An argument against continental philosophy
Vložit
- čas přidán 6. 09. 2024
- In this video we present an argument against those dastardly continental philosophers who some went as far as calling "fraudulent".
Continental philosophy refers to a set of philosophical traditions and movements primarily developed in mainland Europe that focuses on human experience, historical and cultural contexts, and often critiques modernity and rationality (although it is hard to pin down precisely). Major movements include phenomenology (Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger), existentialism (Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir), structuralism (Claude Lévi-Strauss), post-structuralism (Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida), etc.
Some philosophers hate continental philosophy and in this video we will discuss why.
Link to Huemer talking about continental philosophy: • Problems with Analytic...
▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀
Twitter:
/ mon037895046
Discord:
/ discord
Substack:
mon0.substack....
Whether or not Hegel or Heidegger personally believed a particular interpretation is completely irrelevant to whether the interpretations put forth are true or false. The only reason we would need to know for sure exactly what they were arguing is to appeal to them as an authority (a fallacious approach). If the theories of Hegel provide novel insights based upon interpretations of his work then it has value even if the interpretation *of his work* is inaccurate.
Also the guy at the beginning is a literal ancap and a transcendendental idealist for the "laws" of economics. Hardly the best example of analytic philosophy
There are also some analytic interpretations of Hegel, for example by Robert Brandom, so this whole distinction is really not so clear
Also: Ernst Tugendhat did it for Heidegger, and Arthur Danto for Nietzsche.
@@pillmuncher67 I think Graham Priest uses Heidegger as well,
So you are resurrecting the thought of early (Tractatus-era) Wittgenstein? Good luck with that. There’s a reason he himself abandoned those ideas. Language doesn’t work that way. It’s not math.
Exactly! Language is not nearly as stable or airtight as the analytic guys would like to feel it is.
@@gavinyoung-philosophythe fact that language is not clear is precisely the reason why we should be as clear as possible when using it, especially so when we are trying to assert something important, even more so if your idea is going to change the world.
The mindset of "embrace the ambiguity of language" will not propell humanity forward, it is the formalization of everything that allow society to be this advanced, it is the effort of million of mathematicians and physicists who tried to put "rules" into what once seems "magical" and "unexplanable" that get us to where we are today.
@@ngnxtan I’m not giving a statement of personal incredulity and saying let’s just give up. This is not a “language-mystery of the gaps”. I’m just saying that even physicists and mathematicians take for granted the specificity of language. For example, in mathematics, we use the number 0 as a placeholder for a concept we can’t actually conceptualize or use in operations, in the strictest sense that 0 is a contradiction: a something which is supposedly nothing. Instances such as these show how we can use concepts all the time that are helpful and can even be integrated into a rigorous system, yet which are nevertheless riddled with problems that those who claim they’re just being “precise”, are actually just failing to do!
i could not understand your words, too much semantic noise
@@ngnxtan And so what will propel philosophy forward is artificially ignoring one of the most prominent features of language? If philosophy intends to think these problems at all it would have to try to approach precisely such problems. You can't just adopt some model a priori - Descartes' clear and distinct ideas - which by the way is more or less a metaphor derived from Euclidean geometry and imported into the space of reflection, to try to artificially amputate a whole field of problems because it isn't with conducive to the particular set of metaphors you adopt to try to determine what thinking is. Scientific advancement and social advancement are not one and the same thing
Always found it insane that anyone accepts this category of 'continental philosophy' anything other than a strawman that analytic philosophers use to define themselves in opposition to. All the worst cliches about popular French and German philosophers are rhetorically spliced together to produce a coherent 'continental' school of philosophy, presented as an impenetrable web of nonsense that the sensible privately educated Anglophones have swept aside with their eminently practical empirical approaches. Come on, 'yeah well philosophers that don't speak English are umm unclear and I don't know what they were on about' is not actually an argument.
I totally agree. These philosophers are literally only alike insofar as they have a reputation for being hard. Some would say willfully obtuse, some would say creatively ingenious; the difference seems largely one of personal preference, and thus why any arguments against “continental philosophy” as generally unclear is just a gross overgeneralization.
exactly
@@AdamWEST-yu2os Funny how you claim to know so much about this “insular group” yet can’t seem to spell a single one of their names right. Sounds like you haven’t ever read them. Am I hearing some irony?
@@AdamWEST-yu2os I think the idea that a philosopher's work stops being useful after a certain period of time or because they have a strange worldview is kind of nonsense (not that I am interested in Heidegger). No economist would argue this of Adam Smith or David Ricardo. If you're going to engage with psychiatry and psychoanalysis, for instance, it just makes sense to engage with Freud. Of course, post structuralists are particularly interested in the figures you mention, but why would they lead you to retroactively categorise philosophers like Kant and Hegel? It would be like trying to argue that John Stuart Mill is actually analytic.
@@AdamWEST-yu2os I'm not going to get into the weeds arguing about who does or does not have value. With that being said, again, the idea that someone's ideas have been 'discredited' isn't really relevant to whether they should be engaged with or not. Addressing someone's ideas is not the same as agreeing with them, and sometimes it is necessary even when you disagree with them precisely because those ideas are so prevalent.
I'm still not convinced as to why Hegel, for instance, counts as 'continental'. What are the precepts of this continental philosophy? It seems like there is really nothing linking German idealism to Bataille's materialism other than that both of them influenced Derrida.
I won’t speak for mathematics but Physics is certainly full of semantic vagueness and possible points of contention that might stem from that. It only manages to hide it for few reasons:
1. Because the mathematical/formal aspects are clear and rigorous, and these are used for making technology and predictions.
2. Because the pondering of the metaphysical meaning of physical concepts is at best not encouraged, and the passing down of them is carried by prior generations of physicists who have superficial understandings for similar reasons.
An anecdote of mine perfectly gets across this point: on my second semester we were covering the concepts of work and kinetic energy in a classical mechanics course. The assistant teaching us covered all the usual points: work is defined as a path integral of a force field, it equals the difference of kinetic energy, and probably the way that relates to potential energy for conservative fields.
I was puzzled by energy being implicitly given the status of some real, substantive quality (in physics generally) because how could it if it just stems from work, something that’s just a path integral? The assistant was just totally confused, and didn’t really get what was bothering me. Even though all I asked was a very basic question of what the significance of all this was as far as reality goes.
What makes semantic ambiguity stand out in philosophy is just that philosophy is a search for the truth of things. What are you even doing if not making a claim for something or against a different position on something?
As far as the wealth of interpretations go, I think limiting this as a “continental philosophy phenomenon” isn’t fair. You can find this sort of thing for a lot of philosophers throughout history.
The best example that comes to mind is Kant, because he was precisely trying to be very precise and rigorous about everything.
Admittedly, not everyone is as bad as Hegel, but I think semantic ambiguity is unavoidable when doing philosophy. It’s always concerned about things that are more basic than people normally need to define. Of course it will lead to points of unclarity when the author is not available for questioning.
The question is, is semantic ambiguity a problem?
Could it not be, that words have multiple referents until specified?
Is it not the way we measure it in practice that defines which aspects of reality we mean?
Maybe successful reference has less to do with resemblance between thought and reality and more to do with our interactions with reality.
Hegel is significantly clearer than Kant. The critique of pure reason is important but a shitshow for semantic consistency
@@AdamWEST-yu2os she. And no, I’m pretty sure she was sober. Again, her explanation of ‘work’ as a formal concept was fine; just the standard explanation you could get anywhere.
I’m not even necessarily making some kind of case for Derrida. I’m just saying that rigorousness in physics doesn’t necessarily mean much because the meaning of the claims in it can be vague even if the whole formalism is rigorous.
And that’s the issue. I don’t know what the “correct answer” is supposed to be, or even if this is some matter of discussion in the philosophy of physics. If it was, then it’d just be on the assistant for being ignorant and not really exemplify an issue in the whole field.
"En filosofía es importante...". Como si hubiese una filosofía, que majaderos que son
Verdad.
I couldn't DISagree more ... often, if thoughts immediately appear "clear", this means you're just repeating familiar language structures, and philosophy can(!) be about going beyond. Like e.g. Heidegger did, he basically refracted the german language into itself to illuminate structure and heritage - impossible to translate into english. Is it difficult? Yes, but so is learning anything that goes against your deepest habits. Some people (including "professional" philosophers) are not interested in that or too lazy to dig deeper, fine... but stop the grandios statements and be more humble, you're embarrassing yourself.
I totally agree
It's interesting that you claim that those philosophers are lazy. I'm sorry I don't see the point of what you said. Philosophers, mathematicians and linguists are trying to make their assertions as unambiguous as possible. If they don't take clarity seriously, their propositions could be interpreted in a way which they don't intend or be absolutely incomprehensible. What's the point in making things vague or ambiguous or incoherent?
@@benjiewhorf7473 It’s not that continental philosophers are intentionally bringing in ambiguities and vagueness (at least not always), but rather that they accept their presence and reality as an omnipresent fact of language. The analytic philosophers take for granted the fixity and precision of language, at least in certain domains and at certain thresholds of communication, and scold continental guys who purposefully investigate language at its edges where ambiguities and vagueness are most pronounced.
@@gavinyoung-philosophy Hello! I'm not sure whether analytic philosophers take the precision for granted and in my opinion they don't. They accept the limitations of natural language. They simply use the linguistic tools available to make their assertions as unambiguous as possible which is you'd often find them preface their propositions by stating something down the lines of "It is the case that...... ", "There exists.... such that.... " etc. Analytic philosophers(philosophers of language), logicians, semanticists and syntacticians are working on ambiguities. Moreover, they make ample use of symbolic logic and other metalinguistic tools for stating for their premises for extra clarity which natural languages cannot provide.
The problem with being ambiguous while asserting something is that semantic value of the assertion will remain unknown unless otherwise stated by the one uttering it.
I'm genuinely curious about how continental philosophers investigate language at its edges without using any formal tools. I'd appreciate you can recommend some papers or books. Just keep in mind, I'm a semanticist by trainings, so anything too continental will be hard for me to grasp.
@@benjiewhorf7473 Derrida’s “Of Grammatology” is a staple in this regard, and it’s all about the limitations and inherent ambiguities of language. You may enjoy it too considering your occupation!
Sadly, people who know nothing about more advanced philosophy will always be louder and more widely heard than those advanced philosophers themselves.
Even 4 minutes into this video there is so much wrong with it (which, ironically, could even be demonstrated "analytically") but I feel that all that needs to be said, or asked rather, is the following - which objective truths did analytical philosophy uncover which allowed it to somehow maintain the position that it is somehow more clear, has better arguments, or better address counter-arguments, than continental philosophy? Only the most obstuse philosophers would pretend that somehow analytical philosophy has proven itself to such a degree that it is able to lay claim to being better than continental philosophy in terms of metrics like clarity, argumentation, or addressing counter-arguments.
First of all, continental philosophy (whatever you want to say about its actual content) has largely arisen from the FAILURES of analytical philosophy - hence, why Hegel-among the German Idealists-is the one frequently designated as among being one of the most notable figures of continental philosophy whereas, somehow, Kant, Fichte, or Schelling, isn't. What in the fuck Kant, Fichte, or Schelling, successfully argue to make them more analytical than Hegel? Such a premise or argument would be ridiculous to try to argue and, yet, some of the most "clear-headed" (more like basic or primitive) philosophers always attempt to try to distinguish Hegel apart from Kant as being somehow especially continental (which for them really just means "unclear") - just say you don't understand continental philosophy and leave it there.
Second of all, continental philosophies ABSOLUTELY have clear premises that flow into deductively valid and sound arguments - anyone who claims that this isnt the case never actually took the time to read the continental philosophers they are bashing or made 1 or 2 half-assed attempts at doing so and decided that it wasnt their lack of an understanding that was the cause of not being able to understand the text but, rather, it was the text itself. Which, on its face, is fine - however, as evidenced by some of the more post-modern thinkers that also hold clarity in high regard in philosophy (most notably for me are American pragmatists thinkers like Dewey or Rorty), the problem isnt that continental philosophers dont have arguments, the problem-if anything-is that DEDUCTIVELY GIVEN ARGUMENTS HAVE (THUS FAR THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT) FAILED AT PROVIDING ANTECEDENTLY GIVEN REALITIES IN ANY OBJECTIVE SENSE. Here, the issue is most prevalent with Hegel - not in the fact that Hegel isn't sufficiently clear (although many Hegelian scholars themselves have argued this - for example, most notably, Robert Pippin) BUT THAT HEGEL'S ARGUMENTS ARE THEMSELVES CHARACTERIZED BY A (DIALETICALLY) LOGICAL REVERSAL OF THE VERY SHAPE IN WHICH ANALYTICALLY GIVEN DEDUCTIVE ARGUMENTS PRESENT THEMSELVES IN THEIR FAILURES TO PROVIDE NECESSARY CONNECTIONS BETWEEN RATIONALITY AND THEIR GIVEN PHILOSOPHICAL SUBJECT-MATTER (i.e. ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, etc.). In other words, you begin to understand what continental philosophers are trying to do-in the form of deductive reasoning-when you understand that what they are trying to address is the failure of a history and tradition of analytically given deductive arguments to answer the questions in philosophy they tried to solve to begin with.
Third of all, how tf do philosophers-analytical or otherwise-get away with attacking an entire branch of philosophy without providing any positive definition of it DESPITE THE FACT THAT THEY IMPLY THAT THEIR BRANCH OF THOUGHT IS (albeit negatively via the very act of implication I guess) DEFINED BY THE VERY CLARITY AND SIMPLICITY THAT THEIR SUPPOSED ANTITHESIS LACKS? Its unreal to me how some of the worst philosophers have the balls to make the claims they make with literally no support and then turn around and define their entire branch of thought with that same rational support, clarity, validity, soundness, etc. If the only worthwhile theoretical thinking has to be conducted in the same way we do mathematical equations then how is it that we still have no clue how to comprehensively account for any of the main philosophical areas of discipline on logically or rationally given terms? You may have your own view or standpoint on a given area of philosophy like ethics, metaphyics, epistemology, asthetics, or whatever, and you might be totally convinced of its validity, soundess, comprehensiveness, objectivity, etc. but no serious philosopher ever claims that THEIR arguments by any means account for THE ONLY objective view for what counts for ALL of philosophical thought - because to do so would not only be insane, but OBVIOUSLY INCORRECT. So, if you want an idea as to why continental philosophy exists or what it even is, just take a moment to consider how little currency any analytical theory of philosophy has on providing answers to the most fundamental questions concerning the nature of things in reality, or reality itself.
gee calm down
@@joely_62 naw bro, when you've been studying philosophy as long as I have, you hear this same stupid argument over and over and only from people who have no fucking clue what they're talking about.
And don't even get me started on morons like Jordan Peterson and how they've amplified this retarded take by 1000x.
your comment has more content than the video itself lol
@@humbertobourguignonc.berna6396 ❤️
Your comment has a similar issue to the continental philosophy perhaps.
Whatever point is being made is lost in a welter of unnecessary words.
Concision and precision are the best way to convey an idea or concept.
As you'll know, no analytic philosopher is against continental philosophy simply because it's... well, *continental*. After all, there's much admiration for Frege, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Tarski, etc. etc. - and even Brentano and Husserl - in analytic circles. Plus, there are many contemporary analytic philosophers in Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, etc. But not so much so in France!
The point was made that (often) arguments aren't "made explicit" in continental philosophy. That assumes that there are arguments in the first place - it's just that the reader isn't spoon-fed. But what about the types of continental philosophy which simply don't have arguments at all - explicit or implicit? This is a type of philosophy (which is often indistinguishable from political or religious oratory) that relies heavily on (very confident) categorical statements, poeticisms, rhetoric, hyperbole, etc.
I've been accused of being "anal" and "pedantic" for stressing the definitions of concepts. Yet, if this isn't done, people often talk passed each other. That said, not all analytic philosopher do formalised their arguments. That is, they don't state a set of premises, and then offer a conclusion. So there are many midway positions between highly-formalised philosophy, and philosophical free improvisations.
*past
I don't think that Frege, Wittgenstein, Carnap and Tarski are continental philosophers, but then it should be of no surprise that there is critical reception of them by contemporary analytic philosophers
@@Rudi361 They were born and brought up on the Continent (Germany, Austria, and Poland). Though the latter three moved to the UK and US. There isn't a "critical reception" of these philosophers by "contemporary analytic philosophers". If anything, the exact opposite is the case.
Which analytic philosopher does this for ethics? I've yet to know what they mean by basic terms like "good", "duty", "imperative", "ethics" or more importantly, "reasons"?
I am also quite confused as to what analytic philosophy even means? It seems that it meant something pre -1950, and it seems something opposite post 1950?
@@natanaellizama6559analytic typically refers to Anglo-American philosophy, and you might here distant definitions from different people - I usually think of it as more empiricism-based and with discrete topics, and Continental philosophy follows Hegel and the German idealist era, phenomenology, existentialism and structural linguistics. With this in mind, ordinary language philosophy might actually be more Continental than analytical. Analytical might be more left-brained and Continental more right-brained. Anyways it’s not a helpful division in my opinion, and I think Continental philosophy was originally a pejorative used by Anglo-American philosophers.
This whole characterization of Continental philosophy (itself a very loaded and frankly unhelpful term) as generally unclear is just rubbish. The fact of the matter is that the two styles of philosophical discourse are doing something very different with language as they present their arguments. Both are “doing philosophy”, but concerning very different domains, phenomena, and objects of analysis. What the analytic guys fail to understand about Continental philosophers is that their subjects of concern operate on the cutting edge of language itself and often, what the Alaric guys see as “clarity”, the contents philosophers recognize as an obstinate unwillingness to accept the vagueness inherent in language and learn to more creatively approach philosophical discourse. Continental philosophers like Nietzsche, Foucault, Deleuze, etc tend to have a more narrative or literary tinge to their writing as compared to the dry but formulaic and clear style of analytic philosophers, precisely because they are often criticizing our notions of clarity, linguistic accuracy, metaphysical surety, and more. It’s easy to latch onto the proclivity towards neologisms in continental thoughts as a justification for stating that they lack clarity, but the fact of the matter is, these thinkers are just developing language in a novel and creative way that genuinely propels scholarship into new domains instead of agonizing over “problems” created by analytic philosophers who have often imposed such constraints upon their thought in an effort to pretend that language is as stable as they’d like it to be.
Yea analytic philosophy is like you should know that.. its boring and who takes the time to spell that out.
What an absolute mediocrity of an "argument". A series of generalities without no concrete reference to a single passage by any philosopher mentioned. You parade sophistry.
@@AdamWEST-yu2os Maybe read?
@@AdamWEST-yu2os Just stop. You're embarrassing yourself.
@@AdamWEST-yu2os grow up.
@@AdamWEST-yu2os Yes, and I actually have published on the field and know formal logic. Stop embarrassing yourself.
@@AdamWEST-yu2os Where are the passages cited in the video?
That's functionally equivalent to saying all religions are frauds. It's a radical stance.
Great video! I couldn't agree more. I'm tired of 200 page books that can be condensed into two paragraphs. It doesn't mean that some ideas can't be interesting but some times are quite commonplace or ill founded.
I didn't know scholastics from the 12th century had access to CZcams. 🤨czcams.com/video/Mp9NY-Nu4Yk/video.html
Do you mean that all analytic philosophers are, basically, 12th-century scholastics? Perhaps I've misread your statement.
@@paulaustinmurphy Not all, but many are essentially New Scholastics in their approach.
@@InsertPhilosophyHere Do you have any specific analytic philosophers in mind?... The other thing is that the word "scholasticism" has two meanings. One is entirely a judgmental term of abuse: "narrow-minded insistence on traditional doctrine." The other meaning seems to refer to a kind of methodological approach.... In any case, so which 20th century and 21st century analytic philosophers were "narrow-minded" and obedient to "traditional doctrine"? ... Is being a "scholastic" necessarily a criticism? Perhaps *extreme* scholasticism is indeed a bad thing. But isn't its opposite (whatever we take that to be) just as bad?
Basically, the more wordy and inscrutable something is, the more likely it's bullshit.
Hold on a minute, Kit Fine? Wasn't he the one who wrote about fuzzy logic? Degrees of truth? I remember the name because about 35 years ago when I studied philosophy at Leeds University at a lecture for philosophical logic it has stuck in my mind our tutor saying, 'well, I suppose I have to say something about fuzzy logic, although I find it a distasteful subject'.
So is what Fine says about non-analytical philosophy (all philosophy is analytical by the way!) 20% true? Or 56% true. Maybe 73% true. You should ask him.
Very good video. Continentals want to defend their sophistry in the comments though LMAO. I was about to engage but I'd rather not.
This video is more of a argument against analytical philosophers lmao
The number of video essays on this platform alone is proof most people would badly philosophise on anything for free. It's absurd to think it's a kind of organized con
Analytic philosophers continuously display, with childish lack of self-awareness, their total inability to understand and comprehend complex ideas.
Hegel alone is the biggest counter argument to that. Hegel's philosophy is beautiful and much truer than many other philosophies
Not in the slightest
Thanks for posting this thoughtful examination. Perhaps it could be balanced by critiques of analytic philosophy (maybe you have already done that; this is the first time I've looked at your channel.) Over time I have become more and more discouraged by analytic philosophy and its claims of clarity and analytical rigor. I don't think either of those are true. They aren't rigorous and their writing is not clear. I think partly that is due to the analytic tradition's unwillingness to use things like metaphor, simile, allegory, and so forth, on the grounds that they do not lead to clarity. But a case can be made that such structures of comparisons are themselves modes of reason. // This is a complex issue and, once again, thanks for taking the time to present the outlines of the dispute.
What I understand to be continental philosophy is best understood in the light of Kant’s insight that what we call reality is a subjective construct arising from “categories of cognition”. Consequently, what is being investigated in continental philosophy is not reality per se, but the categories of cognition which inform said reality. There is, of course, plenty of badly written continental philosophy. Sartre’s “Being and Nothingness”, for example, often has a distinctively “stream of consciousness” style about it. Nevertheless, what this video calls “noise” is mostly the result of the readers lack of any real understanding of the philosophical perspective being presented.
The analytic/continental disctinction is weird in a particular way: While there is a group of self-styled analytics, there should be much more doubt about the reverse group - the continentals - existing in this way. I think maybe in a narrow sense, 20th century philosophy (especially 2nd half 20th century philosophy) from mainland Europe might share methodological commitments and topics, but if you also group Hegel and German idealism into it, why not also Nietzsche and Schopenhauer? What about Adorno? Habermas? To be precise, I hardly know anything about most of these philosophies, but pretending they all form the group of continental philosophers and can all be written down with a few remarks seems utterly silly.
It is true that analytic philosophy is a style of philosophy defined by providing clear definitions and arguments and by dealing with counter-examples. This way of doing philosophy does make it distinct from basically all other philosophy, but the perception that all the rest is basically the same or can be defined negatively (by the absence of the analytic style) is wrong, I think. The 2nd group is the "all the rest"-group, hence one should find a plethora of questios posed, styles chosen and topics discussed if one looked carefully. The perception of sameness seems truly misguided, hence most uses of the label "continental philosophy" but the most narrow ones should be rejected.
Not least, "extracting information" seems to be only one use of philosophy, and maybe a wildly misplaced one at that.
Maybe this all started with Kant. Finding that philosophy should be more like science and not like "walking in the dark" was motivating him, but also the positivists ans later analytics. Has it worked? Does this kind of philosophy provide us with a consensually agreed upon body of knowledge and facts, with unquesioned methods and assumptions, with paradigms? These would be some of the metrics that one should be interested in if one objected that one's approach was more scientific in nature than other approaches. I hardly think that such an evaluation would be favorable for contemporary (or past) analytic philosophy. The only thing that can be said is that analytic philosophers are c l e a r l y in disagreement with each other. Weirdly, the success of analytic philosophy is hardly debatable. It can be measured in its global spread and the way in which it pushes aside other approaches. But this institutional victory doesn't equate to having won this status like a hard science does. It has won its status maybe like scholasticism has, or Aristotelian natural philosophy - it is hegemonic, yet clearly not "right" if being right would mean conforming to the metrics layed out above.
(To make my point clear, the analytic style has its worth imo, even if it missed its objective entirely and I think one can use it to make clear what one thinks in a very rigorous fashion. I just don't think it's the only reasonable way of doing philosophy and I don't think it should baselessly define everything else just by its own internal standards, because it will trigger misjudgments and arrogance. Also a last remark: Being rigorous in defining a concept or a thought doesn't make the concept clear per se. Even if one succeeds at making something clear, it isn't necessarily right. Adding rigor is only a complete solution to the problems of a field of enquiry if the object of analysis is already of a certain nature to begin with. One can gain a little bit from rigor if doing philosophy, but most philosophical ideas clearly become clear as being actually unclear by doing it.)
I disagree about the analytic philosophy. I find them awfully obscure and in that obscurity hide a lot of things. The greatest example being ethics. I've found no clear or compelling definition of the basic terms that they all seem to be talking about. Heck, I don't even know a basic definition of "reason". From this, there's also a much operative obscurity as to what the relation between this is to the will or to the subject. A far clearer and more compelling work lies in, say, Martin Buber.
I also am not sure about the counter-examples. Again, in ethics, there's no relation at all as to the obvious counter-example of a subjective line of ethics and how it would go. They all just ASSUME the ethical categories and then ASSUME them(even by definition) as "imperative" for some reason and yet not clarify what does that entail. Any meaningful clarification destroys the edifice of "reasons-based" ethics. Half of my time arguing with this philosophy is just getting them to clarify concepts and then trying to tie concepts to intuitions, which is "supposedly" what this philosophy is known for.
@@natanaellizama6559 Ethics might be a special case. Afaik, a lot of analytic findings in this area are assumed to be "common sense" by the analytic philosophers producing them. For instance moral realism, by many, is assumed to be the "intuitive position", and many say what seems to be the case should only be ever doubted if there is a stronger seeming going against it etc. The problem is that the general public is mixed on that question. Overall, the intuitions of trained philosophers and non-philosophers tend to be different, so it is highly questionable if intutitions are these objective immalleable yardsticks they are assumed to be. And maybe the turn to intuitions was disadvantageous to dealing with counter-examples.
@@KommentarSpaltenKrieger
Well, my issue is not with intuitions. They are basic and fundamental, as far as I'm concerned. We ought to analyze our intutions and absent intuitions there is no content to analyze. We even use intuitions to analyze other intuitions. For example, all rational principles are intuitive.
This doesn't entail all assumed intuitions are intuitions or that intuitions are infallible. It is like empirical senses. Without them, what is the content of experience? All experience would assume them, but that doesn't mean they are infallible. Yet it is our way to engage with external reality. The jump forward arises from the obvious fact that sensitive intuitions are not the only KIND of intuitions we use to engage with reality.
I also don't have an issue with moral realism per se, but I do have an issue with it alongside hidden but foundational implications of the practice(like naturalism, secularism, and so on). So, the issue is neither moral intuitions nor moral realism, but how to make sense of those within the previous structures of naturalism and secularism. I don't think one can and conceptual clarification of the regular base intuitions that form the foundational ground for engaging with morality are in conflict with naturalism and secularism.
Hence analytical philosophers(who are mostly naturalist and secular) benefit from not clarifying these concepts and going by "common sense", even though then they negate such common sense in a posterior move. When they are pushed for clarification, then fundamental and irresolvable problems arise.
huemer lmao. he's just as much of a bs artist as some continentals. moral realism 🤣
irreducible normativity 🤣🤣
phenomenal conservatism 🤣🤣🤣
his """argument""" for free will 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
anarcho-capitalism 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Almost no one who is opposed to moral realism would take their opposition to it to its logical conclusion.
@@Saimlordy almost no one who actually understands what opposition to moral realism means would use phrases such as 'its logical conclusion' ominously, as if it implies something sinister. you're engaging in normative entanglement. look it up; lance bush wrote excellent articles on it on his substack 'lance independent'.
So Marx was right. Philosophers are stuck arguing about their imaginary worlds and not the actual world.
Can you suggest any major achievement of the so called "Analytic" philosophy in the last 50 years? Or is the Trolley Problem all you can boast about? Or maybe it already "showed the fly a way out of the bottle"? The whole analytic-continental divide is already obsolete. Any practical use of analytical philosophy died by the end of the Vietnam war when US Army abandoned analytical approach to war and McNamara resigned.
How does analytical philosophy grapple with the unconscious, the main discovery of the 20th century? Or maybe you think that the unconscious is also "fraudulent"? There was the Cassirer-Heidegger debate which Heidegger "won", but any righteous Deleuzean avoids Heidegger like a plague, and Deleuze admired Frege much more than Heidegger, so what should one call this, "a continental split"?
In short, my dear Mon0, you are a straw-manning machine.
„Achievement“?
Do you mean progress? In that case philosophy is generally the wrong place to look for it.
Do you mean contributing to the diversification of viewpoints? In that case it contributes, but it is not clear to me what the intrinsic value of diversification is.
The value of philosophy lies in training and sharpening one’s mind. And both continental and analytic philosophy is valuable for this purpose.
While I don’t agree that he is strawmanning, you’re right: “analytic philosophy” is virtually dead as a meaningful contributor to the continual philosophical projects facing us today. I truly cannot see meaningful challenges that such philosophers even face, although this may be for lack of personal acquaintance with the niche.
@@Everywhere4 I mean creation and improvement of concepts. If you think that philosopher is a sage (a wise man) than your mind surely needs some sharpening.
@@gavinyoung-philosophy I can understand that you, as a fresh and quixotic young academic, try to take the reconciliatory path, but this kind of unproductive "Sokalism" must be exposed for what it really is - a blatant straw-manning, a reactionary ressentiment that is trying to separate an active force from what it can do...
@@exlauslegale8534
But analytic philosophers create and improve concepts. Usually this are metaphysical concepts, so maybe it appears as if they don’t create and improve concepts because the followers of the continental tradition are not interested in the type of concepts the analytics create and improve.
I don’t claim that philosophers are sages. philosophers are delusional, but they are better in examining commonly held presuppositions that are often taken for granted.
Just because you don't understand Continental philosophy doesn't mean it's bad.
I feel like certain arguments make more sense once they'rte laid out extensively, with examples and rewordings and fully using their semantic load. This is what makes Plato's philosophy timeless. The dialectic, for one, since it relies on using the entire semantic load of a sentence, cannot be translated into analytic language, and it seeks precision precisely in the unfolding of the text, rather than by definitions. They are different approaches. Analytic philosophy tries to cross the gap between signifier and signified, whereas continental philosophy presupposes that you're always talking about the signified and that you're aware of this whole procession; in this model, whether your personal conception aligns with the signified is a problem in itself, and there's a ton of literature trying to solve precisely that problem.
"semantic noise" = "semiosis" (Umberto Eco)?
To me this divide is very simple. The so called continental philosophy provides deep and new insights into human condition, our lives essentially. The so called analytical philosophy on the other hand is drowned in useless busywork and is practically almost useless.
Analytic philosophy is the most boring, useless and banale shit ever. Continental philosophy may be labyrinthous, strange, sometimes full of itself, but if you tried going for it and overcoming your ego, which always wants to see that 2+2 equals 4, then maybe you would notice it's not exactly a waste of time, but basically the spine of modern society.
Good video. Can I surmise that you didn't include the clips of continental philosophers obfuscating things (that you've shown in earlier videos), because you want to add those to a later video examining the argument that they're fraudulent?
Hum, maybe I should have put more screenshots of writings considered obscure now that I think about it. Perhaps even only for the sake of giving some quick examples to the viewer.
Just found this channel. Subscribed. It seems from the comments that a lot of people who follow the channel have an emotional attachment to the continental side of the divide. From their tendency to go ad hominem they do sound quite leftist.
I was trained in America, and so gravitate toward the analytic style. However I think the designation “continental” does not go back as far as Hegel and the immediate post-Kantians. It seems more a twentieth century distinction. By that time obscurity had become a stylistic desideratum, rather than, as with Kant, Hegel, Fichte, and the rest, an unfortunate flaw. Nevertheless, I do admit that the continental side is dealing with issues related to consciousness, identity, subjectivity, etc., that do not lend themselves to the eliminative, and in its way distorting, clarity of mathematics and formal logic.
The big problems on continental philosophers are they are mostly system builders. Metaphysics is a very very hard concept. You cannot do metaphysics without even doing physics which is highly technical and already complicated when trying to interpret it without violating any laws. Kant for example based his metaphysics from Newtonian physics.
Experience is indeed important for doing philosophy but without proper methods (logical reasoning) it can be controversial-- it also could be motivated by cognitive biases.
They ruined the natural sciences. They incorporate non-sensical concepts of politics, subjective experience for mind-independent inquiry of objective knowledge.
They can conflate God rather than to separate it.
Nevertheless, they are experts in experience and human condition... and pure reasoning can be hard to suffice the complexity of human experiences. Hermeneutics for example can address the historical and cultural conditions of the human events.
In conclusion, they need to always challenge their assumptions and revise their beliefs if possible and avoid too much metaphysics iff they can't actually find a proper way of doing it with very painstaking consideration of the natural sciences.
I think the field is just outside the dominion of linguistic conceit, and can't really be held to the criteria of analysis within language.
We see this problem in activism in equity and inclusion diversity and all this stuff. 10 minutes into the video and it really is about not the concepts themselves but how much one can misinterpret them and use them for personal financial gain and then people to morally masturbate about it on Twitter?
Tyler Niknam called it years ago.