Does the study of philosophy ever lead to answers?

[Deidre]

Yep! I agree. You guys (broad-brushing) are interested in both the journey and the destination, whilst I'm thinking the journey IS the destination. I mean, the 'final destination' is pretty boring, to my way of thinking.

You might be surprised that many theists live in the here and now. haha

So, think of philosophy as a way to select between a number of goat trails which all meander their way to the same place eventually. None of them solve anything, but some goat trails have more metaphorical goat poo on them.

See? I have the soul of a poet!!

lol

I think what philosophy does in a way, is offer a deeper dive into self, and how we are similar yet different from others. Tests with open ended questions instead of one fixed answer, always interested me more.

 

[shunyadragon]

I wonder if questions would then be considered answers?

I do not believe so. In philosophy it requires one to accept subjective assumption to support the logical arguments, and that just asks more questions.

Worthy of note: The philosophy of Math Logic is a bit of a different ball game, but math in and of itself does not propose objective answers, It is science using the math tool box that tests and falsifies answers in the form of theories and hypothesis and provides answers..

 

[Deidre]

Oh.....I'll taste it to the bottom. Probably need rehab to understand it.

We seem to have reached common ground here.
Cheers!

Try your best to share.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

You might be surprised that many theists live in the here and now. haha

Nah. Based on the theists I've met, I'd say the vast majority of their thinking is about the here and now. It varies from person to person, obviously. I'm too old to be easily surprised, which is probably good. Because surprising old people never ends well.

I think what philosophy does in a way, is offer a deeper dive into self, and how we are similar yet different from others. Tests with open ended questions instead of one fixed answer, always interested me more.

That sounds about right to me.
I just don't know how you can talk about philosophy without including a goat poo analogy!!
(of course I'm joking. I used kangaroo poo last time.)

 

[Deidre]

Is anyone seeing the irony of the thread title in comparison to the ''answers'' in this thread?

 

[rational experiences]

Yes it does, but not the kind of answers that everyone expects.

When people don't find what they expected to find, they usually stop there, and declare that philosophy provides no answers, or only subjective, personal answers, etc. That's an understandable response. A very human thing to do. If you don't see what you expect, you stop there.

Yet, 'stopping there' overlooks how philosophy not only leads to answers but has been providing some of the most useful and influential answers in the history of western culture for over 2,500 years.

Indeed, right offhand I can think of a philosophical answer that has quite arguably had a greater impact on western culture that the Theory of Relativity.

I honestly hate to do this, but I don't have time at the moment to say more than that. However, I will come back later when I do have time and edit this post to explain what I just said.

In other words who created science?

A living bio life human did, in natural and origin self existence first.

A scientist would argue and say MATHS existed before he did. As creation.

The contradiction is that he says O MASS is energy.

O God he says is mass...the holding of energy for his taking from....the body of stone....mass.

So then you say to a scientist so did MATHS own natural MASS by bodily physical natural form?

No he said I lied...I only owned a formula to abstract from mass, energy as my mass science quotation as ANTI to self actually.

For I knew that mountain tip mass in an energy reaction would remove self presence, as self. For I wanted to go back to being a spirit.

Today science says to any human claiming that self as a human is spirit, gets very angry at them.

So you would ask that scientist, for what reason does your self, and psyche be angry at a human claiming self a spirit and eternal for?

That was my owned science theme...and the only way to go back to being a spirit or an eternal body by invention is to remove the bio life from existing...claiming but I exist afterwards as a spirit.....says the scientist, reminding everyone that he was wrong.

 

[Deidre]

Since we're sitting around with our beer 'n pizza...philosophizing, do you think it's ''wrong'' (as in immoral, shame on you) to not vote in this next election?

 

[sayak83]

I think there are more questions that get stirred up by philosophy, than answers. But might it be that our answers, are the only ones that matter to us, because of that inner pull to to see the world through our own skewed lens?

It's helps in creating disciplined thought... which may help in finding ones own personal answers.

 

[Link]

I think there are more questions that get stirred up by philosophy, than answers. But might it be that our answers, are the only ones that matter to us, because of that inner pull to to see the world through our own skewed lens?

Good Philosophy in theory leads to the truth, but who is to represent it and be trusted regarding it?

I took a philosophy of religion and saw so many argument from ontological to cosmological constructed in a way, that it's easy to refute and no counter refutations are ever considered.

I have trust issues for everything that isn't mundane and is not testable. Testable as in an engineer doesn't do his job, the bridge falls. This type of testable expertise, I can trust.

I don't trust Psychology, Philosophy, Religion, and many other things, that there is no consequence to measure in real life if their knowledge is false.

This is another mistake in "majority of experts say" in philosophy. It's seen as most like true type guess when you quote experts. I only consider that true if their expertise has real life effects like planes flying. In fact, the opposite, if there is no testable consequences for their expertise, it's most likely they are wrong about many things they claim to be experts about.

They can be experts but lost in error on top of error.

 

[Link]

A good philosopher distrusts philosophy, and a good religious person distrusts religion.

The reason, is because, a good philosopher goes beyond the norms of society and doesn't limit themselves to what is widely accepted or limit themselves to those considered the greatest experts, and good religious person distrusts everything but God and his guidance naturally for religion and so distrusts naturally humans who corrupt his teachings and instead seeks to walk his path of light and insights.

 

[Sunstone]

PLEASE NOTE: This post is a continuation of post #5, which can be found here:

Does the study of philosophy ever lead to answers?

I'm back! And twice as handsome as before!

@Deidre, thank you for your patience with me.

You know, looking over this thread, I can see I have more work cut out for me than I was bargaining for. That's because so many good folks are using the word "philosophy" in a way that says to me I might confuse them if I do not first and upfront mention what I meant by the word in my earlier post. No worries. The distinction is easy to grasp.

What most people mean by "philosophy" is a kind of freewheeling, 'anything-goes' kind of thinking that is quite often beautifully creative and imaginative. "Why can't ants walk backwards?" "Life is a bowl of cherries." "If it quacks like a duck...." To most people those are easily seen to be "philosophical" questions and statements. Notice how much they involve matters of opinion. How much they are wrapped in subjectivity. Beyond being subjective, we might ask whether people are wrong to speak of philosophy in those ways?

Of course not! That's a crazy question! A crazy question! Why did you even ask it? Don't you know folks have a right to think of philosophy any way they want to!

Um... wait a moment... eh... um... It was me that asked that question. Uh... sorry. At my age, you get confused about these things.

At any rate, there is another kind of philosophy. This second kind is much, much more disciplined than the first kind. The heart, soul, and core of it is the application of strictly logical reasoning to the analysis of various and sundry issues. Emphasis on logic. Double-emphasis on logic. This second kind of philosophy depends so much on logic that without logic, everything else it is falls apart. Logic is the glue holding all of its pieces together. And in practice, that makes it a whole different ballgame from the first kind.

Now, when I said that philosophy answers questions, I was referring only to this second kind of philosophy. And when I said that the kinds of answers it comes up with sometimes have a huge influence on western culture, I was again referring only to this second kind of philosophy.

I hope we're on the same page now.

In my next post, I am going to tell you about one of the philosophical answers that have had a greater impact on the world than the Theory of Relativity. And I am going to do my very best to make it easy to understand and entertaining.



NOTE: This post is continued in post #34, which can be found here:
Does the study of philosophy ever lead to answers?

 

[Link]

Philosophy is perfect in theory, just like democracy is in theory, just like republics are in theory for the people.

Scientists and peer review in theory is perfect system.

Reality hits you, and philosophy is corrupted. Democracy - there is none, just republics controlled by money. Follow the money trail, and the powers on top, are very few.

Science supposed to be peer reviewed, feels like a power struggle is real happening and intellectual bullying is going on.

 

[Sunstone]

What? Why you...!!!!

Tease. You a JUST A TEASE!

I just love it when you talk dirty to me!


Check out post #31 at your convenience. Does the study of philosophy ever lead to answers?

 

[Sunstone]

PLEASE NOTE: This post is a continuation of post #31, which can be found here:
Does the study of philosophy ever lead to answers?



@Deirdre,

I'm back like a bad case of morning breath!

As you might recall, I said in my first post in this thread that philosophy comes up with answers, only they are not the sort of answers we expect to find -- and hence, we tend to think philosophy does not actually come up with answers. But that raises two questions.

First, what kind of answers do we expect to find? That's an easy question. Here's a famous philosophical question, "Does God exist?" That question has been around a long time, probably much longer than we have any record of it. Our first record of anyone in the west asking that question only dates back roughly 2,400 years -- but I'm sure some people were asking it long before then.

So what is the philosophical answer to "Does God exist"? Shouldn't there be one by now?

Well, if by "answer", you mean "yes" or "no", then we're out of luck. The question has never been settled in that sense, not even in over 2,000 years. So, if we only look that far, and no further, then we are going to say, philosophy does not lead to answers.

But there is another way a question can be answered other than in such a straight-forward way as to demand a "yes" or a "no". However, this second way of answering questions is harder to see, harder to catch on to.

Try thinking of it this way. Imagine a beautiful woman or a handsome man. Most people are deeply interested in how beautiful they are. "We all want something beautiful", as the man sings in Mr. Jones. But fewer people are deeply interested in their personalities, their values, their tastes, their interests, their ambitions and dreams.

The second way to answer questions, the way philosophy answers questions, does not deeply interest everyone. But it is the second way of answering questions that philosophy excels at. Truly excels at. Kind of like a beautiful woman or man who is even a more beautiful person inside that she or he is outside.

So what is that second way of answering questions?

To put it somewhat metaphorically, "Philosophy excels at discovering the logical foundations of ideas." At least, that's the usual way things start, with an exploration of the foundations of an idea.

The answers it gives are along the lines of, 'Logically, this first idea assumes this second idea is true. If the second idea is not true, then the first idea cannot be true either." In other words, philosophy usually cannot answer the 'first idea', but it can usually answer the question of what must be true for the 'the first' idea to be true.

An analogy might be this: If you saw a baby, you could be certain that at some time in the past a sperm fertilized an egg. In more or less the same way, philosophers go around figuring out what ideas must be true for other ideas to be true.

Only they do that both backwards and forwards. They not only figure out what ideas had to come first (going backwards), but they also figure out what ideas must follow (going forwards). So philosophy isn't all that good at answering, "Does God exist?", but it can be very good at answering what you must first prove to be true if you are going to claim God exists. And it can be very good at answering what must also be true if God exists.

And all of that figuring -- both going backwards and going forwards -- crucially depends on reasoning logically.

If you were ever to study philosophy and the gods save you if you ever do, you would find that it has produced over the past 2,600 years, tens of thousands of hard, definitive answers of that kind. At least tens of thousands. Most likely more. And some of them have rocked the world. Some of them have gone off like novas in the history of western culture. Some of them have 'changed everything'.

Does any of that make sense, my friend?

There's more to it than that (There is always 'more to it than that', isn't there?), but my aim is not to offer you a complete book on the subject, but just to get you started on it.

By the way, I lied to you when I said I would tell you in this post about a philosophical answer that has had more influence on you -- and most everyone you know -- than has had the Theory of Relativity. That's coming up not in this post like I promised, but in the next post.

Because this post is already long enough.



PLEASE NOTE: This post is continued (and concluded) in post #43, which can be found here:
Does the study of philosophy ever lead to answers?

 

[Mock Turtle]

If philosophy has any value, and it no doubt has much, it usually does provide one means of obtaining knowledge, and that is by asking the right questions - which so often doesn't happen and where many are then led down a road to nowhere.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Since we're sitting around with our beer 'n pizza...philosophizing, do you think it's ''wrong'' (as in immoral, shame on you) to not vote in this next election?

I think it's probably wrong.
If the sounds like hedging, it is.
Once (only) I didn't vote because I preferred the policies on one side (slightly) but there was a scandal right before the election they'd covered up. I refused to vote for them.

But if I had more time, I might have voted for an independent minor party candidate instead. In a sense it is throwing away a vote, but here (at least) lesser parties can impact elections quite substantially through preferences.

I wasn't willing to vote for one without due diligence though.

 

[Heyo]

I'm with @Sunstone on most of this. His answers are brilliant I look forward to more of them.
But sometimes I suspect philosophers of intentionally muddying the waters and keeping a discussion going as "job security". Questions that have been discussed for millennia without answers point somewhat in that direction.

"No we don't!" exclaimed Majikthise in irritation. "That is precisely what we don't demand!"


Scarcely pausing for breath, Vroomfondel shouted, "We don't demand solid facts! What we demand is a total absence of solid facts. I demand that I may or may not be Vroomfondel!"


"But who the devil are you?" exclaimed an outraged Fook.


"We," said Majikthise, "are Philosophers."


"Though we may not be," said Vroomfondel waving a warning finger at the programmers.


"Yes we are," insisted Majikthise. "We are quite definitely here as representatives of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries and Other Thinking Persons, and we want this machine off, and we want it off now!"


"What's the problem?" said Lunkwill.


"I'll tell you what the problem is mate," said Majikthise, "demarcation, that's the problem!"


"We demand," yelled Vroomfondel, "that demarcation may or may not be the problem!"


"You just let the machines get on with the adding up," warned Majikthise, "and we'll take care of the eternal verities thank you very much. You want to check your legal position you do mate. Under law the Quest for Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers. Any bloody machine goes and actually finds it and we're straight out of a job aren't we? I mean what's the use of our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives us his bleeding phone number the next morning?"


"That's right!" shouted Vroomfondel, "we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"

Douglas Adams​

 

[lewisnotmiller]

I'm with @Sunstone on most of this. His answers are brilliant I look forward to more of them.
But sometimes I suspect philosophers of intentionally muddying the waters and keeping a discussion going as "job security". Questions that have been discussed for millennia without answers point somewhat in that direction.

"No we don't!" exclaimed Majikthise in irritation. "That is precisely what we don't demand!"


Scarcely pausing for breath, Vroomfondel shouted, "We don't demand solid facts! What we demand is a total absence of solid facts. I demand that I may or may not be Vroomfondel!"


"But who the devil are you?" exclaimed an outraged Fook.


"We," said Majikthise, "are Philosophers."


"Though we may not be," said Vroomfondel waving a warning finger at the programmers.


"Yes we are," insisted Majikthise. "We are quite definitely here as representatives of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries and Other Thinking Persons, and we want this machine off, and we want it off now!"


"What's the problem?" said Lunkwill.


"I'll tell you what the problem is mate," said Majikthise, "demarcation, that's the problem!"


"We demand," yelled Vroomfondel, "that demarcation may or may not be the problem!"


"You just let the machines get on with the adding up," warned Majikthise, "and we'll take care of the eternal verities thank you very much. You want to check your legal position you do mate. Under law the Quest for Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers. Any bloody machine goes and actually finds it and we're straight out of a job aren't we? I mean what's the use of our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives us his bleeding phone number the next morning?"


"That's right!" shouted Vroomfondel, "we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"

Douglas Adams​

Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett had eerily similar ideas about philosophers...
This was Pratchett talking about farmers from the point of view of philosophers..

It wasn’t that they didn’t take an interest in the world around them. On the contrary, they had a deep, personal and passionate involvement in it, but instead of asking, ‘Why are we here?’they asked, ‘Is it going to rain before the harvest?’
A philosopher might have deplored this lack of mental ambition, but only if he was really certain about where his next meal was coming from.

 

[Sunstone]

But sometimes I suspect philosophers of intentionally muddying the waters....

That's not far from the truth, in my opinion. And I think its even more common today than it was in the past. At least in America. Why? Because in my opinion, the academic field has come to be dominated by hacks.

Several reasons for that. The one that really gets to me is this: Philosophy professors are so poorly paid these days that only two kinds of people are attracted to the job. Those who are extremely dedicated and who are thus willing to work for next to nothing. And those who are so incompetent, they can't get a job anywhere else. The latter appear to me more numerous than the former.

You read a few journals these days -- it's so often nauseating.

What gets me to the extreme about that is that professors -- both good and bad -- are being shamelessly exploited by their universities. They are the academic version of sweatshop labor.

When I was in school, most of my professors owned their own homes, at the least. I even recall getting into a conversation with one of them once about his stock portfolio. It was tougher than importing arctic ice to Texas to get a job in philosophy, but once you got a job, you did about as well as most Americans of the time. Hence, the field attracted more good philosophers 40 years ago than it seems to today.

Added to all of that, Heyo, is the fact American culture is a barren wasteland for philosophy. We have nothing like the rich philosophical tradition of so many European nations. In Norway, philosophy is apparently taught at the high school level. In America, you would for the most part find that only in the elite private high schools -- and most likely then, only the New England ones. So, Americans scarcely know what philosophy is, let alone see much value in it.

That's my guess, at least.

 

[Samael_Khan]

I think there are more questions that get stirred up by philosophy, than answers. But might it be that our answers, are the only ones that matter to us, because of that inner pull to to see the world through our own skewed lens?

To me they are thought experiments. They lead to multiple possibilities which are only limited to the imagination but hardly ever tells us anything concrete about reality.

Then there are just useless uncomfortable conclusions such as the brain in the vat theory.

Philosophy is useful to prevent a person from having a one sided view on things.