[Netbeing]

One of my favorite things I've ever read is David Stove's essay on this subject, "What is Wrong with Our Thoughts?" wherein a cranky old philosopher excoriates his profession.

https://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/wrongthoughts.html

To be fair, as the GP states, most philosophers are honest about this. How much better off we'd all be if economists would admit the same truth about their "discipline".

[mcv]

That is certainly an interesting article. He bluntly declares it obvious that a bunch of leading, mainstream philosophical thought it utter bullshit without explaining why (and instead arguing that nobody can explain why), and I completely agree with him.

Well, except with the bit that numerology is to astrology as astrology is to astronomy. It seems to me that numerology is to mathematics as astrology is to astronomy, but I admit that like the philosophers he's criticising, I too have not read a book on numerology.

(I wrote that before I finished the article. I still haven't quite finished it, but he later ponders about the possibility of creating a nosology of thought; a system to diagnose these maladies of though. And then he gives up because it can never be simultaneously complete and usable. I think that's foolish; you can enormously expand the current nosology by identifying, naming and describing even just a few of these (and some of them seem pretty easy to me). And that vocabulary can grow slowly as people add more.)