From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Fri Jun 22 2001 - 02:02:00 MDT
Mark Walker wrote:
>
> >
> 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).
Pragmatism is philosophically ungrounded when it comes to value
issues. Simply saying that is most valuable/best/good which
*works* begs the question of what it means for it to *work*, by
what standards, what values and how does one ascertain and
ground values?
> 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
This gets into pointless circularity. If it is important to
understand the basis of our claims about knowing and about
ethics and about valuing generally and about meaning, then
philosophy is important. Even if we say we only believe in
science that very belief requires grounding to be trustworthy
and we need to say what our science does and does not cover and
we need to understand the implication that those things not
covered by our science are unimportant and unreal if we are to
claim with honesty and meaning that only that which is covered
by science is important or real. We need to make statements in
epistemological areas about what knowing does and does not
consists of and about the relation between perceptions and
concepts (concretes and abstractions) and so on.
Claims that philosophy is unimportant vs claims that it is not
important are both philosophical claims. They are claims to a
truth asserting that the very study of what we mean by truth and
how we may ascertain it is or is not important. Both claims
argue that philosophy *is* important, and is actually central.
> 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
Your very request already points out and assumes its relevance.
> 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
What does such transcendence have to do with skepticism?
Particularly with the philosophical school of Scepticism or with
any of its modern false relatives?
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
How did you get to this point of asking a value question without
covering the underlying layers at all? You seem to have skipped
metaphysics and epistemology and leaped straight to ethics.
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.
This part of your argument seems reasonable if a bit less
succinct. :-)
- samantha
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