The thing about philosophical problems is, once solved, they are no longer philosophical.

Some examples:
Physics, psychology, linguistics, mathematics, logic, chemistry, biology...

Quiet a few, really.

:cheer:

Philosophy generally isn't thought of as being the same as science, though science definitely has its origins within philosophy. I don't know that any of the questions concerning the natural world (the domain of science) were ever philosophical in nature. I'm also very suspicious of the claim that the essence of a problem changes once a solution is found.

I don't know that any of the questions concerning the natural world (the domain of science) were ever philosophical in nature. — forrest-sounds

...then the problem lies here:

I'm yet to read of a single one... — forrest-sounds

You need to read more. Aristotle, perhaps.

Check this out, it's brief, but worth watching:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2i9WPzRbPo

You need to read more. — Banno

Yes, defiantly.

Aristotle, perhaps. — Banno

Yes, probably.

:up:

Here's a list of the unsolved problems in philosophy all organized for you by Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_philosophy

Nice, So all the other problems are the solved ones.

Plenty of solutions. Little consensus

You need to read more. — Banno


Yes, defiantly. — forrest-sounds

One should always read with defiance. Those who read in compliance are sheep I've always said.

Nice, So all the other problems are the solved ones. — Banno

I Googled for a list of solved problems in philosophy, but nothing came up, so I guess there are none, or maybe Wiki is still assembling the list.

One should always read with defiance. Those who read in compliance are sheep I've always said. — Hanover

I don't read whatsoever. What does that make me to be? (PLEASE DON'T SAY IT.)

I don't read whatsoever. What does that make me to be? (PLEASE DON'T SAY IT.) — god must be atheist

It makes you a bibliophobe. See, that's how you make up new words, unlike the gibberish you put out. It's so pratotonic how you do that.

I Googled for a list of solved problems in philosophy, but nothing came up, so I guess there are none, or maybe Wiki is still assembling the list.
seconds ago — Hanover

Like Banno said, the solved philosophical questions have migrated into the realm of sciences. They are no longer philosophical questions, though they may have been that some time ago.

For instance: What creates wind?

Why do things fall down, instead of up?

How can the Earth be round and not have things fall off at the bottom?

How does the sun get around to the east again after setting in the west?

God lives in the country of heaven? (Sky, clouds.)

What makes the sun disappear on a clear day, with no clouds, for eight minutes or so, every few dozen years?

Why have the sun's coal reserved still not burnt out?

Conversely to the list above, there are philosophical questions now that hadn't used to be:

- what is consciousness? Soul?

- why do mirrors reverse left-right orientation, but not up-down orientation?

- is there a god, and if yes, what kind of thing is he or she?

- the morality of stock trading on the Internet

- if you sit a billion monkeys in front of billion typewriters, they will produce great works of literary art and stuff in a few years. (BTW, this has been disproved by the Internet.)

Like Banno said, the solved philosophical questions have migrated into the realm of sciences. They are no longer philosophical questions, though they may have been that some time ago.

For instance: What creates wind?

Why do things fall down, instead of up?

How can the Earth be round and not have things fall off at the bottom?

How does the sun get around to the east again after setting in the west?

God lives in the country of heaven? (Sky, clouds.)

What makes the sun disappear on a clear day, with no clouds, for eight minutes or so, every few dozen years?

Why have the sun's coal reserved still not burnt out? — god must be atheist

While I recognize you probably presented these questions in order to present examples of solved problems, I think I'll take a more literal approach and answer these questions for you.

Wind is created by fans. Know why it's so cold at the baseball field in San Francisco? They have Giant fans.

Things do fall up, like helium balloons. Also, if you flip upside down and hang your head over the couch and stare at the ceiling, up is down and down is up. I do that sometimes, less now since grammar school.

Your question about the earth is a good one, but I think it has to do with how they attach the houses into the ground so they don't pop up, but that's not the same for cars so my explanation might not be completely right, but it is a good start I think.

The sun sets in the west so the cowboys know to go toward Texas where they live. If it didn't come around each day, there'd be cowboys in New York City eventually and that's stupid because their horses would be killed by gangs.

Heaven isn't a country. It's technically a county, a legal subdivision of earth.

Not sure what the hell you're talking about with the sun disappearing. You might be blinking and that's what you're noticing. If you blink real fast, it'll look like a strobe light.

The sun doesn't run on coal. It runs on Dunkin. That's a reference to Dunkin Donuts. Look it up if you're not from America. If you are from America, you can laugh knowingly at this joke.

Perhaps philosophy is not about solving problems but an awareness of them and figuring out how best to live and think given what we cannot answer.

It makes you a bibliophobe. See, that's how you make up new words, unlike the gibberish you put out. It's so pratotonic how you do that. — Hanover

Except it's not new.

bibliophobe in American English. (ˈbɪbliəˌfoub) a person who hates, fears, or distrusts books.

And the word does not describe my relationship to books. I don't hate them, fear them or distrust them. I just don't read them.

:-) Funny.

Perhaps philosophy is not about solving problems but an awareness of them and figuring out how best to live and think given what we cannot answer. — Fooloso4

The awareness part: right on. I have problem with the second part.

So... given what we cannot answer... we can only live by those guidance that are answerable or not even question but a nominative truth.

For instance: Does god exist? I don't know. --- Ergo, you can't live your life to satisfy god, as you don't know the first thing about god, not even about its existence.

It is somewhat impossible to live your life by those standards, that are given by questions we don't have answers to.

Or what did you have in mind, Fooloso4? Can you give some examples, of how to live and think GIVEN what we can't answer?

:fire:

In the intervening three minutes I thought of a good answer to my own question to you, Fooloso4.

In the past everyone thought there was a god. So you did what you believed god wanted to you to do.

Now we question the existence of god. Its existence became a philosophical question.

Therefore we are not bound any more to behaviour that was tied to a god belief. We don't say our evening prayers, for instance, and we don't go to church.

Starting from what principles and using what method should they be solved? Answers to such problems have been offered in a way or another, but not to everyone's satisfaction. In philosophy it is more difficult to agree on principles and method than in other fields, not least because in philosophy there is a strong tendency to question what it is usually taken for granted.

To piggyback on what others have said: philosophy (mostly) consists in reasoning to better, or more probative, questions; when answers to such questions are decidable, even in principle, by cumulative data (evidence), they can be treated as problems to be solved aka "sciences" (as Banno points out); until then, at the mercy of undecidable answers, philosophy proposes ways of 'cultivating well-being' in spite of lacking decidable answers aka "uncertainty" (as Fooloso4 points out). And so philosophy "progresses" only in so far as philosophers discover / invent new questions and refine less probative questions into more probative questions. IMO 'reducing misuses/abuses of ignorance' (speculatively and/or dialectically and/or methodologically) is the philosopher's Sisyphusean stone.

For instance: Does god exist? I don't know. --- Ergo, you can't live your life to satisfy god, as you don't know the first thing about god, not even about its existence.

Some thought that in order to see god you have to become godlike first, so if we are to believe them, if you don't follow a godly life you won't see god. They went as far as to claim that the godly life is the most beautiful and happiest life, but what is the point of pursuing such a life, if you find no satisfaction in it?

Welcome to the forums, Sahrian.

I'm yet to read of a single one, rather tragic really. Plato outlined the most important problems in philosophy around 2500 years ago, and we are yet to solve one, we haven't even made progress.
Is progress in this domain even possible? If not, why not? And if not, why bother? — forrest-sounds

A very good question, I thought of it myself many suns ago. I felt a sense of pride rush through me at what was to me the profundity of this...er..."discovery."

Alas, it didn't take long for real, professional, true, philosophers to school me on that score - it was old news, it was what every genuine philosopher already knew. In fact, trying to solve evidently unsolvable problems is what philosophy is all about. Of course, solving one or two would be the highlight of any philosophical career but such occasions are either imaginary or few and far between.

Socrates was known to have confessed his abject ignorance with the words, "I know that I know nothing" and he was a giant in philosophy, having founded it in the west. Perhaps, philosophy isn't about solving as much as it is about getting a handle on the problem. Philosophy isn't about knowing something or anything but is essentially a journey through life that ends when the philosopher confronts faer own ignorance and comes to terms with it.

In a sense then, philosophy is less about solving problems and more about creating them.

My definition of a philosopher: Ugly, irritating, and preferrably Greek (description of Socrates, the Athenian gadfly).

Welcome to the forums, Sahrian.

Thank you very much! I'm glad to be here.

Or what did you have in mind, Fooloso4? Can you give some examples, of how to live and think GIVEN what we can't answer? — god must be atheist

Questions about how we ought to live, on a personal, social, political, and geo-political level.