lukeprog comments on Philosophy: A Diseased Discipline - Less Wrong

88 Post author: lukeprog 28 March 2011 07:31PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (425)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: lukeprog 13 June 2011 05:18:59AM *  4 points [-]

This paragraph, from Eugene Mills' 'Are Analytic Philosophers Shallow and Stupid?', made me laugh out loud:

The paradox of analysis concludes that

(PA) A conceptual analysis is correct only if it is trivial.

Philosophers from Socrates onward have [provided] conceptual analyses of knowledge, freedom, truth, goodness, and more. The paradox of analysis suggests that these philosophers... are shallow and stupid: shallow because they stalk triviality, stupid because it so often eludes them.

Mills goes on to defend philosophers, with two sections entitled 'Embracing Triviality, Part I' and 'Embracing Triviality, Part II.'