[qsort]

Language vs. meta-language. I completely subscribe to parent's point of view: because concepts expressed in natural language are so massively overloaded, it's very hard to make precise statements.

When disciplines acquire their own method and formal language, they tend to splinter off philosophy. Think about mathematics, physics, biology, economics...

[eevilspock]

https://xkcd.com/55/

[bobthechef]

> Language vs. meta-language.

I do not understand what this is supposed to mean or demonstrate.

> because concepts expressed in natural language are so massively overloaded, it's very hard to make precise statements.

That's why philosophers clarify meanings and ask for clarification for terms when they think are vague. That something is "overloaded" (amphiboly) doesn't mean you can't determine which meaning is used or, right? When you read something, you're not grading papers. You're interpreting things in a sensible way.

> When disciplines acquire their own method and formal language, they tend to splinter off philosophy. Think about mathematics, physics, biology, economics...

Formalization isn't magic. To formalize something, you have to get to a place where you have a clear enough and correct enough understanding so that you can express it in that language. And in any case, philosophers do employ formalization when they think it useful. It isn't always. Frankly, even mathematicians, practitioners of the most formal of sciences, don't use formal methods to express their _reasoning_ in most cases.

[TheOtherHobbes]

The problem isn't that it's possible to un-overload natural language - it's that the overloading is unconscious. In reality there are different meta-languages of relationships and assumptions built into natural language at every level of use and sophistication.

Formalisation will not fix this. It's just as likely to bake the unconscious assumptions into a formal language as to remove them.

Philosophy done well can un-overload those assumptions, but done badly it can also provide rhetorical frameworks for perpetuating assumptions that should really be questioned.

[a9h74j]

FWIW, I once read a claim that someone had found ca 30 different meanings of 'paradigm' in Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Both works might represent good practice of philosophy.

[qsort]

> I do not understand what this is supposed to mean or demonstrate.

Parent said 'Stating "there is no way to refute or evaluate philosophy" while then going on to do the same seems incongruent'. I was just refuting this. It's essentially the same argument as "everything is philosophy" or "everything is politics", technically true but only in a vacuous sense.

> That something is "overloaded" (amphiboly)

I don't mean this. If I say "automorphism", I mean one thing and one thing only, because formal languages allow us to have precise definitions. Natural language doesn't have that. Words like 'truth', 'beauty', 'justice' are vague, imprecise meshes of meaning, so much that making precise statements about them is extremely problematic even conceptually.

> Formalization isn't magic. To formalize something, you have to get to a place where you have a clear enough and correct enough understanding so that you can express it in that language.

I completely agree. One of the major contributions of philosophy is that it attempts to untangle the mess. I have already said that I find this useful and productive. I'm not bashing philosophers, here.

> And in any case, philosophers do employ formalization when they think it useful. It isn't always. Frankly, even mathematicians, practitioners of the most formal of sciences, don't use formal methods to express their _reasoning_ in most cases.

I don't think these two cases are even remotely comparable. Mathematicians certainly do write informally when they write proofs, but that's only a way of communicating the result to another human. Any proof could be, given enough time, be rewritten completely formally, for example in a way that could be checked by a machine. If it can't, then it's wrong.

Formalization employed by philosophers is essentially just a writing device they are using in order to prove a point. The subtext "we could break this down to a deduction tree, but it's too boring to actually do that" that underlies a mathematical proof is completely missing.

Many authors have written literature using mathematical notation. It doesn't make their books math, for the same reason.

[dlkf]

> It's essentially the same argument as "everything is philosophy" or "everything is politics", technically true but only in a vacuous sense.

I'm not convinced that we need to reach for the everything-is-philosophy hammer in order to make a reasonable case that we are doing philosophy when we argue that, for example:

> Words like 'truth', 'beauty', 'justice' are vague, imprecise meshes of meaning, so much that making precise statements about them is extremely problematic even conceptually.

[GoblinSlayer]

Science uses imprecise terms too, like "space", "probability", "entropy", "black hole".

[dlkf]

>> Stating "there is no way to refute or evaluate philosophy" while then going on to do the same seems incongruent.

>> Language vs. meta-language.

> I do not understand what this is supposed to mean or demonstrate.

I believe the intended meaning is that there is a difference between statements within philosophy and statements about philosophy.

Here's an example of a statement within philosophy:

A) Every beginning is in time, and every limit of extension in space.

Here's an example of a statement about philosophy:

B) Statement A, along with the rest of metaphysics, is meaningless.

On the surface, this critique looks promising if you're a scientifically-minded person who doesn't want a bunch of philosophical bullshit in their worldview.

But the problem is: if statement B isn't philosophy, then what exactly is it?