Philosophical discourse may be logically, linguistically, psychologically, sociologically and ideologically analyzed. One can question whether philosophical discourse has any claim to veracity or value. One can be amazed by the hubris, confidence and self-image of those who present themselves as philosophers and question the epistemic or intrinsic public value of the discourse they produce. One can inquire whether philosophers fail to question the assumptions they tacitly assume, or whether some positions be never stately clearly but only insinuated (cf. Ernst Gellner's Words and Things). One can question whether self-proclaimed "rigorous" philosophy is actually as "rigorous" as it claims to be and question whether such a "rigor" be not entirely illusory and only based on stylistic mimicry and convoluted jargon masking the lack of any possibility of formalization in an axiomatic-deductive system. One can question whether philosophical discourse be not a mere language game like the crossword, a disease of language, based on vagueness, ambiguity and unconscious association, whitewashed by the high-minded pretense of being some sort of self-reflection on language and logic themselves. A game based on the dynamics and structure of human consciousness which yet denies outright such a role for human consciousness in the spirit of: pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! The elephant in the room is that philosophy is very similar to a pretentious closed-minded cult based on mimicry of linguistic style and jargon-juggling (that seems scientific yet is not, whose arguments on the surface seem to be like a logical mathematical proof but fall utterly short of it) and that it is completely lacking criteria for veracity and value. And yet there are so-called philosophers would look down or trivialize introspective psychology, mathematical linguistics (the only way to go beyond circularity in linguistics) or the universal ethical principles of human and animal rights. All human activities with value have a public, objective criteria. Philosophy does not have such criteria and is dishonest if it assumes that it does. The best thing that the "analytic philosopher" could ever hope for would be to be replaced by a mathematical logician or computer scientist - but this can never be the case because the required clarity and precision is drastically lacking. Contrary to most academic critiques of analytic philosophy the central flaw of analytic philosophy is not that it ignores fundamental domains of human existence and experience (which is true enough) but that it claims to be analytical and rigorous while it most certainly is not. In fact, it utterly lacks any criteria of veracity or value. A principle tacit assumption and error of analytic philosophy is that the mathematical formalization of (a relevant fragment of) natural language is neither possible nor desirable for philosophy. Another one is (often tied to its physicalist dogmatism): introspective psychology (as in Hume, William James and Brentano) is of little value and not a source of substantial philosophical insight and progress. And if we bear in mind its rejection of the marvelous metaphoric and analogical capabilities of natural language, we come to the conclusion that analytic philosophy is a verbiage, a linguistic production, which is simply pretentious garbage. It is a cult, a disease which merits careful linguistic, psychological and cultural analysis in the shining wake of Ernst Gellner.
A note on the formalization of natural language. When two people sit down to play a game they have reached a agreement. The pieces on the board will represent the game and they will abide by the rules. The agreement is that the board, pieces and rules will stand for the game. A formalization of a fragment of natural language will take the form of a formal system with a series of formal definitions which a group of people will agree represents a certain fragment of natural language. This group will agree (based on a perceived contextual adequacy) to abide by the rules of the game of such a formal system for the purposes of certain arguments or debates and agree that the formal system and its moves stand for the linguistic activity of the debate. The formalization of natural language is in a way a return to the origin and essence of natural language. Indeed as mentioned in the conclusion of our Analyticity, Computability and the A Priori, it is through the reliving and showing forth of the process of our psycho-cognitive development that we may hope to ultimately see the light regarding the problems of philosophy.
We also remark that if analytic philosophy was initially a-historical and explicitly rejected previous philosophy, it now has tragically appropriated and poisoned the history of philosophy itself and most particularly the interpretation of ancient philosophy and ancient logic. It takes its dogmas, errors and prejudices and projects them onto ancient thinkers by rejecting valid research and contemporary interpretations of these thinkers. Thus philosophy journals governed by analytic dogmatic cliques abhor the idea (despite strong documentary evidence) that Aristotle or ancient philosophy in general were in possession of an adequate logic of multiple generality. The counter-arguments they put forward are ridiculous and feeble and only parrot the pretenses of those who built the careers on the opposite view.
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