This is the second of a series of my philosophy posts (or tweets) on X, as now published here on Medium.
The tweets were relatively long anyway, as I have a X Premium subscription which allows people to publish long posts. Indeed, I went for the subscription option precisely because I was unhappy with X’s word limit (as well as other limitations)…
What can you say in (up to) 280 characters? Not that I ever intended to do the opposite: post article-long posts on X.
Thus, I intended to strike a happy medium between posting full essays, and posting short (usually unhelpful) tweets on X.
In terms of my reposts on Medium, I’ll often need to stop myself from over-extending the original X posts, which will kinda defeat the object of reposting “shorts”. However, as stated, some X posts will be tweaked and extended if required.
Finally, I also add links to the original tweets, which can’t be done on X itself.
Philosophy is not dead. It has kept up with science.
Sure, some philosophers haven’t kept up with science. However, many have.
Or, I should say, many analytic philosophers have.
Some philosophers outside that tradition, on the other hand, don’t have much respect for science. Indeed, they’re positively anti-science. So perhaps Stephen Hawking had them in mind… Probably not.
This also depends on what the words “kept up with” mean. What is deemed to be up to date anyway? Full knowledge of the papers which have been published in the last, say, three months in respected science journals?
It’s also true that some philosophers (such as metaphysical realists) believe that philosophy actually trumps science in that if there’s a clash between the two, then science itself must accommodate philosophical theories.
[E. J. Lowe believed this — at least when it came to to certain issues, such as the nature of spacetime. See his chapter ‘Metaphysics’ in The Bloomsbury Companion to Analytic Philosophy.]
It also depends on how much knowledge of science critical scientists expect from philosophers. As much knowledge — and as many skills — as scientists themselves have? However, if that were ever the case, then wouldn’t such philosophers actually be scientists?
So is that the problem that some scientists have with all philosophers — that they aren’t actually scientists?
Is it really that simple?
Sexy Popular Science
Perhaps “pop culture” often gets these things wrong because of what physicists themselves write and say. More precisely, because of what physicists write in their “popular science” books.
This has got a lot to do with physicists (not pop culture) attempting to make their topics (more?) sexy.
There are two main reasons why such physicists tart up science:
(1) In order to get more people interested in science.
(2) To help sell more of their own books.
It’s Been Peer-Reviewed! Wow!
In response to the claim above, are we meant to stand back and shout the following? —
Peer-reviewed! Wow! I’ll order half a dozen.
I’m not actually against peer-review. (It would be an odd thing to be against.) And there is a strong need for it. However, there are also problems.
For example, what if all the reviewers of a paper (or within a specific journal) believe similar things, have been educated in similar ways, uphold the same political or scientific views, etc?
What if there are only two reviewers for a particular submitted paper?
What if all (or perhaps just some) of the reviewers are biased, corrupt, dumb, or simple careerists?
Deepak Chopra has
“an answer to the riddle of why mathematics is so effective in describing the laws of nature and quantum mechanics”.
All the physicists, mathematicians and philosophers on the planet are waiting with bated breath for his answer.
Shorter
Endless Richard Feynman tweets and memes on X/Twitter are about as useful to science as Brad Pitt’s haemorrhoids.
What Happened to Philosophy? (Philosophy Now)
The content of the tweet above (at least) seems to tie in with what Nigel Warburton, Julian Baggini, Simon Critchley, etc. have to say about “professional Anglo-American analytic philosophy”.
So it’s odd how strong and systematic the links are between the philosophers who criticise “professional philosophy”, and, well, professional philosophy, as well as their links to university departments of philosophy, and to their various colleagues who’re professional philosophers. Indeed, Simon Critchley is a professional academic philosopher and critic of “professional philosophy”, and has been so for almost his entire adult life.
Alexander Jeuk (who classes himself as a “Marxist philosopher”) says that “modern philosophy suffers from overspecialization”. (My very strong bet is that he actually means analytic philosophy.) Would he also say that about any other discipline — such as physics, chemistry and economics? And what about Critical Race Theory, Subaltern Studies, Women’s Studies, etc?
Perhaps the (romantic) argument is that philosophy isn’t (or shouldn’t be) like these (former) disciplines. It should be “for the people”.
I’m also curious about Alexander Jeuk’s reference to “simplistic argument structures”. On the face of it, isn’t “overspecialised” philosophy (again, he means analytic philosophy) the prime culprit when it comes to too-complex “argument structures”?… So perhaps these (seemingly?) complex structures are actually simplistic structures, at least according to Alexander Jeuk.
Now I’m very curious.
Shorter
Did Nietzsche prove that?
Shorter
This is wank.
As if there are any important philosophers who haven’t “read philosophy”.
Of course, the meme above is poetic and rhetorical. However, if taken literally, then it’s wank.
Nietzsche himself read lots of philosophy. And Nietzschean philosophy is largely a response to prior philosophy.
So am I missing the point here anyway?
Is this simply about hipster memes-for-teens on Twitter/X?
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