(December 16, 2018 at 9:50 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote: What does it take to do philosophy “right”? Or be good at it? Why is Sam Harris not good at philosophy? I’m not trying to be a smart ass here; I’m genuinely want to know what skill sets and training are required to be good at doing philosophy, and what exactly is bad philosophy?
Important questions!
I've never thought to lay out the qualities before...
Surely, open-mindedness. A willingness to engage with the real arguments of others, and not mis-state those arguments to make it easy to attack them. Willingness to self-criticize. Willingness to see one's own axioms so as not to beg questions.
Bad philosophy I guess does the opposite of those things. What makes me gripe are the people who think they are making knock-down arguments who in fact don't know that their objections were dealt with long ago. I guess that means that doing good philosophy requires reading lots and lots of philosophy. And if you want to publish, getting smart people to edit you.
I can't specifically talk about Harris, because I don't know his writing well enough.
