What is good philosophy, and how to tell?
 

Do you know of any rules we can follow to distinguish the good stuff from the utter crap?

Most of the philosophy of science, statistics and decision theory is at least interesting. Philosophy of mathematics is less so, unless you have a very specific temperament. The mathematical/logical symbol to latin phrase ratio should usually be over 1, unless they have some really, really good thought experiments.

Why? Do you believe that our science graduates would more quickly find cures for cancer and other such things if they read that book? If so, why would you suppose that? And if not, what would be the point?

Any rules I might give would immediately then give rise to the question of a justification for them, which would get us into a rather lengthy discussion, and given the lack of common ground among those who would likely post responses, not likely to be a discussion in which much progress would be made.

There is also the question of what type of rule you have in mind, as one might want rules which specify necessary and sufficient conditions, or one might want just a rule of thumb. I have heard more than one professor of philosophy say that one should avoid German philosophers whose names begin with the letter "h." That, of course, does not go far enough, and obviously is not specifying either a necessary or sufficient condition per se, as it isn't being German or having a name that starts with the letter "h" that really matters, but it is identifying a group of philosophers who they judged to be worthless.

I will, however, venture a suggestion, that any philosophy that does not make any difference in how one would live one's life is of limited value at best, and worse than nothing at its very worst.

One may also apply the principles of logic, and say that any inconsistent position is necessarily false, and therefore ought to be rejected, but that will not get us very far along at all in practice, though it will help reject some of grosser errors.

A further suggestion is that one ought to be more inclined to disregard anything that is not clearly written. Although one might suppose that this is a purely stylistic matter, it is not, for a confused mind tends to produce confused writings.

If you want something a bit more lengthy on this subject, the following may be of some use:

http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/wrongthoughts.html

But that, too, is not going to give you a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for identifying bad philosophy, and is more of a rambling discussion that vaguely points one in more or less the right direction.

I think you've come up with an adequate identification of crap in philosophy discussions.

Now, you should see the faces of philosophy undergraduates when I tell them that I think more than 90% of philosophy is utter shit and something like 95% of the philosophy they like is worse.

Because they are all continentalists. -.- Most german philosophy is crap. Especially those with H.

That is a description of relatively good philosophy, as that is far superior to the senseless gibberish that many philosophers have written, who not only fail to point in the right direction, they fail to point in any real direction at all.

I suspect that your percentages are off, though I have not tallied it up to see. (Have you?) I have no wish to inspect the shit to make sure it is all pure shit, so that although I will agree with the idea that most is worthless or worse (e.g., see James' essay here for an example of something worse than nothing), I will not go so far with you in saying it is such a high percentage. But not having tallied it up, I am uncertain that you are wrong, even though I suspect it.

You might be put off by some of the garbage in, say, Epictetus' writings, whereas I rather like the little bits in him that are good, and therefore place him in the "worth reading" category. I would not, of course, suggest trusting everything he wrote, but he did say some interesting things that are worth thinking about. Epicurus is an even better example for my side, for although he did write some garbage, the main points of his surviving writings are nevertheless excellent. I seem to recall advising you to read him before, and do not recall if you did. Here is a link to a site devoted to him, with links to his writings. I particularly recommend his Principle Doctrines, the Vatican Sayings, and his Letter to Menoeceus. I will not go so far as to say that those writings are pure gold, but they do give excellent practical advice, and if everyone adopted his approach to living, the world would be a far better place. And most people would be far happier with his approach to life than with their current ones, even if their neighbors did not likewise follow Epicurus' advice.

But since this is getting off topic, perhaps you will respond via PM instead of here, unless you think that your remarks will benefit others.

Pyrrho,

That sounds like a clear reflection of our universe.

Alex.

PS - I liked the line from a uni colleague "If you think philosophy is easy, then you're not doing it."

Prrho,

Because it would give them a grounding in the politics of the field in which they work. One good example is in funding applications.

Alex.

However much it might be analogous to the universe for a writing to be gibberish, that does not make it worth reading.

No but there are several considerations to that effect.

First, most philosophy is not written down. And most such philosophy is even worse than the written down version.

Second, most philosophy that is written down is not published. And unpublished philosophy is generally worse than published philosophy.

Third, much of the philosophy that is published is still bad, and since it is generally better than the unpublished and unwritten philosophy, those are even worse.

Fourth, much of the philosophy that is published in journals is pretty bad, and since it is generally better than the philosophy mentioned above, those are even worse.

The actual percentages may be even higher. Take a look at the philosophy in this forum, in the FW section or EoG forum, for instance. Most of that is incredibly bad.

If you are counting every passing thought in anyone's head, then I think you are being overly conservative in your estimate of the crap, as I am quite sure it is well over 99% that would be crap.

However, I previously had in mind only published philosophy, not every silly thought that enters anyone's head.

Yes. I remember someone criticizing something I posted as being too simple and homely (its virtues being that it was clear and obviously true, unlike the post to which I was responding), instead of the difficult foolishness that was preferred by that individual. It can be hard going trying to slog through some of the drivel that has been written. The difficulty does not make it not total crap.

If we look at someone like Epicurus, he is mostly pretty easy to read, and he actually gives excellent advice on how to live one's life (which is a fairly important matter). Quality, indeed, has little to do with difficulty.

Well, I am only counting that which is philosophy under a normal and very broad definition. Obviously most of that is trash. Perhaps much of it is unwritten. Certainly, most of it is not published in journals. And even that which is, is not good generally.

I must say I'm having problems with this thread. It seems as though most of you have some sure way of telling good philosophy from bad philosophy. I don't happen to have that faculty.

If it's something that can be learned, I'd appreciate receiving a rundown as to how I could acquire that talent.

Thanks.

You don't have any suggestions as to how to tell? Ideas about indicators?

Are we to assume that your philosophy is trash free?

Since most published philosophy is trash, and since philosophy which is not published is even more likely to be trash, and since the philosophy you are now expounding is not, to my knowledge, published, I suspect that your current sentiments are unworthy of consideration.

If there were any rules, how would we know that those rules were themselves good philosophy? We would need meta-rules, which would require meta-meta-rules, and so on.

I think that rather than hard and fast rules, we ought to be more interested in flexible heuristics. The main issue should b the following: Given that I have limited time and cannot possibly acquaint myself with all of philosophy, how can I maximize the utility (relative to my values) of time I spend?

One quick and easy heuristic is to search for ideas that seem very counter intuitive to you and look at their justifications. Often these justifications are weak, but when you find a really great one you grow mentally.

Another is to look for view that are in direct opposition to your own. Your goal should be to find arguments that break your worldview down as often as you can handle doing so. I find it to be mentally taxing, but also very worthwhile, to try to absorb and intuitively understand where opponents of my ideas are coming from. It is usually easy to tell if they are coming from a position of ignorance, but it can be hard to tell if they are actually on solid footing. If you are unsure of their solid footing, I would say that that is an indication that you are lacking some important piece of knowledge that they can point you to.

First of all, rules of thumb are not sure ways of telling anything, so you will want to be careful about what significance you attribute to any particular statement. Second, if you mean to suggest that with some set of rules, it is impossible for error, then you may want to read about fallibilism.

Are you saying you can't tell the difference between good and bad philosophy? If not, then that is the problem. But if so, you should look for commonalities among the good and commonalities among the bad to give you some general ideas on how one tells the difference. Or just ask yourself, how is it that you know the one is good and the other is bad?

Some questions one might consider are:

Is what is being said useful? Does it matter if what is said is true or false? Is what is being said even meaningful?

If the answer to any of those questions is "no," then most likely it isn't good philosophy.

Perhaps I should have simply asked you, do you judge all philosophy to be equally good? If not, how is it that you manage to judge some of it as being better than others?

That's exactly the point I'm making. I do not understand how someone can toss aside 99% of philosophy as being crap.

I'm not saying it isn't. I'm just saying I don't know how anyone can sort out philosophies the way anyone can sort out rotten potatoes from good ones.

I've read a great deal in this area of human endeavor, have found some of it to be useful, some to be intriguing, some incomprehensible (which doesn't mean it's bad, since I have that problem with quantum mechanics).

But, think how wonderful it would be if someone would show me how to toss aside 99% (or was it 99.99%) of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Kant and a host of others with the assurance that it's crap.

It would sure save a lot of time and effort on my part.

That brings up an interesting point. If one does not understand something, it could be that one does not understand due to something about oneself (did not try hard enough, too stupid, whatever), or it could be something about the thing (extremely poorly written, nonsensical, whatever). But all is not lost, as there is a way to distinguish between these two, and that is judging by whether or not other people seem to understand it. And for that, one needs more than just that they claim to understand it, which means nothing, but that their comments about it fit in with what other people say about it. They do not have to all agree exactly, but if their interpretations are all over the map, then that is a sign that they are making it up (either intentionally or unintentionally), rather than that they are understanding something. And if no one seems to understand some writing (that isn't written in a dead language), then that is a good indication that the defect is in the writing, not in you, when you fail to understand it.

When we look at complicated mathematics, the mathematicians have a remarkable degree of consistency in their pronouncements about the abstruse concepts, and so this gives us a strong indication that it is intelligible, and not nonsense. But if we consider a philosopher, whose interpreters all or nearly all disagree about the majority of what the philosopher said, then that is a strong indication that it is really not comprehended by them (as they are all witnesses, as it were, that the others fail to understand it), and so it is likely to be gibberish. And further, if the pronouncements that are made about the abstruse topic are all as abstruse as the topic itself, that, too, is a sign that it is likely to be gibberish, though one needs to take some care about this, which, again, the example of mathematics will be of help. The explanations that mathematicians give is understood by more people than the original bare idea, and the degree of understanding is related to (but not solely determined by) the level of study that people have made of the subject of mathematics. And, in the case of mathematics, the basics are readily understandable, to some degree, by nearly everyone, which again gives us good reason to suppose that it is a subject that is not nonsensical. But the same cannot be said of the writings of some philosophers, whose basic ideas, if even really ideas and not nonsense, are not understood by many people (if by any at all), which suggests that there is something amiss.


Obviously, one cannot shave off the majority of the works of every philosopher as garbage, as some philosophers are better than others, where some write mostly what is good, and some write mostly what is bad, and some appear to have failed to write anything good at all. One can read about philosophers to get a hint about this, but as it is a controversial matter, one needs to read the philosopher for oneself to judge who is and who is not writing crap. But one need not read for long to get an idea about this, particularly if one is a good judge, as when someone is writing sensibly from the start, this is a strong indication that that individual may have written more that is good, and if the thing one has read is crap, that is a strong indication that the individual wrote more crap. Of course, this is a matter of induction, and so there is some degree of uncertainty in doing this, but it is a way of saving a good deal of time. Typically, what one will want to select is whatever book the philosopher in question regards as the best introduction to that philosopher's ideas, to get a fair assessment of that individual without reading their entire corpus. And often, one need not read the entire book that one has selected, to have a very good idea of whether the book is gibberish or not.

Of course, some people are better than others at this, and one ought to be careful about misjudging things, and if ever there is evidence that one encounters that one made a mistake previously, then obviously one ought to reconsider the matter anew. But as for how to go about judging these things, I have already in this thread made several simple suggestions to get people started, and obviously one may consider whether or not my suggestions are good ones or not.

Jaybees,

One good indicator is that an argument should follow.

Application of Occam's razor keeps things sharp.

Finally: If you think philosophy is easy, you are not doing it.

Alex.

Good. There is indeed a very high probability that it is so according to what I said before.

ETA. I agree with everything Pyrrho said above. Very good post.
ETA. Zetetic11235's post is also good.

I think there is another important point to add. The collective discipline of philosophy concentrates around certain ideas and texts. If a work of philosophy is considered to be important to the overall discipline, there is most likely a reason for that, and it is probably worth investigating.

The best way to get a good idea of what's crap and what's not is to go get a college degree in philosophy. But that might be a little too time consuming for you. But that's the wonderful thing about philosophy, you have all your life to learn it. Why the rush? Just pick up a book and start reading. You have until you die to figure out how good it is.

At least one important thing necessary is that what is at issue be made crystal clear, and not be confused with any other issue. For instance, suppose the issue is whether omniscience is consistent with human freedom. This issue should not be confused with a very different and unrelated issue, namely whether there is (or could be) such a thing as omniscience (or, indeed, human freedom). Clarity is central to no merely good philosophy, but to good thinking, since good philosophy consists in good thinking. The amount of confusion is directly proportional to the amount of crappy philosophy.

Why do I have a feeling that this is a non-answer? In virtually any field of human endeavor there are rules of thumb for distinguishing between worthwhile and worthless material. These are not necessarily perfect, nor is there necessarily agreement among practioners in these fields concerning the correct methods of sorting. But they do give rules.

I grant that philosophy is more nebulous than physiology, but there still must be some technique you could point me to which wouldn't involve a lifetime of study. After all, theoretical physics isn't exactly a self-evident discipline, but when I read what the experts in the field have to say about it, I at least get a grasp of what they are driving at.

I do not get even that from anyone who insists they have the key to how to distinguish good philosopy from bad.

First, from what I can gather good philosophy is what one agrees with and bad philosophy is what one disagrees with. I think this is true of every field but it's more applicable to philosophy and its related fields (like religion or art). Its easier to define what health is (physiology) than to define health as good (philosophy).

Second, what I find to be good philosophy tends to be good psychology. Meaning that it resonates with my own experience with myself and with others, as well as with contemporary studies. I can appreciate some of Ayn Rand or Socrates and still disagree with their view of property or state. In which case I would call some stuff in a book or story good and some crap.

Lastly, the technique depends on why you care so much about what is considered good philosophy. Read and study what interests you when it interests you. If you think its crap move on to something else. I do agree with this statement, though: But this is only because I dabble in philosophy to learn how to live. So your mileage may vary.

I don't think anyone is suggesting you throw it out before you read it, only suggesting that there are better ways to become acquainted with the same (or more refined) ideas.

When it comes down to it, the modern philosopher isn't usually referring back to Plato, and he certainly isn't contributing to solving any concrete problems unless he's a logician, a philosopher of the mind (if he is willing to get his hands dirty with science) or making any strong claims.

There are philosophers who fall pretty clearly into the useless crap category. Philosophers of the mind who are staunch ideological epiphenominalist/anti-reductionists and have not worked with neuroscience at all (remaining blissfully ignorant) come to mind.

It seems like many analytic philosophers fall into the not-even-wrong category. This is an issue because analytic philosophers make a claim to substantive results so they especially have to face up to these criteria. That said, I would say that those few good analytic philosophers are very good and produce interesting interdisciplinary research.

As far as continental philosophy goes, I put it in the same category as speculative/thought provoking fiction. I don't expect it to give me any powerful new ways to think about things (except in very rare instances), but it is worth reading if it's well written, and I might be entertained while I glean an idea or two. That's when it's good, when it's bad (Derrida), it is just a waste of time.

Perhaps this is due to a goal bias. My goal in reading or learning anything is primarily to gain a clear, accurate and precise mental framework through which I can view the world around me. If the philosophy I am reading is not aiding this as significantly as, say, reading science is, then I will categorically dismiss philosophy as something that is not as important as science. Of course, the prudent thing to do is to keep reading some philosophy so I can update my views in case I'm wrong.

Zetetic,

With respect, this is why you are missing the juice in philosophy. It seems like you have on a pair of mental spectacles which colour the world in the way that you want to see it. This obviously makes you feel comfortable but it is the biggest mistake in philosophy.

In order to do philosophy we have to learn to question our own beliefs and methodologies, before we start questioning others.

You have to take your specs off.

Alex.

Pyrrho,

You missed the joke. For clarification - What direction does the universe point in?

Alex.

Make no mistake about it, I didn't come into philosophy with this attitude. I came in through Nietzsche, Camus, Dostoevsky and Sartre. I'm familiar Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Husserl, Russell, Frege, Quine, Carnap, Tarski, Rousseau, Lock, Mills, Hobbes, Bentham, Marx, Smith, a little Habermas, Rorty, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Peirce, Dewey, James and the list goes on. You might ask 'You read them, but did you understand them?'. I would say that I did, and I have chosen my point of view for deeply philosophical reasons. I am currently (tentatively, though I would argue vigorously for it) a philosophical pragmatist roughly in the tradition of Peirce.

Part of questioning our beliefs is questioning our methodology. A philosopher begins with only one method, that of trusting his very much human intuition. Cognitive science gives up tools for correcting against the tricks our minds can play on us. Mathematical rigor gives us a framework upon which to hang our complex ideas in order that we keep them consistent. These are tools necessary for deep philosophy, not the mere trappings of the insecure. A philosopher who rejects these tools on the basis of ignorance is no philosopher at all, in my eyes.

Also, it's a bit rude to make assumptions (even if they are phrased politely) about my tendency to question my own beliefs, I've probably heavily revised them half a dozen times in as many months. Of course, you have your preconception; so we'll see how well you fare in this endeavor.

Z,

This could be the nub of it. The mind does play tricks on us, and an attraction to cognitive science could be one of these tricks. Similarly, the appeal of consistency is hard to avoid for the orderly mind. However, the alternative is a hard road.

When I was writing my MPhil (which the Uni wanted to convert to PhD) I had a philosophical crisis. My attempt to apply rational principles to a moral problem (utilitarianism and moral rights) seemed intially plausible, but the deeper I went into thought experiments on moral dilemmas the harder it was to hold consistency. A fall back onto reflective equilibrium diluted the principles in order to maintain consistency, but this was getting to baby and bathwater time.

In the end, I found myself looking at moral tragedy as the only plausible explanation, with the rational principles highlighting the tragedy. However, deep down, after several years of study and much writing, I was about to junk my precious rational principles. So, I took my MPhil for the trip done and put my pet thesis away in the drawer, much to the consternation of my supervisors. However, I felt that I had been a better philosopher for sorting something out, even if it took a long time.

I too started with Neitzsche and find myself back there.

Remember - "If you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you" ?

I'm an old guy now, so nothing to prove, and all I want now is for it to be real. Looks like you didn't just take the philosophy trip, but have the energy to build something - make it as real as you can.

Good thoughts to you.

Alex.

No. I don't know of any such rules. Maybe a qualitative assessment of the stuff (being passed off as good philosophy) will suffice and be adequate for your purpose. We don't need, for example, to know of any rules to distinguish (and let's keep this simple) a good refrigerator from one that is utterly (as you put it) not so good. Yes, we could possibly somehow quantify the general differences between refrigerators that perform their functions well from those that do not, but we need not immediately turn our attention to making, perhaps, tedious-to-follow rules or tests when all we might need to know is whether the stuff helps us to or detracts us from the purpose of doing philosophy.

See, it's simple when it comes to the refrigerator. If it (and for simplicity's sake) keeps the food cold, then it's working as it ought. With philosophy, it's a bit harder to pin down, but I don't see why it shouldn't follow the same general idea. That is, and to put it simply, if what is presented as philosophy succeeds to do as philosophy is designed (or aims towards fulfilling our purpose of doing philosophy), then maybe it would be better to regard such philosophy as good philosophy.

This brings up what I think might be an interesting point. What is presented as philosophy need not be useful or important in order to be good philosophy. The test seems to be whether or not it's working properly. We don't say (or least we shouldn't say) that inductive arguments are lousy because they don't do as deductive arguments do. We don't say of refrigerators that they have failed in some way just because they do not cook our food. We need to look at the purpose of philosophy and think of it as an archer's target. Then, look at what's being presented as philosophy and think of it as an archer's arrow.

We don't have to like what we see, and if what we see is uninteresting, unimportant, or even downright useless, then we should still refrain from calling or otherwise regarding such philosophy as bad philosophy, for what makes philosophy good or bad has nothing to do with that but instead the purpose.

If desiring to understand the mind is a trick of the mind, it is one that it seems we should welcome. I've found that more often than not, the more damaging trick of the mind is that we place ourselves on a pedestal, away from the probing of scientific inquiry.

I am not referring to tricks willy-nilly, mind you. That leads to Descartes' demon and extreme skepticism. I am referring to known cognitive biases. Being aware of these can help us to mitigate their effects to some degree (depending on which ones we are talking about), and I think that the only clear road forward is to try to work around them.

Perhaps morality is somewhat more chaotic/dynamic than you expected? It may be that we lack the knowledge necessary to do what you were trying to do at the time you were trying to do it. That is always a possibility.

The human brain is one of the most complex physical structures we know of, and as far as we can tell, it is the seat of morality. It may well be that the field of ethics requires a bit more scientific exploration in order that we sort out our jumbled intuitions.

I've always felt that the feeling of existential crisis is the most difficult to overcome, something that you come back to multiple times.

I can only hope that I build something real during my career (wherever I might go), but I suppose I would not be too upset if I fail to. ;)

Good thoughts to you as well.