Confusion as to what philosophy is

tim wood

I've been on TPF and its predecessor for a middling long time, and it seems to me that we're awash at this time with an unusual number of posts from people who are confused about what philosophy is. This includes the ignorant and the stupid - I plead guilty to both, ignorance all the time and occasional stupidity. And these, ignorance and being stupid, our human condition, redeemed in the willingness to be corrected and the effort to learn. But here also many who are not willing, those who just want to rant and are oblivious or hostile to argument or even sense. Those agenda-driven whose methods are mainly Prucrustean; Trumpian who insist their nonsense is sense and have zero interest in real sense; woo-mongers interested in nothing but their own woo, impervious to reason. And those who do not understand, and aren't willing to. These appearing in every one of the main TPF categories.

As medicinal, I'll assay to say what philosophy is. No doubt others can say better; I invite them to that. My point and goal a simple if incomplete expression of the sense of the thing, to both better know it when it's present, and when it isn't.

Philosophy is the good-will-intentioned effort to interpret and understand the world. It is not the Kantian model of the foundations of knowledge that has the world conform to the mind, rather the uses and understanding of knowledge so gained to make sense of things. And the sense conditioned by the knowledge at the time, so when Thales says the world is made of water, or Heraclitus fire, these are appropriate for their respective times and purposes, and to be understood in their contexts. Mere disagreement being not philosophy, although philosophy may well arrive at a considered disagreement.

Philosophy is also the attempt to reason, and being open to reason. Where reason is rejected, unless on grounds of better reason, or ignored or dismissed out-of-hand, that is not philosophy. Indeed it is anti-philosophy and an enemy of philosophy, practitioners anti-philosophers and enemies of philosophy.

It is a mistake made by some to think this an argument site. A mistake because argument is the generic name for methods of philosophy, some of its tools, but not the thing itself or the purpose of this site. It's called the philosophy forum, not "the argument forum."

Good-will, openness, seeking reason and acquiescing to it. Improvements welcome, a premium on simplicity and brevity.

Augustusea

nice we're getting into metaphilosophy,

Philosophy is a study or questioning, of everything really,
and its only tool is logic and reason,
that I think is the definition of philosophy,

Philosophy is also the attempt to reason, and being open to reason. Where reason is rejected, unless on grounds of better reason, or ignored or dismissed out-of-hand, that is not philosophy. Indeed it is anti-philosophy and an enemy of philosophy, practitioners anti-philosophers and enemies of philosophy — tim wood

isn't anti philosophy a philosophy in itself?

Asif

My goodness! Snowflake philosophy!
To me Philosophy or better still Logic is honest human Description. It is Subjective. The word objective is a nonsense when used literally.
The problem I see is old dinosaurs pendants and dogmatists who appeal to Authority and "history" in lieu of Logic and those who get all whitney emotional when their beloved idols are smashed.

Judaka

↪tim wood

I disagree, philosophy is not about reason and this fixation on reason causes people to misunderstand themselves. Your opinions, preferences, moral views, values, perspectives, your psychology, biology, emotions, desires and all that constitutes the lifeblood of your philosophical views are not ruled by reason. Reason is just a component of some of these things but people do not create philosophy with reason alone. And reason itself can be a characterisation defined by your individual preferences, for truth is a vector for logic to go in many different directions. Depending on how the truth is managed, perceived, what our goals are, what our identity is and the list goes on.

Philosophy is about developing an understanding of really any topic and then using that understanding for really any purpose. Any attempt to dictate how a topic should be understood or what that purpose should be is just more philosophy.

tim wood

philosophy is not about reason — Judaka

Did anyone say it was? This in lieu of a longer answer, that in part might have started, if not the the use of reason, then what?

TheMadFool

I was made to believe that philosophy is, essentially, about areas where humanity is utterly unsure of itself - philosophers typically being the adventurous explorers in what is uncharted territory. Being so, it must be the norm rather than the exception to be lost in the wildnerness of new ideas and this state of being lost takes the form of what people, who've made a home for themselves in familiar, well-explored regions of the mind and the world, consider woo-woo or nonsense. @tim wood stop putting down real philisophers :chin:

tim wood

↪TheMadFool

Point! I think Aristotle observed that no one argues about things that are well-known, well-established. But at the same time, when lost do you loudly claim you know where you are, that you are not lost, but that everyone else is?

And the OP isn't about what philosophy is about, but what (imo) it is. And to use your analogy, it is a set of tools for dispassionately figuring out where you are, so that even if you're not where you want to be or should be, you can at least navigate back to where you were.

TheMadFool

↪tim wood

Agreed but I appeal that philosphers be given some slack in what they do. You never know when a crazy idea can become a treasure trove of hidden wisdom.

Judaka

↪tim wood

I dictate what is good-willed and what isn't, I dictate when reason is appropriate and when it isn't, reasonableness is what I say it is. My views, strong and robust, in my mind, won't be reviewed in that way by others. I am not validated by agreement or invalidated by disagreement. The way I see myself and my place in the world is reinforced by my actions, interpretations and understanding. You just have to accept that whenever you discuss something with someone, you don't know what you're getting yourself into, you barely even understand what they're talking about - whether you see it that way or not.

tim wood

↪Judaka

A manifesto of anti-philosophy if ever I read one! The idea, as I see it, is a meeting of minds, whether middle or one side or other best guided by reason. But I shall try to take you at your word.

Pfhorrest

I think a quick and general answer would be that philosophy is about the fundamental topics that lie at the core of all other fields of inquiry, broad topics like reality, morality, knowledge, justice, reason, beauty, the mind and the will, social institutions of education and governance, and perhaps above all meaning, both in the abstract linguistic sense, and in the practical sense of what is important in life and why.

But philosophy is far from the only field that inquires into any of those topics, and no definition of philosophy would be complete without demarcating it from those other fields, showing where the line lies between philosophy and something else.

Philosophy uses the tools of mathematics and the arts, logic and rhetoric, to do the job of creating the tools of the physical and ethical sciences. It is the bridge between the more abstract disciplines and the more practical ones: an inquiry stops being science and starts being philosophy when instead of using some methods that appeal to specific contingent experiences, it begins questioning and justifying the use of such methods in a more abstract way; and that activity in turn ceases to be philosophy and becomes art or math instead when that abstraction ceases to be concerned with figuring out how to practically answer questions about what is real or what is moral, but turns instead to the structure or presentation of the ideas themselves.

The characteristic activity of philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom, not the possession or exercise thereof. Wisdom, in turn, is not merely some set of correct opinions, but rather the ability to discern the true from the false, the good from the bad; or at least the more true from the less true, the better from the worse; the ability, in short, to discern superior answers from inferior answers to any given question.

Philosophim

I view philosophy in comparison to science. Science has a theory based off of a known phenomenon, and attempts to prove and disprove it. But science deals in the objectively defined. We knew that lightning existed. We just didn't know why it existed. That is the job of science.

Philosophy is the job of defining identities in the world on an objective level that can then be tested with science. It is to take what we simply use for granted, and analyze it to a point in which we are better able to understand it and use it. Knowledge for example. We have a general understanding of what knowledge is, but it is not an objective definition, or even known to be real. We are trying to define that which is undefined. If we are successful, then we discover a base definition of something that can then be tested.

The goal of philosophy is honestly to destroy itself. It is to take the ideas within all of us that we suspect or objective share conditions, and define them in such a way that they can be confirmed as such.

tim wood

The goal of philosophy is honestly to destroy itself. — Philosophim

I like this! To eat all the thistles in the field. There are a lot of thistles, and thistles, one way or another, beget more thistles. So I think were in good supply at least for a while! .

Asif

:rofl: No sense of irony or scientism.
Let these rabbits eat their strawman thistles and put on their lab coats complete with Idols for logic.
Appeals to authority!

TVCL

↪tim wood

I like this take on what philosophy is and what it is aiming at. What I found of particular interest what your assertion that:

But here also many who are not willing, those who just want to rant and are oblivious or hostile to argument or even sense. Those agenda-driven whose methods are mainly Prucrustean; Trumpian who insist their nonsense is sense and have zero interest in real sense; — tim wood

...

Indeed. But I suppose that you find such people to be similarly closed to a clarification of philosophy or an appeal to common modes of conduct such as you've made? And so I was wondering, on the one hand, who this kind of clarification was aimed at and, on the other, how you tend to approach those who are such as you have described?

Banno

↪Judaka

Ah, you preference understanding over reason.

That'll be why, then.

Judaka

↪Banno

What?

Banno

↪Judaka

If you reject reason, understanding becomes a much easier.

Judaka

↪Banno

Are you saying you read what I wrote as "I reject reason"?

A Seagull

↪tim wood

I think it may be useful for this topic to look at what philosophy is not.

Here are some suggestions:

Philosophy is not the devotional following of what philosophers past have declared to be philosophy, whether they be Plato, Aristotle or Kant.

It is not what has been written about philosophy.

It is not about playing with words to arrive at some banal (or absurd) conclusion. e.g. A is B, B s C, therefore A is C.

It is not about creating some fictional world that has but little relevance to the real world.

Banno

↪Judaka

Is it wrong that you preference understanding over reason?

Judaka

↪Banno

What kind of situation requires me to choose between the two?

Banno

What kind of situation requires me to choose between the two? — Judaka

A philosophical one, perhaps?

philosophy is not about reason — Judaka

I'm just unsure what to make of this. I would not call any discussion that forgoes reason philosophical. Religious, perhaps; mystical, even. But not the child of Socrates.

apokrisis

And to use your analogy, it is a set of tools for dispassionately figuring out where you are — tim wood

So a disembedding? That move from the "taken for granted" - the concrete and particular - towards an understanding in terms of the most abstract or general view. And the principal tool involved is dialectical argument.The discovery of the opposing limits of what could even be.

Judaka

↪Banno

I don't think there's any situation that requires me to choose between the two.

I did say that philosophy is not about reason when I meant to say philosophy is about more than just reason. I'll take responsibility for that.

Wayfarer

This includes the ignorant and the stupid - I plead guilty to both, ignorance all the time and occasional stupidity. — tim wood

I don't see much of either in you, but I do see there are certain topics which just 'push your buttons'.

There are quite a few philosophically-literate posters here but it being a public forum there are inevitably ignoramuses and trolls also.

I regularly pledge to myself 'done with philosophy forums' but I find I need to come back. I do actually read philosophy and the subject interests me, although I see a lot of 20th century academic philosophy as a wasteland.

Philosophy is the job of defining identities in the world

on an objective level that can then be tested with science. — Philosophim

No, no, no. That is 'the instrumentalisation of reason'. Philosophy is the love of wisdom, or better still, love~wisdom. It is open-ended and cannot be easily defined. Many of the Platonic dialogues are littered with aporia, unanswerable questions, and at least part of philosophy’s task is with the contemplation of such questions.

The goal of the original philosophers, according to Pierre Hadot, ‘was to cultivate a specific, constant attitude toward existence, by way of the rational comprehension of the nature of humanity and its place in the cosmos. This cultivation required, specifically, that students learn to combat their passions and the illusory evaluative beliefs instilled by their passions, habits, and upbringing.’

180 Proof

↪Wayfarer

:up:

I meant to say philosophy is about more than just reason. — Judaka

:up:

I plead guilty to both, ignorance all the time and occasional stupidity. And these, ignorance and being stupid, our human condition, redeemed in the willingness to be corrected and the effort to learn. But here also many who are not willing, those who just want to rant and are oblivious or hostile to argument or even sense. Those agenda-driven whose methods are mainly Prucrustean; Trumpian who insist their nonsense is sense and have zero interest in real sense; woo-mongers interested in nothing but their own woo, impervious to reason. And those who do not understand, and aren't willing to. — tim wood

Especially online, philosophy (or, rather, philosophizing) seems medicine for the healthy (i.e. dialectical ones) and poison for the unhealthy (i.e. dogmatic herd). I find the temptation to name names - TPF members - nearly erogenous ... :sweat:

Anyway, for what it's worth, my two drachmas:

Only the unwise seek - love - wisdom, or strive to flourish from understanding - contemplating - the variety of ways in which we are unwise (i.e. confused, perplexed, frustrated, oblivious, sleepwalking-through-our-lives aka "foolish") that is broadly designated ontology, axiology & epistemology (prioritized by whatever schema (metaphysics) is deemed most illustrative, or illuminating). For an unwise few this becomes a way of life (ethos) - aka "thinking" - which consists in both reflective inquiries (logos) and reflective practices (mythos).

Caveat: it's folly to contemplate this word salad (meta-mandala) and try to eat it too.

:death: :flower:

Mww

↪tim wood

Philosophy (of a certain time and kind): the means by which reason curbs its own enthusiasm.

180 Proof

Philosophy (of a certain time and kind): the means by which reason curbs its enthusiasm. — Mww

Kantian, but still ... :up:

Metaphysician Undercover

And the sense conditioned by the knowledge at the time, so when Thales says the world is made of water, or Heraclitus fire, these are appropriate for their respective times and purposes, and to be understood in their contexts. — tim wood

The modern version of Heraclitus' fire, is the people who claim that the world is made of energy. Then there are those who claim it is all waves, which is similar to Thales' water, or the Pythagorean ether. It seems like history repeats itself. Isn't that what philosophy is, to observe the repetitions in history?

180 Proof

It seems like history repeats itself. Isn't that what philosophy is, to observe the repetitions in history? — Metaphysician Undercover

I side with Schopenhauer (pace Nietzsche) against this emphatically Hegelian nostrum.

Confusion as to what philosophy is

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Categories

More Discussions