Are you suggesting that the contributions of Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and so forth are all just science of philosophy? Do you intend, further, that there is otherwise nothing new in philosophy since Aristotle?

Could an argument be made? Yes, you can make an argument for almost anything.

Could a good argument be made? I doubt it.

I would be interested in the argument if you can make it. You might start with explaining what you mean by "science of philosophy." To me that is a very vague phrase.

I would understand this statement as studying philosophy but not practicing it. Right?

What do you mean by “science” here and why would it be “just” “science of philosophy”? Particularly so since, say, someone like Hegel — well-read on and responding to ancient philosophy — deemed it necessary for philosophy to become science.

I wrote an intricate reply then my phone died. So, you should read Three Waves of Modernity and peruse Nietzsche and Modern Times by Laurence Lampert. In short, science is not the category but the branch. In other words, the scientific method is a particular type of philosophy but it is not an exhaustive definition of the later. Philosophy, on the political level at least, fundamentally deals in Noble Lies. Moderns chose to alter the application of such but that doesn’t mean that all modern philosophy is scientific. Rousseau and Nietzsche, in particular, certainly are not.

Fascism baby, he invented it!

Wikipedia is generally a good place to start

And it depends on what you mean by “liberalism” — freedom to do what?

Specifically on the topic of whether his ideas were freeing or repressive:

He believed in that sort of philosophy where everyone born into a group must be ideologically limited to the doctrines of that group, must not question those doctrines, must glorify those doctrines and through that glorification, work towards the advancement of the group. That dissenters from that doctrine should not be tolerated.

I am of the opinion that that undermines any claim towards liberality that one might attribute to him. But his time and place were so different from the present that if you understand his time, you can see how dissent was such a rare thing, and easy to condemn.

Again, context.

These labels like “liberalism” are really pointless unless you’re talking about one issue over a limited time-span. Freedoms often come at the expense of other freedoms. The thing Person A thinks of first when they hear the word “freedom” has everything to do with that individual’s priorities and circumstances in their surroundings.

Isn’t this a signified/signifier thing?

I’ve heard of an example about two languages both having a word that more or less means “stool” and a word that more or less means “chair”, but then there’s some kind of seat where one would call it a stool and the other would call it a chair…

Either way, it’s not an issue of authorities.

The “authorities” didn’t decide that Pluto wasn’t a planet. Scientists discovered a celestial body far out in the universe that changed a lot of the models they were operating on, and when they tried to make new models — which are necessary and useful for understanding a lot of things, and for formulating new experiments to learn more things — they realized Pluto didn’t fit.

There’s a book, called “How I killed Pluto and why it had it coming” or something cheesy like that, that’s by the actual scientists involved.

As for colors… define “a color” and “not a color”. Could physicists discover some new aspect of light particles that makes primary colors so much more fundamentally different from secondary colors that it has to change even how these are taught to 4 year olds? I guess it’s possible.

It’s also possible for the evolution of human biology to fall over some tipping point, or for climate change to affect standard air pressure, or something so that the line between “red” and “infrared”, or between “violent” and “ultraviolet”, changes.

But short of that, “green is no longer a color” seems as likely as “five is no longer a number”.

>But I care about the general moral.

Whether the thumb is a finger is not really any different than whether a hot dog is a sandwich. With all due respect for Kripke, if formal systems of any kind whatsoever could resolve such things, they would have been resolved long ago, whether by Kripke himself or by Aristotle or by someone in the interim.

>Could the authorities conclude that green isn’t a color?

Green isn't a color. Green is an experience of perceiving a frequency of electromagnetic radiation that opsin molecules most sensitive to ~535 nanometer wavelengths respond to. So the authorities say.

> Suppose physicists announced that. I think I want to say they could be wrong.

It seems like you are reticent to confess that, as if physicists, biologists, or scientists in general are priests with the blessing of God who must not be contradicted. This is scientificism, not science.

>The fact that the authorities announce a classification doesn’t make it automatically right. But could it be right?

Ay, there's the rub.

"Could" is something we mere mortals must deal with. Scientists (and analytic philosophers like Aristotle or Kripke) should stick with "is", and we should ignore them when they don't, because they are not priests providing divine revelations.

The meaning of words (like "finger" or "sandwich") does not derive from being codes for logically precise and consistent categories. Socrates was [mistaken ]( >But I care about the general moral.

Whether the thumb is a finger is not really any different than whether a hot dog is a sandwich. With all due respect for Kripke, if formal systems of any kind whatsoever could resolve such things, they would have been resolved long ago, whether by Kripke himself or by Aristotle or by someone in the interim.

>Could the authorities conclude that green isn’t a color?

Green isn't a color. Green is an experience of perceiving a frequency of electromagnetic radiation that opsin molecules most sensitive to ~535 nanometer wavelengths respond to. So the authorities say.

> Suppose physicists announced that. I think I want to say they could be wrong.

It seems like you are reticent to confess that, as if physicists, biologists, or scientists in general are priests with the blessing of God who must not be contradicted. This is scientificism, not science.

>The fact that the authorities announce a classification doesn’t make it automatically right. But could it be right?

Ay, there's the rub.

"Could" is something we mere mortals must deal with. Scientists (and analytic philosophers like Aristotle or Kripke) should stick with "is", and we should ignore them when they don't, because they are not priests providing divine revelations.

The meaning of words (like "finger" or "sandwich") does not derive from being codes for logically precise and consistent categories. Socrates was mistaken when he said that in order to know if virtue can be taught we must first define it. Substitute 'wisdom' or 'knowledge' or 'sandwich' for "virtue" it makes no difference. The definition of a word depends, innately, inherently, and intrinsically, on context. Whether a thumb is a finger or a hot dog is a sandwich depends on why you are using the word "finger" or "sandwich", not on the physical (or historical, or "conceptual") properties of fingers, thumbs, wieners, or food.

Conventional philosophy includes a supposedly unavoidable premise that words (or "concepts", a word invented to avoid dealing with this very issue/truth) cannot have communicative value in this fashion: they must be codes or else they are meaningless. Nothing could be further from the truth. (I mean that literally, not just figuratively.) Your intuition may tell you (since you have been taught according to this convention) that this informal/non-categorical/illogical method of words and language would result in incomprehensibility: that words would be unintelligible if their definitions were entirely derived from context rather than "authority". But the truth is, this is how words have always worked, since humankind first started using them. And it is worth pointing out that we started using them long before we realized we were doing so, and came up with the word "word" to identify and describe them, let alone before analytic philosophers started insisting they'd work better if they were a formal and logical system of codes.

So the reality (and I mean that, again, literally rather than rhetorically) is that scientists are authorities on science, which is about quantities and formulas, not words or reality. There are ways (contexts) in which a thumb is a finger, there are other ways it is not. It isn't really that confusing unless you want it to be. Your brain might be nothing more than an organic computer programmed by natural selection and operant conditioning, but your mind is independent of that, and is all about self-determination, reasoning, morality, and ignoring as much of what you've been taught as you need to in order to do better than those who taught you.

Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.

It is a well-established (though by no means universally accepted) premise of human behavior that negative reinforcement (punishment) is almost entirely ineffective past the age of reason (about four to seven years old) and of limited value even before then. Nevertheless, most people far older than that continue to desire retribution for an injustice. There are valid and good reasons for this desire, but that it can be a deterrent (a prospective negative reinforcement, in other words) is not really one of them.

As for rehabilitation, it, too, has a meaningful basis in the arena of criminal sentencing, but coercion nullifies the possibility of rehabilitation: a human cannot be forced to rehabilitate, they can only be convinced to obey. Also, the practice of providing heightened opportunities for rehabilitation to criminals contradicts the demands of justice, by essentially rewarding convicts for previous bad behavior and (if this can even be considered separate) effectively substituting advantage for retribution, in a social sense.

For imprisonment to be just and moral, it should be seen as simply sequestration, removing an individual from society. Whether it is a punishment or is an adequate opportunity for voluntary rehabilitation is for the convict to determine. Making their living conditions as sparse as humanely possible based on the nature of their crime is appropriate, but willfully (including through malicious neglect) making their circumstances intolerable or horrifying in a misguided effort to maximize either punishment or deterrence is not merely inhumane, it is counter-productive.

It really doesn't matter how severe or horrendous the crime was. The optimim process from a social perspective is whatever has the greatest statistical likelihood of resulting in a convict both recognizing and accepting the immorality of their actions and voluntarily choosing to rehabilitate themselves. And what we are currently doing in the United States is not that. A large part of the reason we have such a significant problem with crime in the US is because of the prison system in the US, although the teleologies are so complex that most people aren't interested in understanding how that is possible. And the people who most definitely (and erroneously) believe in punishment have any easy time convincing anyone who has any desire for retribution against lawbreakers to vote for the Wrong Wing Party, and spewing atrocious lies about anyone who does manage to understand that 'the beatings will continue until moral improves' is too much of a joke to even be funny.

"My parents whipped the hell out of me, and I'm a better person for it," is something that only comes out of the mouth of a severely emotionally damaged individual.

Can you explain this more for me, I am interested

True. Either man decides what's right and wrong, or someone/thing else does. If man decides what's right and wrong, then "You say theft is wrong? Well I say it's right... were both men, so now what?" Sure, the collection of all humans can come up with moral codes, but does that really PROVE that things like murder are wrong? All I see are a bunch of people sharing an idea.... (this probably ties into the idea that truth {objective reality} is dictated and spoken into existence by man himself)

Anyways, great post, and this question will probably never be answered, unless we can know that a supreme being exists or not, and we don't even know if aliens exist yet...

Personally, I think there is something in everyone that really does judge their own morality, and everyone knows what is true right and wrong (like charity giving/murder). I also personally believe that someone like the Las Vegas shooter, or the WW2 bad guy deserves no excuse, and no remorse. It's one thing to be misguided or taught something wrong, it's another to defile your conscious and ignore your own judgement repeatedly.

It’s not about what I say or what they say, or what anyone says, it’s about the effect that it has on others.

I don’t think 2022 standards are that much better than 1940 standards or 1840 standards, or 740 BCE standards, or Ancient Roman standards or Tang Chinese standards or Viking standards or Aztec standards or whatever else.

I think all the systems are broken — still, today, everywhere. and need to be reevaluated.

Elephant parable.

They’re all broken in a lot of different ways. Only by bringing the whole world and the present and the past together and honestly examining without bias and without discomfort, can a positive system be built.

Isn’t this a question for neurologists, not philosophers?

Thank you for sharing this. I’m so glad to hear that others care about these ideas too.

I think meditating every night for the last 3 months has allowed me to get to what you might term a secular form of “The Sublime”. What I have observed is a gradual development of the ability to detach from human culture as you call it, in short bursts, throughout the day. The more I meditate, the more aware I am of the space between my environment and my reactions. In short, I can just exist. I believe this is one way to experience “reality” without all the cultural influences clouding it. Not sure if I’d call it an objective reality, but at least it’s one different from the usual culturally motivated one. Maybe it’s a different facet of reality.

Anyway, I’m happy to report that while in this state during the day, I often experience profound gratitude for being able to breathe, eat, sleep and experience the world. Gratitude is definitely heightened during and after my daily meditation practices, as well as feelings of forgiveness, benevolence and wishing other living beings well. There are also feelings that are quote unquote “unpleasant”, like despair, rage, terror and the like. I see all of these as part of the experience of being alive, something that non-living things cannot sense, so I count them as blessings and am interested in immersing in them fully. Overall, seems like the trend is towards being calmer, more deliberate with my choices, more comfortable with myself and accepting situations and others as they are.

Hopefully, the more I meditate, the more space I have to discern “reality” from cultural pressures. Well, at least insofar my senses and cultural background allows me to. What about you? Anything you do to trigger this state?

When did “culture” start to mean “conspicuous consumption” as opposed to “art”?

I think I find something sublime in art quite often.

Whether it’s just a particularly skilled or intense or emotional performance of a song or a dance; or the character arc of a character I really care for in a piece of media with a longer story… art tends to be what gives me that feeling of just wanting to gasp.

Just wanting to… point at it and say, “This! This! Look at this! Just look at this!!”

I feel this way about things all over anyone’s highbrow-lowbrow spectrum, with no regard to those distinctions.

If what “culture” means to someone is the food selfies you post online to show off, I’d recommend picking up a book. Any book.

…. Stop me before I start talking about how sublime my favorite character is, but like…!!!

> Nurtured, taught, educated

> Trained, Indoctrinated

The mobile app won’t let me reply to your post in any decent way, but these things are opposites.

Opposites don’t always come in twos.

There are three prongs here.

1. Basic observation -> basic assumptions/hypotheses about causality coming from just what that one individual can see with the naked eye, without building off of anyone else’s experiences.

2. Schooling and indoctrination -> A set interpretation of the past imposed on individuals by society. Mistakes are enshrined as truth because they confirm the biases of some decision maker (that decision maker can be an individual leader, or can just as easily — more often — be a crowd/the majority).

3. Actual education means ruthlessly questioning beliefs and refusing to accept confirmation bias. It means ruthlessly breaking down inherited packages into the smaller blocks that make them up, and questioning who put those blocks together into that package, and why, and whether that system is still functioning, etc.

So if you stop at 2, or if you accept this idea that 2 is “reason” — that 2 is the limit of what “reason” can mean — then of course, “reason” isn’t going to get you much further than 1.

But 2 isn’t reason.

>We are animals with evolved abilities like all creatures on this planet.

Here is where your reasoning starts to fail. (Although, if I'm being honest, it was actually earlier when you said you were wary of "reason", by which I presume you actually meant logic, but let's skip that issue for the moment.)

We are animals with evolved abilities unlike any other creature on this planet. This alone doesn't distinguish us. Every species of creature has some evolved abilities which are different from all other species: this is part and parcel of being a distinct species. But with humans it goes beyond that, because of the specific ability we evolved to have, which is demonstrably unique in result.

>Reason is an evolved ability that did not somehow leap past biological barriers & provide us with a god-like tool to unlock the mysteries of the universe.

Returning to that earlier point, then: reason is an evolved ability that leaps past biological barriers and provides is with a tool to unlock the mysteries of the universe. These mysteries become less mysterious therefor. Reason need not be "god-like", in fact it cannot be God-like, but overcoming biological (and other physical) barriers is exactly what it is for, and what it accomplishes. But (and this is the most important issue in all of philosophy, the key to unlocking all of the things about human behavior which are not merely biological abilities but the capacity to go beyond biological and physical barriers) reason is not logic. It is something more than that. It is, among other things, the ability to conceive of logic, and it must be greater than logic, it must transcend mathematics and deduction and even induction (or any other formal system) in order to recognize, discover, invent, or develop formal systems like logic, which you have been taught to identify and describe as reason. That, the limitations of logic, is what you are raling against, what you are wary of, and you are using reasoning to do so.

>The lion could be said to be using the faculty in a simplistic manner while we are using it in a far more complex way.

The lion uses no reason nor logic. The lion is logic, with no reason. It's genes are logic, the physics of the nucleotides and the proteins they "encode" is logic, the entire universe is logic, limited by mathematical laws although we know not how. But lions (nor whales, elephants, dogs, birds, apes, or fungi) have no consciousness, they do not have reasoning, they are unaware of the existence of biology or logic. They have no reason to be, they engage in no reasoning, and they are incapable of deciding how they should behave, they merely exist and do whatever their biochemistry causes them to do. Humans really are different. You can say that reason is an illusion, that consciousness is merely an unsolved engineering problem or a gift from god or a ground state of the universe, what you're really doing is denying the evidence. Humans are different. We aren't just a different kind of life, we are a different kind of matter, even though our biological existence is the same as any other life form and our atoms are the same as any other object. Our consciousness isn't a fiction, our language is not a logical code, and our morality is not simply social norms.

>I step back from saying evolution is true; I stick with evolution is highly plausible

You remind me of Richard Dawkins, stepping back from saying God isn't true, and sticking with God is merely implausible. Socrates' showed that accepting uncertainty is a necessary aspect of reasoning. Descartes showed that doubt is a fundamental premise of consciousness. But sooner or later we have to man up and accept the fact that being unsure if humans are moral creatures (and that God does not exist!) is a disastrous and unproductive pretense.

>as animals we think to assist survival of the species.

Animals don't do that, though. If they thought at all (they do not, though the neurological impulses in their brain is only teleologically, not physically, different from the neural impulses which are our thoughts) they would only consider, care about, or assist their own survival, and seek to be the definition of the species rather than merely a single creature doomed to die. Evolution is undeniable, the mechanism of natural selection is so absolutely true and unavoidable that even God, if It existed, could not prevent it from occurring. But knowing evolution is true (beyond the notion of causation itself, a mere fiction in comparison) does not mean that what some person or expert (or ALL people and experts, if we can imagine such a universal consensus) claims the implications of evolution are is likewise true.

>We are animals. With limited evolved abilities.

We have that one evolved ability which has no limit. We can imagine things that aren't real, and consider whether they should be real, and devise methods to make them real. Just because we are still animals doesn't mean we are still just animals. Consciousness isn't just sense perception with a larger neural network, it is a very specific and particular (and also holistic) perception (to be explicit and give it a name, it is self-determination and theory of mind) that isn't limited to senses (or sense) with a larger neural network. 😉

>We are in the present world situation partly because we deny our evolved limitations.

We are in the present world situation entirely because we have the ability to ignore our evolved limitations. The real problem is that we deny that, as you are doing. If we were just animals like any other, we wouldn't be in this mess. And if we accept the moral responsibility of reason, instead of trying to avoid it by confusing reason with "logic", we can work our way out of this mess, and any other situation we might find ourselves in.

> We are a lion starving to death at the water hole because plausibility is not certainty.

What is the water, in your metaphor?

We are apes trapped in a tar pit, unable to figure a way out because plausibility is as close to certainty as anything beyond cogito ergo sum ever gets. We cannot overcome metaphysical uncertainty (whether there is anything beyond our perceptions) and we cannot overcome epistemic uncertainty (whether there is anything to our perceptions) and we need to stop using that as an excuse for remaining stuck in this damned tar pit. 🤓

Funny how often the acts to promote races and genders only create larger barriers

What’s the point of this discussion?

You’re trying to decide whether it’s “objectively” less bad…?

Why? To do what with?

There are reasons why there are such things as legal trials. One reason is to establish the facts of the case, and to make sure (with witnesses and evidence) that those facts are accurate. The other is to decide what should be done based on the laws. There’s a reason why laws will give a range of suggested penalties for things, not one absolute correspondence between people injured and time in jail, or what have you.

This reminds me of my response to the Argo problem. That is, “if you change the parts, how much do you have to change before it’s no longer considered the same ship?”

I think it always depends. To what practical purpose are you asking? What practical thing can you do only if it is the same ship?

I don’t think there can be such thing as “objectively, absolutely, the same object” — the object is made of a ton of smaller parts, anyway. How do you even draw the line and say “These things are one object, a Ship”, and “Those things are not one object, they are parts”? You only do it by practicality.

(tl;dr I am not a Platonist)

Egalitarian what?

What behavioral issues?

If you think neurodivergence is a bad thing? Stop.

Neurotypicality is probably a myth, anyway. I mean, how can people claim to know how a person 200 years ago would have gotten diagnosed as today, if that person were…

• born into a situation where they had no option but to work on the farm their whole life, and/or pump out babies?
• born into a richer family, but thought of as “the odd one”, so they get either sent off into some war to die, or thrown in a back office to just file papers and never say anything but “yes sir”?
• Made it out of either of the above situations by being creative in the arts or sciences, their eccentricities shrugged off as “genius”; if they’re remembered at all today, internet mind-blown types want to debate whether or not they were neurodivergent but serious biographers and doctors realize you can’t just do that about someone who isn’t there, etc.

It’s not like people throughout history had as many options as people today.

Behavior is influenced by literally millions of things — every sensory input, even the ones we’re not aware of… which then awaken (consciously or subconsciously) memories, which are recorded (again, millions of sensory inputs every second, which get recorded and how?) and accessed for reasons we don’y understand and can’t control…

And the emotions evoked by a memory you didn’t realize you were remembering, that comes up due to a smell you didn’t realize you were smelling, nudges your behavior slightly this or that way, for better or for worse, times a trillion.

It’s like a pool table, but with as many balls as, well… atoms in your body.

“Behavior issues” in the past few years, like more public fights and loudness and rudeness comes from the spread of the belief that if you have any standards whatsoever, you’re a snob and a bad person.

(Signed, someone who’s legitimately autistic/neurodiverse/whatever word you want to use, and moved to the other side of the planet to be where people don’t do that rubbish. So don’t blame neurodiversity for assholes.)

> https://theappalachianonline.com/opinion-truth-objectivity-and-postmodernism/

Is that article a spillover from the late 2010’s 90s-style culture war remake? Stuff like:

>To solve these problems, among others, Karl Marx, began drifting away from Enlightenment principles in search of ideas to eliminate the inequalities brought on by Enlightenment principles. However, the disillusionment with the Enlightenment occurred post World War I and II, when the technological marvels produced by science led to the slaughter of millions.

Doesn’t strike me as particularly productive. Marx pretty much continued the sort of critical philosophy that Kant (perhaps the most important Enlightenment thinker….or at the very least one of the most important ones) pioneered, the post-Kantians systematized, and the German idealists and their successors critiqued sympathetically.

The critique of Enlightenment ideals and conceptions of reason we see after WWII (like, say, Critical Theory and the Frankfurt School, i.e., the eternal bogeyman of a subset of the political right) strike me as perfectly in line with the very spirit of the Enlightenment, which is always also self-critical. Also blaming the disillusionment exclusively on science strikes me as misleading. There was disillusionment with the culture that spawned out of the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment at large.

>Consistent with postmodern doctrine is the belief that institutions, such as science and language, are oppressive institutes of control.

Who actually claims this and what is their actual argument here? And more importantly, what is the context of this argument? This is an often repeated claim that isn’t entirely wrong, but I worry that it has taken on a life on its own, i.e. separated from actual postmodernist thought.

>If both sides are right and wrong, does that not prove postmodernism’s point that truth is up to individual interpretation? Not exactly. Aristotle solved this philosophical problem in ancient Greece when he theorized that truth and ethical behavior bisect between two extremes, called the “Golden Mean.” Since both sides offer truth and falsehood, given their rejection of the other side’s perspective, then it stands to reason that the middle approach is true, since it formulates a solution based on complete information. To answer humankind’s biggest question pertaining to truth is to find the middle between Enlightenment and postmodern philosophy. To choose one over the other is to look at the world from an incomplete lens. We should strive to reach a reasonable approach toward human progress while acknowledging our personal bias and give those with dissenting beliefs a platform.

Disagree. A better solution would be to first actually understand what led to the disillusionment with Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment ideas and what those critiques of them (especially those that still conceive of themselves as continuing the Enlightenment project or at the very least as laboring in its spirit) say. Especially since this issue doesn’t really seem to be confined to the post-war era:

>Paradoxically, the crisis of the Enlightenment arose from within, and indeed from its most cherished principle. The problem is that this principle is self-reflexive. If reason must subject all beliefs to criticism, it must also subject its own tribunal to criticism. To exempt its tribunal from scrutiny would be nothing less than ‘dogmatism’, accepting beliefs on authority, which is the very opposite of reason. The criticism of reason therefore inevitably became the meta-criticism of reason. If the Enlightenment was the age of criticism, the 1790s were the age of meta-criticism. All the doubts about the authority of reason, which are so often said to be characteristic of our ‘post-modern’ age, were already apparent in late eighteenth-century Germany.

Frederick Beiser’s Hegel, p. 23

I suppose it depends on your interpretation of the truth. I for one don’t view societal expectations as truth because each society has different truths, and thus no one will ever know which truth is “THE TRUTH”. It may also depend on spiritual belief. If you don’t believe there is a higher power, than maybe there is no truth. Each society creates their list of rights and wrongs yet no society is right or wrong because it doesn’t matter. If you do believe in a higher power, than the truth may only come from them, and no one will actually know the actual truth until they meet their maker.