5 ms·

Philosophers and Other Conjurers

37 points by Hooke 5y ago

verisimi 5y ago
Opening line: "What did Ludwig Wittgenstein mean by comparing a philosophical problem to a magic trick? Ask professional magicians." Without having fully read the article, my take would be that it relates to verification. A philosopher (I think) is prepared to consider those things generally accepted as truth but which he cannot verify personally as 'open to interpretation'. He would be prepared to review what that would mean if those assumptions were incorrect. In a similar yet reversed way, a conjurer is attempting to trick your verification and make you accept as truth something which is actually false - if one's senses are misled this enables the trick. Both relate to verification and the tricks that are played. Both philosopher and conjurer are in the 'meta domain' - ie away from the standard, normal understanding of sense data. In answer to the question in the opening line, the answer is that there can only be one answer - there is objective truth. However, humans limited sense data may prevent us knowing that answer sometimes. In those cases, in the absence of an easy or obvious answer, philosophers may use their framework and language to provide something that seems to answer our question. (Apparently, we need answers and cannot live with uncertainty - without a second thought we accept philosophical/religious/linguistic trickery as true rather than be scrupulous in reviewing our untested assumption to reveal the trick.) But the truth is singular but the (philosophical) explanations are multiple - they could all be wrong. Those framework answers could be wrong. The moral - for me - in this story is that scepticism about all sense data is advised, and all provided frameworks that have been provided without being based in personal verification. Whether that is news, corporate statements, TV, beneficent philanthropists, history, science, even family members (the later may be unintentionally bought in) - all can mislead us, creating (or parroting) satisfactory stories that may not relate to an objective truth, even if they say they do. In fact there is a nefarious angle to this - if a conjurer is able to trick most people that may provide an advantage - in the absence of good information the conjurer is able to harness our energy/resources/times/money to their ends.
- aradox66 5y ago
  I believe you just laid out the basic argument of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. At the risk of supporting your point, not all philosophy is based on this perspective :)
causi 5y ago
What's fascinating to me about philosophy is how self-obsessed it is. When you take a math class you don't spend time learning to compute without the concept of zero or in Roman numerals. You don't have a science lab where you try and capture phlogiston or detect the ether. Yet philosophy education seems pathologically incapable of separating a philosopher's useful work from their utter dreck, or of abandoning philosophies long disproved. For example, they can't teach you about Descartes' epistemology without also getting into his ignorant dualism. This addiction is the reason the entire field sags under an air of uselessness.
- marginalia_nu 5y ago
  Philosophy isn't so much about producing conclusions for others to adopt as doctrine, but the process of arriving at conclusions for others to model, which makes trains of thought that lead to contradictory conclusions especially interesting to study. As long as there has been philosophy, there has been sophistry. The adversarial use of bad (but very convincing) arguments was a problem in ancient Athens, and it's a problem today. If you can't even find the fault in an argument made in good faith, you're absolutely helpless when the faults are made in bad faith.
- turboaspie 5y ago
  Not sure where to start with this bizarre criticism of philosophy... You're somehow conflating learning the history of your own field to being self-obsessed. Almost all of social science and humanities education starts with a history introduction - the origin of ideas, the development of the field, etc. Is literature self-obsessed too, because they read Homer? Your analogy with phlogiston completely fails, and not just for that, but because revisiting ancient philosophical ideas is not the same as reconsidering outdated scientific theories. Your source of misunderstanding is captured in your criticism that philosophers are incapable of >abandoning philosophies long disproved If you think philosophy can be proved or disproved, then you don't get it. Philosophy produces arguments, and some of those may be stronger than others, but there is very little in philosophy with unanimous agreement. I think _your_ ignorance, ironically, is what makes you believe that certain ideas are ignorant. For example, here you say that philosophers >can't teach you about Descartes' epistemology without also getting into his ignorant dualism I say this as a non-dualist - the debate on the philosophy of mind is far from "proved" or "disproved", and moreover your suggestion that Descartes' dualism should somehow be removed from the curriculum is ridiculous. The point is that philosophy students have the opportunity to debate and think about this stuff, rather than just accepting it as dogma. So even if we were to reject an idea entirely we'd still teach it to new students. (Not to mention that separating Descartes' epistemology from his metaphysics would be a terrible pedagogical idea.) But what's even more bizarre about your comment is that all of this is pretty much irrelevant because in actual philosophy education and literature today the kind of ancient ideas you're attacking are never the core stuff. They might be used as intro or historical material but you're exaggerating the extent to which they take up the curriculum. The whole thing is a strawman to be honest from someone who I doubt has ever studied philosophy in a university.
sharikous 5y ago
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37 points by Hooke 5y ago

Opening line: "What did Ludwig Wittgenstein mean by comparing a philosophical problem to a magic trick? Ask professional magicians." Without having fully read the article, my take would be that it relates to verification. A philosopher (I think) is prepared to consider those things generally accepted as truth but which he cannot verify personally as 'open to interpretation'. He would be prepared to review what that would mean if those assumptions were incorrect. In a similar yet reversed way, a conjurer is attempting to trick your verification and make you accept as truth something which is actually false - if one's senses are misled this enables the trick. Both relate to verification and the tricks that are played. Both philosopher and conjurer are in the 'meta domain' - ie away from the standard, normal understanding of sense data. In answer to the question in the opening line, the answer is that there can only be one answer - there is objective truth. However, humans limited sense data may prevent us knowing that answer sometimes. In those cases, in the absence of an easy or obvious answer, philosophers may use their framework and language to provide something that seems to answer our question. (Apparently, we need answers and cannot live with uncertainty - without a second thought we accept philosophical/religious/linguistic trickery as true rather than be scrupulous in reviewing our untested assumption to reveal the trick.) But the truth is singular but the (philosophical) explanations are multiple - they could all be wrong. Those framework answers could be wrong. The moral - for me - in this story is that scepticism about all sense data is advised, and all provided frameworks that have been provided without being based in personal verification. Whether that is news, corporate statements, TV, beneficent philanthropists, history, science, even family members (the later may be unintentionally bought in) - all can mislead us, creating (or parroting) satisfactory stories that may not relate to an objective truth, even if they say they do. In fact there is a nefarious angle to this - if a conjurer is able to trick most people that may provide an advantage - in the absence of good information the conjurer is able to harness our energy/resources/times/money to their ends.

aradox66 5y ago
I believe you just laid out the basic argument of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. At the risk of supporting your point, not all philosophy is based on this perspective :)

causi 5y ago

What's fascinating to me about philosophy is how self-obsessed it is. When you take a math class you don't spend time learning to compute without the concept of zero or in Roman numerals. You don't have a science lab where you try and capture phlogiston or detect the ether. Yet philosophy education seems pathologically incapable of separating a philosopher's useful work from their utter dreck, or of abandoning philosophies long disproved. For example, they can't teach you about Descartes' epistemology without also getting into his ignorant dualism. This addiction is the reason the entire field sags under an air of uselessness.

marginalia_nu 5y ago
Philosophy isn't so much about producing conclusions for others to adopt as doctrine, but the process of arriving at conclusions for others to model, which makes trains of thought that lead to contradictory conclusions especially interesting to study. As long as there has been philosophy, there has been sophistry. The adversarial use of bad (but very convincing) arguments was a problem in ancient Athens, and it's a problem today. If you can't even find the fault in an argument made in good faith, you're absolutely helpless when the faults are made in bad faith.
turboaspie 5y ago
Not sure where to start with this bizarre criticism of philosophy... You're somehow conflating learning the history of your own field to being self-obsessed. Almost all of social science and humanities education starts with a history introduction - the origin of ideas, the development of the field, etc. Is literature self-obsessed too, because they read Homer? Your analogy with phlogiston completely fails, and not just for that, but because revisiting ancient philosophical ideas is not the same as reconsidering outdated scientific theories. Your source of misunderstanding is captured in your criticism that philosophers are incapable of >abandoning philosophies long disproved If you think philosophy can be proved or disproved, then you don't get it. Philosophy produces arguments, and some of those may be stronger than others, but there is very little in philosophy with unanimous agreement. I think _your_ ignorance, ironically, is what makes you believe that certain ideas are ignorant. For example, here you say that philosophers >can't teach you about Descartes' epistemology without also getting into his ignorant dualism I say this as a non-dualist - the debate on the philosophy of mind is far from "proved" or "disproved", and moreover your suggestion that Descartes' dualism should somehow be removed from the curriculum is ridiculous. The point is that philosophy students have the opportunity to debate and think about this stuff, rather than just accepting it as dogma. So even if we were to reject an idea entirely we'd still teach it to new students. (Not to mention that separating Descartes' epistemology from his metaphysics would be a terrible pedagogical idea.) But what's even more bizarre about your comment is that all of this is pretty much irrelevant because in actual philosophy education and literature today the kind of ancient ideas you're attacking are never the core stuff. They might be used as intro or historical material but you're exaggerating the extent to which they take up the curriculum. The whole thing is a strawman to be honest from someone who I doubt has ever studied philosophy in a university.

sharikous 5y ago

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