The author of this article might have a point but Jesus what a pretentious fuck
>you can't explain micro-electronic engineering to the layman
>don't expect me to tell you why killing people is wrong in plain English
Wrong. Scientists explain difficult concepts in simple terms all the time. If you can't summarise your thesis in words everyone can understand than you've failed.
theguardian.com
if you can't explain something to your grandmother, you don't really understand it.
- Albert Einstein or whatever
>Wrong. Scientists explain difficult concepts in simple terms all the time. If you can't summarise your thesis in words everyone can understand than you've failed.
Explain?
OP here. Let me make a better argument for why philosophy is hard to expound.
It is not because "it is a series of arguments". This is retarded, nobody cares what your response to Plato or Descartes is, they want to know what your point is.
The difficult in simplifying philosophy is illustrating the implications succinctly. Imagine if I told someone that scientists have identified serotonin as being responsible for the feeling of pleasure. Someone with no background in psychology or neuroscience or anything similar will find this meaningless. They might ask "why the fuck are you wasting time looking at brains instead of getting a real job?"
I don't need to outline the consequences of what the discovery meant as I'm sure you all know, but I feel simple philosophical statements are really meaningless without the context: are we talking morality? Or ethics? Or politics? What's the importance?
Which is why it's useful to always start with a thought experiment that can give the thesis some meaning.
That quote is in the article itself, maybe try reading it first...
Hmm let's see. You have pop-science books; public science lectures; individuals who have made a career out of popularising science; prime time television shows on all kinds of science; science books for literal 5 year olds. All of these are attempts to getting scientifically illiterate people to understand ideas which were developed over thousands of years and have a rich and technical history that no single person understands fully.
>why isn't philosophy immediately practical and easy to understand
The reason is twofold: 1) it's not for anything else, philosophy is for its own sake, 2) anyone who discards the historical discourse ends up revealing something peculiar to philosophy taken as an absolute discourse: self-referential/operational reflexivity.
Regarding 1, if you're looking for a justification of biases of narrow or broad kind you're not looking for philosophy, and if you've presupposed a problem that needs an answer you'll be digging for an impossible solution (free will, god, etc). The aim of philosophy isn't to prove anything, it's to comprehend things. If you don't care, why are you trying? It's like going to a Christian church and complaining that you're not being convinced by the Bible and can't have faith. You're already starting on the wrong side of a problem and can't bridge it.
Regarding 2, if you don't want to start with dogmatic bias you're going to find yourself having to engage a reflexive discourse and you're going to lose a lot of people on the way while you construct up. The most obvious form of this is Hegel, who does exactly that and is hated/misunderstood because this style is too hard for most.
Third,
>Scientists explain difficult concepts in simple terms all the time
Check out this pop-sci pleb.
>it's not for anything else, philosophy is for its own sake
Absolute horse shit. No philosopher agrees with you on that one mate, philosophy is the foundation for every thing else.
>anyone who discards the historical discourse ends up revealing something peculiar to philosophy taken as an absolute discourse: self-referential/operational reflexivity.
I understand what you're saying but you know "books are made of other books" is true of many other things, but that shouldn't require me read every books or watch every film in chronological order since the beginning of time before moving onto contemporary stuff. We can "bracket" out fundamentals to get to the relevant points.
My breakfast is here I will continue this later.
your serotonin example is flawed because it seems obvious to me, that people who refer to simple concepts as this (serotonin = happiness) understand nothing about the complexity of the subject. simplicity is only beautiful when it captures or densifies a complex situation. however, the beauty of this densification is only appreciated by those who understand the initial complexity of the problem. for example: E=mc2 is almost meaningless to people who do not understand physics or mathematics. they are unable to perceive the beauty its beauty.
Pop science is not science user. I hope you don't really believe that because you watched a lecture by Black Science Man, Bill Nye, or anyone else that now you understand anything. It's called dumbing things down because it's not the actual thing, pop science is full of misunderstanding precisely because truth cannot be simplified.
>. No philosopher agrees with you on that one mate
Literally never read a philosophic work have you?
>I understand what you're saying
Well I can tell you didn't because you repeated to me exactly what I said wasn't the issue.
>I will continue this later.
Don't see why or how since you never began.
Oh but you do have pop philosophy aka J B Peterson
>wasting time looking at brains instead of getting a real job
The whole idea of a "real job" is really weird at this point. We overproduce the amount of food needed for most of civilization, the costs are only likely going to go down as research improves things.
It's more productive to be involved in discovery, research and theorizing than it is to have a 'practical' job where you perform more basic work that gives you enough money to fuel the inflation of housing prices which form an ever increasing portion of the average paycheck because everything else is getting more efficient and requiring less work.
There's lots of pop philosophy too faggot. Also pop science and pop philosophy usually end up adulterating the subject and producing all sorts of confusions. If you wanna really come to grips with these sorta topics you gotta invest a bit of time. When you're dealing with entire new vocabularies, systems and concepts dating thousands of years and constantly being reiterated and innovated, it makes sense that you'll have to immerse yourself a bit for things to start making sense.
ITT mad phil students who don't like the fact almost everyone can understand even their advanced ideas
That is really, really not true. Most cannot even understand the concept of dialogue.
jesus fuck you're such a massively pretentious pseud
Philosophy cannot be meaningfully divorced from the vast tradition of commentary and interpretation which we call the history of philosophy. Every attempt to do this leads to a diminishment of the subject, because its history IS, in an important sense, its own subject. Good historical overviews have been written, but they can never replace the authentic reading of the texts, because 1) Every modern overview fits ancient theories into paradigms which arise later in their development, and 2) They imply something which has to be proven, namely, the linear progression of ideas which are supposed to lead to the modern methods of philosophy while remaining fundamentally the same subject.
The most pompous post award of the year goes to... You know what you wrote could be said of any other subject? Of course something is lost in translation; someone reading a summary of Kant's ethics with a brief historical preface isn't going to assume he's not an expert on Kantian ethics. Does that mean making philosophy mainstream is futile? The whole "if you're not gonna bother spending a thousand hours studying philosophy you might as well not bother" attitude makes you sound like a dick. Imagine if a historian told you to throw out your 20th Century American History book because you haven't read the prerequisites to fully understand it.
>your serotonin example is flawed because it seems obvious to me, that people who refer to simple concepts as this (serotonin = happiness) understand nothing about the complexity of the subject.
Not sure how this is relevant. No neurologist equates serotonin with happiness, and I certainly wasn't hinting at anything like that. What I had in mind was, a simple discovery like "genetic marker X was identified as being responsible for Y" might be met with confusion when it falls on the ears of someone ignorant on genetics, but if you told them "we're about to cure cancer" then they're understand. This is analogous to illustrating philosophical breakthroughs with thought experiments rather than quoting the original text.
Most of the bogged down philososphy
is either word/semantics games by masters and phd students trying to make a "significant contribution"
or they are germans
who have a penchant for inventing words on the fly.
Their language practically tailors itself to invent new words.
And sometimes, like the sciences they label things completely counter intuitive, based off of their name or some fucking obscure greek myth.
I get the whole "the author is dead" meme for fiction.
But the author needs to make sure his audience comprehends him completely or else he risks people misinterpreting his message.
and now adays people that bog shit down in flowery language are definintly playing the part of the sophist so they can easily defend a convoluted idea.
"no no user that not what he ment at all."
philosophy is the love of wisdom.
when you bog shit down in esoteric vocabulary then its just you masturbating your ego and not engaging in the persuit or cause of wisdom.
>Also pop science and pop philosophy usually end up adulterating the subject and producing all sorts of confusions
No shit dude, it's just a start. The reason the public generally dislike philosophy and consider it a waste of time is because there's a high barrier to entry. A shame really, if more people knew a bit of philosophy we'd be much better off.
I really don't get the snotty attitude when all I'm saying is we can do better in popularising philosophy.
is there a cat sitting on your keyboard intermittently hitting the return key?
You know that the Analytic movement emerged as a way to formalize philosophy like they formalize physics/chemistry/and so on, so, if you don't like analytical philosophy it is because you want things to be difficult to read
>REEEEEE MUH FUCKING OBSCURANTIST PROSE PHILOSOPHERS SHOULD CARE ABOUT MUH COMMON MAN REEEEEE WHY DOES NO ONE CATER TO MY RETARDED BRAIN REEEEEEEEE
Slave moralists OUT
Another retard who can't read. it's no wonder you don't even understand what slave morality is...
I don't think its that "high barrier" entry stuff
I think a lot of people don't really see a practical use for philosophy when they have religion or science that can give them a quick and easy explanation.
You don't see companies actively looking for philosophers and pay them the big bucks.
That whole working at McDonalds meme.
Alot of people see philosopher as the epitome of the snobby educated liberal.
this is by far the biggest complaint I get.
I was the first one accused of
REDDIT spacing
Never!
reminder that Hegel sincerely thought the layperson with a basic education could grasp his books.
>philosophy is for its own sake
Yeah, and that's why the one field of philosophy that has indisputably not been granted to the sciences (ethics) is now set to become a trillion-dollar industry, due to the advent of self-driving cars.
You massive faggot, take off your trip before you embarrass yourself further.
>now set to become a trillion-dollar industry
source? this seems doubtful
Philosophy has a lot to do with invention rather than discovery, I mean this in the best way possible. It is, amongst other things, a movement to invent better ways to say some things, or to ask better questions themselves. This is not trivial or superficial at all.
The degree of importance on whether it should be simplied or not is debatable. I also think it is nice that you can explain complicated things to your grandmother. Then again, you are not fully responsible for how well your grandmother will understand what you say. If you don't consider this, you have a very naive view on what knowledge and communication is about.
There is also something to be said about how philosophy makes use of language, of ordinary language. If someone who doesn't know much of philosophy or science picks up an advanced math textbook, he won't understand a thing, it will be just numbers and letters and weird signs that are impossible to decipher. He may, however, assume that it is a language that needs to be mastered, that if he study math from the basics, he may eventually get to understand the advanced statements. However, if you pick up a very complicated philosophical work, not only you will not understand it properly, but you'll think you understand it. because you've seen words like "spirit", "work", "love", "communism", "being" etc before and thus, you've formed an idea of them, an idea that might apparently clash with the author's idea. That doesn't mean you actually clash with what the author is saying there, because you are not familiar with his reasoning and the context of other philosophers that talked about the same thing. Just like with math, if you go through the whole path, it will make sense (a new sense) to you.
A lot of people disregard philosophical works, or specific philosophers or trends of thought because they identify themselves too much with some of the words used and it is thought that you can judge someone's reasoning by looking at an aphorism about it. The best part of philosophy, imo, is so violently ground shaking it is only natural that you don't accept it with ease, because rather than the functioning of rockets or something which is outside of most people's lives and that could be only an addition of knowledge, it is about ordinary life and it requires a new arrangement of ordinary words, thus, some sort of abandoment of previous ways of thinking the world. Which is hard.
>the one field of philosophy that has indisputably not been granted to the sciences
Crazy how all of philosophy has basically branched out into an actual academically rigorous field (whether a humanity, a natural science or a soft science).
>(ethics) is now set to become a trillion-dollar industry, due to the advent of self-driving cars
is every car going to need a philosopher in the back doing utilitarian calculations or something
>t. doesn't know what PhD stands for
>As technology advances it becomes easier and easier to empirically test things that were previously thought only to be discussed through argumentation and not direct observation.
>This means anything other than technology has advanced.
>Wrong. Scientists explain difficult concepts in simple terms all the time. If you can't summarise your thesis in words everyone can understand than you've failed.
They don't, though. Try reading any physics journal and see how quickly you give up. PBS documentaries on youtube don't count as "explaining difficult concepts" if you're getting abstract reifications. If you don't put in the effort to actually learn something you never will, it's as simple as that
>utilitarian
>philosopher
Choose only one, and choose wisely.