[atreestump]

Love of wisdom

The most general definition of philosophy is ‘the most general and comprehensive type of inquiry’. What is inquiry? Let’s say, ‘the attempt to say what is true and why’; which is to say ‘what is true, must be justified by reasons and/or evidence’.

Philosophy leaves nothing out, except for the particulars that other sciences and what their own specialist established methods investigate. ‘What is the cure for cancer?’, is a very important question. This is not a philosophical question however.

If you ask ‘what is health?’, or ‘what is a cause?’, or ‘how many many social resources should be devoted to curing cancer against other social aims?’; all three of these are philosophical questions.

First philosophy

This refers to two philosophical sub-fields:

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[*]Epistemology – the theory of knowledge
[*]Metaphysics – the theory of reality
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These two sub-fields constitute a very important family of inquiries. Such as:

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[*]What is reality?
[*]How do we know reality?
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Other related areas that we may stray into are:

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[*]Logic
[*]Philosophy of language
[*]Philosophy of science
[*]Social philosophy
[*]Political philosophy
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The latter impact first philosophy. Social and political changes sometimes alter the atmosphere in which first philosophy is done. For example, you can’t understand the development of the very abstract philosophy of German Idealism without recognising how the German Idealists were influenced by Jean Jacques Rousseau’s political philosophy and, by the French Revolution.

Modern philosophy

This arguably began with the 16th or 17th centuries as Medieval institutions and Medieval ways of thought, began to give way to the modern world.

Many thinkers are radical and controversial to say the least. My reading will differ from the reading from other commenters and philosophers – this comes with the territory of philosophy.

Great does not necessarily mean ‘right’.

The best a beginner can hope to achieve is to become familar with the whole forest and basic familarity with some of the biggest, distinctive trees.

To do this, you want:

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[*]To be able to see three of four most basic claims of a philosopher on a topic
[*]Understand those claims as clearly as the philosopher proposing them does (sometimes, more clearly)
[*]Understand their contraries. To understand a term or position, you have to automatically ask ‘what is the opposite to this claim?
[*]Understand the main arguments or reasons for each of these basic claims of each philosopher
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Basic issues

What exists? What is the population of reality? Example: Much of reality seems to be material and made out of matter. Is it all material? If all reality were material, that would raise many questions immediately.

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[*]Does the human soul exist?
[*]What about numbers?
[*]Does the human mind and personality exist? Is it nothing more than the brain? Or is the mind different from and more than the brain?
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Suppose the mind is the brain.

As a physical system, wouldn’t the brains output simply be determined by its input? How could a material system like the brain, have free will? Lacking free will, how could it be a moral being, or be subject to moral responsibility any more than say, a Lion is subject to moral responsibility?

We often hear of criminals, especially murders and serial killers trying a defence in court that tries to say there were physiological problems about their own bodies that caused their actions. If this is true, then we can then ask if our normal behavior is also governed by chemicals, are we also not responsible for what we do?

From a genetic perspective, Lions are genetically programmed to eat other animals, we don’t blame them for doing so. From a Darwinian perspective, we are also animals and with our own genetic programming.

If the mind is on the other hand, not the brain, if there is a non-physical, non-material part to us called ‘the mind’, how in the world can it interact with the physical world? This includes the physical brain that it presumably depends on.

Another problem raised by science is that the physical world that physics describes is vastly different to the world you and I experience. The table and chairs around you are mostly empty space from the point of view of physics. They don’t appear to be empty space from our point of view, in which case, which ones are real?

The one science describes, or the one we experience and use?

Are there values in nature, if nature is entirely physical? Or are the values, like ethical values we assert, simply human projections and imaginations that have nothing to do with any other reality?

Bertrand Russell once wrote on the perspective of reality from the point of view of modern science.

Even more purposeless, more void of meaning, is the world which science presents for our belief…That man…his origin, his growth, his fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms…These things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.

If it’s true that modern science can do these things, if he is right, then that leads to very stark, metaphysical implications about reality and our place in it.

All of this pressuposes that we have knowledge, or at least a scientific knowledge of an at least partly material universe.

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[*]Epistemic Realism – The view that our knowledge is true of its objects independent of our ideas, theories, and cultures.
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When our knowledge is true, it is true of things that exist independently of itself. Do we have such knowledge? 

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[*]Antirealism (relativism) – Our true knowledge is made true not by objects independent of us, but by our own ideas, perspectives, theories and cultures.
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In other words, the only validity we ever find in our knowing, is when the knowing fits in with our other ideas. This is the claim that says: we see things as we are, not how the things are.

We do have true beliefs from this point of view, but true just means ‘true for us’, ‘true for the holders of our theory’ or ‘true for the members of our culture’. This means there could be equally valid truths that contradict each other. There is no other universal truth, or truth in and of itself to speak of.

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[*]Scepticism – Doubts that we have true knowledge at all.
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The sceptic points out that even in science, we keep changing our theories. If replacement makes a theory false, then contemporary theories, if they are destined to be replace also, will be false too.

How do we get knowledge?

There are methods and limits. Does it come from sense experience entirely, if so, there are many things we ought not be able to know because they are unexperiencable. Or, is there another source of knowledge in addition to our sense experience?

Other questions arise in epistemology and metaphysics:

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[*]Does God exist?
[*]Is belief in a monotheistic God compatible with our knowledge of the world?
[*]Does history exhibit a pattern of development, or is it random or cyclic?
[*]Can all reality be reduced to the study of physics?
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All of these questions are provided by the unique conditions of the modern world.

In the Medieval period, all fields we know as the naturalistic and social sciences were part of philosophy. As they developed their own special methods, they split off from philosophy to form their own disciplines.

I will conlcude this thread and willtalk about the political aspects in the next thread.

[Socrates]

@”taylerallen6″ check this out.

[Resurrector]

Interesting point!

[Resurrector]

Revisiting this topic…

[Resurrector]

Let’s discuss again.

[Resurrector]

Still a hot one!

[Resurrector]

Let’s discuss again.

[Resurrector]

This is still relevant.

[Resurrector]

Any updates on this?

[Resurrector]

Worth revisiting.

[Resurrector]

Interesting point!

[Resurrector]

Still a hot one!

[Resurrector]

Let’s discuss again.

[Resurrector]

Worth revisiting.

[Author]

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