Philosophy Bro(philosophybro.com)
philosophybro.com
Philosophy Bro
https://www.philosophybro.com
31 comments
I prefer when people engage with philosophy seriously. Trying to couch philosophical ideas in this sort of frivolous language falsely implies that you can understand them without dedicated effort. The language of philosophy isn't the hard part if your doing it right.
I'm yet to be convinced that philosophy has any worthwhile ideas that require "dedicated effort" to understand.
Philosophy as a whole? Certainly has many worthwhile ideas, or even just explications/clarifications of concepts. Certain philosophers, however? Yeah, not clear that there's really something worthwhile behind all the gobbledigook.
Such as? The stuff that actually makes sense (e.g. "I think therefore I am", the veil of ignorance, trolley problems etc.) can all be explained in less than a minute.
Perhaps it is useful to think of philosophical works as a record of the protracted reasoning process it took to arrive at those ideas.
These ideas, which now seem trivial and “explainable in less than a minute” are sometimes the result of distilling out, simplifying, and neatly packaging the ideas contained within an entire life’s work (or in some cases multiple generations of work!)
It is not clear to me that you could have arrived at some of these ideas without having traversed some of the intermediate steps these philosophers did.
It’s only with the benefit of hindsight and the fact that these distilled, bite-sized ideas, have deeply permeated the culture in which we live, that they seem simple.
These ideas, which now seem trivial and “explainable in less than a minute” are sometimes the result of distilling out, simplifying, and neatly packaging the ideas contained within an entire life’s work (or in some cases multiple generations of work!)
It is not clear to me that you could have arrived at some of these ideas without having traversed some of the intermediate steps these philosophers did.
It’s only with the benefit of hindsight and the fact that these distilled, bite-sized ideas, have deeply permeated the culture in which we live, that they seem simple.
Dedicated effort? Whatever, man. I just Kant deal with this sh*t.
I enjoy existential comics, which like this site also aims to be a more approachable introduction to philosophy https://www.existentialcomics.com/
And it wears its biases on its sleeve so no one is likely to be deceived about its positions. No attempt at evenhandedness, in the great philosophical tradition. Much like Russell’s History of Western Philosophy.
Thanks for the link!
I love the style to pieces, but I stopped reading when on the very first page I tried I found something that was central to the post but plain wrong, namely the conflation of logical positivism with verificationism. That's totally incorrect history (and it was a post about history).
So, for those like me who are interested but don't have the background, could you explain? As I understand logical positivism, I would have expected verificationism to be very closely related.
Good question! Thank you!
The short answer is that logical positivism was always extremely diverse, and there's no reason to think that there's a consistent core to it, but if there is then it has to do with a belief in making progress in philosophy and science by (a) using logic to build on (supposedly) certain foundations (although they didn't agree on what those foundations were), and (b) repudiating metaphysics (which meant different things to different people, but which IMO was probably the most important point of agreement among the logical positivists anyway).
They were all influenced by Bertrand Russell's earlier claim that philosophy should proceed by using logical arguments based on certain premises (to the extent possible - he didn't think it was always possible), and that it should define terms strictly, based on what was already known, as opposed to positing anything. They were also all (I think all - certainly most of them) influenced by Einstein's ideas. Neither Russell nor Einstein was verificationist.
Verificationism was fairly popular among logical positivists, especially at the beginning, and especially in English-speaking countries, because Ayer, who was not one of the founders of logical positivism but who visited Vienna while he was a student and wrote an early and very popular book about it in English, stressed verificationism. But Ayer's book was over-simplified in its presentation of what logical positivsm was (IMO), and in any case logical positivism continued to develop, with almost all of its important literature being in German.
All the major logical positivists (I think - certainly most of them) sooner or later - and in some cases very soon - gave up on verificationism, but still called themselves logical positivists (or logical empiricists, which was and is usually thought to be more or less synonymous).
From the 1930s onwards, English became more important than German for the first time, and the most important logical positivists were then those who were in English-speaking countries, especially Carnap in America (and arguably Wittgenstein, depending on whether you think he'd been a logical positivist to start with). All of them (I think, and certainly Carnap) repudiated verificationism pretty early on, athough Carnap continued to call himself a verificationist in some contexts, while the rules he proposed were much more complicated than the original verificationism (I wouldn't call them verificationist at all, just anti-metaphysical ... but admittedly this is controversial).
All that time, logical positivists were working on many systems of philosophy and science that used logical principles to construct claims about the world from supposedly certain foundations plus strict definitions, eschewing metaphysics. That was what they saw their job to be.
Someone COULD argue that verificationism was always something logical positivists felt they had to try to stick to to some extent (although IMO even that would probably be an over-simplification). But to say that logical positivism and verificationism were the same thing is totally wrong, historically. More specifically, criticising logical positivism by only criticising verificationism doesn't hit the target. Criticising it by criticising logical constructions might work, or, as became popular in the very late 20th century, you could criticise it by saying that it was wrong to repudiate metaphysics. Those two criticisms would at least be on target, whether or not they work.
It's all super interesting and I encourage you to read https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logical-empiricism/ :-)
The short answer is that logical positivism was always extremely diverse, and there's no reason to think that there's a consistent core to it, but if there is then it has to do with a belief in making progress in philosophy and science by (a) using logic to build on (supposedly) certain foundations (although they didn't agree on what those foundations were), and (b) repudiating metaphysics (which meant different things to different people, but which IMO was probably the most important point of agreement among the logical positivists anyway).
They were all influenced by Bertrand Russell's earlier claim that philosophy should proceed by using logical arguments based on certain premises (to the extent possible - he didn't think it was always possible), and that it should define terms strictly, based on what was already known, as opposed to positing anything. They were also all (I think all - certainly most of them) influenced by Einstein's ideas. Neither Russell nor Einstein was verificationist.
Verificationism was fairly popular among logical positivists, especially at the beginning, and especially in English-speaking countries, because Ayer, who was not one of the founders of logical positivism but who visited Vienna while he was a student and wrote an early and very popular book about it in English, stressed verificationism. But Ayer's book was over-simplified in its presentation of what logical positivsm was (IMO), and in any case logical positivism continued to develop, with almost all of its important literature being in German.
All the major logical positivists (I think - certainly most of them) sooner or later - and in some cases very soon - gave up on verificationism, but still called themselves logical positivists (or logical empiricists, which was and is usually thought to be more or less synonymous).
From the 1930s onwards, English became more important than German for the first time, and the most important logical positivists were then those who were in English-speaking countries, especially Carnap in America (and arguably Wittgenstein, depending on whether you think he'd been a logical positivist to start with). All of them (I think, and certainly Carnap) repudiated verificationism pretty early on, athough Carnap continued to call himself a verificationist in some contexts, while the rules he proposed were much more complicated than the original verificationism (I wouldn't call them verificationist at all, just anti-metaphysical ... but admittedly this is controversial).
All that time, logical positivists were working on many systems of philosophy and science that used logical principles to construct claims about the world from supposedly certain foundations plus strict definitions, eschewing metaphysics. That was what they saw their job to be.
Someone COULD argue that verificationism was always something logical positivists felt they had to try to stick to to some extent (although IMO even that would probably be an over-simplification). But to say that logical positivism and verificationism were the same thing is totally wrong, historically. More specifically, criticising logical positivism by only criticising verificationism doesn't hit the target. Criticising it by criticising logical constructions might work, or, as became popular in the very late 20th century, you could criticise it by saying that it was wrong to repudiate metaphysics. Those two criticisms would at least be on target, whether or not they work.
It's all super interesting and I encourage you to read https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logical-empiricism/ :-)
My background in philosophy is "studied a decent amount of it in college," so I certainly could be wrong here. But to me the paragraph that you are describing as "just plain wrong" seems relatively measured, consistent with the SEP article, and consistent with what I learned about logical positivism through my philosophy courses and textbooks (e.g., Schwartz's Brief History of Analytic Philosophy, Godfrey-Smith's Theory and Reality, Ney's Metaphysics, Devitt and Sterelny's Language, Truth, and Reality). Here is said paragraph:
"As in most philosophical movements, not all positivists agreed with each other, but they generally agreed that if you couldn’t verify something, it was meaningless."
Here is Ney on positivism (p. 121):
"Logical positivists differ on what verification must involve in any particular case, but a pillar of logical positivism was the view that there are two basic kinds of verification: by analytic and by synthetic methods."
Or Godfrey-Smith (p. 27):
"I turn now to the other main idea in the logical positivist theory of language, the verifiability theory of meaning."
You can also look at Devitt and Sterelny's discussion of verificationism, or the section on logical positivism in Schwartz. They are pretty consistent with the quoted paragraph from Philosophy Bro.
"As in most philosophical movements, not all positivists agreed with each other, but they generally agreed that if you couldn’t verify something, it was meaningless."
Here is Ney on positivism (p. 121):
"Logical positivists differ on what verification must involve in any particular case, but a pillar of logical positivism was the view that there are two basic kinds of verification: by analytic and by synthetic methods."
Or Godfrey-Smith (p. 27):
"I turn now to the other main idea in the logical positivist theory of language, the verifiability theory of meaning."
You can also look at Devitt and Sterelny's discussion of verificationism, or the section on logical positivism in Schwartz. They are pretty consistent with the quoted paragraph from Philosophy Bro.
Thanks for adding a link to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
I think the SEP really tries its best to be understandable for newcomers while not dumbing-down things too much (unlike so many popular philosophy books and articles). As a non-philosophy grad trying to intermittently delve into philosophy, the encyclopedia has been a very valuable resource to me, for getting a rough outline of the philosophical ideas and debates throughout history.
I think the SEP really tries its best to be understandable for newcomers while not dumbing-down things too much (unlike so many popular philosophy books and articles). As a non-philosophy grad trying to intermittently delve into philosophy, the encyclopedia has been a very valuable resource to me, for getting a rough outline of the philosophical ideas and debates throughout history.
I didn't refer to a paragraph. What I said was wrong was the conflation of logical positivism with verificationism (so that an attack on verificationism becomes an attack on logical positivism). If you think he didn't mean to conflate the two, you might be right.
Strongly agree with you.
I read the article on Schopenhauer and Marcus Aurelius. Pretty amusing I have to admit, but a lot seems to be lost in the process. That is to say, you could come away with some wrong impressions of the subjects covered. At least as far as I understand them.
This was my take away as well. There is a lot of important nuance lost.
A lot of stoic philosophy taken in bite size pieces can seem totally bat shit and stupid, but if you read generations of people’s thoughts, learn to place the ideas temporally and culturally (to some degree at least), even the bizarre parts begin to make sense contextually.
Even so, anything that tries to make philosophy more accessible and interesting to people is good in my book. Reading bro Marcus Aurelius is arguably better than reading nothing at all.
A lot of stoic philosophy taken in bite size pieces can seem totally bat shit and stupid, but if you read generations of people’s thoughts, learn to place the ideas temporally and culturally (to some degree at least), even the bizarre parts begin to make sense contextually.
Even so, anything that tries to make philosophy more accessible and interesting to people is good in my book. Reading bro Marcus Aurelius is arguably better than reading nothing at all.
It’s so weird to see Marcus Aurelius summarized this way because Marcus Aurelius was already bro Marcus Aurelius.
How so? Because he wasn’t a typical scholarly philosopher?
Though the Camus entry is essentially on point, it glosses over so many more interesting and worthwhile insights from him.
As a fun way to get people to see the value of philosophy I think it’s great, but I’d hope they would then learn more and see the nuances these great thinkers brought to these topics eventually.
Philosophical writing is often practically diametric to bro speak but hopefully that doesn’t mean most interested readers wouldn’t delve deeper.
As a fun way to get people to see the value of philosophy I think it’s great, but I’d hope they would then learn more and see the nuances these great thinkers brought to these topics eventually.
Philosophical writing is often practically diametric to bro speak but hopefully that doesn’t mean most interested readers wouldn’t delve deeper.
> Though the Camus entry is essentially on point, it glosses over so many more interesting and worthwhile insights from him.
Of course, it'a a short blogpost not a book-length treatment. Anything of comparable length would've "glossed over" the same things.
Of course, it'a a short blogpost not a book-length treatment. Anything of comparable length would've "glossed over" the same things.
Without a doubt. I think a more eloquent and concise style could capture a bit more and maybe provide a little more intrigue, but yeah, there’s no way a small blog post will capture the works of people like Camus.
A full length Baudrillard piece was given this treatment in 2012:
https://www.continentcontinent.cc/archives/issues/issue-2-2-...
https://www.continentcontinent.cc/archives/issues/issue-2-2-...
Here is something similar but for physics.
https://www.youtube.com/@Eigenbros/videos
I'm a proud owner of an original Kickstarter copy of "Descartes Meditations, Bro" circa 2013 or something like that.
The author of this site also co-created the game "Secret Hitler" with the makers of Cards Against Humanity. I'm personally not a fan of social deduction party games, but that one is pretty good as far as they go.
He's also the co-designer of Inhuman Conditions which is by far the best 2 player social deduction game.
I asked ChatGPT to summarize one of the subjects and I find this much more readable and insightful.
https://imgur.com/S0R40Jh