You may be forgetting Canada, Australia and New Zealand. When a philosophical field is preeminent in the English speaking part of the developed world; and of significant (but secondary) importance in non-English speaking European countries; it’s a pretty good bet that it’s the largest school of Western philosophy (population of CANZUK+US > population of Western Europe—UK; and I would guess the distribution of funding/size of philosophical faculties would only amplify this trend).
It strikes me as odd to say that Continental ideas couldn’t usefully be “formalised” in any way. When Continental philosophers write books or give lectures, are they not tacitly “formalising” their ideas: setting out what they are, how they relate to other ideas, and so on? If they can do this in their own work, shouldn’t other people come along and present those ideas and their relations in a different, clearer and more useful fashion? Indeed, isn’t that what teachers of Continental philosophy have been doing for the past hundred years or so? Perhaps Continental philosophy aims to be genuinely impenetrable: but that seems a little uncharitable.
I agree with you that, as described, phenomena themselves may not fit into a Web structure, given they may have no relations to other phenomena. However, as your post demonstrates, Husserl also developed theories about phenomena, what they were, what they were relevant to (our process of doing philosophy, our understanding of the world, etc.). That theory is one that presumably supports, contributes to, or opposes other philosophers’ understandings of how philosophy should be conducted/how we understand the world—and thus exhibits all the characteristics needed to integrate it into a web of theories and their relationships (N.B. that the Web wouldn’t be limited to purely logical relations).
I’ll definitely concede that Philosophy Web makes use of “standard” Western notions of truth value at a meta level; although it could integrate theories about the nature of truth etc. into an object level analysis.
On 2, when I say formalizable, I mean in terms of giving the original arguments a symbolic formal treatment, that is, converting them into formal logical statements. Much of non-analytic philosophy has to do with criticizing this kind of procedure. For an example among many, check this recent one from a Neo-Thomistic perspective (I refer to this one because it’s fresh on my mind, I read it a few days ago).
On 4, maybe a practical alternative would be to substitute vaguer but broader relations, such as “agrees”, “partially agrees”, “disagrees”, “purports to encompass”, “purports to replace”, “opposes”, “strawmans” etc., to the more restricted notions of truth values. This would allow for a mindmap-style set of multidirectional relations and clusterings.
You may be forgetting Canada, Australia and New Zealand. When a philosophical field is preeminent in the English speaking part of the developed world; and of significant (but secondary) importance in non-English speaking European countries; it’s a pretty good bet that it’s the largest school of Western philosophy (population of CANZUK+US > population of Western Europe—UK; and I would guess the distribution of funding/size of philosophical faculties would only amplify this trend).
It strikes me as odd to say that Continental ideas couldn’t usefully be “formalised” in any way. When Continental philosophers write books or give lectures, are they not tacitly “formalising” their ideas: setting out what they are, how they relate to other ideas, and so on? If they can do this in their own work, shouldn’t other people come along and present those ideas and their relations in a different, clearer and more useful fashion? Indeed, isn’t that what teachers of Continental philosophy have been doing for the past hundred years or so? Perhaps Continental philosophy aims to be genuinely impenetrable: but that seems a little uncharitable.
I agree with you that, as described, phenomena themselves may not fit into a Web structure, given they may have no relations to other phenomena. However, as your post demonstrates, Husserl also developed theories about phenomena, what they were, what they were relevant to (our process of doing philosophy, our understanding of the world, etc.). That theory is one that presumably supports, contributes to, or opposes other philosophers’ understandings of how philosophy should be conducted/how we understand the world—and thus exhibits all the characteristics needed to integrate it into a web of theories and their relationships (N.B. that the Web wouldn’t be limited to purely logical relations).
I’ll definitely concede that Philosophy Web makes use of “standard” Western notions of truth value at a meta level; although it could integrate theories about the nature of truth etc. into an object level analysis.
Regarding 1 and 3, good points, and I agree.
On 2, when I say formalizable, I mean in terms of giving the original arguments a symbolic formal treatment, that is, converting them into formal logical statements. Much of non-analytic philosophy has to do with criticizing this kind of procedure. For an example among many, check this recent one from a Neo-Thomistic perspective (I refer to this one because it’s fresh on my mind, I read it a few days ago).
On 4, maybe a practical alternative would be to substitute vaguer but broader relations, such as “agrees”, “partially agrees”, “disagrees”, “purports to encompass”, “purports to replace”, “opposes”, “strawmans” etc., to the more restricted notions of truth values. This would allow for a mindmap-style set of multidirectional relations and clusterings.