i had to google positivism, that's how anti-philosophy i am at this point
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I know it may seem frustrating that there are so many concepts and terms that seem opaque - but that's partly because it's complicated.
Lawyers and doctors also have their own, specific vocabulary - because anything complex needs to simplify or sentences become insane.
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We stand on the shoulders of giants in many fields, philosophy included. If you dont stand on those shoulders by reading those works, you're likely to be rehashing an argument settled / widely accepted a century ago.
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I sorta don't believe this? Like I don't need to know much about the history of literature in order to write a great novel - just exposure to the stories around me, even movies, would work.
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I think novels and philosophy are fundamentally different, unfortunately, because a novel is art and philosophy is reasoning / logic
And I'm not saying you couldn't come up with a novel, important philosophical argument. And you might face insecure quotes in response...
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What I'm saying is that if you haven't read the past 100 years of philosophy, it's next to impossible to know whether it's new or whether it's important because you don't know if it's already been done - or whether it commits a mistake on a first principles basis.
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I see what you mean but also not sure I agree - the stuff is 'in the water', so to speak. I don't think reading Plato will help my cognitive abilities at this point, but I assume it influenced culture enough to influence the things that did help my cognitive abilities.
I mean, it might be true for Plato largely because every philosopher has read his work and so you can read the bits that lasted over millenia
But reading Wittgenstein probably would help your thinking (just as it would anyone).