frogandbanjo t1_j3xrt4g wrote
Unproductive hair-splitting - and yes, there is occasionally a productive version. This ain't it.
"Disinterested pursuit" clearly means "no investment in a particular destination that therefore taints the journey" in context.
Are we really worried that this thing we usually just call "intellectual laziness" will be forgotten? That's when one's immature lust to achieve anything that one might convince one's self is "truth" will suffice. Rather than being an investment in a particular destination, that's an undue, overriding investment in being done - for bragging rights, for mental comfort, for whatever.
That is also bad, yes. We weren't going to forget about it.
InterminableAnalysis t1_j3xyoe9 wrote
This whole thread is basically an equivocation of the term "disinterested". I absolutely acknowledge the fact that knowledge, and the pursuit of knowledge (or truth, let's say), is always finite and situated within some given medium. But this thread seems to be taking "disinterested" to mean "absolutely without motivation", and taking "motivation" to mean "one's entirely subjective reason". There is of course a good sense in which we should be on guard against this kind of stuff, but I don't think it's at all as widespread in philosophy as this thread is making it out to be. It seems to me obvious enough that we must have our own commitments to what things like "truth", "knowledge", etc. mean in order for us to be able to pursue them, but I'm getting the impression that what this thread is devolving into is a discussion about how those interested in these kinds of pursuits are really just rationalizing their beliefs instead of presenting reasoned views that respond to other views in a critical way (and of course it's devolving into other things as well, good ol' r/philosophy for ya!).
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