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As a philosophy major with multiple degrees, this is a very strange thing to read. I was raised by a highly religious family, and was always confused by why we

by scoofy 6y ago

As a philosophy major with multiple degrees, this is a very strange thing to read. I was raised by a highly religious family, and was always confused by why we believed what we believed. This led me to studying philosophy. I think most people don't have the deep suspicion that everything they may know might be wrong, somehow, and that the phenomena they experience may be explainable in a parallel way that better describes things. Caring about and understanding the structure of knowledge is philosophy. It always surprises me that other's have not explored these subjects beyond casually considering them during a novel or film.

yamoriyamori 6y ago
> I think most people don't have the deep suspicion that everything they may know might be wrong, somehow, and that the phenomena they experience may be explainable in a parallel way that better describes things I've always wondered why it's such a majority that don't have these suspicions. (It took me a long time to realize I can relate to these 'skeptics' easier and eventually become better friends.) And to drill down into this group: what's the split on whether the suspicion truly never occurs to them and whether they've chosen to ignore the suspicions and be obstinate their entire lives. Re: casually exploring philosophy through novel or film. Sadly I do think it's just a fact that it's an angle of entertainment and the only exposure to philosophy people get in the 21st century.
- roenxi 6y ago
  > I've always wondered why it's such a majority that don't have these suspicions. Because being philosophically correct (or even philosophically consistent) offers a very small material advantage. Or sometimes a disadvantage - if the environment shifts so that individuals do very badly then questioning the local collective (historically, often a church) might end poorly.
- posterboy 6y ago
  > > I think most people don't have the deep suspicion that everything they may know might be wrong, somehow, and that the phenomena they experience may be explainable in a parallel way that better describes things > I've always wondered why it's such a majority that don't have these suspicions This is entirely pejorative. First of all, the premisses is a contradiction in terms. If knowing with certainty is a matter of definition, then doubt about it is expressly excluded. You can go down the slippery slope and deny objectivity all together to arrive at the quote popularly attributed to Sokrates, and develop platonic ideals to finally hold it with Descartes idealizing yourself, cogito ergo sum. Yet, we fundamentally can't know what others think and feel. If we can only take a best guess, and converse to peek and poke for improving the estimate, then that's what philosophy really means in the all daily sense, our "company philosophy" and such like. It generalizes well either way, whether anthropomorphizing the environment, or objectifying people, if we always can only project from the self onto others. And esteem is actually a good analogue to philos! Still, a notable duality remains in my philosophy above. The point I'm trying to make is, I guess, that I will have to keep that formyself and leave yours to you, because ambivalence is a feature, and a bug.
im3w1l 6y ago
I stopped being interested because I reached a point where I felt there were strong diminishing returns. Additional study didn't lead me to make different choices or looking at everyday things differently any more. And it didn't take that long to get to that point.
- blackbear_ 6y ago
  Indeed. The only conclusion I reached was "well, if I cannot be sure of almost anything, what's the point?" And that's usually the point you reach when you talk about politics with reasonable people whom you disagree with. You both conclude you can't really know much at all and leave the conversation with the same beliefs you both had before.
posterboy 6y ago
> Caring about and understanding the structure of > knowledge is philosophy. I disagree. At least, I expected the sentence to continue differently, because the study of philosophy is to a significant degree concerned with a survey of the historic development of certain traditions of thought, and ideas. But beyond that, it's only rarely about the structure of knowledge. That's predominantly done in information science, informatics, what English call computer science for short. Of cohrse, caring about can be done in both disciplines, but also in any other field, pretty much by the definition of "study". Except, philosophy eventually will do it with blanket terms to the point of being meaningless. Point in case: your comment. Really though, it depends entirely on the philosophy under study.
- fmoralesc 6y ago
  > the study of philosophy is to a significant degree concerned with a survey of the historic development of certain traditions of thought, and ideas. Have you actually been exposed to any high-level contemporary philosophical research? While it is true that many philosophers do care about the history of ideas, this is quite often done in order to treat various philosophical questions systematically (for many philosophers, it's all about the questions, not about any 'philosophy' that needs to be studied). Besides, for many philosophers there is also some interest to integrate their work with the work of researchers in many other disciplines. If you work in philosophy of language, it would be ridiculous not to try to acquire some working knowledge of linguistics and cognitive science. If you work in epistemology (aka the theory of knowledge), you have to have some knowledge of cognitive science, game theory, computer science, psychology, evolutionary theory, and so on, just to know what other philosophers might be discussing. GP's claim could be parsed in many different ways (what is 'understanding'? what is 'the structure of knowledge'?), and the suggestion that whatever that is is 'predominantly done' in computer science betrays some ignorance (or perhaps some willing obtuseness) about the alternatives. That you think that their claim was meaningless says more about you than about the claim. Why, instead of disagreeing with GP immediately, don't you ask them what they mean? You know, engage with a philosophical thought?
  - posterboy 6y ago
unabst 6y ago
> understanding the structure of knowledge is philosophy I would replace knowledge with arguments. Knowledge is already "solved" in many minds and it'll be hard for philosophy to reclaim the word. But arguments? I don't think so. No field is as deeply concerned about arguments than philosophy. Tangible arguments are scientific arguments, which are a mere subset of philosophy. Modern philosophers have failed to market the superset.
- scoofy 6y ago
  I wasn't trying to be precise. I use knowledge in the sense of proposition. The interplay between deductive knowledge/frameworks, and inductive. I problem of that relationship is the core of why many of our mappings from the world to the framework of the world are so difficult.
yamrzou 6y ago
I used to spend my time on https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/ https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/ looking for.. answers. Until I read "Philosophical Investigations" and "On Certainty" by Ludwig Wittgenstein. They depict the nature of language and the nature of doubt, and allowed me to frame philosophical questions differently, from language perspective and a psychological one. "It is not our aim to refine or complete the system of rules for the use of our words in unheard-of ways. For the clarity that we are aiming at is indeed complete clarity. But this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely disappear. The real discovery is the one that makes me capable of stopping doing philosophy when I want to." — Philosophical Investigations.
jfengel 6y ago
Moral philosophy is also philosophy, and it's only tangentially related to the structure of knowledge. I think the problem with defining "philoosphy" is that any time a field becomes sufficiently well-defined, they stop calling it "philosophy". Natural philosophy is now "science". Early practitioners of economics, linguistics, and even law were called "philosophers". Fields like sociology and cognitive science still overlap a lot with philosophy departments. What's left in philosophy is those fields that are still vague and without definitive answers even at the base level. Epistemology (structure of knowledge) and ethics are two broad headlines that encompass much of what's called "philosophy" now, but a lot of work in philosophy departments only barely fits into those categories (like those that also lump under sociology). These fields are important, though it's easy for fans of "hard sciences" to dismiss them because they're so poorly defined. It's worth remembering that Newton and Darwin both considered themselves philosophers. They were the ones who took poorly defined fields to gave them rigorous footings, and we respect them for finding the order in what was orderless before they started.

by scoofy 6y ago

yamoriyamori 6y ago

> I think most people don't have the deep suspicion that everything they may know might be wrong, somehow, and that the phenomena they experience may be explainable in a parallel way that better describes things I've always wondered why it's such a majority that don't have these suspicions. (It took me a long time to realize I can relate to these 'skeptics' easier and eventually become better friends.) And to drill down into this group: what's the split on whether the suspicion truly never occurs to them and whether they've chosen to ignore the suspicions and be obstinate their entire lives. Re: casually exploring philosophy through novel or film. Sadly I do think it's just a fact that it's an angle of entertainment and the only exposure to philosophy people get in the 21st century.

roenxi 6y ago
> I've always wondered why it's such a majority that don't have these suspicions. Because being philosophically correct (or even philosophically consistent) offers a very small material advantage. Or sometimes a disadvantage - if the environment shifts so that individuals do very badly then questioning the local collective (historically, often a church) might end poorly.
posterboy 6y ago
> > I think most people don't have the deep suspicion that everything they may know might be wrong, somehow, and that the phenomena they experience may be explainable in a parallel way that better describes things > I've always wondered why it's such a majority that don't have these suspicions This is entirely pejorative. First of all, the premisses is a contradiction in terms. If knowing with certainty is a matter of definition, then doubt about it is expressly excluded. You can go down the slippery slope and deny objectivity all together to arrive at the quote popularly attributed to Sokrates, and develop platonic ideals to finally hold it with Descartes idealizing yourself, cogito ergo sum. Yet, we fundamentally can't know what others think and feel. If we can only take a best guess, and converse to peek and poke for improving the estimate, then that's what philosophy really means in the all daily sense, our "company philosophy" and such like. It generalizes well either way, whether anthropomorphizing the environment, or objectifying people, if we always can only project from the self onto others. And esteem is actually a good analogue to philos! Still, a notable duality remains in my philosophy above. The point I'm trying to make is, I guess, that I will have to keep that formyself and leave yours to you, because ambivalence is a feature, and a bug.

im3w1l 6y ago

I stopped being interested because I reached a point where I felt there were strong diminishing returns. Additional study didn't lead me to make different choices or looking at everyday things differently any more. And it didn't take that long to get to that point.

blackbear_ 6y ago
Indeed. The only conclusion I reached was "well, if I cannot be sure of almost anything, what's the point?" And that's usually the point you reach when you talk about politics with reasonable people whom you disagree with. You both conclude you can't really know much at all and leave the conversation with the same beliefs you both had before.

posterboy 6y ago

> Caring about and understanding the structure of > knowledge is philosophy. I disagree. At least, I expected the sentence to continue differently, because the study of philosophy is to a significant degree concerned with a survey of the historic development of certain traditions of thought, and ideas. But beyond that, it's only rarely about the structure of knowledge. That's predominantly done in information science, informatics, what English call computer science for short. Of cohrse, caring about can be done in both disciplines, but also in any other field, pretty much by the definition of "study". Except, philosophy eventually will do it with blanket terms to the point of being meaningless. Point in case: your comment. Really though, it depends entirely on the philosophy under study.

fmoralesc 6y ago
> the study of philosophy is to a significant degree concerned with a survey of the historic development of certain traditions of thought, and ideas. Have you actually been exposed to any high-level contemporary philosophical research? While it is true that many philosophers do care about the history of ideas, this is quite often done in order to treat various philosophical questions systematically (for many philosophers, it's all about the questions, not about any 'philosophy' that needs to be studied). Besides, for many philosophers there is also some interest to integrate their work with the work of researchers in many other disciplines. If you work in philosophy of language, it would be ridiculous not to try to acquire some working knowledge of linguistics and cognitive science. If you work in epistemology (aka the theory of knowledge), you have to have some knowledge of cognitive science, game theory, computer science, psychology, evolutionary theory, and so on, just to know what other philosophers might be discussing. GP's claim could be parsed in many different ways (what is 'understanding'? what is 'the structure of knowledge'?), and the suggestion that whatever that is is 'predominantly done' in computer science betrays some ignorance (or perhaps some willing obtuseness) about the alternatives. That you think that their claim was meaningless says more about you than about the claim. Why, instead of disagreeing with GP immediately, don't you ask them what they mean? You know, engage with a philosophical thought?
- posterboy 6y ago

unabst 6y ago

> understanding the structure of knowledge is philosophy I would replace knowledge with arguments. Knowledge is already "solved" in many minds and it'll be hard for philosophy to reclaim the word. But arguments? I don't think so. No field is as deeply concerned about arguments than philosophy. Tangible arguments are scientific arguments, which are a mere subset of philosophy. Modern philosophers have failed to market the superset.

scoofy 6y ago
I wasn't trying to be precise. I use knowledge in the sense of proposition. The interplay between deductive knowledge/frameworks, and inductive. I problem of that relationship is the core of why many of our mappings from the world to the framework of the world are so difficult.

yamrzou 6y ago

I used to spend my time on https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/ https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/ looking for.. answers. Until I read "Philosophical Investigations" and "On Certainty" by Ludwig Wittgenstein. They depict the nature of language and the nature of doubt, and allowed me to frame philosophical questions differently, from language perspective and a psychological one. "It is not our aim to refine or complete the system of rules for the use of our words in unheard-of ways. For the clarity that we are aiming at is indeed complete clarity. But this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely disappear. The real discovery is the one that makes me capable of stopping doing philosophy when I want to." — Philosophical Investigations.

jfengel 6y ago

Moral philosophy is also philosophy, and it's only tangentially related to the structure of knowledge. I think the problem with defining "philoosphy" is that any time a field becomes sufficiently well-defined, they stop calling it "philosophy". Natural philosophy is now "science". Early practitioners of economics, linguistics, and even law were called "philosophers". Fields like sociology and cognitive science still overlap a lot with philosophy departments. What's left in philosophy is those fields that are still vague and without definitive answers even at the base level. Epistemology (structure of knowledge) and ethics are two broad headlines that encompass much of what's called "philosophy" now, but a lot of work in philosophy departments only barely fits into those categories (like those that also lump under sociology). These fields are important, though it's easy for fans of "hard sciences" to dismiss them because they're so poorly defined. It's worth remembering that Newton and Darwin both considered themselves philosophers. They were the ones who took poorly defined fields to gave them rigorous footings, and we respect them for finding the order in what was orderless before they started.