Antiphilosophy

Last updated November 06, 2024

Antiphilosophy is an opposition to traditional philosophy.^[1]^[2] It may be characterized as anti-theoretical, critical of a priori justifications, and may see common philosophical problems as misconceptions that are to be dissolved.^[3] Common strategies may involve forms of relativism, skepticism, nihilism, or pluralism.^[4]

The term has been used as a denigrating word^[5] but is also used with more neutral or positive connotations.^[1]^[2] Boris Groys's 2012 book Introduction to Antiphilosophy discusses thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Shestov, Nietzsche, and Benjamin, characterizing their work as privileging life and action over thought.^[4]

Examples of antiphilosophical positions

Ethics

The antiphilosopher could argue that, with regard to ethics, there is only practical, ordinary reasoning. Therefore, a priori it is wrong to superimpose overarching ideas of what is good for philosophical reasons. For example, it is wrong blanketly to assume that only happiness matters, as in utilitarianism. This is not to claim, however, that a utilitarian-like argument may not be valid in some particular case.

Continuum hypothesis

Consider the continuum hypothesis, stating that there is no set with size strictly between the size of the natural numbers and the size of the real numbers. One idea is that the set universe ought to be rich, with many sets, which leads to the continuum hypothesis being false.^[6]^[7] This richness argument, the antiphilosopher might argue, is purely philosophical, and groundless, and therefore should be dismissed; maintaining that the continuum hypothesis should be settled by mathematical arguments. In particular it could be the case that the question isn't mathematically meaningful or useful, that the hypothesis is neither true, nor false. It is then wrong to stipulate, a priori and for philosophical reasons, that the continuum hypothesis is true or false.^{[lower-roman 1]}

Scientism

Scientism, as a doctrinal position in that science is the only way to know the reality, is continuously confronting the utility and validity of Philosophy methods, adopting an anti-philosophical position. Authors like Sam Harris believe that science can, or will, answer questions about morality and ethics, making philosophy useless.^[8] In line to Comte's Law of three stages , scientists conclude Philosophy is a discipline of plausible answers, but that fails by not verifying their postulates with physical reality, which must necessarily conclude that it is science, for its categorical imperative to respond only through accessible and universal responses to rational-sensitive experience, a stage of knowledge in line with material existence, if not the only one.^[9]

Antiphilosophies

Wittgenstein's metaphilosophy

The views of Ludwig Wittgenstein, specifically his metaphilosophy, could be said to be antiphilosophy.^[1]^[3] In The New York Times , Paul Horwich points to Wittgenstein's rejection of philosophy as traditionally and currently practiced and his "insistence that it can't give us the kind of knowledge generally regarded as its raison d'être".^[3]

Horwich goes on to argue that:

Wittgenstein claims that there are no realms of phenomena whose study is the special business of a philosopher, and about which he or she should devise profound a priori theories and sophisticated supporting arguments. There are no startling discoveries to be made of facts, not open to the methods of science, yet accessible "from the armchair" through some blend of intuition, pure reason and conceptual analysis. Indeed the whole idea of a subject that could yield such results is based on confusion and wishful thinking.

Horwich concludes that, according to Wittgenstein, philosophy "must avoid theory-construction and instead be merely 'therapeutic,' confined to exposing the irrational assumptions on which theory-oriented investigations are based and the irrational conclusions to which they lead".

Moreover, these antiphilosophical views are central to Wittgenstein, Horwich argues.

Pyrrhonism

Pyrrhonism has been considered an antiphilosophy.^[10]

Notes

↑ Cf.^[1] and Wittgenstein's view on "pure mathematics".

Related Research Articles

In mathematics, specifically set theory, the continuum hypothesis is a hypothesis about the possible sizes of infinite sets. It states:

"There is no set whose cardinality is strictly between that of the integers and the real numbers."

Metaphilosophy, sometimes called the philosophy of philosophy, is "the investigation of the nature of philosophy". Its subject matter includes the aims of philosophy, the boundaries of philosophy, and its methods. Thus, while philosophy characteristically inquires into the nature of being, the reality of objects, the possibility of knowledge, the nature of truth, and so on, metaphilosophy is the self-reflective inquiry into the nature, aims, and methods of the activity that makes these kinds of inquiries, by asking what is philosophy itself, what sorts of questions it should ask, how it might pose and answer them, and what it can achieve in doing so. It is considered by some to be a subject prior and preparatory to philosophy, while others see it as inherently a part of philosophy, or automatically a part of philosophy while others adopt some combination of these views.

Reality is the sum or aggregate of all that is real or existent within the universe, as opposed to that which is only imaginary, nonexistent or nonactual. The term is also used to refer to the ontological status of things, indicating their existence. In physical terms, reality is the totality of a system, known and unknown.

Philosophy of mathematics is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of mathematics and its relationship with other human activities.

Hilary Whitehall Putnam was an American philosopher, mathematician, computer scientist, and figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. He contributed to the studies of philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of science. Outside philosophy, Putnam contributed to mathematics and computer science. Together with Martin Davis he developed the Davis–Putnam algorithm for the Boolean satisfiability problem and he helped demonstrate the unsolvability of Hilbert's tenth problem.

Analytic philosophy is an analysis focused, broad, contemporary movement or tradition within Western philosophy, especially anglophone philosophy. Analytic philosophy is characterized by a clarity of prose; rigor in arguments; and making use of formal logic and mathematics, and, to a lesser degree, the natural sciences. It is further characterized by an interest in language and meaning known as the linguistic turn. It has developed several new branches of philosophy and logic, notably philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of science, modern predicate logic and mathematical logic.

The problem of induction is a philosophical problem that questions the rationality of predictions about unobserved things based on previous observations. These inferences from the observed to the unobserved are known as "inductive inferences". David Hume, who first formulated the problem in 1739, argued that there is no non-circular way to justify inductive inferences, while acknowledging that everyone does and must make such inferences.

Crispin James Garth Wright is a British philosopher, who has written on neo-Fregean (neo-logicist) philosophy of mathematics, Wittgenstein's later philosophy, and on issues related to truth, realism, cognitivism, skepticism, knowledge, and objectivity. He is Professor of Philosophical Research at the University of Stirling, and taught previously at the University of St Andrews, University of Aberdeen, New York University, Princeton University and University of Michigan.

Certainty is the epistemic property of beliefs which a person has no rational grounds for doubting. One standard way of defining epistemic certainty is that a belief is certain if and only if the person holding that belief could not be mistaken in holding that belief. Other common definitions of certainty involve the indubitable nature of such beliefs or define certainty as a property of those beliefs with the greatest possible justification. Certainty is closely related to knowledge, although contemporary philosophers tend to treat knowledge as having lower requirements than certainty.

Paul Gordon Horwich is a British analytic philosopher at New York University, noted for his contributions to philosophy of science, philosophy of physics, the philosophy of language and the interpretation of Wittgenstein's later philosophy.

Originally, fallibilism is the philosophical principle that propositions can be accepted even though they cannot be conclusively proven or justified, or that neither knowledge nor belief is certain. The term was coined in the late nineteenth century by the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, as a response to foundationalism. Theorists, following Austrian-British philosopher Karl Popper, may also refer to fallibilism as the notion that knowledge might turn out to be false. Furthermore, fallibilism is said to imply corrigibilism, the principle that propositions are open to revision. Fallibilism is often juxtaposed with infallibilism.

Penelope Maddy is an American philosopher. Maddy is Emerita UCI Distinguished Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science and of Mathematics at the University of California, Irvine. She is well known for her influential work in the philosophy of mathematics, where she has worked on mathematical realism and mathematical naturalism.

The analytic–synthetic distinction is a semantic distinction used primarily in philosophy to distinguish between propositions that are of two types: analytic propositions and synthetic propositions. Analytic propositions are true or not true solely by virtue of their meaning, whereas synthetic propositions' truth, if any, derives from how their meaning relates to the world.

Joseph Zalman Margolis was an American philosopher. A radical historicist, he authored many books critical of the central assumptions of Western philosophy, and elaborated a robust form of relativism.

The simulation hypothesis proposes that what we experience as the world is actually a simulated reality, such as a computer simulation in which we ourselves are constructs. There has been much debate over this topic in the philosophical discourse, and regarding practical applications in computing.

Quietism in philosophy sees the role of philosophy as broadly therapeutic or remedial. Quietist philosophers believe that philosophy has no positive thesis to contribute; rather, it defuses confusions in the linguistic and conceptual frameworks of other subjects, including non-quietist philosophy. For quietists, advancing knowledge or settling debates is not the job of philosophy, rather philosophy should liberate the mind by diagnosing confusing concepts.

In the philosophy of mathematics, Benacerraf's identification problem is a philosophical argument developed by Paul Benacerraf against set-theoretic Platonism and published in 1965 in an article entitled "What Numbers Could Not Be". Historically, the work became a significant catalyst in motivating the development of mathematical structuralism.

The therapeutic approach to philosophy sees philosophical problems as misconceptions that are to be therapeutically dissolved. The approach stems from Ludwig Wittgenstein.

There is not a single philosophical method, though there are indeed methods, different therapies, as it were.

The Quine–Putnam indispensability argument is an argument in the philosophy of mathematics for the existence of abstract mathematical objects such as numbers and sets, a position known as mathematical platonism. It was named after the philosophers Willard Quine and Hilary Putnam, and is one of the most important arguments in the philosophy of mathematics.

In the philosophy of mathematics, Aristotelian realism holds that mathematics studies properties such as symmetry, continuity and order that can be immanently realized in the physical world. It contrasts with Platonism in holding that the objects of mathematics, such as numbers, do not exist in an "abstract" world but can be physically realized. It contrasts with nominalism, fictionalism, and logicism in holding that mathematics is not about mere names or methods of inference or calculation but about certain real aspects of the world.

References

1 2 3 4 Penelope Maddy, "Wittgenstein's Anti-Philosophy of Mathematics", Johannes Czermak and Klaus Paul, eds., Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Mathematics, 1993, http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~pjmaddy/bio/wittgenstein%27s%20anti-philosophy.pdf
1 2 Jan Riis Flor, "Den senere Wittgenstein", Poul Lübcke, ed., Vor tids filosofi: Videnskab og sprog, Politikens forlag, 1982
1 2 3 Horwich, Paul (2013-03-04). "Was Wittgenstein Right?". Opinionator. Retrieved 2022-10-07.
1 2 Mullarky, John (28 August 2012). "Reviews: Boris Groys, Introduction to Antiphilosophy". Notre Dame Philosophical Review. Retrieved 10 February 2022.
↑ Bruno Bosteels, "Radical Antiphilosophy," Filozofski vestnik (2008)1, 55-87
↑ Continuum hypothesis#Arguments for and against CH
↑ Penelope Maddy, June 1988, "Believing the Axioms, I", Journal of Symbolic Logic 53 (2): 481–511, http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~pjmaddy/bio/Believing%20the%20Axioms%20(with%20corrections).pdf
↑ Pigliucci, Massimo (2018-01-25). "The Problem with Scientism | Blog of the APA" . Retrieved 2024-02-19.
↑ Burnett, Thomas. "What is Scientism?". AAAS - DoSER. Retrieved 2024-02-19.
↑ Pascal Massie, "Philosophy and Ataraxia in Sextus Empiricus" PEITHO / EXAMINA ANTIQUA 1 ( 4 ) / 2013 p.212 https://philarchive.org/archive/MASPAA-7