From: Mark Walker (tap@cgocable.net)
Date: Wed Jun 20 2001 - 05:18:37 MDT
Samantha Atkins wrote:
). But of course this same point can be made about liberal thinkers like
> > Mills, Dewey, Berlin and Rawls.
>
> Rawls and Dewey are most certainly NOT liberal thinkers, at
> least not in the classical liberal sense.
>
Agreed. But, as a bit of armchair sociology, I suspect that most who sail
under the liberal banner today identify more with the positions of Dewey and
Rawls as opposed to say Mills.
> > It can't be the fact that we can point out a
> > philosophical geneology that distinguishes the socialists and the Nazis.
>
> It is a fact however, that America especially has been largely
> philosophically unarmed and that many of her best and brightest
> have an active aversion and contempt for philosophy. How many
> times have I watched discussions here that broadly claimed that
> philosophy was and is irrelevant?
>
> - samantha
>
I am neither an American nor a sociologist so I am not really in a position
to comment on your generalization about "America". I suppose it would be
ironic; given that if 20th century philosophy is remembered at all the
philosophical school of "pragmatism" will rank as one of the most important
developments. The irony, of course, is that pragmatism is a distinctively
American school of philosophy: from Pierce, James and Dewy, through to
Quine, Putnam and Rorty. (With apologies to the Brit. Schiller).
I too have seen the claim philosophy was and is irrelevant promulgated
here. The original post that started this thread claimed the opposite.
Neither side, as far as I can see, has advanced much in the way of reasons
for their claim. Whether the former side needs to advance reasons I can't
say, but clearly if the claim that 'philosophy is relevant' is a
philosophical claim then this must be supported by reasons. Given its
encompassing nature, philosophy is the one discipline that must be critical
of its methods and telos. (Plato, Hegel, et al. argue this point in some
detail). Hence, my challenge to the original post to defend this claim of
philosophy's relevance. (You know, the post with the question which you
describe as "false and sterile"). So let me answer my own challenge to
defend the relevance of philosophy. This task may be divided into the
question of subject matter and methodology. With respect to the subject
matter, we can (following Kant) consider three questions that philosophy has
generally considered of central importance: What can we know? What should we
do? What should we hope? Transhumanism too raises these questions: The
question of what we can know is of relevance in the possibility of
skepticism that transhumanism raises, namely, that we might be able to
create beings whose knowledge transcends our own in the same way that ours
transcends that of an ape or bug, etc. This sort of transcendental or noetic
skepticism clearly has historical antecedents in Kant. The question of what
we should do is asked in the most basic way when we ask whether we ought to
alter our natures, and if so, how? These are ethical questions clearly under
the purview of philosophy. There is a long tradition of perfectionism in
ethics that is clearly of relevance here. What can we hope for? Perhaps,
that we will live forever as godlike beings, or at least at minimum that we
are not all turned into so much black goo. What are the grounds for hopes in
general? Philosophers like Kant provide instruction here. There is then at
least an overlap of subject matter between transhumanism and philosophy.
Perhaps it is the methodology of philosophy that the philosophy nay-sayers
object to. Philosophy is sometimes said to be irrelevant because it employs
an a priori methodology. Yet, proponents of a purely a priori methodology
in philosophy are but one school of thought within philosophy. (Actually,
pure a priorists are extremely difficult to find in the history of
philosophy. Even someone like Hegel who is often cast as an arch-rationalist
was concerned with the "empirical facts". Cf. commentaries by Fackenheim and
Burbidge for example). There is a school of empirically based naturalism
which has Aristotle and Hume as its patron saints and is the dominant
methodology in Anglo-American philosophy today.
The overlap in subject matter and methodology suggests that philosophy
is, and ought to be, of relevance to transhumanists. Mark.
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