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Ironically, I took multiple philosophy courses at the university of Texas taught by both Bob Solomon (one of the “eminent philosophers”) and his wife. I gradua

Ironically, I took multiple philosophy courses at the university of Texas taught by both Bob Solomon (one of the “eminent philosophers”) and his wife. I graduated from the philosophy program with a profound distaste for analytical philosophy, believing it to be pedantic BS that really only shows the limitations of whatever language you’re using for discourse. Hence the abstraction into symbolic logic, but symbolic logic only works as a pure abstraction: any link to the real world becomes limited by the language constructs you can use to describe the world, the subject/object relationships, etc. There are many languages and writing systems in the world. I expect the peculiarities of each to rear its head when attempting to use them to do “real” philosophy (I honestly view most of the analytical offshoots of philosophy as mathematics; somewhat telling, the university disagreed and forced all CS majors to take logic classes in the philosophy department).

whatshisface 9y ago
I think that the perceived stiffness of analytic philosphy is really just the true limitations of philosophy made obvious. >that really only shows the limitations of whatever language you’re using for discourse. It's not entirely clear that natural languages are more powerful than formal ones (in terms of stating true facts,) but what is easy to see is that English makes it far easier to appear to prove something you haven't. That gives it an illusion of power. Ironically Neitzsche had something to say about this: you've got the small claims that seem pedantic and insignificant, and the grand claims that explain the meaning of it all, but in the end the small claims can be made so much more certain than the grand ones that they're what you want to base everything off of. Viscosity of water vs. angels on the head of a pin.
- exelius 9y ago
  Exactly; I’m not saying natural language is better, just that you can’t really do any better without running into the same issues around discourse/rhetoric.

whatshisface 9y ago

I think that the perceived stiffness of analytic philosphy is really just the true limitations of philosophy made obvious. >that really only shows the limitations of whatever language you’re using for discourse. It's not entirely clear that natural languages are more powerful than formal ones (in terms of stating true facts,) but what is easy to see is that English makes it far easier to appear to prove something you haven't. That gives it an illusion of power. Ironically Neitzsche had something to say about this: you've got the small claims that seem pedantic and insignificant, and the grand claims that explain the meaning of it all, but in the end the small claims can be made so much more certain than the grand ones that they're what you want to base everything off of. Viscosity of water vs. angels on the head of a pin.

exelius 9y ago
Exactly; I’m not saying natural language is better, just that you can’t really do any better without running into the same issues around discourse/rhetoric.