How much of philosophy is mere lofty sophistry and bamboozlement?
by Rick on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 | 5 Comments
Peter S asked:
Semantic precision but it seems to be the end of the gurus of long parade of philosophic language is at least as important if some of long parade of long parade of the late 1960s appear to boredom can understand if it aint crisp its suspicious.
Semantic
Semantic precision but it seems to be the end of the gurus of long parade of philosophic language is at least as important if some of long parade of long parade of the late 1960s appear to boredom can understand if it aint crisp its suspicious.
Semantic
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I’d go with ‘most’. A lot of the time, true perceptions are often dishearteningly concise.
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You know the saying, “If you can’t dazzle ‘em with brilliance, Baffle ‘em with Bullsh!t”.
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The sophists have been a fly in the philisophical ointment since Greek times.
Personally I like clarity and brevity but not all philisophical enquiry can be summed up in simple pithy statements.
I tried reading Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason once and thats a perfect example of a great deal of complicated philisophical language. A little boring and inpenetrable for non-specialists. Its not my cup of tea but he certainly wasn’t a sophist and many consider him to be one of the true great philosophers.
The way I would divide sophistry from true philosophy is not so much how verbose they are but their motives. Sophistry is basically a fancy lie, or diversion for personal benefit, told in a convincing way. Sophists often use a long confusing string of words to confuse the issue. Philosophers often use a long confusing string of words to try to access or explain difficult questions.
The difference is real but very subtle and to me its really about honesty and motives. There are more sophists than philosophers so beware.
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The most difficult philosopher to comprehend is Kant. His sentences drone on forever, and his paragraphs take up whole pages.
Why is he hard to understand? He does not want to be understood. That is the case with many of the so-called “mystic” philosophers, the ones who want you to accept what they say, because they say it; but to get you to accept it, you must not understand it, or you would reject it.
“The implicit, but unadmitted premise of the neo-mystics of modern philosophy, is the notion that only an ineffable consciousness can acquire a valid knowledge of reality, that “true” knowledge has to be causeless, i.e., acquired without any means of cognition…
“This is a negation, not only of man’s consciousness, but of any consciousness, of consciousness as such, whether man’s, insect’s or God’s. (If one supposed the existence of God, the negation would still apply: either God perceives through no means whatever, in which case he possesses no identity—or he perceives by some divine means and no others, in which case his perception is not valid.) As Berkeley negated existence by claiming that “to be, is to be perceived,” so Kant negates consciousness by implying that to be perceived, is not to be …”
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 106
Beware any philosopher who speaks unintelligibly. He/she does not wish to be understood.
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It’s an accurate observation you’ve made. Same goes for many of the other overly-refined Liberal Arts, too. I remember once attending a lecture on Pop Art at the Sorbonne in Paris with my then-girlfriend who was a star student in her class there.
There were some 400 students briskly taking notes as the professor, looking like an ant at the bottom of the huge amphitheater, explained the significance and irony of two neon signs that some artist had made which said, respectively, ‘RUN FROM FEAR’ and ‘FUN FROM REAR’.
Leaving the lecture, my girlfriend asked what I thought. “Well,” I said, “I thought the superficial approached the supernatural.” To which she rolled her eyes and answered, “That’s just because you don’t know the History behind it.”
“Susan,” I replied, “I don’t have to be a farmer to know what a cow-pat is.” In the same vein, there was a pretty good metaphor in Paris at that time. One lady, exasperated with the dog-leavings on the street, used to carry around a can of Reddi-Whip and a jar of maraschino cherries. She would transform the droppings into “sundaes”.
Fortunately, the city and its inhabitants have since become more conscientious and cleaned up. Philosophy, especially the two extremes of esotericism that your question mentions, and the self-defining solipsism of the Dr. Phils and Wayne Dyers, (as well as baloney served by political and financial ‘analysts’ and profilers) could use some of the same sort of attention, that is, being placed where it belongs in the trash. Their analyses remind me of the endless descriptions of cheap jewelry on the Home Shopping Network.