Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Tyler Durden :

Well, yeah. It's much more legitimate than objectivism.

I wouldn't mind questioning presuppositions about reason if it were done in a rigorous way. Continental philosophers just seem to me to be bad writers, or at least bad philosophy writers. I think they're troubled by genuine philosophical concerns, but if they won't bother to make their ideas accessible, I can't take them too seriously. When I read continental philosophy, I just think "argument by assertion... argument by assertion... yeah, there's some more argument by assertion..."

Analytic philosophers question presumptions about reason as well, but they do it in a better way, I guess. My principal complaints with continental philosophers are with the presentation, not with the subject matter. In my least charitable moments, they strike me as a bunch of literature-writers, sociologists, linguists, and psychologists, who decided they liked the word "philosophy" and that it lent some legitimacy to their argument by assertion.

Dated, perhaps, but not at all on its way out, as far as I can tell. It's rare to find a department in the United States with a significant population of continental philosophers, and not rare to find a department without any of them.

Tyler Durden

Which is why i was more than eager to show that there's a huge degree of difference between objectivism and existentialism.

Define 'rigorous' and you'll see the same guys who make unexamined presuppositions about the very subject they engage in.

Oh really? Which ones? Have you read them all? Do they all fit under such a sweeping generalization?

I'm sure you have, but actual quotes would help your case.

Could you be more specific? I actually think the thinkers of post 1950's actually helped accelerate analytic thinking into a closure.

A poorly conceived sweeping generalization. Many of those thinkers were trained in philosophy at their universities, yet they confront the bigger questions of philosophy on a different playing field than the analytic thinkers, who are content to ignore the big questions that has haunted the history of philosophy, mine tools to locate a privileged vocabulary for their obsession with language.

Perhaps you have an affinity for the enterprise of science, and are too happy to subject the nature of philosophy as a scientific enterprise much like those church fathers did to philosophy in the medieval age?

Professors of philosophy in america have motives for keeping their academic department a certain way that aren't really honestly thought out philosophically.

True. It's due to the language more than anything, really, that helps generate this divide in style of thinking.

"German philosophy is a footnote to Plato. French philosophy is a footnote to a bad translation of german philosophy, english philosophy is a footnote rebuttal to a bad translation of french philosophy, and american philosophy is a footnote to the wall street journal as understood by the reader's digest."

I am also a philosophy student, and my studies are largely taught in the anglo-american strata. However, when i want to sign up for these continental thinkers, there aren't enough specialists trained in philosophy to teach those classes.

On the other hand, there's a trend over the past two decades that's about to change... Top philosophy departments at universities like Berkeley and the ivy league teach poststructuralism, but nowhere else.

HRG

But not all presuppositions are equal. There are some worldviews which need only a single, rather weak presupposition, while others need an extremely strong one.
Sorry, that's ridiculous - those aren't entities. They are patterns in human minds.

Logic is accounted for by the semantics of human language.

The laws of science are our (approximate) descriptions of regularities of the universe; their existence is consistent with the absence of intermeddling gods who might disturb them.

Morality is accounted for as an explanation humans have invented for the empirical fact that people within a society tend to behave in a particular manner.
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The Christian worldview can account for all these.

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Yes, because of its extremely strong presupposition. The naturalist worldview can do it as well, starting from a much weaker presupposition.

Anything can be "proven" if you assume a sufficiently strong axiom aka presupposition.

BTW, if you claim that the existence of God accounts for the laws of logic, then tell me how they would be different if no god existed. If you cannot tell me any difference, then the Christian worldview is irrelevant for them.

So if there is no god, can you tell me a proposition A such that:

A and not-A

is valid ?

Logic is inherent in the semantics of human languages. Thus if you don't use it, you are not speaking a language that the rest of us will understand.
So tell us why the ukase of God X creates any obligation, and why what is wrong to inflict on Israelite babies is right to inflict on Amalekite babies.

The theist worldview cannot really account for objective morality. It just calls the subjective morality of its postulated God objective.
If science was interested in an "ultimate nature of reality" (whatever that may be), you might be right. However, it isn't. It is interested in successful descriptions, explanations and predictions - and it has been quite successful.
Of course, since they have defined their meaning for themselves. Meaning is always subjective: meaning to someone.
Even if this claim might be true under your presuppositions, you really should not use them to evaluate other worldviews. That's like asking a soccer umpire to judge a cricket match.

For the record: I did not need any part of the Christian worldview to give meaning and purpose to my life. Of course, those are my meaning and purpose, and I pity those who feel the need to look for the meaning and purpose that someone else may have defined for them.

Regards,
HRG.

"Humans breed pigs for a purpose -- making bacon.
Does that make a pig's life meaningful for the pig ?"
(S. Johansson)

HRG

And under your theistic worldview, certainty is impossible as well, since you cannot be certain that your presuppositions are true.

IOW, the only things we can be certain about at the level of certainty which you require are the theorems of formal systems. Note that those are independent of the existence of any God.

Since the God of the Bible seems to be lying, you will have to argue that Christianity is independent of the Bible.
Come on. An omniscient, if not omnipotent IPU might have told us.
If you can presuppose your God, I can presuppose such an IPU.

And of course, you commit the Original Sin of Western philosophy of confusing knowledge with 100% guilt-edged knowledge - which can be had in formal systems, but only there.

<snip>

Regards,
HRG.

Howay the Toon

Of course naturalistic atheists make presuppositions. But these are essentially limited
to the realibility of our senses and and acceptance of the basic laws of Logic.

Christian Presuppostionists must also make these presuppostions before they can do or think anything at all. They just add one more presuposition in assuming God exists.

They then need to pretend that what they are doing and what we are doing is somehow equivalent so that it is a choice between 2 competing presuppostions each equally unsupported. So the equivalent atheist presuppostion is either:

Denying the presupposition of Gods existence or
Setting up our own reason as our ultimate authority.

But this step demonstrably fails. You can't try to argue that "There may or may not be a god" is an equivalently unsupported presupposition as "I assume God's existence". And as for establishing our own reason as its own authority. On who's authority does the presuppostionist decide to adopt his position except his own reason.

Clutch

Your fetish for argumentation via the presentation of actual "evidence" is simply one mode of the privileging and exclusionary reflex, here devoted to "rigorizing" Thomas's performance of philosophy; that is, requesting that he circumscribe his expression to fit the site(s) upon which you prefer to exercise the power of defining what will count as acceptable, through the forces implicit in the rhetoric of "truth", "soundness", "argument", or "intelligibility".Yes, that is a poorly conceived sweeping generalization. Foolish and whiny, too!

Tyler Durden

Cute, but not quite, clutch. I was hoping for some evidence behind the generic account of non-anglo-american philosophy beyond this shallow level of caricature so there is more substance behind those summations. Most of my colleagues at school are brutally ignorant of philosophers who do not speak or write english today, and are content to prattle the prevailing prejudices of academia.

I guess Richard Rorty's also foolish and whiny when he says the same thing, coming from an insider's position, correct? Argument by ridicule.

Next!

Clutch

Gosh, it still sounds like banal scientism -- all this asking for evidence and argument and such. It also continues to sound like hypocrisy. Or wait -- did you have quotes to bear out your inane characterization of analytic philosophy tout court? (That's French, dontcha know...)Quite right -- arguing from "Rorty says that" is ridiculous, and it's very decent of you to point this out yourself.

Tyler Durden

Your attempts to come up in the clutch are amusing, if not terribly original...

Wrong. It is so much more fun to use the methods of analytic thinkers against them, i'd allow.

I most certainly do - but first things first. After i hear Thomas' response, then i'll be more than happy to indulge you.


Another argument from ridicule? Sheesh, i can't keep up. Instead of pissing in the well, thereby reducing this discussion to your level of comfort, why don't you address his point? Is it true that professors of philosophy, especially in England and America, have invested interests in keeping their department a certain way or not? It wouldn't hurt to take a peek, now, could it?

Clutch

You seem not to understand what an argument from ridicule is. In particular, calling something ridiculous is not tantamount to ridiculing it in lieu of pointing out its rational defects. (Do I really have to explain this?)

Your claim was that the marginal status of so-called continental philosophy is just an artefact of ill-considered turf protection by entrenched analytic philosophers. You produced this remarkable claim with neither explicit evidence, nor any sign of implicit expertise -- viz, you betray no familiarity with wide sample of departments, nor with the general practices or dispositions of academic philosophers.

When I pointed this out, you shored up your conspiracy theory with an equally remarkable argument: Richard Rorty says so too!

That is utterly ridiculous.