The Boundaries of Philosophy
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- Опубликовано: 23 фев 2024
- Dr. Ellie Anderson and Dr. David Peña-Guzmán, Philosophy professors and co-hosts of Overthink podcast, discuss perhaps their biggest (and most meta) question yet: what is philosophy? Specifically, what are the boundaries of the discipline of philosophy, and how is it separated from other disciplines in the modern academy? Can we use a set of necessary and sufficient conditions to create an inclusive and exclusive definition of philosophy? If we can't, what are the consequences?
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Philosophically speaking, those leather pants are fire, ngl
the real cool kids philosophers
Reminds me of this quote from artist Grace Hartigan, “I cannot expect even my own art to provide all the answers - only to hope it keeps asking the right questions.”
I just love Ellie. Her diction is spectacular! And as a queer latino man that wants to be in academia, I just feel so happy to see someone like David being himself ❤
Thanks. Very stimulating.
Raymond Aron is still really famous in France, almost iconic, as a political philosopher. A "liberal" in the classical European sense, he held the minority position opposite Sartre, along with people like Camus. History has been kind to his pragmatic point of view, lack of naiveté about authoritarianism and its ideologies. There are a lot of his lectures available on this platform; of note, the five-part series "philosophie et histoire" of 1963. He had a great voice.
Exactly!
Are those lectures in French ?
@@iamk108 Yes, they are.
You could defend the philosophy department precisely on the grounds that philosophy permeates every other field of study. Even outside academia, being able to dissect an argument, identify presuppositions or non sequiturs is an incredibly useful skill. Everyone can benefit from an education in philosophy.
Really nice one guys !
I love that your podcast is a sort of dialogue between two professors, one being more specialized in analytical philosophy whilst the other is more continental, bridging the divide between the two whilst taking a more holistic, comparative approach
Nice to see y’all “in person”
I didn’t mean for it to end up so long. You guys bring me such joy and a chance to think deeply!
As an undergraduate, I feel wholly unqualified to comment, however, I do think philosophy is a field free of boundaries. Anarchism has been my latest fascination as I wait for my seemingly endless gap year to end. The issue here is the authoritative deference we give the disciplines that make them appear distinct or a-philosophical. From what I’ve observed, the line that separates any given discipline from philosophy is non-existent. All branches on the same tree, schools of thought.
This all seems to return to the conjecture that philosophers don’t answer questions. Which reminded me about the anarchist example of your car breaking down, and you ask an unqualified friend for help and then a mechanic. The point being that the mechanic has no more authority than your friend, but he does have expertise. I shouldn’t need to obey him, but I’ll heed his words if I want my car to work. Which highlights that this is a division of labor problem, as we know profit hates range. All the other departments have efficient methods that produce high volumes of commodified answers that substantiate their ongoing place in the university.
It’s not that physicists far outpaced philosophers, or are really any different from the latter, but that they devised epistemologies they used to rigidly pursue truth. In Ellie’s video on phenomenology of perception, she pointed out how we can skip the “am I a brain in a vat?” cogito ergo sum stuff if we start off by thinking of our perception as fundamentally embodied. Same difference. Some methods get you to the answer faster, and I think the philosophers beat the psychologists to that one too! It’s more likely you’ll find that time is relative if you have systematized your inquiry and investigation. However, to me, all their skills, tools, fields are inherently philosophical. They are asking philosophical questions and can only find answers using philosophy and its gifts.
😊
1st paragraph is drop the mike statement. I would cut the 'unqualified' statement. i meant second parargraph
Okay, i'm only seconds in this video but Elli ATE with this outfit🔥🖤
is it possible it was inspired by Foucault?
Thank you! I just discovered your podcast and it's amazing! What about Deleuze's idea that philosophy is the creation of concepts?
Would love if you guys did an ep on the experience of beauty
Question: What is it? It exists as a normative question that fulfills the function of prescriptive questions; it also exists as an identity question of the sameness of categories that are defined through the question What is it?
What is philosophy? Anything that points to some instruction for use.
Philosophy examines, discusses, clarifies, analyses and synthesizes fundamental concepts used in the study of nature, human society and thought - concepts like essence and appearance, matter, necessity, causality, law, regularity, correlation, form, content, good life, good and bad, beautiful, ugly, sublime, freedom, equality.
Scientists, whether in the natural or the social sciences, often have naïve conceptions of those fundamental concepts. Physics scientists, for example, mistake regularities for causal relationships and social scientists mistake functions for causality and correlations for causality.
In thought, in theories, we often find circular arguments which are invalid, contradictions, non seguiturs, gaps and hietuses and lacunae. We also find unexamined assumptions on which their whole edifice is based.
Very interesting. So is philosophy a method, a skill set that is applied to desired outcomes.
Why am i getting " The Breakfest Club mets "Perks of being a wallflower vibes from this discussion..The guys bring Soooo much to the table and you don't compete with one another,You compliment one another without sounding condesceding 😊
Philosophy aside, I'm digging both of these outfits. 😁
Well, this conversation certainly is a philosophical exercise.
One way it seems to me is missing from this discussion is insight about what a general or broad statement might be. For example one might view this video as what is said in conversation, but it is after all a video. Broadly then in what sense is this movie philosophical aside from the words spoken? One way to see that is to say the words are detached from the reality photographed by the camera. So the broad statement is the movie of the ‘being’ shot, and the words are a parallel layer of the commons of conversation. Hence the movie not being detached from the real being of the scene stands for consciousness where the words as detached lose ‘being’ of some sort.
Maybe these words try to much to appear philosophical 😂
She is so cool
Philosophy should have no boundaries. It should permeate every human activity.
Philosophy is one way of being amongst other modes of being. This kind of "definition" is open a bunch of question that wasnt mentioned here. Just one question from the many others is how can we give value to this way of being amongst the others. But, honestly, I hate this kind of commenting communication for so many reasons. However. I like your conversation.
It is difficult to define any discipline.
it's the result of a problem
I feel like for most other fields of study, you need an overwhelming burden of proof for an idea to be considered valid, or else it’s frowned upon as a theory and is almost never applied. Philosophy to me encourages the exploration of more abstract ideas even if they have no pragmatic application, mostly in economic terms
An "area" of philosophy which in my view is free from all these concerns with boundaries or lack tereof is the individual, personal, quiet, intimate meditation on our own dasein, on life as we experience it, and on how the totality of human condition is replicated in each one of us. I'd never have an Epistemology book on my bedside, but I do have Montaigne's Essays. Perhaps this is a very limited view of philosophy. It may also be the philosopher's ultimate safe haven, who knows? I ike to think we can just be practicing 'amateur philosophers' and enjoy the sobering, comforting emotional tone that comes with self-reflection - which I believe has nurtured many a philosophical vocation over the centuries..
I want to read Pneumatica by Heron of Alexandria, just for the spirit of it all.
At 35:00 or so did the one on the left effectively say "Here is my description of philosophy which I will write think and publish, but if confronted I will discard the philsoophy for whatever will keep my position and serve my own self interest"?
He's not discarding his philosophy, nor serving self-interest.
Simply saying that there could be a defense of philosophy that isn't based on HIS understanding of philosophy.
@@zaydenmichaeljames473 At 34:00 the individual in leather pants and glasses poses a question: If the dean was to have read the article in question and accepted the philsophy of the author the dean will cut the philosophy department.
The philosophy of the author (the individual with non leather pants and no glasses) as I understand states that philosophy has no boundaries and there are pluralistic ways of doing and knowing. The author states that they would tell the dean they misunderstood the article, and philsophy has boundaries and the department should not be cut.
The questioner themselves even pushes back, sensing it was a joke or "bad faith" answer and demands a good faith answer. The author of the paper states this is their answer and they would dismiss their philosophy if it made sense strategically.
Starting at 34:41: "My philosophical position, I don't think needs to guide my strategic thinking to protect a philosophy department. I really really don't." The questioner themselves says they are not satisfied with the answer as the author begins to say they will give the answer the questioner wants but that they will defend their strategic answer. To me this strongly suggests the author would argue against their own philosophy for a self serving interest. That being the philsophy department where they work is continued to be funded and the author continues having a job.
I do understand nuance in life and context mattering and maybe I need more of an understanding as to what the author states is "the theoretical impossibility of exclusions with the very real possibility of inclusions" 35:02. After relistening the author does better desribe what he means about this, and I do see his point.
but my own personal philosophy is that if you put skin in the game and this causes your philosophy to change, maybe the philosophy you previously held was not all that strong to begin with. Maybe you need to rethink some of your assumptions about practical reality and see how this changes your theoretical philosophy.
But maybe I am just overthinking...If only there was a place or podcast with other people who OverThink philosophical questions.
"Whenever science operates at the cutting edge of what is known, it invariably
runs into philosophical issues about the nature of knowledge and reality."Handbook of the Philosophy of Science (Vol7 Statistics) by Elsevier Publishing.
So far, I've never found anything providing neither a more precise, nor a more broad definition of philosophy (which encompasses everything understanding itself as philosophy and anything mistaken for something else which ends up being unmasked as - usually bad - philosophy, like "scientific theories of consciousness" or "evolutionism", etc.): Philosophu is the quest for Being. Or, to formalize:
- Philosophy is the study (1) of being in itself and the being of things which, whatever way, are (2) -
(1) from the latin "studium": love, passionate proximity, intellectual engagement and care;
(2) including those that are non-existent, impossible, contradictory, self-contradictory, etc.
Take any philosophical act in the history of the world, and you'll find the philosophical component of it (because one muse acknowledge each philosophical act is also a lot of other things - a political act, an artistic one, a scientific one, etc.)
- either in the definition of being itself,
- or in the specific modalities of being of the things brought into play by the aforementioned act.
Was, "friends of Sophia," a reference to, "friends of Dorothy?"
Philosophy is the consideration of reality within logic.
Logic is the synthesis of the relationships between the components of reality, as we have noted until now.
The only limit of philosophy is that always and without exception, its results will only be hypotheses.
Philosophy is taking a nihilistic form, and what was meant to be "a love of wiadom" nowadays is becoming more like "people posturing and saying things that no one with a commonsense can understand."
For me the only two philosophers that left to be read are Dostoyevsky and Kiegregaard (probably also Cioran and Baudelaire in a specific context).
Could we infer that, as philosophy doesn’t have clear boundaries, it can be defined as not a study of an object per se, but a way of looking at any object? More like a means to do something, rather than a discipline.
Funny, I was teaching an introductory class on philosophy 20 minutes ago...
A (relatively) recent book by James Turner (an emeritus historian at Notre Dame) made the case that the humanities are all united around a philological method: they all employ a comparative approach to cultural objects. But Turner only made this claim at the cost of arguing that philosophy (which the book somehow imagines to be a non-philological and non-comparative discipline that engages in pure thought) is not humanistic. The book is entitled Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities.
P.S.: This has been one of my very favorite episodes in the podcast. The segment starting at around 24:00 was absolutely stellar.
Interesting, thanks for this reference!
Reading philosophy is in many ways like engaging in play. It can be recreational.
Side question: Has anyone translated Aristotle’s metaphysics into first order logic?
Philosophy is the articulation of being with language and examines the interchange of this relationship through time.
WRONG! Philosophy is just when you think deeply and rigorously about something.
@@lorenzomizushal3980 Is the articulation of being with language contradictory to think[ing] deeply and vigorously about something? If so, how and why?
@@crowboggs that's notthe point, it's just not a necessary requirement for philosophying.
@@lorenzomizushal3980 How do depth and vigour distinguish philosophy from thought?
@@crowboggs You should be able to figure that one out, it's plainly obvious.
In a sense, philosophy is to the other disciplines what the brain is to the body. Also, for any discipline to cohere, it does so by way of philosophical structuring & direction, right? Paradoxically then, even tho it manifests in & is valuable to society rather invisibly, it still must also stand alone - ie not itself be dissolved - to be able to function. Otherwise guidebooks replace scientific inquiry & creativity, & eventually freedom succumbs to pressures to do/produce more vs be. Philosophy is needed to remind people to think.
I follow Ellie I like her presentations. You should get hold of people like Hamza Yousuf as well as Robert Kuhn they are heavy into these subjects. If nothing else you'd get good amount of new followers.
Philosophy ends when its hypotheses are reified by dogmatic discourse (opinion, religion, science or other) which is right now ;). Otherwise, I'd be very curious indeed to read an essay titled The Mathematics of Philosophy, maybe writen by Data, from Star Trek Next Generation?
Isn't your statement alone imposingvthat the question is not in dogma, but in a person that sticks firmly to this dogma?
Crisis of fojndations of mathematics, nihilism and atheism have already appeared in 19-20 century. So relativism isn't new.
Would.
Which one? Lol
In ancient times, the knowledge scope was narrow and the scientific method was not well developed as well. Therefore, there were no definitive answers to most of the questions the ancient philosophers sought to answer.
When the world entered the Enlightenment, the intellecturals realised two things, first, by changing one's ideas, one can change his/her world. The second is the study of the natural world via observation and interpretation (through the use of the scientific method), humans can understand and manipulate (change some outcomes of the natural world such as preventing a disaster that can occur from an earthquake) the natural world.
Certain branches of knowledge start to isolate themselves from philosophy as they start to rely on the scientific method more and more, and therefore, possess clearer and more definitive answers than they used to. In other words, the reliance on philosophical discussions to interpret the natural world is not good enough.
For this reason, if both philosophy and the natural sciences seek to answer one question regarding interpreting the natural world, the natural sciences will have the last word all the time (e.g. answering the question of whether the universe is eternal or has a starting point).
Philosophy only engages in answering questions that have no definitive answers yet or it's subjective (e.g. ethics).
I would describe philosophy as a circle; a circle of circles
With no center. You're always in the circle. You can't answer why you're in the circle or what it would be like outside of the circle. You get thrown into this circle and the circle knows you before you even know the circle. This is how you come to love the circle. But I don't love the circle. In fact I detest people who love the circle so much that I've decided it isn't a circle. It's much more shaped hyperbolic or eliptic. Infinitely more complex than the cirlce and now we can resume the task of Non-Euclidean geometry.
Philosophy is quite literally the discipline of interdisciplinarity.
LOL
Does it contain itself?
@nesigouin2049 "Discipline" in the other sense, as in making sure that the interactions are structured in a credible way. Maybe philosophy could be defined as a focus upon the relational element in thought. It is only ever about something insofar as this is related to something else.
It's interesting that the most interesting things are undefinable. What is art? I just remembered that I bought a book a few months ago by Deleuze and Guattari, which was meant as an attempt to define philosophy itself, "Qu'est-ce que la philosophie?". But, I haven't read it. On the back cover it actually says, "La philosophie n'est pas interdisciplinaire, elle est elle-même une discipline entière qui entre en résonance avec la science et avec l'art, comme ceux avec elle..." so he's using resonance where I said the relational. But, I haven't read the other 262 pages :)
Hi! Math podcast here (brand new on youtube w/ 1 episode. Over 120 audio-only episodes). We just dove into trying to understand machine learning and BAM! Suddenly we are steeped in epistemology in needing to define presuppositions of machine learning determined by not only the data sets chosen for training (and their biases), but the biases in how the reward function is defined and 'steers' the training, and in how the optimizing functions tweak the parameters to do things. How did we end up here? We're in this twilight area that is between philosophy and math and uncertainty is the norm.
Wondering if you'd like to perhaps collaborate on an episode on maybe applied epistemology?
Philosophy is the mother of all knowledge. The kids leave home and forget where they came from, but mum is still mum.
If philosophy is the mum, then religion is the father.
I see philosophy as saying something one can’t prove. Unlike doing math. And similarly various branches of science are rooted in the real world. This seems to me is an ancient practice of ‘realism’ in philosophical self expression. One might ask of saying something philosophical that what connects it out of self expression is that which by tradition is not philosophy but realism.
I only really understand this stuff when you do the history approach. It gets too filled with jargon otherwise. 15:00 apricot cocktail. Also concept manipulation.
Philosophy exist because only two philosophers could have this conversation lol
...contradictio in adjecto! : there are and never can be Grenzen to Philosophy...
slayyy
Philosophy of philosophy or metaphilosophy
That last answer on defending the philosophy department from David was so sus…
big slay
I don’t think it’s a problem that philosophy has no clear boundaries. Philosophers have argued persuasively that science and its branches also don’t have boundaries. It’s not clear that the sciences are unified by their objects of study or by their methods.
I liked the way Dr Anderson distinguished between φιλία (philia - friendship, love, affection), έρως (eros - love, desire, lust) and αγάπη (agape - love, fondness, affection).
Indeed good theoretical distinctions, but in real life quite a mixed bag and a source of psychological suffering, as Freud pointed out.
@@franciscopolatscheck8837 And yet, when people mix, conflate or confuse them, we impose negative, informal or formal sanctions on them. That means that the distinctions are important in our culture. It is true that Freud, in his Oedipus complex, suggests no distinction between eros and agape in the child's attachment to his/her mother.
Anyway, Dr Anderson just wanted to explain the Greek etymology, the roots of the word philosophy - philos (friend, lover) sophia (wisdom).
David is wrong about "answers" - Ellie you know your stuff * respect *
You both seem to have forgotten to include philosophy as the study of death in life. I agreee with Ryle the specialisation was/is a harmful trend. Philosophy is the study of everything that is not yet a science....philosophy helps answer the questions that allow the eventual transition toward a fully blown science. It is like a parent who talks themselves out of a job in raising knowledgable kids.
Karl popper deamed Plato dangerous in the context of maintaining an open society..
obviously central planning would impede in anarchy of production which defines capitalism..
Perhaps the road to becoming a philosopher king should be restricted
Democracy dosent work so long as the colonized are religated to far regions
Philosophy is hindered by it's method and difficulty in producing commodities or valued services
Are the flat earth ears philosophers?
I imagine the real boundary of philosophy is socionormative practices inherent within confined spaces of academia. Hell, all philosophy is an imprint of what's popular at the time coupled with bias of the majority masquerading as common sense. Also, I don't know if it could ever be truly inclusive. Regular academics seem to go for the throat a lot to keep their job. Especially starting out. Let's also not forget the hampering limitations such as social status, good looks, social maneuvering, backstabbing, nepotism, hard cash, popular sympathies, hyper-local cultural expectations or risk being labeled as "weird," and the list goes on. Which is ultimately all hilarious since every philosophy clings to some form of heuristic to stay sane. That said.. as much I don't like it, I stick to Neo-platoism so I don't seriously injure people. lol
There is, of course, political and power considerations to be had. There's a reason many modern day thinkers don't bother is because someone with yet another axe to grind will use status as a means to overrule that narrative and it's just a headache. It's not so much paranoia as it is boots on the ground reality for a lot of people. There's a reason you don't have many T.E.R.F. philosophers anymore except old head circle hold outs. (boilerplate: Not a TERF. Not a nazi. More like a reformed troll / pedagogue more than anything.)
I'm afraid I didn't hear anything distinctly succinct to convince the importance of philosophy to a mindset that is anti=humanistic and very utilitarian. This is where you throw away your academic hat away, don't quote history (use it), and make it about the advantage that it gives in a world of need. The need: soft skills that Plutarch and the stoic movement that is driving a growing cross-section of young American male populace. hard skills that were at the heart of Steve Jobs mantra (don't mention the eastern influence). And the principal element of problem solving that envelope all disciplines.
Perhaps the point of the video isn't to convince such an audience? That project is worthwhile, but not all discussions of the nature of philosophy need to foreground it.
@@OverthinkPodcastPhilosophy I stand corrected. My apologies
philosophy aka the margin for error haha
Isn't theology the "Queen of the sciences" (or am I splitting hairs?).
No it's the mother of all oxymorons.
Theology as the pearl of human inquiry somewhat fell out of fashion after many began to reject rational theology. Nonetheless, if you think it still is the the queen of sciences, I’m sure you have some interesting arguments to back it up.
I’m of course only talking about the European tradition.
I can’t really get mr. Peña-Guzmán here. He is too reductive, and out of step with the dynamic we are in. Argumentation like this doesn’t come across as neither dialectical nor a constructive dialog.
Narrowing the philosophical experience down in this way feels like a teleological trap or a circular argument feeding itself. I can’t see philosophy as a method for creating “research deliverables”, as they’ve become the financial lure of ‘productive’ science itself.
Slowly externalizing intuition, creativity, relations and holistic thought from science has furthered compartmentalization, where broader context is in dire need in our time.
Do we really need to beat more out of (post) modernism, or should we explore what has been essential in our history, its outcomes and maybe leave the modernist "progress" behind?
Not a statement just for meta-modernism, rather against modernism as-is. We aren't as rational as stated by Adam Smith, and (social-) Darwinism is not a good model for civilized coexistence. Those are social constructs that gave good gifts, but now leaves a void of unpaid emotional debt.
What we have called "natural behaviour" is an malappropriation of nature, not an adaptive presence in it - our ecology speaks back, and we should listen.
Well, my ranting aside - We do have valuable luggage carried from our past, but maybe we should leave the empty boxes behind, and think outside of them?
The answer at 2:00 is somewhat wanting. History is irrelevant.
Can we not validate Neil Degrass Tyson as a science commentator? He's way to simplistic and ordinary
Philosophy is the one thing everyone does every day. Most just aren't very good at it.
Talking philosophy is interesting but bottom line so far is, "It is stranger than we can think". JBS Haldane. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._B._S._Haldane