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.
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."
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?
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.
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.
"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?