Regarding Kant, I think it's really important to distinguish two questions: does the critique or other works of his contribute valuable ideas that are worth knowing (for reasons besides intellectual history) to philosophy and does it make sense to actually read Kant yourself. I think the answer to the first question is certainly yes -- while one can plausibly argue Being and Time didn't -- but the answer to the second question is far less clear.
After all, we don't doubt Newton contributed massively to our understanding of math and physics but that doesn't mean there is any benefit (other than historical) to reading his original work in the Principia.
People really dislike this kind of conclusion. Something in our physchology makes us want to treat originals with some kind of special respect. It's the same reason we will go to a museum to see the original Mona Lisa but if an exceptionally skilled artist creates a forgery we can't distinguish we don't treat that the same -- and we certainly don't prefer semi-forgeries that improve aspects of the original. But I think we need to set aside -- or at least understand they aren't based in intellectual efficency -- those kinds of feelings when judging how to spend our limited time. Having worked as a teaching assistant in a number of moral philosophy classes my sense is that the most valuable ideas in Kant have been extracted and are better digested without reading the original (who cares you don't know exactly what some long dead guy thought).
And yes, it is certainly true that people have developed lots of interesting philosophical ideas in the course of reading and interpreting thinkers like Kant and Plato. But that doesn't show the insight came from the work anymore than the story you create based on shapes in the clouds derives from insight in the clouds. Had that same effort been devoted to understanding some modern philosophical papers I expect even more useful insight would have arisen.
Reading the old primary texts that contributed these major ideas is useful in helping us try to grok the non-obviousness of ideas that have since become obvious.
I agree with that and that's why I made the exception for intellectual history. I had that experience reading the Leibniz-Clark correspondence. But I expect doing that right would mean reading very different authors -- selecting the voices that have most influenced how we think now means you miss some of that variety.
Unfortunately, from an educational perspective it is really hard to structure a class around: let's read some wacky stuff philosophers in the past believed. If you run that class as if you are engaging with the philosophical ideas you risk creating a false perception amoung students as to what is a good argument [1] but philosophers often aren't really equipped to teach a course in the history of ideas because they don't study the stuff that didn't make the cut and the historians don't know enough of the philosophy.
I don't mean it shouldn't be done just pointing out it is difficult to do properly.
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1: Even when philosophy classes appropriately cover arguments students too often leave assuming whatever they read is a serious consideration (my sense is most philosophers don't think Thompson's violin argument is very persuasive even if it's good to cover).
In physics and math there are evolutions in notation and convention. Practically, the Principia isn't worth reading when learning physics because we now use Leibniz notation for calculus, which Newton didn't (and was invented in parallel with his work). So there is a textbook tradition where new knowledge is taken from research papers and codified into a form designed to be learned from. For ideas expressed in natural language, there is still some difficulty when they are not expressed in idiomatic modern English, and some value in reading an extracted, condensed version of Kant. But I don't think there is quite the same barrier practical barrier
It is also relatively easy to verify that an idea in physics or math is the same in the re-telling as in the original source. You can show equivalence between one formulation and another. But that's not necessarily true for philosophical ideas, where there can be nuance and slight variations. So I get the impression that philosophy also uses the original source as a consensus mechanism, we refer to the original source because then we all have consensus on what the originally form of the argument is.
Well there are two possibilities. I believe the 2nd.
1: There is no sense in which philosophy makes any progress. For that to be true we can't look at a work in any even slightly reliable sense and say: this has less errors/gaps/fallacies than that because if we could we could clean up the mistakes in the old stuff.
If true we should stop doing philosophy. Philosophy research isn't helping us learn what is true and we have no idea if philosophy education misleads us more than it informs. At best it's just an aesthetic exercise like listening to music and shouldn't be an academic subject.
2: Philosophy is able to make progress by identifying when arguments are weak or posing counter-examples. Its not as clear or robust as in math or physics but I believe it is broadly true for analytic philosophers when they are discussing what arguments are true/valid.
Much of that improvement isn't in throwing out arguments but in better identifying assumptions or just stating them more clearly -- though we do abandon projects like Carnap's logical probability because it was seen to have seemingly insurmountable barriers. Also we can learn where the potential weak points are in arguments eg that there are serious problems with Kant's categorical imperative such as why can't you just universalize rules with an exception for anyone who satisfies a description that just fits you (modern Kantian inspired deontological programs grapple with these).
It's not that there aren't fads or missteps just that on average we make some progress in identifying bad arguments.
Sort of a strange episode in that you spend a lot of time on whether Slaughter will have a lot of impact or not and whether it has been target (via conservative legal scholarship and conservative jurisprudence) for 40+ years, and not a lot of time about who has the better argument about the underlying article II power and things like the decision of 1789. In a round about way you sort of imply you won't talk about that because there is a lot of well written and convincing scholarship and don't want to wade into those weeds. On the other hand that makes this case that much harder to swallow since it went "all" in on the unitary executive theory. If writing an originalist opinion, it seems like the more prudent thing to do would have been to acknowledge the conflicting historical record and say that in some cases removal power can be curtailed and some cases it can't. Could even openly admit that future cases might be harder to decide based on historical record.
By deciding these big questions in big sweeping ways "no ifs, ands, or quasis"* (*conditions may apply, see Cook) it just seems very anti-constitutional and pro-juristcratic (is that a word?). It makes me very uncomfortable that the Roberts court has seemingly tended to enhance the power of the less democratic institutions---toward more judicial power and more executive power---and limit the power of the more democratic institution---congress. Completely unconvinced by any of the reasons why the fed is different. Even if you accept Will's proposal that the fed is the "third bank of the US" it seems entirely unconvincing that the constitution means something along the lines of: the constitution doesn't specify an independent national bank but it implies it, but no other independent executive agencies.
Appreciate Dan bringing up what other's have called the "Roberts 2-step" (maybe should be the Roberts n-step") where it seems he spends several opinions making the aspects of a big area of law sound faulty and unworkable and then looks back and says "obviously this must happen, look how faulty and unworkable the foundations are!". This would be a much easier thing to swallow if it was justices appointed by different parties hacking away at the pillars of support, or even just a different justice!
I was struck that Will articulated part of the logic of the Roberts 2-step unprompted at the beginning of the episode. The demise of independent agencies is not worth discussing now because it's baked in by prior decisions. But I strongly suspect that when discussing the demise of independent agencies at the time of those prior decisions, Roberts partisans would have said it's premature to discuss the demise of independent agencies as a whole because Seila Law only partially changes the status quo. The result is that the court overturns a precedent and transfers vast powers from Congress to the executive, but then objects to even the notion that it's worth talking about that they are doing so.
And feels un-formalist to talk about precedent being functionally overturned by implication and partial decisions, or to consider unimportant opinion that actually formally overturns the precedent and binds the lower courts to the new precedent.
Regarding Kant, I think it's really important to distinguish two questions: does the critique or other works of his contribute valuable ideas that are worth knowing (for reasons besides intellectual history) to philosophy and does it make sense to actually read Kant yourself. I think the answer to the first question is certainly yes -- while one can plausibly argue Being and Time didn't -- but the answer to the second question is far less clear.
After all, we don't doubt Newton contributed massively to our understanding of math and physics but that doesn't mean there is any benefit (other than historical) to reading his original work in the Principia.
People really dislike this kind of conclusion. Something in our physchology makes us want to treat originals with some kind of special respect. It's the same reason we will go to a museum to see the original Mona Lisa but if an exceptionally skilled artist creates a forgery we can't distinguish we don't treat that the same -- and we certainly don't prefer semi-forgeries that improve aspects of the original. But I think we need to set aside -- or at least understand they aren't based in intellectual efficency -- those kinds of feelings when judging how to spend our limited time. Having worked as a teaching assistant in a number of moral philosophy classes my sense is that the most valuable ideas in Kant have been extracted and are better digested without reading the original (who cares you don't know exactly what some long dead guy thought).
And yes, it is certainly true that people have developed lots of interesting philosophical ideas in the course of reading and interpreting thinkers like Kant and Plato. But that doesn't show the insight came from the work anymore than the story you create based on shapes in the clouds derives from insight in the clouds. Had that same effort been devoted to understanding some modern philosophical papers I expect even more useful insight would have arisen.
I think there's a lot to this, but I also like Scott Alexander's point about "reading the history of philosophy backwards" (https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/11/read-history-of-philosophy-backwards/)
Reading the old primary texts that contributed these major ideas is useful in helping us try to grok the non-obviousness of ideas that have since become obvious.
I agree with that and that's why I made the exception for intellectual history. I had that experience reading the Leibniz-Clark correspondence. But I expect doing that right would mean reading very different authors -- selecting the voices that have most influenced how we think now means you miss some of that variety.
Unfortunately, from an educational perspective it is really hard to structure a class around: let's read some wacky stuff philosophers in the past believed. If you run that class as if you are engaging with the philosophical ideas you risk creating a false perception amoung students as to what is a good argument [1] but philosophers often aren't really equipped to teach a course in the history of ideas because they don't study the stuff that didn't make the cut and the historians don't know enough of the philosophy.
I don't mean it shouldn't be done just pointing out it is difficult to do properly.
---
1: Even when philosophy classes appropriately cover arguments students too often leave assuming whatever they read is a serious consideration (my sense is most philosophers don't think Thompson's violin argument is very persuasive even if it's good to cover).
In physics and math there are evolutions in notation and convention. Practically, the Principia isn't worth reading when learning physics because we now use Leibniz notation for calculus, which Newton didn't (and was invented in parallel with his work). So there is a textbook tradition where new knowledge is taken from research papers and codified into a form designed to be learned from. For ideas expressed in natural language, there is still some difficulty when they are not expressed in idiomatic modern English, and some value in reading an extracted, condensed version of Kant. But I don't think there is quite the same barrier practical barrier
It is also relatively easy to verify that an idea in physics or math is the same in the re-telling as in the original source. You can show equivalence between one formulation and another. But that's not necessarily true for philosophical ideas, where there can be nuance and slight variations. So I get the impression that philosophy also uses the original source as a consensus mechanism, we refer to the original source because then we all have consensus on what the originally form of the argument is.
Well there are two possibilities. I believe the 2nd.
1: There is no sense in which philosophy makes any progress. For that to be true we can't look at a work in any even slightly reliable sense and say: this has less errors/gaps/fallacies than that because if we could we could clean up the mistakes in the old stuff.
If true we should stop doing philosophy. Philosophy research isn't helping us learn what is true and we have no idea if philosophy education misleads us more than it informs. At best it's just an aesthetic exercise like listening to music and shouldn't be an academic subject.
2: Philosophy is able to make progress by identifying when arguments are weak or posing counter-examples. Its not as clear or robust as in math or physics but I believe it is broadly true for analytic philosophers when they are discussing what arguments are true/valid.
Much of that improvement isn't in throwing out arguments but in better identifying assumptions or just stating them more clearly -- though we do abandon projects like Carnap's logical probability because it was seen to have seemingly insurmountable barriers. Also we can learn where the potential weak points are in arguments eg that there are serious problems with Kant's categorical imperative such as why can't you just universalize rules with an exception for anyone who satisfies a description that just fits you (modern Kantian inspired deontological programs grapple with these).
It's not that there aren't fads or missteps just that on average we make some progress in identifying bad arguments.
Sort of a strange episode in that you spend a lot of time on whether Slaughter will have a lot of impact or not and whether it has been target (via conservative legal scholarship and conservative jurisprudence) for 40+ years, and not a lot of time about who has the better argument about the underlying article II power and things like the decision of 1789. In a round about way you sort of imply you won't talk about that because there is a lot of well written and convincing scholarship and don't want to wade into those weeds. On the other hand that makes this case that much harder to swallow since it went "all" in on the unitary executive theory. If writing an originalist opinion, it seems like the more prudent thing to do would have been to acknowledge the conflicting historical record and say that in some cases removal power can be curtailed and some cases it can't. Could even openly admit that future cases might be harder to decide based on historical record.
By deciding these big questions in big sweeping ways "no ifs, ands, or quasis"* (*conditions may apply, see Cook) it just seems very anti-constitutional and pro-juristcratic (is that a word?). It makes me very uncomfortable that the Roberts court has seemingly tended to enhance the power of the less democratic institutions---toward more judicial power and more executive power---and limit the power of the more democratic institution---congress. Completely unconvinced by any of the reasons why the fed is different. Even if you accept Will's proposal that the fed is the "third bank of the US" it seems entirely unconvincing that the constitution means something along the lines of: the constitution doesn't specify an independent national bank but it implies it, but no other independent executive agencies.
Appreciate Dan bringing up what other's have called the "Roberts 2-step" (maybe should be the Roberts n-step") where it seems he spends several opinions making the aspects of a big area of law sound faulty and unworkable and then looks back and says "obviously this must happen, look how faulty and unworkable the foundations are!". This would be a much easier thing to swallow if it was justices appointed by different parties hacking away at the pillars of support, or even just a different justice!
I was struck that Will articulated part of the logic of the Roberts 2-step unprompted at the beginning of the episode. The demise of independent agencies is not worth discussing now because it's baked in by prior decisions. But I strongly suspect that when discussing the demise of independent agencies at the time of those prior decisions, Roberts partisans would have said it's premature to discuss the demise of independent agencies as a whole because Seila Law only partially changes the status quo. The result is that the court overturns a precedent and transfers vast powers from Congress to the executive, but then objects to even the notion that it's worth talking about that they are doing so.
And feels un-formalist to talk about precedent being functionally overturned by implication and partial decisions, or to consider unimportant opinion that actually formally overturns the precedent and binds the lower courts to the new precedent.
completely unrelated to anything, but who did intro and outro music for your podcast? it's really really good