What is the name for half-baked understanding of philosophies?

Question

I think many people who subscribe to Taoism pushing the idea to extremes, like thinking that only feeling is correct (in the name of the Tao cannot be spoken), or researching is useless (in the name of wu wei). As RationalWiki puts it: "separate out the ideas they find most palatable, and discard the rest as superstition"*. Even the Zhuangzi ridicules Confucius to the point that I feel disrespected and unacceptable. I also think that the reason the Tao cannot be spoken is because we have the tip of the tongue phenomenon, which can be explained by modern cognitive psychology.

What I'm looking for is a name for half-baked understanding of a philosophy. It makes sense on the surface, but it pushes the ideas to the extremes that can be dangerous if you don't study it carefully. It's like how Osho is perceived in Buddhism SE: "he's like the Tibetan saying, honey on a razor blade, if you are careful there's honey to be tasted, but if you are careless there's the razor blade." I guess the same critic can be apply to New Age.

I think this line of thinking is aligning with naïve cynicism (everyone is bias except me) and naïve realism (who doesn't agree with me are irrational, or misinformed) in social psychology and philosophy of mind, and therefore there is a name for it. Do you know what it is?

^{*The context in there is about the distinction between philosophical Taoism and religious Taoism, so in a sense I take it out of context.}

Answer 1

I think that one problem you are observing is the conflict between Eastern thinking and Western thinking.

The way I see it, Western thinking was established in Ancient Greece with the writings of Aristotle and Plato, which were carried into the governing principles of the Roman Empire. Western thinking was recrystallized many years later by Descartes, who held logic and causality above all else, declaring that while he can't be sure of the existence of anything else, "I see that myself is actually thinking, therefore I can be sure that at least I exist."

In Western thinking, argument ad absurdum is a common method for identifying problems with ideas. Any idea that's applicable here, if true, is applicable there; and if it doesn't make sense there, then it can't be true here, either.

But in Eastern thinking (the way I see it), you have acceptance of diverse ideas characterized by polytheism and pantheism; and you also have quieting of thought characterized by the koans of Buddhism. Both of these postures deny argument ad absurdum, yet have been embraced by many smart and good people throughout history.

It is natural that Eastern thoughts look funny from a Western perspective, just as Western thoughts look weird from an Eastern perspective. Which one is true? I cannot tell.

Answer 2

Piaget talks about the distinction between:

• accommodation, where we restructure our internal models to better conform to new information, and...
• assimilation, where we restructure new information to better conform to our internal models.

What you're calling half-baked philosophy, I think, is generally a superficial form of assimilation: people trying to shove the round peg of a divergent worldview into the square hole of their own given understanding. I'm not suggesting that's bad, because both accommodation and assimilation are necessary aspects of learning. But it can be frustrating.

But really, I think this question confuses 'process' with 'product'. Philosophy is (metaphorically) the process of baking an idea. It takes time, effort, and conscientious skill to do it right, and most people are conspicuously negligent on all three. When we say that some idea is 'half-baked' we're not commenting on the idea itself; we're complaining that the (philosophical) chef went wrong somewhere in the process and produced something peculiar. And unfortunately, a lot of people are indiscriminate about what they feed their head with, perfectly content to chow down on even the most peculiar thing without really tasting it.

It doesn't really do any good to attack the thing itself, because people will continue to bake peculiar misunderstandings. Bring down one, and two will pop up in its place (like the myth of the Hydra). Instead, you need to show people how to bake (err... philosophically speaking).