{"id":7947,"date":"2014-05-20T16:11:39","date_gmt":"2014-05-20T16:11:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/05\/20\/how-much-time-for-philosophy-part-ii\/"},"modified":"2014-05-20T16:11:39","modified_gmt":"2014-05-20T16:11:39","slug":"how-much-time-for-philosophy-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/05\/20\/how-much-time-for-philosophy-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"How Much Time for Philosophy? Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear Bill,<\/span><\/p>\n

Thanks for that post<\/a>! <\/p>\n

Here are my two simple comments:<\/p>\n

How much time should one spend on philosophy? "A good chunk of the day," you say; assuming that one is above all else interested in truth (about ultimate issues) and\/or in the Absolute. But should one be interested in either of these? That's a philosophical problem. And I guess that in your view philosophy can't settle it: philosophically, it is as reasonable to be interested as not to be.<\/span><\/div>\n

Even assuming that kind of interest, why do philosophy a good chunk of the day? Once one has toiled through the central apories of philosophy, something like glancing at their concise list may be sufficient. I mean sufficient for what you want from philosophy: intellectual humility and appreciation of the question what, if anything, lies beyond the limits of the discursive  intellect and how one may gain access to it.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Best,<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
V.<\/span><\/div>\n

Dear V.,
<\/span><\/p>\n

Thank you for your comments which are both penetrating and very useful to me.<\/span><\/p>\n

Response 1.<\/em>  Philosophers (the real ones, not mere academic functionaries) seek the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters.  I take it we agree on that. But should one<\/em> seek the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters?  You rightly point out that whether one should or shouldn't (or neither) is itself a philosophical problem.  And you also clearly see that if the problems of philosophy are insoluble, then this particular problem is insoluble.  And if it is insoluble, then philosophy is no more reasonable to pursue than to eschew.<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, I accept the consequence.  But it is reasonable<\/em> to pursue philosophy, and that suffices to justify my pursuit of it.  And who knows?  Perhaps I will definitively solve one or more philosophical problems to the satisfaction of all competent practioners.  You understand that I do not claim to know (with certainty) that the insolubility thesis is true. My claim is merely that it is a reasonable conjecture based on some two and a half millenia of philosophical experience.  It is reasonable to conjecture that no problem has ever been solved by us because no problem is soluble by us.  I expect the future to be like the past. (But then so did Russell's chicken who expected to be fed on the day the farmer wrung his neck.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Response 2.<\/em>  Let's assume that the pursuit of philosophy is reasonable and worthwhile for some of us as an end in itself (and not because we are paid to do it, or teach it.)  But why continue with it day after day for many hours each day? As you put it so well, why does it not suffice to glance from time to time at a concise list of the central apories to gain the promised benefits of intellectual humility and the motivation to look beyond philosophy for routes to truth?<\/span><\/p>\n

There are several considerations.<\/span><\/p>\n

1. There is the sheer intellectual pleasure<\/em> that people like us derive from thinking and writing about the problems of philosophy.  The strangeness of the ordinary entrances us and we find disciplined wondering about it deeply satisfying.  We humans like doing well what we have the power to do, and those of us who like thinking and writing and entering into dialog with the like-minded are made happy by these pursuits even if solutions are out of the reach of mortals.  What Siegbert Tarrasch said of chess is also true of philosophy, "Like love, like music, it has the power to make men happy."<\/span><\/p>\n

2. Then there is the humanizing effect<\/em> of the study of the great problems.  Bear in mind that for me the problems are genuine and deep and some of them are of great human importance. They are not artifacts of non-workaday uses of language, nor are they sired by erroneous empirical assumptions or remediable logical errors.  I firmly reject their Wittgensteinian and 'Wittgenfreudian' dismissal, or any other sort of anti-philosophical dismissal or denigration.  (Morris Lazerowitz<\/a> was a 'Wittgenfreudian,' or, if you prefer, 'Freudensteinian.')  So it is deeply humanizing to wrestle with the problems of philosophy.  We are brought face to face with our predicament in this life.  To change the metaphor, we are driven deep into it.<\/span><\/p>\n

3. It is also important to grapple with the problems of philosophy and plumb their depths so that we can mount effective critiques against the scientistic junk solutions<\/em> that are constantly being put forth in once good but now crappy publications such as Scientific American<\/em> and peddled by sophists and philosophical know-nothings like Lawrence Krauss<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

4. Since it is not the case that all solutions are equally good or equally bad, it is useful to know which are better and which worse.  Even if the mind-body problem is ultimately insoluble, some 'solutions' can be known to be either worthless or highly unlikely to be true.  Eliminative materialism is a prime  candidate for the office of nonsense theory.<\/span><\/p>\n

5. Since the insolubility thesis as I intend it is put forth tentatively and non-dogmatically, it must be continually tested.  This is done by trying to solve the problems.  The insolubility thesis is not an excuse for intellectual laziness.<\/span><\/p>\n

6. But perhaps the most important point is that philosophy, pursued in the manner of the radical aporetician, can itself be a spiritual practice. This is a large topic, and brevity is the soul of blog; so I'll content myself with a brief indication.<\/span><\/p>\n

The insolubilia of Western philosophy, if insoluble they are, could be likened to the koans of the Zen Buddhists.  The point of working on a koan is to precipitate a break-through to satori or kensho by a transcending of the discursive intellect.  
<\/span><\/p>\n

If you said to the Zen man that he is wasting his time puzzling over insoluble koans, he would reply that you are missing the point.  "The point is not to solve them, but to break on through to  the other side<\/a>, to open the doors of perception beyond the discursive to the nondual." 
<\/span><\/p>\n

\nRelated articles<\/legend>\n
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\"\"<\/a>A Question for Benson Mates<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Solubility Skepticism, Religion, and Reason<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>How Much Time Should be Spent on Philosophy?<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Has Even One Philosophical Problem Ever Been Solved?<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Philosophy is a Useless Major; All Praise to Philosophy<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear Bill, Thanks for that post! Here are my two simple comments: How much time should one spend on philosophy? "A good chunk of the day," you say; assuming that one is above all else interested in truth (about ultimate issues) and\/or in the Absolute. But should one be interested in either of these? That's … Continue reading “How Much Time for Philosophy? Part II”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aporetics","category-metaphilosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7947\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}