

Philosophy is a Bunch of Empty Ideas - conistonwater
http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2014/06/philosophy-is-a-bunch-of-empty-ideas-interview-with-peter-unger.html

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ttctciyf
Interesting read, thanks. I do wonder about his characterisation of
_Philosophical Investigations_ : he seems to be saying it's only good for
showing philosophy students that philosophical ideas are duff, whereas I think
it has more value in showing that ideas most people carry around in the back
of their heads (like: "there is such a thing as _the_ meaning of a word") are
duff, and maybe working towards disinfection of the collective psyche in that
regard. Also, it's not quite as out-of-kilter with the Tractatus as implied.
The Tractatus itself was aimed at ruling a lot of metaphysical theorising as
out-of-court. Philosophical Investigations does revise the approach
substantially, but shares some of the goals of the earlier work.

Maybe the most enjoyable thing, though, was the complete lack of any false
modesty on the part of the interviewee:

> I can do psychology [...] far better than the best psychologist like Daniel
> Kahneman, who hasn’t been trained up in philosophy. It may be because I’m
> smarter than him. But there’s probably more to it than just that.

!

~~~
masswerk
In fact, Unger is mixing up various positions of Wittgenstein over several
decades. Usually, Wittgenstein is treated as two authors, numbered
Wittgenstein I (the author of the tractatus logico-philosophicus) and
Wittgenstein II (the author of the Investigations and beyond). Now, the
position of rather teaching, was Wittgenstein's position after he thought of
having ruled out any questions that would matter to be answered by philosophy
(in the tractatus). The Investigations are quite opposed to the project of the
tractatus, starting to investigate the production of meaning by language as a
social process, dismissing most of the notions of the tractatus. (In other
words: While the tractatus was using meaning for asking, if any traces of "the
mystic", the spiritual meaning of the world, were to be derived by logic –
short answer: No –, the Investigations have an all together other topic, how
meaning itself would be derived, contesting the very basis of the tractatus.)

And on metaphysics in general: We have learned so much more from Kant than,
say, Da Vinci; what would Unger have to say on engineering? If philosophy
isn't about easy answers, it isn't about easy questions, too ...

P.S.: I may be biased, since I've a degree in the field. Yes, there's much
crappy philosophy, esp. in the 19th century. But then, there's much crappy
software, too. Should we give up programming, just because MS failed again?

~~~
ttctciyf
I wouldn't agree that

> The Investigations are quite opposed to the project of the tractatus

quite so straightforwardly; both are to some extent interested in describing
the limits of what can be said objectively, and in constructing arguments that
place some (including a lot of philosophical) speech outside that boundary. I
do agree that the stance taken by the Tractatus is undermined by the deeper
problematic exposed by PI, of course, I'm just saying there is commonality in
the intent.

I don't think it's realistic to evaluate philosophy in terms of its production
of positive "philosophical truth", btw. From my point of view most of its
value is in exposing incorrect assumptions.

~~~
masswerk
It's a question of the "all together other topic": In the sense of a theme, it
has much in common, but the PI puts its questions there, were the TLP would be
on the ground of an established knowledge. So it's partly the same, and at,
the same time, if would go with the notion that the kind and level of the
question itself would matter, something quite different.

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eli_gottlieb
I only partially agree. I think that pure philosophy is essentially "empty
ideas", but _impure_ philosophy, philosophy as done _in strict relation to
specific and detailed domain knowledge_ , is very useful.

So, for instance, metaphysics would be "the philosophical portion of
theoretical physics", useful for pointing physics in new directions but
ultimately reliant on actual data to constrain its imagination.

