Reason is a great tool, but has its limitations. Unlike the application of reason to the natural sciences, it has not been a good tool to resolve the significant philosphical issues that have under discussion since people began to ponder their place in the universe. I do not expect any definitive answers anytime soon.
There are a couple reasons for this that you refuse to acknowledge. First of all, philosophy by its nature attempts to answer questions where the methodology for answering them is unclear. When the methodology for solving a problem becomes clear, it ceases to be philosophy. Physics, biology, linguistics, psychology, etc. etc. all began as philosophy.
Second of all, I'd challenge your contention that no progress has been made in solving philosophical problems. We know a lot better what isn't true, for instance. And thats a form of progress.
If one wants an answer to "life's big questions", I suggest just picking what appeals to you and shaping your life around that. At that point you can apply all the reason and logic (or love and magic) you want, to build something that is coherent and makes sense for you.
That's a completely meaningless method. It can be used to build literally any answer you want to any question. That doesn't make it deep or
-inducing, that makes it moronic.
In the 2,500 since the Golden Age of Greece the process of arguing philosophy has gotten more complex and esoteric, but few answers of note have been forth coming. (Isn't there a popular definition of insanity that can be applied here?)
Do you have
any idea what you're talking about? The problems tackled by philosophers today are extremely clear, and philosophy in general is done in a much more clear manner. Today, for instance, I was doing some research on something called "the problem of material constitution". I read some Aristotle on it, and it was extremely difficult to make heads or tales of what on earth he was saying. Then I read a contemporary article on the exact same problem, and it was much easier to comprehend. That fact that you don't get it doesn't make philosophy bad, it just means either that you don't want to get it, or that you are too dumb to get it, or that you just haven't read enough philosophy to form any meaningful conclusion about it. I'll leave it as an exercise to figure out which of these three is most true in your case.
birdjag said:
The topics of philosphical discussion are infinitly interesting and rich
Hey, at least you said one thing that wasn't wrong and ignorant!
Birdjag said:
but the impenetrable jargon and belabored process of constructing arguments has sucked the life and value out of them.
This is just an argument from incredulity. In short, you're saying "I'm too dumb to understand it, so it must be valueless." I can read an article in nearly any area of contemporary philosophy and find it perfectly comprehensible, after just a couple years of serious study. Thats hardly "impenetrable jargon", its just a fact about academic discourse. In philosophy, one of the biggest problems is getting very clear on what you are talking about. In order to get super-clear, you must introduce stipulative and technical definitions so as to eliminate ambiguities. The fact that something is incomprehensible to someone who has never seriously studied it is hardly meaningful. If I picked a random page from some electrical engineering journal that would be perfectly comprehensible to Perfection, I probably wouldn't be able to make heads or tales of it. But that's my problem, not the discipline's.
