Turns out a lot of what we consider common sense today is things that were considered the cutting edge of human thought in the 1950s.
You know how its easy to figure out that just because you saw something, and are sure that what you saw makes your conclusion true, and thus is real knowledge? Well turns out nope, correlation is not causation, and the guy who explained that only managed to do so in 1950.
1950 is when we figured out that just because one thing happens right after another thing, does not guarantee that the first thing is causing the second thing. Sometimes we just get lucky.
You know the whole speech is violence and you can r*pe a woman by saying r*pe out loud? That's a misinterpretation of a paper written in 1993 that is talking about how speech itself is an action because there is an intent with which something is spoken. An argument that was once used to suggest that all porn by its very nature is the subjugation and subordination of women.
Then there is the question of moral luck, a paper by Thomas Nagel from 1979 which shows us that a big part of being a moral person is just being lucky. You never got into that accident which caused somebody to die. You never had that one bad day where that fist fight trying to defend yourself accidentally killed the person you were fighting. Philosophers previously argued that only what you cannot and can do is moral. Morality is the decisions you make, but so much of moral judgement is based on things out of your control that moral luck becomes an actual thing. That if we were to ignore moral luck, we would end up in societies that we consider undeniably immoral.
For example - letting all the weed users out of jail en masse causing an increase in other unrelated crimes.
Then there is a famous paper from I don't remember when and I don't remember by who which proves that inductive reasoning, that gut feeling works and makes perfect sense, and that someone saying they have two black balls in their drawer then pointing to a red shoe in the room to prove it makes sense, because the existence of a red shoe outside the drawer actually increases the probability of there being two black balls in the drawer even if by a minuscule amount.
Let's also not forget about the bits about how deep and complex philosophy is, and turns out it's not. That's continental philosophy, which for the majority of time has been a self masturbatory exercise where the author has been more focused on writing things that make them feel and sound smart than things that can be tested by the reader or anybody else for that matter.
Continental philosophy is the peak of conclusions a man can derive about the nature of the universe without having testable hypothesis. In my personal opinion by now it is in the same place as Alchemy as a real science.
Continental philosophy is crap. It is a bunch of guys going "what if" and "let's assume" about things then writing a whole book or five starting from there. It is an attempt at deep insight from a human perspective without the use of any measuring cowtools. It is as useful as poetry to be precise.
The last time the continental school did something useful was probably before the 1950s and its easy to tell that the continental school has reached its limits when only wannabe geniuses online would make 1 hour long videos about it, along with the fact that they are at best the backbone of real sciences, acting as the baseline which has long ago already been surpassed.
Psychoanalysis and critical theory are well and good for example, but it is real technical science and logic that builds up upon it. To find methods of proving the idea and the concepts. To take probability of events into account.
Truth is, philosophy has been failing for decades because the actual sciences made so many advances that for the philosopher to write anything useful would require them to actually be well read in advanced logic and analysis. Which is where the analytical school of philosophy was born, and over time this school has appeared to grow into something incomprehensible to the average person without a P.hd solely because the analytical philosophy school actually kept up with the sciences and the discoveries that they made.
You can also see the difference in the quality of analytical and continental philosophy in the quality of the societies that most espouse each type. The Americans are far more focused on and dedicated to analytical philosophy. They in turn have a society that continues to grow and prosper and make new discoveries, because they use logic to solve their problems and find insights into how the world works.
The European world meanwhile, has fallen far behind the Americans, because their entire philosophy and way of thinking is based off of a single individual having profound sounding insights about the world and how it functions that do not translate to actual output and solutions in the real world.
Continental philosophy is akin to the world of emotions while Analytical philosophy is akin to the world of reason, with the greatest horror of all being that the average person and the world embraces continental philosophy far more strongly than it does analytical philosophy, suggesting that people always want the r-slurred easier solutions that make them feel smart rather than the solutions that work but are beyond them. This is where the human ego clashes against human capability, and why we end up with those who revolutionize society with their discoveries becoming completely disconnected from everyday society altogether over time.
Now I wonder how analytical and continental philosophy explains the existence of the incel culture.
Conclusion:
Continental philosophy is people pretending to be smart. Analytical philosophy is people actually proving what they say. The human species is on average genuinely r-slurred and you can tell by the fact that even truths were being written down and becoming famous like some great and amazing profound truths in the 1950s and the average person still hasn't caught up to them so far.
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Disclaimer:
For your first issue, I think the high point of entry is a part of it. I'm unsure about the too many cooks aspect for reasons I'll get to below. But I think you hit the nail on the head.
The main thing is while it's interdisciplinary, you don't think of Logic as being something that can really be found standalone. Which, to a degree, makes sense. I can rattle off a ton of professions and majors where Logic is invaluable: computer science, the law both as an attorney and legal scholar, philosophy, writing, mathematics, theology. It sets the foundation for higher thinking at large. But if you look at universities where there is a dedicated major to it? In the US, I'm turning up very few results. In Europe you'll tend to find more, as well as some places in Asia (I've seen an odd distribution of papers come from people based out of Hong Kong, for instance). Which makes sense for an institution. You're not just teaching, you're selling, and Logic as its own discipline doesn't sell well on its face. I would disagree with that lack of value, because I think even as a minor it provides unquestionable benefit. As another thing, Logic used to be required curriculum in the 20th century, at least in America, but then was removed because of a perceived lack of social value.
So as a result, you aren't sparking young minds to really be interested in it, and you're not laying a bedrock for the average citizen to be a more potent thinker. Which means that, like you noted, there's little wiggle room unless you're doing it as your PhD, because why weigh the opinion of someone who got it as their undergrad degree and not their doctorate in something like this, and there's not a lot of people doing that. So the perceived lack of practical value, despite what I would argue as a heck of a lot of evidence to the contrary and the insular culture, means that we've got a field that's kind of eating itself alive.
Now, about the "too many cooks" bit, I'm not sure if that's the case. It's more like we've got a kitchen with a handful of master chefs and a bunch of people who've only ever eaten at restaurants, if that makes sense. The real issue is that we don't have enough people who are truly engaged in advancing the field. This is where your point about criticism comes in. You're absolutely right that criticism is easier. It's way easier to poke holes in someone else's argument than to construct a watertight one yourself. And in a field like Logic, where precision and rigorous thinking are paramount, on top of academia's subculture where your reputation is the most important thing to safeguard, that criticism can be pretty brutal.
So what we end up with is a situation where you've got a small group of highly specialized experts making advancements, and a larger group of people on the periphery who can understand enough to criticize but not enough to make substantial contributions themselves. It's not that 90% of people in the field are incapable of doing anything but criticizing. The bar for making meaningful advances is so high that many don't even try. This creates a sort of feedback loop. The field becomes more insular, the advances become more specialized and harder for outsiders to understand, and the cycle continues. It's not that there are too many cooks in the kitchen. It's just that we've made the kitchen so intimidating that most people don't even try to cook.
So long as it doesn't impinge on innovation or novelty, it's one of the best approaches. Philosophy and Political Thought are great as things to talk over at cocktail hour or as establishing baselines for implementing policy and such, but sometimes it can get into the weeds and miss the important things that hit close to the human experience. Life is messy, people are tricky for a million different reasons, and sometimes if you spend your whole life looking at things under a metaphorical microscope in metaphorical lab conditions then you can forget to look up from your work, see the the world for what it is, and remember why you were analyzing something in the first place. Because if you can't put something into practice, or intend to, and it won't provide an insight that can be used down the line, then what's the point? Ideas and ideologies are a tool, and a tool that doesn't have a good use is a pretty shitty tool.
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I agree fully with your last statement. I think a high quality pragmatist would automatically account for innovation and novelty as well as being part of a pragmatic lifestyle. What I like about pragmatism is that once we are all pragmatist the best pragmatists would obviously come out on top and it makes sense for them to come out on top, because they are the best at making useful decisions taking into account how the world is.
Reading the first half of your post I feel like I accidentally came to the right conclusion. I wasn't thinking about the logic not being valued as a major aspect at all.
Honestly, I know I wasn't born during those times, but I still kind of feel like I missed out on the time of television where it was used as an educational resource to explain how things work.
One of the tragedies of humanity as a species is that we prefer being entertained over being educated. The surprising part is that the entertained group never seems to die out either.
Also I want to celebrate a little win with ya, I managed to study today without having an anxiety attack. I don't know when I started having a negative experience trying to study but I am finally passing it by and I am glad that I am.
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Heck yeah, always good to hear. Keep your chin up, keep hacking at it, admit when you're wrong so you can figure out how to be right, seek help when you need it, and you'll do just fine.
Regarding the entertainment/education part, I think it's all a state of mind. If you find something that really interests you, and you even just dabble in it as a craft or as a study to dabble in as a part time thing, then I think that's how you get around that. We have YouTube for a reason, and watching videos or lectures is incredibly beneficial. Quite frankly you could get the equivalent of a bachelor's degree by self motivated study and working through problems with how much information is online right now. We live in a time where the library of Alexandria is alive and well, and all you need to do is just have that desire to learn something. I've been getting into the swing of reading and listening anything I come across, and it doesn't just make me smarter but it also makes me feel more well-rounded and a want to learn more as opposed to learn about a certain thing.
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The only concern I have is can I get a job just knowing how to do the job but with no degree. Because I can definitely learn how to do the thing.
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I hope you had chatgpt pen that one fam
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