Philosophy Now Forum

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Sat Aug 19, 2023 8:22 am Robert Hanna wrote this...

commonsense wrote: ↑Sat Aug 19, 2023 4:58 pm Seriously, change is the result of learning. As an amateur, Í find disheartening to think that academic philosophers are not lifelong learners.

commonsense wrote: ↑Sat Aug 19, 2023 4:58 pm Seriously, change is the result of learning. As an amateur, Í find disheartening to think that academic philosophers are not lifelong learners.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Sat Aug 19, 2023 8:53 pm

commonsense wrote: ↑Sat Aug 19, 2023 4:58 pm Seriously, change is the result of learning. As an amateur, Í find disheartening to think that academic philosophers are not lifelong learners.

If all philosophies are functionally equivalent it hardly seems worth it to change your vocabulary for no gains whatsoever.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Sat Aug 19, 2023 12:54 pm

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Sat Aug 19, 2023 8:22 am Four leading examples come immediately to mind:
Saint Augustine’s radical turn from worldly Manicheanism to ascetic Christianity, as recorded in the Confessions (Augustine, 401);

Wait was ST. A. really a non-academic....?

His studies of grammar and rhetoric in the provincial centers of Madauros and Carthage, which strained the financial resources of his middle-class parents, were hoped to pave his way for a future career in the higher imperial administration

In 383 he moved to Milan, then the capital of the western half of the Empire, to become a publicly paid professor of rhetoric of the city and an official panegyrist at the Imperial court.

He also underwent a kind of philosophical apprenticeship.
I mean, we're comparing people in very different eras, but he's hardly someone who just wrestled with ideas on his own. Yeah, he didn't get a doctorate in a 20th/21st century University. I mean, seriously
And Kant?????

Immanuel Kant’s Hume-inspired awakening from his “dogmatic slumbers,” as later recorded in the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics , and his corresponding radical turn from classical Leibnizian-Wolfran rationalism to transcendental idealism in the Critique of Pure Reason , aka “Kant’s Copernican Revolution” (Kant, 1781/1887/1997, 1783/2004);

Kant showed a great aptitude for study at an early age. He first attended the Collegium Fridericianum, from which he graduated at the end of the summer of 1740. In 1740, aged 16, he enrolled at the University of Königsberg, where he spent his whole career.[18] He studied the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz and Christian Wolff under Martin Knutzen (Associate Professor of Logic and Metaphysics from 1734 until he died in 1751), a rationalist who was also familiar with developments in British philosophy and science and introduced Kant to the new mathematical physics of Isaac Newton. Knutzen dissuaded Kant from the theory of pre-established harmony, which he regarded as "the pillow for the lazy mind".[19] He also dissuaded Kant from idealism, the idea that reality is purely mental, which most philosophers in the 18th century regarded negatively. The theory of transcendental idealism that Kant later included in the Critique of Pure Reason was developed partially in opposition to traditional idealism. Kant had contacts with students, colleagues, friends and diners who frequented the local Masonic lodge.[2

And yeah, Whitehead wasn't an academic philosopher, he was an academic mathematician. This guy has a weird way of supporting his hypotheses.

And then Wittgenstein....
I mean, he was at Cambridge actively involved in the academic philosopher culture there.

These people all participated directly in the academic worlds of their time, engaging with academic philosophers.

But his hypothesis is poorly and even strangely 'supported'.

Robert Hanna himself is an academic philosopher. Does this mean he can't change his mind? (about this issue)

Third , “philosophers” means “contemporary professional academic philosophers.”

What about great philosophers of the past —by which I mean, all great philosophers now dead, from the pre-Socratics forward to 2023—many or even most of whom weren’t professional academic philosophers: did any of them ever change their minds about their fundamental beliefs and commitments?

"Now, what about the exceptional 1% of contemporary professional academic philosophers?
I can think of at least one famous philosopher, namely, Susan Haack, and also of one philosopher-nobody, namely, myself (Haack, 2023; Hanna, 2023c).

Have we changed our minds?
In one sense no, and in another sense yes.

Over the course of our philosophical lives, after we completed our PhD dissertations, we both read philosophy outside our AOS and teaching expertise; we both worked intensively and seriously, and then also published, on philosophical issues, problems, or topics outside our AOS; and we both gradually developed and defended non-reductive or top-down and nondeterministic and active-minded or creative-minded worldviews.
But we haven’t actually changed our minds about those worldviews, yet.
So although it’s true that we haven’t actually changed our minds in that sense, nevertheless over the course of our philosophical lives, we’ve both gradually come to essentially the same place where Augustine, Kant, Whitehead, Wittgenstein, and Hawking ended up after their changesof-mind.
Nevertheless at the same time, in another sense, yes, both Haack and I have metaphilosophically changed our minds, from being for professional academic philosophy, to being against professional academic philosophy—i.e., from being as it were card-carrying members of professional academic philosophy, to being serious critics of professional academic philosophy—and that has ultimately made all the difference in our subsequent philosophical lives (Haack, 2016, 2017, 2020, 2021; Hanna, 2013-2023).

Lacewing wrote: ↑Sat Aug 19, 2023 5:36 pm

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Sat Aug 19, 2023 8:22 am Robert Hanna wrote this...

I think those are interesting points to consider regarding how philosophers get stuck in certain tracks of study. Yet, there are those who eventually step beyond certain molds, and that is both encouraging and inspiring.

Philosophers, priests, teachers, politicians, anyone really, can get locked into a certain way of seeing things -- and then might become dependent on that for their sense of purpose, worth, and meaning -- and defend it in spite of broader reason. For if they were to consider seeing beyond it, they might have to face the seemingly unbearable reality of admitting they've 'spent years being 'wrong''. But of course, it's not that serious... it's a winding journey of choice... which involves rigidity vs. flexibility, density vs. expansion, fixed vs. moving. It's inspiring and encouraging to witness anyone choose broader awareness by expanding beyond whatever they might previously have felt bound to/by.

Constantine wrote: ↑Sat Aug 19, 2023 11:31 pm I'm constantly under the pressure of survival, where philosophy is the means by which to survive. I have been force to change my beliefs in order to keep a coherent mindset and live, and keep others alive.

I don't believe most tenure track philosophers have ever have this stress, unless they were drafted,

attofishpi wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 4:47 am If a philosopher can't change their mind when presented with a more rational alternative, then they ain't a philosopher.

Lacewing wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 5:22 am

attofishpi wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 4:47 am If a philosopher can't change their mind when presented with a more rational alternative, then they ain't a philosopher.

Philosophers are people, and people not only have trouble letting go of their beloved ideas (due to their intoxication and investment), but they also don't readily see that other alternatives 'are more rational'.

Lacewing wrote: ↑Sat Aug 19, 2023 5:36 pm

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Sat Aug 19, 2023 8:22 am Robert Hanna wrote this...

I think those are interesting points to consider regarding how philosophers get stuck in certain tracks of study. Yet, there are those who eventually step beyond certain molds, and that is both encouraging and inspiring.

Philosophers, priests, teachers, politicians, anyone really, can get locked into a certain way of seeing things -- and then might become dependent on that for their sense of purpose, worth, and meaning -- and defend it in spite of broader reason.

Lacewing wrote: ↑Sat Aug 19, 2023 5:36 pm
For if they were to consider seeing beyond it, they might have to face the seemingly unbearable reality of admitting they've 'spent years being 'wrong''.

Lacewing wrote: ↑Sat Aug 19, 2023 5:36 pm
But of course, it's not that serious... it's a winding journey of choice... which involves rigidity vs. flexibility, density vs. expansion, fixed vs. moving. It's inspiring and encouraging to witness anyone choose broader awareness by expanding beyond whatever they might previously have felt bound to/by.