joshualharris

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Forgive me if someone else has made this rather obvious remark (too many comments to wade through), but isn't it a weird irony to rely on the big generalization that "[h]itherto the people attracted to philosophy have been mostly those who loved the big generalizations, which were all wrong?"

You give the impression of someone who has not begun to understand basic, perennial philosophical problems. To illustrate, consider the following questions that are dealt with explicitly (and incredibly well) by philosophers throughout the tradition, but not derivable at all from any scientific discovery:

  • What is the nature of the ontological difference between being qua being and particular beings? Perhaps you think this is a pseudo-problem, yet we all think we can meaningfully say that different things are in (maybe) the same way and the same respect. In what sense is it legitimate to do this?

  • What is the best metaphor we can use to describe what is going on when we say something is "true"?

  • What is the Good?

The presuppositions that underlie this blog post are questionable for many reasons, but they are especially so because you go out of your way to ridicule the only mode of inquiry that is capable of calling them into question: namely, philosophical inquiry.