CSP: The True Light of God

Find me a more redpilled philosopher from some time in history. Pro tip: you can't. Kant comes close, but can't quite compete due to his bullshit, newtonian, conceptualist, nominalism.

Based Wittgenstein.

yeah he cool, but his early stuff is shitty. Like, the Tractatus is interesting, but it ruined academic philosophy.

How did it "ruin" anything. Pragmatism is fine but while pierce created an interesting language game; Wittgenstein analyzed language games generally and laid the foundation for a less idiosyncratic kind of logic. I think pierce is definitely of his era as is Wittgenstein and both are interesting. It is kind of sad that the only to discuss things on pol is polemics--philosophers contribute to philosophy it isn't a competition.

I've never hear Kant called a nominalist.

Peircean logic is essentially the logic of science practiced by contemporary scientists. The idea of generating phenomenological concepts for a given hypothesis by looking to the nomological part of our theory is a Peircean idea. E.g. our description of a parallax in a general theory of stellar position is generated in part from our observations of parallaxes.

Wittgenstein, in his early iteration, I think, fell for the old platonic folly of thinking that there is some pre-established order behind our reasoning from signs, and thus generates his phenomenological (to the extent that he has any) from a rational ego of sorts. The later Wittgenstein shores this up, yes. But I'm not sure how his contextualist justifications escapes the circularity problem that plagues most forms of nominalism-- unless I'm reading (late) Wittgenstein incorrectly.

Peirce's logic seems to escape the circularity problem in that it's self-critical and fallible.

I say that (early) Wittgenstein ruined academic philosophy because much of it relies on the standard analytic practice of "linguistic intuition-counter-example dialectic toward some calcified, absolute, eternal truth."

I don't think that Wittgenstein necessarily had this in mind, but his followers took it and ran-- which is why I think he wrote the Investigations.

Hmm...

>implying Deweyian metaphysics aren't elder god-tier

He's a Humean nominalist, but reverses the connection that Hume makes.

Hume thinks that we experience empirical particulars, and that this experience constitutes the content for our mental associations. Kant thinks that our capacity for mental associations gives rise to the particulars of our experiences.

Neither can distinguish between accidental and real associations of mind.

The association of 'blackness' and 'crowness' on Kant's view follows from a tendency of the mind to relate unintelligible matter according to some principle of reason. Hume thinks that there exist particular representations of each and that the mind makes an accidental habit of associating them into the idea of black crows.

Hume cops out by introducing resemblance as a means to claim that some associations are more "natural" than others. Resemblance, of course, is still an accidental habit of mind inferred from representations.

Kant's theory of universals gives the impression that it is a realism because it rests its foundations on universalizable principles of reason; that is, he codifies good and bad methods of reasoning, where Hume tries, but it's vacuous because he's a skeptic. Hume blithely ignores the most important consequences of his skepticism.

I'm actually reading Dewey for the first time as we speak. I think that he's on the side of angels. But I have a knee-jerk reaction to his stuff based on what I've read by Richard Rorty.

Rorty takes Dewey's work and interprets it as "let's do away with the search for truth!" "it's all about agreement and justification!"

And for Rorty, this means that we should agree with him that progressive leftism is what we're justified in believing.

I will give Rorty credit, though. He takes his meat-axe naturalism to its logical conclusion. Not even Quine had the courage to do this.

Very helpful response. I don't think that Wittgenstein required a solid absolute "truth"; only that a question without an answer is nonsense. I need to read more American philosophy I think. Bump for a good thread

Whom should I read before Peirce?

Thanks for the bump, user.

American philosophy is great--it's what I want to study in grad school. I recommend starting with Peirce's How to Make Our Ideas Clear and/or The Fixation of Belief (I think Sup Forums would be remiss to not read this). Also, I'm partial to Josiah Royce's *The Religious Aspect of Philosophy*, where he lays out his objective idealism.

I dunno, I think that philosophy should be given back to common-sense and be loosened from the grips of the standard analytic methods employed in today's universities.

Philosophy is a science after all, and should proceed as such IMO.

See I think in the case of Rorty here; the trouble arises when we conflate the category of Truth; which is ethical with the category of Reason which is representational. What I liked in Wittgenstein is how he kept these categories separate; illustrating the ways in which Reason can represent what Is and leaving out any claim to "Truth". Later it seems he tries to reconcile it and wrangle something like meaning out of representation but I am not sure if he could.

Thanks for the tips. You might like Allister Macyntire's idea of virtue ethics. I havent read much of it but he doesn't shy away from the fallibility inherent to ethical questions and is comfortable with common sense even though it tends toward teleology (like good virtues arise from good character).

Damn it's really difficult to give an exhaustive list of Peirce's influences because he really was a student of the history of philosophy.

Kant was his man first and foremost. Plato and Aristotle are of course major influences. He thought that Hegel was close to correct with his system. He follows the common-sense view propounded by Reid, employs Scotus' realism, Schelling's panpsychism/monism, and Plotinus' infinistic logic.

Peirce was also influenced by LaMarck and Darwin--evolution is *huge* in Peircean thought.

He read the American transcendentalists, especially Emerson.

The gospel of John and the Ecclessiastes are also apparent in some of his works-- if you wanna get crazy with it, you could look to his essay "Evolutionary Love." It's one of my favorite pieces of philosophy.

Like I said in an earlier comment, I'd start with How to Make our Ideas Clear, and do some biographical research on Peirce. He's such a beautiful thinker.

>I'd start with How to Make our Ideas Clear
Oh good, exactly where I'm starting.

Don't have the patience for german idealism atm, but I'll probably review the Greeks and then go through Darwin, Spenser, Emerson,and James. Hopefully this will suffice

Emerson has a very ennobling effect on my mood whenever I read him. Whitman and Thoreau (sometimes) are good too. Damn it makes me long for an earlier time.

Also I am just giving my opinion I'm not op btw

German Idealism gets kind of weird, I agree. Schelling and Hegel are about where I stop. I have a friend who goes all the way through Heidegger, and he seems to think that there's some important stuff in there, but I haven't given it a shot.

I had the opportunity to take a Heidegger seminar, but turned it down.

Oh! And Husserl is pretty cool IMO. Lol, I'm all over the place.

I think that your list definitely suffices. Thomas Reid is also pretty helpful in reading Peirce IMO. Mainly because of his response(s) to classical empiricism, which I think is a trainwreck.

(late) Wittgenstein sort of tries to evaporate the tension between fact and value, right?

Instead of trying to reconcile the two separate categories, he tries to demonstrate them as a formal aspects of one and the same category.

Sort of like Scotus' formal distinction between the will and the intellect; both are formal aspects of mind, but have a fundament in the mind.

Or am I off the rails here?

I've haven't read any Macyntire. I'll give put him on my reading list after Dewey.

I'm totally okay with teleology and I don't believe that it has to be this spooky sort of ontological category that naturalism makes it out to be.

Ahh I love Emerson. Tbh American philosophy and literature are god tier lol.

Yes I think he does that later on; I am a bit of an amateur at philosophy so I don't know scotus so I can't say about him but I definitely think in the notebooks I remember Wittgenstein discussing some aesthetic questions in his way and my sense of it was he was willing to incorporate the representation and sense into qualia generally; like maybe what you were saying regarding Pierce and that parallax view is similar--that our observations become representations of ourselves and I suppose this is then rebroadcast onto what we observe..like maybe Wittgenstein conceded to "perception" or "intuition" a bit...its very interesting because he wrote Tractatus as in a war hospital and the notebooks after teaching kids for some years..I get the sense that he changed over the years but I'm more into poetry than philosophy. Are you religious at all user?

Really though; and so often neglected by "serious intellectuals" and by American culture too desu

I grew up Methodist, but was never really forced to go to church. In high school, I went through my militant atheist phase, but have since dialed it back.

I call myself an atheist, because I don't participate in any formal worship. I don't go to church, bible studies, pray, do ritual, and so on.

However, my philosophical views might characterize me as religious or theistic in some people's eyes. I think that New Atheism strawmans a great deal of religion, and that we shouldn't be so quick to disparage it. Reading Peirce has really opened me up.

So, I don't practice any religion, but the idea of it is very attractive to me.

What about you? Who/what are your influences?

Well, I was a very avid reader of the existentialists (broadly) so of course I vowed atheism for a time as well but lately the whole outlook of meaninglessness feels flat to me. Religion provides a kind of framework of contours to life, cosmogony I guess is the word--and I don't see a lot of other options for that; but since I cannot truly say I believed becoming religious seems disingenuous. And a lot of my favorite thinkers seem to fall back on religion eventually; although Camus just ended up dying young the lucky wanker. Your thread reminded me of a time right before I found Sartre etc. when I was very into Thoreau and Emerson so I guess I asked because I wonder if you feel a need for meaning as I do and where do you look for it if so.

Haha that Camus--crazy bugger predicted his own mode of death, so to speak.

No, I don't have that longing to find meaning against a backdrop of the possibility of a cold, mechanical, meaningless, universe. I do have a natural bent to explore what seem to me to be spiritual phenomena (if it's not a problem to use the locution 'spiritual').

The view of the logic of science that I've adopted seems to be consistent with various aspects of religion (though I don't believe that critical common-sensist science entails a religious position). I think that psychical phenomena are ultimately reducible to physical ones and vice-versa, if that makes any sense.

For instance, a meditative trance is reducible in some sense to brain processes, but this doesn't cheapen what the experience is. Mechanical logics of science seem to gut psychical phenomena, attempting a full reduction to effective, physical processes. I think that matter and mind are one and the same substance, but have distinct formal, logical properties.

So if I'm religious at all, it's not necessarily for any personal reason (though self-fulfillment is an aspect of it), it's simply because it isn't ruled out by my view of how science works, is actually consistent with and bolsters it, and the religious life seems more fulfilling to me.

Idk I'm a kook, and will probably be laughed out of the academy if I make it to grad school lol.

Nah you're very genuine in your answers and hopefully grad school is not a dull experience for you. It is nice to have decent comments on Sup Forums for once. I would go on but I have to sleep or something. Good luck. Maybe I will do a philosophical thread sometime.

Also for what it's worth I think the outlook of exploration vs. the need for meaning is helpful and it may have me questioning my angst all over again :)

Haha thanks for the kind words. You're right, this type of exchange is something that is rare on Sup Forums.

I'll be on the lookout for philosophy threads.

Oh--and don't go too far down the rabbit hole, life should be enjoyed and not questioned all the time. I should know, I don't always take my own advice in this area lol

Good luck in your exploration(s)!

Haha cheers & good sleeps