What Are Philosophers Experts At?

I think what Tyler was really meaning to say was that moral philosophers are experts at being wise and good. And moreover, that the consensus among moral and political philosophers is that the best way to promote the good is via a socialist economy.

he consensus among moral and political philosophers is that the best way to promote the good is via a socialist economy.
I’m pretty sure they aren’t mostly libertarians, but do you have any evidence that is actually their consensus?

As for atonal music, I’m still waiting to be invited to a conference for composers!

Fortunately, there’s no need for that invite, since I myself am blessed with a bachelor’s degree in music theory. I impart to you that the consensus in the field is that atonal music is good, sometimes very good, though many suggest that charlatans have an easier job fitting into the atonal crowd than elsewhere.

There are no members of the field that I’m aware of who don’t accept the greatness of Schoenberg and the progress represented by the abandonment of tonality.

Though personally, I’m not a big fan.

Schoenberg is somewhat harder to like than other atonal composers. Much more approachable are Copland and Stravinsky’s investigations of atonality.

If even moral philosophers have no expertize at morality, they how can you conclude that you do? And if you have no expertize, on what basis do you conclude that you are right and everyone else is wrong?

I do believe that the vast majority of political and moral philosophers have strong left-wing tendencies. This is based on my graduate study in Harvard’s and Oxford’s philosophy departments, as well as from the opinions expressed at various conferences on the subject. I do not know of any surveys on the matter, but there’s no reason to doubt that these academics differ from their colleagues in other departments in the humanities. Among all faculty, there is undoubtedly a left-wing bent.

I myself do not believe that the study of moral and political philosophy makes someone wise and good. Which is why I abandoned my studies of the subject.

If you read your Plato,you see that Socrates already did the work of running around and proving that experts don’t really know what it is that they are experts at. Ask a moral philosopher what morals are, and he will give you examples, but will he give you a definition that does not include examples?

There was once a time when phillosophers took the holistic view of the world, and attempted to explain the world as a whole, through its various parts. They did so to first learn what the world was really like, and to then advise on what the best life is to live. It’s been a long time since philosophers did that. Though there does seem to be hope in people like Lou Marinoff. I myself should be considered a philosopher in the old sense of the term, though now I get called an Interdisciplinarian.

Keep in mind that conferences tend to be weighted toward people who reflect readily identifiable and to some extent extreme views (“surely we need a Kantian there”), rather than typical views.

Nice point!

Scot Scheule, do you disagree with anyone on things falling down? Doesn’t our intuition also tell us that heavier things fall faster though experts tell us they do not?

Troy Camplin, what did holism ever accomplish? I will gladly take the scientific advances of reductionism.

Bryan, all you need to do to salvage your disagreement is to abandon moral realism. Come on in, the water’s fine.

Reductionism is wonderful and has accomplished amazing feats — in the realms of physics and chemistry. All our incredible technological feats have been accomplished through scientific reductionism — only all those feats have been in the realms of physics and chemistry. Reductionism applied to biology has resutled in a mixed bag at best — the complexities are becoming increasingly obvious. And where has reductionism gotten us in psychology, economics, sociology, literature, philosophy, and the arts? Nowhere. In textual analysis, reductionism was introduced under the label of deconstruction, and the absurdities of that are beginning to become evident. This is not to say that reductionism doesn’t have its place in understanding complex phenomena — one does have to understand the parts, after all — but complex phenomena are more than the sum of their parts. To understand complex phenomena, we have to understand the emrgent patterns as well as how the parts interact with one another to create those patterns. In truth, holism hasn’t yet had its day. It had to wait for reductionism to run its course as something that would work by itself. Holism — or, more accurately, a combination of holism with reductionism — is the new frontier. The work in complex systems is only jsut beginning — it is in the same situation as very early quantum physics, which didn’t seem to be worth much other than to explain a few strange phenomena. Few would have guessed that in a short period of time it would give us nuclear power (and bombs), personal computers, and cell phones, among other things.

You philosophers are definitely experts at something. But what is that something?

I thought it was helping people deal with the simple daily problems of living.

At least it was until the Capital-P philosophers started chasing their tails.

Regards/Stephen

Can someone please explain the point of professional philosophy to me? I can philosophize all I want with other people, but why should I get paid for it? Why should someone get paid to think about and argue about issues that, generally, are the types of issues with which each man must decide for himself. I refer to Mel Brooks’ History of the World Part I. When Mel Brooks’ character tries to collect unemployment, he tells the teller he is a “stand-up philosopher.” To this the teller responds, “Oh, so you’re a *Bullshit Artist*. Did you bullshit last week?”

This, in my opinion, sums up my stance on philosophers. It’s great as a hobby, but it’s really only bullshitting when you get right down to it.

People should get paid to do philosophy because 1) not everyone is good at it, 2) not everyone has the time to do it (and time is money, so you need money to have the time to do it), and 3) philosophy can have huge long-term effects. The Aristotlean West is a much different place than the Buddhist-Confucian East. The Scottish philosophers laid the groundwork for the Americann Revolution. Roussean laid the groundwork for the French Revolution (and subsequence egalitarian-driven revolutions that have typically been blamed primarily on Marx, who certainly had his hand in thiings since the advent of the 20th century). Many of the problems we see in the modern West can be blames on postmodern philosophy. So philosophy is extremely important. And suporting the right philosophy — meaning, the right philosophers — is perhaps one of the most important things in the world.

I’m more into a Hegelian-Nietzsche dialectical synthesis view of dialectics vs. Marxist dialectics, but other than that, I’m with you.