Category: Metaphilosophy
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Philosophy between the Impersonal and the Personal
Philosophy aspires to the impersonal truth but, like a rocket that fails to achieve escape velocity, it remains forever in orbit around the personal, tied to it, expressive of it. This ineluctable tie-in to the personal works against philosophy's pursuit of the universal. And so, while in aspiration one, in execution philosophy is many, which…
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False Advertising and the Philosophy Major
An article by Neven Sesardic Related: Should One Stoop to a Defense of Philosophy or the Humanities?
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The Training of a Philosopher
One must don the logical straitjacket and then do one's dance.
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Chess and Philosophy
In a chess game as in a philosophical debate, the outcome remains uncertain until the end is reached. What distinguishes the philosophical debate is that the outcome remains uncertain even when the end is reached.
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Seriously Philosophical Theses and Argument Cancellation
Reader C. P. inquires, Do you think that the arguments for and against every substantive philosophical thesis are equipollent [equal in force], or do you think only that we can never be certain about the truth of the theses? In some of your posts, you suggest that you think the former (e.g. here); but in…
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Is the Philosophical Life the Best?
This from a reader: I have a concern about the philosophical life. While I do think philosophy is intrinsically valuable, and while I do deny that one is obligated to "do the most good" with one's life (I'm not a consequentialist), I wonder if there are better ways to live than to devote one's life…
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Is the Unexamined Life Worth Living?
Written in October of 2004. I recently read Norman Podhoretz's Ex-Friends: Falling Out with Allen Ginsberg, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer (The Free Press, 1999). It is an enjoyable and stimulating analysis of the breakdown of friendship in the crucible of political disagreement. I recommend it. But an early…
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Skepticism and the Life Adoxastōs
A very good essay in metaphilosophy.
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Rationalistic Fideism, Mysterianism, Misology, and Divine Simplicity
I want to thank the perspicacious Lukas Novak for helping me in my endless quest to know myself. Professor Novak comments: Is Bill a Gnostic? Well, I am not sure about the precise meaning of this epithet, but to me Bill appears as a strange amalgam of a rationalist and a fideist. The rationalist comes…
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Paul Roubiczek on the True Object of Philosophy
Neglected and obscure, Paul Roubiczek is well-worth reading. Thinking Towards Religion, London: Darwen Finlayson Ltd., 1957, p. 29: I believe that the true object of philosophy is the search for ultimate truth, not because I assume we can succeed in this search, but because it will bring us to the boundaries which we have to…
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Philosophy as Misosophy? Religion as Misology?
Here at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical
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Mary Midgley on Complaints about Clarity
Here at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical.
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Paul Ludwig Landsberg on Two Types of Philosophy
The following quotation is from John M. Oesterreicher, The Walls are Crumbling: Seven Jewish Philosophers Discover Christ, London: Hollis and Carter, 1953, p. 195. Oesterreicher is glossing Landsberg's doctoral thesis Wesen und Bedeutung der Platonischen Akademie, 1923: . . . there are two types of philosophy: the autonomous, patterned after Plato's, which undertakes to bring about man's…
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Over at MavPhil Strictly Philosophical
Peter Unger on Bertrand Russell on the Value of Philosophy Solubility Skepticism, Religion, and Reason
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“The Jury is Still Out”: A Silly Sentence When Used by Philosophers
One sometimes comes across 'the jury is still out' in technical philosophical writing. A philosopher might write that 'the jury is still out' on some question, for example, whether the triviality objection to presentism is sustainable. It's a silly thing to say. It is first of all obvious that philosophical inquiry, though in some ways…