Some very interesting points have been raised by some bloggers recently. I happened to stumble across them while reading up on plant nervous systems, of all things.

This article, for example, wonders whether analytical philosophy asks too many questions about the propositor than about the issue itself. A little like taking sides in an intellectual discussion.

Similarly, this article sparked off a series of thoughts by the author on how trends, as he terms it, affects the way philosophers and all participants in arguments in general moderate the tone of their argument to “pander to the audience”. I’m sure everyone’s thought about this at least once while writing up a paper for submission, or when your tutor asks you how you’re going to tone your survey so the surveyees don’t answer based on a biased question. The perfect survey, to quote my project work tutor, is extremely difficult to come up with and it takes a lot of skill to make sure all the questions are prefectly impartial.

How does your audience affect you? And how do scientists write the perfect logical journal article? No one report is truly free of all opinions. There are definitely opinions in the reasons for choosing to fix certain variables. So how does the perfect philosopher argue? Analytical philosophers need all the logic they need. But it is virtually impossible to get rid of all human intellectual and emotional reaction to certain things. Something that does not quite fit into your mode of thinking immediately starts you wondering why and how the other side is right, and how you can rebut. It is more difficult when you are arguing as a group, because then the herd instinct (something I stress quite often) kicks in and one, being human, has this natural tendency to try to protect this one value you all believe in. That herd instinct is dangerous, but we can’t rid the world of it. That would be akin to a dystopia where everyone lives only on logical thought. Logical thought alone won’t get you anywhere; part of the privilege of being human is being able to sense the grey areas such as good and bad.

So is it possible to ignore trends, as the writer in that article suggested the idea be called? I would say no. One commentor in the article suggested “philosophical system-building as an expression of the will to power, rather than a search for objective truth”. Quite possible, in my opinion. Philosophers are innately human, and humans innately have a pretty robust ego. Philosophical disscussions and your average argument with a friend usually tends to melt away into a sparring contest to see who dies first – in other words, who runs out of evidence to back oneself up first. At least that’s the case for my friends and I.

It’ll be a while yet before people can actually communicate without bringing any emotions(and I mean it, I’m not just talking about being unbiased, but also how you think a robot would probably handle the information) into their discussion, and I don’t believe that day will ever come.

By the way, some of you might want to check out what Pyrrhonian Skeptics are all about. That’s new to me too. (at least the name is if not what they do)