Antiphilosophical Dictionary - Peter Naur

[Black Dragon]

Interesting, and he makes some valid points, the best ones being to criticize and scrutinize things without just accepting them at face value because some famous philosopher said them, and to base psychological definitions on direct experience rather than metaphors and such. However, I think his reasoning is a mixed bag of actual wisdom and distortions/biases. While it's perfectly legit to criticize Aristotle's interpretations, criticizing philosophy as a whole and the desire to come at psychology from a purely scientific perspective seems, to me, more or less a materialist world view and by its very nature distorted(and in some ways even dangerous).

"Scientists are mostly uninterested in what philosophers say.  Thus the scientists for hundreds of years, unconcerned with the philosophers' presumption, have been formulating ever more adequate and coherent descriptions of the ways of the world.  Most of those who have even glanced at what philosophers say have been puzzled to notice how the philosophers have talked for several thousand years, without being able to display a single specimen of what they say they seek: a truth."

There's probably the best example. Although I'd wager Naur probably had the best of intentions(you know what they say...), this type of thinking is not only distorted, but detrimental to the progress of humanity, and especially insidiously damaging to fields such as psychology. Everything is concrete proof this, scientific method that...though I have not read his work, from the bits you posted, it seems he's proposing an explicitly rationalist, materialist point of view. That line of thinking has kept philosophy, spirituality, and science not only separate and compartmentalized, but at apparent odds, to the detriment of our progress as a species.

You can see this in how a good chunk(perhaps even the majority) of the mainstream scientific community has a virulent contempt for philosophy(including in a lot of cases morality and ethics), and a crazed need to ridicule and "debunk" anything pertaining to metaphysics. Only with the advent of quantum physics is that ever so slowly starting to change, and some of them are starting to discover and more or less even prove things philosophers have known all along. Through the 20th century, mainstream science really solidified the materialist premises to the point of dogma, and has become a mirror image of the corrupt witch-hunting, heretic-shaming religions its proponents so love to bash on.

Another example of the danger of that way of thinking is clear in how the mental health/psychiatric industries push useless and dangerous pills that don't actually work, and avoid addressing the real issues in a constructive way, because the way they see it, mental health issues are a purely scientific/non-philosophical matter of chemicals/physiology(and to some extent cognitive and environmental factors), because everything's just chemicals and the only reason you have thoughts and self-awareness is because of chemical reactions in your brain.

Simply put, they believe matter supersedes consciousness(because you can prove the existence of chemical reactions as a fact with materialist scientific methodology, while consciousness remains elusive and by their estimation therefore squarely in the realm of philosophical hogwash). Anyone on a site like this would probably agree that premise is ass-backwards, and a society operating from it is only screwing itself and benefitting STS agendas.

The quote about Bertrand Russel having "forgotten" his anti-philosophical stance in later works, is an indication that he evolved past that phase into a more balanced and holistic approach. That phase of scientific rationalism was good to get him thinking critically and questioning things, and to see things through a certain unique perspective or lens. In fact, I went through a phase much like that in high school and a couple years after, though I was never fully an atheist or materialist(identified as an agnostic but inquisitive/curious about metaphysical possibilities). He likely realized later the incompleteness and skewed bias of his view.