Instead of saying that the subject is conceptually confused, you phrase the question in terms of discrepencies between their “intuitive algorithm” and some formally proposed algorithm. But is this actually different from resolving discrepencies between a proposed definition of a term and the subject’s intuitive understanding of it?
Begging your pardon if this sounds excessively deflationary, but it seems to me that you’re basically just saying that philosophy is the practice of clearing up conceptual confusion. I think that’s a description most people would agree with anyway.
Parenthetically, I am somewhat suspicious of the notion that philosophy’s imponderables are subject to dissolution by empirically grounding such questions. It seems to assume a kind of “philosophical completeness” to the human mind whereby any meaningful question that can be formulated by it is also in principle resolvable by it.
I think there are subtle differences between definitions / conceptual confusion and algorithms, although they are really close to each other. But when I flunked my first calculus test, I realized that having memorized the Newton-Leibniz definition did not give me the practical, algorithmical skill to solve 10 equations in the allocated time for the test, I should actually practice the algorithm. Definitions people can argue forever, but algorithms work or don’t.
Nevertheless clearing up conceptual confusion is close enough—although I haven not seen everybody thinking about philosophy that way. Rather it is so that they ask “what is concept x?” and by that “is” they tend to reify the concept, as if it had an individual existence.
The point is to propose an algorithm that by matching the intuitive, unconscious algorithm, makes it conscious. There is an element of self-consciousness there that goes beyond clearing up concepts. It is more like “I am now really aware what I am actually doing when I do X!”
Definitions people can argue forever, but algorithms work or don’t.
Well, sometimes we can’t tell by any finitary means that they work since there are algorithms that cannot be proved either to terminate or not. Perhaps the practice of philosophy is just such an algorithm?
Instead of saying that the subject is conceptually confused, you phrase the question in terms of discrepencies between their “intuitive algorithm” and some formally proposed algorithm. But is this actually different from resolving discrepencies between a proposed definition of a term and the subject’s intuitive understanding of it?
Begging your pardon if this sounds excessively deflationary, but it seems to me that you’re basically just saying that philosophy is the practice of clearing up conceptual confusion. I think that’s a description most people would agree with anyway.
Parenthetically, I am somewhat suspicious of the notion that philosophy’s imponderables are subject to dissolution by empirically grounding such questions. It seems to assume a kind of “philosophical completeness” to the human mind whereby any meaningful question that can be formulated by it is also in principle resolvable by it.
I think there are subtle differences between definitions / conceptual confusion and algorithms, although they are really close to each other. But when I flunked my first calculus test, I realized that having memorized the Newton-Leibniz definition did not give me the practical, algorithmical skill to solve 10 equations in the allocated time for the test, I should actually practice the algorithm. Definitions people can argue forever, but algorithms work or don’t.
Nevertheless clearing up conceptual confusion is close enough—although I haven not seen everybody thinking about philosophy that way. Rather it is so that they ask “what is concept x?” and by that “is” they tend to reify the concept, as if it had an individual existence.
The point is to propose an algorithm that by matching the intuitive, unconscious algorithm, makes it conscious. There is an element of self-consciousness there that goes beyond clearing up concepts. It is more like “I am now really aware what I am actually doing when I do X!”
Well, sometimes we can’t tell by any finitary means that they work since there are algorithms that cannot be proved either to terminate or not. Perhaps the practice of philosophy is just such an algorithm?