Posted by alexandra_k on October 2, 2005, at 4:25:30
The albatross
Is graceful
Awe inspiring
Until forced to land
And there it is
Sitting abord the ship
Gawpy and clumsy and awkwardSome people are like that too.
There is something a little distasteful about psychologizing philosophy...
Like when the physicists discovered they required an observer...
and the ideal of mind-independent reality was shattered
likewise the ideal of a dispassioned search for truth.'We have to start somewhere and better to argue for what one finds plausible than for what one finds inplausible'
Though why it is that one finds one position plausible
Why it is that one is so repulsed by the other
Comes down to associations...Some people are reviled by there being aesthetical facts
(Because they don't want to be wrong in their judgements of artistic merit)
Some people are reviled by there being no aesthetical facts
(Because then my fingerpainting would be as worthy as a picasso)
But neither of (these) follow...
And once we learn to see difference
Between objectivity and authoratarianism
Between subjectivity and loss of standard altogether...
Well...
Then one might be better placed to find the truth
We are slaves to psychology
Just like the physicists are
Though of course the psychologists are answerable to the laws of physics and the laws of logic themselves...How many begin by wondering
'What is the meaning of life?'
But how to turn the meaning of life into a research project????
One must carve a bit off...
Make it a little more manageable...
And so one begins by investigating meaning...
Then moves to investigating reference
(a sub-set of meaning)
And one ends up by writing a response to a footnote by Gareth Evans.
And the point was...
That along the way...
The point was lost.What did I want to know?
What did I want to know?
What did I want to learn about given that I can study anything I want?
Anything I want at all...
We get diverted along the path.
Diverted into studying philosophical topics for philosophers
Philosophical topics created by philosophers
For philosophers
And we lose the point of what it was that interested us to start with.The establishment...
There is a divide.
Like in psychology I guess.
You have the experimental psychologists on the one hand...
The psychodynamic theorists on the other...
And in philosophy you have the analytic philosophers on the one hand...
And the continental theorists on the other....
Theorists working within different tradition work on different issues, different topics,
They study them with very different research methods,
They study different theorists,
Not many people know about (and work across) both sides of the divide...And a stock characterisation is that the continental philosophers (who I have never read...) make grand sweeping claims, brute assertations, irresponsible generalisations that are undersupported by argument and reason. They appeal to authority 'Derrida said______' the implication being that it simply must be true if Derrida said it...
And a stock characterisation is that the analytic philosophers have lost the point and they worry themselves to death over technical points that nobody outside of analytic philosophy really cares about or understands. And they don't create new theories so much as excelling in tearing old ones down... And who cares what Derrida said when the question that is more to the point was 'but was Derrida right?' And that is something that has to be argued for...
And of course both are useful...
Two opposing principles...
In tension...
The urge to say something
To develop something
The urge to be correct in what you say
Which means contemplating and weighing the arguments, the reasons.And philosophers have been known to turn...
To ostracise people
(just like most groups of people I suppose)
And the analytic philosophers...
Sign an open letter to the NY times
To object to Derrida getting an honourary PhD from Cambridge...
The implication being that his work was not up to standard
But the accusations...
Unsupported by argument
Unsupported by evidenceAnd some topics are not deemed worthy by the establishment...
And technical skill is prized...
The art of saying nothing
In a way that nobody can object to
And what is the point?
No.
What was the point?And will the point be unacceptable to them???
Possibly.
But...
I don't care.
Its okay :-)
I'm okay :-)
I do have things to say :-)
And whether those things are considered acceptablt
Whether those things are considered unacceptable...
I don't care :-)I'm going to start from somewhere that I find plausible
And the most brilliant thing I've heard...
The most brilliant thing I heard all week...Is to think of those who disagree....
Think of them charitably
Try to find what it is that they think they retain by disagreeing with you
And show them how that doesn't follow...
Show them that they don't have anything to lose.But the trouble is....
That it works the other way as well.Tis not contrary to reason for me to prefer the scratching of my finger over the destruction of the universe.
Tis not contrary to reason indeed...
Hmm
And once again the point is lost...
poster:alexandra_k
thread:561840
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20050910/msgs/561840.html