Theme: Reform

–“PHILOSOPHY MUST BE DRAGGED OUT OF THE IVORY TOWER AND INTO THE MARKETPLACE OF IDEAS”–

Um. I don’t think so. Unless it has a dramatic reformation.

via negativa, measurement, science, economics, and law, versus via positiva, philosophy, theology, occult, daydreaming.

While I find no difference between theorizing and philosophizing that is because I do not engage in empty verbalisms or sophisms, pseudosciences, nor the magic of ignoring costs.

Philosophy can be laundered such that philosophizing(imaginary and verbal) and theorizing (existential and actionable) are essentially identical by the use of operational language, the full accounting of costs, and a preface of the choice of goods as those of the equalitarian herd, or the hierarchical pack.

But as practiced, and as the demotion of the discipline to a peer to theology has evidenced, measuring, theorizing, philosophizing, and theologizing are simply analogous to description, deduction, induction, abduction, and guessing, using increasingly specious excuses for one’s guesswork.

The athenian tradition did not account for costs. There are two principle reasons for it:

(1) the peerage was small and wealthy with common interests – and costs were as rude then as today

(2) discussion of costs immediately changes from ideals to reals thereby self selecting into class interests

(3) mathematical idealism influenced greco-roman thought so heavily, giving such sophism an unearned legitimacy.

(4) historically religion spoke in these ideal terms, philosophy an improvement upon them, and empiricism an improvement upon philosophy, and science an improvement upon empiricism, just as ‘Testimonialism’ is an improvement upon science. (empiricism vs science distinguished by the 20th’s implementation of operational language, and testimonialism by the completion of the scientific method).

It is time for philosophy to either abandon idealism, sophism, and the ignorance of costs, or to be further demoted into the theology of ideals.

Otherwise, like theology, it cannot compete in the marketplace of ideas.

That is what the evidence shows us.

People ask me every single day what philosophy to read and I tell them ‘none of it’ other than perhaps the bookends of Aristotle and Nietzsche. The rest is all measurement, science, economics, Law, and history.

There are no crimes equal to those of abraham, saul, and mohammed in the ancient world, and marx, freud, boas, in the 19th, and adorno, derrida and foucault in the 20th. We can complain about Augustine and Aquinas as apologists, but by them the damage was done.

It is very hard to criticize archimedes, democritus, aristotle, epicurus, zeno in the ancient world, and bacon, newton, hobbes, lock, smith, hume in the modern, or poincare, maxwell, darwin, menger, pareto, spencer, nietzsche and many others in the 19th, and einstein, watson-crick, and the many others in the 20th.

Precision of our knowledge increases thereby justifying the pack, offset by counter-revolutions in denial, sophism, pseudoscience, and supernaturalism expanding the herd. And the war between neolithic feminine dysgenic herd strategy of the levant, and the bronze age masculine eugenic pack strategy of indo europeans.

Truth is undesirable to the many.

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https://www.newstatesman.com/2019/01/philosophy-must-be-dragged-out-ivory-tower-and-marketplace-ideas?