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I agree that there is no such thing as a "state of the art" in a subject such as philosophy... but you can read a lot of stuff from e.g. Plato or Aristotle that

I agree that there is no such thing as a "state of the art" in a subject such as philosophy... but you can read a lot of stuff from e.g. Plato or Aristotle that is just refuted nowadays. For example, I studied linguistics and whenever I had to read Plato about language I was reminded that he really had no idea what he was talking about. I also personally don't like Plato (he always creates these absolute strawmen as opponents), but that's more personal. I agree though that it's valuable to read at least some of it and to see whether it speaks to you or whether you find the method of inquiry interesting.

Viliam1234 6y ago
But people who didn't study linguistics can still be impressed by Plato, and then quote him to impress others. So, it's ultimately a question of why do you even want to study philosophy in first place. I suspect that for most usual purposes, Plato is perfectly okay.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >But people who didn't study linguistics can still be impressed by Plato, and then quote him to impress others. Same way people that studied science X (including linguistics and CS), but are philosophically naive, can have a coarsed-grained view of very nuanced situations, and adhere to naive assumptions... As an American philosopher noted, "An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing". This is true for a scientist with expertise in whatever X. Philosophy and epistemology (along with history and art) are ways to not be a simpleton with a narrow field of view who can't put together two coherent sentences outside their field (and doesn't even understand the second and third order implications of what he studies, its possible societal impact, its relevance and so on), but to get a wider picture. Whch is not the same as "impressing others", except in the sense that intelligence and education do impress others sometimes...
coldtea 6y ago
>For example, I studied linguistics and whenever I had to read Plato about language I was reminded that he really had no idea what he was talking about. You don't read Plato for empirical science though (or Aristotle for that matter). You read him for the philosophical ideas. Whether language is X or Y for example is still debated, and while a modern linguist might know X research results or new theories, Plato still sets off many questions that are still dividing sides and are under debate. E.g. from a Stanford website breakdown: "The positions of Hermogenes and Cratylus have come to be known to modern scholarship as ‘conventionalism’ and ‘naturalism’ respectively. An extreme linguistic conventionalist like Hermogenes holds that nothing but local or national convention determines which words are used to designate which objects. The same names could have been attached to quite different objects, and the same objects given quite different names, so long as the users of the language were party to the convention. Cratylus, as an extreme linguistic naturalist, holds that names cannot be arbitrarily chosen in the way that conventionalism describes or advocates, because names belong naturally to their specific objects. If you try to speak of something with any name other than its natural name, you are simply failing to refer to it at all. For example, he has told Hermogenes to the latter’s intense annoyance, Hermogenes is not actually his name".
- Tainnor 6y ago
  But philosophy of language is a thing and IMHO, Plato is mostly useless there. What is described in the quoted excerpt as "naturalism" is... simply not a position that any modern linguist (at the very least since Saussure) would take, because it is plainly ridiculous and flies in the face of basically all evidence. Generally, I don't think that philosophical ideas exist in a vacuum, they are informed by the real world and by science (hence why e.g. quantum mechanics plays such an important role). Plato bases his ideas off of specific premises (that's the whole point of the socratic dialogues), but I find the premises often very flawed. For example, how does Platonism and the idea that there is "an ideal horse" make sense in the context of evolution? It doesn't, IMHO, and cognitive science seems to give much better answers to such question as how we can recognise the concept of "horse".

Viliam1234 6y ago

But people who didn't study linguistics can still be impressed by Plato, and then quote him to impress others. So, it's ultimately a question of why do you even want to study philosophy in first place. I suspect that for most usual purposes, Plato is perfectly okay.

coldtea 6y ago
>But people who didn't study linguistics can still be impressed by Plato, and then quote him to impress others. Same way people that studied science X (including linguistics and CS), but are philosophically naive, can have a coarsed-grained view of very nuanced situations, and adhere to naive assumptions... As an American philosopher noted, "An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing". This is true for a scientist with expertise in whatever X. Philosophy and epistemology (along with history and art) are ways to not be a simpleton with a narrow field of view who can't put together two coherent sentences outside their field (and doesn't even understand the second and third order implications of what he studies, its possible societal impact, its relevance and so on), but to get a wider picture. Whch is not the same as "impressing others", except in the sense that intelligence and education do impress others sometimes...

coldtea 6y ago

>For example, I studied linguistics and whenever I had to read Plato about language I was reminded that he really had no idea what he was talking about. You don't read Plato for empirical science though (or Aristotle for that matter). You read him for the philosophical ideas. Whether language is X or Y for example is still debated, and while a modern linguist might know X research results or new theories, Plato still sets off many questions that are still dividing sides and are under debate. E.g. from a Stanford website breakdown: "The positions of Hermogenes and Cratylus have come to be known to modern scholarship as ‘conventionalism’ and ‘naturalism’ respectively. An extreme linguistic conventionalist like Hermogenes holds that nothing but local or national convention determines which words are used to designate which objects. The same names could have been attached to quite different objects, and the same objects given quite different names, so long as the users of the language were party to the convention. Cratylus, as an extreme linguistic naturalist, holds that names cannot be arbitrarily chosen in the way that conventionalism describes or advocates, because names belong naturally to their specific objects. If you try to speak of something with any name other than its natural name, you are simply failing to refer to it at all. For example, he has told Hermogenes to the latter’s intense annoyance, Hermogenes is not actually his name".

Tainnor 6y ago
But philosophy of language is a thing and IMHO, Plato is mostly useless there. What is described in the quoted excerpt as "naturalism" is... simply not a position that any modern linguist (at the very least since Saussure) would take, because it is plainly ridiculous and flies in the face of basically all evidence. Generally, I don't think that philosophical ideas exist in a vacuum, they are informed by the real world and by science (hence why e.g. quantum mechanics plays such an important role). Plato bases his ideas off of specific premises (that's the whole point of the socratic dialogues), but I find the premises often very flawed. For example, how does Platonism and the idea that there is "an ideal horse" make sense in the context of evolution? It doesn't, IMHO, and cognitive science seems to give much better answers to such question as how we can recognise the concept of "horse".