Stages of philosophical abilities

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

What stage are you?

  • Stage 1: “Philosophy is just BS”
  • Stage 2: Philosophy without rigor
  • Stage 3: Partial exposure
  • Stage 4: Exploration phase
  • Stage 5: Specialization
  • Stage 6: Philosophy with rigor
  • Stage 7: New philosophy
  • Stage 8+: The 8+ stages. Anything 8 or above.
0 voters

For some time, I have been collecting observations of my friends and other people in regards to their philosophical abilities. I have noticed “patterns” which I have formed into hiearchical stages of philosophical ability. This does not represent a serious analysis, though I imagine many will agree with it. Also, I should warn that I have not tried to find out if there has been any serious prior art on this matter. If anyone has any good references, it would be much appreciated.

Stages of philosophical thinking

  1. “Philosophy is just BS”: At this stage, philosophical thinking is not taken seriously. Usually, it is replaced by unexamined extreme scientism or a wild unexamined belief system (beyond standard religions). The ideas of individuals at this stage are so nonsensical as to be irrefutable. How some individuals, even after many many years, still manage to progress beyond this stage, could likely serve as a proof for divine intervention.

  2. Philosophy without rigor: Philosophy is considered as a way of thinking; although it may not be taken seriously as it is believed that nothing can be gained from it. In truth, nothing can be gained because the view of philosophy at this stage is devoid of consistency or rigor. No consideration is given to the work of philosophers in the past or even the notion of progress in philosophy for that matter. It is not uncommon at this stage to conclude that all philosophical thinking is non-serious, which is a rather convenient conclusion given that it results from non-serious philosophical thought. At this stage, it is important to practice thinking philosophically and to construct philosophical theories. Once sufficient practice has been made, it may be enough for some philosophically inclined elder to bluntly note the glaring and often self-stultifying logical errors in those very theories. Repeatedly. After some time, and references to other philosophers and their standard arguments, painful and slow progress into stage 3 can be made.

  3. Partial exposure: This is the first stage where any real philosophy is even touched. Philosophy is recognized as a legitimate and serious way of thinking, and it is known that some questions have been well studied by philosophers in the past. Despite this, exposure to those works at this stage is limited. At this stage, one should focus on practicing serious philosophy through dialogues and solving philosophy problems. However, once sufficient practice has been obtained, one should quickly move on to more reading rather than talking, in order to avoid stagnation at this stage.

  4. Exploration phase: The major difference between this stage and the last is the number of works actually examined. Familiarity is gained with the various disciplines of philosophy and their pivotal works, some of which have actually been read or otherwise studied. At this stage, it is best to put off specialization as much as possible until one has a clear survey of all philosophy.

  5. Specialization: After becoming exposed to a wide variety of areas, individuals at this stage begin specializing in certain disciplines of philosophy often based on their preferences. This specialization manifests as increased research, discussion, problem solving, and general thought about subtle topics in their specialty.

  6. Philosophy with rigor: Progress in this stage results entirely from attempts at greater rigor and formalism in all their arguments and thoughts. At this stage, one is said to truly begin to master the basic logic and analysis tools of philosophy. One usually begins attacking specific problems in this stage with serious results. Time should be spent writing formal and painfully rigorous arguments, examining each explicit assumption that would normally go unexamined in the earlier stages. Also, care should be taken to review and practice basic logic skills and problem solving tools. Progress is made with the solution or analysis to complex problems, culminating in a new problem, solution, or analysis.

  7. New philosophy: This stage is marked by the analysis of new and unique problems and/or solutions that is publishable in research journals. This stage is often reserved for graduate or postgraduate students of philosophy.

  8. The 8+ stages: There are several stages beyond 7 which lead to greater and greater novel contributions to philosophy.

That’s it. What are your thoughts on this? Where do you think you fall and why? I just noticed I could add a poll. Try it out.

~Kevin

2

I disagree with the ordering slightly, im an undergraduate who has studied and used logic and written pretty rigorous essays (believe it or not), but i havent specialised yet. On balance, I guess Im still a number 4. :smiley:

3

As one progresses through these stages, they gain greater rigor and formalism in their arguments. I do not dispute this. The rigor that I refer to in stage 6 is in preparation for publishable work. Although undergraduates in philosophy courses can write A+ papers, the best of them cannot hold a candle to a well written paper of a graduate philosophy student. That sort of rigor comes from attacking specific problems in all there sublte depth. Without specializing you will find yourself doing 20 things poorly rather than 1 or 2 things well.

Also, as a personal justification, I have consistently witnessed specialization before students were able to begin attaining the “pre-publishable” rigor I described.

~Kevin

4

You do know once you have studied all there is to read on the subjects of philosophy a realisation occurs that Philosophy is just BS, or at least just a form of mental masturbation of your intellectual falus.

Almost all the stuff learned at the stages 4, 5, & 6 is BS. While 7 is groundbreaking BS it’s still BS, all you’re doing is adding more new BS to steps 4, 5, & 6 for the next generation of philosopher to learn and then discard. Philosophy to a large extent is died to dieing, as most if not all the questions have been replaced by new questions that are expressible in the sciences, or at the point were there’s nowhere else to take the propositions as all the directions of study, research and cogitation have be made barren. Reason and logic isn’t enough to solve all the philosophical conundrums, I’ve always believed that once you have hit the paradox you’ve gone about as far as you can hope to go.

Science is the only hope for Philosophy as we have imagined all there is to imagined until more evidence becomes available to us (and we all know what Hume made of Empirical Evidence, so my statement is fundamentally a paradox). Metaphysics is dead, logical & reason are just tools and not the solution in themselves. All they can do is sort and categorise the data, once you run out of data there’s nowhere else to go except around in a circle, philosophy has been chasing its tail for a while now. Most of the ground breaking and philosophy destroying facts are coming now from things like Zoology (we can see our own patterns in other animals and because we’re more detached its easier to see them as they are and not as we would like them to be), Psychology and Physics (including mathematical disciplines). The time of the pure philosopher has coming to an end, the lessons learned from philosophy must be applied to a field of endeavour in the sciences. The only true lesson philosophy can still teach each new generation is, ‘Cogito ergo sum’, ‘I think therefore I am’, or as I feel a better translation closer to the sprit of the Latin, ‘I have experiences & thoughts therefore I know I existence.’ It’s the only undeniable fact you’ll learn from philosophy as scepticism can destroy all others.

5

This analysis of philosophy is unscientific and according to your initial premise that “philosophy is just BS”, we can conclude that any philosophical analysis of philosophy is also BS.

But to be honest, you then mention that only “almost all” philosophy is BS. Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I am still left with the impression that your basic premise is that of extreme scientism or some science-centric flavor of logical positivism, which could be summarized as, “only scientific theories are valid”, which as you see is a self-stultifying statement.

Scepticism is but one prevaling theory among many. To honestly analyze it, you must do so within the context of these other theories, which leads you back to philosophy. As a physics graduate student, I find as much use in philosophical analysis as I do mathematics. That is to say, that within the confines of physics, pure math is as useless as philosophy. Only in the application of philosophical or mathematical results do we find a use for these systems in physics. Occam’s razor as a heuristic device is a famous example, but most philosophical results are generated ad hoc when creating a methodology to solve a problem. Upon solving a physics problem I often ask “how do I know what I have is the truth”, which is not a physics question. I am lead to a brief philosophical analysis of what I mean by truth in the context of this problem, and then I apply it to what is physically observable. Whenever I start a problem, my first step is to state and analyze my explicit assumptions. Which assumptions are valid and which are superfluous? When are too many assumptions bad? Physics does not analyze these questions, save for unphysical assumptions.

Science as a problem solving system can only address problems which are physically testable. If we naively draw an anology of Godel’s incompleteness theorem to scientific problem solving systems, it seems suggestive that there may exist problems that are not scientifically testable. If this is the case, so long as there exist questions whose solutions can never be proven nor disproven scientifically, there will always be systems trying to analyze them in a non-scientific manner.

Now to be a little more rigorous we might ask whether there exists such questions outside of axiomatic systesm. Before you even answer, be it yes, no, or anything under the sun, you are not working within a scientific problem solving system, and thus by the act of responding you legitamize the analysis of such questions (although not necessarily the questions themself).

Rather than saying “philosophy is just BS” or “philosophy is not BS”, it seems alot more fruitfull to ask “is philosophy BS, and if so what exactly is BS?” If you come out with a blanket overgeneralizing statement then you have done something wrong.

~Kevin

6

No. 3 for me if numbers of works examined is the critera for moving beyond this point, obvioulsy tho this is all relative and i’m assuming nobody can say that there is a right number of works to have studied, so i can only assume that relative to others here that i am below their ability, having only within the past couple of years begun to look further than my own beliefs and philosophies and considered the works of others.

7

The key here is “number of works examined”, not simply read. I am quite certain that there are people in this forum who consider themself beyond the exploration phase because they “read lots of stuff” and can quote Nietzche without effort. However, upon conversing with them, I would likely conclude that the number of works they have examined with some rigor is very small, placing them in only the partial exposure stage. In some cases the number of works examined can be zero, despite all that they read. These are the worst people to deal with as they often fall into the “philosophy is BS” stage. These are the people that believe they have gone beyond stage 8 (even though they have not published) and have found it all to be garbage. Like I said, these are the worst people to deal with.

I find the number of works examined really depends on the individual more than anything. There is no set number and there shouldn’t be. To determine when you have passed beyond the exploration stage you must ask yourself, “do I have a basic grasp of what philosophy is about? Have I examined the fundamentals in each discipline?”

The exploration phase can take awhile, but don’t let this dissuade you. It can actually be quite alot of fun.

I am curious about this. Before you started examining other beliefs and philosophies, do you now view yourself as having been in stage 1? If so then what were your exact views of philosophy and what triggered you to consider more?

~Kevin

8

Yep and as i havent examined any numbers of works (according to the criteria laid out), i cant be at stage 4. I recognise that examined is a given requirement for no.4 and thought i implied so in my post… :confused: No… am i missing ur point? I apreciate that we dont fit into catagories like they have been laid out hence me using the word ‘if’ … if this is the criteria …

Yeah i do bits of stages 1 to 5, but according to that list i am at stage 3 … sorry if i havent understood you

9

Yep and as i havent examined any numbers of works according to the criteria laid out, i cant be at stage 4. I recognise that examined is a given requirement for no.4 and thought i implied so in my post… :confused: No… am i missing ur point? I apreciate that we dont fit into catagories like they have been laid out hence me using the word ‘if’ … if this is the criteria …

Hah, I was just using your post to rant. Don’t worry about it. However I do have a comment on your last sentence,

Each stage represents a general description of the overall abilities of the person at that stage. Simply using a little rigor, does not make you stage 6, simply having a preference does not make you stage 5, and finding out that you disagree with something so much as to call it BS does not make you stage 1. To direct my comment more to what you are saying, the “specialization” refers to by analogy the specialization that undergraduates in philosophy often experience just before they graduate or in the begining of graduate school. This same phenomena is seen in the sciences as well. First you start off studying everything under the sun, but eventually you focus your efforts on something that you particularly like, but with the mind of someone who has already surveyed everything else.

Personally growing up as a student interested in physics, I knew that I wanted to do particle physics long before I had properly surveyed physics (think middle school). I read books here and there and tried to do real particle physics, but it was not serious. Only after I understood basic physics could I really begin to attack problems specific to particle physics, and even now they are still crude attempts.

Specialization necessarily refers to the mindset one has acheived after surveying philosophy. If you have that mindset, then you have that mindset. Period. You cannot “do bits of it” as you say. Of course, this is all just according to my list, which I clearly stated initially as a non-serious effort. Though, as there seems to be a hint of truth, I may try to analyze it more seriously someday. Constructive criticisms are thus welcomed.

~Kevin

10

“Oh don’t let the eternal sparkle die in the small measure of the law” - P.Klee

Anyway your view of philosophy with so much emphasis on rigour and logic (too which it could be easily argued “which logic?”) seems to me too much on the analitic side for my tastes

:stuck_out_tongue:

11

Do not confuse logic with rigor. Rigor is just being careful and accurate in what you are doing. For example, refraining from making rash over generalizations is a step towards a more rigorous analysis.

Also, do not confuse analysis with logic. If you take the analysis out of philosophy, then what are you left with? Based on my experience, I have often seen rigorous analysis go hand in hand with those who are philosophically able. Now in the spirit of rigor, I shall note that this is merely anecdotal and does not serve as a proof in any way. In fact that can be said of this entire thread, but that is all that I want. Responses and thoughts like yours based on your opinions and experiences.

Now as for “what logic” that is a very good and reasonalbe question. By “basic logic” I am merely refering to a set of tools often used to aid analysis of, or in the construction or deconstruction of arguments. Most of these tools I will bluntly say are derived from aristotlean logic, but I would be more specific and call this subset ‘the logic used in most philosophical debates’. I should note that these tools are used by the earlier stages, yet what distinguishes stage 6 from the earlier stages is the rigour of analysis as well as a greater mastery of the sublte applications of those logic tools (specifically to advanced problems that are nearly publishable). This type of mastery is not seen on even the best philosphy papers in an intro philosophy course.

~Kevin

12

Don’t worry I’m not confusing with logic neither analysis nor rigor.
My statement on you being too close to analytic philosophy it is not due to such a confusion but by the fact that usually those are values that are taken more in consideration in the english-speaking world rather than in the continental.

Infact it is a remarkable fact that the word “immaginative” doesn’t appear even once in the whole a text. It would have been considered an unforgivable mistake by any good lover of the late heidegger. :wink:

I don’t believe this was a distraction on your side. In section i.e N.6 you assert that the innovation in philosophy is giving a new solution or creating and analyzing new problems.
Yet it seems that such new problems and solution come from mastering and applying the philosophical tools.

You never seem to consider instead the invention of new ways of arguing, or the power that an immaginative or creative argument can have. The history of philosophy is full of great immaginative philosopher which were not so rigorous:

Foucault’s ambitious archeological and genealogical works which historical parts were highly criticised.

Nietzsche as a whole.

Brentano thesis of teh irreducibility of the intentional.

Heck even Kant for some is not as rigorous as he would want us to think…

Obviously you can reply that solving problems is in itself a creative act.

But if such It will be you answer I would be forced to reply to you that there is still a difference between the Hack and the Genius.

13

I think the order is completely wrong.

Philosophy is BS should be n.o 9. philosophy is about argument, people invent stuff and argue about their inventions, and that’s all philosophy is. it is just an invention.
I, even though I have no formal “philosophical” education, i.e no degree in philosophy, I can argue just as well as any “great” philosopher. Their ideas are interesting, that’s all. Philosophy is just some interesting nonsense.

14

I’m not into extreme anything and especially scientism, I’m just interested in things that a group of people can do together following some simple rules and all end up with the same answer. And I’m certainly not interested in Logical Positivism. Which brings me right to the point about why I think most of Philosophy is BS. Logic dictates a proposition is one of the following states true, false or unknown. Logical Positivism is fundamentally flawed as the whole verifiable principle is unverifiable, or leads to statements that are circular or prove irreverent facts. ‘The Green Bus is Green’, Whoo! Some great philosophy was done during the 60’s.

The only Truth which is 100% undeniable is ‘Cogito Ergo Sum’, everything else can be disputed, and I’m not saying other things are false, just that for every proposition put forward a counter proposition can respond that is contra in sprit to the original. Only if you have someway of testing the validity of both statements is it possible to draw a conclusion. But back to my point about Hume and Science, all science proves is every test carried out thus far has produced the same result, but every time you retest you cannot say with certitude that the same results will transpire. Enter what we use to guide are daily life, statistics. If it’s happen 100 times before, it’s more then lightly going to happen again, all things being equal. Yes, this paragraph seem out of place after my first statement about science and how groups of people can “prove” facts, yet Hume would argue cause and effect our impossible to know with certainty. Who do you believe?

The results of Science can be seen in the technology we’re using to have this discussion. But if we take the two arguments at a pure logical level and ponder which is true we can only come away with each having a status of unknown, as there is always some proposition (even if it is quite fanciful) that can’t be verified or falsified. If things can’t be verified or falsified then logic can’t be used to judge the truth of a proposition. If logic is rendered useless in this way how are we meant to investigate the nature of things philosophical? All you end up with is more questions without answers as facts can’t be deduced as there to much uncertain or scepticism. In the end all you have is big pile of BS, but it was fun till you figured this out. For this reason is logic always the best tool to find truth?

Well the Universe is the ultimate axiomatic system and also one of the ultimate question in philosophy, “How did it come into existence?” The concept of infinite when mixed with the finite leads to a paradox. If the universe has always existed then our theory of the Big Bang and universe being 15 millions years old is a load of BS, or the concept of the infinite is. While imaginable it’s nothing more then a trick of the mind caused by an error in logic or an assumption about how the universe works. If the Big Bang was truly the beginning and there was nothing before this then to logically prose that there was a time before this is in error (ha-ha, that sounds a little like a logical positivism statement, doesn’t it?). To use the logical proposition that ‘something existed before the universe’ doesn’t seem like an error, as we are used to one thing preceding the next, cause and effect.

So what is the next step for this problem? Is logic fundamentally something that only exists in the human consciousness and not as prevalent in the universe as we would like to think? Or as Schopenhauer might put it, the phenomenon doesn’t necessarily reflect the object as it truly is, the noumenal. How can we reconcile our problem of the concept of infinite against our experiences of the finite and the fact that they are for certain propositions logical exclusive? Is the logic flawed or the rules that guide our use of logic?

Philosophy as taught in universities is more of a history of philosophical progress. The learning of how to do philosophy is taught through studying of past endeavours of other philosophers, (this is the 4, 5 & 6 steps). The mental disciple of problem solving through logical cogitation is a worthy undertaking. But once you apply what you have learned against the philosophical questions traversed across the long road to enlightenment, you’re left at the end with understanding of the problems, yet with very few solutions. Though we do pick up two little gems along the way ‘Cogito Ergo Sum’, and Schopenhauer’s expansion of Kant regarding the Noumenal and Phenomenon, ruffle stated as “We intrepid & cogitate the world in our mind, not the world as it really is.” We can only understand objects based off our 5 senses limited abilities to intrepid the objects true nature. If there is a property of an object that isn’t knowable by these senses, then that property goes unseen & not understood to us, like a foreign language; until that is, we find someway of translating that property’s ‘native language’ into one of our own 5 native languages through a translator (i.e. some technical wizardry, simple example a microscope. A whole new world becomes available to us for our study).

Now, I said philosophy is BS, not the application of the philosophical process. That’s what I believe is the only good thinking about philosophy and it’s the outcome of steps 4, 5, & 6 when completed in there entirety. How much of the steps 4, 5 & 6 are still relevance to you now? They’re only relevant while learning; once learned they cease to be of practical use. But applying the disciplined ability to study a proposition and extracting all the possible problems and if lucky some answers; it’s at this point that philosophy becomes priceless.

How many of the great advances in knowledge came about through happy change? I would say most discoveries are a product of either chance or intuition (this at best being guided chance). The philosophical discipline helps to stack the dice in our favour, but doesn’t guaranty success. "How do I know what I have is the truth.” It depends what you mean by truth. It’s true in framework of your current experiment. If you change the framework then you chance the balance in the equation so what was once true could now cease to be so. May of the laws of physics are only true at certain scales, change the scale and the law becomes redundant. It’s the same with the philosophy in 4, 5 & 6. During the era that the philosophy was created they were true, as the mood of the people was right for those beliefs, it’s no different now for what we believe, and likewise it will be no different the future.

Now if you want to use the word truth in relation to the noumenal, then you have a problem, as it’s never knowable in itself but only through some proxy. That gateway to the noumenal can also colour its truths, like looking at the world through rose-tinted glasses. Because of this ‘Truth’ with the capital T, again something the mind can imagine, but can we ever possible know it? when the things and tools we use to discover it can change how we intrepid its nature. How can we tell if something we believe isn’t being coloured by the tools we used to discover it? Our mind could be incapable of understanding it, or it mightn’t follow the laws of logic, as we understand and implement them. Enlight of all this uncertain, philosophy and its truths now become BS. All we have is the process at this moment in time that we believe to the best, but some happy chance in the future could come along and make redundant all we believe is true and even the processes we use to search for the truth.

15

No, Philosophy is the ability to take an argument, analysis it, find it’s strong and weak points and then based on the context of the proposition see if it’s true, false or unknowable. It’s not about arguments! That’s what people who call themselves philosophers who think they’re doing philosophy do! There is a requirement for logic in the process. Yes anybody can argue, but few can do it with logic and accept when they’re wrong.

16

I feel that I’m still in the Exploration Stage. It describes me perfectly. I have more than just a slight interest in philosophy, I read philosophy extensively, but…I have not yet focused by studies on one particular area of philosophy. :wink:

17

I notice, having read many posts, that anyone can commit a fallacy, especially circularity. And it doesn’t matter whether one is doing an undergrad or grad philosophy, self-taught, etc. I think recognizing that there is a fallacy, or that one has made a wrong turn into a fallacious argument, takes more than knowing logical argument. One has to have a commonsensical ability to spot it. I wish I could explain more clearly. Can anyone address this?

18

Mmm… this almost sounds like someone’s homework… but I’ll bite.

Can you give an example of the fallacy you would like addressed. You say people need to address fallacy, but to address it you first need to recognise that some element or conclusion is false in the original proposition, thereby creating a fallacy.

How do you recognise a false element or statement? Verification & Falsification if you want to use analytical philosophy, otherwise you’re just going on instinct. It’s more then lightly the original statement can’t be verified for falsified. Meaning the person making the statement is also going on instinct. Normally statistics come into play at some point of the analysis. You go as far as logic can, at this point it’s impossible to test any statement so intuition takes over and it either feels right or wrong. To test this (as pure Yes / No aren’t applicable) you have to move into statistics and the Occam’s razor. While this can’t give you an absolute answer it gives what is believed to be the best alterative at this time based off statistical evidence.

19

Lol!! No, not a homework. :stuck_out_tongue:

You gave a dizzying array of tech terms. That would be like a paper level. Okay, I just want to treat this question on a posting-on-forum-board level. A fallacy of circularity, for example. Sometimes one doesn’t recognize that he/she is arguing in a circle, but since “words get in the way”, it can give you an appearance that one is not presupposing what one is trying to prove, but if you just read carefully, the argument is fallacious. And so, no one says anything. A fallacious argument must be recognized by both debaters. Arrgghh, I hope this helps clarify.

20

Right, one way to approach this is by getting a piece of paper and laying out all the components that make up the argument (proposition). Meaning you start with a premise, then you try to build up your case for it. With the paper you write down each statement you use to strengthen your idea, i.e. the believed facts that you are putting forward that build up an argument which at this point in time neither truth / false but unknown. For each element of the case your building up, write it down in the middle of the page. Once you have all the elements laid out like that you need to test them. Are any of them true in themselves? Or do they rely on something else to be true? More then lightly they rely on something else to be true. So draw a line from original element item to what is relied upon, do this for all the parts of your argument. If your argument is circle at some point the lines will make a circle and you will see on paper that your argument is a fallacy. Meaning the two items (or it could be a bigger circle) will use the other as its reason (proof) for being true; when this happens you know you’ve found your problem.