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> Rigor in modern non-STEM academics is extremely abstract at best, and clouded with clique-derived "registers" of language that only the in-group shares. This

> Rigor in modern non-STEM academics is extremely abstract at best, and clouded with clique-derived "registers" of language that only the in-group shares. This language spills out into some drivel like the following I found the other afternoon: There's still a significant chunk of philosophy which isn't like that at all. Sure, there's a lot of "Continental philosophy" which ends up looking largely indistinguishable from the "critical theory" cant to which you object (although, maybe, it is unfair to tar all of it with that brush). But philosophy in the analytic/Anglo-American tradition has maintained much of its immunity against that disease. Similarly, there's still plenty of work published in fields such as history, economics, sociology, political science, etc, which (mostly or entirely) sticks to good old-fashioned factual arguments. For example, sociology of religion – try reading the late Rodney Stark's work on applying rational choice theory to the study of religions, or Eric Kaufmann's contributions to religious demography – you won't find any "cyborg feminism" in either of them.

all2 4y ago
I'd be very interested in the "analytic/Anglo-American tradition" crowd. Can you recommend any books? I'd even take a college primer on the subject. I will definitely take a look at Stark's and Kaufmann's work.
- skissane 4y ago
  My own personal introduction to philosophy came from Edwards and Pap's now rather dated 1965 textbook A Modern Introduction to Philosophy–my father did an introduction to philosophy course at university in the late 1960s, and that was the main textbook they used, and teenage me was rather excited to discover it on his bookshelf. I myself did 1st year philosophy at university in 2000, but only one unit (logic) actually had a textbook, the others I did (epistemology, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, political philosophy) just used photocopied books of readings (I remember we had readings from Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Locke, Hobbes, Hume, Berkeley, Kant–and some more recent authors whose names escape me now). I found a site with a whole set of free university-level philosophy textbooks – https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/subjects/philosophy https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/subjects/philosophy – although I can't vouch for them since I haven't read any of them myself Some philosophers whose works I've read and enjoyed: Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia; Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons; Peter Singer's Practical Ethics; Graham Priest's In Contradiction; Graham Oppy's Arguing about Gods; Edward Feser's Five Proofs of the Existence of God – that's a rather eclectic and idiosyncratic list, including books by authors which radically disagree with each other (e.g. Feser's book tries to prove God exists, Oppy's book argues all known proofs of God's existence fail) - but you definitely won't find any of that "critical theory" cant in any of them
- techno_tsar 4y ago
  The analytic/continental split happened around the 19th century. Both traditions read more or less the same thinkers in Western philosophy (e.g. Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, the Enlightenment Rationalists, the Enlightenment Empiricists, the Enlightenment Idealists, Kant) up until then. Once you hit the 19th century, stick with the readings that deal with the problems set out by Frege, Russell, and Moore, who are trying to get as close to science and formalizing problems in a clear, mathematical way as possible. As a result, the philosophical agenda uses conceptual engineering as a general approach. Generally speaking, any topic that fits into a "Philosophy of X" (e.g. Philosophy of mind, language, ethics, action, etc) is part of the analytic tradition. The continental thinkers (starting with Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger) are asking questions like "What is one's place in the world?" or "How do forces of history affect the deepest parts of people?" or "How does our Western scientific worldview limit other kinds of knowledge?" On the surface, this is going to seem a lot more 'subjective' and is partly why it gets obscure very, very fast. Personally, I think it's still worth reading, but that's because I find those issues interesting to begin with.
  - all2 4y ago
    > "How does our Western scientific worldview limit other kinds of knowledge?" Feyerabend's "Against Method" comes to mind here. I haven't touched his work in a long time. It seems I've some reading to do.
techno_tsar 4y ago
As someone who has studied in the analytic tradition, I think it's wildly uncharitable to consider Continental philosophy a disease. A lot of it is very poorly written, but extremely illuminating. Good thinking is humble and prudent, the way many people who think within a scientific materialist or Anglo-American philosophical tradition dismiss enormous bodies of work that has a very different framework is lamentable, and something I regret doing as a naive undergrad who only wanted ordinary English, "rigorous", or "mathematical" philosophy. Why don't we like the alleged 'relativism' of Continental philosophy? That tells us something about the culture we live in, and is worth thinking about it. Ironically, it's the concepts in Continental philosophy that allows us to talk about it the best, even if by doing so we end up disagreeing with its most notorious thinkers. Just my two cents.
- skissane 4y ago
  > As someone who has studied in the analytic tradition, I think it's wildly uncharitable to consider Continental philosophy a disease. I should point out that I did say (with added emphasis): > Sure, there's a lot of "Continental philosophy" which ends up looking largely indistinguishable from the "critical theory" cant to which you object (although, maybe, it is unfair to tar all of it with that brush) In other words, a lot of it really is that bad – but not all of it. I myself have to admit I've always been rather fascinated by Foucault, and I think a lot of what he has to say is rather interesting and of contemporary relevance–especially his viewpoint that sexual orientation is a set of contingent cultural constructs, rather than some essential reality of persons Žižek too – I've read some of his essays, sometimes he makes some insightful points (to me at least) – although I haven't read his philosophical works, and his essays I've read, I'm not sure if they should be classified as "philosophy" per se > Why don't we like the alleged 'relativism' of Continental philosophy? How does it answer the classic objection that relativism is self-defeating? I don't think "relativism" is the biggest complaint though. The biggest complaint is obscurantism–which risks dressing up the trivial as profound, and hiding falsehoods behind fancy language. And imprecision–analytic philosophy is very much about precise definitions and precise arguments, which makes it easier to judge whether an argument succeeds or fails, and to work out whether the parties to a dispute are actually arguing about the same thing or just talking past each other–Continental philosophy tends to be much more impressionistic in character, making it harder to work out what people are saying, and to judge the quality of their arguments
mola 4y ago
It's funny, I feel that most of the worst offenders are those that synthesize continental philosophy with American analytical tradition. The continental thinking becomes a prescription to be followed and applied analytically. And you get this weird feminist cyborgs. I truly believe that US academia mangled and caricatured very deep and insightful thinkers.

all2 4y ago

I'd be very interested in the "analytic/Anglo-American tradition" crowd. Can you recommend any books? I'd even take a college primer on the subject. I will definitely take a look at Stark's and Kaufmann's work.

skissane 4y ago
My own personal introduction to philosophy came from Edwards and Pap's now rather dated 1965 textbook A Modern Introduction to Philosophy–my father did an introduction to philosophy course at university in the late 1960s, and that was the main textbook they used, and teenage me was rather excited to discover it on his bookshelf. I myself did 1st year philosophy at university in 2000, but only one unit (logic) actually had a textbook, the others I did (epistemology, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, political philosophy) just used photocopied books of readings (I remember we had readings from Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Locke, Hobbes, Hume, Berkeley, Kant–and some more recent authors whose names escape me now). I found a site with a whole set of free university-level philosophy textbooks – https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/subjects/philosophy https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/subjects/philosophy – although I can't vouch for them since I haven't read any of them myself Some philosophers whose works I've read and enjoyed: Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia; Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons; Peter Singer's Practical Ethics; Graham Priest's In Contradiction; Graham Oppy's Arguing about Gods; Edward Feser's Five Proofs of the Existence of God – that's a rather eclectic and idiosyncratic list, including books by authors which radically disagree with each other (e.g. Feser's book tries to prove God exists, Oppy's book argues all known proofs of God's existence fail) - but you definitely won't find any of that "critical theory" cant in any of them
techno_tsar 4y ago
The analytic/continental split happened around the 19th century. Both traditions read more or less the same thinkers in Western philosophy (e.g. Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, the Enlightenment Rationalists, the Enlightenment Empiricists, the Enlightenment Idealists, Kant) up until then. Once you hit the 19th century, stick with the readings that deal with the problems set out by Frege, Russell, and Moore, who are trying to get as close to science and formalizing problems in a clear, mathematical way as possible. As a result, the philosophical agenda uses conceptual engineering as a general approach. Generally speaking, any topic that fits into a "Philosophy of X" (e.g. Philosophy of mind, language, ethics, action, etc) is part of the analytic tradition. The continental thinkers (starting with Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger) are asking questions like "What is one's place in the world?" or "How do forces of history affect the deepest parts of people?" or "How does our Western scientific worldview limit other kinds of knowledge?" On the surface, this is going to seem a lot more 'subjective' and is partly why it gets obscure very, very fast. Personally, I think it's still worth reading, but that's because I find those issues interesting to begin with.
- all2 4y ago
  > "How does our Western scientific worldview limit other kinds of knowledge?" Feyerabend's "Against Method" comes to mind here. I haven't touched his work in a long time. It seems I've some reading to do.

techno_tsar 4y ago

As someone who has studied in the analytic tradition, I think it's wildly uncharitable to consider Continental philosophy a disease. A lot of it is very poorly written, but extremely illuminating. Good thinking is humble and prudent, the way many people who think within a scientific materialist or Anglo-American philosophical tradition dismiss enormous bodies of work that has a very different framework is lamentable, and something I regret doing as a naive undergrad who only wanted ordinary English, "rigorous", or "mathematical" philosophy. Why don't we like the alleged 'relativism' of Continental philosophy? That tells us something about the culture we live in, and is worth thinking about it. Ironically, it's the concepts in Continental philosophy that allows us to talk about it the best, even if by doing so we end up disagreeing with its most notorious thinkers. Just my two cents.

skissane 4y ago
> As someone who has studied in the analytic tradition, I think it's wildly uncharitable to consider Continental philosophy a disease. I should point out that I did say (with added emphasis): > Sure, there's a lot of "Continental philosophy" which ends up looking largely indistinguishable from the "critical theory" cant to which you object (although, maybe, it is unfair to tar all of it with that brush) In other words, a lot of it really is that bad – but not all of it. I myself have to admit I've always been rather fascinated by Foucault, and I think a lot of what he has to say is rather interesting and of contemporary relevance–especially his viewpoint that sexual orientation is a set of contingent cultural constructs, rather than some essential reality of persons Žižek too – I've read some of his essays, sometimes he makes some insightful points (to me at least) – although I haven't read his philosophical works, and his essays I've read, I'm not sure if they should be classified as "philosophy" per se > Why don't we like the alleged 'relativism' of Continental philosophy? How does it answer the classic objection that relativism is self-defeating? I don't think "relativism" is the biggest complaint though. The biggest complaint is obscurantism–which risks dressing up the trivial as profound, and hiding falsehoods behind fancy language. And imprecision–analytic philosophy is very much about precise definitions and precise arguments, which makes it easier to judge whether an argument succeeds or fails, and to work out whether the parties to a dispute are actually arguing about the same thing or just talking past each other–Continental philosophy tends to be much more impressionistic in character, making it harder to work out what people are saying, and to judge the quality of their arguments

mola 4y ago

It's funny, I feel that most of the worst offenders are those that synthesize continental philosophy with American analytical tradition. The continental thinking becomes a prescription to be followed and applied analytically. And you get this weird feminist cyborgs. I truly believe that US academia mangled and caricatured very deep and insightful thinkers.