I have never claimed a degree in philosophy...
A carefully worded straw man. You made a claim to expertise and then made a dismissive argument using that claim as a premise. In a public forum where anonymity is enforced, claims to expertise are inherently unverifiable and are therefore a rather poor choice of premise. Arguments where the claim to expertise takes on a character of intimidation are just bad form anywhere, anytime.
...and philosopher is not a protected title.
"Philosophy" and "philosopher" are words that have meanings. When you try to equivocate those meanings, your critics would be remiss in their duty if they did not challenge you. They have challenged you. You responded with snarky comebacks and evasion. Your critics reasonably infer from that defensiveness that it was your intent all along to see how much you could get away with. In other words, your critics called your bluff. That's a fairly legitimate tactic in debate. Don't like it? Don't bluff.
No.
You tried to use your purported "25 years of study" to intimidate Skeptic Ginger from challenging your homegrown attempts at philosophy. And it is not the first or only time you have tried to lord your supposed superiority as a philosopher over the other posters, myself included. If you cannot abide having your feet held to the fire, don't make claims that invite the kinds of scrutiny that make you uncomfortable.
As for you being able to judge what level of proficiency I have...
You're still trying to make this about someone else. You made a claim that does not stand up to scrutiny, and you have been evasive and dishonest in the discussion of it. Currying sympathy or shifting your responsibility onto other people does not meet the challenges against
your claims.
So yes, I am an amateur philosophy, but whether I dabble you can't judge. So stop doing that.
To dabble means to work at something in an irregular or superficial way. That seems to be an accurate description of how you've told us you approach the study of philosophy. If my stating it plainly, in contrast to your diluting it in volumes of equivocal screed, makes you uncomfortable, then that was the point.
Now one can dabble and still achieve a high degree of proficiency. My new colleague is an engineer who does thermal analysis of jet engine designs for Rolls Royce. My grandfather was a frontier blacksmith and later a machinist. My colleague dabbles in baking. My grandfather dabbled in oil painting; he was a Bob Ross devotee before it was cool. Now my colleague's proficiency at baking can be judged in part by his having placed third in an internationally televised baking contest. Someone else judged his ability to bake, according to ostensibly common standards. If I didn't consider myself a competent judge of baking -- and I don't -- then I could place faith in the published judgment of someone else who is recognized as an expert. Similarly my grandfather bartered his paintings for goods and services. Here again, someone else applied a set of standards my grandfather did not invent or control, and judged his work to be successful. If I knew nothing about his ability except that strangers paid or bartered to obtain his work, then this would be evidence that he had attained some objective standard of proficiency. None of this is to say there are indisputable, undebatable standards in either baking or painting. It's to point out that proficiency is most credibly determined by others according to standards the subject doesn't control.
You can't claim that. Despite repeated requests, you cannot name a standard you don't control. Indeed, you're now frantically trying to claim there shouldn't be any standard at all. You cannot show evidence of having met any standard by any judgment besides your own. You decide what the standard should be, if there should even be any, and you decide whether or not you've met that standard and what that means. And you demand that others give you full faith and credit for it. Even worse, you gaslight people according to this imaginary achievement. If they say that what you write doesn't make any sense, you tell them it's because they don't understand it and must not be as proficient in philosophy as you. That's plainly arrogant.
And now, with your bluff laid bare, you're begging for lenience. The answer, rightly so, is
no.
As much as you want to lash out at others and try to put them on the spot, question their ability to judge your claims, or suggest that there should be no judgment, the world has already solved the problem of how people who are not themselves experts in a field can weigh others' claims to expertise for evidentiary purposes. And that solution does not rely on the claimant's say-so. That's why we have independent external standards that the claimants don't control. When you can supply that, you can make credible claims to proficiency. If you cannot, then you should not make arguments that require your critics first to accept you as an expert.
) tells people what to do is ludicrous. That blurs the whole 'do we have choices' argument with 'science' making those choices, or something, whatever. That's quite the stretch from using the scientific process to determine 'better', prettier, love and so on.
