The Rube Goldberg of Philosophy

In one of the presentations last class, the point was made that Aristotle has an apparent obsession with classification and distinction-making. To the extent that this allowed him to gain insight into the mechanical functioning of human living, one could argue that it was a very good thing. To the extent that it unnecessarily complicated his models, one could argue that it may not have been such a good tendency. What is meant by "unnecessary complexity" is that distinction which either a) doesn't exist or b) possesses no material impact on the understanding of the theory as a whole, and therefore acts as an obstruction to acquiring this understanding from the more essential components. As the presenter argued, Aristotle's distinction between intellectual and moral virtues may be an instance of unnecessary complexity. The argument was not so much that the qualities Aristotle attributes to intellectual and moral virtues do not exist, but that making a hard and fast distinction between the two, and then discussing their uniqueness and removal from each other might have actually been detrimental to a complete understanding of virtues. This argument is based on the reasoning that ALL virtues seem to possess, to some extent at least, both the "intellectual" property of being transmittable through teaching, observation and study, and the "moral" property of self-habituation. The argument left the door open to go eve further and suggest that, even if Aristotle's implied separation exists, it is not material to one's understanding and its inclusion may serve to obscure the true nature of the pursuit. I'm not sure if I buy this argument wholesale, but it does raise an interesting question about philosophy in my mind.

What is the proper relationship between complexity and simplicity, and specific applicability and general relevance? In more empirical lines of scientific inquiry, theories are considered most useful, robust, and attractive when they can be described as "parsimonious" (a term I thought was primarily concerned with financial miserliness, but that I recently read in a political science journal referring to the more simple/general end of this spectrum). In philosophy, though, there seems to be a place for analysis along the entire continuum (though Aristotle would likely argue that he aims for the mean...). It is not apparent to me whether this is a good thing, a bad thing, or merely the way things are. On the one hand, philosophy is a gigantic academic field, containing within itself a sub-focus or field of study for just about every other academic discipline there is. While one can study philosophy of engineering, for example, it is very difficult to conceive of the inverse being possible. In this way, I think it is acceptable for philosophy as a discipline to have a more nebulous and ambiguous set of rules and expectations.