To be honest, I am pretty confused by your argument and I tried to express one of those confusions with my reply. I think you probably also got what I wanted to express but chose to ignore the content in favor of patronizing me. As I don’t want to continue to go down this road, here is a more elaborate comment that explains where I am coming from:
First, you again make a sweeping claim that you do not really justify: “Many (perhaps most) famous “highly recognized” philosophical arguments are nonsensical”. What is your ground for this claim? Do you mean that it is self-evident that much (perhaps most) of philosophy is bullshit? Or do you have a more nuanced understanding of nonsensical? Are you referring to Wittgenstein here?
Then you position this unjustified claim as a general prior to justify that your own position in a particular situation is much more likely to be valid than the alternative. Doesn’t that seem a little bit like cherry picking to you?
My critique of the post and your comments boils down to the fact that both are very quick to dismiss other positions as nonsensical and by doing so claim their own perspective/position to be superior. This is problematic because although certain positions may seem nonsensical to you, they may make perfect sense from another angle. While this problem cannot be solved in principle, in practice it calls for investing at least some effort and resources into recognizing potentially interesting/valid perspectives and, in particular, staying open minded to the recognition that one may not have consider all relevant aspects and to reorient accordingly. I will list a couple of resources that you can check out if you are interested in a more elaborate argument on this matter.
* Stegmaier, W. (2019). What Is Orientation? A Philosophical Investigation. De Gruyter. * Ulrich, W. (2000). Reflective Practice in the Civil Society: The contribution of critically systemic thinking. Reflective Practice, 1(2), 247–268. https://doi.org/10.1080/713693151 * Ulrich, W., & Reynolds, M. (2010). Critical Systems Heuristics. In M. Reynolds & S. Holwell (Eds.), Systems Approaches to Managing Change: A Practical Guide (pp. 243–292). Springer London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84882-809-4_6
To be honest, I am pretty confused by your argument and I tried to express one of those confusions with my reply. I think you probably also got what I wanted to express but chose to ignore the content in favor of patronizing me. As I don’t want to continue to go down this road, here is a more elaborate comment that explains where I am coming from:
First, you again make a sweeping claim that you do not really justify: “Many (perhaps most) famous “highly recognized” philosophical arguments are nonsensical”. What is your ground for this claim? Do you mean that it is self-evident that much (perhaps most) of philosophy is bullshit? Or do you have a more nuanced understanding of nonsensical? Are you referring to Wittgenstein here?
Then you position this unjustified claim as a general prior to justify that your own position in a particular situation is much more likely to be valid than the alternative. Doesn’t that seem a little bit like cherry picking to you?
My critique of the post and your comments boils down to the fact that both are very quick to dismiss other positions as nonsensical and by doing so claim their own perspective/position to be superior. This is problematic because although certain positions may seem nonsensical to you, they may make perfect sense from another angle. While this problem cannot be solved in principle, in practice it calls for investing at least some effort and resources into recognizing potentially interesting/valid perspectives and, in particular, staying open minded to the recognition that one may not have consider all relevant aspects and to reorient accordingly. I will list a couple of resources that you can check out if you are interested in a more elaborate argument on this matter.
* Stegmaier, W. (2019). What Is Orientation? A Philosophical Investigation. De Gruyter.
* Ulrich, W. (2000). Reflective Practice in the Civil Society: The contribution of critically systemic thinking. Reflective Practice, 1(2), 247–268. https://doi.org/10.1080/713693151
* Ulrich, W., & Reynolds, M. (2010). Critical Systems Heuristics. In M. Reynolds & S. Holwell (Eds.), Systems Approaches to Managing Change: A Practical Guide (pp. 243–292). Springer London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84882-809-4_6