• Pieter R van Wyk
    26
    Thank you for the invitation to join this forum. I am joining with some trepidation - I am not a philosopher and I have not any formal qualification in philosophy. But then, according to Jostein Gaarder in 'Sophie's World' - "...the only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder ..." I also have to admit that I do not speak any of the peculiar languages 'ology', 'ism' and such, I prefer plain English.
    The Problem, from my "faculty of wonder": For more than 2,600 years philosophers has studied and contributed to our knowledge and understanding but we still suffer from strife, civil disobedience, revolution, and war. "The only results I see from philosophy are a world in which we are: unable to have peace, unable to eradicate poverty and hunger, and a world in which a well-balanced coexistence with our environment and among ourselves is but a pipedream!" (from How I Understand Things. The Logic of Existence). Why is this?
  • Malcolm Parry
    304
    In England we have always had a system of queuing. It was an agreed set of unwritten rules and no one transgressed. The system worked was egalitarian and was literally "first come first served"

    This has degenerated in the last few decades and people try and game the system. Once there is a small breakdown in the system, it rapidly becomes every man (or woman) for themselves.

    We can have wonderful ideas about no strife, everyone being fed etc etc but as soon as a couple of people jump the queue the result is chaos and the breakdown of balance in society.

    Also, when there is inequality then there is resentment and people wishing to get more than they have when they see others with more.

    I also think we like a struggle and a bit of a scrap.

    Not one ism was quoted there.
  • Pieter R van Wyk
    26
    Thank you for the response, but I think you have opened a can of worms:
    1. What, exactly, do you mean by 'system'?
    2. You mention unwritten rules that were followed and then not followed - is that not the basis of any political change and if so, we humans has been doing that for as long as philosophy has been studied, not so?
    3. You show negative comments on "a couple of people jump the queue", is that not the basis of our human innovation and progress? The same goes for "people wishing to get more than they have".
    Your contribution is appreciated and thank you for the plain english but I do not find myself closer to an answer to my question.
  • Malcolm Parry
    304
    1. What, exactly, do you mean by 'system'?Pieter R van Wyk

    The system was that people stood in line and waited their turn.

    You mention unwritten rules that were followed and then not followed - is that not the basis of any political change and if so, we humans has been doing that for as long as philosophy has been studied, not so?Pieter R van Wyk

    I was pointing out why this is. From your opening post. If everyone doesn't buy in, then we get a world in which we are: unable to have peace, unable to eradicate poverty and hunger, and a world in which a well-balanced coexistence with our environment and among ourselves is but a pipedream!"

    Your contribution is appreciated and thank you for the plain english but I do not find myself closer to an answer to my question.Pieter R van Wyk

    The answer is some people will always be selfish c**ts if they think they can get away with it and there aren't sufficient rules and discipline to stop them. It isn't rocket science.

    Why do you think the world is as it is?
  • Wayfarer
    24.6k
    Why is this?Pieter R van Wyk

    Do you think it might be because the lessons of philosophy may not actually be observed? That if more people actually comported themselves as philosophers, in a spirit of rational self-knowledge and temperance, then there would be correspondingly less strife. But then that can’t really be imposed, it is something that has to be taken up voluntarily. And besides, philosophy itself is generally regarded as a bookish and irrelevant subject by a lot of people.

    So - why blame philosophy? Don’t the problems you’re lamenting characterise unruly human nature?
  • Red Sky
    37
    For more than 2,600 years philosophers has studied and contributed to our knowledge and understanding but we still suffer from strife, civil disobedience, revolution, and war.Pieter R van Wyk

    In my opinion the only way to prevent these is perfection, which is impossible. From my understanding, Philosophy is a bunch of people trying and thinking everything they can to improve (Or at least that is how I think it should be).
    Do you think one person can bring about such a huge change? While people do work together it is not simply 1+1=2 in terms of ability.
    War might be easier to understand, can one person stop war. War is violence between two countries (rudimentary definition). On a smaller scale imagine two people, if one person wants to punch another, and follows through then it is violence. Can a person stop that?
    If a country wants to start a war, what can stop them?
    The only way to eradicate war, is to control people which is impossible, and most people would consider immoral.
    Not to mention not all war is bad. War can be fought for many purposes, you would stop both the good and bad of war.
    Its the same with everything else you mentioned, the only way to stop it 100% is to take away their freedom.
    Which leads me to the question, would you rather live in today's world or in any point in the past? (and if the later please tell me what time)
  • Pieter R van Wyk
    26
    So your answer to my question is: Because some people are selfish when they can get away with it. Somebody must only make better rules and instill better discipline. This answer, however, only begs the questions: why are some people like that, who, exactly should make these rules and how should these rules be enforced?
    My answer is simple: the world is as it is because that is how the world and we humans evolved. Which then begs the question, how did this evolution took place?
    The answer to this question is a bit more involved but is spelled out unambiguously in the book, How I Understand Things. The Logic of Existence.
  • Tom Storm
    10k
    "The only results I see from philosophy are a world in which we are: unable to have peace, unable to eradicate poverty and hunger, and a world in which a well-balanced coexistence with our environment and among ourselves is but a pipedream!" (from How I Understand Things. The Logic of Existence). Why is this?Pieter R van Wyk

    I'm not sure what philosophy has to do with world peace or orderly behaviour. Can you explain the connection?

    Humans hold beliefs, and some of these beliefs fall under the domain of philosophy. It's a vast and complex subject, marked by frequent disagreement and often involving abstract or obscure approaches. Philosophers are just as likely to argue with rancour as any other group, especially when they hold different presuppositions. A subject like solving hunger or caring for the environment is just as likely to dissolve into conflict as any other issue. Why? Because there are always conflicting and contradictory values and beliefs attached to any proposed model. Philosophy won't end the diversity of viewpoints.
  • T Clark
    15k
    Why is this?Pieter R van Wyk

    Welcome to the forum. Philosophy is not really equipped to solve the problems you’ve identified.
  • Malcolm Parry
    304
    My answer is simple: the world is as it is because that is how the world and we humans evolved.Pieter R van Wyk

    How is that different to my example? What do you propose to order society better?
  • Punshhh
    3k
    You’re aiming at the wrong target. It’s the human condition, not what thinkers have worked out, that is the problem here.
  • Pieter R van Wyk
    26
    I am not blaming, merely asking a question. According to the Oxford Dictionary, philosophy is:
    1. the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence.
    2. the study of the theoretical basis of a branch of knowledge or experience.
    3. a theory or attitude that guides one's behaviour.
    So, after 2,600 years of this study we still have armed conflict, poverty and hunger, we are destroying our own environment and we are somehow on the verge of being taken over by artificial intelligence. Why is that?
    You mention "unruly human nature" - so, do we accept that the "human nature" that has been studied for this 2,600 years is in fact strife, civil disobedience, revolution and war?
  • Wayfarer
    24.6k
    You mention "unruly human nature" - so, do we accept that the "human nature" that has been studied for this 2,600 years is in fact strife, civil disobedience, revolution and war?Pieter R van Wyk

    Human nature has strong tendencies towards those activities. That humans are often inclined to those destructive behaviours is observable thoughout history. How to rein it in and to what ends are questions that indeed occupy philosophers (among others.)
  • Pieter R van Wyk
    26
    If I understand you correctly, you are saying that my question does not have an answer?
    As to your question: "
    would you rather live in today's world or in any point in the past? (and if the later please tell me what time)Red Sky
    This question has no utility - it think it is called a rhetorical question.
  • Pieter R van Wyk
    26
    If philosophy cannot end the diversity of viewpoints, what exactly is the purpose and utility in studying philosophy?
  • Tom Storm
    10k
    If philosophy cannot end the diversity of viewpoints, what exactly is the purpose and utility in studying philosophy?Pieter R van Wyk

    Why would philosophy eliminate the diversity of viewpoints? Do you believe there’s only one way of thinking and that philosophy should get us all there?
  • Heracloitus
    498
    The answer to this question is a bit more involved but is spelled out unambiguously in the book, How I Understand Things. The Logic of Existence.Pieter R van Wyk

    Perhaps you should say my book, since you are the author :wink:
  • Malcolm Parry
    304
    Perhaps you should say my book, since you are the author :wink:Heracloitus

    That is class. I wonder if he has worked why we no longer queue in UK as much as we used to.
  • Harry Hindu
    5.7k
    For more than 2,600 years philosophers has studied and contributed to our knowledge and understanding but we still suffer from strife, civil disobedience, revolution, and war. "The only results I see from philosophy are a world in which we are: unable to have peace, unable to eradicate poverty and hunger, and a world in which a well-balanced coexistence with our environment and among ourselves is but a pipedream!" (from How I Understand Things. The Logic of Existence). Why is this?Pieter R van Wyk
    It wasn't philosophers that contributed to our knowledge. It was scientists and inventors of technology. It is through science that we have been able to feed more people and increase their lifespans. Are there people still starving and still dying at young ages? Yes, but it seems we are heading in the right direction unless one makes the argument that more humans is the problem. We don't have enough resources to go around equally so is philosophy/science telling us that a Logan's Run society where everyone dies at 30 to maintain a steady population so scarce resources can be equally distributed is the way to go?

    Science doesn't tell you what you should do. It merely tells you what is. What you do with that information is up to you - keeping in mind that you are an individual member of a social species that may need to compromise with other individuals to acquire the benefits of a group while trying to minimize the restraints the group has on your individual freedom and expression (what good are you to the group if you haven't attended to your own well-being?) Evolutionary psychology informs you that this is the set of circumstances we find ourselves cognitively in but it is ultimately up to you to decide how much energy you devote to the group as opposed to yourself.
  • SophistiCat
    2.3k
    "The only results I see from philosophy are a world in which we are: unable to have peace, unable to eradicate poverty and hunger, and a world in which a well-balanced coexistence with our environment and among ourselves is but a pipedream!"Pieter R van Wyk

    Perhaps you didn't mean it that way, but the way this quote reads is that "a world in which we are: unable to have peace, unable to eradicate poverty and hunger," etc., came as a result of philosophy -which is absurd. Philosophy is not responsible for all the misery in the world. If that's not what you meant, then you really need an editor ;)

    If philosophy cannot end the diversity of viewpoints, what exactly is the purpose and utility in studying philosophy?Pieter R van Wyk

    If anything, the purpose of philosophy is to increase diversity of viewpoints.
  • unenlightened
    9.7k
    If philosophy cannot end the diversity of viewpoints, what exactly is the purpose and utility in studying philosophy?Pieter R van Wyk

    "Because it's there." As Mallory replied when asked why he wanted to climb Everest. Your book cannot end the diversity of viewpoints — so why did you write it?
  • RogueAI
    3.2k
    Welcome to the forum. Philosophy is not really equipped to solve the problems you’ve identified.T Clark

    But things have gotten much better for a lot of people in the last thousand years. Hasn't philosophy played a large part in that?
  • Fire Ologist
    1.3k
    The only results I see from philosophy are a world in which we are: unable to have peace,Pieter R van Wyk

    Hi Pieter,

    Welcome.

    We all see what you are asking, but each word is important to the philosopher. You are making leaps without showing the logic and it may not be logical to make those leaps.

    Just above you seem to be saying that there is one result from philosophy, and this result is the world where we are “unable” to have peace…

    It almost sounds here like you are saying philosophers are sowing the discord in the world, or at least supporting the philosophies that lead to or allow for all the badness.

    I don’t think that is what you are meaning to say.

    So of we are to really dig into the weeds here, you need to speak more carefully.

    "...the only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder ..."Pieter R van Wyk

    There are two threads raging on the forum right now as we speak that utterly challenge that. “Good philosophy” requires much more rigor than what “the faculty of wonder” requires.

    But still, I personally do think good philosophy and wisdom can come from anyone, not just an academic (academia can be a hindrance to wisdom). So I truly welcome your sense of wonder and willingness to make assertions and test them out here in the forum. But, as you’ve already seen, welcome to all of the push-back!

    I think you are asking too much and should ask narrower questions, if you want to get closer to the answer you seek.

    There is the human condition and the world we share. I would say nothing in it has really changed for 5,000 years - we shoot ourselves and our neighbors in the foot constantly, and blame the other guy. That’s what we do to each other for various reasons and theories and causes and purposes, or maybe just is.

    Then there is philosophy - which includes making observations like the one I just did about the human condition, but also includes seeing if this observation is said well and reflects the reality behind what appears. (So many ways to say what philosophy is.). Further, and more modernly, philosophy has come to be logic, the analysis of language itself. It’s hardly about such grand questions you are asking at all. It’s about whether your question is coherent and can even be asked let alone answered. It’s about whether my observation about the human condition has any real sense and reference to it that others can discuss with me, or is it just my own narrative.

    Last there is what you are asking - when is philosophy going to say the magic words that show us how to improve our condition.

    But there is a huge disconnect as to whether such magic is possible. It is a philosophic question whether some universal Truth even exists, one that could magically answer your questions.

    But also, there is an even bigger disconnect between knowing the one magical truth and subsequently following it and living it. The world is full of war because people don’t always care about the truth and simply want to destroy others despite no logical reason to do so. People are sons of bitches.

    All that said, there are answers to your question in philosophy-adjacent areas.

    Why is the world so messed up?

    Buddha: because of our desire.
    Christ and The book of Genesis: because people are broken, our essential nature marred by a self-inflicted wound (original sin).
    Existentialism: because mind in the universe is absurd, seeking to know the world it willingly distinguishes itself from in order to reconnect itself to that world through knowledge (absurd endeavor called “truth”) (also, in my opinion, a lot like original sin but without the religious baggage).
    Politicians: because the other party are all deplorables. (Because some people are sons of bitches but not me.)

    The philosopher qua philosopher hates those answers. Too mythical and psychologistic and idealistic, too able to be dissected into nonsense upon rigorous scrutiny.

    But the philosopher has yet to provide an answer, and many philosophers do not think it possible.

    And again, even if we wrote the magic book with the most persuasive argument concluding absolutely that compassion and love and humility and respect and charity, all fostered by self-discipline and practice, will together build us a better world, most of us would say, I’m too tired, leave me alone.

    That, in my opinion, is the problem - it’s not a lack of philosophy, it’s a lack of effort.

    Basically, it’s your fault.
    And mine. (Mostly mine.)
  • Fire Ologist
    1.3k
    That if more people actually comported themselves as philosophers, in a spirit of rational self-knowledge and temperance, then there would be correspondingly less strife. But then that can’t really be imposed, it is something that has to be taken up voluntarily. And besides, philosophy itself is generally regarded as a bookish and irrelevant subject by a lot of people.

    So - why blame philosophy? Don’t the problems you’re lamenting characterise unruly human nature?
    Wayfarer

    That is a much more succinct, and so better, way of saying the key takeaways I was trying say. :up:
  • Quk
    188
    My answer is simple: the world is as it is because that is how the world and we humans evolved. Which then begs the question, how did this evolution took place?Pieter R van Wyk

    I think the evolution randomly varies the magnitude of the selfishness in the personality of each newborn. With this individual variation in our societies, evolution will develop sweet compromises between too much selfishness and too much selflessness. No individual is autarkic, so it is forced to be cooperative. When the individual exaggerates its selfishness, the other individuals won't trust him or her anymore, thusly the selfish parts of the society will die out after a short time as the elements of personality are partially inheritable, I guess. That's why cooperative societies live for millions of years and selfish societies such as the Hitler-regime, for example, last for just a few years. But evolution won't stop to generate variations of personalities at random. That's why there's often three steps forward and one step back; the cycle goes on. Life is based on random variations, and that does not only affect the development of bodies but also that of the minds.
  • T Clark
    15k
    Hasn't philosophy played a large part in that?RogueAI

    No, I don't think so. As I see it, philosophy usually reflects rather than leads. It's generally a couple of steps behind.
  • Quk
    188

    I think there are some philosophers that reflect and then lead. Popper, Russell, Kant, Epikouros, Sokrates ...
  • T Clark
    15k
    I think there are some philosophers that reflect and then lead. Popper, Russell, Kant, Epikouros, SokratesQuk

    I used the words "usually" and "generally" because I didn't want to be too definitive. I'm sure there are some cases, although I don't know enough to argue the specific philosophers you've identified. I would have thought that the best candidates for philosophers who actually lead would be political philosophers such as Marx.
  • Quk
    188


    I correct myself: I actually agree with you regarding the word "usually". I have the impression that most philosophers remain caught in their reflection loop. They usually remain descriptive and unable to provide suggestions for problem solving. I guess this happens mostly in the field of language philosophy, less so in the field of logic, for example.
  • Red Sky
    37
    This question has no utility - it think it is called a rhetorical question.Pieter R van Wyk

    To whether this question has meaning or not I think that I, the one who asked the question, would be able to tell better.
    My intent with the question is whether you think that times in the past are better than now.
    Additionally, I think some people are trying to say that we would be in the same situation even without philosophy or even worse. Not having philosophy wouldn't change whether we have poverty or not.
  • Tom Storm
    10k
    No, I don't think so. As I see it, philosophy usually reflects rather than leads. It's generally a couple of steps behind.T Clark

    That’s an interesting subject and could be a thread in itself: does philosophy lead or follow? I suspect it leads though it probably depends on the examples we focus on. @Joshs often argues that philosophy innovates and sets the direction, and it can take a hundred years for society to catch up to the ideas. That’s why postmodern ideas, while not yet fully assimilated and still resisted, seem to be gradually becoming more influential. Meanwhile, it's sometimes said that many people are still operating within the framework of 17th-century materialism. In the 19th century slavery was abolished based largely on ideas about rights and human dignity developed in the 17th century (Locke).
bold
italic
underline
strike
code
quote
ulist
image
url
mention
reveal
youtube
tweet
Add a Comment

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.

×
We use cookies and similar methods to recognize visitors and remember their preferences.