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Disclaimer: I have a Ph.D. in philosophy, so I'm probably biased. You're not biased: you know WTF you are talking about. Whereas pg doesn't. He's fallen into t

Disclaimer: I have a Ph.D. in philosophy, so I'm probably biased. You're not biased: you know WTF you are talking about. Whereas pg doesn't. He's fallen into the same trap that many very smart people fall into: thinking they understand philosophy, just because they're capable of deeply thinking about a problem. They fail to understand that that isn't enough: you need to very thoroughly study and understand what others have had to say on a subject, because nobody is smart enough to think of all angles and relevant points on his own. You see this a lot with theoretical physicists, who ramble on about philosophical consequences of theories without a clue of the actual complexity of the subject.

mattmanser 14y ago
pg did Philosophy you plonker.
- Confusion 14y ago
  No, he didn't. He 'majored in philosophy for most of college'. That means that he was merely ready to start doing philosophy, like earning a black belt is generally taken to mean that you are finally ready to actually start studying your art. Pg's conclusion is much like concluding some defensive art doesn't work, right after earning your black belt, because you realize you would probably still lose from an attacker with a knife. You're not yet capable of handling such a formidable challenge, unless you are lucky. Additional practice is needed to confidently handle armed opponents. These theoretical physicists have all read works on philosophy. The problem is not lack of basic knowledge: it's lack of deep knowledge about the specific issue.
  - mattmanser 14y ago
    Start doing? This sounds very much like a religious argument. 'Have faith my son, one day you will understand'. If you want to keep moving the goal posts, go ahead. Perhaps you feel only Doctors are qualified to talk about philosophy. pg actually attacks this very point in the article: Wittgenstein is popularly credited with the idea that most philosophical controversies are due to confusions over language. I'm not sure how much credit to give him. I suspect a lot of people realized this, but reacted simply by not studying philosophy, rather than becoming philosophy professors. The whole point is that by the end of a Philosophy degree the smart ones have realized its a bust, a dead end. I am sorry if you are a professional philosopher/teacher, but one day you will realize you've wasted your professional career. The whole point about Philosophy is that there is no deep knowledge. You can't think deeply because you keep getting caught by semantics.
    - Confusion 14y ago
      Wittgenstein left some nicely quotable statements behind, that people think they understand, when in fact they don't. Like Nietzsche's "God is dead"[1], there is a lot more behind the statement than most people know or even suspect. People repeat Wittgenstein's 'conclusion' from his Tractatus, but don't appreciate how much nuance his later publications give to that statement. This is still the trap I was talking about. I'm not moving the goal posts: I'm just asserting that they are further away than most people think. Some people say: "everyone is a philosopher", to which you can reply "indeed, and most are awful ones". Instead of asserting all kinds of things in this essay, pg should have asked a series of constructive questions: if something seems obvious, yet smart people disagree, then perhaps, just perhaps, there is something to learn there. Somewhere with deeper knowledge of the subject could then have pointed to material that explains why it just isn't so simple. That is the bottom line: it just isn't so simple. It is unclear which things 'we cannot speak of', if anything. It is unclear how to make language precise enough to speak of certain things and whether that is possible. Many people have written many things about 'language and truth' and simply majoring in philosophy is just not enough to appreciate the whole of it, like majoring in physics is not enough to understand most Ph.D. theses in physics. It certainly doesn't enable one to conclude that "philosophy is just confusion over language". If only because there are branches of philosophy that investigate that exact question. [1] This is the entire aphorism and the sentences that follow the proclamation of God's death are essential to understanding what Nietzsche is saying. Those who don't know what follows the proclamation don't understand anything about what Nietzsche was saying. First and foremost: he is not (just) talking about the Christian God. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?
      - mattmanser 14y ago
        /facepalm Who mentioned Nietzsche? Why is half your reply about him? Why are you incapable of expressing yourself? Are you an amateur philosopher by any chance? This reads like it's straight from a bad philosophy discussion forum that I embarrassingly used to frequent before I learnt how to actually structure my arguments.

mattmanser 14y ago

pg did Philosophy you plonker.

Confusion 14y ago
No, he didn't. He 'majored in philosophy for most of college'. That means that he was merely ready to start doing philosophy, like earning a black belt is generally taken to mean that you are finally ready to actually start studying your art. Pg's conclusion is much like concluding some defensive art doesn't work, right after earning your black belt, because you realize you would probably still lose from an attacker with a knife. You're not yet capable of handling such a formidable challenge, unless you are lucky. Additional practice is needed to confidently handle armed opponents. These theoretical physicists have all read works on philosophy. The problem is not lack of basic knowledge: it's lack of deep knowledge about the specific issue.
- mattmanser 14y ago
  Start doing? This sounds very much like a religious argument. 'Have faith my son, one day you will understand'. If you want to keep moving the goal posts, go ahead. Perhaps you feel only Doctors are qualified to talk about philosophy. pg actually attacks this very point in the article: Wittgenstein is popularly credited with the idea that most philosophical controversies are due to confusions over language. I'm not sure how much credit to give him. I suspect a lot of people realized this, but reacted simply by not studying philosophy, rather than becoming philosophy professors. The whole point is that by the end of a Philosophy degree the smart ones have realized its a bust, a dead end. I am sorry if you are a professional philosopher/teacher, but one day you will realize you've wasted your professional career. The whole point about Philosophy is that there is no deep knowledge. You can't think deeply because you keep getting caught by semantics.
  - Confusion 14y ago
    Wittgenstein left some nicely quotable statements behind, that people think they understand, when in fact they don't. Like Nietzsche's "God is dead"[1], there is a lot more behind the statement than most people know or even suspect. People repeat Wittgenstein's 'conclusion' from his Tractatus, but don't appreciate how much nuance his later publications give to that statement. This is still the trap I was talking about. I'm not moving the goal posts: I'm just asserting that they are further away than most people think. Some people say: "everyone is a philosopher", to which you can reply "indeed, and most are awful ones". Instead of asserting all kinds of things in this essay, pg should have asked a series of constructive questions: if something seems obvious, yet smart people disagree, then perhaps, just perhaps, there is something to learn there. Somewhere with deeper knowledge of the subject could then have pointed to material that explains why it just isn't so simple. That is the bottom line: it just isn't so simple. It is unclear which things 'we cannot speak of', if anything. It is unclear how to make language precise enough to speak of certain things and whether that is possible. Many people have written many things about 'language and truth' and simply majoring in philosophy is just not enough to appreciate the whole of it, like majoring in physics is not enough to understand most Ph.D. theses in physics. It certainly doesn't enable one to conclude that "philosophy is just confusion over language". If only because there are branches of philosophy that investigate that exact question. [1] This is the entire aphorism and the sentences that follow the proclamation of God's death are essential to understanding what Nietzsche is saying. Those who don't know what follows the proclamation don't understand anything about what Nietzsche was saying. First and foremost: he is not (just) talking about the Christian God. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?
    - mattmanser 14y ago
      /facepalm Who mentioned Nietzsche? Why is half your reply about him? Why are you incapable of expressing yourself? Are you an amateur philosopher by any chance? This reads like it's straight from a bad philosophy discussion forum that I embarrassingly used to frequent before I learnt how to actually structure my arguments.