Hacking Hacker
Note: I've not read Hacker, who seems to have many thoughtful approaches to where and whereof philosophy can speak. But I'll quibble with this (found via Zo)
By doing philosophy you come to realise things about the structure of our conceptual scheme that you would never have realised otherwise. Realization is indeed a dawning of knowledge. But the knowledge here is not knowledge of the world we live in. It is knowledge of the structure of our conceptual scheme. It very often looks like “metaphysical knowledge” of reality – as it were knowledge of the scaffolding of the world. But it’s no such thing.
ok.
The world doesn’t have scaffolding.
If the preceding statement is true, then how can you categorically make any claim about what "the world" does or does not have?
Rather, in doing philosophy, we come to realise the character of the grammatical and linguistic scaffolding from which we describe the world, not the scaffolding of the world.
A more careful analysis might find that such a clean and neat separation of res and verba is one thing philosophy teaches us not to take for granted.
By doing philosophy you come to realise things about the structure of our conceptual scheme that you would never have realised otherwise. Realization is indeed a dawning of knowledge. But the knowledge here is not knowledge of the world we live in. It is knowledge of the structure of our conceptual scheme. It very often looks like “metaphysical knowledge” of reality – as it were knowledge of the scaffolding of the world. But it’s no such thing.
ok.
The world doesn’t have scaffolding.
If the preceding statement is true, then how can you categorically make any claim about what "the world" does or does not have?
Rather, in doing philosophy, we come to realise the character of the grammatical and linguistic scaffolding from which we describe the world, not the scaffolding of the world.
A more careful analysis might find that such a clean and neat separation of res and verba is one thing philosophy teaches us not to take for granted.
Labels: peter hacker, philosophy
posted by Tom Matrullo at Sunday, November 14, 2010
3 Comments:
Once upon time long ago in a place far away, I studied Wittgenstein under Hacker for a semester. It was very poor preparation for the Yale English Dept a year or so later.
I didn't know you'd worked with him, Phil. You'd know better than I - is Wittgenstein good preparation for reading, or more suitable for puzzle people?
I don't know what res and verba mean, but I am going to look them up. I want to understand what you mean.
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