Talk:Philosophical progress

Instrumental optimism should not be presented as a "synthesis" of pessimism and reasoned optimism. Logically, it is one side of a dichotomy between two different views, both of which conclude that even though philosophy is incapable of scientific progress, philosophy still has value. This dichotomy is between whether that value is intrinsic or extrinsic. Hence, a reasoned optimist believes that philosophy has intrinsic value, and an instrumental optimist believes that philosophy has extrinsic value. Furthermore, these two different views can be fruitfully combined, since they are not mutually incompatible. --Susurrus 23:57, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The following section seems perfectly useless to this article. It could have been included at the end of any article whatsoever about philosophy. I have therefore deleted it, but am including it here, in case someone wants to develop it further into a proper article of its own:

Lessons for Philosophy and Metaphilosophy

Philosophers are somewhat notorious for pursuing discussions to the point that even the most simple concepts take on the rarefied air of paradox, and the whole discussion collapses into a self-referential hall of mirrors. The fate of this article is no different; indeed, now it is even falling into self-referentiality about its own self-referentiality. But there is an important lesson contained in this about the nature of philosophical disputes: they exhibit their own peculiar sort of what Jean-Paul Sartre called "absolute inwardness:" every attempt to resolve a philosophical dispute essentially entangles us in disputes about the nature of philosophy itself. Meta-philosophical reflections on the nature of philosophy and the possibility of philosophical progress are not specialized side-notes to other philosophical work, but rather are involved in--and themselves involve--key debates in metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of science, philosophy of language, and the theory of value. It may seem like philosophy is stuck with a terrible burden, if it is expected to explain itself as well as its subject-matter at every turn. But appearances may be deceiving: things may not be as weird as they seem. As Ludwig Wittgenstein was fond of pointing out, it may not be that remarkable that you use the same methods even when you philosophize about philosophy itself: "When you are learning spelling, 'SPELLING' is one of the words that you learn to spell. But you don't speak of 'spelling of the second-order.'"

--Susurrus 00:22, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)