Belief without Verification or Certainty

[vulcanlogician]

I'm still working on this. Here is a recent article on Derrida, which goes into the difference between analytical and continental philosophy. 

https://aeon.co/essays/after-jacques-der...philosophy

In brief, the analytic, A.J. Ayer-type people will demand a more cut and dried type of verification. While the continentals are still comfortable with the big, never-provable ideas. But that doesn't mean that these are things we don't reasonably have beliefs about. 

I liked this part of the article:

For Derrida, the division into analytic and continental philosophy is misnamed. For him, the division was between ‘analytic’ and ‘traditional’ philosophy – where the latter is philosophy that deals with big questions such as ethics, aesthetics, God and the meaning of life. As the English novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch put it, analytic philosophy explores a world where ‘people play cricket, cook cakes, make simple decisions, remember their childhood and go to the circus, not the world in which they commit sins, fall in love, say prayers or join the Communist Party.’

I think that's good criticism of analytic philosophy. It rings somewhat true. But I also think it's to analytic philosophy's credit that it puts those "continental things" outside the sphere of its interests. Even Communist sinners cook cakes and play the occasional game of cricket. And so, to some degree, they can be interested in what analytic philosophy has to say. I have a great deal of love for continental and analytic thinkers. To me, they are slightly different projects with the same ultimate aim. I tend to agree with the notion that analytic philosophy has "lost" something once proudly held by "traditional philosophy." But I tend not to separate the schools of thought so much. Perhaps analytic and continental are simple modalities and involve more of a local and historical distinction rather than a real distinction in purpose.

The list of big things -- sins, love, etc. -- are to me things that we believe without firm verification. There are reasons, and arguments, and we may be entirely reasonable in our conclusions, but that doesn't mean that anything is verified, in a strict sense. 

We know many things through symbolization. Here is a good article on that:

https://jhiblog.org/2021/11/15/reality-a...terminism/

I'll make it a point to check out both articles.

And this from Kant:

[The principle of art that engages people is] the capacity for the presentation of aesthetic ideas; but by an aesthetic idea I mean that representation of the imagination which gives much cause for thought without any determinate thought, i.e. concept, being able to be adequate to it, which consequently no language can completely attain and make comprehensible.

I thought about putting all this in the thread about a possible crisis in psychology, largely because Freud's career exemplifies this. (He turns out to be very much in this Germanic Romantic tradition.) He really wanted to be a scientist, but he found in the end that what he was dealing with was not quantifiable or testable in that way. Some see this as a failure on his part, but I see it as recognizing the unavoidably fuzzy, unverifiable aspects of what it is to be human. 

In the end, what he invented was a sort of applied literature. Story-telling, symbol-making, to express truths which, like aesthetic truths, resist conceptualization. Myths and symbols retain their multivalent expressiveness, while quantified truths get a pin stuck through them. 

All of these things involve deeply held beliefs with neither verification nor certainty -- and this is all for the best.

Speaking of Kant, he is seen by some scholars as a pivotal figure where philosophy generally began to split into continental and analytic. (Often citing his views on aesthetics being important here).

 I disagree. If you look at the lineages of ideas you find things like:

Descartes -> Spinoza -> Hegel

and

Kant -> Schopenhauer -> Nietzsche

How one thinker influences another seems to cross the boundaries of what were later dubbed "different categories of thought." (ie. analytic, continental).  For example, if anyone made philosophy more analytic and deductive, it was Descartes. Spinoza worked within the Cartesian framework (and loved Descartes' thinking)... and Hegel considered himself a Spinozist. But scholars like to toss Hegel into the continental camp. (I suppose Hegel was influenced by Kant too. But Kant's influence on Hegel isn't something I know a great deal about.)

Kant is an interesting case having been heavily influenced by "British" empiricism. One may say his affinity for those British thinkers makes him something of an analytic philosopher. But then we see Schopenhauer starting his thought within the Kantian framework, who is the followed by Nietzsche. And Nietzsche is (of course) NOT an analytic philosopher at all.

I tend to see the whole body of thought as a development from traditional philosophy. Continental and analytic are shorthand for a modality, methodology, certain set of conclusions. But neither points to a genuine distinction as far as essentials go.