It doesn’t just appear to be nonsense. It actually is nonsense.
And that is the crux of the problem right there. The intellectual standards of academic philosophy are incredibly low, and as usual the Law of the Minimum applies. It takes real effort to exceed Sturgeon’s Law, but the field of philosophy has managed to do so.
Actual philosophical thought, as opposed to mere sophistry with a new hat, comes from people working in disciplines that have high standards for consistency, coherence, and permittable evidence. Their professional work has illuminated questions that ‘philosophy’ left in darkness for a thousand years—and because they possess skill at thinking, and have developed that skill through meeting those standards, their amateur philosophy is still infinitely better than the ‘professionals’.
In this manner, philosophers have demonstrated the dangers of being self-righteous, of setting for yourself the standards that you strive to meet. They have done this by becoming an object lesson.
It doesn’t just appear to be nonsense. It actually is nonsense.
And that is the crux of the problem right there. The intellectual standards of academic philosophy are incredibly low, and as usual the Law of the Minimum applies. It takes real effort to exceed Sturgeon’s Law, but the field of philosophy has managed to do so.
Actual philosophical thought, as opposed to mere sophistry with a new hat, comes from people working in disciplines that have high standards for consistency, coherence, and permittable evidence. Their professional work has illuminated questions that ‘philosophy’ left in darkness for a thousand years—and because they possess skill at thinking, and have developed that skill through meeting those standards, their amateur philosophy is still infinitely better than the ‘professionals’.
In this manner, philosophers have demonstrated the dangers of being self-righteous, of setting for yourself the standards that you strive to meet. They have done this by becoming an object lesson.