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Good essay, but a little short on examples of how philosophers actually think. Here's a famous example, a paper written by philosophers to poke fun at their pro

Good essay, but a little short on examples of how philosophers actually think. Here's a famous example, a paper written by philosophers to poke fun at their profession. A dialogue that opens with "if you believe that only material objects can exist, do holes exist?" and goes to pretty ridiculous depth. http://home.sandiego.edu/~baber/metaphysics/readings/Lewis&Lewis.Holes.pdf http://home.sandiego.edu/~baber/metaphysics/readings/Lewis&L... I've read a lot of philosophical reasoning that was similar in spirit to this paper, and can't quite say if I'm a fan of it or not. All I can say is, it's not as good at finding definitive answers as mathematics (which I also love), but it sure can uncover a lot of questions.

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TchoBeer 5y ago
This is really great, love the dialogue.
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
An awful lot of philosophical disputes are disagreements about the definitions of words, but neither side states their definition - they just assume their definition. The different sides then have different things that are "obviously true" (once you assume their definition of some word), and they proceed to argue back and forth, each with their assumptions, but with neither side ever stating their assumed definition. The result is a complete waste of time on all sides. Take "do holes exist", for example. This will turn on the definition of "exist". Clearly they exist in some sense, and clearly they don't in another sense. Once you realize this is what's going on, the discussion becomes uninteresting.
- scoofy 5y ago
  I think this get things backwards. Philosophers (save maybe Austin) generally reject the authority of a definition. In the analytic tradition, words are just pointing at things or concepts, and a definition is a heuristic or shorthand. Fighting over the definition of "exist" is exactly trying to take the concept(s) the two are thinking of, and decide whether they are internally consistent. If they are, all the better, they needn't even be the same, but if they are not internally consistent, then the concept is clearly wrong and not worth discussing.
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    I'd say that there are more than one concept that can be labeled by the word "exist". If you don't say which concept you're talking about, and the other person is running with a different concept that wears the same label, that discussion isn't worth having. They could discuss either concept, and have a meaningful discussion (with quite a bit of agreement). But because they're actually discussing different concepts, but using the same word, the discussion just wastes everybody's time.

deleted 5y ago

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TchoBeer 5y ago

This is really great, love the dialogue.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

An awful lot of philosophical disputes are disagreements about the definitions of words, but neither side states their definition - they just assume their definition. The different sides then have different things that are "obviously true" (once you assume their definition of some word), and they proceed to argue back and forth, each with their assumptions, but with neither side ever stating their assumed definition. The result is a complete waste of time on all sides. Take "do holes exist", for example. This will turn on the definition of "exist". Clearly they exist in some sense, and clearly they don't in another sense. Once you realize this is what's going on, the discussion becomes uninteresting.

scoofy 5y ago
I think this get things backwards. Philosophers (save maybe Austin) generally reject the authority of a definition. In the analytic tradition, words are just pointing at things or concepts, and a definition is a heuristic or shorthand. Fighting over the definition of "exist" is exactly trying to take the concept(s) the two are thinking of, and decide whether they are internally consistent. If they are, all the better, they needn't even be the same, but if they are not internally consistent, then the concept is clearly wrong and not worth discussing.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  I'd say that there are more than one concept that can be labeled by the word "exist". If you don't say which concept you're talking about, and the other person is running with a different concept that wears the same label, that discussion isn't worth having. They could discuss either concept, and have a meaningful discussion (with quite a bit of agreement). But because they're actually discussing different concepts, but using the same word, the discussion just wastes everybody's time.