I strongly disagree. Almost every question in philosophy that I’ve ever studied has some camp of philosophers who reject the question as ill-posed, or want to dissolve it, or some such. Wittgensteinians sometimes take that attitude towards every question. Such philosophers often not discussed as much as those who propose “big answers” but there’s no question that they exist and that any philosopher working in the field is well aware of them.
Also, there’s a selection effect: people who think question X isn’t a proper question tend not to spend their careers publishing on question X!
Sure, there are absolutely philosophers who aren’t talking about absolute nonsense. But as an industry, philosophy has a miserably bad signal-noise ratio.
I’d mostly agree, but the particular criticism that you levelled isn’t very well-founded. Questioning the way we use language and the way that philosophical questions are put is not the unheard of idea that you portray it as. In fact, it’s pretty standard. It’s just not necessarily the stuff that people choose to put into most “Intro to the Philosophy of X” textbooks, since there’s usually more discussion to be had if the question is well-posed!
I strongly disagree. Almost every question in philosophy that I’ve ever studied has some camp of philosophers who reject the question as ill-posed, or want to dissolve it, or some such. Wittgensteinians sometimes take that attitude towards every question. Such philosophers often not discussed as much as those who propose “big answers” but there’s no question that they exist and that any philosopher working in the field is well aware of them.
Also, there’s a selection effect: people who think question X isn’t a proper question tend not to spend their careers publishing on question X!
I agree, but the problems remain and the arguments flourish.
Sure, there are absolutely philosophers who aren’t talking about absolute nonsense. But as an industry, philosophy has a miserably bad signal-noise ratio.
I’d mostly agree, but the particular criticism that you levelled isn’t very well-founded. Questioning the way we use language and the way that philosophical questions are put is not the unheard of idea that you portray it as. In fact, it’s pretty standard. It’s just not necessarily the stuff that people choose to put into most “Intro to the Philosophy of X” textbooks, since there’s usually more discussion to be had if the question is well-posed!