To my mind, there's a pragmatic side to this issue, and a deeper, philosophical side (some would call it 'meta-philosophical'). Lenz touches on both, though as I'll explain below he doesn't forefront how radical the philosophical side is
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"Claims are either true or false; arguments are either valid or invalid. If this understanding is correct, then the exclusion of false or invalid points does indeed seem to leave us with true ideas." This is Lenz's charitable take on the adversarial paradigm...
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... but the conditional he advances (and seems to endorse) also presupposes that some ideas are irrefutable (or, equivalently, that not every idea can be refuted). And this is of course false. Trivially, every P is refuted when not-P is assumed.
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I think this shows even more clearly the problem with the adversarial paradigm: refutation or philosophical criticism is *too easy*. It's just applied logic. And Lenz brings out well why this is a problem: it leads us to throw out ideas too soon!
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There's a nice image in Plato – is it in the Sophist? Plato compares the students of philosophy that have mastered the skills of logical refutation to young dogs that will chase and bite everything that moves. Apt, all too apt.
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So, what does Lenz think we should do? Play with ideas, instead of fighting over them.
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But he realises that this requires us to change our conception of what an idea is. Lenz suggests that ideas are not simple statements, but more like intellectual projects. And such projects can be more or less critical.
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Lenz calls this a holistic view of ideas. The suggestion reminds me of Collingwood, who proposed to move away from propositional logic to a 'logic of question and answer'. (If you're curious, read Collingwood's Autobiography – one of the most subversive philosophical books)
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The holistic view of ideas is a very welcome one, I think. But Lenz (perhaps to control reputational damage!
) doesn't forefront how radical it is...
(note, radical both senses, i.e. fundamental and departing from status quo)Prikaži ovu nit -
Consider the following implication. If ideas are tied up with intellectual projects, then the possibility of philosophical disagreement seems close to impossible, assuming that different philosophers will inevitably be embarked on different intellectual projects
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For example, when
@keithfrankish asserts that consciousness is an illusion and@timcrane102 says that it isn't, these claims would not actually contradict each other, given that the intellectual projects of each of these philosophers are very differentPrikaži ovu nit -
(I've written something about this in light of Collingwood's criticism of analytic philosophy https://philarchive.org/archive/STEAAD-6 …
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Is this a bad consequence? I think it isn't. But it is a substantive philosophical question whether the consequence is compatible with, say, the idea that philosophy is all about valid argument or conceptual analysis...
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... and it is also unclear what kind of logic we require to model the permissible transitions between these ideas. (If you're interested, you could look at what
@cdutilhnovaes is doing with 'dialogic logic')Prikaži ovu nit -
So when Lenz suggests that philosophical discussion should become more of a playful exchange, he's not just making a point about the practice, I think...
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... I think that a rejection of the adversarial paradigm requires us to reconceive the very point of philosophical discussion. It is an exchange where disagreement is at best provisional or apparent, and where the aim is mutual understanding, not to get at 'the truth'.
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Mutual understanding. Do I here disagree with Lenz? He writes that "the point of philosophical arguments is not truth after all, but rather wisdom, or something like it." This at least seems a disagreement, given that wisdom (or something like it) is not mutual understanding.
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But perhaps we mean different things when we talk about the *point* of philosophical arguments. (Dialectic in action!) It can be true that a love of wisdom leads us to pursue a better understanding of others. Understanding others can make us wiser.
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And if that is so, then the point of philosophical discussion can both be mutual understanding and be wisdom, or the pursuit thereof.
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Both the adversarial paradigm and this new rival view presuppose that philosophically is deeply, perhaps fundamentally, a social practice. But whereas the former construes it as a divisive one, the latter allows philosophy to become something that unifies and binds together.
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