This is helpful. Look forward to more. All of this is relevant to the absurdity i experience in political discussions where people conform to ideologies and refuse evidence that points to a '3rd' way.
Do you see aporia as a release valve from the limitations of classification?
Great question! I think I use etymology and historicism more often to call concepts into question, rather than aporia, if by aporia you mean Socratic elenchus (asking questions to show what an interlocutor already knows, acting as a philosophical "midwife") in order deliberately to lead an interlocutor to aporia (puzzlement).
Socrates' approach in the aporetic dialogues reads to me as aggressive and eristic, intended to make his interlocutor look and feel stupid. It's also heavily conceptual; he doesn't normally admit experience as evidence. If it's an authentic attempt to help someone, it often doesn't feel like it to me (in the Hippias Minor or Theaetetus for example).
But if by "aporia" you just mean questioning concepts, exploring paradoxes, or expressing doubt in an open investigatory way that leads to a suspension of judgement, I'm all for it! Buddhist noting practices also seem to me related, in that they use concepts to turn off conceptual thinking.
Great points Doug! The question of what is "well-defined" is fascinating and goes right to the heart of Western philosophy. Everything from Aristotle's Organon to Wittgenstein's Tractatus are, in different ways, attempts to answer this question of what can be defined. And I think I have a different answer :)
This is helpful. Look forward to more. All of this is relevant to the absurdity i experience in political discussions where people conform to ideologies and refuse evidence that points to a '3rd' way.
Do you see aporia as a release valve from the limitations of classification?
Great question! I think I use etymology and historicism more often to call concepts into question, rather than aporia, if by aporia you mean Socratic elenchus (asking questions to show what an interlocutor already knows, acting as a philosophical "midwife") in order deliberately to lead an interlocutor to aporia (puzzlement).
Socrates' approach in the aporetic dialogues reads to me as aggressive and eristic, intended to make his interlocutor look and feel stupid. It's also heavily conceptual; he doesn't normally admit experience as evidence. If it's an authentic attempt to help someone, it often doesn't feel like it to me (in the Hippias Minor or Theaetetus for example).
But if by "aporia" you just mean questioning concepts, exploring paradoxes, or expressing doubt in an open investigatory way that leads to a suspension of judgement, I'm all for it! Buddhist noting practices also seem to me related, in that they use concepts to turn off conceptual thinking.
Perhaps the law of the excluded middle applies only for well-defined things.
What does it mean for "god" to "exist"? Lots of definitional arguments there.
What does it mean to be "Asian"? Sorites paradox land there.
Great points Doug! The question of what is "well-defined" is fascinating and goes right to the heart of Western philosophy. Everything from Aristotle's Organon to Wittgenstein's Tractatus are, in different ways, attempts to answer this question of what can be defined. And I think I have a different answer :)