Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Philosophy of Philosophy', 'Gdel's Proof' and 'Interview with Baggini and Stangroom'

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24 ideas

1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 5. Aims of Philosophy / e. Philosophy as reason
Progress in philosophy is incremental, not an immature seeking after drama [Williamson]
     Full Idea: The incremental progress which I envisage for philosophy lacks the drama after which some philosophers still hanker, and that hankering is itself a symptom of the intellectual immaturity that helps hold philosophy back.
     From: Timothy Williamson (The Philosophy of Philosophy [2007], Intro)
     A reaction: This could stand as a motto for the whole current profession of analytical philosophy. It means that if anyone attempts to be dramatic they can make their own way out. They'll find Kripke out there, smoking behind the dustbins.
1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 8. Humour
Humour is practically enacted philosophy [Critchley]
     Full Idea: Humour, for me, is practically enacted philosophy.
     From: Simon Critchley (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.198)
     A reaction: This may be overstating it, as the funniest jokes may be the least philosophical, and remarks may be faintly amusing but very profound. Lear and his Fool make up a single worldview together.
Humour can give a phenomenological account of existence, and point to change [Critchley]
     Full Idea: Humour provides an oblique phenomenology of ordinary life; it is a way of describing the situation of our existence, and, at its best, it indicates how we might change that situation.
     From: Simon Critchley (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.198)
     A reaction: The trouble is that this leads us to relentlessly political standup comedians who aren't very funny. Critichley may have a problem with remarks which are very funny precisely because they are so politically incorrect. I sympathise, though.
1. Philosophy / G. Scientific Philosophy / 3. Scientism
Scientism is the view that everything can be explained causally through scientific method [Critchley]
     Full Idea: Scientism is the belief that all phenomena can be explained through the methodology of the natural sciences, and the belief that, therefore, all phenomena are capable of a causal explanation.
     From: Simon Critchley (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.196)
     A reaction: He links two ideas together, but I tend to subscribe fully to the second idea, but less fully to the first. Scientific method, if there is such a thing (Idea 6804), may not be the best way to lay bare the causal network of reality.
1. Philosophy / H. Continental Philosophy / 1. Continental Philosophy
German idealism aimed to find a unifying principle for Kant's various dualisms [Critchley]
     Full Idea: In his Third Critique Kant established a series of dualisms (pure/practical reason, nature/freedom, epistemology/ethics) but failed to provide a unifying principle; German idealism can be seen as an attempt to provide this principle.
     From: Simon Critchley (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.187)
     A reaction: He cites 'subject', 'spirit', 'art', 'will to power', 'praxis' and 'being' as candidates. This is a helpful overview for someone struggling to get to grips with that tradition.
Since Hegel, continental philosophy has been linked with social and historical enquiry. [Critchley]
     Full Idea: In continental philosophy from Hegel onwards, systematic philosophical questions have to be linked to socio-historical enquiry, and the distinctions between philosophy, history and society begin to fall apart.
     From: Simon Critchley (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.188)
     A reaction: I have a strong sales resistance to this view of philosophy, just as I would if it was said about mathematics. It seems to imply a bogus view that history exhibits direction and purpose (the 'Whig' view). There are pure reasons among the prejudices.
Continental philosophy fights the threatened nihilism in the critique of reason [Critchley]
     Full Idea: If reason must criticise itself (in Kant) how does one avoid total scepticism? In my view, the problem that has animated the continental tradition since Jacobi (early 19th cent) is the threat of nihilism.
     From: Simon Critchley (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.188)
     A reaction: As an outsider to 'continental' philosophy, this is the most illuminating remark I have read about it. It is not only a plausible account of the movement, but also a very worth aim, which should be taken seriously by analytical philosophers.
Continental philosophy is based on critique, praxis and emancipation [Critchley]
     Full Idea: The basic map of the continental tradition can be summarised in three terms: critique, praxis and emancipation.
     From: Simon Critchley (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.189)
     A reaction: I wince at 'emancipation', which seems to take freedom as of unquestionably high value, instead of being one of the principles up for question in social philosophy. There are more presuppositions in Marxist than in analytical philosophy.
Continental philosophy has a bad tendency to offer 'one big thing' to explain everything [Critchley]
     Full Idea: In continental philosophy there is a pernicious tendency to explain everything in terms of 'one big thing', such as the 'death drive' (Freud), 'being' (Heidegger), 'the real' (Lacan), 'power' (Foucault), 'the other' (Levinas), or 'différance' (Derrida).
     From: Simon Critchley (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.197)
     A reaction: From a fan of this type of philosophy, this is a refreshing remark, because if pinpoints a very off-putting feature. Each of these 'big things' should be up for question, not offered as axiomatic assumptions that explain everything else.
1. Philosophy / H. Continental Philosophy / 2. Phenomenology
Phenomenology is a technique of redescription which clarifies our social world [Critchley]
     Full Idea: Phenomenology (as in the later Husserl) is for me a way of assembling reminders which clarify the social world in which we exist; it is a technique of redescription.
     From: Simon Critchley (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.198)
     A reaction: I'm not sure if I can identify with this as a target for philosophy, but it is interesting and sound worthy of effort. Critchley offers this as the best strand in 'continental' philosophy, rather than the big explanatory ideas.
3. Truth / C. Correspondence Truth / 3. Correspondence Truth critique
Correspondence to the facts is a bad account of analytic truth [Williamson]
     Full Idea: Even if talk of truth as correspondence to the facts is metaphorical, it is a bad metaphor for analytic truth in a way that it is not for synthetic truth.
     From: Timothy Williamson (The Philosophy of Philosophy [2007], 3.1)
     A reaction: A very simple and rather powerful point. Maybe the word 'truth' should be withheld from such cases. You might say that accepted analytic truths are 'conventional'. If that is wrong, then they correspond to natural facts at a high level of abstraction.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 4. Anti-realism
The realist/anti-realist debate is notoriously obscure and fruitless [Williamson]
     Full Idea: The debate between realism and anti-realism has become notorious in the rest of philosophy for its obscurity, convolution, and lack of progress.
     From: Timothy Williamson (The Philosophy of Philosophy [2007], After)
     A reaction: I find this reassuring, because fairly early on I decided that this problem was not of great interest, and quietly tiptoed away. I take the central issue to be whether nature has 'joints', to which the answer appears to be 'yes'. End of story.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 10. Vagueness / b. Vagueness of reality
There cannot be vague objects, so there may be no such thing as a mountain [Williamson]
     Full Idea: It is sometimes argued that if there is such a thing as a mountain it would be a vague object, but it is logically impossible for an object to be vague, so there is no such thing as a mountain.
     From: Timothy Williamson (The Philosophy of Philosophy [2007], 7.2)
     A reaction: I don't take this to be a daft view. No one is denying the existence of the solid rock that is involved, but allowing such a vague object may be a slippery slope to the acceptance of almost anything as an 'object'.
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / e. Vague objects
Common sense and classical logic are often simultaneously abandoned in debates on vagueness [Williamson]
     Full Idea: The constraints of common sense and classical logic are often simultaneously abandoned in debates on vagueness.
     From: Timothy Williamson (The Philosophy of Philosophy [2007], After)
     A reaction: Wiliamson has described himself (in my hearing) as a 'rottweiller realist', but presumably the problem of vagueness interests a lot of people precisely because it pushes us away from common sense and classical logic.
10. Modality / D. Knowledge of Modality / 1. A Priori Necessary
Modal thinking isn't a special intuition; it is part of ordinary counterfactual thinking [Williamson]
     Full Idea: The epistemology of metaphysical modality requires no dedicated faculty of intuition. It is simply a special case of the epistemology of counterfactual thinking, a kind of thinking tightly integrated with our thinking about the spatio-temporal world.
     From: Timothy Williamson (The Philosophy of Philosophy [2007], 5.6)
     A reaction: This seems to me to be spot-on, though it puts the focus increasingly on the faculty of imagination, as arguably an even more extraordinary feature of brains than the much-vaunted normal consciousness.
10. Modality / D. Knowledge of Modality / 4. Conceivable as Possible / a. Conceivable as possible
Williamson can't base metaphysical necessity on the psychology of causal counterfactuals [Lowe on Williamson]
     Full Idea: The psychological mechanism that Williamson proposes as the supposedly reliable source of our knowledge of necessities only seems applicable to counterfactuals that are distinctively causal, not metaphysical, in character.
     From: comment on Timothy Williamson (The Philosophy of Philosophy [2007]) by E.J. Lowe - What is the Source of Knowledge of Modal Truths? 5
     A reaction: My rough impression of Williamson's account is that it is correct but unilluminating. We have to assess necessities by counterfactual thinking, because nothing else is available (apart from evaluating the coherence of the findings).
We scorn imagination as a test of possibility, forgetting its role in counterfactuals [Williamson]
     Full Idea: The epistemology of modality often focuses on (and pours scorn on) imagination or conceivability as a test of possibility, while ignoring the role of the imagination in the assessment of mundane counterfactuals.
     From: Timothy Williamson (The Philosophy of Philosophy [2007], 5.4)
     A reaction: Good point. I've been guilty of this easy scorn myself. Williamson gives our modal capacities an evolutionary context. What is needed is well-informed imagination, rather than wild fantasy.
12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 2. Self-Evidence
There are 'armchair' truths which are not a priori, because experience was involved [Williamson]
     Full Idea: There is extensive 'armchair knowledge' in which experience plays no strictly evidential role, but it may not fit the stereotype of the a priori, because the contribution of experience was more than enabling, such as armchair truths about our environment.
     From: Timothy Williamson (The Philosophy of Philosophy [2007], 5.5)
     A reaction: Once this point is conceded we have no idea where to draw the line. Does 'if it is red it can't be green' derive from experience? I think it might.
12. Knowledge Sources / E. Direct Knowledge / 2. Intuition
Intuition is neither powerful nor vacuous, but reveals linguistic or conceptual competence [Williamson]
     Full Idea: Crude rationalists postulate a special knowledge-generating faculty of rational intuition. Crude empiricists regard intuition as an obscurantist term of folk psychology. Linguistic/conceptual philosophy says it reveals linguistic or conceptual competence.
     From: Timothy Williamson (The Philosophy of Philosophy [2007], Intro)
     A reaction: Kripke seems to think that it is the basis of logical competence. I would use it as a blank term for any insight in which we have considerable confidence, and yet are unable to articulate its basis; roughly, for rational thought that evades logic.
When analytic philosophers run out of arguments, they present intuitions as their evidence [Williamson]
     Full Idea: 'Intuition' plays a major role in contemporary analytic philosophy's self-understanding. ...When contemporary analytic philosophers run out of arguments, they appeal to intuitions. ...Thus intuitions are presented as our evidence in philosophy.
     From: Timothy Williamson (The Philosophy of Philosophy [2007], p.214-5), quoted by Herman Cappelen - Philosophy without Intuitions 01.1
     A reaction: Williamson says we must investigate this 'scandal', but Cappelen's book says analytic philosophy does not rely on intuition.
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 5. Rationality / b. Human rationality
The human intellect has not been, and cannot be, fully formalized [Nagel/Newman]
     Full Idea: The resources of the human intellect have not been, and cannot be, fully formalized.
     From: E Nagel / JR Newman (Gödel's Proof [1958], VIII)
     A reaction: This conclusion derives from Gödel's Theorem. Some people (e.g. Penrose) get over-excited by this discovery, and conclude that the human mind is supernatural. Imagination is the key - it is a feature of rationality that escapes mechanization.
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 6. Meaning as Use
You might know that the word 'gob' meant 'mouth', but not be competent to use it [Williamson]
     Full Idea: Someone who acquires the word 'gob' just by being reliably told that it is synonymous with 'mouth' knows what 'gob' means without being fully competent to use it.
     From: Timothy Williamson (The Philosophy of Philosophy [2007], 4.7)
     A reaction: Not exactly an argument against meaning-as-use, but a very nice cautionary example to show that 'knowing the meaning' of a word may be a rather limited, and dangerous, achievement.
23. Ethics / F. Existentialism / 2. Nihilism
Perceiving meaninglessness is an achievement, which can transform daily life [Critchley]
     Full Idea: If nihilism is the threat of the collapse of meaning, then my position is that one has to accept meaninglessness as an achievement, as an accomplishment that permits a transformed relation to everyday life.
     From: Simon Critchley (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.193)
     A reaction: This sounds cheerfully upbeat and life-enhancing, but I don't quite see how it works. One could easily end up laughing at the most appalling tragedies, and that seems to me to be an inappropriate (Aristotelian word) way to respond to tragedy.
24. Political Theory / B. Nature of a State / 5. Culture
If languages are intertranslatable, and cognition is innate, then cultures are all similar [Williamson]
     Full Idea: Given empirical evidence for the approximate intertranslatability of all human languages, and a universal innate basis of human cognition, we may wonder how 'other' any human culture really is.
     From: Timothy Williamson (The Philosophy of Philosophy [2007], 8.1)
     A reaction: This seems to be a fairly accurate account of the situation. In recent centuries people seem to have been over-impressed by superficial differences in cultural behaviour, but we increasingly see the underlying identity.