology and not from philosophy ---- but all this hardly touches my main thesis, now, does it ?

Come off it. There's room in this sub-debate, as you know well, for honest differences in opinion, but you haven't gone anywhere near my main point, and you' were trying to use very minor quibbles to do an ego job.
Do try again ! Answer my main thesis this time, please.

Clutch

Gurdur, this is not a flamewar. Not from my end. You said some things about recent and contemporary philosophy that were plain wrong, and I pointed out just how they were wrong. Nothing is left undone in that respect.

If you are sincerely interested in learning more about these matters, I would be happy to oblige you. But your apparent obsession with finding insult in any demonstration of your error, and your tendency to respond with invective, certainly makes it undesirable for me to pursue this as things stand.

If you want a flame-war, you're on your own. If you want to discuss philosophy with someone who actually does it, you need only reconsider your attitude and approach.

Hugo Holbling

Yes - the thread was so far beneath me that i posted a response when it seemed no-one else was interested and answered your question as best i could; viz. that the words were not being used incorrectly. I then made an off-hand comment which you jumped on and started attacking me for, even when it was quite clear who was making the positive assertion. If you want to continue this discussion in a civil manner then feel free to PM me; otherwise, i'd appreciate it if you'd stop second-guessing my motivations and apologize for your derogatory comments.

Clutch

I can't for the life of me see what set thirdin off. I thought Hugo was actually pretty self-deprecating and funny.

Oh, well.

Hugo Holbling

Thanks, Clutch! As i said in my thread, i don't see why philosophy shouldn't have an element of humour included, along with a healthy refusal to take ourselves too seriously. I apologize if i cause offense by my approach, but it's sure nice to receive support every so often.

Thanks again.