1. What specific characteristic is it that separates a Public Intellectual (note 1) from you (assuming that you are not a self-annointed Public Intellectual).
2. What specifically is it that Public Intellectuals know that you don't know?
3. What knowledge is it that gives Public Intellectuals deeper moral insights than you have?
4. Is this knowledge which Public Intellectuals possess empirical? Is it replicable? Falsifiable? Can anyone verify its validity, or can only certain Intellectuals do so? If only certain Intellectuals can verify the validity of their special Intellectual knowledge, what special powers are involved? Can you obtain those powers?
5. If not empirical, is thisPublic Intellectual knowledge intuited, or perhaps revealed? Or was it always (universally) True, absolutely?
6. If the special knowledge which Public Intellectuals possess is not empirical, not intuited, not revealed, and not universally True, then how did the Public Intellectual acquire that knowledge?
7 If the special knowledge Intellectuals possess was conjured by Intellectuals without the use of absolutes such as first principles, then how does that knowledge differ from imagination or self-delusion?
8. Do years of sequestration in schoolrooms translate linearly to wisdom, unattainable by those with fewer years of sequestration?
Note 1: Here we are discussing Public Intellectuals who are self-proclaimed in the fashion of Pigliucci, Ruse, Dawkins, Chomsky, Singer, etc.
1 comment:
This question has puzzled me ever since I first started to really think.
Modern philosophy has all but retired it's noble crown, metaphysics, years ago- it has argued itself out of relevance.
Most people today associate philosophy with skepticism, that is, with doubting. I'd say that when the person on the street hears the word "philosophy", what comes to mind is "useless speculation" and/or "mental gymnastics"- certainly not wisdom. Perhaps they are right.
Doubting is not thinking. Doubting is destroying. It is no coincidence that post-modernism is obsessed with dis-integration, dis-connection, and de-construction. Why? Simply put: An unrelenting emphasis on the quantitative view of reality which limits and distorts the true nature of the Real and our perception of it. Without First Principles , philosophy can be nothing but sophistry.
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