Category: Metaphilosophy

Philosophy as Hobby, as Career, as Vocation

An e-mail from a few years back with no name attached:

Leiter fancies himself a gatekeeper to the realm of academic philosophy. You gotta love the professional gossip that seeps through his blog – Ned Block got an offer from Harvard but turned it down, here's the latest coming out of the Eastern APA, or noting, yesterday, that Ted Honderich consulted him during the publication of the new Oxford Companion to Philosophy. And look at the way Leiter prides himself on knowing the goings on at each school and each professor. . . what a status-obsessed elitist (I believe those are your words). No wonder this guy publishes the PGR. Others of us enjoy doing philosophy, most of the time, but here is a man who loves *being* a philosopher, all of the time.

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Morris Lazerowitz on Philosophy and Propositions

Immersed as I am these days in a metaphilosophical project, I once again pull Lazerowitz's Philosophy and Illusion (Humanities Press, 1968) from the shelf.  Morris Lazerowitz (1907-1987) may not be much read these days, but his ideas remain provocative and worth considering, despite the fact that they are now taken seriously by few, if any.  But if he is right in his metaphilosophy, then I am wrong in mine, and so intellectual honesty requires that I look into this in some detail.

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Deus Ex Machina: Leibniz Contra Malebranche

I have been searching the 'Net and various databases such as JSTOR without success for a good article on deus ex machina objections in philosophy.  What exactly is a deus ex machina (DEM)?  When one taxes a theory or an explanatory posit with DEM, what exactly is one alleging?  How does a DEM differ from a legitimate philosophical explanation that invokes divine or some other nonnaturalistic agency?  Since it is presumably the case that not every recourse to divine agency in philosophical theories is a DEM, what exactly distinguishes legitimate recourse to divine agency from DEM? Does anyone have any references for me?  Herewith, some preliminary exploratory notes on deus ex machina.

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The Dictionary Fallacy

What I will call the Dictionary Fallacy is the fallacy of thinking that certain philosophical questions can be answered by consulting dictionaries.  The philosophical questions I have in mind are those of the form What is X? or What is the nature of X?  High on the list:  What is justice?  Knowledge? Existence?  Goodness?  But also:  What is hypocrisy? Lying? Self-deception? Envy? Jealousy? Schadenfreude? Socialism?  Taxation?  And so on. The dictionaries I am referring to are ordinary dictionaries, not philosophical dictionaries. 

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In Praise of Blogosophy

Philosophy is primarily an activity, not a body of doctrine. If you were to think of it as a body of doctrine, then you would have to say there is no philosophy, but only philosophies. For there is no one universally recognized body of doctrine called philosophy. The truth of course is one not many. And that is what the philosopher aims at: the one ultimate truth about the ultimate matters, including the ultimate truth about how we ought to live. But aiming at a target and hitting it are two different things. The target is one, but our many arrows have fallen short and in different places. And if you think that your favorite philosopher has hit the target of truth, why can't you convince the rest of us of that?

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Are There Any Rationally Compelling Arguments for Substantive Theses?

From the mailbag:

Greetings! First, you have a terrific blog, keep up the good work! I'm just an undergrad who is minoring in philosophy, so a lot of your posts are a little over my head, but I try to follow along when I can.

I was just having a quick glance at your post on Russell's Teapot, and one paragraph stuck out to me:
 
"Now it seems to me that both (S) and (W) are plainly false: we have all sorts of reasons for believing that God exists. Here Alvin Plantinga sketches about two dozen theistic arguments. Atheists will not find them compelling, of course, but that is irrelevant. The issue is whether a reasoned case can be made for theism, and the answer is in the affirmative. Belief in God and in Russell's teapot are therefore not on a par since there are no empirical or theoretical reasons for believing in his teapot."
 
I think I have an issue with your statement about atheists not finding theistic arguments compelling to be irrelevant, and all that is important is that, according to you, a reasoned case can be made for theism. So, it sounds to me like you are distinguishing between 2 statements:
 
"Atheists don't find theistic arguments compelling."
 
and
 
"A reasoned case can be made for theism."
 
You accept the former statement, but you say it's irrelevant, because you accept the latter statement. But to me, I find both statements to be essentially synonymous.
 

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Why Not Stick to Pure Philosophy?

I ask myself this question.

Why not stick to one's stoa and cultivate one's specialist garden in peace and quiet, neither involving oneself in, nor forming opinions about, the wider world of politics and strife? Why risk one's ataraxia in the noxious arena of contention? Why not remain within the serene precincts of theoria? For those of us of a certain age the chances are good that death will arrive before the barbarians do.

Those in the arena may be admired for their courage, but doubts arise as to their wisdom.

So why bother one's head with the issues of the day? We will collapse before the culture that sustains us does. The answer is that the gardens of tranquillity and the spaces of reason are worth defending, with blood and iron if need be, against the barbarians and their leftist enablers. Others have fought and bled so that we can live this life of solitude and beatitude. And so though we are not warriors of the body, we can and should do our tiny bit as warriors of the mind to preserve for future generations this culture which allows us to pursue otium liberale in peace, quiet, and safety.