Continental or Analytic philosophy?

[wide marlin]

My question is about which you prefer and why. For context, Continental philosophy is often centered around a creative or conceptual approach to philosophy, which is often resistant to strict logical analysis. On the other hand, Analytic philosophy is usually focused on rigorous argumentation and precise language. It's as if Continental philosophy treats philosophy as a poetic insight into deeper reality while Analytic philosophy treats philosophy as a form of science.

It seems to me that you need a certain kind of creativity within philosophy to come up with new problems and solutions. For example, Kant had to be fairly creative to respond to Hume's problems. I mean, most of us probably wouldn't even consider the view that our mind creates space and time as even a possibility.

However, it also seems like you need rigorous argumentation and a thorough reasoning process to be able to argue for and against different positions. An example could be how Wittgenstein pointed out how certain questions are so damn tricky to answer due to a lack of clear definitions. Like, what does it even mean to ask: "What is the meaning of life?" Meaning often refers to what words mean or some feeling of purpose, so it's quite tricky to flesh out the question thoroughly.

So, my problem is which should be preferred and why. Or should we perhaps try to combine the two? I'm just having trouble reasoning thoroughly through proper argumentation while being creative with the questions and answers I present.

I'd appreciate any answers and please correct me if I misstated or left something important out when it comes to describing Analytic and Continental philosophy. Also, sorry for my bad grammar.

[gray sundial]

For the sake of promoting discussion, what would be an example of a topic that would illustrate the differing approaches of these views?

I'm not sure if I'd subscribe to one approach or the other.. is an eclectic philosopher an option? 🙃

[olive laurel]

{Disclaimer : first time seeing those types of philosophies = I speak from the definition you gave}

I don't think we have to choose one or the other. The two can coexist.

However, one can be preferred over the other depending on the context / your goal behind using them.

I don't stumble on the problem that you have where one goes against the other (although I don't pretend that I'm doing any rigorous philosophy).

I just treat philosophy as both. Philosophy can be a poetic insight using science (/ or just both at separate times)

But yeah, I think I usually start with continental I think and then I follow it up with analytical (and maybe go back to continental at the end a little bit/ whenever through the process [kinda for fun / to explore larger avenues]).

~~ ask for clarifications if needed

[golden snow]

I can provide a really nerdy response! I hope it has a little bit of the rigor the risk community sometime demand, but since I'm a nerd....

Idealism: For idealism, I actually DO prefer continental philosophy. I believe Kant actually asking what it meant to "be" or if a person "being" could have entailments was strong, especially since it was asked in the height of the late-enlightment.

Compared to analytic notions in idealism or hylomorphic views (ew), I think Continental traditions build on intuition a bit better (which physicallists actually can struggle with, because the universe isn't that intuitive! It's just actually a weird place to be!

I do think that some loosely analytic/continental traditions land in physicalism, and I actually do prefer some rigor here.

I'm not sure the moniker is used that often, but if we take the Epistomology out....I've always found intrapersonal truths and ideas, speech and statements come from asking like what essence, or universal or sort of "is/no-thing" an atom or particle may have.

That's nasty, STFU and keep your gross meat-churn fucking mouth shut. Produce coherent human thoughts and be 5-fucking-percent more honest.

[mortal mulch]

Hylomorphic?

[golden snow]

I forget it explicitly but it's some dumb idea that dumb dualism exists which is basically dumb.

In my view hylomorphism undermines epiphenomenal explanations that are grounding for theories which don't aspire to be universal or super-real.

Like, I don't think it's a problem to say I feel a certain way and then say it's because fucking Howard Schultz fucking opened a fucking coffee shop that sells $5 fucking dollar sugary fucking lattes.

I don't need metaphysical stuff for that.

[mortal mulch]

Well dualism and other mystical ideas are dumb so yeah 😁

[golden snow]

Well, I also disagree with that.

Dualists have the ability to claim a victory by asking about fundemental properties. It's a hard concept to understand, that both ontological layers matter immensely...

[mortal mulch]

Ah anyway Aristotle I see

[mortal mulch]

Wdym?

[golden snow]

Not sure.

[mortal mulch]

Ah I see reading into it this is specifically cognitive dualism (intellect). Which from a modern science perspective is obviously stupid.

[golden snow]

Yes, that's 100% true, I think.

Scientific theories endorse that there's a specific limit or boundary of descriptions, often categorical and based on methodology, system descriptions and how the theory relates outward as well.

[mortal mulch]

But you can't blame an Aristotle who had absolutely no understanding of the brain much less the nervous system.

[mortal mulch]

So if I'm not mistaken this amounts to 'the soul is an emergent property of the body existing in the form of the body, while intellect/thinking is a separate property in reality'. Something like that. What I don't understand is how can this distinction be said to be well-formed?

That thinking exists beyond the body or even the soul as a higher emerging property?

[mortal mulch]

For me I do not have any dualistic thinking, emergent properties exist but there's nothing beyond particularities of concept or material in them, that is representation versus manifestation. I'm very much a hard materialist. There exist only interactions between forces, substances, spaces, and the concrete and abstract representations permitted or facilitated by them. This is my opposition to the mysticism of dualism and to spiritualism in general; that would pretend that there is another world beyond our world, that is simultaneously inaccessible and integral. We cannot have both, either your imagined entities are in the form of our world and shaping them, accessible and integral, or they are inaccessible and having no consequence on reality as we know it. A property cannot be simultaneously integral to local existence and not composed of it, or in other words accessible to it. So it is not that metaphysical realities necessarily do not exist it is that they do not intersect with our local reality. They are absolutely inaccessible to humans and any aspect of our reality and existence can have no part in it (integral presence). So too is our local 'reality' just that inaccessible to anything else that might, in a hypothetical metaphysical sense and form, be existing.

[golden snow]

Yes sure. I think that's a good way of putting it.

"I'm sorry bro I was philosophizing."

Which is different than, "np I'll explain where I find this in reality."

[mortal mulch]

So reading in detail about it, my interpretation of the overall hylomorphic philosophy independent of particular aspects or formulations, is one of both a dichotomy and a unity. The dichotomy being of form versus composing matter and the unity being of all forms existing under a unified set of fundamental materials which are in a certain sense interchangeable or have "potential" and the forms having a substance separate and beyond mere matter (this last part I do not agree with). I do not see anything fundamentally wrong with this sort of view, it is only when it is interpreted and taken into more mystical ideas like a soul or the guiding essence of forms (teleology) that it becomes problematic and obviously false.

[mortal mulch]

As a historical note this sort of thinking and position by Aristotle was apparently in opposition to ancient Greek atomism as expressed by Democritus. To Aristotle the world is composed of forms and hylé (substances that pervade everything and are shaped into forms) not only atomic units of matter.

And at some point trying to take this to its terminal end we bump forcefully into modern physics concepts. The larger question of "what is the world most deeply formed of?" is not so simply resolved by an observation of particles, molecules, energy, space, and fields. The underlying argument is one of discrete against continuous. The natural question of our ancestors then too is: what reason is there to believe that our world, the universe, is a continuous space and that the matter within it, whether forming atoms and particles or not, exists in a continuous manner?