OK, but you've gotten rid of "scientist" by making "philosopher" pretty narrow. You've left out people who are very careful about values. We often call them "sages" or "wise men." Are we going to deny them your title?
Well, since I believe care is the most important thing I think we'd better give it to them. So let's say, "a philosopher is a person who is very careful about what he believes or values." If that's a sufficient compliment then there's no longer a need for "sage" or "wise man."
You're going to say, "what he believes or values"? Suppose one person values something so highly that to keep it he believes nonsense. Another person is very careful about what he values and is very careful about what he believes. Are you going to use the same compliment-word for both?
Yes, I'll just modify the word. The second person is a better philosopher.
Oh, oh, "better" and "worse." Stretch-words. Pretty soon you'll be calling any minimally careful person a philosopher.
Of course. That's the way to eliminate troublesome words. Like "scientist" and "scientific." Get rid of them and you'll no longer hear, "That's not "scientific"; you'll hear, "That's not very careful." Get rid of that other troublesome word, "religion," and you'll no longer hear that big trouble-maker, "That's not science, that's religion." People will more easily get down to the questions that need dealing with: Have we arrived at this belief carefully? And at this value? What needs to be balanced against what? People who do that are "better philosophers" than people who don't. "Better" is a good enough compliment. "Worse" is a good enough put-down. Care is the key.
Yes, look for care, but be careful. That person you see taking more care than anybody else may not be the greatest philosopher; he may just be the greatest pedant, scrutinizing little things while ignoring the big ones.
Like what?
Human limitations, human mortality. Only if you ignore your own mortality, and think you have all the time in the world, can you aim at perfection. Do that when your fellow mortals need your help and I'll call you a "finicky philosopher" — to specify your inferiority.
And to remove the word "pedant" from the vocabulary. But these mortals that need a philosopher's help, I suppose that that's because they themselves are not philosophers?
No, they are "hasty philosophers." Though they need the same thing, reliable knowledge, they don't have time to take the care scientists take. They have to settle for the good guess. Considering their number, and their influence (especially in democracies), and the terrible actions — lynchings, pogroms, foolish wars, genocides — they take when they act on unreliable knowledge, the best thing philosophers can do in the world is improve their guesswork.
You mean the best thing leisurely philosophers can do. You're calling everybody a philosopher.
OK, philosophers with leisure, the kind given them in universities, the place where they have the best opportunity to help the poor hasties, the guessers, the wanna-be-hafta-be scientists. If they don't help, they're "useless philosophers." If they interfere with the help, they're "dangerous philosophers."
I already know the "useless philosophers." They're the pedants. But who are the "dangerous philosophers"?
The dangerous philosophers are those pedants who undermine confidence in good guesswork by showing that its theoretical support is not perfect, or, worse, that there's no support at all. They are dangerous because if enough hasties lose their confidence there will be more lynchings, pogroms, foolish wars, and genocides than there would otherwise be.
Sounds terrible. How do you deal with such people? I'm ready to lynch them.
No, no, hah, hah. They live in universities, where all us leisurelies live. Threats appear in words and you hold them off with words. Here, speaking in the stripped-down vocabulary I'm trying to promote, you could only call the dangerous people "poor philosophers." You'd have to hope that that was enough of a put-down to discourage them.
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