Philosophy as usual

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Philosophy as usual is a parallel to politics as usual but is more abstract, and the power game is less obvious. Typical tricks of the trade are:

  • endless regress so that any effective argument is met with a more abstract one until the entire argument is ungrounded and hand-waving and fancy talk will win the day - can only be defeated by a single clear standard of evidence
  • side arguments introduced without limit to simply dilute the conversation to the point where no decision maker is listening at all, and is likely not to come back
  • accusation of faction loyalty, or actual faction loyalty, overriding one's commitment to due process - changing the rules during the actual game with no consensus of all factions to do so
  • God's Eye View of course, which leads inexorably to worship of a GodKing
  • accepting philosophy itself as a guide to reality, even if no body actually believes the arguments and commits to test them, i.e. live by them
  • discarding as "unimportant" the ethics that some body actually lives by as if intent and ideals always over-rode real bodily experiences.

Postmodernism is a simple rejection of most of the above and an attempt to portrary all philosophy as language games. This is not satisfactory for all problems, e.g ontology remains at the core of language because all language has agreed glossary, it is hard to avoid the question of what constitutes consensus decision making or peer review in professions and trades, and journalists can't operate without neutral point of view (however useless that may be for actually providing real neutrality of views).

Cognitive science takes issue with a great many of the problems arising in philosophy as usual, and many stances taken by postmodernists. They avoid the problems of both by focusing on some body as it operates in some environment, which has rules like ecology that make it predictable. A lot of problems are avoided by focusing on the body-ecology feedback system.

Consumerium:philosophy is more focused on that loop than typical philosopher concerns. That is probably why trolls like it so much, and festoon their world tree on holidays with printed pages from Consumerium:Itself.