Tag: analytical philosophy

59

Maybe it is very significant that analytic philosophy has a traditional consensus that words have meaning, not things.

An analytic philosopher is so used to the praxis of this consensus that this may sound like a bizarre attack on a notion that is trivially correct. But isn’t this actually a pre-supposition that’s both obviously contingent/questionable & vastly impactful/consequential? (& indeed ideological, begging much explanation?)

  • furthermore, words are taken as having (primarily or only) extensional meaning, which can be regarded as disconnecting/removing meaning from individual minds/persons…

so: Therefore, naturally focusing on that which seems most meaningful – and specifically words being that -, the focus of the analytic methodology and tradition in general is on words! – And this focus and prioritisation in turn(, especially considered beyond the limited aspects/interests of philosophical enquiry,) gives words[, in principal and in general,] authority and power.

or, more simply: The rational mind sees words as the locus of meaning, therefore focuses on words, thereby endowing them with power… Rational traditions supports the power of the words, and more specifically commands and law-utterances, of authorities. I.e. such traditions support [power-]hierarchy.

  • So, this seems to fit perfectly with the law & order of [the lord] god & [church] hierarchy – & theology?

– Both the things [esp. nature] & the common/lay people have no [inherent] meaning – & should thus submit under the law/order of the word, the word that is authority and power due to carrying/holding meaning, indeed the totalised, objective meaning of the god-perspective – whether explicitly or implicitly – whether administered by a monk or a philosopher…

p.s. just as a reminder for contrast: The alternative is to consider it generally reasonable and possible that things have meaning – natural entities, phenomena, people, etc. – whilst words are just compromising, abstracting tools of communication between minds and meanings. (And of course, why not also that things are meaning? – An absurd notion in our reality, but really not absurd at all.)

entry 31

Philosophical training as the taming/tempering of the feeling of being convinced* by an argument:

Through a long process of repeatedly studying arguments, feeling convinced by them and then each time realising that there is an equally convincing (and rational) counter-argument, the threshold for being convinced gradually rises and one feels less and less convinced by rational arguments. At the end, only a perfect argument [, which has the character of direct, visual understanding,] elicits the feeling of being convinced.

That is maybe the central training/disciplining of rational thinking, and the central learning technique of philosophical training. It disciplines rationality in that it teaches one the limitations and pitfalls of rationality – of analysis by [logical] argumentation – it balances the radical ambitions of abstract analysis, instilling humility into the thinker who wants to attempt abstraction of the world – especially by means of argumentative analysis of ideas.

This practice leads to a gradual increase of the degree to which one is intuitively careful, skeptical and critical toward the tools of logical/abstract/rational analysis/argumentation themselves – a kind of meta-criticism or meta-criticalness. And, importantly, this resulting reflective skeptical stance toward rationalistic, abstract criticism somewhat ironically has the effect of gradually opening the mind, as it makes one slower to dismiss an idea that one has counter-arguments to! This is maybe the dialectic extreme/final limit/end of rationality.

– [Paranoid/simplistic] conspiracy theorists lack this training & ability, whilst also being very open-minded [by natural pre-disposition], and thus their open minds are too easily and quickly filled/satisfied by [non-perfect] argumentation (maybe argumentation that is critical of some mainstream position and that suggests some non-mainstream idea) – their minds are quickly, suddenly filled by a huge, un-tempered feeling of convincedness – a feeling they aren’t trained to handle and have no reason to question.


*re. ‘the feeling of being convinced’: To me this is one of the most useful concepts and most important phenomenal/experiential elements of the practice of philosophy. In more detail, what I mean by this: I mean a feeling in the sense of the sort of phenomenon/experience that one also calls an intuition. And I mean a feeling that appears/happens at some point while one is studying/receiving an argument/line of reasoning: at some point, while studying an argument, one starts to feel convinced, or notices that one feels convinced. I’m suggesting a non-rational or irrational, intuitive component to the practice of studying, reading and judging arguments – which is of course at-odds with the normal view of the study and judgement of arguments being an entirely rational process that entirely corresponds to philosophical, abstract theories of logic/of the structure of arguments. Supporting this view that there is always a non-rational, intuitive component to the enterprise of logical analysis is a matter for a later entry.