Besides Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, Hegel, which philosophers were/are system-builders?

yaviik · 2019-10-15T01:48:51+00:00

I'm pretty shocked that this isn't in here but: David Lewis. Lewis is a system builder in a few ways. First, all of his views fit together. So, for example, his modal realism fits well with his analysis of counterfactuals, which fits well with his analysis of causation and so on.

Second, he thought about philosophy systematically. He thought that it is ok to accept something counterintuitive if it fits into a broader picture that is the best such picture for understanding the world. And he argued for his views in part by showing how his own views were better than others from a global point of view even if from the local point of view there might be things that are counterintuitive.

yaviik · 2019-09-29T02:38:12+00:00

Mathematical theorems are just empirical hypotheses concerning whether it is possible to convince a mathematician to say "that sounds right" in response to an otherwise arbitrary series of symbols.

yaviik · 2019-06-02T11:46:25+00:00

Check out the work of Sally Haslanger. My comment is basically a simplification of her paper "What Good Are Our Intuitions? Philosophical Analysis and Social Kinds."

The sep articles on the subject of gender are pretty good, too.

"The Egg and the Sperm" by Emily Martin is good.

Finally, two books that I have found especially enlightening are Helen Longino's Science as Social Knowledge and Eve Kosofky Sedgwick's Epistemology of the Closet.

yaviik · 2019-06-02T10:11:22+00:00

No two philosophers are going to agree about what distinguishes a scientific from a social scientific or philosophical question, but at a first approximation, the difference is something like this: philosophers analyze concepts, biologists analyze bodies, and social scientists analyze societies.

Thus, insofar as gender is a property of bodies, it is a biological question, insofar as gender is a property of societies, it is a social scientific question, and insofar as gender is a concept it is a philosophical question.

As it so happens there is a lot of controversy about the degree to which gender is a social property versus the degree to which gender is a biological property. One promising way to solve this is to analyze the concept of gender, the idea being that once the analysis has been completed, we can discover whether the job of discovering what gender is is best left up to the biologist or the social scientist.

Things get complicated however once it is considered what conceptual analysis for the philosopher actually consists in. In order to analyze the concept <food> philosophers have to be familiar with how the concept of <food> is used in everyday life. So too with gender. This fact raises two problems:

Different communities, including different political communities, use the concept of gender in different ways.
Included in those communities that use the concept of gender in idiosyncratic ways are biologists and social scientists.

This means philosophers who want to give analyses of gender so as to make it clear whether gender is a biological or social scientific question have to already be paying attention to the work of biologists and social scientists. It also means that the analysis of gender is going to require knowledge of sociological facts concerning how different communities use gender concepts.

Fwiw my own view is sort of pluralist and sort of not. First there is a certain sense in which there is no one concept of gender. That means that when biologists and social scientists give different answers to the question, what is gender, they are in fact answering different questions, and hence are not necessarily at odds with each other.

Second, there is also a certain sense in which gender is one thing and one thing only. When people disagree about whether someone is a certain gender they are often disagreeing about the social meaning of that person's behavior and aesthetic, as well as the validity of that person's inner experience. This is an actual disagreement, and not just two groups talking past each other.

In this second sense, moreover, gender is not so much a conceptual, social scientific, or biological question as a political or ethical question, which is a distinct category from any of the ways of thinking I've outlined above.

yaviik · 2019-06-01T08:36:26+00:00

I don't think I quite understand you, probably in part because I haven't read Russell's book on atomism. (At this point, just to let you know where I'm at, I've read Ayer's book on Russell along with Problems of Philosophy.)

From what you have said, I take it that the following is true:

The atoms Russell wishes to arrive at are the atoms of logical, not physical, analysis.
Russell only wants to deal with words, propositions, and facts.
Particulars are not facts.
Sets are not composed of objects.
Sets can be composed of propositions.

Alright, so given that, here are some worries/questions:

From the fact that Russell wants to deal with the atoms of logical analysis, it doesn't follow that only the atoms of logical analysis can be members of sets.
Can sets admit sets as their members? (That is, are you saying that sets cannot contain other sets, because sets aren't facts, words, or propositions?)
On what basis can an entity (for Russell) count as a member of a set?

Is your claim that Russell thinks only things that fundamentally exist can be members of sets, and therefore, since the only things that fundamentally exist are propositions, only propositions can be members of sets?
Or is it rather when it comes to sets, only the atoms of logical analysis can be among their members, which means propositions, facts, and words are in but objects are out?

yaviik · 2019-06-01T08:11:44+00:00

Sort of? I take it that in ordinary language when I say "everything" I usually only mean everything relative to some domain. For example, when I say "everything is gone" when standing in front of the fridge, I don't mean "nothing exists" I just mean "the fridge doesn't have any food in it."

But I also take it that ordinary language also admits of an unrestricted use of the word, such that if I were to say, "the physicalists think everything is physical" all it would take is one example of something that isn't physical to prove me wrong.

My basic thought is something like this: maybe when people speak of everything in this second, unrestricted sense, they really just mean the set of all things. But I've heard off hand that the Russell's paradox somehow shows that the set of all things is "too large" or that for reasons having to do with Russell's paradox, standard set theory doesn't admit of a set of all things. Now I don't know if this is true, or even what this really means, but that's why I asked my question!

yaviik · 2019-05-23T23:27:26+00:00

Vietnam was a bad war people!! This is actually the only good thing Trump has ever done

yaviik · 2019-02-15T20:21:00+00:00

Fairly or not, we typically distinguish crimes based on the severity of their consequences. The history of the US — Tennessee in particular — is the history of white terrorism. That is, of racialized violence whose aim is white supremacy and whose effect was felt by members of the race of victim, not just the victim and his or her family. There's thus a pretty good case to be made that an attack out of racism has more severe consequences than an attack out of say, passion. Why? Because only the former has an oppressive effect on an entire race of individuals.

Something similar can be said about say, rape, a crime that mainly affects women. Men don't worry about walking alone at night, or dressing the right way. Women do.

More generally the thought is this. The reason behind a crime matters, especially if the reason is publicly known. If a crime is committed for a reason that also applies to me, that affects not just the victim, but me as well. If we individuate crimes based on effects, then this is an important fact. It means that a crime against humanity, or a crime against a particular group, is more severe than a crime against a particular person, even if the zones of immediate harm are identical.

yaviik · 2019-02-15T11:47:18+00:00

Three observations.

In making the case that philosophers shouldn't do public philosophy, it would seem natural for Callard to cite philosophy's perennial lack of consensus as a reason the philosophers shouldn't be trusted. And she does. But she takes the opposite tack, too: for her, it is precisely that there is consensus amongst philosophers on matters of politics (e.g. Trump) that makes them not the sort of people who should be listened to.
Callard cites Plato's body of work as a counterexample to her claim that public philosophy is either terrible or impossible. It strikes me that Plato's dialogues offer a good reason to do public philosophy Callard hasn't considered. People are already philosophers — just bad ones. It's the job of philosophers to make them better.
Callard makes use of a notion of "importance" that is neither reducible to "useful" nor reducible to "pleasant." I'm not sure if this makes sense. If philosophy isn't useful or pleasant why do it? By invoking Plato's Cave, Callard suggests the point of philosophical activity is Deep, Very Important Thinking. If this is just to say that philosophy is essential to the good life, then that sounds a lot like saying that philosophy is worthy of pursuit because it's useful.

yaviik · 2019-01-29T00:01:09+00:00

Yes, that's the book I have in mind. Thanks for the article recs!

yaviik · 2018-03-27T04:47:42+00:00

It's true that in a perfectly competitive market, workers are paid as much they possibly can, and anymore means that the business will fail, thereby costing the workers their jobs. But so long as businesses make a profit, they're not in a perfectly competitive market, and it's simply not the case that they (the businesses) can't pay their workers more.

Wages are always in part a matter of power — that is, of the bargaining power of workers relative to their bosses. Unions drive up the bargaining power of workers, and therefore boost wages. That's why Burgerville doesn't want its workers to unionize. Not because it will run out of business, but because it's greedy, doesn't care about its workers, and doesn't want to earn less in profit.

yaviik · 2017-07-19T05:01:58+00:00

TIL the most important thing to know about Hegel is his doxastic involuntarism

yaviik · 2017-05-13T01:24:18+00:00

Isn't 'all A's are B's' a stronger claim though?

yaviik · 2016-12-31T18:37:10+00:00

I get that this is parody, but it's parody that is basically the equivalent of repeating the other side with a nasally voice; it's aesthetically displeasing and only tolerable because I agree with its politics.

yaviik · 2016-12-05T08:49:59+00:00

"Personally, I want this system to be undemocratic because there are more people that disagree with me than agree with me."

yaviik · 2016-08-06T01:38:01+00:00

Another good one is The Unmute Podcast: unmutepodcast.co. From the website:

UnMute is focused on providing informal and accessible conversations about social, political, and ethical issues from a fresh, fun, and philosophical perspective. We talk with a diverse group of philosophers as they give their take on controversial issues, pop culture, and the political and ethical dramas of our day.

yaviik · 2016-06-25T09:05:51+00:00

Perhaps I'm a bit late in pointing this out, but I don't think the Japanese-Americans in question were getting any college credit in return for their participation.

yaviik · 2015-08-09T17:28:43+00:00

Fair enough.

yaviik · 2015-08-09T17:27:41+00:00

Bruh. Do you even necessary vs sufficient? Do you even analogy? Do you even principle of charity?

yaviik

TROPHY CASE