Learning formal logic, for example, isn’t that much help in understanding what logic is.
It certainly doesn’t hurt! Learning formal logic gives you data with which to test meta-logical theories. Moreover, learning formal logic helps in understanding everything; and logic is one of the things, so, there ya go. Instantiate at will.
Likewise, knowing how people make moral decisions is not at all the same as knowing what the moral thing to do would be.
Sure. But for practical purposes (and yes, there are practical philosophical purposes), you can’t be successful in either goal without some measure of success in both.
I gather your point is that it’s only certain concrete questions that have any real meaning.
Where does lukeprog say that? And by ‘meaning’ do you mean importance, or do you mean semantic content?
But the problem with logical positivism is that its claim about what’s meaningful and what isn’t fails to be a meaningful claim under its own criteria.
Lukeprog and Eliezer are not logical positivists in the relevant sense. And although logical positivism is silly, it’s not silly for obvious reasons like ‘it’s self-refuting;’ it isn’t self-refuting. The methodology of logical positivism is asserted by positivists as an imperative, not as a truth-apt description of anything.
Dismissing those questions—failing to think through the assumptions on which your viewpoint rests—only guarantees that your answers to those questions will be pretty bad.
In some cases, yes. But why do you think lukeprog is dismissing those questions? He wrote, “I think many philosophical problems are important. But the field of philosophy doesn’t seem to be very good at answering them. What can we do? Why, come up with better philosophical methods, of course!” Lukeprog’s objection is to how people answer philosophical questions, more so than to the choice of questions themselves. (Though I’m sure there will be some disagreement on the latter point as well. Not all grammatical questions are well-formed.)
I think that logical positivism generally is self-refuting. It typically makes claims about what is meaningful that would be meaningless under its own standards. It generally also depends on an ideas about what counts as observable or analytically true that also are not defensible—again, under its own standards. It doesn’t change things to say formulate it as a methodological imperative. If the methodology of logical positivism is imperative, then on what grounds? Because other stuff seems silly?
I am obviously reading something into lukeprog’s post that may not be there. But the materials on his curriculum don’t seem very useful in answering a broad class of questions in what is normally considered philosophy. And when he’s mocking philosophy abstracts, he dismisses the value of thinking about what counts as knowledge. But if that’s not worthwhile, then, um, how does he know?
I think that logical positivism generally is self-refuting. It typically makes claims about what is meaningful that would be meaningless under its own standards.
Let’s try to unpack what ‘self-refuting’ could mean here. Do you mean that logical positivism is inconsistent? If so, how? A meaningless statement is not truth-apt, so it can’t yield a contradiction. And you haven’t suggested that positivists assert ‘Non-empirical statements are meaningless’ is both meaningful and meaningless. What, precisely, is wrong with positivists asserting ‘Non-empirical statements are meaningless,’ and asserting that the previous sentence is meaningless as well? You’re framing it as an internal problem, but the more obvious and compelling problems are all external. (I.e.: Their theory of meaning is coherent and intelligible, at the very least from an outsider’s perspective; it just isn’t remotely plausible.)
It generally also depends on an ideas about what counts as observable or analytically true that also are not defensible—again, under its own standards.
Here I agree, except ‘under its own standards’ isn’t doing any important work. Logical positivism’s views are not inconsistent; they’re just silly and unmotivated. There is no reason for us to adopt its standards in the first place.
And when he’s mocking philosophy abstracts, he dismisses the value of thinking about what counts as knowledge. But if that’s not worthwhile, then, um, how does he know?
Speaking for myself, I think it’s very important for us to unpack what we mean by epistemic justification (as opposed to moral and other forms of justification). For instance, it’s very difficult to understand ‘rationality’ without an understanding of the normative dimension of ‘knowledge.’ But the words ‘knowledge’ and ‘justification’ themselves aren’t magical. If we need to taboo them away for purposes of rigorous philosophy, then re-introduce them only for pragmatic/rhetorical purposes in persuading laypeople, that’s fine. The traditional philosophical way of framing the question, as ‘What is knowledge?‘, is unhelpful and confusing because it conflates the semantic question ‘What do we mean by the word “knowledge”?’ with the much deeper and more important questions beneath the surface.
Similarly, I think a lot of recent work in the metaphysics of causality unhelpfully conflates conceptual analysis with metaphysical hypothesizing; both are important topics (and important work may be done on either topic under lukeprog’s rubric), but if we confuse the two we lose most of the topics’ significance in a haze of equivocation.
I think that logical positivism generally is self-refuting. It typically makes claims about what is meaningful that would not satisfy that would be meaningless under its own standards. It generally also depends on an ideas about what counts as observable or analytically true that also are not defensible—again, under its own standards. It doesn’t change things to say formulate it as a methodological imperative. If the methodology of logical positivism is imperative, then on what grounds? Because other stuff seems silly?
I am obviously reading something into lukeprog’s post that may not be there. But the materials on his curriculum don’t seem very useful in answering a broad class of questions in what is normally considered philosophy. And when he’s mocking philosophy abstracts, he dismisses the value of thinking about what counts as knowledge. But if that’s not worthwhile, then, um, how does he know?
It certainly doesn’t hurt! Learning formal logic gives you data with which to test meta-logical theories. Moreover, learning formal logic helps in understanding everything; and logic is one of the things, so, there ya go. Instantiate at will.
Sure. But for practical purposes (and yes, there are practical philosophical purposes), you can’t be successful in either goal without some measure of success in both.
Where does lukeprog say that? And by ‘meaning’ do you mean importance, or do you mean semantic content?
Lukeprog and Eliezer are not logical positivists in the relevant sense. And although logical positivism is silly, it’s not silly for obvious reasons like ‘it’s self-refuting;’ it isn’t self-refuting. The methodology of logical positivism is asserted by positivists as an imperative, not as a truth-apt description of anything.
In some cases, yes. But why do you think lukeprog is dismissing those questions? He wrote, “I think many philosophical problems are important. But the field of philosophy doesn’t seem to be very good at answering them. What can we do? Why, come up with better philosophical methods, of course!” Lukeprog’s objection is to how people answer philosophical questions, more so than to the choice of questions themselves. (Though I’m sure there will be some disagreement on the latter point as well. Not all grammatical questions are well-formed.)
I think that logical positivism generally is self-refuting. It typically makes claims about what is meaningful that would be meaningless under its own standards. It generally also depends on an ideas about what counts as observable or analytically true that also are not defensible—again, under its own standards. It doesn’t change things to say formulate it as a methodological imperative. If the methodology of logical positivism is imperative, then on what grounds? Because other stuff seems silly?
I am obviously reading something into lukeprog’s post that may not be there. But the materials on his curriculum don’t seem very useful in answering a broad class of questions in what is normally considered philosophy. And when he’s mocking philosophy abstracts, he dismisses the value of thinking about what counts as knowledge. But if that’s not worthwhile, then, um, how does he know?
Let’s try to unpack what ‘self-refuting’ could mean here. Do you mean that logical positivism is inconsistent? If so, how? A meaningless statement is not truth-apt, so it can’t yield a contradiction. And you haven’t suggested that positivists assert ‘Non-empirical statements are meaningless’ is both meaningful and meaningless. What, precisely, is wrong with positivists asserting ‘Non-empirical statements are meaningless,’ and asserting that the previous sentence is meaningless as well? You’re framing it as an internal problem, but the more obvious and compelling problems are all external. (I.e.: Their theory of meaning is coherent and intelligible, at the very least from an outsider’s perspective; it just isn’t remotely plausible.)
Here I agree, except ‘under its own standards’ isn’t doing any important work. Logical positivism’s views are not inconsistent; they’re just silly and unmotivated. There is no reason for us to adopt its standards in the first place.
Speaking for myself, I think it’s very important for us to unpack what we mean by epistemic justification (as opposed to moral and other forms of justification). For instance, it’s very difficult to understand ‘rationality’ without an understanding of the normative dimension of ‘knowledge.’ But the words ‘knowledge’ and ‘justification’ themselves aren’t magical. If we need to taboo them away for purposes of rigorous philosophy, then re-introduce them only for pragmatic/rhetorical purposes in persuading laypeople, that’s fine. The traditional philosophical way of framing the question, as ‘What is knowledge?‘, is unhelpful and confusing because it conflates the semantic question ‘What do we mean by the word “knowledge”?’ with the much deeper and more important questions beneath the surface.
Similarly, I think a lot of recent work in the metaphysics of causality unhelpfully conflates conceptual analysis with metaphysical hypothesizing; both are important topics (and important work may be done on either topic under lukeprog’s rubric), but if we confuse the two we lose most of the topics’ significance in a haze of equivocation.
I think that logical positivism generally is self-refuting. It typically makes claims about what is meaningful that would not satisfy that would be meaningless under its own standards. It generally also depends on an ideas about what counts as observable or analytically true that also are not defensible—again, under its own standards. It doesn’t change things to say formulate it as a methodological imperative. If the methodology of logical positivism is imperative, then on what grounds? Because other stuff seems silly?
I am obviously reading something into lukeprog’s post that may not be there. But the materials on his curriculum don’t seem very useful in answering a broad class of questions in what is normally considered philosophy. And when he’s mocking philosophy abstracts, he dismisses the value of thinking about what counts as knowledge. But if that’s not worthwhile, then, um, how does he know?