How to "get" Philosophy | Hacker News Reader

How to "get" Philosophy

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Interesting. One thing I have to disagree with is where he says philosophy isn’t logical (logic was actually invented for philosophy). Is philosophy just peoples whims and opinions then? Now a day’s everybody have big opinions about politics, sports and so on, but what’s scary is that we actually believe that after 5 seconds of thought we have found the problem or the answer (watch sports commentators for example). What’s even scarier is that sometimes we even believe that we’re the only ones who see the answer, seeing ourselves as smart ones who have everything figured out. Enough of a rant, let’s continue. Logic is the foundation philosophy. The proof is very similar to PGs proof that good art or good design isn’t subjective. A trick that most philosophers use in creating an argument is formulating it in a way that the outcome either yes or no. Like “Whether God exist”. St. Tomas Aquinas, who was probably the greatest philosopher, wrote his whole summa in this fashion. I believe the concept (and the basic logical foundation of philosophy) came from Aristotle. But anyway this shows that logic is the foundation of philosophy.

Philosophy is important because what people believe has a huge influence, either good or bad on society. A philosopher is in a way a psychologist for society, but his prime goal is to discover the truth. Philosophy also doesn’t have to be complicated and obscure (this is just a stupid stereotype). Philosophy is really just the most practical use of logic and common sense, which most people don’t have and would do well to develop. You develop good logical thought by first learning the basic theory behind it, and then developing a mental habit of continuously using your logical faculties throughout your daily life. But first we have to stop thinking we now everything and admit we know nothing, because we then become students to Logic and we reap in the dividends for the rest of our lives.

I agree for the most part, except for the statement "we know nothing." That phrase seriously annoys me, especially when it follows a good critique of non-logical "philosophy." How is it consistent to maintain "we know nothing" as a philosophical precept, unless it is a knowledge claim and therefore self contradictory?

Additionally, while philosophy is based on logic, logic is only half the picture. Logic is syntax processing, and as such does not provide the semantics of the statements being analyzed. So, there are really two aspects to philosohpy, syntax and semantics. Analytic philosophers focus on syntax and continental philosophers focus on semantics. This split is fairly recent relative to the history of philosophy, seems to have started around the time of nominalism, i.e. Ockham. Before then, you'd find both elements in philosophical texts. I.e. in Plato's dialogues there are both logical discussions and poetic myths.

Your syntax/semantics distinction between analytic and continental philosophy is not how I think most philosophers would characterize it.

Here's a nice writeup from the Philosophical Gourmet Report:

"Analytic" philosophy today names a style of doing philosophy, not a philosophical program or a set of substantive views. Analytic philosophers, crudely speaking, aim for argumentative clarity and precision; draw freely on the tools of logic; and often identify, professionally and intellectually, more closely with the sciences and mathematics, than with the humanities. (It is fair to say that "clarity" is, regrettably, becoming less and less a distinguishing feature of "analytic" philosophy.) The foundational figures of this tradition are philosophers like Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, the young Ludwig Wittgenstein and G.E. Moore; other canonical figures include Carnap, Quine, Davidson, Kripke, Rawls, Dummett, and Strawson.[1]

"Continental" philosophy, by contrast, demarcates a group of French and German philosophers of the 19th and 20th centuries. The geographical label is misleading: Carnap, Frege, and Wittgenstein were all products of the European Continent, but are not "Continental" philosophers. The foundational figure of this tradition is Hegel; other canonical figures include the other post-Kantian German Idealists (e.g., Fichte, Schelling), Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Gadamer, Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Habermas, and Foucault. Continental philosophy is sometimes distinguished by its style (more literary, less analytical, less reliance on formal logic), its concerns (more interested in actual political and cultural issues and, loosely speaking, the human situation and its "meaning"), and some of its substantive commitments (more self-conscious about the relation of philosophy to its historical situation).

That looks like exactly what I'm talking about. All the canonical analytic philosophers listed there tend to be best known for their contributions to logic, i.e. formal validity of arguments.

On the other hand, the listed continental philosophers are all known for the worldviews they put forth, i.e. the meaning given to the terms we use, or even new terms.

My roommate for the past two years is a philosophy major, and he's gotten me hooked on analytic philosophy as opposed to continental. The former actually does attempt to pursue truth through logic and reason.

You would also be surprised how many great contemporary philosophers are out there. Philosophy, after all, evolves over time much like every other field. Aristotle and his buds are great, but people who don't follow contemporary philosophers are like those that are stuck listening to The Beatles when they could be giving new bands like Fleet Foxes a chance. Sure, life's questions don't really change, but contemporary philosophers build off the foundation the early philosophers laid out.

Or the build off the mistakes of earlier philosophers. It's a philosophical question itself whether philosophy always progresses, and therefore we can ignore the earliest philosophers. I am of the opinion, like one of the other commentators, that Thomas Aquinas is one of the greatest philosophers, and modern philosophy has become seriously fubar.

Sadly nowadays philosophy is seen like a pure theoretic field but since the beginning it was both a system (theoretic) and a way of life (practical- applying the theory). Socrates already criticized sophists. They were payed to teach philosophy (and rhetoric, logic etc.) but didn't apply philosophy to themselves. Platonism, Epicureanism, Stoicism were all both a system and a way of life.

This distinction disappeared, but not totally, with Christianity. Christianity was seen as the ultimate philosophy, bringing a system and a way of life together and making it popular as the ultimate, definitive and right system. Whereas in the ancient Greece philosophy and religion were both side by side in the live of people, with Christianity they were mixed together. Only the theoretic foundations of philosophy remained and were taught, since there were not needs anymore for a way of life.

Lately some thinkers came back to this primary vision, like Nietzsche who set up a system but wanted to apply it to human begins, hopping to change them. However because of these evolutions, philosophy is often seen like a pure theoretical system.

I tend to believe that "getting" philosophy is mostly a matter of liking it, and that's not something easily transmitted. Either you find questions like "what is morality? Could a computer have consciousness? Could I just be a brain in a vat being fed stimuli by evil scientists?" interesting, or you don't, and if you don't, I don't see how you could progress very far along the path to understanding philosophy.

Sometimes these kinds of questions only become really interesting after you've studied them a bit. To a naive newcomer, they may seem silly or nonsensical, but hearing some of the arguments, details and positions can bring to light a lot of interesting stuff that may not be immediately obvious.

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