Listening and Diagnosing (guest post)

“Over and over again I see philosophers go so far to take everything at face value that it leads them to a worse understanding of what is actually going on in an argument.” Philosophers are an unusual bunch. Normally when someone gets up in front of their colleagues at work and gives a speech about, say, how “life has no ultimate meaning,” the appropriate response would be something along the lines of, “hey, are you feeling alright?” and perhaps a call to HR. But when a philosopher does this, the rest of us respond with “what, exactly, do you mean by ‘ultimate’?” and other things that basically say: “prove it.” There’s a saying around here: philosophers are people, too. What would taking that idea seriously mean when it comes to philosophical discussion and disagreement? In the following guest post, Mark Schroeder, professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California, looks at one aspect of this: the role that “diagnosis” plays in ordinary life and the role it might play…

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