well good luck with that.
here’s the next revolutionary application of philosophy:
but first a little build up. See, philosophy, as a science, is dead. Meaning it’s no longer progressing.
there are no new truths we can arrive at philosophically without chewing our own tails off. but none of that matters.
The fact is, we have more than enough philosophy to let all manner of flies out of all manner of bottles.
Tools to keep our ideas and beliefs clear and rational and consistent. We have the great list of fallacies.
Ever peruse all the fallacies? They all have great names, there’s like a hundred at last count.
If you like philosophy at all, go look at these lists. I guarantee you will recognize a TON of these fallacies
from your every day life, in the statements of the people closest to you, AND coming from the talking heads
and writers who bring us our news, and from politicians and celebrities of all stripes.
What the fuck? FOLKS, WE HAVE THE TOOLS. We literally have the fallacies all listed. And yet we continue to
riddle our dialogues with these self-same fallacies. It’s so EASY for a philosopher to simply
review a dialogue, sentence by sentence, and as soon as a fallacy occurs, the philosopher can hit a buzzer
and tell us which one. But we NEVER DO THIS. And yet it would be SO EASY TO DO.
Again, I’m not talking about progress in terms of metaphysics and ontology or epistemology. I’m talking about all
the BASIC CONFUSIONS, the civil issues, the quarrels and world views great and small that are bent out of shape
and fucked and getting worse, trifles that many of philosophy’s tools could unravel in their sleep and just come out and say who’s
wrong and point exactly which fallacy is at play.
We need an APP for this. Or at least a TV show called Fallacy Watch. But it’s going to be hard to bring to market. After all, the
mass media and the small indie media traffics in fallacy. And each one of us, our spouses, our kids, our
customers and bosses and our whole fucking infrastructure THRIVES on fallacy, like flies on dung.
I’m not talking about BELIEFS. I’m not talking about FACT FINDING or SCIENCE. I’m strictly talking about
internal logic, epistemology, linguistics, analysis, just that ALONE would force people to admit how stupid and wrong they are about
most things, starting with fanaticism.
It will be very hard to introduce such a thing. But it would also be very easy.
It’s the next step. Who’s going to step up?