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<snip>
> This, I think, exemplifies what's wrong with Philosophy as an academic
> discipline today. There's a heavy emphasis on negativism, on "nots", rather
than
> on more positive issues, on impossibilities rather than on possibilities.
<snip>
As one who's spent a decade in academic philosophy, I think I'm qualified
to respond. Pilosophers concentrate on proving impossibilities because,
in logic, it is much easier to prove an impossibility than a
possibility. As anyone who's ever taken an advanced logic course can
bear out, the only knock-down, drag-out proofs end in contradictions,
after which one's initial assumption that one CAN do something is proven
false (reductio ad absurdum).
The only way to be taken seriously in philosophy these days is to provide
air-tight proofs. So, fledgling philsophers utilize the above strategy
until it becomes habit. This methodology restricts the practice of
philosophy to policing people who make untenable assumptions and base a
lot of work on them. For example, language theorists assume that we can
map snetences onto thoughts. They then give elaborate theories based on this
assumption. But since it is not possible to make these maps (as I could
prove in more space), these theories are conceptually bankrupt.
As to the question on the test, it is stupid and not representative of
anything I've encountered in my experience with philosophy.
