Who destroyed philosophy?

@fresco,

Well dang it all I prefer Feyerabend, this must be why I was under the assumption Po-Mo was philosophy, I have been in the wrong forum all along.

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Its all to do with "consensus". Read Kuhn on the mechanisms of paradigm shifts.
Conservatives resist revolutionaries.

No, you misunderstand. The problem is that "post-modernism" is a collective appellation that actually refers to a bunch of different perspectives making a variety of claims, unlike classical philosophy where everyone agreed about everything.

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@Razzleg,

Oh I get it now, I could do real philosophy if I operate under the same set of presuppositions Ken does and never ever attempt to use an alternate methodology to figure something out. Silly me.

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@GoshisDead,

GoshisDead wrote:

Oh I get it now, I could do real philosophy if I operate under the same set of presuppositions Ken does and never ever attempt to use an alternate methodology to figure something out. Silly me.

I don't understand what you are saying here, Gosh. For you to operate under the same set of propositions that Ken does you would have to be Ken. That must be clear, only Ken can operate with"Ken's propositions", since they are by definition Ken's. To quote Wittgenstein, "No one can think a thought for me the same way that no one can don my hat for me."

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@Razzleg,

Well I guess this whole big philosophy thing is out of my range to comprehend.

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@Razzleg,

It is indeed a range of views, rather than a 'school of thought'. Why is PoMo not philosophy? One reason is the idea of the shattering, or splintering, of the 'meta-narrative' of the tradition. Up to a certain point, everyone could be sure that they were working within the confines of a tradition, even if they disagreed on certain very fundamental terms (i.e. nominalism vs realism). But with the advent of postmodernism, there was no longer a sense of an over-arching narrative at all, but various points of view.

Some of major influences in all of this were sociologists rather than philosophers, particularly Max Weber and Peter Berger. Some of Berger's books, particularly Social Construction of Reality, have been hugely influential in this whole development.

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@jeeprs,

So one is to say we cannot have a meta-narrative about a meta-narrative because a meta-meta narrative cannot be codified?

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@GoshisDead,

well I do realize what a hall of mirrors it can be, and often is. But in my case, there is a kind of thread I am following through the labyrinth, which helps me to organize my thoughts around it. I too am very wary of the most notorious of the well-known postmodernist thinkers. But there is something I am starting to see about it, which I can't avoid incorporating.

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@jeeprs,

Lol I was introduced to Philosophy through the social sciences and I have noticed that in many cases Po-Mo is more practical a maze navigator than many other more traditional tools. So here I sit at the bottom of the poisoned well sucking up the black water.

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@jeeprs,

jeeprs wrote:

It is indeed a range of views, rather than a 'school of thought'. Why is PoMo not philosophy? One reason is the idea of the shattering, or splintering, of the 'meta-narrative' of the tradition. Up to a certain point, everyone could be sure that they were working within the confines of a tradition, even if they disagreed on certain very fundamental terms (i.e. nominalism vs realism). But with the advent of postmodernism, there was no longer a sense of an over-arching narrative at all, but various points of view.

Some of major influences in all of this were sociologists rather than philosophers, particularly Max Weber and Peter Berger. Some of Berger's books, particularly Social Construction of Reality, have been hugely influential in this whole development.

Well, I agree with you that, insofar as "post-modernism" is a meaningful designation, it refers to a perspective that encourages a certain amount of inter-disciplinary thinking, such as sociology, biology, phenomenology, etc.

Part of my hesitation regarding too starkly drawn a contrast between "traditional philosophy" and "post-modernism" is, where do you draw the line? If we are to infer that they designate different historical periods, at what point did one period end and the other begin? There have always been heretical thinkers who have not conformed to traditional forms of argument or concept. Likewise, in another (unrelated) thread, someone drew the line between modern and post-modern philosophy by saying that modern philosophy spans the period from Descartes to Kant, and that post-modernism started with Nietzsche. Where did Hegel go? Can we safely ignore both Hegel and heretics in our periodization of traditional history? I'm just not sure where Po-Mo started, partly because certain voices of anti-traditional dissent have been around since the inception of the tradition, and also because in their attempts at historical reevaluation the the Po-Mo-ists have repeatedly claimed a variety of thinkers as progenitors (or at least to have "discovered" thoughts sympathetic to their conception.)

And to what degree can we confidently say that Descartes and Plato belong to the same tradition? I suppose that one could draw an historical thread between points A and B, and say, "Well, Plato said this, and this philosopher responded thus, and so on, and so forth, until we get to Descartes who said that. But this sounds rather like an exaggerated game of "Telephone", the purpose of which is to demonstrate the inevitable distortion of the original phrase. It's been said that all of Western Philosophy could be reduced to Plato, but that is a bit of an exaggeration. Most periods, and most thinkers, work under the assumption that they are solving problems left unsolved by their predecessors, and expect that the concerns of their philosophy supersedes the concerns of those prior. To a certain extent each generation of thinkers tends to also undermine that sense of their own progress by arguing with their immediate predecessor, who was no less confident of their own inevitability. If Po-Mo continues that trend, then I think that a hard line between it and tradition is quite impossible.

I'm not trying to slam traditional philosophy. For me, tradition cannot be reduced to a single point of view, and it is quite large enough to accommodate current "post-modern" trends in thought.

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Incidentally, if I were going to place the burden of responsibility for "post-modernism" on one thinker, I'd lay it squarely on the shoulders of Montaigne before I'd give it to Nietzsche.

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@Razzleg,

actually, it was Ding-an-Sich who made that remark about modern philosophy extending from Descartes to Kant, and post-modernism starting with Neitszche, and I thought it was a pretty good observation. I hadn't thought of it before, but it strikes me as being true. I think that Descartes was very much in the tradition of Platonism, but Neiszche was not. Why I think that would probably require a pretty substantial essay to defend, in this context I will just put it down to intuition.

I am of the view that there is a distinctive vision in Western philosophy, originating with Pythagoras and Plato which is the real authentic core of the tradition, but again, I don't know if I could make it stand up in court, so to speak. But in my view the line leads through the phenomenological side of the tradition, rather than the analytical schools, through Brentano-Husserl-Heidegger, although I am probably never going to be able to really get across all of that, life is too short. But I can really see the influence of Kant on cognitivism and constructivism, in fact the thought has struck me that he has probably had a huge influence on sociology and anthropology.

The biologist and philosopher by the name of Francisco Varela really interests me, he brought together biological sciences, phenomenology, and Buddhist perspectives into that movement that is now emerging as 'embodied cognition' and 'neuro-anthropology' which is where I think the most interesting developments in the western tradition now are.

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@jeeprs,

Varela is a significant figure in co-operation with Maturana. Where the "embodied mind" starts going off the rails is, IMO, with its application by Lakoff et al to linguistics and mathematics.

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@jeeprs,

jeeprs wrote:

actually, it was Ding-an-Sich who made that remark about modern philosophy extending from Descartes to Kant, and post-modernism starting with Neitszche, and I thought it was a pretty good observation. I hadn't thought of it before, but it strikes me as being true. I think that Descartes was very much in the tradition of Platonism, but Neiszche was not. Why I think that would probably require a pretty substantial essay to defend, in this context I will just put it down to intuition.

I am of the view that there is a distinctive vision in Western philosophy, originating with Pythagoras and Plato which is the real authentic core of the tradition, but again, I don't know if I could make it stand up in court, so to speak. But in my view the line leads through the phenomenological side of the tradition, rather than the analytical schools, through Brentano-Husserl-Heidegger, although I am probably never going to be able to really get across all of that, life is too short. But I can really see the influence of Kant on cognitivism and constructivism, in fact the thought has struck me that he has probably had a huge influence on sociology and anthropology.

The biologist and philosopher by the name of Francisco Varela really interests me, he brought together biological sciences, phenomenology, and Buddhist perspectives into that movement that is now emerging as 'embodied cognition' and 'neuro-anthropology' which is where I think the most interesting developments in the western tradition now are.

It seems to me that if Plato, and Aristotle, and Descartes, and Hume, and more recently, Wittgenstein, and J.L. Austin, and Gilbert Ryle, and Quine, and Davidson, are not philosophers, then I do not know what the term "philosopher" could possibly mean. So, I would say that philosophy is the kind of thing people like those I have just mentioned do. Now that is, of course, not to say what philosophy is, since to say that would we to say what kind of thing it is that people like that do. But it is certainly a good start. Wouldn't you say?

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Seems to me that the general argument against Po-Mo as a "real" philosophy is that it has done away with any real pursuit of objective truth. It can be seen as the glorification of perception and apperance.

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I vote for the idiot Nietzsche, the moron Marx, and the fool Kierkegaard.

All hail Hume, last of the great philosophers.

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@kennethamy,

Well no argument from me regarding Plato, Aristotle and Descartes. As regards the more recent thinkers, I obviously am not in a position to say that what they do is not philosophy, as they have helped define it, but what I can say is that due to the direction that the discipline has taken, I have had to look further afield for the knowledge I am interested in.

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@GoshisDead,

quite true - it does deny the idea of 'absolute objectivity'. I struggled with this for a long time, but I have come to terms with it now. It is much easier to deal with if you understand something about non-dualism, as this provides a sense of ethical orientation without the 'Big J Judgement' that characterizes much of the grand tradition in the West.

Have a look at The Truth about Truth - anyone read this? Looks kind of interesting as a PoMo anthology....

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@jeeprs,

jeeprs wrote:

Well no argument from me regarding Plato, Aristotle and Descartes. As regards the more recent thinkers, I obviously am not in a position to say that what they do is not philosophy, as they have helped define it, but what I can say is that due to the direction that the discipline has taken, I have had to look further afield for the knowledge I am interested in.

Was the knowledge philosophical knowledge? And was it of the kind these philosophers were discussing? I see no difference between the kinds of questions discussed by Descartes about epistemology, and those discussed by Locke, or Austin, or Dennett. Of course, their approaches might differ, but so you would expect after a span of centuries. You would not expect Newton and Greene to think and approach the issues of physics in the same way either, would you?

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@kennethamy,

No I would not, but I have consciously separated myself from the mainstream, though. I didn't know that this was what I was doing when I set out, but that is what happened. Remember the 60's? I was part of the 'counter-culture'. We felt that Western thinking generally had become too materialistic, too driven by science, and had lost all sense of the human relationship to nature. That is why we got interested in Eastern philosophy. Now I have mentioned this before, but you generally seem to have a very negative, or possibly stereotyped, view of Eastern philosophy. But Eastern philosophy is created around the teaching, or the state, of spiritual enlightenment, which I don't think is comprehended or represented in current Western philosophy. (I always get a lot of criticism for saying this.)

I am making an effort to understand current Western philosophy - in fact, speaking of Brian Greene, I am labouring through 'Fabric of the Cosmos' even as we speak. But I still stand by many of my criticisms. Also I think that some Eastern perspectives are becoming part of the mainstream now, mainly by way of the developments in Physics and Philosophy that we have discussed many times previously. I can say without fear of contradiction that quantum theory discredits the perspective of naive realism, or absolute objectivity, or the idea of a mind-independent reality (however you want to put it). This is a very difficult thing for Western philosophy to accept. (Remember the argument about whether the Moon exists if nobody is looking at it? I have learned that Einstein - Einstein! - said exactly the same. In fact I think Western philosophy, in the broadest sense, is literally in a state of crisis at this time.)

'Philosophical knowledge' is no longer something that I believe can be held at arm's length. It can't be formulated and summarized and written down in a series of verbal propositions. Hence my interest in Buddhism, which is not concerned with verbal formulae but with 'realization'. Traditional philosophy had something in common with this, even if the terminology was different: it was a spiritual disicpline and a way of life, aimed at emancipation from the thousands of trivial concerns of worldlings.

Anyway I know all these are very big statements. I really don't want to force them on anyone. This is just my understanding of the matter. Others will have a different view.

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Who destroyed philosophy?

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