Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Metaphilosophy

  • From Religion to Philosophy: A Typology of Motives for Making the Move

    People come to philosophy from various 'places.'  Some come from religion, others from mathematics and the natural sciences, still others from literature and the arts.  There are other termini a quis as well.  In this post I am concerned only with the move from religion to philosophy.  What are the main types of reasons for those who are…

  • The Philosopher and the Christian

    For Vito Caiati ………………….. George W. Bush once referred to Jesus Christ as his favorite political philosopher, thereby betraying both a failure to grasp what a philosopher is and who Jesus claimed to be. Jesus Christ is not a philosopher.  The philosopher is a mere lover of wisdom.  His love is desirous and needy; it…

  • Politics and Philosophy

    Politics is a practical game. One has to win to be effective. Merely to have the better set of ideas and policies is to fail. Philosophy, however, is not about winning. It is about ultimate understanding, spiritual self-transformation, and wisdom. A politics fully informed by insight and understanding would be ideal if it were not impossible.…

  • The Concept of ‘Standoff’ in Philosophy

    The following two propositions are collectively logically inconsistent and yet each is very plausible: 1. Being dead is not an evil for any dead person at any time.  2. Being dead at a young age is an evil for some dead persons. Obviously, the limbs of the dyad cannot both be true.  Each entails the…

  • A Curious Mode of Refutation

    Here: To begin with, the idea that “existence exists” excludes the idea that existence doesn’t exist. It denies the subjectivist, pragmatist, postmodernist view that reality is an illusion, a mental construct, a social convention. Obviously, people who insist that reality is not real are not going to buy in to a philosophy that says it is real.…

  • Can Philosophy be Saved?

    An essay by Susan Haack. Related: Genuine Inquiry and Two Forms of Pseudo-Inquiry Philosophy Profession in Thrall of Dreadful Rankings Susan Haack on the Fragmentation of Philosophy and the Road to Reintegration

  • The Consolations of Philosophy for the Middle-Aged

    The Economist reviews Kieran Setiya, Mid-Life: A Philosophical Guide. Related: A Philosopher on the Midlife Crisis  

  • The Value of Philosophy

    What good is philosophy? It teaches humility in point of knowledge and belief. It lays bare the infirmity of reason. It prompts us to seek other sources of insight, including mystical intuition and divine revelation, while supplying us with the tools for their evaluation and critique. Its problems, though insoluble, can serve as koans. Good philosophy…

  • The Misery of Philosophy II

    One goes round and round on the dialectical merry-go-round. Thoughts lead to thoughts which lead to more thoughts, including inconclusive thoughts, semantically indeterminate thoughts, mutually contradictory thoughts. Words beget words unto endlessness. On the side of the subject one never penetrates to the source of thoughts. And on the side of the object one never…

  • The Misery of Philosophy I

    Philosophy is endless because inconclusive. But how is knotting one's thread with a dogma better than going on endlessly? After all, what we want is knowledge of truth, not the mere fixation of belief.

  • “Why I Left Academic Philosophy”

    Interesting. Take it with several grains of salt and factor in the fact that it is by a 'transwoman.' The following is borne out by my experience: But ultimately I don't need academic philosophy to do philosophy. My blogging over the past ten years has reached a larger audience than I could ever hope to achieve…

  • Popular Conceptions and Misconceptions of Philosophy

    Here, with interesting comments.

  • First Philosophy or Scientism?

    I was going to add to this old draft from 15 December 2009, but it looks like I won't be getting around to it. So here it is. …………………………. Robert Cummins (Meaning and Mental Representation, MIT Press, 1989, p. 12) regards it as a mistake "for philosophers to address the question of mental representation in…

  • Philosophy, Religion, Mysticism

    Philosophers contradict one another, but that is not the worst of it. The grandest philosophical conclusion is and can only be a proposition about reality and not reality itself. But it is reality itself that we want. Can religion help? Its motor is belief. But belief is not knowledge, either propositional or direct. And if…

  • Are Any Substantive Philosophical Propositions Epistemically Certain?

    I asked our Czech colleague Lukáš Novák for examples of philosophical propositions that he considers to be not only true, but knowable with certainty. He provided this list: a) God exists.b) There are substances.c) There are some necessary truths, even some de re necessary truths.d) Human cognition is capable of truth and certainty.e) There are no…