Moaning about Metaphysics
On the Deprogramming of a Promising Young Philosopher
I got triggered and said this
Solid Rebuttal, however, this did not stop the young Oxford Philosopher.
Solid attempt to get at the world, the problem itself, young man!
So then, because of my aversion to Analytic Philosophy, rather than providing a substantive response, and because of my proclivity for “Slam Poetry” that Amos is familiar with, I drew a picture…
I eagerly await Amos’s witty, satirical response to a PICTURE.
I’d love to see a video of our pre-literate ancestors watching sand grains pile up. They’d be so spooked. Thank god they evolved language so we can give voice to this sense of bafflement.
“Solid attempt to get at the world, the problem itself, young man!”
Today I turned 21 and became a young man. For my birthday I want you to agree that there are seemingly incongruous facts about the world that words are about, but to which words are not identical.
You linked an article where you said “nah chief” to yourself for saying “OK, so we both agree that some linguistic evidence E exists, and we’re trying to provide some account of E.”
Of course, I disagree that the problem of material constitution is a problem of explaining linguistic data in the way that, say, the dispute between people who think >50% of moral utterances are truth-evaluable and people who deny or doubt this is. I think the problem is a problem about apparently incongruous facts about the world, which could be expressed in English or Yiddish or Swedish.
From the image you made me (thank you) it seems like you’re anticipating the objection that your attempt to render the problem of material constitution a pseudo-problem (‘you can’t have a problem if you don’t have words!’) seems sufficient to render many scientific problems — where there are seemingly incongruous empirical facts — pseudo-problems, even though the scientific community regards them as problems in good standing.
Judging from the graphic, your response to this is that scientific problems have solutions whereas philosophical problems don’t have solutions, as evidenced by the fact that people like Philip Goff who are working on the hard problem of consciousness have reached a stalemate. But even if the hard problem of consciousness were a pseudo-problem, that wouldn’t lend much credence to the claim that the problem of material constitution is a pseudo-problem, since they are different issues. I’m sure you agree that some ‘problems’ are problems and others are pseudo-problems; one ‘problem’ being a pseudo-problem doesn’t give you good evidence that an unrelated ‘problem’ is a pseudo-problem.
Of course, your claim will be that most if not all ‘problems’ in analytic philosophy are pseudo-problems. This might be so, but it looks like the only reason you’ve given me for thinking that the problem of material constitution is a psuedo-problem is appealing to a broader principle that philosophical problems are psuedo-problems. But I already knew that that was what you believed.
I am quite prone to suggestion, so incanting “Philosophy is fake! Philosophy is fake!” over and over will make me slightly more likely to agree with you. But I don’t think it would ultimately work and if it did it would be for the wrong reasons.