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Old 25th November 2012, 03:12 PM   #109
Kevin_Lowe
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Originally Posted by Bikewer View Post
I have joked that philosophy is what happens when very intelligent people have too much time on their hands....
We had a fairly active atheism "group" on Facebook (before it was abruptly removed)that had some pretty good discussions and debates.
One participant was obviously newly-enrolled in philosophy classes, and his arguments got more and more obtuse as weeks went on... We enjoined him to stop using jargon and write in plain English as none of the other participants were studying... But he wouldn't quit and eventually went off in a huff, evidently to frequent a philosophy-oriented board.

I have found a tendency in philosophical writing to become unnecessarily obtuse. That's fine if you're speaking to a group of similarly-trained scholars, but not if you're trying to convey concepts to folks outside that heady group.
Does there seem to be something a little... funny, perhaps... about judging an area of academic study based on the behaviour of one person who newly enrolled in a class?

I mean, do you normally do that? Do you judge karate based on knowing one yellow belt, or art based on knowing someone who took one watercolour class, or economics based on knowing someone who read a blog about it, or a genre of writing based on reading one short story?
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