What problems does philosophy solve

[StringJunky]

Strange, on 30 Oct 2014 - 1:03 PM, said:

I can't agree it is useless.

It is when one introduces metaphysics and mysticism as apparent components of it.

 

I think, to have a sound footing in philosophy, one must know the mechanics of human consciousness and that means being fluent in cognitive neuroscience or biopsychology. By understanding this subject one can get a grip on the limits of perception of the world around us. If we don't know how our brain pieces the world together how can we hope to extrapolate the external reality in a scientific way? Without this prior knowledge of objectively-observed cognitive functioning philosophy will forever remain founded on sand.

 

Dennet is at least, in my opinion, on the right track in his field of studies by including cognitive science as part of them.

 

 

 

 

[PeterJ]

Surreal, yes. The OP asked, Does philosophy solve any problems? He would not be asking this if he could see it solving any problems. Therefore, his question supports my proposal that the solution does not lie in any of the theories that are considered by stereotypically 'western' thinkers. This is a very simple point. The point is simply that western metaphysics is a failure, and I see no reason for providing any evidence when it is so obvious.

 

Clearly most people here regard it as a failure so I'm not sure why we'd disagree about this. All I'm doing is explaining why it is a failure. I'm not saying 'all science is wrong' like some naïve idiot. I'm stating that one tradition of metaphysics has got it wrong, and that this would be the only reason the OP needs to ask this question.

 

If we are going to stick with this tradition then my answer to the question would be a simple no. It is obviously no. Footnotes to Plato and no progress in many centuries. I was suggesting we should move on.

Edited October 30, 2014 by PeterJ

[Strange]

Surreal, yes. The OP asked, Does philosophy solve any problems? He would not be asking this if he could see it solving any problems.

 

As you are flat out wrong about this (YOU implied that philosophy solved problems. THAT was the reason for the question) I see little reason to trust anything else you say.

 

But as you haven't actually contributed anything, that is no great loss.

[Eise]

Sorry, I was being brief due to lack of time and because I couldn't think of a good example.

 

But, for example, many people would say "killing someone is wrong"; a clear moral statement. But then if you start testing various cases, it is clear that it is not so clear cut. Is it OK to kill in self defence? Is it OK to kill someone who is suffering from an incurable disease? If it is wrong to kill someone, then is capital punishment OK? If you have a choice of deliberately killing someone in order to save the lives of 2 other people, should you do it? What if it is 100 people? Or a million? What if it is a choice between killing an old man to save two babies? Or killing a baby to save two old men?

 

I don't think philosophy can provide answers to any of these, but I think it requires some knowledge of philosophy to test the ideas.

 

Well, at least the kind of answers people give on such questions reveal if they think only in terms of consequences, or also of allowed actions in itself. A lot of more questions arise when only this first aspect of moral thinking is handled. How does one compare consequences (an old woman is worth 10 points, y young one 30?). Do human lives have intrinsic value? Animals? etc etc.

 

No, philosophy cannot solve these questions. But it can clarify our way of thinking, and this might influence how we think about such cases in the future. I would say, it can increase the quality of the decisions, not their contents. As you say: that is not useless.

[Strange]

 

Well, at least the kind of answers people give on such questions reveal if they think only in terms of consequences, or also of allowed actions in itself.

 

And making people aware that there are (at least) these two ways thinking about the problem is valuable.

[John Cuthber]

Many years ago, almost any sort of "thinking" would have been termed "philosophy" even if it was about something that would these days be considered as some other subject- perhaps physics or maths- maybe even literary criticism or theory of art.

 

However today those subjects stand in their own right.

It's my (unevinced- and presented here so that it might get shot down-) belief that the bits of thinking that remain part of philosophy are the bits that nobody else found a use for.

 

What has philosophy done in the last 50 or 100 years which made my life better?

[PeterJ]

Strange - I'm sorry you don't understand what I'm saying,. Probably my fault. I certainly have no idea what your complaint is.

 

John repeats the usual opinion above. He see no use for philosophy. Why? Because nobody listens when someone offers them a solution. They start leaping up and down with indignation and assume, because this is what they believe, that philosophy is so useless that nobody could have a solution, therefore a person which claims otherwise must be talking nonsense, therefore there would be no point in trying to understand what they're saying. Case closed.

 

You ask a question to which you firmly believe you already know the answer. I see no purpose in it. You believe that philosophy cannot solve problems, and I'm trying to explain why you believe this. If you did not believe this then you would not have asked the question. You believe it because you refuse to consider the potential solution that I'm offering. Perhaps you can tell me what's wrong with it.

 

Or perhaps I explained it badly. Who knows. Clearly one person did not see any meaning in it and chooses to bandy insults rather than talk about it.

Edited October 30, 2014 by PeterJ

[Strange]

What has philosophy done in the last 50 or 100 years which made my life better?

 

That is the sort of thing I was hoping to hear about. Apart from contributing to the definition/development of the scientific method, I can't really think of anything

[John Cuthber]

Strange - I'm sorry you don't understand what I'm saying,. Probably my fault. I certainly have no idea what your complaint is.

 

John repeats the usual opinion above. He see no use for philosophy. Why? Because nobody listens when someone offers them a solution. They start leaping up and down with indignation and assume, because this is what they believe, that philosophy is so useless that nobody could have a solution, therefore a person which claims otherwise must be talking nonsense, therefore there would be no point in trying to understand what they're saying. Case closed.

 

You ask a question to which you firmly believe you already know the answer. I see no purpose in it. You believe that philosophy cannot solve problems, and I'm trying to explain why you believe this. If you did not believe this then you would not have asked the question. You believe it because you refuse to consider the potential solution that I'm offering. Perhaps you can tell me what's wrong with it.

 

Or perhaps I explained it badly. Who knows. Clearly one person did not see any meaning in it and chooses to bandy insults rather than talk about it.

Perhaps I should rephrase the question.

What has philosophy done in the last 50 or 100 years which made my life better?

[PeterJ]

Nothing at all as far as I can see. It is almost a complete waste of time in the West since it can solve no problems. I presume you're excluding any other kind of philosophy from consideration. Otherwise you would have seen the value in it.

[Strange]

Strange - I'm sorry you don't understand what I'm saying,. Probably my fault. I certainly have no idea what your complaint is.

 

All you appear saying that all (western) philosophy is wrong. That is completely unhelpful.

 

You ask a question to which you firmly believe you already know the answer.

 

Obviously not. I assumed from the comment that started this, that you thought at least some philosophers had solved one or more problems. I was interested to find out what they might be. It seems like I read to much into your comment about Dennett (to me, "what problems has he solved" implied that others had solved problems).

 

If you did not believe this then you would not have asked the question.

 

If I thought I knew the answer why would I ask the question? I asked because I hoped you were going to give some interesting examples of problems solved by philosophy. (And please stop telling me what I think and why. It would be annoying enough if you were right)

 

You believe it because you refuse to consider the potential solution that I'm offering.

 

Perhaps you can explain how simply dismissing whole swathes of philosophical thought is a solution to anything.

[John Cuthber]

Nothing at all as far as I can see. It is almost a complete waste of time in the West since it can solve no problems. I presume you're excluding any other kind of philosophy from consideration. Otherwise you would have seen the value in it.

I don't care where the philosophy comes from and it's silly to assume I do.

What I'm asking is what it actually achieves.

What has would philosophy have done in the last 50 or 100 years which made my life better if I was somewhere other than the West?

Or, if you prefer

What has philosophy done in the last 50 or 100 years which made my Easterner's life better?

[PeterJ]

You ask me how dismissing whole swathes of philosophy is a solution to anything. This is how we solve problems in the sciences. We solved gravity by dismissing Newton. We can solve philosophy by dismissing all the philosophers who have failed to solve it.

 

You ask me to explain which problems it can solve, and I have said it's all of them. I'm giving a general solution, not a solution to this or that problem. The beginning of the solution would be to abandon the views that do not work. If we cannot do this then there is no way forward.

 

In order to see how this solution works we would have to understand what the problem with philosophy actually is. I've tried to explain but the task is beyond me in a hostile environment.

 

So I'll just say simply yes, philosophy solves problems, once has the trick of it. For further info there is plenty of relevant literature. The trick would be to abandon all extreme theories. Basically, this means taking certain parts of Kant and Hegel seriously. Yes, this is dismissing one whole swathe of philosophy, and this would be why it works as a solution. But it takes time to see this, and time is something we haven't got here. I cannot get past the first part of an explanation.

 

If we cannot understand Kant's comment that all selective conclusions about the world as a whole are undecidable, then we cannot understand how to solve philosophy. So this would be the place to start. The doubt about the effectiveness of philosophy arises from the fact that Kant identifies, but in western thought there is no solution to it. Give this fact a different interpretation and we will have a solution. But first we would have to understand this fact, and I'm not convinced that anyone here has yet grasped it. In this case, there's not much chance that what I'm saying will seem sensible. I'm solving a problem that has not been recognised as a problem, so the solution will make no sense.

 

Yes, philosophy solves problems. But this cannot be understood if we do not study the issues. The first issue is why the problem arise in the first place, which is what I tried to explain. But no matter, I have no wish to browbeat anyone and just wanted to defend philosophy from the charge of being useless. People tend to look at western philosophy and judge the whole subject pointless, forgetting that this is a subset of philosophy based on ideas that are rejected by every philosopher who ever claimed to have solved philosophy.

 

Also, to grasp this approach we would have to be able to talk about mysticism in a calm and balanced way, and I think you'd agree that this would not be the place to do attempt to do this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[imatfaal]

"We solved gravity by dismissing Newton."

"We can solve philosophy by dismissing all the philosophers who have failed to solve it"

[Strange]

From that first link, "what you said was so confused that one could not tell whether it was nonsense or not" could describe a quite a few threads going on currently...

You ask me to explain which problems it can solve, and I have said it's all of them

 

Then it shouldn't be hard to provide an example.

 

 

I'm giving a general solution, not a solution to this or that problem.

 

You haven't given a solution. You have claimed there is one, but that's all.

[PeterJ]

Example: Freewill vs Determinism

 

This is two extreme metaphysical positions. Neither idea works. They form the two horns of an ancient dilemma. The problem is undecidable for the reason Kant gives. The solution would be to reject both. This solution can be seen as a global compatibilism. This approach assumes that the universe is a unity, thus that all distinctions are emergent.

 

Mind/Matter, Externalism/Internalism, Something/Nothing, Beginning/no-Beginning, One/Many, and so forth, the solution would be same in each case. The assumption that the universe is a unity (not a 'One' - which is simple monism) requires that we abandon all partial theories.

 

Now, you may not see much in this, because it needs a book's worth of elaboration. But it is the only solution of philosophy that has ever been proposed and it is irrefutable. So, it is not actually possible to prove that philosophy does not solve problems since we cannot prove that this is not the solution.

 

The solution would be, as I've said a few times above, to abandon all extreme metaphysical theories. How this can be seen as 'not giving a solution' I'm not sure. It would be the solution.

 

These are difficult topics and I am not a genius at communicating, but it must be pretty clear by now what I'm saying by now. If not my apologies, but maybe it's too ambitious to do this on a forum starting from scratch.

Edited October 31, 2014 by PeterJ

[Strange]

 

The solution would be, as I've said a few times above, to abandon all extreme metaphysical theories. How this can be seen as 'not giving a solution' I'm not sure.

 

Going back to your earlier example of Newton: when it was discovered that the precession of Mercury was not explained by Newton's theory, if someone had just said "abandon Newton" that would not have allowed the correct precession to be calculated.

 

So abandoning other models does not, by itself, provide a solution.

 

So, how exactly does "abandon all extreme metaphysical theories" answer the question of free will?

 

The only reason your claim is "irrefutable" is because there appears to be nothing to refute.

 

 

but it must be pretty clear by now what I'm saying by now

 

It is very clear. But, I suspect, not in the way you hope.

[PeterJ]

Abandoning Newton was necessary for a solution, but I agree that it was not in itself the solution.

 

I want to stress the necessity of abandoning unworkable positions here, however, since until one has seen the necessity for doing this the remaining position will seem ad hoc and unnecessarily weird. If we cannot understand what the problem with philosophy is then we cannot hope to solve it.

 

I'll start easing myself out of this since I'm just causing trouble. I'd suggest reading about Nagarjuna for more background on what I'm proposing. Or, if you like mathematics, George Spencer Brown or Hermann Weyl. For a more western style refutation of positive theories there is Bradley's Appearance and Reality. For something more relevant to physics there is Ulrich Mohrhoff. Tom MacFarlane is excellent on all these topics and has plenty online. They all adopt the same solution but explain it from different angles. It is a very common view but goes largely unnoticed in scientific circles, at least now that the early QM pioneers, who were often good philosophers, have passed on. Schrodinger got it, and spent forty years arguing for this view. So no need for me to bang on. I'll assume a lack of interest and beat a retreat, just like I always end up doing here. It is a remarkably closed-minded forum, I must say.

 

 

 

.

[2501]

Example: Freewill vs Determinism

 

This is two extreme metaphysical positions. Neither idea works. They form the two horns of an ancient dilemma. The problem is undecidable for the reason Kant gives. The solution would be to reject both. This solution can be seen as a global compatibilism. This approach assumes that the universe is a unity, thus that all distinctions are emergent.

 

 

I would say that this problem has largely been solved actually i.e. we most likely do not have any free will, at least in the classical understanding of the term. It is notable that this problem was solved by science rather than philosophy though. It is more like everyone is in denial rather than there being an actual debate over the topic...

Edited October 31, 2014 by 2501

[PeterJ]

It was not solved by science. If you think that science can solve philosophical problems then we'd have to backtrack and start the discussion at a more simple level. Freewill and determinism are not scientifically testable theories. Or not unless we call metaphysics a science of logic, which I'd be okay with. There is a reason that science is not called philosophy.

 

To repeat, the solution would be to 'sublate' the two terms and ideas, such that they can be seen to be two ways of viewing the same phenomenon. We would have to abandon all extreme views. This is a solution because it has explanatory power and it can be generalised, Simply denying freewill gets us nowhere, and in the sciences it cannot be more than a guess. It might be a good guess, but nobody is interested in guesswork stated as fact.

[2501]

It was not solved by science. If you think that science can solve philosophical problems then we'd have to backtrack and start the discussion at a more simple level. Freewill and determinism are not scientifically testable theories. Or not unless we call metaphysics a science of logic, which I'd be okay with. There is a reason that science is not called philosophy.

 

To repeat, the solution would be to 'sublate' the two terms and ideas, such that they can be seen to be two ways of viewing the same phenomenon. We would have to abandon all extreme views. This is a solution because it has explanatory power and it can be generalised, Simply denying freewill gets us nowhere, and in the sciences it cannot be more than a guess. It might be a good guess, but nobody is interested in guesswork stated as fact.

 

 

I disagree; free will as is generally understood certainly has properties that can be tested, and so far the science has shown that we don't indeed have much conscious control over our actions. You may be interested in this short article that sums up the scientific evidence against the existence of free will; LINK: http://io9.com/5975778/scientific-evidence-that-you-probably-dont-have-free-will

 

You may also be interested in watching this video by Sam Harris, who provides a convincing argument against it (and the corresponding science that supports his assertions):

 

 

 

On a more general scale however, the fact that everything is governed by the laws of physics (and higher up on the scale, in biology, all behavior can be reduced to whatever is encoded in genes) would implicitly imply that free will doesn't exist, since all behavior can be ultimately reduced to a set of physical interactions and phenomena within the brain, of which can be described rationally.

Edited October 31, 2014 by 2501

[John Cuthber]

Peter,

You seem to have missed this.

 

I don't care where the philosophy comes from and it's silly to assume I do.

What I'm asking is what it actually achieves.

What has would philosophy have done in the last 50 or 100 years which made my life better if I was somewhere other than the West?

Or, if you prefer

What has philosophy done in the last 50 or 100 years which made my Easterner's life better?

because your next post had nothing to do with answering the questions I asked.

Would you like to try again?

[PeterJ]

Sorry John, but I don't know how to answer your question. Philosophy has not made any progress in the East for centuries. It arrived at the end long ago. So the last fifty years were no different from the previous one thousand and fifty years. But you might notice that Buddhists, Taoists, Sufis, Absolute Idealists, Vedantists and others who hold this view of philosophy are generally pretty happy people, tend to care for other people and do little harm in the word, and that they don't have to spend all their time worrying about philosophy. It's a subtle effect, and not without exceptions, but it can be discerned.

 

If you're asking me what philosophy could do for you then this would be a more interesting question. I predict that it would change your life considerably for the better were you to study it carefully. Just as long as you don't assume that you're bound to fail, which is always a self-fulfilling prophecy, and only if you don't care where ideas originate as long as they work.

 

I'm sure you'd agree that there must be a solution for philosophy even if this is not it. if so, then it would be important to establish that this is not it, and not to simply dismiss it. This solution would explain why western metaphysics does not solve problems. It would be because this is the only solution it refuses to consider. It's refusal to consider this solution is exactly what distinguishes it as 'western'. Really it's a no-brainer. There obviously is a solution it refuses to consider, otherwise a solution would have been found by now. So you've got half the world saying they have the solution, and the other half refusing to believe that there could be a solution. It's a bit weird if you stand back and look at the situation.

 

To be fair to us westerners, lots of western philosophers do find this solution, but once they've found it they are no longer viewed as part of the tradition, and tend to disappear from the curriculum. Kant is clearly on my side as to the solution for philosophy, albeit he never quite sorted it all out, perhaps because he didn't have the internet, and yet he is supposed to be a central pillar of the western philosophical tradition. It is all stranger than fiction.

 

Kant shows us the solution for philosophy if we interpret him sympathetically. I'm only agreeing with him.

[John Cuthber]

Peter,

You seem to have missed this.

 

because your next post had nothing to do with answering the questions I asked.

Would you like to try again?

Edited November 1, 2014 by John Cuthber

[2501]

I think what PeterJ meant to say was that that science has superseded philosophy in almost all respects, and is therefore unable to come up with a credible answer to how philosophy has any relevance in this day and age

Edited November 1, 2014 by 2501