Wednesday, May 6, 2015

ANALYTICAL PHILOSOPHY IS BULLSHIT- Jersey Flight



"Philosophers today (like most other scholars) systematically narrow the scope of their questioning in order to get more precise and more certain results. This is analyticity, or a version of it anyway. The process of narrowing iterates repeatedly, until finally you’re discussing sub-sub-sub-questions of original questions which have been long forgotten. Beyond that, often enough the analytic method is further ornamented with fanciful counterfactual hypotheticals which themselves can become independent objects of study. The outcome of all this is a perfect Potemkin village of conditionally rigorous conclusions which are irrelevant to anything actual or actually imaginable." John Emerson, Why Analytic Philosophy Should Rankle Your Ass Too

In other words, what is the point? Where exactly does this analytical approach lead? The answer is to the Abyss. Eventually the "narrowing" has no place to go and so it leads to a debate over the rules of grammar, which eventually give way to the question of "context," at which point we are forced to admit the supremacy of "preference" in relation to our conclusions.

Analytical philosophers are merely pretenders... but even more, they do philosophy from ignorance... claiming to be the lords of clarity they are actually the lords of confusion (or perhaps it would be better to say, the lords of deception and irrelevance).

An analytical philosopher claims to be doing a certain thing in a certain way, in contrast to that which is the wrong way, and yet they are unaware of their own position (the point at which their process breaks down; the inability of their method).

If analytical philosophy teaches us anything; it teaches us that truth is a matter of preference, which is a matter of conditioning [enter here subjectivity]: it teaches us the inability of analytical philosophy to live up to the arrogance of its own claims. [...claims to be doing something more scientific and precise---- nonsense! disintegration by syntax! Grammatical subjectivity!]

To be an analytical philosopher is merely to confess one's ignorance in relation to the limits of philosophy.

{In contrast, that which has been deemed postmodern/continental is aware of the Abyss; is aware of the inability of philosophy to produce a certain kind of conclusion; hence, is not deluded by a rational vision of grandeur; understands that philosophy is poetry, and that style and creation account for progress and change.}

He that seeks to narrow, when he should be building, has left the track of life to engage a self-serving program of the ego sustained by irrelevant and useless distinctions (semantics which lead nowhere). But this should come as no surprise; for some men philosophy has never been anything more (and shall never be anything more) than a game. 


Analyticus: But my dear man, philosophy is a game!

Flight: I can see you are correct, but there are different ways and reasons to play this game. When I speak of philosophers playing games I am referring to abstract nonsense; I am referring to ways and reasons that have no bearing on reality. To solve a problem in this sphere is to solve an equation that has no bearing on life. Analytical philosophy is the game that leads nowhere. In my mind the greatest proof against analytical philosophy is the fact that it has made a conversation on theism possible! [see Analytical Theism] Surely this is evidence of its futility? After all, how valuable is a method which makes it possible to speak of the rationality of invisible unicorns?

I am well aware that you will say there is nothing here; that I am merely exaggerating or misrepresenting the true nature of analytical philosophy. And yet theism is a subject which should be long dead, but analytical philosophy (in its own special analytical way) has brought it back to life. No doubt it is still without substance, but when philosophy is not concerned with substance (as is the case with analytical philosophy) then the non-substance of theism can assert itself as philosophy.

Analyticus: My dear Mr. Flight, I suggest you go back to school and learn the substance of analytical philosophy, because the only thing you have provided here is an ignorant caricaturization. 



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