Transcript Meta-Philosophy: How do we define philosophy?

Can we coherently describe absolutely
anything and everything?
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As a Love of Wisdom
As Study of Systems
As Study of
Methodology
Historicity
Self-reference and Selfapplication
Disagreement and
diversity
Primacy of the practical
Learning good and bad
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As study of assertion
As exposition
As life style
Literature as philosophy
Pursuit of beauty
As science
As argument
As folklore
Philosophers
As pedagogy
“The pointed man had a point in every
direction and as he quickly pointed out, ‘
A point in every direction is the same as
no point at all’” – from a story by Harry
Neilson.
If Philosophy is defined too broadly it looses
all semantic force: if it is defined too
narrowly it fails to encompass all well
accepted usages.
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As a Love of Wisdom
As Study of Systems
As Study of Methodology
Pissing on a red ant
Historicity
Self-reference and Selfapplication
Disagreement and diversity
Primacy of the practical
Learning good and bad
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As study of assertion
As exposition
As life style
As literature
Literature as philosophy
Pursuit of beauty
As science
As argument
As folklore
Philosophers
As pedagogy
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Note methods and heuristics behind a favored
characterization of philosophy, e. g.,
 Authority,
 The phrase ‘Love of Wisdom’ is given by many texts and is attributed
to Socrates.
 Essentialist,
 Find necessary and sufficient conditions
 Intuition,
 A favored use of philosophy may produce an affective response – an
emotional reaction.
 History-Etymology,
 Lexicographers may research a first published use of the term
philosophy and provide definition relying on that context.
 Demonstrative
 pointing
 Synthesis
 Create new meaning
In logical and mathematical systems either of two mutually
antagonistic types of economy may be striven for, and each has its
peculiar practical utility. On the one hand we may seek economy
of practical expression: ease and brevity in the statement of
multifarious relationships. This sort of economy calls usually for
distinctive concise notations for a wealth of concepts. Second,
however, and oppositely, we may seek economy in grammar and
vocabulary; we may try to find a minimum of basic concepts such
that, once a distinctive notation has been appropriated to each of
them, it becomes possible to express any desired further concept
by mere combination and iteration of our basic notations. This
second sort of economy is impractical in one way, since a poverty
in basic idioms tends to a necessary lengthening of discourse. But
it is practical in another way: it greatly simplifies theoretical
discourse about the language, through minimizing the terms and
the forms of construction wherein the language consists. – from
Two Dogmas of Empiricism, W. V. O. Quine.
Work towards solutions for the
broadest possible questions that
still make sense and the narrowest
possible questions that still make
sense.
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where "making sense" is delimited
by our current and near future
concerns. Consequently, an
appropriate response to any
philosophical query is simply
"So!"
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Goals, Aspirations, Desires
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Greatest Concerns
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Definition is an engine for discovering
presuppositions.
Move the question into philosophical territory
by broadening its scope.
Put on the brakes by asking, “Does it still make
sense to ask such questions?”
You’re onto something when you can respond
to a retort of “So.”
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First you tell them what you’re going tell them.
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Then, you tell them.
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Then, you tell them what you told them.
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Situating Metaphysics in our
Mental Maps
Relevance to Current Debates
Quine Vs. Kripke
 What about Mary
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Making Sense of Essence
Puzzles of Change to Aristotle
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Quine
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Necessity is an outmoded dogma of empiricism
Kripke
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Uses a refined version of essentialism to argue
against the identity theory
Substance
•Material
•Immaterial
Essentialism
•Essential
properties
•Accidental
properties
Necessity
AnalyticSynthetic
contingent
de re – de
dicto
•a priori
•a posteriori
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Thales
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Everything consist in and is caused by water
All things are filled with gods
Anaximander:
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The infinite (boundless) contains all in chaotic
mixture
The universe, vortex like, sorts together its material,
(earth, water, air, and fire) into the proper place.
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Heraclitus:
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All things come into being through opposition
And all are in flux, like a river.
Democritus
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There are nondenumerably many atoms and a void
of empty space.
 Parmenides:
 There is no “many”, only the one.
 You can only speak of what is.
 Change (coming to be) is an illusion of perception
 Yet, perception is knowledge (the secret doctrine).
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The declarative sentence “ The wind is hot.” may have these
interpretations.
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S1 : The state of w’s being hot at I
S1*: The state of w’s phenomenally appearing
hot to some preceiver, x at t
(1) Assumption: There are no states of the same sort as S1
(2) Assumption : There are states of the same sort as S1* ,
therefore,
(3) S1 is not reducible to S1* and
(4) S1 is not supervenient upon S1*
(1) There are states of the same sort as S1*, S2*,
etc, But, these are reducible to nothing more
than states which are micro-physical.
,Therefore,
 (2) States which are of the same sorts as S1 are
supervenient upon states of the same sort as
S1*, and that’s an ontological claim about the
states of Heracletean flux.
P is supervenient upon G iff necessarily, if any
two things have G, then they have P
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S1 may be expressed by collapsing it to a
singular term wind-hot which has no referent
but is the expression of some ideal limit.
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S1 = ” The wind is hot.”
S2 = The wind appears hot to meBs
S3 = The wind appears hot to meB
T
S1 : The state of w’s being hot at I
S1*: The state of w’s phenomenally appearing
hot to some perceiver, x at t
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Apparently, S1 has the truth value T iff S2 is true
Yet it also appears that, S1 does not have the truth
value T iff S2 is true.
Suppose two individual utter S, S2 is T and S3 is T
But sometimes S2 and S3 may not have the same
truth value ?
Therefore , S1 cannot have truth values.
S1 can express a statement but not a proposition –
Pollack's rule.
162c5
“Aren’t you surprised if you’re going to turn out, all
of a sudden, to be no worse in point of wisdom
than anyone whatever, man or even god?”
Objection to Protagorean relativism: It goes against
our intuitions about wisdom.
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We are inclined to feel that some persons are more
wise than others. The presumption is that this
would be disallowed by the version of
Protagoreanism discussed to this point.
162d5
‘Gentlemen, young and old you sit about making debating point. You trot out
the gods, whom I exclude from my speaking and writing . . . An you say
things that the masses would accept if they heard them, for instance that
it’s strange if no man is to be any better in point of wisdom than any
farmyard animal. But there’s absolutely no proof or necessity in what you
say’ on the contrary, your relying on plausibility. If Theodorus, or any
other geometrician, were prepared to rely on plausibility when he was
doing geometry, he’d be worth absolutely nothing.’
First Reply to objections to Protagorean theory
Note the reply is put in quotes as though it were indeed the reply of
Protagoras and not Socrates’ interpretation. Moreover, it is ambiguously,
a hypothetical reply.
1)
The Socratic objection is rhetorical only
2)
some entities are categorically excluded from the Protagorean thesis e.g.
god
3)
plausibility, intuitions are not proofs
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163 5
Reiterates the general theme i.e.,Theaetetus’
thesis that knowledge and perception are the
same thing.
163b
Restates the problem by example
T or F: At time t for all instances of perceiving (via
seeing or hearing) knowledge is co-instantiated
in the perceiver.
But the example brings in yet another distinction
between perceptions properly so called and
interpretations of the appearances.
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163c
Theaetetus picks out the distinction of 163b
affirming the former while denying that the
later distinction picks out anything in the
category of interpretations which is either
knowledge or perception
But is this the trap?
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152d
It is to the effect that nothing is one thing by
itself and that you can’t correctly speak of
anything either as some thing or as qualified in
some way.
156
The universe is change and nothing else. There
are two kinds of change, each unlimited in
number, the one having the power of acting,
and the other the power of being acted upon - - - there come to be offspring, unlimited in
number but coming in pairs of twins, of which
one is a perceived thing and the other a
perception.
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Early Greek philosophy is concerned to learn the
ultimate nature of the world, i. e., Metaphysics,
and to understand the constitution of knowledge,
i. e., Epistemology.
This effort focused on competing theories of
change and permanence.
Plato’s examination of these theories, e. g., in the
Socratic dialogue ‘Theatetus’ produces an
epistemological survey of perception and an array
of theories of knowledge, most notably the
Protagorean identification of perception with
knowledge and the ‘standard’ definition of
knowledge as justified true belief.
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First you tell them what you’re going tell them.
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Then, you tell them.
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Then, you tell them what you told them.
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Contrast Plato to Aristotle
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Provide a basic Aristotelian framework
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Consider contemporary applications
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Introduce theoretic anomalies
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Aristotle may be considered a founder of
Empiricism since he take the natural world as
given through the senses to be the basic
building block of his Metaphysics and the
privileged objects of knowledge in his
Epistemology.
This contrasts sharply with and rejects the
notion of Universal Forms as privileged objects
of knowledge which, according to Plato have
an existence independent of particulars .
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Substance is not simple but rather a complex of
both matter and form, i. e., informed matter.
Essentialism:
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Essential properties are Necessary, i. e., such that it is
inconceivable that the substance lack the property
and yet remain numerically one and the same object.
Accidental properties are not necessary to preserve
the identity of the substance.
See Saul Kripke – Naming and Necessity.
For counterpoint
see W. V. O. Quine – Two Dogmas of Empiricism
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Ancient Greek thought progresses from simple,
vague, and sometimes confused myths and
metaphors toward ever more exacting
demands for first principles
that begin to replace storied narratives about
ourselves and the world with grounded
ontology's and prescriptive methods for
identifying knowledge about ourselves and the
world.