There might be an initial suspicion that the methodology of the experiment is flawed, but I guess it does make more sense that it would be accepted eventually and then a new theory would come along.Jack D Ripper wrote: ↑November 28th, 2020, 6:21 pmSeth_Gibson wrote: ↑November 28th, 2020, 4:08 pm It took me much longer to get through the section on catholic philosophy for Russel's history as I found it comparably less interesting. Not much original thought is there, at least in the way Russel portrayed it. But hey, at least they preserved the questions Plato attempted to answer. If they did not care, Plato might have become some obscure philosopher, and a large portion of the western canon would never develop as a response to his arguments.
Although I agree that medieval philosophy is less interesting (and less good) than other philosophy, I don't think it was very useful in the rediscovery of the ancient philosophers. In fact, I think it is mostly the opposite, as Christians had a habit of burning books they did not like. This is why, for example, we have so little of what Epicurus wrote. But, perhaps, they did help make Plato more influential, as they did not burn his books and tried to adapt some of his ideas to Christianity (well, that started long before medieval philosophy, as Augustine was doing that, but many continued that tradition). It also may have helped Aristotle be influential, as they liked him, too. So we have a lot of Aristotle and a lot of Plato that we can read today.
Seth_Gibson wrote: ↑November 28th, 2020, 4:08 pm I just read it. There is definitely an incentive to stroke the ideological preconceptions of the people scrutinizing one's work. In Thinking: Fast and Slow it is shown that when someone disagrees with you, areas of your brain light up with pain, essentially creating cognitive strain. This makes you more likely to catch grammatical mistakes in the work of people you disagree with. Also, the fact that Sokel used the terminology of the academics reduced the cognitive strain even further, because familiarity makes people comfortable. This phenomenon is known as the mere exposure effect.
The key, though, is that in order for academics to contribute in some way, they must argue that someone from before is wrong without creating cognitive strain. Value is created where disagreement arises if the academic can show how the theory can be improved or replaced. When scientists have a model that describes the world, the newly accumulated evidence is integrated into that model, such as the theory of relativity. When the result of an experiment is not compatible with a theory like relativity (a quantum mechanical result, for example), the experiment is viewed with suspicion, and it is not until a new theory comes along like quantum mechanics that the results are generally accepted.
I don't think that is right. They accept the results when it is repeated by others who get the same results. They don't wait until there is a theory to explain it to accept the results of the experiment. In fact, it is the acceptance of the results that drives the work on a theory to explain it. If they did not accept the results of the experiment, then they would have no need to explain the results of the experiment.
There are still a few sections in Beyond, Good and Evil that still appear incoherent to me, despite knowing way more about Nietzsche than I need to as you said. It is not lack of expertise on my end, but a lack of clarity on Nietzsche's. Initially, I was impressed with Nietzsche being above my level, because whereas with Plato I could get through 30 pages in an hour, I could only get through 5 with Nietzsche. But now that I can grasp his esotaric writing style, it seems more like he is repeating the same ideas without a further proof just as you said. At first I thought it was my fault for not grasping the underlying message he conveys like others seem to argue, but I gave up on finding that message. He leaves too much work for the reader to peace his puzzles togethar without knowing how to himself.Jack D Ripper wrote: ↑November 28th, 2020, 6:21 pmSeth_Gibson wrote: ↑November 28th, 2020, 4:08 pm Philosophy is more chaotic than that because there are multiple theories of reality that run in parallel, and none of them are universally recognized as objective, unlike with science. This makes me think that I could definitely get away with writing nonsense, as long as I "improve" upon the nonsense of others, while making sure to not to offend them.
Part of all this comes from a video I watched which talked about how to create value with academic writing. If everyone on this forum watched this video, then it would be a lot easier to have discussions:
https://youtu.be/vtIzMaLkCaM
There are a couple of things driving the nonsense that gets published in academia. Part of it is based on the "publish or perish" approach to hiring at universities. At many schools, teachers who do not publish do not get tenure and instead get fired. So they have to publish something or they perish in academia. So, if they have nothing worthwhile to say, they can write something unintelligible instead, that they get published, and it keeps administrators happy who then give them tenure. So, for that aspect of the problem, it is an institutional problem rather than something academics particularly desired to do.
Also, there are many prejudices that people have, and appealing to them works for getting things published. Some of the people running "scholarly" journals are idiots who believe a great deal of nonsense themselves, and so one can get published in those journals primarily by writing garbage. That was exploited in the Sokal Hoax.
Many people don't seem to think about it this way, but when you don't understand something, it could be because you are not smart enough to understand it, or it could be because you did not have the right preparation for it (as, for example, being presented with the last proof in Calculus III before you took Calculus I), or it could be because it is nonsense. This last option is one that people often are reluctant to suppose is the case, but it is a very real option.
It is stated in that article about the Sokal Hoax that the most groundbreaking works in string theory are easier to read than the ones less groundbreaking. If only a few people understood Einstein's general theory of relativity, that would be a sign if his inadequacy, not his brilliance. Would you say that it is the same with philosophy, that there is a relative negative correlation between difficulty of understanding and greatness (as a general rule of thumb, because there are plenty of contrary examples)?