03-31-2021, 07:05 AM
That's a nice overview of how Naur's work fits into everything, and a more careful look than my own. I read Naur in a more narrowly filtered way than your own, and extracted what I found valuable things from it while separating it in my mind from philosophy which aims to transcend the world (i.e. the Platonic side of the Plato-Aristotle divide, which Naur is entirely silent about, and by extension, all other purely spiritual/non-materialistic philosophy too).
Naur seems completely uninterested in playing the role of a materialistic skeptic and criticizing spiritual strivings to transcend the world. Indeed, he maintains a simple silence on all such things. I think the striving for "Truth" which he criticizes can be understood from his examples and emphasis. It's the variety which looks for the essence of everything within the material world. And so, he mocks Bertrand Russell who simultaneously claims that truth is great and that philosophers haven't found any (after millennia of arguing about it).
When materialistic philosophers search for the great "Truth", they do so in domains overlapping with scientific activity, and Naur views them as creating useless hindrances for scientific progress, while their claims of valuing and advancing "Truth" amounts to no more than sophistry.
I think Naur has a point, but:
1. He uses words differently than most trying to argue seriously about these matters. I think that's a main reason this work of his is not academically acceptable. But what he means isn't tricky to understand if you think about it.
2. His entire for vs. against philosophy thing can be cleanly, categorically separated from the more Platonic striving to, well, try to escape Plato's cave. That is, if you keep in mind #1, all concerns about #2 are basically untouched by Naur's argumentation.
Naur glosses over many things. That relates to his own sloppy use of language, where I think he implicitly narrows the scope of consideration, and argumentation. When he claims that philosophy began with Aristotle, for example, he is making clear what kind of philosophy he will be arguing against, but philosophers may be thrown off by the way he used the word "philosophy" and miss the point that he reduced it to a subcategory of philosophy. On top of that, "Aristotelian" becomes extended through his generalizations into the category of stuff he's arguing against. His sloppiness with the main categories of philosophy perhaps reflects his contempt for it all.
The way I find the book most useful is in pointing towards cases where philosophy is simply bad psychology and limiting assumptions about reality in disguise. I found it helpful for improving my personal BS-detector.
Naur seems completely uninterested in playing the role of a materialistic skeptic and criticizing spiritual strivings to transcend the world. Indeed, he maintains a simple silence on all such things. I think the striving for "Truth" which he criticizes can be understood from his examples and emphasis. It's the variety which looks for the essence of everything within the material world. And so, he mocks Bertrand Russell who simultaneously claims that truth is great and that philosophers haven't found any (after millennia of arguing about it).
When materialistic philosophers search for the great "Truth", they do so in domains overlapping with scientific activity, and Naur views them as creating useless hindrances for scientific progress, while their claims of valuing and advancing "Truth" amounts to no more than sophistry.
I think Naur has a point, but:
1. He uses words differently than most trying to argue seriously about these matters. I think that's a main reason this work of his is not academically acceptable. But what he means isn't tricky to understand if you think about it.
2. His entire for vs. against philosophy thing can be cleanly, categorically separated from the more Platonic striving to, well, try to escape Plato's cave. That is, if you keep in mind #1, all concerns about #2 are basically untouched by Naur's argumentation.
Naur glosses over many things. That relates to his own sloppy use of language, where I think he implicitly narrows the scope of consideration, and argumentation. When he claims that philosophy began with Aristotle, for example, he is making clear what kind of philosophy he will be arguing against, but philosophers may be thrown off by the way he used the word "philosophy" and miss the point that he reduced it to a subcategory of philosophy. On top of that, "Aristotelian" becomes extended through his generalizations into the category of stuff he's arguing against. His sloppiness with the main categories of philosophy perhaps reflects his contempt for it all.
The way I find the book most useful is in pointing towards cases where philosophy is simply bad psychology and limiting assumptions about reality in disguise. I found it helpful for improving my personal BS-detector.