There’s a soft patch around 5 and 6. Why is testability important? It’s a charactersitic of science, but science assumes an external world. It’s not a characteristic of philosophy—good explanation is enough in philosophy, and the general posit of some sort of external world does explanatory work. And it’s separate from the specific posit that the external world is knowable in some particular way.
It’s a characteristic of philosophy, too, at least according to the positivists. If you’re humoring a metaphysical theory that could not even in theory be confirmed or falsified by some possible observation, they suggest that you’re really engaging in mythmaking or poetry or something, not philosophy.
Positivism isn’t necessarily true, and if it is, it still doesn’t get you to 6, because LP recommends you have no metaphysics which would imply no solipsistic metaphysics. (LP might be compatible with the claim that your own sense-data are all you can know , but that isn’t quite the same thing).
A lot of philosophy is like that. Or perhaps it is better compared to music. Music sounds meaningful, but no-one has explained what it means. Even so, much philosophy sounds meaningful, consisting of grammatical sentences with a sense of coherence, but actually meaning nothing. This is why there is no progress in philosophy, any more than there is in music. New forms can be invented and other forms can go out of fashion, but the only development is the ever-greater sprawl of the forest.
There’s a soft patch around 5 and 6. Why is testability important? It’s a charactersitic of science, but science assumes an external world. It’s not a characteristic of philosophy—good explanation is enough in philosophy, and the general posit of some sort of external world does explanatory work. And it’s separate from the specific posit that the external world is knowable in some particular way.
It’s a characteristic of philosophy, too, at least according to the positivists. If you’re humoring a metaphysical theory that could not even in theory be confirmed or falsified by some possible observation, they suggest that you’re really engaging in mythmaking or poetry or something, not philosophy.
Positivism isn’t necessarily true, and if it is, it still doesn’t get you to 6, because LP recommends you have no metaphysics which would imply no solipsistic metaphysics. (LP might be compatible with the claim that your own sense-data are all you can know , but that isn’t quite the same thing).
A lot of philosophy is like that. Or perhaps it is better compared to music. Music sounds meaningful, but no-one has explained what it means. Even so, much philosophy sounds meaningful, consisting of grammatical sentences with a sense of coherence, but actually meaning nothing. This is why there is no progress in philosophy, any more than there is in music. New forms can be invented and other forms can go out of fashion, but the only development is the ever-greater sprawl of the forest.