This is my favorite piece of yours on philosophy so far! Especially appreciate the clarification on philosophy's methods, and your description of prototype theory
I often think of your work as “psychological philosophy” where the word philosophy is used in the everyday sense (e.g. “my parenting philosophy is…”). It a fun play on words to contrast it with the more formal field of philosophical psychology which I used to find interesting but grew tired of. This blog series helped me realize why: it’s useless except for winning abstract arguments. Thanks.
Reading this makes me notice something. I think I tend to think of your work as "philosophy" because I mostly engage with it as an intellectual curiosity. This is because I have not managed to find anything in your writing that is practically applicable to my life, as much as it feels like there should be something there (maybe because I already agree with the general approach a lot of what you write). I feel the same way about rationality writings, and really most philosophy-adjacent works that act as some sort of call to action.
It's also possible that I'm internalising the mindset of these works in a way that is not directly legible to me but still adds up to a practical benefit. Or I might just be bad at making actionable changes in my life.
Same here. David says that he intends to help me solve my problems, but I may be lucky enough to not have many of them? Perhaps me just enjoying his crisp articulations and explanations is largely unintended and of lesser value to him, but it's good enough for me, and if his stuff helps somebody beyond that - that's great too.
This is so good, it's so good that you try to forget it's totally wrong because of its delicious style. I'm an engineer, with my own business, so I know a thing or two about usefulness, only to be clear that I'm no academic philosopher, any argument like "you hate me, that's all" won't suffice. I choose 3 points (you could easily say more than 50 things, for sure):
1. "There are nearly no absolute truths or falsehoods in the actual world", Are you sure? For example, when a woman is pregnant, she is 90% pregnant or 70% pregant or 50% pregnant?
2. "Philosophy is about metaphysical entities (piety, the gods, utility, essences, propositions) for which evidence is absent." This is a good one, does philosophy talk about these entities or is more about how, why and what we can know about these entities? (This could also include how we can know that we know that these entities are something or not?)
3. "Philosophy has several different purposes, and you may engage with different parts of it, in different ways, depending on how they align with your own purposes." Judgment requires sometimes to work with things that have not clear purpose (or with any purpose at all), and assume that there may be a purpose that we don't know yet (examples in science is Mendel's genetics, Marxist theory of capitalism, Augustine's ideas on education, Paul's small writings on christ resurrection)
This is one of my favorites as well! Your ability to summarize topics and make it fun, clear and actionable is very helpful. I wish you would write a similar piece on spirituality, vajryana/dzogchen. What's it for? What will practice pragmatically provide, etc. I've started to teach a bit and ask people why they want to learn meditation and, in most cases, want to tell them mediation will not provide that or doesn't seem like the best method.
> I've started to teach a bit and ask people why they want to learn meditation and, in most cases, want to tell them mediation will not provide that or doesn't seem like the best method.
Uh, congratulations or commiserations as appropriate :)
I've also started to teach a bit, just conceptual stuff so far. But will be teaching meditation for the first time in a couple weeks. (Sort of? Tonglen, specifically. Is that "meditation"? I dunno.)
I'm curious what people think they want meditation for that they won't get, and what you recommend instead?
The general theme is that when people are asked to honestly probe/journal/think hard about what they really want, it comes down to basic human desires like health, connection, social status, security, control, to be liked/valued, have some ideology of what life is and how to live it that feels true. These seem better addressed through lifestyle, counseling, gaining skills (education, communication, emotional) and reading Meaningness (or letting go of trying to answer such questions).
Am I off here?
What is meditation good for? I'd love your thoughts.
Off the top of my head:
Concentration: Focus, Learning to get out of rumination, relaxing, altered experiences, cessation
Insight: Seeing the transitory nature and groundlessness of experience, no essences
Yidam: Seems life a combo of concentration and insight depending upon focus. Concentration= visualization, mantra, chanting, ritual, elements of tummo. Insight= Form/emptiness, dream like world/experience, fluidity of self
Dzogchen: Resting wide open without distraction in immediacy, experience self liberates, not doing anything, futility of conceptual questions and answers
> People generally seem to be looking for well-being, control, mental health, and mystical fantasies
Yes, that seems right, for many.
(I'm slightly surprised by "control of others" appearing here. Do people think they'll get that from meditation? I guess it's promised by some icky mahayoga stuff; is that what they're looking for?)
> These seem better addressed through lifestyle, counseling, gaining skills (education, communication, emotional)...
Hmm, yes, that seems plausible.
There are types of well-being that you can get from meditation better than alternatives, I think, though.
> Am I off here?
I don't know, you are the meditation teacher, not me :)
> What is meditation good for? I'd love your thoughts.
I kind of wish we didn't have that word, because it refers to such diverse practices, with diverse purposes, attractions, and outcomes.
Supposedly I'll be teaching tonglen, which is good for "opening your heart." That sounds nice; and weak and safe. Tonglen is also good for developing courage, which is not so weak or safe. And for taking up the warrior's commitment to instantaneous intervention in difficult situations, cutting through obstacles, which isn't nice or safe at all.
My own motivation for starting to meditate seriously was curiosity. I'm not sure how common that is.
Now I do it largely for stress relief, which is embarrassingly basic, but that's where I'm at, and it does work. Oh, and also because somehow I'm supposed to be a Buddhist teacher now, so I feel some sort of professional obligation to catch up.
I feel you're skirting around discussing the failure mode that philosophy, self help, and psychology have in common: being used for intellectual masturbation and/or as psychic defense mechanisms. Which is to say a lot of people read philosophy and self help and expand a lot of energy understanding it (and themselves) to ultimately not do anything or make any practical changes. I think the appropriate term for that is insight porn.
So part of your message sounds to me like "please don't use my work as insight porn and instead make meaningful changes to your life", which is a solid sentiment but sounds a bit silly when said out loud. I'm not sure what can be done to avoid that fate but I can see why it's partially worth concerning yourself with. If anything you may have already had a good amount of success in avoiding it compared to other bloggers (many of which probably deliberately seek such readership).
For me, your final words say it all: "I dunno, maybe I’m selling pop phenomenology. Your call. *Who cares?*"
That's what I said back in November in my comment to your early work on this issue:
"While your jeremiad against philosophy is entertaining, I find your main work so much more insightful and useful that I'm sad to see your bad brain distract you from it. Ultimately, *who cares how your work is labelled by others?* I think most of your readers could care less whether it counts as philosophy or not."
Possibly of interest: here's a blog post from a historian linking one kind of ancient philosophy with self-help:
> A lot of the surviving stoic writings are maxims, short pieces for contemplation designed to help you dwell less on bad things that are happening, sometimes more imagery than argument. Imagine–for example–that life is like being a guest at a banquet. Platters are being passed around and people are reaching out and taking what is offered them. Some platters come to you and you take of them–other platters never make it to you, or are empty when they do. But you are a guest, these things were not yours, they were offered as gifts, so you have no reason to be angry that you can only taste some of them–better to enjoy the platters that do reach you, and remember that the host who offered them is kind.
> This is where stoicism serves very much like a self-help book, or more generally as philosophical therapy, which is what classical philosophies largely aimed to provide.
But there are downsides to this pigeonholing too. Critics of the genre claim it can be useless and harmful, just like Philosophy:
'Scholars have targeted self-help claims as misleading and incorrect. In 2005, Steve Salerno portrayed the American self-help movement—he uses the acronym "SHAM": the "Self-Help and Actualization Movement"—not only as ineffective in achieving its goals but also as socially harmful, and that self-help customers keep investing more money in these services regardless of their effectiveness. Others similarly point out that with self-help books "supply increases the demand ... The more people read them, the more they think they need them ... more like an addiction than an alliance".
Self-help writers have been described as working "in the area of the ideological, the imagined, the narrativized. ... although a veneer of scientism permeates the[ir] work, there is also an underlying armature of moralizing".'
'This is the second part of “I don’t do philosophy,” which is Chapter 4 of “Undoing Philosophy.” If you’ve arrived here without context, you might want to read chapters 0, 1, and 2 of “Undoing Philosophy” first. Or, you might want to start with the first part of Chapter 4, which is “Four kinds of philosophy I don’t do.”'
I'm a bit confused by the chapter numbering. Is there a Chapter 3 already, or is that still to come, or is there some kind of misnumbering going on?
Hi, thanks, yes, I'm somewhat familiar with his work. I don't advertise an email address, but if you get email notifications for my posts here, you could use that one.
This is my favorite piece of yours on philosophy so far! Especially appreciate the clarification on philosophy's methods, and your description of prototype theory
I often think of your work as “psychological philosophy” where the word philosophy is used in the everyday sense (e.g. “my parenting philosophy is…”). It a fun play on words to contrast it with the more formal field of philosophical psychology which I used to find interesting but grew tired of. This blog series helped me realize why: it’s useless except for winning abstract arguments. Thanks.
Reading this makes me notice something. I think I tend to think of your work as "philosophy" because I mostly engage with it as an intellectual curiosity. This is because I have not managed to find anything in your writing that is practically applicable to my life, as much as it feels like there should be something there (maybe because I already agree with the general approach a lot of what you write). I feel the same way about rationality writings, and really most philosophy-adjacent works that act as some sort of call to action.
It's also possible that I'm internalising the mindset of these works in a way that is not directly legible to me but still adds up to a practical benefit. Or I might just be bad at making actionable changes in my life.
Same here. David says that he intends to help me solve my problems, but I may be lucky enough to not have many of them? Perhaps me just enjoying his crisp articulations and explanations is largely unintended and of lesser value to him, but it's good enough for me, and if his stuff helps somebody beyond that - that's great too.
This is so good, it's so good that you try to forget it's totally wrong because of its delicious style. I'm an engineer, with my own business, so I know a thing or two about usefulness, only to be clear that I'm no academic philosopher, any argument like "you hate me, that's all" won't suffice. I choose 3 points (you could easily say more than 50 things, for sure):
1. "There are nearly no absolute truths or falsehoods in the actual world", Are you sure? For example, when a woman is pregnant, she is 90% pregnant or 70% pregant or 50% pregnant?
2. "Philosophy is about metaphysical entities (piety, the gods, utility, essences, propositions) for which evidence is absent." This is a good one, does philosophy talk about these entities or is more about how, why and what we can know about these entities? (This could also include how we can know that we know that these entities are something or not?)
3. "Philosophy has several different purposes, and you may engage with different parts of it, in different ways, depending on how they align with your own purposes." Judgment requires sometimes to work with things that have not clear purpose (or with any purpose at all), and assume that there may be a purpose that we don't know yet (examples in science is Mendel's genetics, Marxist theory of capitalism, Augustine's ideas on education, Paul's small writings on christ resurrection)
This is one of my favorites as well! Your ability to summarize topics and make it fun, clear and actionable is very helpful. I wish you would write a similar piece on spirituality, vajryana/dzogchen. What's it for? What will practice pragmatically provide, etc. I've started to teach a bit and ask people why they want to learn meditation and, in most cases, want to tell them mediation will not provide that or doesn't seem like the best method.
> I've started to teach a bit and ask people why they want to learn meditation and, in most cases, want to tell them mediation will not provide that or doesn't seem like the best method.
Uh, congratulations or commiserations as appropriate :)
I've also started to teach a bit, just conceptual stuff so far. But will be teaching meditation for the first time in a couple weeks. (Sort of? Tonglen, specifically. Is that "meditation"? I dunno.)
I'm curious what people think they want meditation for that they won't get, and what you recommend instead?
People generally seem to be looking for:
Well being (okayness with self and world)
Control (others and self)
Mental health fixes (healing, symptom relief
Mystical fantastical idea of what meditation is
The general theme is that when people are asked to honestly probe/journal/think hard about what they really want, it comes down to basic human desires like health, connection, social status, security, control, to be liked/valued, have some ideology of what life is and how to live it that feels true. These seem better addressed through lifestyle, counseling, gaining skills (education, communication, emotional) and reading Meaningness (or letting go of trying to answer such questions).
Am I off here?
What is meditation good for? I'd love your thoughts.
Off the top of my head:
Concentration: Focus, Learning to get out of rumination, relaxing, altered experiences, cessation
Insight: Seeing the transitory nature and groundlessness of experience, no essences
Yidam: Seems life a combo of concentration and insight depending upon focus. Concentration= visualization, mantra, chanting, ritual, elements of tummo. Insight= Form/emptiness, dream like world/experience, fluidity of self
Dzogchen: Resting wide open without distraction in immediacy, experience self liberates, not doing anything, futility of conceptual questions and answers
Thank you for the detailed reply!
> People generally seem to be looking for well-being, control, mental health, and mystical fantasies
Yes, that seems right, for many.
(I'm slightly surprised by "control of others" appearing here. Do people think they'll get that from meditation? I guess it's promised by some icky mahayoga stuff; is that what they're looking for?)
> These seem better addressed through lifestyle, counseling, gaining skills (education, communication, emotional)...
Hmm, yes, that seems plausible.
There are types of well-being that you can get from meditation better than alternatives, I think, though.
> Am I off here?
I don't know, you are the meditation teacher, not me :)
> What is meditation good for? I'd love your thoughts.
I kind of wish we didn't have that word, because it refers to such diverse practices, with diverse purposes, attractions, and outcomes.
Supposedly I'll be teaching tonglen, which is good for "opening your heart." That sounds nice; and weak and safe. Tonglen is also good for developing courage, which is not so weak or safe. And for taking up the warrior's commitment to instantaneous intervention in difficult situations, cutting through obstacles, which isn't nice or safe at all.
My own motivation for starting to meditate seriously was curiosity. I'm not sure how common that is.
Now I do it largely for stress relief, which is embarrassingly basic, but that's where I'm at, and it does work. Oh, and also because somehow I'm supposed to be a Buddhist teacher now, so I feel some sort of professional obligation to catch up.
I feel you're skirting around discussing the failure mode that philosophy, self help, and psychology have in common: being used for intellectual masturbation and/or as psychic defense mechanisms. Which is to say a lot of people read philosophy and self help and expand a lot of energy understanding it (and themselves) to ultimately not do anything or make any practical changes. I think the appropriate term for that is insight porn.
So part of your message sounds to me like "please don't use my work as insight porn and instead make meaningful changes to your life", which is a solid sentiment but sounds a bit silly when said out loud. I'm not sure what can be done to avoid that fate but I can see why it's partially worth concerning yourself with. If anything you may have already had a good amount of success in avoiding it compared to other bloggers (many of which probably deliberately seek such readership).
For me, your final words say it all: "I dunno, maybe I’m selling pop phenomenology. Your call. *Who cares?*"
That's what I said back in November in my comment to your early work on this issue:
"While your jeremiad against philosophy is entertaining, I find your main work so much more insightful and useful that I'm sad to see your bad brain distract you from it. Ultimately, *who cares how your work is labelled by others?* I think most of your readers could care less whether it counts as philosophy or not."
https://meaningness.substack.com/p/philosophy-doesnt-work/comment/78105646
Who cares what people call meaningness/meta-rationality? No one.
I fervently hope that this essay, Part 2 of Chapter 4 of 'Undoing Philosophy' is the final chapter on this topic.
Possibly of interest: here's a blog post from a historian linking one kind of ancient philosophy with self-help:
> A lot of the surviving stoic writings are maxims, short pieces for contemplation designed to help you dwell less on bad things that are happening, sometimes more imagery than argument. Imagine–for example–that life is like being a guest at a banquet. Platters are being passed around and people are reaching out and taking what is offered them. Some platters come to you and you take of them–other platters never make it to you, or are empty when they do. But you are a guest, these things were not yours, they were offered as gifts, so you have no reason to be angry that you can only taste some of them–better to enjoy the platters that do reach you, and remember that the host who offered them is kind.
> This is where stoicism serves very much like a self-help book, or more generally as philosophical therapy, which is what classical philosophies largely aimed to provide.
From: https://www.exurbe.com/stoicisms-appeal-to-the-rich-and-powerful/
But perhaps ancient philosophy wasn't much like modern philosophy? After all, there were no philosophy departments.
"Is Meaningness philosophy? Of course. Is David lying or mistaken when he says it is not? Of course not." Sorry 🤭 I love "pop phenomenology"
forgot to say there's a typo here "thinking, feeing and acting"
Thank you! Fixed now :)
'If you feel you have to put it in a box, try “self-help.”'
I agree that work on meaningness/meta-rationality has a much stronger family resemblance to the Personal Development genre than Philosophy. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_development
But there are downsides to this pigeonholing too. Critics of the genre claim it can be useless and harmful, just like Philosophy:
'Scholars have targeted self-help claims as misleading and incorrect. In 2005, Steve Salerno portrayed the American self-help movement—he uses the acronym "SHAM": the "Self-Help and Actualization Movement"—not only as ineffective in achieving its goals but also as socially harmful, and that self-help customers keep investing more money in these services regardless of their effectiveness. Others similarly point out that with self-help books "supply increases the demand ... The more people read them, the more they think they need them ... more like an addiction than an alliance".
Self-help writers have been described as working "in the area of the ideological, the imagined, the narrativized. ... although a veneer of scientism permeates the[ir] work, there is also an underlying armature of moralizing".'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_development#Criticism
'This is the second part of “I don’t do philosophy,” which is Chapter 4 of “Undoing Philosophy.” If you’ve arrived here without context, you might want to read chapters 0, 1, and 2 of “Undoing Philosophy” first. Or, you might want to start with the first part of Chapter 4, which is “Four kinds of philosophy I don’t do.”'
I'm a bit confused by the chapter numbering. Is there a Chapter 3 already, or is that still to come, or is there some kind of misnumbering going on?
Hi, thanks, yes, I'm somewhat familiar with his work. I don't advertise an email address, but if you get email notifications for my posts here, you could use that one.
I look forward to seeing your post!