The Greatest Thinker Of The Millennium

[bwv 1080]

     

     The whole point of my post, which was a response to nut-job, is exactly that. I defended non-verifiable philosophy as necessary and gave an explanation. Maybe you don't agree with my idea about it. I sum it up as sciences verifies facts about the world, and philosophers propound rules about 1) what is found and what to think about it 2) what we want in light of what we know. None of this is directly verifiable, but it is so valuable that we can't cease doing it. Facts are verified, rules are used.

     This may sound like a pinched version of philosophy, but it's far more expansive than some I've seen.

OK although it read to me that you were giving philosophy the short shrift that OP

The foundations of science itself are philosophical and there are real debates about how much of the real world science can reveal to us, the skeptical or nominalist case could even hold that things like quarks or electrons do not exist, they are simply convienent theoretical abstractions that do a good job modelling real world behavior

[drogulus]

I'm a person whom judges the ultimate value of a philosophy according to how much he "gets" out of it, in other words "how much my life is improved by that philosophy", or at least "how much my life improved when I apply this or that (or myriad) philosophie(s) to a certain period in my life". And, I wonder if the basic Weltanschauung of a person, during a specific period in his or her life, determines a certain philosophy's worth.

When I look back on my own studies, I see how much and how often Continental and Post-Modern philosophy had a positive impact on my life. So I wonder if that tells me that I'm a hopeless Romantic.

    I think your view of philosophy is more common than mine. I don't like commoners, so get out of here! 

    Late in life A.J.Ayer wrote a little book called The Meaning of Life. 
   

[drogulus]

OK although it read to me that you were giving philosophy the short shrift that OP

The foundations of science itself are philosophical and there are real debates about how much of the real world science can reveal to us, the skeptical or nominalist case could even hold that things like quarks or electrons do not exist, they are simply convienent theoretical abstractions that do a good job modelling real world behavior

     I find stuff like this, about the reality of quarks and theoretical abstractions being entitled to be called real, fascinating. It lies at the heart of what I'm getting at. The only theory of truth that will get my approval is one that makes room for useful abstractions like quarks. The theories I don't like are the ones that think there's an answer to the question "are they really real?". That's because by my reckoning the use the abstractions have is real reality, while the Platonic idea of Super Reality which lies behind the "really real" question is the target of my wrath.

Below is a short excerpt (all you can get on the Web, I think) of a paper that discusses views from which mine are, in part, derived:

Real Patterns
Journal of Philosophy, LXXXVIII, 27-51, January 1991.

Real Patterns

Daniel C. Dennett
Center for Cognitive Studies
Tufts University

1. Realism about beliefs

Are there really beliefs? Or are we learning (from neuroscience and psychology, presumably) that, strictly speaking, beliefs are figments of our imagination, items in a superceded ontology? Philosophers generally regard such ontological questions as admitting just two possible answers: either beliefs exist or they don't. There is no such state as quasi-existence; there are no stable doctrines of semi-realism. Beliefs must either be vindicated along with the viruses or banished along with the banshees. A bracing conviction prevails, then, to the effect that when it comes to beliefs (and other mental items) one must be either a realist or an eliminative materialist.

This conviction prevails in spite of my best efforts over the years to undermine it with various analogies: are voices in your ontology? Are centers of gravity in your ontology?

It is amusing to note that my analogizing beliefs to centers of gravity has been attacked from both sides of the ontological dichotomy, by philosophers who think it is simply obvious that centers of gravity are useful fictions, and by philosophers who think it is simply obvious that centers of gravity are perfectly real.


     What Dennett is saying is that there nothing out there to overrule our decision to grant reality status to patterns and other useful abstractions which play a role in physical theories. In order to arrive at such a position, the fixed star of philosophy for more than 2,000 years, that there is a reality more Real than our reality, must be abolished (a very good thing IMO), but not in favor of whatever you want like the radicals say, but instead by reference to what is empirically verified. Dennett is proposing to add the reality of patterns, that is information, to the materialists definition. This is what he calls "mild realism".

     Curiously, you'll notice that mild realism and the many Platonist beliefs have something in common. They both imagine something beyond mere stuff can be called real. The advantage of MR here is that limits are envisioned pertaining to the use and form of abstractions. They pertain to something, they have salience, like the center of gravity, or belief. This usefulness within a physical context constitutes their reality. The Forms are untethered, just begging for an apriorist to tell us everything about them. 

[Haffner]

    I think your view of philosophy is more common than mine. I don't like commoners, so get out of here! 

EEK! Ernie zee philosophical Boo-ZHWAH!

[bwv 1080]

Back to the OP I would say that the most underrated yet influential and important thinker of the Millennium is Adam Smith, who set out the basis of both economics and moral philosophy in a very naturalistic view of that harmonizes better with current biological, economic and anthropological research.  Key to Smith's views is the concept of an emergent order in both nature and human affairs, arrived at a century before Darwin

Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments is thus full of far-reaching possibilities. One astonishing surprise is that, although published exactly 100 years before Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859, TMS's examination of the way in which these systems of unintended order, as I call them, develop and change over time adumbrates in substantial part the way in which Darwin's theory explains the development and change of species. If recent work in what is called "sociobiology"—the field of inquiry that attempts to explain large parts of human social behavior by employing evolutionary insights[5]—has merit, then Smith's TMS, which is the first book in the Western tradition to try to work out such a view, might well have been on to something important indeed.

Thus The Theory of Moral Sentiments has had enormous historical influence, is subtle and sophisticated, develops an account of morality that is plausible and persuasive, and works out a model for explaining human interaction that is powerful enough to encompass virtually the entire range of human life. On top of that, some recent empirical research suggests his theory might be true. I can think of little else a book would need to be included as one of the greatest works of the Western tradition. I therefore commend it to you for your consideration, and I hope you will think of Smith not merely as an economist, but rather as he thought of himself: a moral philosopher. []

http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/adam-smith-moral-philosopher/

[drogulus]

Back to the OP I would say that the most underrated yet influential and important thinker of the Millennium is Adam Smith, who set out the basis of both economics and moral philosophy in a very naturalistic view of that harmonizes better with current biological, economic and anthropological research.  Key to Smith's views is the concept of an emergent order in both nature and human affairs, arrived at a century before Darwin


http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/adam-smith-moral-philosopher/

   I agree.

[Philoctetes]

Whoever convinced women that they should wear tight fitting spandex whilst they play volleyball.

[drogulus]

Whoever convinced women that they should wear tight fitting spandex whilst they play volleyball.

    Which adds a new dimension to the question "Are they really real?". 

[Philoctetes]

    Which adds a new dimension to the question "Are they really real?". 

Plus it puts it all into perspective by asking the follow up, "Does it really matter?"

[drogulus]

Plus it puts it all into perspective by asking the follow up, "Does it really matter?"

    It matters if you want to get metaphysical.

[Florestan]

        Someone has to decide what being a lover of knowledge amounts to. Among the someones is (heh!)me. So I have decided that those philosophers who understand what distinguishes successful enterprises from wheel-spinning ones get the prize.

This boils down to "I, Drogulus, decide, on my own criteria, who is a good philosopher and who is a bad philosopher". Thank you for this frank acknowledgment of your being dogmatic.

I don't see what's a priori about it.

Then with all due respect, you're blind.

You watch what they do and pay attention to what they say. If you don't have a dogma to instruct you that's all you can do. Don't you do that?

I certainly do because I have no a priori idea of what constitutes a bad or a good philosopher or what philosophy should do or should not do. I take them on their own terms.  For instance, while I disagree with Hegel, I consider him one of the greatest philosophers in the whole Western tradition. But then again you don't. You proclaim the dogma that "those philosophers who understand what distinguishes successful enterprises from wheel-spinning ones get the prize" and you filter all philosophy through this sifter.

       

philosophers propound rules about 1) what is found and what to think about it 2) what we want in light of what we know.

Dogma again and again. Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Pascal, Nietzsche certainly don't fit in. Are they less of a philosopher, or bad ones, because they don't conform to the dogmatic defintion of philosophy you adhere to?

     

[Florestan]

     On The Idea of Continental and Postmodern Perspectives in the Philosophy of Science

          Anyway, try to read the paper

Honestly, I tried but the page layout is a torture for the eye and I gave up after the first paragraph.

         I can recommend the book Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont if you're interested in the subject. After you read the book I doubt you'll want the "friendship" of the theorists that the book exposes as the charlatans and (dare I say it?) morons they are. This book does not go into the alliance of religion and PoMo. I don't have a reference for that right now.

If you want my opinion about Postmodernist philosophy and its relation with religion, here it is.

PoMo Phil is no philosophy at all, it is the very contrary of a philosophy, starting with the name. PoMo Phil has no love for wisdom, on the contrary it is manifestly hostile to any wisdom. Traditional philosophy tried to understand the reality (of world, of human being, of soul, of spirit, of whatever); PoMo Phil denies any reality. Traditional philosophy seeked to arrive at truth, whatever it might have been; PoMo Phil denies any truth. Traditional philosophers seeked to clarify their thoughts the utmost possible and this is exactly why they might appear verbose; in stark contrast, PoMo Phil-ers' verbosity is pure and intentional claptrap, as Alan Sokal proved brilliantly: his hodgepodge of absurdities, fallacies and plain lies is indistinguishable from the horde of like (or worse) nonsensical papers which are published daily in peer-reviewed PoMo Phil journals --- the dfifference being that Sokal made a joke while the PoMo Phil-ers pretend to be taken seriously. In short, PoMo Phil is the very negation of the great Western philosophical tradition and the proliferation of the former is a threat to the preservation and enhancement of the latter.

As for PoMo Phil 's alliance with religion, it depends what religion are you referring to. If you mean the New Age-ish mish-mash of Asian mysticism, African or Amerindian animism and watered-down, emasculated and distorted Christianity which it promotes, I don't have any need or use for it. But when was the last time you have encountered an alliance between Roman Catholicism and PoMo Phil? When was the last time you read a PoMo Phil defense of the Orthodox Church? Is it any wonder that you'll have a hard time answering?

To sum it all up: PoMo Phil is inimical to both reason and faith and as such it's a clear and present danger to genuine science, genuine philosophy and genuine religion.

[drogulus]

This boils down to "I, Drogulus, decide, on my own criteria, who is a good philosopher and who is a bad philosopher". Thank you for this frank acknowledgment of your being dogmatic.

    Well, I do give reasons. Hasn't it occurred to you that your juvenile mode of responding here does you no credit?

    Notice also that your restatement of what I do, which is correct, is not a description of dogmatism. It's the criteria that makes a position dogmatic, not the degree of confidence with which it's held. Since I don't decide who is a good philosopher on a dogmatic basis there is no dogma to be "matic" about. Perhaps you object to the way I argue, or my tone. If you figure it out, let me know, because this "Oh yeah, you are too!" won't fly.

[Florestan]

    It's the criteria that makes a position dogmatic, not the degree of confidence with which it's held.

Precisely. Your criteria have nothing to do with philosophy itself; they are just what you would like philosophers to do, and when they don't, you dismiss them. If you don't like dogmatic, fine, I'll withdraw it. How about doctrinaire? Or perhaps ideologue? Anyway, you might pick whatever word you want or none --- the reality behind it remains: a good philosopher must conform to your own vision of philosophy and this is hardly an open-minded position.

[drogulus]

As for PoMo Phil 's alliance with religion, it depends what religion are you referring to. If you mean the New Age-ish mish-mash of Asian mysticism, African or Amerindian animism and watered-down, emasculated and distorted Christianity which it promotes, I don't have any need or use for it.

     Why not? Do they not observe the correct, er, dogma? You mention the Catholics and Orthodox favorably. It appears that they are not, in your view, distorted. I agree, they are less so than others you mentioned, and it is precisely on grounds of faithfulness to traditional dogma that this is so. Notice I'm using the term correctly, not merely as a form of abuse.

    From the Catholic Encyclopedia:

     But according to a long-standing usage a dogma is now understood to be a truth appertaining to faith or morals, revealed by God, transmitted from the Apostles in the Scriptures or by tradition, and proposed by the Church for the acceptance of the faithful. It might be described briefly as a revealed truth defined by the Church -- but private revelations do not constitute dogmas, and some theologians confine the word defined to doctrines solemnly defined by the pope or by a general council, while a revealed truth becomes a dogma even when proposed by the Church through her ordinary magisterium or teaching office. A dogma therefore implies a twofold relation: to Divine revelation and to the authoritative teaching of the Church.

[drogulus]

Anyway, you might pick whatever word you want or none --- the reality behind it remains: a good philosopher must conform to your own vision of philosophy and this is hardly an open-minded position.

    I'm in no better position to figure out what you're accusing me of than you are.

    Why shouldn't philosophy conform to my vision? It has to conform to something, so it might as well be mine. If I find something better, I'll incorporate that. That's pretty open-minded.

[Florestan]

AFAIK, dogmatic has two meanings: one is indeed that of adhering to, and acting in compliance with, religious dogmas; the other one, less circumscribed, is applied to a person who makes his worldview the universal standard by which all others should be judged. It is in this latter sense and in strict respect to philosophy that I called you dogmatic and I stand by it.

[Florestan]

        Why shouldn't philosophy conform to my vision?

What a pity that Plato or Kant or Hegel were born much too early; had they been your contemporaries, they would have rushed to your feet to be lectured about what philosophy is and what they should do and how; as a result their work would have been much better and much scientifiker (sic!). Alas, great is the world's loss because of that not happening!

[drogulus]

Your criteria have nothing to do with philosophy itself; they are just what you would like philosophers to do, and when they don't, you dismiss them.

     I'm old fashioned. I think that love of knowledge requires that a philosopher give a credible account of knowledge and how it is arrived at. That is what I'm principally concerned with, an account of what exists (what the subject of "realism" is) and how reliable predictive knowledge can be gained about it. Therefore that forms the view I have of the usefulness of thinkers. Do they contribute to this understanding or not?

     Some of the names you mentioned are of thinkers who I might respect in some way as social critics or psychologists, but by my definition they are not philosophers of the stature of Kant, Hume, or Wittgenstein. Obviously others choose philosophers for other "meaning of life" reasons, and unlike some analytics (?) I actually have some respect for that kind of philosophy. It just isn't my main focus. I think you have to tell a good ontological/epistemological story first, then I'll listen to what else you have to say.

AFAIK, dogmatic has two meanings: one is indeed that of adhering to, and acting in compliance with, religious dogmas; the other one, less circumscribed, is applied to a person who makes his worldview the universal standard by which all others should be judged. It is in this latter sense and in strict respect to philosophy that I called you dogmatic and I stand by it.

    It sounds like you're saying that I think I'm right, and therefore want others to adopt my view. To some extent this is true. However, I have limited expectations about that possibility. My powers of explanation are not what I'd like them to be, and I'm not interested in facile agreement. So there's not much chance that I will suddenly persuade a bunch of people to adopt what must look like a rather strange point of view. Anyway I don't believe in easy agreements. I'd rather see some sign that I'm raising the right issues.

What a pity that Plato or Kant or Hegel were born much too early; had they been your contemporaries, they would have rushed to your feet to be lectured about what they should do and how.

     You're treating them as authorities (of course you are, that's what we're arguing about!), not thinkers who you're in dialogue with. This dialogue implies the possibility of disagreement. Socrates would take my side in this, wouldn't he? 

[Florestan]

    That is what I'm principally concerned with, an account of what exists (what the subject of "realism" is) and how reliable predictive knowledge can be gained about it.

Then limit yourself to scientists and leave philosophers alone. What you do is asking the apple-tree to grow oranges.

 

You're treating them as authorities (of course you are, that's what we're arguing about!), not thinkers who you're in dialogue with. This dialogue implies the possibility of disagreement.

I've just stated that I disagree with Hegel but it seems you missed that one.