Philosophy 102: The Three Groups of Philosophical Concepts (The Core List)
PLEASE NOTE If you are new to philosophy it is not recommended that you read this article without first reading all the articles in the 200s (Pure Philosophy) series.
"I went off to college planning to major in math or philosophy-- of course, both those ideas are really the same idea." - Frank Wilczek
In my Three Groups thesis I claim the following:
1. The central concepts in each of the various subject-matters of philosophy can be placed, non-arbitrarily, into three groups - which I give the deliberately non-descriptive labels G1, G2 and G3.
2. Because the theories or doctrines in each subject area of philosophy are usually centered upon a single concept, most philosophical theories and doctrines also fall into the Three Groups.
3. The concepts and theories in a Group are connected by their relation to quantitative concepts. Those in Group 1 are connected by the concept of singularity. Those in Group 2 are connected by the concept of grouped plurality. And those in Group 3 are connected by the concept of totality.
4. Because these claims are meta-philosophical claims - claims about the whole of philosophy - their truth can only be made evident by showing the Three Groups in each of the subject matters of philosophy. Hence my series of articles about the subject matters of philosophy.
5. In the history of philosophy, few if any of the sets of doctrines offered by individual philosophers fall into just one Group, so the Three Groups are not three 'philosophies' nor even three classes of philosophies.
6. The Three Groups thesis shows that many of the dichotomies worshipped in what I call philosophy's Dichotomy Fetish can be seen to be incomplete trichotomies (see Philosophy 104).
7. The Three Groups are my discovery and were the subject of a seminar given at an Australian university in 1993.
Here are some of the most central concepts (the 'core concepts') sorted into the Three Groups:
Philosophical values: G1. Identity, G2. Harmony, G3. Precision
Philosophical disvalues: G1: Confusion, G2:Conflict, G3: Imprecision
Philosophical methods: G1. Analysis, G2. Synthesis, G3. Synopsis
Aspects of linguistic meaning: G1. Content, G2. Form, G3. Context
Sorts of argument: G1. Analogy, G2. Deduction, G3. Induction
Laws of reasoning: G1: Identity, G2: Non-contradiction, G3: Excluded middle
Epistemic levels: G1: Pre-cognitive, G2: Cognitive, G3: Non-cognitive
Sorts of knowledge: G1. Perceptual, G2. Propositional, G3. Practical
Ends of knowledge: G1. The real, G2. The true, G3. The Effective
Sorts of properties: G1. Qualities, G2. Relations, G3. Quantities
Sorts of truth: G1. Semantically necessary, G2. Logically necessary, G3. Contingent
Criteria of contingent truth: G1. Correspondence, G2. Coherence, G3. Utility
Aristotelian causes: G1. Material, G2. Final and Formal, G3. Efficient
Revised Aristotelian causes: G1. Matter - quality, G2. Function - form, G3. Cause - effect
Means to propositional knowledge: G1. Experience (Empiricism), G2. Reason (Rationalism), G3. Practice (Pragmatism)
Propositional knowledge, attitudes to belief: G1. Dogmatism, G2. Local skepticism, G3. Global skepticism
Propositional knowledge, theories of justification: G1: Foundationalism, G2. Coherentism, G3. Reliabilism
Mind: analysis: G1. Consciousness, G2. Intentionality , G3. Individuality
Mind: substance theories: G1. Substance Dualism, G2. Substance Monism, G3. Substance Pluralism
Mind: sorts of physicalism: G1. Mind-brain Identity Theory, G2. Functionalism, G3. Philosophical Behaviourism
Mind: the mind-body problem: G1: Parallelism, G2: Idealism, G5: Epiphenomenalism
Mind: status of the will: G1. Indeterminism, G2. Soft determinism, G3. Hard determinism
Value: analysis of the general concept: G1: positivity-negativity, G2. bipolarity, G3. Totality
Value forms: G1. Absolute bipolarity, G2. Socially relative bipolarity, G3. Individual-relative bipolarity
Absolutely bipolar values: G1. Right-wrong (deontological), G2. Right-wrong (factual), G3. Right-wrong (consequential)
Socially relative bipolar values: G1. Rectitude (deontological), G2. Moral virtues, G3. Rectitude (consequential)
Individual-relative bipolar values: G1. Good-bad (intrinsic), G2. Good-bad (extrinsic), G3. Good-bad (instrumental)
Species of good-bad: G1. Aesthetic, G2. Intellectual, G3. Hedonic
Meta-ethics: G1. Cognitivist Non-Naturalism, G2. Cognitivist Naturalism, G3. Non-Cognitivism
Normative ethics: G1. Deontological, G2. Virtue-theoretic, G3. Consequentialist
It seems like philosopher (oh, and he played music, too) Anthony Braxton would appreciate your idea of The Three Groups were he still alive.
Thanks for this link. Interesting (moderately). I've read that interview page and followed a link there to Braxton's writings. I found the interview comprehensible, but not the two 'philosophical' papers I attempted.
Braxton's own writings are in what I consider to be the worst style of philosophical writing. They are full of invented and unexplained jargon, show a love for over-long and over-complicated sentences and an over-use of quotation marks for emphasis. Worst of all, they seem to say something and to make sense but do neither. If you can make any sense for me at all of "Narrative Structures", please do so. Braxton wants (wanted) to be revolutionary, but failure to make sense is not a revolution that can lead to anywhere worth the going - unless accidentally.
My understanding of what he says in the interview is that there are presently three musical paradigms (or, perhaps, three paradigms of thought in general) - traditionalism, restructuralism, and stylism.
Traditionalists are stuck in the past and won't accept anything new unless it's dug up from the past.
Restructuralists are revolutionaries, inventors, deep innovators (as distinct from the shallow innovation of the traditionalists).
Stylists are those who take a restructuralist innovation and run with it, working out its every last worthwhile consequence.
I've used the term 'paradigm' because the notions Braxton refers to are quite similar to those put forward by Thomas Kuhn in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions . Kuhn introduced the notion of a scientific paradigm, which is a set of innovative scientific concepts and theories at first resisted by traditionalists but eventually accepted and then worked on until all its consquences have been explored, after which its inadequacies (anomalies) put it under pressure from new candidate paradigms. I've outlined this in my article here.
Braxton's tri-centrism is only superficially similar to my trichotomism. I suspect that you realize this and wanted to draw me into a conversation. But that's fine, I respect you and enjoy our talks. And this reply will at least serve to show Jim that I haven't abandoned Listology yet, I've only been on sabbatical :-)
You overestimate my thought process, which went something like this: "Hey, Braxton is philosophizing about music, and has broken music into three groups! bertie philosophizes and likes to break stuff into three groups. Maybe he'd be interested in this."
Hopefully the sabbatical won't turn into a Mondical and a Tuesdical.
...Anthony Braxton is dead?
Oops, my mistake. I read something wrongly somewhere.
Can you recommend a good Philosophy 101 book? I'm thinking of something that would spend some time with each major figure of philosophy and the methods and ideas they introduced, as well as how they dealt with enduring philosophical problems. Preferably less than 400 pages.
Sounds like you want a history of philosophy. This sort of approach to the subject is most likely to cover all the important names and what they had to say about the problems. The other sort of approach to the subject, which you should also take, is to read a book about the problems, preferably one that is based on excerpts from the primary sources (the original writings of the philosophers themselves).
The titles I review in my list, here, are the only ones I can honestly recommend. I have read others, but that was back in the early 90s. Of the ones in my list I would single out the Russell and the Turnbull for histories. The Russell is longer than you specify, but you don't have to read all of it, just the chapters that are specifically about individual philosophers. It doesn't, however, cover recent developments. The Turnbull is shorter, but it does come up to the late 90s. For a problem-based introduction I can't go past Warburton's Philosophy - Basic Readings , which I have outlined on that list.
These are three British books; you might prefer American. There are many good American equivalents, and I could list some, but it would not be a list based on recent familiarity. Sorry if this is not much help to you.
That's great; thanks!