Sometimes I have felt like a philosophical argument is a way to justify my beliefs to myself. A way in which to rationally describe my beliefs, a description of something that was already there...The most compelling philosophical arguments must be ones that resonate with people the most so sometimes it feels like who gets to produce an argument that best matches how we are inherently predisposed to believe "wins", e.g. , nobody would take seriously a philosophical position that says that we ought to commit self-harm because we are naturally not inclined to think of such a thing as something we ought to do. Hope you're doing well, cheers!
As a non-philosopher (i am a french speaker medecal doctor) i have to thank you a lot for your videos. You help me alot to understand a bit of meta-ethic. As you said here, i never have been convainced by philosophical argument in itsef. Like some pro-choice argument. I may see what other poeple find appealing but something in me dosen't share it. I always found myself non convainced by moral argument. Good and bad seem to be word that describe preferences that can change through time. But it is quite entertaining though. Anyway, this type of your video is my favorit of you. Thank you agan and take care. PS: excuse my english.
Good timing. I've been thinking this myself. What are we actually doing with Philosophy? It endeavors to give us answers about knowledge and reality but increasingly I think it doesn't actually do that, and cannot. I think it's just a game we play, the same way people play the moral realism game. I think reality is beyond our conceptualizations and will always remain elusive to them. I'm not saying the philosophy game isn't worth playing, but if you're not willing to play that game, why not play a different game? Just something I've been thinking. I think anti-foundationalist approaches are more useful than Foundationalist ones. This is essentially the argument Eastern philosophy makes, that reality is beyond our conceptualizations because reality just eclipses our conceptualizations. This universal system with all of these interdependent and interconnected parts will elude our limited, finite, restricted conceptual knowledge. Whenever we grasp at "the thing" we think is true, it slips out of our fingers and befuddles us further. I think this is a sign from the universe that we're going about this the wrong way. That's what I take it to mean. Sorry for the rambling.
>> It endeavors to give us answers about knowledge and reality but increasingly I think it doesn't actually do that, and cannot Yeah, and it seems like a lot of professional philosophers agree with this. If you ask them what the point of philosophy is, a lot of them will grant that it's not an effective for getting at the facts about the world, but that it has other goods (like mapping conceptual space, say). But then there's a disconnect between what we seem to be aiming to achieve in our arguments, and what we recognize we're actually achieving.
That's rather pessimistic, though I'm inclined to mostly agree. I still think careful philosophical thinking can help us acquire knowledge. Think, for instance, of the careful thought Dennett has put into the question of consciousness. That careful thinking is often missing from blunt scientific approaches to addressing philosophical questions, and can yield insights I don't think a flat-footed scientific approach would yield. While I agree a lot of philosophy is a game, maybe it would be helpful to catalog insights and benefits of thinking about and studying philosophy. I suspect we'd find there are values and advantages to doing philosophy that slip between the cracks.
@@KaneB The *disconnect* is what gets me. Philosophers will happily concede that maybe philosophy can't achieve X, but hey, at least it does {A, B, C}. Then if you read their published articles, it sure looks like they're trying very hard to achieve X, and make no mention at all of how they're doing a good job of achieving A, B, or C. That is, they'll argue X is *true*, rather than say something like "My goal in this article is to clarify the conceptual possibilities." No, their goal is rather explicitly that "X is true" or "belief in X is justified." There's something off with this picture. And I worry that philosophy equips its practitioners to be able to suppress or sustain very high levels of cognitive dissonance via philosophical rationalization.
@@lanceindependent Well, I don't agree with Dennett on consciousness at all but that's besides the point. I don't think what I'm saying is pessimistic. To someone like Laozi or Nagarjuna it's actually extremely optimistic because once you understand the contingency and interdependence of phenomena that's when the real fun begins. The ineffability of the reality we live in. To Nagarjuna, it was the best way to achieve compassion for other beings and to attain peace and happiness within yourself. And I think there's a lot of truth behind that. I don't want to sound pessimistic xD but if we look at our "best" (ergo, closest approximation to "reality" per se) scientific theory like quantum mechanics and we look at the various theories proposed to explain it, the ones on the table are just bonkers mad. If there's anything that better makes my point, that our concepts cannot grasp reality, then I think that's it. All of the candidate explanations are whackjob crazy, yet those are the "explanations." Well, then maybe explanation is the problem.
Really great opening by going over the different indirect justifications that are given for the purpose of philosophical argument. I always thought the point was to arrive at truth in some way, to show some positions to be false, implausible, or to sort of develop positions over time until we reach a point where we can converge or combine theories. I get the impression that this is what the aim of philosophy is as a discipline - the structure of academic philosophy - how it is done in terms of debate and arguments that advance or challenge positions. I don't know how effective that is or if the progress made is towards truth or really just towards conceptual clarity as you mention. I also don't really know what my own motivations are for engaging with philosophy and for arguing. I don't think I'm trying to convince others, maybe I'm just trying to convince myself or challenge my own beliefs in some way. I guess I also don't really know :)
This is an easy question to answer. The point of philosophical arguments and philosophy generally is not to procure knowledge of some kind, it is not to create the most rational beliefs, it is not for justification, it is not for other people, and it is definitely not for the sake of philosophy itself. Philosophy is a process of controlled negation aimed at assumption identification and reduction, that's it. Period. In this sense, and only this sense, has philosophy made real progress over the years. For any given claim or idea, there are assumptions latent within it. Assumption identification necessarily leads towards idea creation. The lesser the assumptions, the closer to truth. Idea creation, though, is not the process of philosophy but is the useful byproduct of philosophy. Why is idea creation a byproduct rather than the goal? Because as soon as the assumptions of an idea are identified and the new ideas are born, if these new ideas have been reduced to a very small set of assumptions, then these ideas transform from philosophy into science. If such ideas have not been thoroughly reduced, then they stay as philosophy until they are reduced. E.g. Claim: It is good to brush your teeth. Assumption 1: Concept of good. Assumption 2: concept of self-identity. Assumption 3:concept of property. Assumption 4: concept of parthood. Assumption 5: "It is" concept of reality. Assumption 6: Concept of the other. Assumption 7: Concept of objects. Assumption 8: concept of action Assumption 9: concept of meaning. etc Philosophy will take these assumptions, reduce them, find new assumptions and reduce them again until it reaches a very limited set of assumptions.
I was thinking, why should we do philosophical argumentation? Like science is useful because it helps us predict things, so in turn helps us make better decisions for whatever goal we have at the time. Mathematics helps us describe the situation at hand in rigorous ways, then gives us tools to work out the consequences, hence again better decisions. What good does philosophizing do for an individual, an entity or an organization? (NOTE: I'm not asking this in derogatory sense. I'm serious thinking about this myself and would like to hear other's opinions on the topic) (Second Note: this is, somewhat like, my framing of the question on this video itself)
As a teacher of students on a baccalaureate programme for whom philosophy is a compulsory subject, I have regarded it as very much my role to give an account of the point of philosophy, its value to the students' overall education and particularly how it can add value and understanding to other areas of their studies. If I had not felt able to do this, I think I would run into significant difficulties in the presentation and ambit of my lessons. There have been years in which after teaching a lesson of chemistry I would then move to another room with many of the same students to give a lesson of philosophy; it was important to me that this did not involve any cognitive disjunction, on the contrary I was often able to emphasise the continuity. Topics such as particle wave expressions or of entropy have philosophical implications but also need to be understood from a philosophical perspective. It would have been similar if I had also taught maths. This does, I think, tend toward a more realist and even a prescriptive approach, which I guess you would disagree with. For Verity, your designer, assuming that her assumptions are those of naïve realism, I would try to show and explain how a more sophisticated understanding or colour perception can benefit her development as a designer, something that is actually quite easy to demonstrate,
Did my question from a few days ago about the nature of argumets inspire you to make this video? Anyway, i was wondering whether we could say that the point of arguments is not to show the rationality of a view; but rather to find "the most reasonable" view. Whether a poistion is more reasonable than another would then be determined by considerations about the coherence, simplicity, explanatory power and so on.
Yes, that was one thing that got me thinking about it. I also had a conversation with another commenter on the same video, Roger Baltimore, that inspired this as well.
It seems to me that what we're trying to achieve by engaging in philosophical debates and discussions is to advance our individual and collective understanding of ourselves, and nature. The dialectic sometimes bares fruit. Advances in mathematics, logic, science, psychology, sociology and many other subjects have stemmed from philosophical debates.
Perhaps the source of difficulty here is recognizing that philosophy is akin to a game. It is like an intellectual sport. Imagine two groups run out onto a field to face against each other. We might expect that they are doing this for some purpose, like they intend to fight to protect their way of life against an enemy, and then we might be confused to see them kicking a ball around, with no apparent purpose beyond putting it through the goal that is defended by the opposing team. They are apparently accomplishing nothing of any value, and yet they put a large quantity of effort into it. The key to understanding what they are doing is to understand the concept of a game. Philosophy is very much akin to politics, except that philosophy is to football as politics is to war. Philosophy is the political exercise of persuasion, but done only as an exercise, only for fun and for testing our skills and not for any real stakes tied to winning or losing. In order for philosophy to have a point, we must try to win, but winning is not the point. The point is to test our intellectual skills in discussing a challenging topic, trying to convince the other side that we're right even though we gain nothing by doing so. What we gain is skill in argumentation and logic. We don't really _want_ to convince the other side that we're right, because then we'd lose our debating partner, but we still have to put in an honest effort to be convincing or else the whole exercise becomes pointless because it's not testing our skills. We might also ask what is the purpose of boxers punching each other? They don't want to injure each other, but they must still seriously try to punch each other because that's the game. That's how they test their skills. And because they don't want to injure each other, they follow rules of good sportsmanship that they would not bother with if they truly wanted to do harm. They obey a referee and they fight in rounds and obey the bell. In the same way, in principle, philosophy should be more sporting and less prone to personal attacks and more thoughtful and logical than we would find in politics were people debate issues of grave personal importance.
You're right in that being rational isn't enough on its own. We can be rational and hold a position that doesn't align with reality. I see it as a falsification step. While we can be irrational and hold a position that does align with reality, that alignment is coincidence. We are much more likely to be wrong if our position is irrational, so being rational is one step toward a robustly correct position. So, when someone accuses us of being irrational, what they are expressing is a high confidence that we are not correct.
I quite liked your point about philosophy not being too concerned with a rhetorical strategy to convince people to adopt your position. In my view, it seems like giving a philosophical argument is a way in which one can strengthen their own position, since providing a philosophical argument often results in a critical response. Being aware of the potential shortcomings of one's position can be valuable. But then again, that might just be an attempt to justify one's position as "rational", which might not necessarily be important.
I feel like every philosopher needs to answer that question before they can call themselves a philosopher, especially a professional one. What are we respecting and paying them for?
What is a good reason to bother with something? This is a philosophical question. To do philosophy is to answer this question in a systematic way, and it seems that there are good reasons to do this.
The cyclical nature of the question is funny. Discussing the point of philosophical argument entails the use of philosophy, and finding the "correct" answer can be posed as an argument. On the other hand, simplifying, explaining, and rationalizing perspectives is undeniably a useful skill, and argument is good practice.
I consider philosophy as a form of art. Keeping this in mind makes point of arguments quiet clear: to compete in rethoric, logic and sharpness of mind with those who are good at it, to be entertaining for those who argue at least, to be entertaining for public at most
If the goal of philosophy is to equip philosophers to be good at arguing and entertaining the public it strikes me at as a catastrophic failure at both. If you wanted to be persuasive, you'd study rhetoric and psychology. If you wanted to be good at entertainment, philosophers would practice e.g., comedic timing, perform stand up, participate in improv sketch comedy, and do other things that would improve their skills at persuading and entertaining. If these are its goals, it seems to be going about it all wrong.
@@lanceindependent a very specific entertainment for a very specific auditory. Was never ment for everyone. We can look at those, who was engaged in philosophy throughout the history: noble men of antiquity, emperors even, preists and scholars of medival period, kings some times, aristocracy of renessans, extrovagant nobility and men of wealth in the age of enlightenment. Those are no ordinary people who was trying to appeal to their likeminds
Been thinking about this in a roundabout way lately. Often moral realists will accept that neither their arguments nor the objective facts will necessarily motivate behaviour. It makes me wonder what even they are attempting to do in arguing for realism. I suppose many philosophers would consider that there is a fact of the matter in most domains and by providing sound arguments they are providing "reasons" for their position.
I make a point to ask realists about what they're trying to do or convince me of and I never get satisfactory answers. It mostly seems to come to that there are facts about what's "morally right and wrong." Well okay, so what? I don't care. Some reply that the fact that I don't care isn't an argument that they're wrong. Sure, sure, of course. But I'm not supposing that it is. I'm supposing that their position seems completely trivial. Yet this is not the case with findings in science. Facts about fundamental physics, biology, and chemistry are all of potential relevance to developing technologies that improve our lives and achieve our goals.
That's the same for all questions of metaphysics though. Which then leads people to attach farcical moral arguments onto their metaphysical claim in order to justify you believing it. Hilariously there are moral arguments for believing meta-moral positions from moral anti realists lol
@@suzettedarrow8739 You're right, but I see it as basically a negative position. Why would you expect the non-existence of something to motivating? Realism on the other hand does have a history of holding that morality is motivational. This has been largely dropped from modern theories however due to the difficulty of defending it. My point is once that motivating power of morality is dropped, realism seems to be nothing more than a the result of a word game or logical puzzle that can never -in principal- effect anything important.
Hi! I have just found about your channel yesterday, and I was very happy that it has videos on questions and topics that puzzled me recently very much. One of these questions is what is the point of philosophy. I saw your two videos on philosophical progress, the other very recent video about philosophical consensus and this video, and it seems to me, sorry if I put it crudely or reductively, pointless. I am a high school student. I am interested very much in philosophy, and I wanted to pursue an academic research in it. But the idea that I can't reach almost certain truths whatever I (and lots of others) tried very hard to find it really repels and discourages me. Please, guide me if I am missing anything.
I suppose it depends on what your goals are. It's not pointless to me because I happen to be interested in many philosophical topics just for their own sake, and I'm too worried about whether or not I'm reaching truths. Obviously, I would like to have true beliefs, but failure to hold true beliefs with respect to many philosophical questions doesn't seem to make that much of a difference to anything. I think anybody doing philosophy will just have to live with the fact that the discipline doesn't achieve consensus in the way that e.g. the sciences do.
@@KaneB I differ on three points with you. - I don't think it's possible to know that you have an absolute truth. - Science only determines which theory is most likely within a spectrum of certainty. Consensus results from shared experience. - Philosophy maps the uncharted terrain that science will later analyze. A philosophical model of the unknown terrain of reality is the fun part of life. The arguments test the functionality of the model.
@@EduardoRodriguez-du2vd I'm not sure why you think you differ with me on the first two points. I agree with those. In fact, as a scientific antirealist, I wouldn't even say that science tells us which theory is "most likely". It's a tool for finding theories that best systematise, predict, and control the observable phenomena. As for the third point, I just don't see any reason to expect that most areas of philosophy will later become sciences.
@@KaneB So, seriously, what do you think the point of philosophy is (as you don't believe that theoretical convergence (consensus) and cumulatively are an indication of truth, but an indication of the most suitable theory of predicting and controlling nature)? What is TRUTH then? And could we ever distinguish it? And how? I know my reply may feel a bit demanding, but those questions are making me suffer cognitively :D
After I graduated, I began to view philosophical argumentation as a sort of play. I generally don't argue to justify my beliefs. I usually end up arguing because I respect the intellect of one of my peers and want to play ball.
The aim of philosophical argument is the justification of belief. Philosophy is the study of arguments, at the end of the day. The work of philosophy is to study whether & how arguments work - work in justifying belief.
Quite a solid stance imo. But while there is significant overlap, I think those two things are not quite equivalent, depending on how broadly you define "justification" and "belief": Not every justification of belief is philosophy. You can justify some beliefs for very simple, "irrational" reasons, like something just "strikes" you as more likely or intuitive. Not every philosophical argument is about justification of belief: some arguments go beyond believing/convincing and want to advocate for actually doing something, like enact a policy onto society as a whole.
I've heard that arguments used to defeat the existence of moral values can be used against any kind of values (e.g epistemic values). >Do you have a video on this?
I never know why philosophers don't take these things as a hint that philosophy might just be the wrong method for discovering something wildly profound about reality that actually delivers the goods. The major take away is that philosophy and rationality can be used to justify or claim just about anything all while retaining a rational composure. So why not dismantle the whole framework and move on and try things radically different than logic/rationality/philosophy. Art strikes me as more successful at giving us something radically new or profound. I take many poems to be radically more successful at communicating a truth to me than a syllogism and music can bring my mind to places that seem more legitimate and meaningful than any argument could. Like what music communicates seems more voluptuous, thicker and much more content rich and saturated than what any rational argument communicates. The communication via some experimental music piece seems perfectly legitimate, like why not?? it feels "more true" than some system of rationality that can be used algorithmically to defend essentially anything under the sun. I feel like philosophers are prejudiced and bias toward written language as though it was the definitive precise medium or analog of accurate communication.. but thinking this just seems like tone deafness or like Aspergers symptoms to me.
Me either. Fortunately, *some* of us take these considerations as hints, and that's why we do philosophy outside the field of academic philosophy, or remain within the field but integrate insights and methods from other fields: computer science, psychology, physics, neuroscience, etc. I don't think this is quite what you are alluding to though. Your comments about art and music delivering insights sounds really interesting. It has a ring of truth to it, but also teeters dangerously close into territory where mystics and gurus would obscure genuine insights behind clouds of bullshit.
I very rarely view music as communicating anything, unless we're talking about the semantic content of song lyrics, but I don't think that's what you have in mind there.
@@lanceindependent Right I certainly don't like clouds of bullshit. But it could be a don't throw the baby out with the bullshit scenario. But since we are attracted to anti-realism why not be a little more comfortable with suggesting some radical things, why not, if we're making it up as we go along, maybe we should have some more fun while doing that.
@@KaneB Yeah man. You see this is why that "a limit of my imagination" phrase is so important. And also why philosophy is crap because phenomenology can vary so wildly. I guess I have synesthesia mildly, but also when I read words or hear people talking it doesn't feel like they are communicating anything to me (even though that is the exact purpose of words) meanwhile I can hear an instrumental classical piece of music (something experimental we'd both probably like) and it feels like it communicates something that has more dimension to it than some word based communication. Like I feel as though I was "shown" or "told" more by it than if someone just told me what they meant verbally. Even Lance Bush gets what I'm saying to some extent and you don't get more antirealist than Lance Bush haha
@@lanceindependent I'd also like to clarify I don't mean we should interpret what I'd call a deep musical insight into a language style truth, that seriously would be some new age crap and I'd be totally against that. I can't stand new age stuff. But I'd say a musical truth that seems to be communicating something deeply can stand on its own. The thing I would distrust would be stupid interpretations of these "mystical sensations" the sensations themselves absent interpretation are good enough, the interpretations seem like they pollute how cool and amazing it is that non-conceptual truth might actually be a thing. To take a non-conceptual truth and translate it into something conceptual is where all the bullshit gets started. If we just left those insights alone for what they are on their own non-conceptual terms, I think we could find something very meaningful in them absent any lame or goofy interpretations of them.
Could you be overthinking this situation? What about good old-fashioned seeking pleasure or seeking pain minimization? I spend a lot of my day chasing the feeling of being interested and engaged. Your ramblings we're interesting to me. They were also useful as food for thought.
Being that you traced the question back to your personal motivation for giving philosophical arguments, I'd say the answer isn't universalizable (not even with respect to yourself). Personal motivations for developing an investigation or an argument can vary drastically depending on the particular case (and that is not something that is limited to philosophical argumentation). For example, suppose a scientist is engaged in producing a revolutionary theory about how cancer works. One could say, from the outside, that the reason for such scientific inquiry is to discover the truth, or to create a theoretical model that allows humanity to be saved from a very serious disease, etc (like the arguments one could make, from outside, to justify philosophy as a discipline and an specific argument as representative of the discipline). However, the motivation for the scientist himself may be that he has been traumatized after the death of a very dear family member at the hands of cancer, and that now, for that very reason, he has a personal crusade against said disease. The motivation to discover a theory in particle physics may be the search for fame within the intellectual domain. The motivation to produce a sociological argument may be to theoretically base certain social structures that are functional for the theorist, etc. It seems to me that you are asking a psychological, almost biographical question. In the case of this video, I would think that the motivation of your argument is plain curiosity, although, as Hume said, "To explain the ultimate causes of our mental actions is impossible. ’Tis sufficient, if we can give any satisfactory account of them from experience and analogy".
I suppose in a sense, but it's not as though she endorses pragmatism as a philosophical position. She'd count as a pragmatist in the same sense that any non-philosopher who just gets on with their job, without really worrying about philosophical commitments, is a pragmatist.
At 16:40 you say, "I guess we can say that her position is not adequately justified". I think that was a mistake on your part. Could you explain what would lead us to say that her position is not adequately justified?
@@KaneB @Kane B Interesting. At ~15:00, you seem to say that she, Verity, justifies her belief in color realism by appealing to the many smart people who believe color realism. You say "She isn't making any sort of rational error in continuing to believe color realism". Do you think unjustified belief is a rational error? Or do you think Verity's belief in color realism is at least sufficiently well justified so as to avoid her belief being a rational error?
@@suzettedarrow8739 >> Do you think unjustified belief is a rational error? No. I don't think there's anything irrational in holding beliefs without justification. Also, to be clear, I don't have a strong view nor I particularly care whether or not we call Verity's belief justified. That's why I prefaced the statement with "I guess we can say..."
@@KaneB >> That's why I prefaced the statement with "I guess we can say..." Given the casualness & off the cuff nature of the video, I can't in good conscience interpret those kinds of phrases too steadfastly. So I ask. More relevantly, what to your mind would be an example of a "rational mistake" if not the holding of an unjustified belief? Holding a belief at-odds with one's own goals seems, to me, like a practical mistake, not a rational mistake. Do you disagree about that?
@@suzettedarrow8739 >> More relevantly, what to your mind would be an example of a "rational mistake" if not the holding of an unjustified belief? I count a set of beliefs as rational provided that (a) all the beliefs could jointly turn out to be true and (b) they support, or at least do not interfere with, successful action. >> Holding a belief at-odds with one's own goals seems, to me, like a practical mistake, not a rational mistake. Do you disagree about that? I don't know.
An observation: you are not bald. My self-conviction: You should be bald My argument: We are bald-ness incarnated. We must accept ourselves as such. This is absurd, then I started to get away from the judgement that is most obvious.
@@KaneB Cookiehood. This is an important concept in the new and growing field of gastronomic realism. Join us gastronomic realists in addressing questions related to cookiehood, sandwichness, and quesadillism
@@lanceindependent I think the ontology about the essence of cookiehood is extremely important and we should devote academic resources to investigate the modality of cookiehood and cookieness.
I think we can do philosophy in order to try to know what is true and what is false and to shape our views on life and on the world and on ourselves, and I don't see this becoming a problem unless we aim for certainty, and I don't think certainty is necessary. How do you find that? But ultimately, I find the "indirect" goods of philosophy just as important.
You make it seems like all of the scholars other than the philosophical ones are unable to map out details of conceptual space....that's very unconvincing.
@@thotslayer9914 I can believe in any god that can be proven by natural means. I don't think that I am agnostic. If there is THANOS standing in front of me, I will consider it powerful enough to be a god and believe that god exists.
@@thotslayer9914 I don't think there is a limitations of naturalism. Rather, it's a limitation of "transcending" if there is. I think you have mistaken my position. I would also accept ANY transcending god if it's existing at all. The condition is simple. 1)Just tell me how it's existing and non existing can be differentiated. 2)How to differentiate a transcending being from another identical transcending being if there is. I really don't think that I am an atheist or agnostic. I am very open minded.
@@thotslayer9914 Your question is getting irrelevant. I believe in things that I believe. I had believed in things that I no longer believe. I am believing in things that I haven't been believing. So, I don't see why I can't believe in a transcending entity if 1)one can be differentiated from existing to non-existing 2)one can be differentiated with another identical transcending entity. By the way, people always mistaken the limitation of science with limitations of naturalism. I always see people mixing the two. I will not be surprised if your are one of those.
@@thotslayer9914 I am not particularly interested in gods and all. I was just trying to answer your questions. I know it's about philosophy here. That's why I was wondering in the comment section. Try to get something new.
I have deep frustrations about why philosophy is so celebrated, especially in the academic sphere, when it seems to be based on nothing (it doesn't actually *study* anything; a point which I'm elaborating on below) and to have no goal/purpose. Most philosophical questions don't get past the standard of being well-defined to a relevant degree. (i.e. It is specified what every term (and their compositions) means to suitable precision, and it is justified that they all exist outside of their usual context (instead of, say, as merely a local or macroscopic concept that breaks down upon analysis).) In fact, a lot of philosophical questions ARE about semantics - "What is X?". Most of those that are well-defined are subjective, dependent on the experiences and definitions of the individual or their society. (e.g. ethics) Most of those that aren't subjective are not investigable/knowable, or otherwise don't have any practical impact no matter what the answers to them are. (e.g. metaphysics) Most of those that are investigable already have simple answers (or not so simple answers, e.g. psychology) (or if not an answer, then at least a theoretical method for arriving at the answer) that don't require deep philosophical dives to solve. Those that don't have answers don't have any satisfactory conclusion from philosophy either. Furthermore, most philosophical arguments seem to have at least one logical flaw, or unjustified assumption, or just a general disconnect from reality. Frequently these are overgeneralisations/overextensions, equivocation, circular reasoning, or just straight up unjustified assertions that, if acknowledged at all, are purported to be some flavour of "self-evident". And these happen so early on in the argument that I just lose my patience - why should I continue to read pages of what this philosopher thinks and bend my mind trying to fill in the gaps for them, when I don't even know if any of what they say is substantial in the end? My teacher wouldn't give me the time of day, so why is this guy so special? All university pages on their program in philosophy that I've seen advertise critical thinking as one of the main takeaways of the program, but what I get seems to be the opposite of that. I want to know why certain philosophers and philosophical arguments are so propped up when they fail on such basic levels. It's okay for people to fail, but it's not okay to keep asserting that they are making sense and then try to retrospectively find the sense and build on top of it. That's just literary analysis at that point. As far as I can tell, philosophy is useful only when people are stuck and need some creativity and lateral thinking to make progress. Either that, or philosophy is just there to retrospectively justify to you that what you've been doing so far is right. (The whole "relying on intuition to make judgments" aspect.) I've recently been entertaining the analogy that philosophy is the court jester - it's in the business of making critical and witty remarks, but it doesn't actually do anything in the end, other than perhaps indirectly influencing the monarch's decisions. And more than just minuscule benefits, philosophy can be harmful at some points, especially if it leads people to believe that they are more justified in doing what they do than they really are, espcially if what they are doing is atrocious (by modern standards). In watching these videos, I've found myself liking the skeptical arguments best. And the best resolution to how we know anything anyway is not out of any deep theoretical reason, but simply the empirical test - there is no reason to keep sticking to any theoretical framework other than it "tending to work (better than the alternatives)".
Why do you assume there is a point to anything you do? Why couldn't it be that you are a disembodied experience that just popped into existence in this moment? (thought of annoying you with skepticism a bit due to prior videos of yours)
I don't know if I assume that in this video. In the end, I'm not sure why I make philosophical arguments. Maybe I just have the brute desire to do philosophy, and there is no further reason for it. Similarly, if I'm eating some chocolate cake and I ask myself, "what's the point of eating the chocolate cake?", well, I just like eating chocolate cake. There is no further reason, at least as far as I'm aware. However, an important disanology between eating chocolate cake and doing philosophy is that often, I don't particularly enjoy doing philosophy. It can be frustrating or boring or confusing. So it seems like I should have some further goal in mind, where making philosophical arguments is a means for achieving that goal.
@@KaneB Well don't you assume that speaking will produce sounds for example? And when taking a bite of chocolate cake, don't you assume that there will be the taste of a chocolaty candy?
@@justus4684 Because that's what's happened every other time I've spoken, because it follows from our best theory of what sound is and how the human larynx works, and because nobody has ever presented any good reason to expect otherwise.
"Philosophy: the study of ideas about knowledge, truth, the nature and meaning of life, etc." All sciences seek truth. Philosophy is the science of science, it seeks the truth about how we know things. If you're a moral relativist - do you even believe in 'truth'? Is this the problem? Could this be why discussion seems pointless to you, because you don't think there's any truth to be found?
Your philosophical training has made you very adept at making nuanced arguments, unfortunately it's the choice of topics that exposes the pointlessness of the enterprise. Your main focus on this channel, from what I can see, is moral realism/anti realism. The problem with that topic is it's vacuity, it's like arguing against alchemy. There were, we can imagine, alchemical realists and anti realists, eventually there became chemists and so on and so forth. Are there any attempts by you to move from that silly dichotomy to a more powerful paradigm of knowledge? Like moving from alchemy to chemistry? Unfortunately no, so the overall "point" of the philosophical exercise is diminished. Unless the overall question on the topic of morality is "what is the nature of this topic, what can we know about it?" Then there will always be a gaping chasm of pointlessness.
A lot of my recent videos are on moral realism/antirealism, but I wouldn't say that's the "main focus" of the channel overall. There have been years where I've uploaded very little on metaethics. >> The problem with that topic is it's vacuity, it's like arguing against alchemy. There were, we can imagine, alchemical realists and anti realists, eventually there became chemists and so on and so forth I'm not sure how this is vacuous. It seems to me that the alchemical antirealists were straightforwardly correct, at least concerning most of the fundamental assumptions of alchemy. >> Are there any attempts by you to move from that silly dichotomy to a more powerful paradigm of knowledge? Actually yes, I do have videos on alternative approaches to epistemology. But I'm also interested in the standard moral realism/antirealism debate. If you're not interested in that, there's a simple solution: Don't watch my videos about it.
@@KaneB The alchemical anti realists were correct in the sense that the propositions of alchemy were false, yes but that's not the point. The alchemical anti realist did not say "the mutability of elements especially from lead to gold is false, therefore there is no reality, or anything knowable about the elements at all." Which, despite your undoubted protestations, IS your position in regards to morality. "The claims that there are mind independent moral facts in the world is wrong, therefore there are no facts of the matter at all with regard to morality." Unlike alchemy, the particular claims of moral realists are quite easily dismissed, but why merely stop there? All you're doing is giving the realist the argument that no other rational proposition has been put forward as explaination. Which is a similar problem you just talked about with regards to colour. Also, putting forward alternative approaches to epistemology is not really the same. In fact, with regards to morality, normal boring ordinary scientific approaches will suffice to present a more plausible explanation than current realist proposals, in my opinion. And finally, despite your resentment at this fact, I'm still going to watch your enlightening and entertaining videos so there.
@@RoryT1000 >> Which, despite your undoubted protestations, IS your position in regards to morality. I deny that there are stance-independent moral facts. There are plenty of other facts regarding morality -- and some of those facts are important in defending the position that there are no stance-independent moral facts. For example, the facts about origins and variations of moral belief might be useful for undermining realist epistemologies. >> Also, putting forward alternative approaches to epistemology is not really the same. In fact, with regards to morality, normal boring ordinary scientific approaches will suffice to present a more plausible explanation than current realist proposals, in my opinion. You asked about attempts to provide a "more powerful paradigm of knowledge". If what you're asking for now is "normal boring ordinary scientific approaches", then yes, I have talked about that as well, for instance in the videos on moral naturalism and on evolutionary debunking arguments. >> And finally, despite your resentment at this fact, I'm still going to watch your enlightening and entertaining videos so there. Why would I resent it? Your views and comments directly help the channel. Based on what you've expressed about your interests, I think you're wasting your time, but that's not a problem for me.
@@KaneB "some of those facts are important in defending the position that there are no stance independent moral facts" Please understand where I'm coming from ok, when I gave the example of the alchemical realists/anti realists before, in the context of this video where you're looking for meaning in philosophical arguments, I called it vacuous precisely for the reason you've just stated. You shouldn't just see the value in facts and arguments because you can debunk something, that's only 5% of the work. The real meaning in philosophy is leaping from that starting point to developing a rigorous account of the subject you're studying, or pointing the way forward to a rigorous account. I feel that people don't do that, things become bogged down in silly disputations. Moral realism)anti realism arguments definitely, in my opinion, have that distinct flavour.
Sometimes I have felt like a philosophical argument is a way to justify my beliefs to myself. A way in which to rationally describe my beliefs, a description of something that was already there...The most compelling philosophical arguments must be ones that resonate with people the most so sometimes it feels like who gets to produce an argument that best matches how we are inherently predisposed to believe "wins", e.g. , nobody would take seriously a philosophical position that says that we ought to commit self-harm because we are naturally not inclined to think of such a thing as something we ought to do. Hope you're doing well, cheers!
So philosophy is just retrospective justification.
As a non-philosopher (i am a french speaker medecal doctor) i have to thank you a lot for your videos. You help me alot to understand a bit of meta-ethic.
As you said here, i never have been convainced by philosophical argument in itsef. Like some pro-choice argument. I may see what other poeple find appealing but something in me dosen't share it.
I always found myself non convainced by moral argument. Good and bad seem to be word that describe preferences that can change through time. But it is quite entertaining though.
Anyway, this type of your video is my favorit of you. Thank you agan and take care.
PS: excuse my english.
Thanks for the comment, glad to hear my videos are helpful!
Good timing. I've been thinking this myself. What are we actually doing with Philosophy? It endeavors to give us answers about knowledge and reality but increasingly I think it doesn't actually do that, and cannot. I think it's just a game we play, the same way people play the moral realism game. I think reality is beyond our conceptualizations and will always remain elusive to them.
I'm not saying the philosophy game isn't worth playing, but if you're not willing to play that game, why not play a different game? Just something I've been thinking. I think anti-foundationalist approaches are more useful than Foundationalist ones.
This is essentially the argument Eastern philosophy makes, that reality is beyond our conceptualizations because reality just eclipses our conceptualizations. This universal system with all of these interdependent and interconnected parts will elude our limited, finite, restricted conceptual knowledge. Whenever we grasp at "the thing" we think is true, it slips out of our fingers and befuddles us further. I think this is a sign from the universe that we're going about this the wrong way. That's what I take it to mean.
Sorry for the rambling.
>> It endeavors to give us answers about knowledge and reality but increasingly I think it doesn't actually do that, and cannot
Yeah, and it seems like a lot of professional philosophers agree with this. If you ask them what the point of philosophy is, a lot of them will grant that it's not an effective for getting at the facts about the world, but that it has other goods (like mapping conceptual space, say). But then there's a disconnect between what we seem to be aiming to achieve in our arguments, and what we recognize we're actually achieving.
That's rather pessimistic, though I'm inclined to mostly agree. I still think careful philosophical thinking can help us acquire knowledge. Think, for instance, of the careful thought Dennett has put into the question of consciousness. That careful thinking is often missing from blunt scientific approaches to addressing philosophical questions, and can yield insights I don't think a flat-footed scientific approach would yield.
While I agree a lot of philosophy is a game, maybe it would be helpful to catalog insights and benefits of thinking about and studying philosophy. I suspect we'd find there are values and advantages to doing philosophy that slip between the cracks.
@@KaneB The *disconnect* is what gets me.
Philosophers will happily concede that maybe philosophy can't achieve X, but hey, at least it does {A, B, C}.
Then if you read their published articles, it sure looks like they're trying very hard to achieve X, and make no mention at all of how they're doing a good job of achieving A, B, or C. That is, they'll argue X is *true*, rather than say something like "My goal in this article is to clarify the conceptual possibilities." No, their goal is rather explicitly that "X is true" or "belief in X is justified."
There's something off with this picture. And I worry that philosophy equips its practitioners to be able to suppress or sustain very high levels of cognitive dissonance via philosophical rationalization.
@@lanceindependent Well, I don't agree with Dennett on consciousness at all but that's besides the point. I don't think what I'm saying is pessimistic. To someone like Laozi or Nagarjuna it's actually extremely optimistic because once you understand the contingency and interdependence of phenomena that's when the real fun begins. The ineffability of the reality we live in. To Nagarjuna, it was the best way to achieve compassion for other beings and to attain peace and happiness within yourself. And I think there's a lot of truth behind that. I don't want to sound pessimistic xD but if we look at our "best" (ergo, closest approximation to "reality" per se) scientific theory like quantum mechanics and we look at the various theories proposed to explain it, the ones on the table are just bonkers mad. If there's anything that better makes my point, that our concepts cannot grasp reality, then I think that's it. All of the candidate explanations are whackjob crazy, yet those are the "explanations." Well, then maybe explanation is the problem.
@@lanceindependent Hard agree (with your second post).
Really great opening by going over the different indirect justifications that are given for the purpose of philosophical argument. I always thought the point was to arrive at truth in some way, to show some positions to be false, implausible, or to sort of develop positions over time until we reach a point where we can converge or combine theories. I get the impression that this is what the aim of philosophy is as a discipline - the structure of academic philosophy - how it is done in terms of debate and arguments that advance or challenge positions. I don't know how effective that is or if the progress made is towards truth or really just towards conceptual clarity as you mention. I also don't really know what my own motivations are for engaging with philosophy and for arguing. I don't think I'm trying to convince others, maybe I'm just trying to convince myself or challenge my own beliefs in some way. I guess I also don't really know :)
This is an easy question to answer. The point of philosophical arguments and philosophy generally is not to procure knowledge of some kind, it is not to create the most rational beliefs, it is not for justification, it is not for other people, and it is definitely not for the sake of philosophy itself. Philosophy is a process of controlled negation aimed at assumption identification and reduction, that's it. Period. In this sense, and only this sense, has philosophy made real progress over the years.
For any given claim or idea, there are assumptions latent within it. Assumption identification necessarily leads towards idea creation. The lesser the assumptions, the closer to truth. Idea creation, though, is not the process of philosophy but is the useful byproduct of philosophy. Why is idea creation a byproduct rather than the goal? Because as soon as the assumptions of an idea are identified and the new ideas are born, if these new ideas have been reduced to a very small set of assumptions, then these ideas transform from philosophy into science. If such ideas have not been thoroughly reduced, then they stay as philosophy until they are reduced.
E.g. Claim: It is good to brush your teeth.
Assumption 1: Concept of good. Assumption 2: concept of self-identity. Assumption 3:concept of property. Assumption 4: concept of parthood. Assumption 5: "It is" concept of reality. Assumption 6: Concept of the other. Assumption 7: Concept of objects. Assumption 8: concept of action Assumption 9: concept of meaning. etc
Philosophy will take these assumptions, reduce them, find new assumptions and reduce them again until it reaches a very limited set of assumptions.
I was thinking, why should we do philosophical argumentation? Like science is useful because it helps us predict things, so in turn helps us make better decisions for whatever goal we have at the time. Mathematics helps us describe the situation at hand in rigorous ways, then gives us tools to work out the consequences, hence again better decisions. What good does philosophizing do for an individual, an entity or an organization?
(NOTE: I'm not asking this in derogatory sense. I'm serious thinking about this myself and would like to hear other's opinions on the topic)
(Second Note: this is, somewhat like, my framing of the question on this video itself)
As a teacher of students on a baccalaureate programme for whom philosophy is a compulsory subject, I have regarded it as very much my role to give an account of the point of philosophy, its value to the students' overall education and particularly how it can add value and understanding to other areas of their studies. If I had not felt able to do this, I think I would run into significant difficulties in the presentation and ambit of my lessons.
There have been years in which after teaching a lesson of chemistry I would then move to another room with many of the same students to give a lesson of philosophy; it was important to me that this did not involve any cognitive disjunction, on the contrary I was often able to emphasise the continuity. Topics such as particle wave expressions or of entropy have philosophical implications but also need to be understood from a philosophical perspective. It would have been similar if I had also taught maths. This does, I think, tend toward a more realist and even a prescriptive approach, which I guess you would disagree with.
For Verity, your designer, assuming that her assumptions are those of naïve realism, I would try to show and explain how a more sophisticated understanding or colour perception can benefit her development as a designer, something that is actually quite easy to demonstrate,
Did my question from a few days ago about the nature of argumets inspire you to make this video? Anyway, i was wondering whether we could say that the point of arguments is not to show the rationality of a view; but rather to find "the most reasonable" view. Whether a poistion is more reasonable than another would then be determined by considerations about the coherence, simplicity, explanatory power and so on.
Yes, that was one thing that got me thinking about it. I also had a conversation with another commenter on the same video, Roger Baltimore, that inspired this as well.
It seems to me that what we're trying to achieve by engaging in philosophical debates and discussions is to advance our individual and collective understanding of ourselves, and nature. The dialectic sometimes bares fruit. Advances in mathematics, logic, science, psychology, sociology and many other subjects have stemmed from philosophical debates.
Perhaps the source of difficulty here is recognizing that philosophy is akin to a game. It is like an intellectual sport. Imagine two groups run out onto a field to face against each other. We might expect that they are doing this for some purpose, like they intend to fight to protect their way of life against an enemy, and then we might be confused to see them kicking a ball around, with no apparent purpose beyond putting it through the goal that is defended by the opposing team. They are apparently accomplishing nothing of any value, and yet they put a large quantity of effort into it. The key to understanding what they are doing is to understand the concept of a game.
Philosophy is very much akin to politics, except that philosophy is to football as politics is to war. Philosophy is the political exercise of persuasion, but done only as an exercise, only for fun and for testing our skills and not for any real stakes tied to winning or losing. In order for philosophy to have a point, we must try to win, but winning is not the point. The point is to test our intellectual skills in discussing a challenging topic, trying to convince the other side that we're right even though we gain nothing by doing so. What we gain is skill in argumentation and logic. We don't really _want_ to convince the other side that we're right, because then we'd lose our debating partner, but we still have to put in an honest effort to be convincing or else the whole exercise becomes pointless because it's not testing our skills.
We might also ask what is the purpose of boxers punching each other? They don't want to injure each other, but they must still seriously try to punch each other because that's the game. That's how they test their skills. And because they don't want to injure each other, they follow rules of good sportsmanship that they would not bother with if they truly wanted to do harm. They obey a referee and they fight in rounds and obey the bell. In the same way, in principle, philosophy should be more sporting and less prone to personal attacks and more thoughtful and logical than we would find in politics were people debate issues of grave personal importance.
So philosophy is just a form of art.
You're right in that being rational isn't enough on its own. We can be rational and hold a position that doesn't align with reality.
I see it as a falsification step. While we can be irrational and hold a position that does align with reality, that alignment is coincidence. We are much more likely to be wrong if our position is irrational, so being rational is one step toward a robustly correct position.
So, when someone accuses us of being irrational, what they are expressing is a high confidence that we are not correct.
@@thotslayer9914 I have not, but will take a look
I quite liked your point about philosophy not being too concerned with a rhetorical strategy to convince people to adopt your position. In my view, it seems like giving a philosophical argument is a way in which one can strengthen their own position, since providing a philosophical argument often results in a critical response. Being aware of the potential shortcomings of one's position can be valuable.
But then again, that might just be an attempt to justify one's position as "rational", which might not necessarily be important.
I like the 70's vibe. Feathered hair and the jacket.
To be honest, I was asked why I bother with philosophy and I couldn't really answer the question to my own satisfaction either.
I feel like every philosopher needs to answer that question before they can call themselves a philosopher, especially a professional one. What are we respecting and paying them for?
What is a good reason to bother with something? This is a philosophical question. To do philosophy is to answer this question in a systematic way, and it seems that there are good reasons to do this.
The cyclical nature of the question is funny. Discussing the point of philosophical argument entails the use of philosophy, and finding the "correct" answer can be posed as an argument. On the other hand, simplifying, explaining, and rationalizing perspectives is undeniably a useful skill, and argument is good practice.
I consider philosophy as a form of art. Keeping this in mind makes point of arguments quiet clear: to compete in rethoric, logic and sharpness of mind with those who are good at it, to be entertaining for those who argue at least, to be entertaining for public at most
If the goal of philosophy is to equip philosophers to be good at arguing and entertaining the public it strikes me at as a catastrophic failure at both.
If you wanted to be persuasive, you'd study rhetoric and psychology. If you wanted to be good at entertainment, philosophers would practice e.g., comedic timing, perform stand up, participate in improv sketch comedy, and do other things that would improve their skills at persuading and entertaining. If these are its goals, it seems to be going about it all wrong.
@@lanceindependent a very specific entertainment for a very specific auditory. Was never ment for everyone.
We can look at those, who was engaged in philosophy throughout the history: noble men of antiquity, emperors even, preists and scholars of medival period, kings some times, aristocracy of renessans, extrovagant nobility and men of wealth in the age of enlightenment. Those are no ordinary people who was trying to appeal to their likeminds
@@whiterussian4498 Fair enough, that makes sense.
@@whiterussian4498 I agree heavily with all your statements.
Have you read Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations?
Been thinking about this in a roundabout way lately. Often moral realists will accept that neither their arguments nor the objective facts will necessarily motivate behaviour. It makes me wonder what even they are attempting to do in arguing for realism.
I suppose many philosophers would consider that there is a fact of the matter in most domains and by providing sound arguments they are providing "reasons" for their position.
Antirealists, too, accept that neither their arguments nor the objective facts will necessarily motivate behavior, right?
I make a point to ask realists about what they're trying to do or convince me of and I never get satisfactory answers. It mostly seems to come to that there are facts about what's "morally right and wrong." Well okay, so what? I don't care. Some reply that the fact that I don't care isn't an argument that they're wrong. Sure, sure, of course. But I'm not supposing that it is. I'm supposing that their position seems completely trivial.
Yet this is not the case with findings in science. Facts about fundamental physics, biology, and chemistry are all of potential relevance to developing technologies that improve our lives and achieve our goals.
That's the same for all questions of metaphysics though. Which then leads people to attach farcical moral arguments onto their metaphysical claim in order to justify you believing it. Hilariously there are moral arguments for believing meta-moral positions from moral anti realists lol
@@suzettedarrow8739 You're right, but I see it as basically a negative position. Why would you expect the non-existence of something to motivating?
Realism on the other hand does have a history of holding that morality is motivational. This has been largely dropped from modern theories however due to the difficulty of defending it.
My point is once that motivating power of morality is dropped, realism seems to be nothing more than a the result of a word game or logical puzzle that can never -in principal- effect anything important.
@Joseph the Wanderer Take your facile bigotry elsewhere nerd
Hi! I have just found about your channel yesterday, and I was very happy that it has videos on questions and topics that puzzled me recently very much. One of these questions is what is the point of philosophy. I saw your two videos on philosophical progress, the other very recent video about philosophical consensus and this video, and it seems to me, sorry if I put it crudely or reductively, pointless. I am a high school student. I am interested very much in philosophy, and I wanted to pursue an academic research in it. But the idea that I can't reach almost certain truths whatever I (and lots of others) tried very hard to find it really repels and discourages me. Please, guide me if I am missing anything.
I suppose it depends on what your goals are. It's not pointless to me because I happen to be interested in many philosophical topics just for their own sake, and I'm too worried about whether or not I'm reaching truths. Obviously, I would like to have true beliefs, but failure to hold true beliefs with respect to many philosophical questions doesn't seem to make that much of a difference to anything. I think anybody doing philosophy will just have to live with the fact that the discipline doesn't achieve consensus in the way that e.g. the sciences do.
@@KaneB I differ on three points with you.
- I don't think it's possible to know that you have an absolute truth.
- Science only determines which theory is most likely within a spectrum of certainty. Consensus results from shared experience.
- Philosophy maps the uncharted terrain that science will later analyze.
A philosophical model of the unknown terrain of reality is the fun part of life.
The arguments test the functionality of the model.
@@EduardoRodriguez-du2vd I'm not sure why you think you differ with me on the first two points. I agree with those. In fact, as a scientific antirealist, I wouldn't even say that science tells us which theory is "most likely". It's a tool for finding theories that best systematise, predict, and control the observable phenomena. As for the third point, I just don't see any reason to expect that most areas of philosophy will later become sciences.
@@KaneB So, seriously, what do you think the point of philosophy is (as you don't believe that theoretical convergence (consensus) and cumulatively are an indication of truth, but an indication of the most suitable theory of predicting and controlling nature)? What is TRUTH then? And could we ever distinguish it? And how? I know my reply may feel a bit demanding, but those questions are making me suffer cognitively :D
This video is absolutely amazing!
Thank you!
Philosophical arguments adjusts the 3rd person camera on the game avatar that is your mind / thinking.
After I graduated, I began to view philosophical argumentation as a sort of play. I generally don't argue to justify my beliefs. I usually end up arguing because I respect the intellect of one of my peers and want to play ball.
The aim of philosophical argument is the justification of belief. Philosophy is the study of arguments, at the end of the day. The work of philosophy is to study whether & how arguments work - work in justifying belief.
Quite a solid stance imo.
But while there is significant overlap, I think those two things are not quite equivalent, depending on how broadly you define "justification" and "belief":
Not every justification of belief is philosophy. You can justify some beliefs for very simple, "irrational" reasons, like something just "strikes" you as more likely or intuitive.
Not every philosophical argument is about justification of belief: some arguments go beyond believing/convincing and want to advocate for actually doing something, like enact a policy onto society as a whole.
"Rationality is too easy to be had" - true that!!
I've heard that arguments used to defeat the existence of moral values can be used against any kind of values (e.g epistemic values).
>Do you have a video on this?
Yes: th-cam.com/video/7HHBNU_gXP0/w-d-xo.html
@@KaneB thanks
your videos are very helpful, keep up the good work
Kane B reinforcing my pessimism one video at a time
I never know why philosophers don't take these things as a hint that philosophy might just be the wrong method for discovering something wildly profound about reality that actually delivers the goods. The major take away is that philosophy and rationality can be used to justify or claim just about anything all while retaining a rational composure. So why not dismantle the whole framework and move on and try things radically different than logic/rationality/philosophy. Art strikes me as more successful at giving us something radically new or profound. I take many poems to be radically more successful at communicating a truth to me than a syllogism and music can bring my mind to places that seem more legitimate and meaningful than any argument could. Like what music communicates seems more voluptuous, thicker and much more content rich and saturated than what any rational argument communicates. The communication via some experimental music piece seems perfectly legitimate, like why not?? it feels "more true" than some system of rationality that can be used algorithmically to defend essentially anything under the sun. I feel like philosophers are prejudiced and bias toward written language as though it was the definitive precise medium or analog of accurate communication.. but thinking this just seems like tone deafness or like Aspergers symptoms to me.
Me either. Fortunately, *some* of us take these considerations as hints, and that's why we do philosophy outside the field of academic philosophy, or remain within the field but integrate insights and methods from other fields: computer science, psychology, physics, neuroscience, etc. I don't think this is quite what you are alluding to though.
Your comments about art and music delivering insights sounds really interesting. It has a ring of truth to it, but also teeters dangerously close into territory where mystics and gurus would obscure genuine insights behind clouds of bullshit.
I very rarely view music as communicating anything, unless we're talking about the semantic content of song lyrics, but I don't think that's what you have in mind there.
@@lanceindependent Right I certainly don't like clouds of bullshit. But it could be a don't throw the baby out with the bullshit scenario. But since we are attracted to anti-realism why not be a little more comfortable with suggesting some radical things, why not, if we're making it up as we go along, maybe we should have some more fun while doing that.
@@KaneB Yeah man. You see this is why that "a limit of my imagination" phrase is so important. And also why philosophy is crap because phenomenology can vary so wildly. I guess I have synesthesia mildly, but also when I read words or hear people talking it doesn't feel like they are communicating anything to me (even though that is the exact purpose of words) meanwhile I can hear an instrumental classical piece of music (something experimental we'd both probably like) and it feels like it communicates something that has more dimension to it than some word based communication. Like I feel as though I was "shown" or "told" more by it than if someone just told me what they meant verbally. Even Lance Bush gets what I'm saying to some extent and you don't get more antirealist than Lance Bush haha
@@lanceindependent I'd also like to clarify I don't mean we should interpret what I'd call a deep musical insight into a language style truth, that seriously would be some new age crap and I'd be totally against that. I can't stand new age stuff. But I'd say a musical truth that seems to be communicating something deeply can stand on its own. The thing I would distrust would be stupid interpretations of these "mystical sensations" the sensations themselves absent interpretation are good enough, the interpretations seem like they pollute how cool and amazing it is that non-conceptual truth might actually be a thing. To take a non-conceptual truth and translate it into something conceptual is where all the bullshit gets started. If we just left those insights alone for what they are on their own non-conceptual terms, I think we could find something very meaningful in them absent any lame or goofy interpretations of them.
Could you be overthinking this situation?
What about good old-fashioned seeking pleasure or seeking pain minimization?
I spend a lot of my day chasing the feeling of being interested and engaged. Your ramblings we're interesting to me. They were also useful as food for thought.
I don't get much pleasure from doing philosophy either, though.
@@KaneB all you need is some pleasure. 😃
Good video Kane! Will you let us know when you finish your PhD?
All the writing is done. I'm just waiting to set up the oral defence.
@@KaneB Good luck 🍀
Being that you traced the question back to your personal motivation for giving philosophical arguments, I'd say the answer isn't universalizable (not even with respect to yourself). Personal motivations for developing an investigation or an argument can vary drastically depending on the particular case (and that is not something that is limited to philosophical argumentation). For example, suppose a scientist is engaged in producing a revolutionary theory about how cancer works. One could say, from the outside, that the reason for such scientific inquiry is to discover the truth, or to create a theoretical model that allows humanity to be saved from a very serious disease, etc (like the arguments one could make, from outside, to justify philosophy as a discipline and an specific argument as representative of the discipline). However, the motivation for the scientist himself may be that he has been traumatized after the death of a very dear family member at the hands of cancer, and that now, for that very reason, he has a personal crusade against said disease. The motivation to discover a theory in particle physics may be the search for fame within the intellectual domain. The motivation to produce a sociological argument may be to theoretically base certain social structures that are functional for the theorist, etc. It seems to me that you are asking a psychological, almost biographical question.
In the case of this video, I would think that the motivation of your argument is plain curiosity, although, as Hume said, "To explain the ultimate causes of our mental actions is impossible. ’Tis sufficient, if we can give any satisfactory account of them from experience and analogy".
Isn’t a clothing designer who doesn’t care about colour realism as long as the designing isn’t affected a pragmatist in a sense?
I suppose in a sense, but it's not as though she endorses pragmatism as a philosophical position. She'd count as a pragmatist in the same sense that any non-philosopher who just gets on with their job, without really worrying about philosophical commitments, is a pragmatist.
Metaphilosophy as a therapy
Analytic philosophy branched off from psychology actually, not the other way around
I don't know, you tell me.
We have clearly lots of free time to think about things.
The art of a philosopher is the art of deception. And the mastery here is to lie-into-being such a worldview that could not be refuted.
At 16:40 you say, "I guess we can say that her position is not adequately justified". I think that was a mistake on your part. Could you explain what would lead us to say that her position is not adequately justified?
Because she can't articulate any justification for colour realism or any response to the criticisms of colour realism.
@@KaneB @Kane B Interesting. At ~15:00, you seem to say that she, Verity, justifies her belief in color realism by appealing to the many smart people who believe color realism. You say "She isn't making any sort of rational error in continuing to believe color realism".
Do you think unjustified belief is a rational error? Or do you think Verity's belief in color realism is at least sufficiently well justified so as to avoid her belief being a rational error?
@@suzettedarrow8739 >> Do you think unjustified belief is a rational error?
No. I don't think there's anything irrational in holding beliefs without justification.
Also, to be clear, I don't have a strong view nor I particularly care whether or not we call Verity's belief justified. That's why I prefaced the statement with "I guess we can say..."
@@KaneB >> That's why I prefaced the statement with "I guess we can say..."
Given the casualness & off the cuff nature of the video, I can't in good conscience interpret those kinds of phrases too steadfastly. So I ask.
More relevantly, what to your mind would be an example of a "rational mistake" if not the holding of an unjustified belief?
Holding a belief at-odds with one's own goals seems, to me, like a practical mistake, not a rational mistake. Do you disagree about that?
@@suzettedarrow8739 >> More relevantly, what to your mind would be an example of a "rational mistake" if not the holding of an unjustified belief?
I count a set of beliefs as rational provided that (a) all the beliefs could jointly turn out to be true and (b) they support, or at least do not interfere with, successful action.
>> Holding a belief at-odds with one's own goals seems, to me, like a practical mistake, not a rational mistake. Do you disagree about that?
I don't know.
An observation: you are not bald.
My self-conviction: You should be bald
My argument: We are bald-ness incarnated. We must accept ourselves as such.
This is absurd, then I started to get away from the judgement that is most obvious.
Come to the Continental side…. We have cookies
Yes, but do you have a conceptual analysis that specifies the necessary and sufficient conditions for cookiehood?
“The philosophers have only baked cookies in various ways. The point, however, is to eat them.” - Karl “Cookie Monster” Marx
@@KaneB Cookiehood.
This is an important concept in the new and growing field of gastronomic realism. Join us gastronomic realists in addressing questions related to cookiehood, sandwichness, and quesadillism
@@lanceindependent I think the ontology about the essence of cookiehood is extremely important and we should devote academic resources to investigate the modality of cookiehood and cookieness.
I think we can do philosophy in order to try to know what is true and what is false and to shape our views on life and on the world and on ourselves, and I don't see this becoming a problem unless we aim for certainty, and I don't think certainty is necessary. How do you find that?
But ultimately, I find the "indirect" goods of philosophy just as important.
Ding Dong the beard is dead
The wicked beard is dead
That happened ages ago.
You make it seems like all of the scholars other than the philosophical ones are unable to map out details of conceptual space....that's very unconvincing.
I think that "atheist" is actually a lazy and ill defined term. I don't think that I am one.
@@thotslayer9914
I can believe in any god that can be proven by natural means. I don't think that I am agnostic. If there is THANOS standing in front of me, I will consider it powerful enough to be a god and believe that god exists.
@@thotslayer9914
I don't think there is a limitations of naturalism. Rather, it's a limitation of "transcending" if there is.
I think you have mistaken my position. I would also accept ANY transcending god if it's existing at all. The condition is simple. 1)Just tell me how it's existing and non existing can be differentiated. 2)How to differentiate a transcending being from another identical transcending being if there is.
I really don't think that I am an atheist or agnostic. I am very open minded.
@@thotslayer9914
Your question is getting irrelevant.
I believe in things that I believe. I had believed in things that I no longer believe. I am believing in things that I haven't been believing. So, I don't see why I can't believe in a transcending entity if 1)one can be differentiated from existing to non-existing 2)one can be differentiated with another identical transcending entity.
By the way, people always mistaken the limitation of science with limitations of naturalism. I always see people mixing the two. I will not be surprised if your are one of those.
@@thotslayer9914
I am not particularly interested in gods and all. I was just trying to answer your questions.
I know it's about philosophy here. That's why I was wondering in the comment section. Try to get something new.
I have deep frustrations about why philosophy is so celebrated, especially in the academic sphere, when it seems to be based on nothing (it doesn't actually *study* anything; a point which I'm elaborating on below) and to have no goal/purpose.
Most philosophical questions don't get past the standard of being well-defined to a relevant degree. (i.e. It is specified what every term (and their compositions) means to suitable precision, and it is justified that they all exist outside of their usual context (instead of, say, as merely a local or macroscopic concept that breaks down upon analysis).) In fact, a lot of philosophical questions ARE about semantics - "What is X?".
Most of those that are well-defined are subjective, dependent on the experiences and definitions of the individual or their society. (e.g. ethics)
Most of those that aren't subjective are not investigable/knowable, or otherwise don't have any practical impact no matter what the answers to them are. (e.g. metaphysics)
Most of those that are investigable already have simple answers (or not so simple answers, e.g. psychology) (or if not an answer, then at least a theoretical method for arriving at the answer) that don't require deep philosophical dives to solve.
Those that don't have answers don't have any satisfactory conclusion from philosophy either.
Furthermore, most philosophical arguments seem to have at least one logical flaw, or unjustified assumption, or just a general disconnect from reality. Frequently these are overgeneralisations/overextensions, equivocation, circular reasoning, or just straight up unjustified assertions that, if acknowledged at all, are purported to be some flavour of "self-evident". And these happen so early on in the argument that I just lose my patience - why should I continue to read pages of what this philosopher thinks and bend my mind trying to fill in the gaps for them, when I don't even know if any of what they say is substantial in the end? My teacher wouldn't give me the time of day, so why is this guy so special? All university pages on their program in philosophy that I've seen advertise critical thinking as one of the main takeaways of the program, but what I get seems to be the opposite of that.
I want to know why certain philosophers and philosophical arguments are so propped up when they fail on such basic levels. It's okay for people to fail, but it's not okay to keep asserting that they are making sense and then try to retrospectively find the sense and build on top of it. That's just literary analysis at that point.
As far as I can tell, philosophy is useful only when people are stuck and need some creativity and lateral thinking to make progress. Either that, or philosophy is just there to retrospectively justify to you that what you've been doing so far is right. (The whole "relying on intuition to make judgments" aspect.)
I've recently been entertaining the analogy that philosophy is the court jester - it's in the business of making critical and witty remarks, but it doesn't actually do anything in the end, other than perhaps indirectly influencing the monarch's decisions.
And more than just minuscule benefits, philosophy can be harmful at some points, especially if it leads people to believe that they are more justified in doing what they do than they really are, espcially if what they are doing is atrocious (by modern standards).
In watching these videos, I've found myself liking the skeptical arguments best. And the best resolution to how we know anything anyway is not out of any deep theoretical reason, but simply the empirical test - there is no reason to keep sticking to any theoretical framework other than it "tending to work (better than the alternatives)".
Why do you assume there is a point to anything you do?
Why couldn't it be that you are a disembodied experience that just popped into existence in this moment?
(thought of annoying you with skepticism a bit due to prior videos of yours)
I don't know if I assume that in this video. In the end, I'm not sure why I make philosophical arguments. Maybe I just have the brute desire to do philosophy, and there is no further reason for it. Similarly, if I'm eating some chocolate cake and I ask myself, "what's the point of eating the chocolate cake?", well, I just like eating chocolate cake. There is no further reason, at least as far as I'm aware.
However, an important disanology between eating chocolate cake and doing philosophy is that often, I don't particularly enjoy doing philosophy. It can be frustrating or boring or confusing. So it seems like I should have some further goal in mind, where making philosophical arguments is a means for achieving that goal.
@@KaneB
Well don't you assume that speaking will produce sounds for example?
And when taking a bite of chocolate cake, don't you assume that there will be the taste of a chocolaty candy?
@@justus4684 Yeah, I believe that.
@@KaneB
On what basis?
@@justus4684 Because that's what's happened every other time I've spoken, because it follows from our best theory of what sound is and how the human larynx works, and because nobody has ever presented any good reason to expect otherwise.
Fun, probably
Come and debate on politics & philosophy discord server.
Darth Dawkins vs Kane B? Kane wouldn't be allowed to talk.
I don't really do debates.
@@KaneB ok 👍
"Philosophy: the study of ideas about knowledge, truth, the nature and meaning of life, etc."
All sciences seek truth. Philosophy is the science of science, it seeks the truth about how we know things.
If you're a moral relativist - do you even believe in 'truth'? Is this the problem?
Could this be why discussion seems pointless to you, because you don't think there's any truth to be found?
I'm not a moral relativist; I'm a moral antirealist. Not all antirealists are relativists.
There are lots of propositions that I would say are true.
21:29 Shhhhh 🤫
Your philosophical training has made you very adept at making nuanced arguments, unfortunately it's the choice of topics that exposes the pointlessness of the enterprise.
Your main focus on this channel, from what I can see, is moral realism/anti realism.
The problem with that topic is it's vacuity, it's like arguing against alchemy. There were, we can imagine, alchemical realists and anti realists, eventually there became chemists and so on and so forth. Are there any attempts by you to move from that silly dichotomy to a more powerful paradigm of knowledge? Like moving from alchemy to chemistry? Unfortunately no, so the overall "point" of the philosophical exercise is diminished.
Unless the overall question on the topic of morality is "what is the nature of this topic, what can we know about it?" Then there will always be a gaping chasm of pointlessness.
A lot of my recent videos are on moral realism/antirealism, but I wouldn't say that's the "main focus" of the channel overall. There have been years where I've uploaded very little on metaethics.
>> The problem with that topic is it's vacuity, it's like arguing against alchemy. There were, we can imagine, alchemical realists and anti realists, eventually there became chemists and so on and so forth
I'm not sure how this is vacuous. It seems to me that the alchemical antirealists were straightforwardly correct, at least concerning most of the fundamental assumptions of alchemy.
>> Are there any attempts by you to move from that silly dichotomy to a more powerful paradigm of knowledge?
Actually yes, I do have videos on alternative approaches to epistemology. But I'm also interested in the standard moral realism/antirealism debate. If you're not interested in that, there's a simple solution: Don't watch my videos about it.
@@KaneB The alchemical anti realists were correct in the sense that the propositions of alchemy were false, yes but that's not the point. The alchemical anti realist did not say "the mutability of elements especially from lead to gold is false, therefore there is no reality, or anything knowable about the elements at all." Which, despite your undoubted protestations, IS your position in regards to morality.
"The claims that there are mind independent moral facts in the world is wrong, therefore there are no facts of the matter at all with regard to morality."
Unlike alchemy, the particular claims of moral realists are quite easily dismissed, but why merely stop there? All you're doing is giving the realist the argument that no other rational proposition has been put forward as explaination. Which is a similar problem you just talked about with regards to colour.
Also, putting forward alternative approaches to epistemology is not really the same. In fact, with regards to morality, normal boring ordinary scientific approaches will suffice to present a more plausible explanation than current realist proposals, in my opinion.
And finally, despite your resentment at this fact, I'm still going to watch your enlightening and entertaining videos so there.
@@RoryT1000 >> Which, despite your undoubted protestations, IS your position in regards to morality.
I deny that there are stance-independent moral facts. There are plenty of other facts regarding morality -- and some of those facts are important in defending the position that there are no stance-independent moral facts. For example, the facts about origins and variations of moral belief might be useful for undermining realist epistemologies.
>> Also, putting forward alternative approaches to epistemology is not really the same. In fact, with regards to morality, normal boring ordinary scientific approaches will suffice to present a more plausible explanation than current realist proposals, in my opinion.
You asked about attempts to provide a "more powerful paradigm of knowledge". If what you're asking for now is "normal boring ordinary scientific approaches", then yes, I have talked about that as well, for instance in the videos on moral naturalism and on evolutionary debunking arguments.
>> And finally, despite your resentment at this fact, I'm still going to watch your enlightening and entertaining videos so there.
Why would I resent it? Your views and comments directly help the channel. Based on what you've expressed about your interests, I think you're wasting your time, but that's not a problem for me.
@@KaneB "some of those facts are important in defending the position that there are no stance independent moral facts"
Please understand where I'm coming from ok, when I gave the example of the alchemical realists/anti realists before, in the context of this video where you're looking for meaning in philosophical arguments, I called it vacuous precisely for the reason you've just stated. You shouldn't just see the value in facts and arguments because you can debunk something, that's only 5% of the work. The real meaning in philosophy is leaping from that starting point to developing a rigorous account of the subject you're studying, or pointing the way forward to a rigorous account.
I feel that people don't do that, things become bogged down in silly disputations. Moral realism)anti realism arguments definitely, in my opinion, have that distinct flavour.
I try to avoid lofty language like that but hey it's philosophy after all
The point of a philosophical argument is to explore reality with the most useful tool after experience.
To look smart
@@thotslayer9914 kind of. Why?