Anti-Philosophy: The Argument from Misunderstanding

[@KaneB]

For further worries about philosophy, see: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rGqsnGCcg5t1odk

[@Ekvitarius]

Philosophy is the study of questions that other fields make progress by cleverly avoiding

[@KaneB]

I really like that definition!

[@otavioraposo6163]

Haha, Genius.

[@tilelate9718]

@rubeno.1195 What is blud yappin about

[@benzur3503]

If only all of them avoided those questions cleverly instead of getting annoyed when asked them and answer with “that’s a question for philosophers!”

[@crabb9966]

​@rubeno.1195 you: I am monkey robot, I love science!

[@PrinceofQuarkness]

An interesting video, but I think your summary of Kane B's position on this issue misses several key points...

[@Altitudes]

If I'm misunderstanding you correctly, what youre trying to say is I'm right and everyone else is just woefully failing to see why.

[@TwentySeventhLetter]

I don't think I understand what you're saying

[@John-ir4id]

Philosophical discourse seems to be a giant game of telephone between individuals trying to describe an elephant in a dark room where many of them are dead, most speak different languages, and none have ever met one another or seen an elephant.

[@modvs1]

Cognition decoupled from goal directed, sensory-motor engagement with the material environment, was never going to end well.

[@sibanbgd100]

I would disagree if I understood what you are saying but alas....

[@awkwardukulele6077]

@@sibanbgd100trying to think about stuff without the stuff being connected to real life in any way is…kinda useless, most of the time. Doesn’t help much when it’s like that, tbh

[@sibanbgd100]

@@awkwardukulele6077 hmmm I don't understand

[@Mowrioh]

No lmaoo

[@MsJavaWolf]

@@awkwardukulele6077 I kind of agree but then I also have a problem that's at the same time highly abstract but also potentially real. I took a break from philosophy for a while but was drawn back into it after having a few discussions with Christians. Discussions about God can get highly theoretical but on the other hand if he really exists, it's a very real problem, especially if hell exists. This is the main reason I do philosophy at this point, I don't want to go to hell and maybe some abstract fact can (dis)prove the existence of God. For example I don't care that much about mathematical Platonism, but there are claims that mathematical Platonism might (dis)prove God so I'm going down a rabbit hole of abstract theories to answer the one philosophical question that I actually care about.

[@antlerbraum2881]

The arguing and discussion is the fun part of philosophy, no one will ever know all the secrets of the universe.

Speak for yourself >:).

[@antlerbraum2881]

😳 🤯 😮

@antlerbraum2881 I'd share but they are secrets after all ;).

[@Siroitin]

I like Zizek's concept "recognition in misrecognition". How I understand that, you can never exhaustively express your position so you have to just expect that the other party can recognize your "true position".

[@RydSpyn]

Or rather, perhaps, his idea of "success through failure", i.e. that the failure to express or bring about something in fact realizes it. For instance, the genuinely failed confession of love expressing love most clearly. Or, in the domain of philosophy, when writing about something, it's through the failure to express it that you actually make progress in knowing what it is that you wanted to say in the first place. And what's more, something that was only briefly hinted at in the video, is that you yourself don't really know what you mean, even regarding your own thoughts and opinions, which has been a mainstay theme in philosophy since Socrates. Lastly, expressing a thing both realizes and changes it, while removing you from it and it from you. As Chesterton said, all creativity is fundamentally rejection (picture a mother giving birth to a child), and so by writing philosophy your thoughts and ideas are realized and changed, while at the same time becoming liable to acquiring their own independent meaning.

[@timisontube]

The video essayist Big Joel has a video on the poem “One Art”, the video is called “The Art of Losing”, it displays similar rejection and failure as creativity elements (and vice versa).

[@anthonyspencer766]

I want to say two things here. First, one could be skeptical about the concept of misunderstanding. One sort of behavioral approach might be to alleviate the worry by asking whether our philosophical conversations "work". If we really do misunderstand each other, would it make sense that our conversations occur, and perhaps more importantly, that they persist in occurring? You can sense a Moorean move here. Maybe understanding is a hinge commitment. The second point is that maybe antirealism can handle this problem nicely. It could be that the better way to think about philosophy as a human activity and enterprise is in terms of its function. Or, if we go with social epistemology, we could say that its existence as an activity that people get paid to do (and earn status for doing) is sufficient justification for its utility to society. Humans may just have an intrinsic "subjective problem": whether or not a state like the state described by our concept of understanding actually ever obtains may be beside the point entirely.

[@Dystisis]

"First, one could be skeptical about the concept of misunderstanding. One sort of behavioral approach might be to alleviate the worry by asking whether our philosophical conversations "work". If we really do misunderstand each other, would it make sense that our conversations occur, and perhaps more importantly, that they persist in occurring?" This reminds me of what Guy Robinson called "the conference room theory of meaning". If some phrasing is used consistently in a conference room (albeit perhaps never outside one), then it has meaning.

[@veganphilosopher1975]

Tangentially, I think this touches on the growing, popular notation of building a chatbot to replicate the response of a person living or dead. Who is the one to encode the meaning of hume? Or to decide on the rules that determine that encoding? Was there really one hume? One Nietzsche? One Wittgenstein? How Should such a program respond to inquiries? should we prioritize coherence of theory as the text presents it or prioritize formulating a response close to how the philosopher might have responded when presented with new information? Great video btw

[@lilemont9302]

As chatbots are easy to produce, this isn't too significant of a practical problem.

[@6AxisSage]

Noone encodes the information, they give vast quantities of data (inc most books written on every philosopher) to a neural network, by randomly giving a sample and checking how accurate the next words generated after the sample match the real data. Then you take the error and use that tweek the values in the neural network and repeat over and over until the error gets close to zero. Therefore it encodes itself. Its a blackbox process and we dont know what the network settles on how it decides what to do.

[@mkhex87]

Brilliant. And I love the Quine route. Haven't watched the channel in a long time but only because I know it's gonna keep it real af and be detailed rigorous and nuanced, and I can't absorb it thoroughly at certain times

[@mf_hume]

I think we should at least be open to the idea that many accusations of misunderstanding in contemporary philosophy are strategic rather than genuine.

[@darioabbece3948]

In my opinion the original problem is that language is ambiguous and imprecise. This makes expressing ideas and understanding ideas not trivial. I always recall the sentence "good concept where found by philosophers that were looking for something else", which could further the unintelligibity argument

[@uninspired3583]

Is it just language or are thoughts themselves ambiguous and imprecise?

[@vitornunes07]

​@@uninspired3583 No, just language

[@uninspired3583]

@@vitornunes07 how can you be sure

[@vitornunes07]

@@uninspired3583 if you could implant your thoughts directly into peoples brains they would understand

[@uninspired3583]

@@vitornunes07 we can look at examples. Like the word "heap". Is a handful of sand a heap? It is if you're counting one grain at a time, but it isn't if you're weight how much there is at the beach. This isn't really a language problem, the concept itself shifts depending on context. If you look closely more of our concepts have grey edges like this than are well defined. Language is a reflection of the concept it represents.

[@Ekvitarius]

It’s interesting that when humans argue with each other, we tailor our arguments to the person we’re talking to, and the same basic intuition can be expressed in different ways depending on the flow of the conversation. Maybe there really aren’t philosophical positions at all and they’re just debating tools for trying to communicate or intuitions about a given situation to each other

[@WorthlessWinner]

I think this is overlooked because "exactly what specific individuals thought" isn't important for most fields. It's kinda strange that philosophers dedicate their whole life to working out what Hume or w/e had to say. We don't see people doing that to Darwin or Newton.

[@TheMahayanist]

Because Darwin and Newton had empirics.

[@23LucasFer]

First of all, this is just what some philosophers do. I have never met a professor that only interprets the work of one philosopher. Most philosophers dedicate themselves to problems or areas, such as epistemology or logic, is no different from other inquiries. Secondly, what do you mean by empirics? Have you ever read principia? It's vastly different from what we learn today in physics or calculus classes. Newton had done little work in philosophy but Leibniz, on the other hand, had a lot to say about the nature of space, time and relations. The fact that something has empirical content is not related to being a subject of philosophical analysis or not.

[@WorthlessWinner]

@@23LucasFer - ironic to see a comment on this video asking "what do you mean by that" >_

[@MarshmallowRadiation]

I think that there is some of this, particularly in areas of science that do border on philosophy. Like different interpretations of quantum mechanics ("Bohm claims that particles do have an absolute position that's simply obscured, while Heisenberg says that the position does not exist until measured") or relativity ("Minkovsky was the one who claimed that space and time are truly the same thing, Einstein himself only thought of his theory as showing that the two were merely closely related"), or relating new findings to older paradigms (Dalton naming atoms "atoms" after Democritus' speculative atom even though the two objects are not at all equivalent, or in biology wondering if discoveries like epigenetics and recombinant genomes are "a renewal of Lamarck within the Darwinian framework") It is a lot less common to talk about things this way in science, and the field isn't _as_ occupied with unpacking the works of specific thinkers as much as philosophy itself is, but it is there. I think the commonalities are because in these cases the original thinkers' insights and ideas extended beyond what was incorporated into the main body of knowledge, and it's worth revisiting what these thinkers actually thought to shake ourselves out of dogmatism. Of course, going back and reanalyzing the old might seem at first like treading old ground, which in the case of philosophy is why the accusation that "philosophy doesn't really move forward" gets thrown around, despite progress actually being made in philosophy and philosophical knowledge all the time.

[@CjqNslXUcM]

Reminds me of this passage: ‘I think what I have to say about concepts is like some stuff that Wittgenstein said, but I don’t actually care how well it matches Wittgenstein’s views. I also don’t care, by the way, whether the “Lockean theory” matches Locke’s views. You have to add in caveats like this whenever you mention a major philosophical figure, because there are always people who have devoted their lives to studying that figure and who, if you let them, will give you all sorts of arguments that the famous philosopher has been completely misunderstood and never really said the things they’re famous for saying.’ -Michael Huemer, “Knowledge, Reality, and Value: A Mostly Common Sense Guide to Philosophy”

[@danwylie-sears1134]

It does seem as though a lot of disagreements turn out to be merely verbal, and that can plausibly be extended to an evaluation of other stuff we think we understand. But would that be pessimism about our current understandings? Or would it be optimism about the possibility of coming to agreement just by clarifying verbal misunderstandings, if we could clarify those?

[@uninspired3583]

The real fun begins when we shift from settling disputes with words to bullets.

[@casualstone920]

I’d argue that it is not so pessimistic as it seems at first glance. The science as we know it today actually emerged from philosophical reasoning in the first place. Political science, psychology and other areas have their roots in philosophy. I’d say that once a “philosophical convergence” happens it immediately leaves the area of philosophy and goes straight to the scientific field.

[@drdca8263]

Can we estimate for some topics whether it is likely to eventually reach some kind of convergence (and exit philosophy)?

[@casualstone920]

@@drdca8263 We could start from the definition. What I mean by “convergence” is when a certain practical/scientific aspect emerges. However, it is certainly does not mean that ALL philosophers agreed that the concept is true. But nevertheless some kind of consensus forms. Let’s take liberalism for example. As a concept it came from political philosophy and certainly had some positive practical implications.

[@InventiveHarvest]

Good video. I don't see disagreement as evidence that philosophy is degenerating. After all, the process of Proofs And Refutations is what progresses a research programme towards novel knowledge. Indeed, misunderstandings can lead to new ways of looking at problems. I consider myself a Lakatosian, but I could not claim that I fully understand what he was saying. While my beliefs are based upon what I think he said, I often take a harder position, claiming that counter-examples are always inevitable. While he did claim that we are "swimming in seas of refutations", he would not say that they are always inevitable. Are my beliefs then a misrepresentation of what it means to be Lakatosian? But, even if there are misunderstandings, the broad strokes usually get thru. Thru communication, we are certainly able to get closer and closer to understanding. There is the intent of the sender and there is the interpretation of the receiver. Where these overlap is called communication. Of course the GAVAGI guy would say we don't even understand our own meanings, but this seems unlikely when the sender and receiver are the same entity. We all have our own filters and even different chemical brain states. The only way to fully understand Popper is to be Popper, which is only something that Popper could do. But that being said, I do know that his ideas had to do with novel predictions and refutations - the key ideas have gotten thru to me. I would certainly be interested in a new Popper video from you - not rehashing the whole thing, but presenting a revised way of looking at Popper. You could even do it in regards to the theme of this video - how understanding changes over time and exposure.

[@triffnix]

I disagree on the notion that one fully understands oneself, or knows what oneself means. Hell, many of the thoughts I have are ones I do not understand. Not to mention my behavior, which, in retrospect, always appears absurd in multiple ways. Sometimes, talking feels like realtime brainstorming, which is not reliable at producing things that map on to stuff I think I believe. I might even be more mysterious to me than other people.

[@MrBoooooring]

I know this besides the point (or do I?) but dismissing arguments - not refuting them - is what I love most about philosophy. Logical positivists were great at making philosophy a tool to clean up the cluttered space of philosophical debates. Only for it to be cluttered back.

[@benzur3503]

This is the other side of Hume’s criticism for induction. In a contradiction between induction and the future being similar to the past. Where Hume gives up on the latter due to his skeptic sort of commitment that induction is a necessary cognitive function (to at least humans), thus gives up on induction in the name of maintaining that misunderstandings of the past necessitate a misunderstanding in every instance. It’s a fine argument for why it’s a possible occurrence, but not for its necessity.

[@eliad6543]

I've been meaning to read Wittgenstein properly instead of just seeing him cited everywhere so correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't his later work fit here really well? It's not that there's no truth, it's that there's no truth without context, so attempts to separate the context from the conclusions are only going to breed misunderstandings (which are not "wrong understandings", but rather correct understandings within a different rule system from the one used by the author, who in turn may well have changed their mind over it too). But all I've just said is, too, said using language and can't be understood without presupposed context which will vary. Is induction ever optimistic? Gottlob Frege, to some extent, proves what it would take to make language clear enough to a point where misunderstandings are actually wrong, rather than right in a different set of unspoken (perhaps unspeakable?) assumptions - at that point it may well just be math, and doesn't allows us to talk about many things we desperately want to talk about. Language presupposes context, and it makes sense from an evolutionary perspective too - why would our brains develop to be able to find general truths, which we would be able to apply to a person we don't know on the other side of the world? Does that help us make fertile offspring, in contrast to, say, knowing how much ground your group can cover walking in a day? It seems we're a lot less confused about information that's of no use to someone in a slightly different situation or to ourselves an hour later, but could save our lives or generally help accomplish a goal. This sounds trivial although it could point to the limits of what we can know, but also to the abundance that can exist within them, which will largely be made up of anecdotes, cold hard science, and a frustration of not having answers to actual philosophy, which is in turn soothed by the anecdotes. Lately I can't help but think of wanting truth as a result of an irrational, though not reprehensible, fear of making mistakes. There's also Camus' preface to The Myth Of Sisyphus. After diving quite deep into the book a year ago and not touching it much since, I just read the preface after watching this video. The noteworthy quote is: "After fifteen years, I have progressed beyond several of the positions which are set down here; but I have remained faithful, it seems to me, to the exigency which prompted them. That is why this book is in a certain sense the most personal of those I have published in English". The exigency may stay unchanged, but any expression of it in language will die with time, because the context changes over time. In that sense Camus doesn't give up, but instead, though with regret, treats philosophy like art: it's still a good book, because it's a bad (but possibly optimal) expression of something that doesn't quite fit into language over time. Also, here's a question I think is related - why, in these videos, is your choice of words generally quite formal and similar to the tone many philosophy books and papers are written in? If your arguments, or my comment, lose anything from being said in street slang, they're language-dependent, which explains a lot of the so called "mis"-understandings.

[@low3242]

take Pseudo-Dionysius pill. forget about witt.

[@devos3212]

So basically studying philosophers and philosophy is hard, and a majority of people “ain’t got no time for that!” Interpret that as you will.

[@christiantodorov6239]

Well philosophers dont technically "further clarify", often they expand their views in an ad hoc manner. Usually a philosophical system is created with a few goals in mind, and are motivated from observations in specific fields. Once you expand this into lets say a universal ontological claim, you yourself dont know if it can explain everything. When someone attacks a philosopher he pretends to answer something he has considered, but in reality he is trying to apply his principle in real time. I guess part of why post-structuralism made the author insignificant is because he isnt consistent. there is no consistency. He doesnt logically "track" his statements and look whether they follow some set of axioms. In the heurmeneutics of an author i sense we MASSIVELY overestimate their thinking process. New subscriber btw, love your content

[@watcher8582]

I can see how that would lead some people to go into formal logic and stop bothering with all semantics.

[@Daetelus]

I say the primary purpose of philosophy is to help people understand themselves by helping them find their own truths.

[@Stacee-jx1yz]

The Epoch Philosophy Problem Contradictory: Given a succession of philosophical epochs/paradigms, the following paradox arises: 1) Any paradigm is conceivably subject to revision/rejection 2) So all current paradigms are open to revision 3) But (2) is self-undermining, suggesting all knowledge is revisable This formulation paradoxically renders all knowledge, including the above, radically unstable. Non-Contradictory Possibility: Stratified Reflection Metaparadigms Let L be a paradigmatic language/logic Let T = {φ | L ⊨ φ} be its paradigm theory Define M = {φ | φ ∈ T & ¬Prov_T(φ)} (The Metalogic of T's Unprovability) Representing paradigms as stratified metaparadigms, with self-revisions accounted for in irreducible metalogical propositions M, resolves the paradox of universal revisability.

[@kredit787]

Some valuable benefits of philosophy are critical thinking, reasoning, logic, and knowing how to ask the right questions, so reading philosophers' ideas may not be necessary, but only interesting to explore. It's not unusual for people to criticize what they don't know or understand.

[@TheGlenn8]

As a layman I think this is a kind of risky position for me to take, but I do tend to agree with the statement that philosophical debate boils down to two people using words differently. It's a lot of semantics to me.

[@mega4171]

This is why philosophical debate is an oxymoron. Philosophical dialectic solves all

[@MarcoServetto]

Why stop at philosophy? we are all wrong, all of the times, and if one time it really looks like you are right, you are just not looking to the problem from a wide enough perspective. I'm teaching programming languages, and when we talk about testing, this view is fundamental to be able to debug your code. The mindset there is that we can not make no mistakes, we can not make 'less' mistakes, we can only force our system to make 'new' mistakes instead of repeating the 'old' mistakes over and over. We do this by automating the process of repeating the old mistakes by 'regression testing'.

[@itsalljustimages]

I haven't seen anyone do actually philosophy.. I don't understand why can't philosopher think from first principles. There are many who would tell that Kant said to think for yourself, and yet they would devote their life to be "Kantian" Something similar Buddha said "don't worship me just for the sake of it rather investigate by yourself" (probably not the exact words) and yet most end up doing exactly that. If someone is ready to investigate on first principles actually there is not much in philosophy, it gets exhausted pretty fast compared to if you study what such and such philosopher actually meant. I am by no means saying that one shouldn't read philosphers at all, rather that read for the sake of philosophy. There are only 2 ways to do philosophy: through words and concepts, through intuitions and experience. The second one cannot be shared with others and doesn't stay in its pure form as it ends up being a concoction of two. And the best way to do first way is by questioning/investingating every concept (basically every word). The only person that I know come close to that is Socrates/Plato, and even he used word trickery to steer the investigation in some specific direction in almost all his dialogs. But at least he didn’t try to make it conclusive.

[@tireturd7333]

I would say in the reference to Kant, those are people that subscribe to the belief popularized by him. A random person who never heard of or was influenced by Kant but thought in the same way Kant did, would not be a Kantian, unless we define them as such.

[@rysw19]

There is another potential issue. Whether the philosophers themselves know what they’re saying

[@TheGIGACapitalist]

Disregard philosophy embrace meditation.

[@guitarizard]

Yeah, I had someone trying to use Hume to argue for moral realism😂

[@WorthlessWinner]

Do individual philosophers even know what they're saying? They might be misinterpreting themselves!

[@Siroitin]

true, maybe philosophy and thinking is just a coping mechanism. If I'm not mistaken, that is John Dewey's position

[@23LucasFer]

​@@Siroitinyou are mistaken. His position is that thinking isn't just about propositional content, isn't that we can't be certain what we are thinking.

[@WorthlessWinner]

@@23LucasFer - fitting comment for this video

[@23LucasFer]

@WorthlessWinner indeed. However, I have to disagree with the bigger point of the video. The great number of interpretations is not a problem, is a sign of the scrutiny of the arguments made by professional philosophers. If we think about philosophy as something about creating arguments, similar to mathematical proofs, is expected that we can come up with tons of really well written, yet plausible, arguments. All we have to do is interpret in a slightly different way our starting points. If those differences in starting points are reasonable, I can't see this as anything other than an amazing display of intelectual honesty by philosophers. I have been trained in an undergrad level in science and philosophy, and the way science is taught is not dogmatic, but it isn't as cautious about every step as philosophy is.

[@Siroitin]

​@@23LucasFer you are correct that behavior isn't only based on stimulus-response mechanisms. To survive in daily life, you have to learn habits and you don't have enough time to reflect on everything.

[@ravenecho2410]

Love ur videos! Another interesting thoughts

[@bhangrafan4480]

There are as many types of philosophy as there are philosophers. Still some branches of philosophy are genuinely useful such as mathematical philosophy/logic and epistemology applied to science. Some would say ethics, but I am sceptical about the role of academics in that!

[@driesclans8974]

It doesnt matter if you know what Hume said. It matters that you understand possible positions (whether Hume actually held any of these positions is pretty irrelevant, this is less so with living philosophers because misunderstandings could lead to unfounded accusations). And we do in fact understand different possible positions because we're able to discuss with each other these different possibilities and then only after make the judgement whether Hume held one or the other position. The correctness of our later judgement is of no actual concern other than to historians of philosophy.

[@induplicable]

My position is generally that this misunderstanding that I variably develops is less of an impediment to truth and more of a bridge toward it. Until we can accept that this appears to be a part of it we likely will not get to it

[@tudornaconecinii3609]

To echo the cheeky ending of this video, yes, this video was above par in the "us not getting it" category.

[@yoramgt]

Could you explain in what way is the common understanding of Popper's falsificationism mistaken?

[@markdpricemusic1574]

Part of the problem is that when philosophy is successful it is rapidly sequestered to ''science'' (or natural philosophy, as we used to call it) - see for example atomism in chemistry, and in biology the theories of hereditable 'essences' which informed genetic research. So when philosophers get things wrong they are ridiculed and when they get things right, they are taxed or robbed by 'the practical sciences'. Nobody ''owns'' ideas, so inter-disciplinary pillage is the norm :)

[@hiker-uy1bi]

Could you recommend a modern non-academic treatment of Popper that you think is fair?

[@KaneB]

No, because I'm not familiar with any non-academic treatments of Popper. The writers that I know who seem to me to be fair to Popper are all academic (e.g. Darrell Rowbottom).

[@f1urps]

Ooh I would love to see a video about logical positivism sometime

[@ericb9804]

sort of. Yes, we often legitimately misunderstand what people mean, but its also become unclear what the subject of philosophy is in the first place, which exacerbates our confusion. Prior to about the 20th century, philosophy was genuinely thought of as practice that would lead to "Truth." Realizing that is not what philosophy is, or ever was, makes it hard to put into words, as you demonstrate, what exactly a philosopher hopes to achieve. Most of what philosophy once claimed to do is now done better by other disciplines. To the point where now, to the layman, "philosophy" largely means "metaphysical speculation." "Philosophy is a discipline without a subject." - Richard Rorty.

[@MrBoooooring]

Dennett has the best take on this imo: philosophy is what you do when you don't know what the right question is.

[@AlexanderShamov]

There philosophy as an academic discipline, and then there's philosophy as a type of inquiry. The latter can happen on both the layman level and in the setting of other academic disciplines - say, math - and then it's done by people who aren't specifically trained in philosophy but gain access to novel concepts and ideas well before academic philosophers do. And in that context, I think its goal is pretty clear. Philosophical questions arise at the boundary of the expressive capabilities of the language, and the goal of philosophy is to upgrade the language.

[@Jy3pr6]

Would you say you've gone past skepticism to outright cynicism about philosophy? I've been at that point for a long time. Professional philosophers are clearly misunderstanding eachother on purpise to justify their publishing which somehow justifies them getting paid to entertain themselves with thoughts. At best, in many if not most cases, they're subconsciously unnecessarily disagreeing with eachother

[@KaneB]

Not really, I love philosophy. I'm fine with people being paid to entertain themselves (and others) with thoughts. There are few things in human life that are better than that.

[@CJ_1871]

@@KaneBdo you think philosophy is capable of progressing towards truth?

[@noonesomeone669]

The convergence argument has a lot to do with how individuals experience education. They are trained to look for correct answers from a young age and as one advances in education what those answers are become more descriptive of increasingly more complex and narrow problems or phenomena. One goes from finding the correct area of a rectangle to solving a problem about load on a beam. In that progression the individual is engaging with fields or questions that have a terminus. Philosophy by the nature of what it questions tend to not have those neat end points and when it does make correct predictions they are subsumed by science. The disagreement and the discussion is the point of the field just as much as finding the load on the beam is for engineering. Breaking the idea that philosophy is useless comes about only if curiosity is preserved and ambiguity in answers is persevered.

[@noahgeller8513]

Many claim to understand certain philosophers even more than they understood themselves! I have heard this a lot regarding the Greeks in particular.

[@howtoappearincompletely9739]

I suppose the question that arises if and once one accepts this view is "What are the causes of all this misunderstanding?".

[@andrew_mcintosh]

Interesting. Does this mean that it's possible to agree on what philosophers are saying based on misunderstanding as well?

[@workpine9195]

This why is so important to what is not a thing, but our little time is still so valuable, yeah there are a lot but a lot of extremely abstract and complex ideas that are extremely specific, but sometimes there must be a system to avoid common misunderstanding, till i think the misunderstandings can lead to unique and beautiful paths, the author of the ideas must be respected

[@douglasdao]

Young man yelling at clouds.

[@ellyam991]

What if it is indeed an exploration of conceptual space but in a similar way to how artists explore concepts? There is no convergence in the art world about the correct way to paint a landscape, but people can gravitate towards certain approaches that we can categorize as art-styles

[@low3242]

so we should take Pseudo-Dionysius pill and embrace quietism?

[@ExistenceUniversity]

Perhaps the problem is payment and respect. If a philosopher changes his mind mid-debate because the other philosopher has presented the better arguments, will he get paid tomorrow? Can he just write a new book, retract the old, and still make a best-selling (for philosophy) book? Moreover, as someone whose philosophy is Objectivism and who basis nearly everything on the fact that objects exist and you are experiencing them and talking to me another object about them, a large swath of "philosophers" will pretent that they don't see objects or reality that they are possibly magical fairies in a magic computer controlled by a magic evil scientist. If that is what you are calling "misunderstanding," then maybe you are right to say we cannot communicate to such people

[@trebraswell5043]

Digitial gnosis is going to love this

[@ejenkins4711]

Good line Miss u ave understanding

[@understand5238]

Kane b do you like philosophy?

[@low3242]

as a philosopher you should tell me what to do and how i can cure my melancholy. why you can't do that? why you can't read people's souls like Plotinus? Sextus Empiricus core hair splitting is not good.

[@dancinswords]

That was a really weird cake recipe, but I'll give it a shot

[@abdulrahmanalhamali1707]

Isn't this why Russel worked on his project of logical atomicity (or whatever that was called)?

[@jacob73124]

Hummm very intriguing, esoteric, inaccessible stuff. I’ll have to try and fail to understand a few more times, and then I’ll just convince myself I got it. It’s ✨clear and distinct✨ that, communication being a collective delusion (hallucination?) all my personal thought innovation must proceed directly from my first-principle, natural, characteristics; a procession characterized by another set of my own natural characteristics, governed by another set, and so on. And here occasionalism rears its awful but irresistible power, where 1) you don’t affect me and 2) I don’t affect you and 3) nothing affects anything and so, continuity maintained only by memory, each thing proceeds moment to moment in constant recreation, zapped into expansive existence by continual fulgurations of the divine.

[@jeromyrutter729]

philosophy doesn't even have a common definition. we know it comes from philo (love of) + sophia (wisdom). in latin, philosophus means "thinker". i would say that religion and science are both still philosophy. i define it as "the art of human thought that pertains to an understanding of the human condition...what is our environment, how should we live, what is good, what is the meaning/purpose of life" etc. so, no, you likely won't find consensus. science can't exist without a philosophical foundation. it used to be called Natural Philosophy. as Richard Carrier once put it "science is philosophy with better data". theology cannot exist without definitions (which, themselves, are unfalsifiable) and reason, and then they skip epistemology and put faith in its place...but they still believe in some type of philosophy (theos+logos = the word or logic of god). to even argue against philosophy, you have to do philosophy. the philosopher that probably most impacted epistemology and the limits of human understanding and knowledge was immanual kant. he, rightfully, questions whether we are even talking about reality or our perception of reality. being anti-philosophy is, essentially, being anti-human.

[@luszczi]

What's the simplest philosophical disagreement you can think of? IIRC there was a controversy whether a coin on a table viewed at an angle (not from the top) is perceived as round or not. Some say the percept is round, even though the literal image is elliptical, others say both are elliptical.

[@TheMahayanist]

Probably empiricism vs rationalism. That's just a disagreement on starting points.

[@drdca8263]

Are ellipses not generally considered to be round? Does “round” mean something like “of a shape that is approximately rotationally symmetric”? I think I had thought of it as more like, “smooth and convex”. Huh.

[@KaneB]

I'm not sure what counts as simplest in this context. The debate you mention about the content of perception strikes me as significant and it's not at all easy to resolve.

[@luszczi]

​@@KaneB Easiest to explain (not necessarily resolve). As little complexity in evidence / argument as possible. I claim the dress is golden-white, you claim it's blue. Why? I can see its color and so can you. The evidence is immediate and very convincing, and yet there is a disagreement. Those kinds of controversies can very well be significant, as indicative of something that's epistemically important.

[@piotr_jurkiewicz]

'Words are the source of misunderstandings.' - fox fromThe Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1943 so maybe use numbers or something?

[@markwrede8878]

It's no match for the ransom demands from extortionist capital.

[@low3242]

then why do everything hurts so much? is anything real except pain?

[@HudBug]

I think part of this is the philosopher’s fault. I think a lot of philosophers dabble in ambiguity. Don’t even get me started on Hegel. In this way, if they want to be understood, they should perhaps be more concerned with disambiguation.

[@23LucasFer]

I'm no Hegel apologist, but he doesn't dabble in ambiguity. He has a dictionary for his terms, he isn't easy to read, however. We can't strawman something just because is not easy to understand. Great analytical philosophers, such as McDowell and Sellars have taken a lot from Hegel.

[@drdca8263]

@@23LucasFerWait, he provided a dictionary? Why is the first I’m hearing of this? That sounds to me like if I wanted to know his ideas, like that should be the first thing I read?

[@HudBug]

yeah, my first time hearing of this dictionary.

[@23LucasFer]

Harper Hegel's encyclopedias are there for a reason. They were meant as a guide for his other works. He defines and clarifies much of his terminology. This isn't something new, it's first few weeks stuff in a course about Hegel. We can debate how successful he was at clarifying himself, but we can't deny that he gave us tools. Hegel isn't Heraclitus

[@TheMahayanist]

@@23LucasFer Then the problem is how Hegel is taught, because I've read his works, and I took courses in him from leading scholars, and still don't claim to understand what he says. And I've read widely in continental philosophy.

[@mkhex87]

You should distinguish epistemic pessimism from the proposition that philosophy is not useful or valuable. Just for pr or nuance. I suppose the second thesis was more of the latter and the first thesis was an epistemic pessimism. Semantic pessimism?

[@Nilnaberius6727]

Alan badiou said philosophy exists between math and poetry, it is a shame to see lingustic confusion of story and sign :*(

[@philosophicalmixedmedia]

The purported first ever argument that had philosophical content is credited purportedly to Parmenides of Elia who flourished in the sixty-ninth Olympiad. Parmenides (pro logical positivist) basically demolished the cosmologies of his Ionian predecessors through the argument of there can only ever be two ways 'is' and 'is not' which as a legacy reverberates arguably within the discipline of philosophy in general as in folk philosophy (persons who argue cases for 'is' or 'is not' which has become the fabric of Western societies based on a cult of reason divided as secular ideologies like liberalism, socialist, conservative, elitist, authoritarian fascist, pacifist or religious denomination and the new religious movements like new age and eco feminism and a plethora of East of existentialist philosophy) but less so within collaborative scholar enclaves that converge as the scholar moves up the food chain but for the being legitimate could never entirely agree even with a close collaborator or be charged as not an authentic philosopher. This suggests a self evaluative maintenance is taking place within a competitive intra group dynamic which is similar in fields like science where at minimum two 'teams' compete for a competitive research and development that links to the body political qua nation state. So this suggests the individual philosopher is a liminal social object, but can exist as a political identity via a medium where the message is excessed by the numinous other. A philosopher seems to exist through ideas though if SEM is correct exists within an inter group dynamic that constructs meanings qua syntax. If the theory holds it predicts that for example academic philosophers within the nation state like Searle and Putnam to diverge in many areas but agree that anti realism is false that aligns to the sentiments of super power world political structuralism.

[@howtoappearincompletely9739]

Thank you for giving an example of incomprehensibility in philosophy.

[@philosophicalmixedmedia]

@@howtoappearincompletely9739 an authentic mixed media pastiche

[@zachvanslyke4341]

Is it cold in your room bro? You’re pretty layered up. I do the same thing! Take care 🙏

[@gabri41200]

Philosophy does progress, but reality becomes ever more nihilistic with new discoveries (in neuroscience, for instance), so people go back and cope, trying to hold into unsustainable and inconsistent positions. This is what makes the impression that philosophy is stagnate.

[@Europeanslave]

Sure it's important, but how does it make everyone MONEY.

[@CleanMrMustard]

Isn't this blatantly self-undermining? If I am to be pessimistic about the possibility of understanding the arguments/philosphical positions of others, then why shouldn't I be pessimistic about the possibility of understanding this argument? Also, is this argument supposed to something more than scepticism about the possibility of understanding others? Watching the video, I felt like you were hinting at some kind of larger skepticism but I never really understood what it was skepticism of...? Anyway, I loved the video! I hope you keep up the good work!

[@noahgeller8513]

maybe this is a skepticism about broad philosophical positions or movements, not specific arguments or propositions. so in that sense it isn't self-defeating

[@shafouingue]

I doubt that will happen but discussion videos with other philosophers on youtube like Wes Cecil or Gregory Sadler could be interesting

[@iloveubcuziamu]

There's nothing you have to do. Just be.

[@HerrEinzige]

I don't understand but I'm gonna like and comment anyway

[@andrewhermit9098]

Why don't philosophers just agree on some points, I don't get it.

[@PhilSophia-ox7ep]

MOST philosophers do agree on some core assumptions. But neither do ALL mathematicians agree on the same assumptions.

[@andrewhermit9098]

@@PhilSophia-ox7ep I'm sorry, mathematicians very much deserve a lot of scorn, but putting them next to philosophers is just absurd

[@PhilSophia-ox7ep]

@@andrewhermit9098 Let me know when you address the point

[@changstein]

which philosophy gets you the most beaver

[@guitarizard]

Hedonism Victor Argonov

[@Siroitin]

You haven't made a video about irony yet!

[@scottmcloughlin4371]

I have answers. We forgot what Philosophers ARE, what Philosophers DO and what Philosophy IS. Read Julian's writing "To The Uneducated Cynics.". That's available in the Penguin Reader on Cynic Philosophy and for free online. Philosophers study, (attempt to) structure and teach everything relevant to the survival of co-located groups (city states, empires, etc.).

[@TheMahayanist]

I agree 100%. I would basically say the problem with philosophy comes down to metaphilosophy, what we're actually doing with it and what it's capable of doing for us. Some people think you can prove God or modal realism, others don't. Why? Because they disagree on what philosophy is capable of doing or what it is.

[@dummyaccount.k]

every philosopher has a near-private language. maybe to reach a philosophical convergence we gotta speak easier. learn toki pona and then do a philosophy of toki pona so i dont have to, please.

[@user4475]

Philosophy aims to achieve success through a process, much like the race between Achilles and the tortoise, where one may never truly reach absolute knowledge, but can certainly attain a deeper understanding.

[@AFastidiousCuber]

I see your point, but I thought the point of that thought experiment is Achilles actually does reach the tortoise in finite time.

[@TheYahmez]

@@AFastidiousCuber That's just the self evident opener, not the point. It's called 'zeno's paradox of motion' because his claim was that motion, while appearing to be self evident, seems simultaneously impossible. I believe it revealed the need to invent calculus & assert axioms for construction of limits & such that we might otherwise take for granted. But I could be misunderstanding ourselves.

[@AFastidiousCuber]

@@TheYahmez I am aware of this. The original paradox occurs because we know Achilles reaches the tortoise, but the thought experiment suggests he does not.

[@TheYahmez]

​@@AFastidiousCuber Yes but my Point (as I believe with Zeno) was more about presuppositions & axiomatic revelation. Personally, to me, this is still an open question. There's (")nothing but(") self identification (& its memory) that ties each moment from one prior to the next. Causality & Time (as contemporary physics could be said to allude) may likely be interdependent upon our singular macroscopic perspectives as opposed to fundamental properties of existence. Wave function collapse & 'the now' in which it Might occur (besides perhaps potentially never having occurred at all; I.E. multiverse) may be non-locally real in a 'hollographic-universe' sense & distinctly quantised; having the illusary appearence of continuity- only- due- to- coherence- (& consciousness) being contingent upon a "lazy universe" with "more than a singular moment" in which to be attended.

[@icosahedron7497]

What's philosophy?

[@warrendriscoll350]

Philosophers reach convergence all the time. It's just on the boring stuff lol.

[@wireless849]

Nice video as usual. Have some money

[@laurensbaan3596]

5:23 Which philosophers have you fallen in love with?

[@merchantman3102]

He better answer Diogenes.

[@KaneB]

David Hume, Paul Feyerabend, Robert Nozick, Bas van Fraassen

[@andrewbowen2837]

​@@KaneBFeyerabend? 👀 That's awesome

[@blaynefishlock]

I get the point

[@guitarizard]

You've forgotten there is sophistry and cognitive bias?

[@RefinedQualia]

You must be defining convergence as "total convergence". Doesn't worry me if some silly people are pessimistic skeptics.

[@TheMahayanist]

I'm a fairly optimistic skeptic actually.

[@rebeccar25]

Did you cut your hair?

[@samuelmelton8353]

Sorry lad, I just don't understand anything you've said. Unfortunately I don't have time to look into it further. Good day.

[@otavioraposo6163]

A dinner for the mind. That's what your content is, Kane. And the end of the video was priceless fun.

[@Henry-mc5yq]

I think philosophy is useless, but just as useless as everything else. If it fires synopsis in my brain, I’m doing it.

[@low3242]

taoist sages use to play instruments and chill on mountain tops without any worry in the world. retvrn to china

[@mega4171]

This is what nihilism leads to. Don’t fall victim to it like Kane has

[@chrisw7347]

I just have pessimism about academic philosophy, I think it's a shitshow around games with words that lead nowhere. The point of philosophy is not getting to the truth, but about playing these language games. Philosophy in general, informal philosophy, the principle of philosophy, is great. But burn academic philosophy down to the ground-- it's purely a cesspool of rot of which nothing good can come out. It causes tons of harm, especially morally. You mention Hume who I think is a great example of moral harm that comes from academic philosophy.

[@dummyaccount.k]

o kama sona e #tokipona

[@larianton1008]

Just meditate bro. Find answers from within through direct expetiental understanding. Thats all. Philosophy is a way of interfacing with others, not making a ground within philosophy. I talk to you with words, but these worda are not the thing which Im talking about, kinda deal.

[@he1ar1]

I don't believe you can understand this sentence, but I am going to write it anyway.