Daily Dialectic

It is an open secret that analytic philosophy requires a great deal of bullet-biting. The saying ‘one philosopher’s modus ponens is another’s modus tollens’ reflects one aspect of this, but there are many other considerations: methodological priorities, intuition, and just plain heel-digging-in, amongst others. There’s always a price to pay, and teeth to be lost. A lot of what goes on in philosophy is extra-philosophical.

Which teeth we choose to lose is usually left up to us, the demands from our opponents with different bullet-biting preferences are met with a shrug. We just don’t have common ground, they say. But what about this thing that you clearly don’t care about, it’s very important to me, they go on. Clearly you’re a tin ear. Alternatively, you may be told that yours are not philosophically relevant considerations.

It’s not news that the product is not exactly pure. However, analytic philosophers haven’t been very honest about the degree and the kind of impurities. I do not intend to pinpoint where the impurities come from, or try to eliminate them. I don’t even think they’re a bad thing! I will propose a slightly more honest approach to extra-philosophical factors, along with a philosophical filtration method for extra philosophical factors (patent pending). I don’t know where that’ll get us, but it can’t hurt to give it a burl.