What Constitutes a Philosopher?

[Dumbnamechange]

I hate when people do this quote-by-quote thing, but I think it might help.

 

ianfaircloud, on 18 Mar 2015 - 11:57 PM, said:

The point seems to be this... when people speak of Martin Luther King, Jr., as philosopher, it's "not plainly clear" that they use the term in a different way than the way the term is used in academic philosophy.

 

My position is more that there may be a Gettier-style false lemma in play as to what justifies people calling him a philosopher. That is, (1) MLK is in fact a philosopher (of such-and-such calibre), in virtue of (2) his contributing to a particular historical conversation (even if the significance of his contribution owes mostly to a post mortem canonization, as I think it does). Had (2) not obtained, (3) common reference to MLK as a philosopher would be a misuse of the term, but since (2) did obtain, in whatever sense people intend by calling him a "philosopher," the label fits (because of (2)). Their referring to him as a philosopher is something of a lucky shot, if they aren't aware of or causally related to (2). (How you want to split the hair is up to you, whether they use the term in the right way for the wrong reason, or however.) But the point is that the term's correct because of a certain correspondence alone.

 

I hope this clarified misunderstanding preempts some of the other points you made / questions you raised later on.

 

It's also very interesting to me that Dumbnamechange says that "being a theologian" is "arguably philosophy." In my own experience in theological and philosophical circles, people don't say that theologians are philosophers or even arguably philosophers. The people who do say that theologians are arguably philosophers are not in these circles. Their use of the term is the folk usage that I described in an earlier post above (philosopher in a very broad sense). It looks like maybe Dumbnamechange uses the word in this folk sense, too.

Woah, woah, woah: I put that in aside-brackets, put "arguably philosophy" in parentheses (though I guess I put a lot of things in parentheses), and even just said "arguably", all to suggest I was not going to defend this point. But here goes my apology: from my experience, theology is a branch of philosophy, but if I'm wrong about that, I am, as you should suspect, more than willing to admit that I'm simply misusing the term. (Or more appropriately, misdescribing the connection.)

 

...A professor of mine once said, "The true philosophers are not people like us working in academic philosophy." ... And don't they deserve the title, "philosopher," more than we do? But words aren't assigned meaning that way; they are assigned meaning by their shared meaning across a community of speakers.

 

...Then there's Dumbnamechange's point that "people can systematically misuse terms." This, too, is interesting. Misuse suggests that there's a correct way to use a word. Isn't the correct way to use a word just the way that (among a group of implied hearers, to borrow a phrase) ordinarily gets the point across to those hearers? I'm with the editors of dictionaries when they list among the definitions of "begs the question," "to elicit a question logically as a reaction or a response." In certain circles, this is now a perfectly correct (though irritating to us) way of using the phrase.

When I nail down the standards of correctness for the meanings of terms, I'll hand my doctoral dissertation to you. As for now, I can just give you these http://wsuonline.weber.edu/wrh/words.htm, http://listverse.com/2011/06/07/top-10-misused-english-words/, and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/01/commonly-misused-words_n_4652969.html. I don't pretend to know what metaphysically determines the correct way to use a term, but it sure as hell ain't a popularity contest, lest we've all been speaking nonsense. (Really—I wish I could put this more diplomatically—but this is such a trite point in the philosophy of language. First, dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive: they record what people do say, not what they should say. Second—and I know you haven't said this yet, but it's commonly paired with your position and the kind of appeal your making—any appeal to the evolution of language will necessarily become a moot point, because of (1) the naturalistic fallacy and (2) the fact that, on your own terms, it's wholly indeterminate what will or should then be the correct way to use a term, now or in the imminent future (e.g. "philosopher" might go your broad way in a few more decades, but then again it might not; you can't say it has already gone gone the broad way, because that's precisely what's up for grabs).)

 

This is all to say that Dumbnamechange's reply is interesting and elicits a lot of questions (some would say, "begs" a lot of questions) to which I have attempted answers.

Yeah, yeah, I've seen that kind of send-off before. 

 

 

...

So, this has all become pretty disappointingly narrow (largely my fault). I think a more interesting (but still stupidly philosophical) question is whether everyone is more-or-less philosophical (if not a philosopher) but just to better or worse degrees, or whether there are—as I've been working with so far—more-or-less clear-cut, humdrum criteria in play, demarcating the philosophers from everyone else. The latter position I've expressed seems more prevalent among academics (who maybe are desperate to carve out their own little corner of cultural expertise—it's easier to say, "Kierkegaard wasn't really a philosopher," or whatever than to actually charitably represent and debunk him). But I think it would be a novel PR strategy to shift to the pseudo-egalitarian approach—y'know, go on the offensive and say, "You're all doing it wrong!" rather than breaking any common ground by saying, "Eh, that's not really what we do." (Which, to be clear, is a division even your broad sense/narrow sense conception sustains.) I know Putnam has said something like, "Philosophy isn't dead. It's just that more people than ever are doing it badly." 

 

I think it poses a weird but novel dilemma.

[qualiafreak]

Thought I'd chime in on this and this point alone:

 

"I don't pretend to know what metaphysically determines the correct way to use a term, but it sure as hell ain't a popularity contest, lest we've all been speaking nonsense."

 

I disagree and, in fact, I don't even see how anything but popular understanding of a term determines its meaning. Unless you want to argue that only the original inception of a term can validly determine its meaning??... How do you think language developed in the first place anyway? It's not like terms a priori have meaning. They have whatever meaning they have because and only because people understand them to have that meaning. And I don't think this means "we've all been speaking nonsense." What it means is simply that communication isn't perfect. Words I utter represent concepts in my head, and yours do as well, but those concepts rarely if ever will match up perfectly. The meaning itself isn't in the word, it's in our head. Only subjectivity can attach meanings to things. Words aren't perfect for communicating meaning (perhaps connecting our brains directly would be), but they're the closest thing we've got currently and we can do quite a lot with them. So, if most people use a word a certain way, then it can therefore be understood that way. The "right" way to understand a word is in the way it's being used at that particular instance, and the "right" way to utter a word is in the way that is most common for one's context, so as to facilitate understanding on the other side - operating under the assumption that the "right" way to communicate is the way in which understanding and concept mirroring (is that a thing?) are maximized.

 

P.S. I'm not a linguist and haven't read up enough on this topic to truly make the assertions I'm making. I'm just making them for the sake of conversation because these are the things I think about when I think about the meanings of terms. If this is your field and I'm just so completely wrong it infuriates you, I'd love links to articles. I'm procrastinating.

[Dumbnamechange]

"I don't pretend to know what metaphysically determines the correct way to use a term, but it sure as hell ain't a popularity contest, lest we've all been speaking nonsense."

 

I disagree and, in fact, I don't even see how anything but popular understanding of a term determines its meaning. Unless you want to argue that only the original inception of a term can validly determine its meaning??... How do you think language developed in the first place anyway? It's not like terms a priori have meaning. They have whatever meaning they have because and only because people understand them to have that meaning. And I don't think this means "we've all been speaking nonsense." What it means is simply that communication isn't perfect. Words I utter represent concepts in my head, and yours do as well, but those concepts rarely if ever will match up perfectly. The meaning itself isn't in the word, it's in our head. Only subjectivity can attach meanings to things. Words aren't perfect for communicating meaning (perhaps connecting our brains directly would be), but they're the closest thing we've got currently and we can do quite a lot with them. So, if most people use a word a certain way, then it can therefore be understood that way. The "right" way to understand a word is in the way it's being used at that particular instance, and the "right" way to utter a word is in the way that is most common for one's context, so as to facilitate understanding on the other side - operating under the assumption that the "right" way to communicate is the way in which understanding and concept mirroring (is that a thing?) are maximized.

There are some circularity mistakes in there (e.g. "They have whatever meaning they have because and only because people understand them to have that meaning"—a meaning is precisely that which is understood, so you can't use understanding to ground meaning). But to quickly address what's arguably my most controversial but I think wholly justified point, re: "I don't even see how anything but popular understanding of a term determines its meaning".

 

Premise 1. Popular understanding/usage is an empirical fact about what is the case.

Premise 2. Meaning is a normative concept: there are correct and incorrect ways to use a term; equivalently, definitions of meaning are about what ought be the case (regarding utterances).

Premise 3. ~Naturalistic Fallacy: facts about what is the case can't in themselves justify facts about what should be the case (if you even want to call these latter "oughts" facts, anyway).

Concl. Popular opinion can't determine the meaning of any given term.

 

(It's a rather safe instance of Kripke's Rule-Following Paradox, which more widely tries to show that no facts whatsoever determine the meaning of any given term. (My use of it is ironic, since Kripke's own solution to the problem was to appeal to majority opinion; virtually every commentator has pointed out this ironic flaw in Kripke's solution.)

I recommend seeing it it as saying less about the nature of "meaning" than the nature of "determining," in the particular case of meanings. (This turns it into just a general philosophical problem of normativity: wtf?))

 

P.S. I specifically said "I don't pretend to know" the right theory of meaning here. But my "nonsense" remark was just a lame joke about the "decay of language" or whatever (although it is a plausible reductio ad absurdum of the majoritarianism view: all it takes, on the view you've offered, for this forum to literally become nonsense is enough people to start talking differently).

And your words-represent-mental-concepts view, I take it, is basically Jerry Fodor's. Just mentioning that in case you didn't know / are interested; but it's a notoriously sketchy philosophy with a lot of problems: if the words represent the concepts, then what are the concepts doing? Representing external objects? Then why aren't the words representing those objects? What has the middle-man of mental understanding-states done but kicked the can down the road, displacing the burden of explanation? Is all meaning just "representation" anyway? (Certainly not.)

Edited March 19, 2015 by Dumbnamechange

[ianfaircloud]

I think this line is revealing: "First, dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive: they record what people do say, not what they should say." This line is exactly what's up for debate. You see a separation between how ordinary speakers use words to successfully communicate their ideas, and how they ought to use words. For example, you think that regular folks shouldn't say "begs the question" to mean "elicits a question," even if all the speakers in a particular community use those words to mean that. You think an entire community could be ignorantly using a phrase to mean something that it shouldn't mean to them, even though it does mean that to them.

 

Does that capture your view correctly? I take that to be your view. Some of us will disagree with that view, but I'm interested to hear more from you. I hope you'll reply.

[Monadology]

Ian, do you think that pragmatic reasons can warrant advocating the usage of a word contrary to its shared meaning/popular usage? For an example, take the deliberate reclamation of derogatory terms like 'queer'. 

 

I ask this because if pragmatic reasons can warrant advocating a change in the meaning of a word (or insisting on it meaning something), then the debate is less about one's theory of meaning and more about whether there are good reasons to use 'philosopher' in a way that includes Martin Luther King or, more strongly, is exemplified by Martin Luther King.

Edited March 19, 2015 by Monadology

[Dumbnamechange]

To Ian

Not quite: I have never been talking about a term as it's used by an entire community (100%—even though I could maybe push this way if I wanted to); in these particular cases it's the status of a term used by a large or majority population, whose usage might be subject to correction by people who might then have the role of "linguistic experts". (Chemists on "water" meaning H₂0, Physicists on "heat" meaning mean kinetic molecular energy, and so on, up to Philosophers on "philosophy" as XYZ ——the metaphilosophical problem is obviously big right now, so I'll leave that one open; the point is the epistemic authority involved.) The majority could very well be persuaded that they've been using it not necessarily wrong but without understanding; I should note that while you've been focusing on "misuse", that's been confusing the problem as to why the term is meaningful and when it is meaningful. Going back to MLK, the point there was that people could truthfully call him a philosopher without understanding why he's a philosopher. 

 

On dictionaries: again, not quite—especially on your own terms. Dictionaries take on an explicit status as descriptive v. prescriptive: some dictionaries throughout history have actually tried to say, "This book is prescriptive," failed, and then later backtracked; every other dictionary (or dictionary committee) explicitly says that the book records only how words are used, not how they ought to be used—the latter is what style-books are for. I don't see how you can, on your own terms, argue that the self-proclaimed descriptivist dictionary writers aren't ipso facto descriptivist. So, if this is up for grabs at all, it's because it's an empirical question, but with loads and loads of evidence in my favor. And, if you want to say, as you seem to do, that dictionaries have authoritative power — not because they claim it for themselves (they empirically don't) but because we grant it to them regardless (in which case I and many others will be your empirical counterexamples) — then it would hurt your own point that "beg the question" is regularly targeted in prescriptivist, descriptivist-prescriptivist hybrids, and descriptivist-with-prescriptivist-intentions (OED) dictionaries. And again, you should be able to think of easily enough on your own the multitude of philosophical problems that would follow from meaning being solely words on the right side of dictionary entries (Derridean paradoxes, the resulting fickleness of meaning, that terms would be overdetermined by the multitude of sources saying different things, that I could write a dictionary to make everything you've said so far show agreement with me, the meaning-status of tribes without dictionaries...). 

 

You say, "You see a separation between how ordinary speakers use words to successfully communicate their ideas, and how they ought to use words." Again, I've already tackled that in this thread, but this presupposes an extremely naive view of meaning on your part, that meaning is solely the communication of ideas (wherein successful communication of ideas = successful use of words). How a person ought to meaningfully say, "I promise..." or, "I love you" seems to be determined a lot of other things than ideas in the person's head, words in a dictionary, etc. ("Hello" spoken no matter how intentionally mid-conversation is meaningless.)

Edited March 19, 2015 by Dumbnamechange

[ianfaircloud]

Ian, do you think that pragmatic reasons can warrant advocating the usage of a word contrary to its shared meaning/popular usage? For an example, take the deliberate reclamation of derogatory terms like 'queer'. 

 

I ask this because if pragmatic reasons can warrant advocating a change in the meaning of a word (or insisting on it meaning something), then the debate is less about one's theory of meaning and more about whether there are good reasons to use 'philosopher' in a way that includes Martin Luther King or, more strongly, is exemplified by Martin Luther King.

 

Nice response, Monadology. My position is that people can change the meaning of a word by changing how the word is used. The empirical claim is that, most of the time, a change in usage is an organic process-- people just start using the term in a different way. But people can also change the way the word is used by advocating the change, bringing about a change in how the word is used. Along these lines, if we could reprogram everyone to use a word in a different way, the word's meaning would change.

I think your example from the word "queer" is related but is tangentially related. (I think you see it that way, too. If I understand it correctly, your point is that there can be good reasons to do the reprogramming that I discuss above.)

In my experience, people in academic philosophy normally don't call Martin Luther King, Jr., a "philosopher." I'll operate under the assumption that my experience lines up with the reality of how the word is used in academic philosophy. On this assumption, my view is that, were we were to encourage people in academic philosophy to speak of Martin Luther King, Jr., as a philosopher, we would be requesting either one of these two things: (1) Change the way you view Martin Luther King, Jr., so that he fits your view of "philosopher" as you use the word in academic philosophy; or (2) Change the way you use the word "philosopher" so that it is broad enough to include Martin Luther King, Jr.

The reason for academic philosophers to push back on (2) is that it seems to them that the narrow use of the word philosopher is useful in academic philosophy. It helps distinguish people by the methods they use, the topics they discuss, etc.

The reason for academic philosophers to push back on (1) is that they may simply not agree that Martin Luther King, Jr., fits the description.

My guess is that this thread has elicited such lengthy discussion for another reason: There are some people (perhaps in this thread) who use the term philosopher to mean more than the descriptions I have given it above. They mean the word to demand a certain kind of respect and intellectual authority.

Some words are not value-neutral -- the words themselves invite praise, blame, approval, disapproval, honor, disgust, etc.

Is philosopher one of those words that is not value-neutral? Do we (in academic philosophy) use philosopher to mean not only all the descriptions I have given above, but also something to the effect of, "Someone worthy of special attention in academic philosophy" (or something to that effect)? "Someone whose work is worthy of our serious attention, whose work is properly the subject of a philosophy student's undergraduate thesis, etc."? "Someone whose work is good"?

If so, then I have missed something in my definition of "philosopher" as the term is used in academic philosophy. That's possible.

Edit: Removed emoticons that were placed automatically by my use of parenthesis next to the letter b.

 

Edited March 20, 2015 by ianfaircloud

[qualiafreak]

There are some circularity mistakes in there (e.g. "They have whatever meaning they have because and only because people understand them to have that meaning"—a meaning is precisely that which is understood, so you can't use understanding to ground meaning). But to quickly address what's arguably my most controversial but I think wholly justified point, re: "I don't even see how anything but popular understanding of a term determines its meaning".

 

Premise 1. Popular understanding/usage is an empirical fact about what is the case.

Premise 2. Meaning is a normative concept: there are correct and incorrect ways to use a term; equivalently, definitions of meaning are about what ought be the case (regarding utterances).

Premise 3. ~Naturalistic Fallacy: facts about what is the case can't in themselves justify facts about what should be the case (if you even want to call these latter "oughts" facts, anyway).

Concl. Popular opinion can't determine the meaning of any given term.

 

(It's a rather safe instance of Kripke's Rule-Following Paradox, which more widely tries to show that no facts whatsoever determine the meaning of any given term. (My use of it is ironic, since Kripke's own solution to the problem was to appeal to majority opinion; virtually every commentator has pointed out this ironic flaw in Kripke's solution.)

I recommend seeing it it as saying less about the nature of "meaning" than the nature of "determining," in the particular case of meanings. (This turns it into just a general philosophical problem of normativity: wtf?))

 

P.S. I specifically said "I don't pretend to know" the right theory of meaning here. But my "nonsense" remark was just a lame joke about the "decay of language" or whatever (although it is a plausible reductio ad absurdum of the majoritarianism view: all it takes, on the view you've offered, for this forum to literally become nonsense is enough people to start talking differently).

And your words-represent-mental-concepts view, I take it, is basically Jerry Fodor's. Just mentioning that in case you didn't know / are interested; but it's a notoriously sketchy philosophy with a lot of problems: if the words represent the concepts, then what are the concepts doing? Representing external objects? Then why aren't the words representing those objects? What has the middle-man of mental understanding-states done but kicked the can down the road, displacing the burden of explanation? Is all meaning just "representation" anyway? (Certainly not.)

 

In your first paragraph, you say that meaning is simply "that which is understood." In your second, you say that understanding is empirical and therefore can't be used to determine meaning. Did you mean understanding in a different way in each of these contexts? If meaning simply is understanding, and understanding is empirical, is it possible meaning itself is empirical too? What reasons do you have for premise 2? Does it simply feel to you as though meaning must be something "over and above" the natural world, because if it weren't things seem to turn in on themselves and become "meaningless?"

 

I get that concept/representation views are sketchy. I do not tend toward Fodorian viewpoints on this. The way I understand Fodor, he believes there are literally sentences in the head that encode a "language of thought." I think the way our brain communicates concepts is in a way more complicated than any spoken language in existence as of yet and therefore can communicate a larger range of specific ideas. The middle man of understanding does not simply kick the can. It attaches phenomenality. If there were no experiencers, there would be no meaning. Consciousness is "meaning endowing," not words.

 

As for the idea that "linguistic experts" etc should be determiners of the "proper" meaning of a term instead of the population majority... Perhaps, but there are two different senses of what is proper here. Imagine that there is an isolated small community within a larger community. Imagine that the linguistic experts have agreed on the right way to speak. In the smaller community within the larger one, 100% of people prior to their decision had been speaking in the "wrong way." 10% of people in the community have read the manual the linguistic experts sent out and begin speaking the correct way. In one sense, they are speaking properly because they are following rules. In another sense, they are speaking nonsense because no one around them understands them. Even if I were to contend that there is a "right" way and a "wrong" way to use words, objectively, there still may be cases in which it is appropriate for one to use the word the wrong way - when it facilitates understanding. And the conditions are not just "ideas in the person's head, words in a dictionary, etc." It depends not only on ideas in the person's head, but also the ideas in the head of the person or persons to which they are speaking.

 

I don't disagree that it would be meaningless to randomly say "Hello" mid conversation. How does this in any way show what I've said to be extremely naive? In that case, the understanding is only on the end of the speaker. The context has to be appropriate and the listeners as well. You've said it's naive to think that successful communication of ideas = successful use of words. Then the examples you gave were not successful communication of ideas, so I don't see how they were relevant. I know there are epistemic problems here and it is clearly much more complicated. I know there are some problems with my view of meaning and that representational views bottom out in things being essentially meaningless in a sense. I don't have any emotional attachment for there needing to exist some objective meaning. If linguistic experts should be able to decide the proper usage of terms, their criteria for decision making should be things like removing ambiguity, making key distinctions - all for the purpose of creating a language that maximizes effective communication, or most efficiently enables speakers to get their ideas across. In contexts where the linguists' rules failed to do that, it would be appropriate to break them.

 

Edit:

P.S. This is SO OFF TOPIC I'm sorry

Edited March 20, 2015 by qualiafreak

[Monadology]

Thanks for your response, Ian. You're right that I think the idea of reclaiming a word, as in the case of 'queer,' is tangential. 

 

Part of the reason I raised my question was because it seems to me that your philosophy professor was doing something closer to the reclamation case than, say, trying to give the meaning of the word. So I was surprised that your response was "Words aren't assigned meaning that way." The case is a bit muddled because your professor is working with a use of 'philosopher' that is an genuine live usage, albeit not one that is very active in academic philosophy: identifying individuals whose lives and thought exemplify philosophical wisdom. Still, I had taken it that your professor was advocating for that usage, not saying what the popular usage was within academia. I wasn't there of course, so I may have misunderstood!

 

There seem to be a number of considerations that weigh against the narrow, academic use of the word:

 

(1) Adding the adjective 'academic' to 'philosopher' already clearly narrows the scope to precisely the typical academic usage of 'philosopher'. Why make 'philosopher' track what 'academic philosopher' tracks? 

(2) It puts the use of 'philosopher' out of sync with its usage in the general public, who often use it in a broader sense and an evaluative sense. This contributes to a disconnect between the public and philosophy. [When the public thinks of a philosopher they do not generally think of someone who writes papers about whether lumpl and goliath are identical objects]

(3) It narrows the scope of what will receive academic attention in philosophy to a narrow subset of people (a subset which, as has been emphasized lately, is not very diverse). 

(4) [This seem to be part of your professor's point] It makes the meaning of 'philosopher' disconnected with the properties such as 'producing most of the best work of philosophical value.' This leaves us without a helpful word to refer to those who are not academic philosophers but who produce work of great philosophical value. It also implicitly removes this as an ideal for a[n academic] philosopher.

(5) Along these lines, because of the narrow scope, the exemplary philosopher now becomes more of a researcher (emphasizing 'work' in that sense) as opposed to the exemplary philosopher being someone who lives well and does not just research well: most people would not take Martin Luther King to be an exemplary philosopher merely because of what he wrote. Notably, the same goes for Socrates.

 

 

Dumbnamechange has made some very good points that I think weaken some of these complaints, namely that we do not need a special word to perform some of these functions: adequate descriptions should do. There are also reasons to be wary about evaluatively valenced terms, since they can be used to set boundaries in a much more malicious way. Additionally, the traditional evaluative use probably is entangled with the conception of the philosopher as a genius, which is itself entangled in our biases about gender, race and so on. For that reason, the narrow use might be helpful in the same way that emphasizing actual research in our vision of what a philosopher is can help tone down the influence of implicit bias in our judgment. One doesn't have to be a genius, just a researcher. This relates to the remarks you close on: while the bare word 'philosopher' is not perhaps always straightforwardly evaluative, the non-evaluative content becomes important when we attach evaluative modifiers. There is definitely an important evaluative element of 'philosopher' in that sense even among those who use it to mean 'academic philosopher': e.g. 'Derrida is a charlatan, not a real philosopher,' 'Saul Kripke is the greatest philosopher since Kant' The evaluative use often comes into play more indirectly, such as when sorting 'good' and 'bad' philosophy apart which is more common than sorting into than 'good' and 'bad' philosophers. The evaluative dimension is still very much live even in the academic use of 'philosopher' though, for these reasons (even if no evaluative terms would appear in the dictionary definition which might be something like 'Someone who works in a philosophy department as a professor'). 

Edited March 20, 2015 by Monadology

[rednegativity]

But isn't there a stronger difference between a philosopher and 'Someone who works in a philosophy department as a professor'...? In fact, I would say that "academic" and "philosopher" are two completely independent names, but it is best to write a writing sample on someone who deserves both names.

 

Look at Plato's original account of a philosopher, which (1) is not at all equivalent with the popular or the academic conception of the term, and (2) has nothing to do with the reputation or pedigree that comes with a professorship. The pursuit of wisdom as such is sometimes absent even in academic departments, since unfortunately academic "philosophy" occasionally becomes stilled and dogmatic (a quick glance at any period in the history of philosophy will demonstrate this). And if Kant had published the Critique of Pure Reason without a professorship, we wouldn't say that he was not a philosopher. But then, it's extremely useful that he did have a professorship, because it means he was subject to criticism at the time which demanded him to clarify his positions and contribute to the literature.

 

It's still always best to write on someone who is both "academic" (professional) and a "philosopher" properly understood for a writing sample. It's much more important to engage with a true philosopher, because the experience of writing will prove more worthwhile. And it's worth writing on someone "academic" not only to appeal to authority, but precisely because the academic philosophers have already been subject to peer-review and focus in a way that you won't find outside the tradition. 

[Dumbnamechange]

[1] In my experience, people in academic philosophy normally don't call Martin Luther King, Jr., a "philosopher." I'll operate under the assumption that my experience lines up with the reality of how the word is used in academic philosophy. 

[2] Is philosopher one of those words that is not value-neutral? Do we (in academic philosophy) use philosopher to mean not only all the descriptions I have given above, but also something to the effect of, "Someone worthy of special attention in academic philosophy" (or something to that effect)? "Someone whose work is worthy of our serious attention, whose work is properly the subject of a philosophy student's undergraduate thesis, etc."? "Someone whose work is good"?

[1] OK--that's interesting. I used to say MLK was not really a philosopher: I said that in a room full of my undergraduate faculty and was roundly bucked at. Because I'm a proud jerk, I thereafter researched into why they were so adamant that he was a philosopher ("in their sense," even though "their sense" is the same sense as everyone else's but with tighter assertability conditions). That's where I came into pretty much everything and every point I've made in this thread. Especially (i) the evidence I've already linked into this thread, and (ii) the post mortem canonization into the history of philosophy--I think--justifies the title.

 

[2] This is what I tried to introduce several posts above. From the start (you can check), I've only been relaying a certain position that I think is most common in academia. I'm interested in going down the other road, where "philosopher" is an inherently normative term, and everyone should be held up to it to better or worse degrees. (Well, actually, because of my Wittgensteinian tendencies, I'm more inclined to say that everyone has philosophical impulses/neuroses, and these are a bad thing, which "philosophers" study/cure like a cancer.) This would force philosophy departments to be less cloistered. 

 

[3] In your first paragraph, you say that meaning is simply "that which is understood." In your second, you say that understanding is empirical and therefore can't be used to determine meaning. 

 

[*] As for the idea that "linguistic experts" etc should be determiners of the "proper" meaning of a term instead of the population majority... Perhaps, but there are two different senses of what is proper here. Imagine that there is an isolated small community within a larger community. Imagine that the linguistic experts have agreed on the right way to speak. In the smaller community within the larger one, 100% of people prior to their decision had been speaking in the "wrong way." 10% of people in the community have read the manual the linguistic experts sent out and begin speaking the correct way. In one sense, they are speaking properly because they are following rules. In another sense, they are speaking nonsense because no one around them understands them. Even if I were to contend that there is a "right" way and a "wrong" way to use words, objectively, there still may be cases in which it is appropriate for one to use the word the wrong way - when it facilitates understanding. And the conditions are not just "ideas in the person's head, words in a dictionary, etc." It depends not only on ideas in the person's head, but also the ideas in the head of the person or persons to which they are speaking.

 

I don't disagree that it would be meaningless to randomly say "Hello" mid conversation. How does this in any way show what I've said to be extremely naive? In that case, the understanding is only on the end of the speaker. The context has to be appropriate and the listeners as well. You've said it's naive to think that successful communication of ideas = successful use of words. Then the examples you gave were not successful communication of ideas, so I don't see how they were relevant. I know there are epistemic problems here and it is clearly much more complicated. I know there are some problems with my view of meaning and that representational views bottom out in things being essentially meaningless in a sense. I don't have any emotional attachment for there needing to exist some objective meaning. If linguistic experts should be able to decide the proper usage of terms, their criteria for decision making should be things like removing ambiguity, making key distinctions - all for the purpose of creating a language that maximizes effective communication, or most efficiently enables speakers to get their ideas across. In contexts where the linguists' rules failed to do that, it would be appropriate to break them.

 

[3] No, I said popular understanding [i.e. that one sense as a matter of fact is quantifiably more popular than others] is empirical.

 

[*] Ian, you might be interested in this too. I think one way to clarify the position I've defended is with an analogy to epistemic pragmatism/behaviorism, wherein there is no distinction between "truth" and "assertable beyond reproach," or the like. I think this kind of pragmatism fails in epistemology but fares a lot better in language (between "correct usage" and "utterable beyond reproach"). I think it is just a historical, empirical fact that popular usage of a term bows to expert usage, not the other way around; this is part of what makes expertise expertise.

 

But, qualiafreak, I think you've already stipulated too much in your example to say, "In another sense, they are speaking nonsense because no one around them understands them." The fact that, as a matter of contingency, a bunch of people (but not everyone around them, only 90%) don't yet understand them but in principle could, I think, shows that they are by definition not speaking nonsense. Nonsense has no sense, but not only does their speech have a sense--which is sufficient enough for not being nonsense--but that the public could readily interpret them, pushes your example into overkill.

Also, on "hello" and the performative utterances: No, they in fact can communicate the intentions of the speaker perfectly well but become meaningless/nonsense/infelicitous for, as you yourself mention, contextual reasons--not for a failure to reveal intentions; which is to concede that the communication of ideas/intentions is not the sole criteria for meaning -- my entire case. I chose "hello" because the relevant intention is so simple that it cannot fail to be communicated and understood, so it fails for other reasons; understanding intentions =/= understanding meaning (which should be obvious because "meaning" can mean "use," "purpose," "role," "consequence," "felicity," "representation," "extension," "intension," and a bunch of other things; "intentions" is just maybe the weakest but fairly intuitive reduction to go for, hence why I call it naive).

 

That said, I have said from the start that we should pay attention to what kind of linguistic mistake is being made. **What I've been saying all along** In the case of the "philosopher" example, applying the term can be a conversational mistake even when the extension is correct, so long as it suboptimally implies the speaker's intentions (which it does in the "broad," complimentary sense of "philosopher," since the "broad" sense is equally if not more often used as an insult). My whole point is that we should not (over-)think but look at the way people actually use the term "philosopher," see that it's often in fact derogatory (has been for millennia), and then we can agree that whatever "broad" sense we're talking about does not even maximize effective communication but promotes misinterpretation/disregard--whereas some nearby, intended compliment would work perfectly; the mistake, then, is not going for the nearby compliment (this pretty deductively follows). 

 

(1) Adding the adjective 'academic' to 'philosopher' already clearly narrows the scope to precisely the typical academic usage of 'philosopher'. Why make 'philosopher' track what 'academic philosopher' tracks? 

(2) It puts the use of 'philosopher' out of sync with its usage in the general public, who often use it in a broader sense and an evaluative sense. This contributes to a disconnect between the public and philosophy. [When the public thinks of a philosopher they do not generally think of someone who writes papers about whether lumpl and goliath are identical objects]

(3) It narrows the scope of what will receive academic attention in philosophy to a narrow subset of people (a subset which, as has been emphasized lately, is not very diverse). 

(4) [This seem to be part of your professor's point] It makes the meaning of 'philosopher' disconnected with the properties such as 'producing most of the best work of philosophical value.' This leaves us without a helpful word to refer to those who are not academic philosophers but who produce work of great philosophical value. It also implicitly removes this as an ideal for a[n academic] philosopher.

(5) Along these lines, because of the narrow scope, the exemplary philosopher now becomes more of a researcher (emphasizing 'work' in that sense) as opposed to the exemplary philosopher being someone who lives well and does not just research well: most people would not take Martin Luther King to be an exemplary philosopher merely because of what he wrote. Notably, the same goes for Socrates. 

So, yeah, I think we agree on a lot, so I'll just point out some things to see what you think.

On (1), there are clearly people writing on the exact same historical figures, participating in the exact same dialogue as academic philosophers, who nevertheless aren't a part of academia; "philosopher," then, can include both them and the academics. For example, Richard Rorty was "excommunicated" from academic philosophy, but remained a philosopher (in part), and remains a key figure, staking out a key territory of the philosophical landscape (even if just as a punching-bag, but hey, that's what most philosophers become). Alain De Botton, I think--I'm not sure if he holds a position in a formal institution--would be another example.

On (2) and (3): I mostly agree, and have already said as much. I mean, it's a PR strategy, plain and simple; one that is probably failing. You later say stuff like "Derrida is a charlatan, not a real philosopher" is an evaluative use of the term, but I think it's actually performatively constructing a descriptive use of the term, to just demarcate the kind of respect-for-the-arcane academics want apart from what (i) the public is more liable to ridicule and (ii) academics don't want to spend their time studying/attacking. (I know the terms "respect" and "ridicule" suggest evaluative, but I think if you think it through, you can see what I mean; it's a detaching from any evaluative application of the term.) I think we are still very much in agreement here.

 

But seriously, come on, guys: "the exemplary philosopher being someone who lives well and does not just research well." You're just being a mouthpiece for Plato here. You are not talking about exemplary philosophers but exemplary human beings. What has anything about philosophy characteristically have to do with effectively making you a better human being? This is pure rhetoric -- maybe necessary in the time of the Sophists, but it's been laughable nonsense for the past two centuries at least. I don't know what kind of education forms an ubermensch, but we should hold ourselves to some modicrum of integrity and screen-off the philosopher's bias in ethics. ("Look, I'm a philosopher, I study what it means to lead a great life, and I can tell you with an expertise you'll find nowhere else that I alone hold the key.") No one who hasn't sipped the Kool-Aid of PHIL 101 equates "philosopher" with "great person". Period. Go through your history books, look at all the great figures, and see whether "philosopher" even seems, even on a stretch, apt. How many will you find?

[Dumbnamechange]

Update: approaching 5,000 words. If we keep this up for a few more days, I can maybe edit this sucker into the first draft of my thesis.

[Electric Anxiety]

Sooo,

I would like to hear about any updates in your discussion with your professor Phenofun if there is any.

Also updates later regarding your thesis and how you use Pollan I'd like to hear about as well

[Monadology]

 

 

On (1), there are clearly people writing on the exact same historical figures, participating in the exact same dialogue as academic philosophers, who nevertheless aren't a part of academia; "philosopher," then, can include both them and the academics. For example, Richard Rorty was "excommunicated" from academic philosophy, but remained a philosopher (in part), and remains a key figure, staking out a key territory of the philosophical landscape (even if just as a punching-bag, but hey, that's what most philosophers become). Alain De Botton, I think--I'm not sure if he holds a position in a formal institution--would be another example.

 

Yeah, that seems like a good counterpoint. 

 

 

 

On (2) and (3): I mostly agree, and have already said as much. I mean, it's a PR strategy, plain and simple; one that is probably failing. You later say stuff like "Derrida is a charlatan, not a real philosopher" is an evaluative use of the term, but I think it's actually performatively constructing a descriptive use of the term, to just demarcate the kind of respect-for-the-arcane academics want apart from what (i) the public is more liable to ridicule and (ii) academics don't want to spend their time studying/attacking. (I know the terms "respect" and "ridicule" suggest evaluative, but I think if you think it through, you can see what I mean; it's a detaching from any evaluative application of the term.) I think we are still very much in agreement here.

 

I'm certainly not sure what a good PR strategy for philosophy is! Just to be clear, and you might have gathered this, I don't know whether or not I think any of the reasons I gave are good ones. I just listed ones I thought people might have. 

 

As to the charlatan stuff/real philosopher, I'm not sure I follow you as to why it is merely descriptive. It sounds like you think the idea is that the goal is just to draw a line that excludes people like Derrida because the public sees them as ridiculous and to have an excuse not to read them. I think I understand why that doesn't imply any evaluation  (it's just strategically aimed at PR goals/laziness goals?). That said, some people might mean it that way, but I'm pretty sure there are quite a few people who are not just talking like that for strategic reasons. 

 

 

 

But seriously, come on, guys: "the exemplary philosopher being someone who lives well and does not just research well." You're just being a mouthpiece for Plato here. You are not talking about exemplary philosophers but exemplary human beings. What has anything about philosophy characteristically have to do with effectively making you a better human being? This is pure rhetoric -- maybe necessary in the time of the Sophists, but it's been laughable nonsense for the past two centuries at least. I don't know what kind of education forms an ubermensch, but we should hold ourselves to some modicrum of integrity and screen-off the philosopher's bias in ethics. ("Look, I'm a philosopher, I study what it means to lead a great life, and I can tell you with an expertise you'll find nowhere else that I alone hold the key.") No one who hasn't sipped the Kool-Aid of PHIL 101 equates "philosopher" with "great person". Period. Go through your history books, look at all the great figures, and see whether "philosopher" even seems, even on a stretch, apt. How many will you find?

 

I think this is a fairly crude reading of (5), I probably wasn't clear: I didn't mean for (5) to suggest that philosophy as it has traditionally been practiced by the sorts of people who have been called philosophers (e.g. Kant, Hume, Aquinas etc...) has a privileged grasp of ethical truth and that only people from that class can even begin to live well. What I meant in (5) was the point of view of someone who is suggesting a much more revisionary concept of 'philosopher' which doesn't presume such a privilege, though there is probably still some intended connection between being reflective about the human condition in some way and the respects in which the person was an exemplary human being. Another way is to take (5) to be saying 'look, some people live well in a way that is revolutionary or in some way philosophically significant, you've admitted that MLK was like that, so why not call him a philosopher?' That doesn't presume that the person did 'philosophy' and thereby learned to live well, but more like the reverse and the suggestion is to make room for those people to be called philosophers as well. I'm pretty sure your 'Why not just use the appropriate adjectives to directly laud them instead of using 'philosopher'' response is going to press pretty heavily against either of those, though. 

 

That said, I'm not an advocate of (5) (especially not in the way you took it). Kierkegaard whipped me out of philosophical elitism years ago. The only way (5) has any grip on me is indirectly as a kind of 'what the heck is philosophy even good for given what it describes (especially these days)' sentiment, which occasionally grips me. 

Edited March 21, 2015 by Monadology

[ianfaircloud]

Thanks for your response, Ian. You're right that I think the idea of reclaiming a word, as in the case of 'queer,' is tangential. 

 

Part of the reason I raised my question was because it seems to me that your philosophy professor was doing something closer to the reclamation case than, say, trying to give the meaning of the word. So I was surprised that your response was "Words aren't assigned meaning that way." The case is a bit muddled because your professor is working with a use of 'philosopher' that is an genuine live usage, albeit not one that is very active in academic philosophy: identifying individuals whose lives and thought exemplify philosophical wisdom. Still, I had taken it that your professor was advocating for that usage, not saying what the popular usage was within academia. I wasn't there of course, so I may have misunderstood!

 

There seem to be a number of considerations that weigh against the narrow, academic use of the word:

 

(1) Adding the adjective 'academic' to 'philosopher' already clearly narrows the scope to precisely the typical academic usage of 'philosopher'. Why make 'philosopher' track what 'academic philosopher' tracks? 

(2) It puts the use of 'philosopher' out of sync with its usage in the general public, who often use it in a broader sense and an evaluative sense. This contributes to a disconnect between the public and philosophy. [When the public thinks of a philosopher they do not generally think of someone who writes papers about whether lumpl and goliath are identical objects]

(3) It narrows the scope of what will receive academic attention in philosophy to a narrow subset of people (a subset which, as has been emphasized lately, is not very diverse). 

(4) [This seem to be part of your professor's point] It makes the meaning of 'philosopher' disconnected with the properties such as 'producing most of the best work of philosophical value.' This leaves us without a helpful word to refer to those who are not academic philosophers but who produce work of great philosophical value. It also implicitly removes this as an ideal for a[n academic] philosopher.

(5) Along these lines, because of the narrow scope, the exemplary philosopher now becomes more of a researcher (emphasizing 'work' in that sense) as opposed to the exemplary philosopher being someone who lives well and does not just research well: most people would not take Martin Luther King to be an exemplary philosopher merely because of what he wrote. Notably, the same goes for Socrates.

 

 

Dumbnamechange has made some very good points that I think weaken some of these complaints, namely that we do not need a special word to perform some of these functions: adequate descriptions should do. There are also reasons to be wary about evaluatively valenced terms, since they can be used to set boundaries in a much more malicious way. Additionally, the traditional evaluative use probably is entangled with the conception of the philosopher as a genius, which is itself entangled in our biases about gender, race and so on. For that reason, the narrow use might be helpful in the same way that emphasizing actual research in our vision of what a philosopher is can help tone down the influence of implicit bias in our judgment. One doesn't have to be a genius, just a researcher. This relates to the remarks you close on: while the bare word 'philosopher' is not perhaps always straightforwardly evaluative, the non-evaluative content becomes important when we attach evaluative modifiers. There is definitely an important evaluative element of 'philosopher' in that sense even among those who use it to mean 'academic philosopher': e.g. 'Derrida is a charlatan, not a real philosopher,' 'Saul Kripke is the greatest philosopher since Kant' The evaluative use often comes into play more indirectly, such as when sorting 'good' and 'bad' philosophy apart which is more common than sorting into than 'good' and 'bad' philosophers. The evaluative dimension is still very much live even in the academic use of 'philosopher' though, for these reasons (even if no evaluative terms would appear in the dictionary definition which might be something like 'Someone who works in a philosophy department as a professor'). 

 

Monadology, thanks for the reply again. I've used the words academic philosophy to refer to the community of people who are working in contemporary anglophone philosophy departments (let's just call this the "narrow context" for clarity's sake). (That's as far as my own experience goes, hence the over-narrow use of the term.) My empirical claim is that ordinary speakers in that narrow context, when they speak of "philosopher" without further qualification, typically are referring to a narrow group of living or dead people (often academicians) who share some common projects, or maybe a common methodology, or a similar writing style, etc. They are typically referring to something fairly narrow. That narrow use is probably not the commonest use of the term among English speakers generally. So it would be pretty outrageous for me, in the context of legal academia, for instance, to use "philosopher" without qualification to mean something this narrow. Though in academia generally, I think the term is still fairly narrow. Outside of academia, the term takes an even broader meaning. Among the general public (the "wider context"), the term has a very broad meaning that, at least in my experience, certainly includes people like Martin Luther King, Jr. It may even include people like Bob Dylan.

 

Most of these are empirical claims. These are my experiences of how the word philosopher is used in different contexts. My view is that the meaning of philosopher varies according to context. It's correct to say in the wider context that Bob Dylan is a philosopher. It's incorrect in the narrow context.

 

I think it makes sense that people in the narrow context have a term that refers only to this narrow group. Perhaps that term should be "academic philosopher" for some of the reasons we have discussed. However, in my experience in the narrow context, the term is simply, "philosopher." Of course, when those same speakers leave the narrow context -- say, in writing an editorial for the New York Times -- they can't take for granted that their readers use the word "philosopher" to mean that same narrow group. Indeed, the word doesn't mean that, in the wider context.

 

You'll never hear me use the word "philosopher" in a wider context to refer to the narrow group. In this thread, the context is unclear, particularly because we're actually having a discussion about what the word philosopher means. So to be more clear, I've used the words "academic philosophy" to make it more clear that I am referring to the narrow context. I've treated this thread as the wider context.

 

Monadology, this has been a fun thread for me. I want to express some mild disagreement with what you have said above. I say mild, because I'm really not sure whether I have this right. But my thought is that I disagree with your points (2) and (3). I think one answer to the problem in point (2), i.e. that people working in the narrow context are "out of touch" with people in the wider context, is that people from the narrow context need to understand that meaning changes from context to context. This is the problem of jargon. People from the narrow context need to do a much better job avoiding use of jargon outside of the narrow context. The term philosopher is a term of jargon: it has a special, technical meaning in an academic field (the narrow context). The way to alienate those outside of the field is to use a term of jargon without recognizing that it's a term of jargon. This is why I say what I do above: that you will never catch me using the word "philosopher" in a wider context to mean the narrow group. To do so is to foster an unhealthy and unwarranted kind of intellectual exclusivity, because it implies that the only philosophers (as the term is used in the wider context) are philosophers (as the term is used in the narrow context).

 

Imagine how incredible it would be to claim that the only Bob Dylans are Bernard Williamses! But it would not be incredible to say that Bernard Williams is a kind of Bob Dylan. The former expresses truths in a way that's clearer to some of us than the latter. Or maybe it's the reverse: the latter expresses truths in a way that's more clearer to some of us than the former.

 

The problem of (3) is real, but I don't think that the problem is mostly about people in the narrow context using the word philosopher as a term of jargon. I think the problem is mostly that, speaking in the narrow context, people have an attitude like this one: "Don't study or appreciate the work of nonphilosophers." That's a very unhealthy attitude that does alienate people, and it's probably responsible in part for the "increasing irrelevance of philosophy to public/culture at large," which was voted in a recent poll on Brian Leiter's blog to be the third most important issue in the profession.

Edited March 21, 2015 by ianfaircloud

[Dumbnamechange]

Most of these are empirical claims. These are my experiences of how the word philosopher is used in different contexts. My view is that the meaning of philosopher varies according to context. It's correct to say in the wider context that Bob Dylan is a philosopher. It's incorrect in the narrow context.

 

...Monadology, this has been a fun thread for me. I want to express some mild disagreement with what you have said above. I say mild, because I'm really not sure whether I have this right. But my thought is that I disagree with your points (2) and (3). I think one answer to the problem in point (2), i.e. that people working in the narrow context are "out of touch" with people in the wider context, is that people from the narrow context need to understand that meaning changes from context to context. This is the problem of jargon. People from the narrow context need to do a much better job avoiding use of jargon outside of the narrow context. The term philosopher is a term of jargon: it has a special, technical meaning in an academic field (the narrow context). The way to alienate those outside of the field is to use a term of jargon without recognizing that it's a term of jargon. This is why I say what I do above: that you will never catch me using the word "philosopher" in a wider context to mean the narrow group. To do so is to foster an unhealthy and unwarranted kind of intellectual exclusivity, because it implies that the only philosophers (as the term is used in the wider context) are philosophers (as the term is used in the narrow context).

 

Imagine how incredible it would be to claim that the only Bob Dylans are Bernard Williamses! But it would not be incredible to say that Bernard Williams is a kind of Bob Dylan. The former expresses truths in a way that's clearer to some of us than the latter. Or maybe it's the reverse: the latter expresses truths in a way that's more clearer to some of us than the former.

Thinking of this as an empirical hypothesis as you say, would there be any empirical difference between there being a second "wide" sense to 'philosopher', and there just being a habit of applying the univocal title metaphorically (as in the Dylan example), under the varying assertability conditions of loose-talk?