bobo0100 wrote:
Because there are no clear lines does not negate the idea of caricaturization. because there are colours between red and purple does not destroy our ability to distinguish between red and purple. The fact that there are links between spices does not cloud the difference between bird and bacteria. Likewise a statement may walk the line between ethics and political theory that does not stop us from distinguishing between the two.
That was not exactly my argument (it's not that there aren't 'clear' lines, it's that they are arbitrary, which is a very different issue), but your 'counter-examples' are misinformed, which kind of illustrates my point.
I don't think you have enough background in this subject to discuss this, so I'll leave this to Volenta for now.
vegan: to exclude—as far as is practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for any purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals and the environment.
At around 4 minutes, he talked about the different ways philosophy is or could be manifest today. Modern Academic philosophy is what you're criticizing, and I also criticize it.
You may want to see some of the non-discussions I had with Soycrates here, who is coming strictly (dogmatically) from the academic side of things.
I've even heard of a Randroid teaching philosophy somewhere, which is the equivalent of Ken Ham teaching evolutionary biology; it undermines the credibility of academic philosophy, that it is breaking itself to be inclusive of such insults to reason.
It's as if biologists were so terrified of being seen as closed minded, that they put Intelligent design on the curriculum not because they had to, but because they thought it made them look unbiased and open minded. If Science accepted pseudoscience as its equal, it would be seen as stupid and useless too.
This is ACADEMIC philosophy. Which, frankly, I don't consider 'real' philosophy, it's laughable. There are a few real philosophers in academia, but as a whole it's mostly a useless mess.
At around 11:50, Carrier really gets into my point.
When he talks about the "parts" of philosophy around 14 minutes, he describes it more correctly; they're branches in the sense of scientific branches, like physics, chemistry, biology. You can't do one without doing all of them, "they're all interrelated".
These are really just synthetic divisions that assist us in understanding and digesting; they're not real or fundamental categories. They could equally be divided up in a completely different way, as long as they grouped mutually useful things together in a way that made it easy to specialize and understand.
Around 21:30 he talks about Maxwell, where the only distinction was "what he could prove" and what was more speculative.
The "spectrum of reliability" Carrier talking about is really referring to empirical data.
The list of Bunge's ten criticisms is a good outline of problems. The main, I find is #7
"7. Poor Enforcement of Validity / Methodology"
As I said, most of it -- "philosophy" today -- is pseudophilosophy, and academics are absolutely unwilling to hold standards.
Carrier echoes me: "Philosophy won't even admit that it has a problem"
31:40 Now Carrier is mostly saying everything I just said above.
(I'm writing this as I watch, by the way)
Although I would repeat and clarify some things, I don't disagree with anything Carrier said. I'd be surprised if he disagreed with anything I've said here.
