Pseudophilosophy
From Free net encyclopedia
Pseudophilosophy is any idea or system that masquerades itself as philosophy while significantly failing to meet some suitable intellectual standards. The term is frequently pejorative, and most applications of it are quite contentious. The term bears the same relationship to philosophy that pseudoscience bears to science.
The term is often used more casually to express contempt, irritation, or just dislike toward some idea or system of ideas. It is not, for the most part, used technically within academic philosophy, though it is likely to occur in philosophers' judgments on larger aspects of culture, their advice to new students, their assessments of other disciplines, and so forth.
Nicholas Rescher, in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, defines pseudo-philosophy as "deliberations that masquerade as philosophical but are inept, incompetent, deficient in intellectual seriousness, and reflective of an insufficient commitment to the pursuit of truth." Rescher adds that the term is particularly appropriate when applied to "those who use the resources of reason to substantiate the claim that rationality is unachievable in matters of inquiry."
Contents |
Some accusations of pseudophilosophy
Accusations of pseudophilosophy in academia
An example of academic judgement of pseudophilosophy was the episode when W.V.O. Quine, along with Barry Smith, Hugh Mellor (then Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge), and various other academic philosophers, wrote to protest Cambridge University's award of an honorary degree to Jacques Derrida, claiming that Derrida's work "does not meet accepted standards of clarity and rigor" and that it is made of "tricks and gimmicks similar to those of the Dadaists".
Alfred Korzybski's theory of General Semantics has been given this appellation (also by Quine), and post-structuralism has been widely accused of this kind of accusation (see Sokal Hoax).
Similarly, Arthur Schopenhauer wrote the following about Hegel:
- If I were to say that the so-called philosophy of this fellow Hegel is a colossal piece of mystification which will yet provide posterity with an inexhaustible theme for laughter at our times, that it is a pseudophilosophy paralyzing all mental powers, stifling all real thinking, and, by the most outrageous misuse of language, putting in its place the hollowest, most senseless, thoughtless, and, as is confirmed by its success, most stupefying verbiage, I should be quite right.
- -- Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Basis of Morality, trans. E.F.J.Payne (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), pp.15-16.
Schopenhauer's critiques of Hegel, Schelling, and Fichte are informed by his perception that their works use deliberately impressive but ultimately vacuous jargon and neologisms, and that they contained castles of abstraction that sounded impressive but ultimately contained no verifiable content. Søren Kierkegaard attacked Hegel in a similar manner, writing that it was pretentious for Hegel to title one of his books "Reality." To Kierkegaard, this indicated an attempt to quash critics even before criticism was voiced.
Despite these attacks, Hegel is widely considered one of the most influential writers in world history: the rigor of his philosophy notwithstanding, Hegel had a significant impact on the writings of subsequent philosophers, for example Marx. Hegel scholar Walter Kaufmann contends that Schopenhauer's attacks actually illuminate more about Schopenhauer than about Hegel. Accusations that are similar in substance, if not in style, to Schopenhauer's have been made more recently against Martin Heidegger, postmodernists, and the adherents of French critical theory like Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan and Jean-François Lyotard.
Ayn Rand's Objectivism is often cited as a pseudophilosophy, for several reasons. Firstly, many of her philosophical views are presented in her "romantic realist" novels, rather than in refereed journal articles. Secondly, Rand was a self-taught philosopher, and consequently the philosophical issues that she discussed were out of sync with the research program of mainstream academic philosophy during the years she was active. Her grasp of the historical problems of philosophy is considered idiosyncratic in many ways – her proposed resolution of the problem of universals, for example, treated it as a question of epistemology although it has usually been taken as a question of metaphysics.
Finally, she and some of her followers are often perceived as being dogmatic, frequently ignoring published criticism of the system instead of responding to it. This is in part because many of them were young people excited by her novels and unlearned in philosophy; such people are not often aware of the complexities of their subject and prone to construe disagreement as ignorance. Furthermore, many of her supporters would not permit modifications or additions to her philosophical system, leading some to label Rand as a cult leader.
There have been few published reactions to Objectivism in academic journals. The most comprehensive academic criticism to date is "With Charity Towards None" by William F. O'Neill, published in 1971. However, academic work on Objectivism has grown in recent years: see Response to Objectivist philosophy for some examples.
Pseudophilosophy in popular culture
Other works that have been labelled as "pseudophilosophy" include the religious poetry of Kahlil Gibran, the material in Richard Bach's fable Jonathan Livingston Seagull, The Satanic Bible, James Redfield's The Celestine Prophecy and the novella The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Other New Age works are generally considered speculative or unanalytical by philosophers. Here, the label of pseudophilosophy is used to criticise these works as being conventional, sentimental, or platitudinous; and of lacking rigor, system, or analytical content.
Another cultural phenomenon that has been labelled pseudophilosophy is the form of philosophical skepticism that is the central premise of the motion picture The Matrix.
See also
External links
- Letter protesting the Cambridge award of an honorary degree to Derrida, with critical commentary.