tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6786809981065530267.post9144498505127592742..comments2024-03-14T09:05:08.053-07:00Comments on Special Ed Philosopher: My Ambivalent Feelings Toward PhilosophyKevin Currie-Knighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17401531417243089948noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6786809981065530267.post-20651596500556296412009-03-01T17:35:00.000-08:002009-03-01T17:35:00.000-08:00I will add one more problem with philosophy to the...I will add one more problem with philosophy to the list: <BR/><BR/>As mentioned, I am just not convinced that something like human ethics can be reduced to a cogent, coherent, neat system. Assuming evolution to be true, there is no good reason to suppose that the world is reducible to systems, as human thought - the desire to put it into systems - developed after the fact. As William James was fond of saying, systems are a man-made way of making a big world understandable, and like any generalizaiton, necessarily reductive. <BR/><BR/>But, those philosophers who say such things are generally seen as very unphilosophical, as they do not satisfy the philosophical desire for systems. <BR/><BR/>Like Stanley Fish says in the above quote, even if formalism does prove an impossible goal, there is no good reason to suppose, as do phlilosophers, that life does not go on the same as it always did. (In my more crass way of putting it, the world would not be any worse off if all the philosophy professors suddenly disappeared. Everyone would go on pretty much the same as they always have.)Kevin Currie-Knighthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17401531417243089948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6786809981065530267.post-91811668125120914312009-02-20T22:42:00.000-08:002009-02-20T22:42:00.000-08:00Wow, I can definitely relate! I started a post on ...Wow, I can definitely relate! I started <A HREF="http://www.xanga.com/mrsnongorilla/679369529/formal-logic/" REL="nofollow">a post</A> on my older blog with the phrase "I have a real love/hate relationship with philosophy". I've found, though, that there are a few extremely insightful philosophers amid a lot of pseudo-intellectual fakers that write to fill the bookshelves in the Philosophy section of the bookstore/library. <B>Good</B> philosophy can be very exciting and make you feel like it's okay to put off productivity for a few hours.<BR/><BR/>There are two major problems I see in the field of philosophy. The first is a general sloppiness and a lack of consolidation. Everybody wants to start on a clean slate and ignore what's gone before them. That makes for a lot of redundant reading and a lot of translation between writers to even figure out how ideas are related. It also makes for a lot of worthless writing, where a few shoddy premises fuel mountains of unsound conclusions.<BR/><BR/>The second problem is simply that philosophy is an extremely old and developed field. Many extremely clever and unintuitive ideas were proposed over 1000 years ago, when drilling holes in our skulls to relieve headaches still seemed like a pretty good idea. While that's inspiring in some ways, it means that a lot of the good ideas are already "taken", and maybe it will be hard to go much further with philosophy until the rest of science, the more "practical" fields, catch up.piahwefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14301480369336177718noreply@blogger.com