Platos stepchild wrote:If the statement there are no absolutes in philosophy is absolute, then it's inherently illogical. I agree with you that the statement is philosophical, but I disagree that it's not absolute. I'm going to make an assumption about your worldview. I apologize if I'm wrong; but, it's my best guess. It seems that you regard philosophy as a mode-of-discourse, separate from logic.A_Seagull wrote: (Nested quote removed.)
Impeccable logic Plato, except that you don't seem to have considered the possibility that the original statement: "There are no absolutes in philosophy", is not absolute, but is philosophical.
First of all, logic is actually many different modes-of-discourse, each making conditional as well as absolute assertions. Philosophy deals with what's called epistemic modalities (which is to say, that which eventually might be, might have been, or must be, etc.). So, when I claimed that there are no absolutes in philosophy can't be a philosophical statement, my intention was to show the inherent illogic, because the statement is philosophical.
Consider the statement there are no absolutes in philosophy. It's essentially a claim that something must be true. This is a clear epistemic modality, which is to say, a philosophical and a logical statement. Philosophy is therefore not a mode-of-discourse, separate from logic. I contend that which must be true, is absolutely true. So, if the statement is true, then there are no absolutes in philosophy.
But, if it's true there are absolutely no absolutes in philosophy, and if the statement is philosophical, then we have a non sequitur. That's my original point: we're driven to conclude there are absolutes in philosophy. Now, even though we know there are absolutes in philosophy, what they are is a different question, entirely. I make no claim as to that question. I'm curious to know what you think.
I wasn't actually arguing that the statement wasn't absolute, I was just interested in seeing how you might deal with it from a logical standpoint.
Another way of dealing with it logically is to have statements in 'philosophy' and other statements in a 'meta-philosophy' which relate to 'philosophy' but are not in 'philosophy'. In such a scenario you could have the absolute statement in the meta-philosophy which states that "there are no absolutes in philosophy" without contradiction.
As for my own perspective I see philosophy (or philosophies) as a model. And as such a degree of certainty (or absoluteness) is required lest the model becomes too unstable and collapses under its own uncertainty. And these certainties may well be labelled as 'truths'. (These truths need not have a perfect correspondence with any noumena but they do require a close correlation with the phenomena.)
But this still leaves open the question as to whether a model can be considered to be 'absolute'.