Imagine a group of blind highly intelligent creatures living at the bottom of an ocean. They reason that, were they to travel 'upwards', the ocean would not go on forever; it must have a boundary. But what is the nature of the world that lies beyond that boundary? Each creature speculates and presents arguments as to what lies beyond. It is the quality of the arguments rather than the truth that they are interested in. The more intelligent the creature, the more sophistcated the argument. And so they continue with claim versus counter claim about something of which they know nothing.
That is my rather negative impression of what philosophising is.
Whilst the institute is a clumsy inefficient beast, it does serve a function; it keeps people like me out... lol.
Yes, philosophizing or "sophistry" - the Greeks recognized this - it's always been there. But philosophizing isn't philosophy. There is something like this in almost every field - philosophy isn't unique. I do think there is a tendency to underestimate the history and methods of philosophy and so a tendency to jump in and re-invent the wheel. This is more obvious in something like physics where there are very formal requirements and a progressive structure to the subject - at least as its taught. It's also obvious in branches of philosophy like logic. But that structure is there in general philosophy too.
You would know this I think from your discussion of Scriabin - I think it was or Schoenberg - in order to break rules, you have to master them.
This article represents to me, something good - which is self-criticism. The article talks about "field philosophy" - which makes me think of the Greeks too.
I think you also keep yourself out. Any field, any group of people - has social norms, has agreed on terminology - this does serve a conservative purpose, of course - but that's not without value either - such a group has suffered a lot of mistakes in the past and is trying not to repeat them or re-invent the wheel. Having agreed on terminology facilitates communication but it also make the new thought much more visible - it can be a limitation though, I agree.
Finally, there is something of a myth about people like Einstein and Feynmann - they weren't so much outsiders as the legends portray ... Einstein's struggle with math was relative - he read
Critique of Pure Reason at 11 or 13 - he knew a lot of physics, so he came out of a tradition and superseded it by building on it, not out of nowhere with sheer genius. I'm not saying you don't know all of this ...
And philosophy may still lend itself, maybe more than other disciplines, to the single thinker making a contribution - but that's a little misleading too - because they almost always are steeped in the background of the area they are working in - or the discipline they are coming from turns out to be highly relevant to a breakthrough in another discipline - ...
Whatever the case may be - it's very hard to bring ideas in from the outside - and I'm sure there's been something lost in this - Ramanjuan was a good example of a natural talent in mathematics that didn't get an opportunity to create ...but it's also been pointed out that Darwin for example or Einstein - that there was a cusp there and if they hadn't done the work, Evolution and Relativity would still have come along in time.
Finally, (finally) - there are more of you, people being kept out, than you might think and with enough in common, that maybe it forms an institution of its own. In other words, rebels are dependent on a system to oppose, but less recognized is that the system is also dependent on those rebels - they, you - help form and firm the walls of the institution.
What I posted on IATs above - they show a lot in common, outsiders - in Lanza's case - he crosses over from success in bio-tech to philosophy and physics - he may be a case where his expertise is relevant to a revoltion in another field - or he may be wrong. But from Chris Langan's CMTU to Multi-Sense Realism, to HCT there are some commonalities - one of the most striking is an attempt to explain everything according to one or a very small set of principles - the goal in general of Western science of course, but the difference is that they are saying - "mainstream has it wrong, yes te world is guided by principles, but not
those principles but
these principles" and that seems to me what you are doing with HCT (and that doesn't mean its
wrong) but also, these theories to me are strikingly similar to early attempts in philosphy at "systematic philosophy" - you don't generally see that form much ... it's a throw-back, or its coming back ... but there are known problems with it - and that's where a history of philosophy comes in handy.
Now, all that said - it comes down to something very simple which is that both the mainstream, the institution and those who "are kept out" as you put it - are regulated by the same forces ... so in the end they are all part of the same system. Further evidence of this is that the desire of those kept out is recognition (a bringing in) of their ideas - so that they become mainstream.
And I don't think the outlook is that bleak - historically we get the high points, the "success" story as defined by the culture at the time - when the culture changes, history is re-written and minor figures may gain status while major figures are criticized - the stream of ideas is edited so that revolution was inevitable, was obvious.
It may be that in ten years, HCT is a dominant paradigm and somwhere, someone working in isolation, outside the institution - is struggling to prove it wrong.
