The Philosophy Thread

I have no beef against philosophy per se -- many moons ago it was my excuse for hanging around the University, and I have a BA document to prove it. I learned a lot, and it helped me get into law school later. It's useful to organize our thoughts and identify our premises. But the older I get the more philosophy strikes me as a sort of intellectual sandbox, a pile of words inside a box of logical rules and reasoning, with which we build little imaginary empires, all the while the "real" world, which is indifferent to our thoughts and conclusions, goes on outside the box as it always has. And our lives go on until they end, on our journey from unfathomable mystery to unfathomable mystery. And all the words will vanish into thin air, to be forgotten. I believe -- I can think of no better word for it -- there is meaning to our existence, but I also believe it is found not in reason but in deeper knowing.

 

There's some faulty logic here. If anything is to be suppressed, it must first exist.

I think all infants are born with the roots of empathy, and how it develops and grows depends on the circumstances in which the child is raised.

And we're born with the roots of violence, too, as this short video of a baby smacking Dad for snoring shows!

I think the greatest source of our morality is our closest family.

How would you explain the Nordic countries? (See post #68)

https://www.writingforums.org/threads/the-philosophy-thread.177964/page-3#post-2043692

 

When I was young, I read quite a lot of Primo Levi in an attempt to better understand the meaning of life. Now I'm older, I attempt to read more of Beckett to better understand the meaninglessness of life.

We all snatch at things that resonate and, as readers, it's often in the writing of others that we pitch the hunt, where we find things that resonate and even for a short while make sense of the mess. One of your stories, @GrahamLewis, if I'm not mistaken, entered in a competition from a good while ago, still comes to my mind with some frequency. One character assists another with the message that, to paraphrase horribly, "it's not about you", awakening that character to their position within a chain of what comes before and after. It's great when a story articulates a muddled thought one might have, and those are the ones we remember long after the reading and, sometimes, the ones we return to read again.

 

...because not all lawmakers are similarly self-interested. Sure, there are lots of greedy, arrogant, selfish lawmakers out there, but equally, I made a mistake to assume they were all like that.

Then again, having studied the history of Scandinavia recently, I can safely say that:

1. Nordic countries are not as populous as more temperate ones (for obvious reasons), and not as large as (say) Australia or the USA.

2. Government income is therefore -- perhaps -- lower.

3. Nordic countries also, in the past, spent lots of their time fighting each other and/or other countries, and suffered for it. (Norway especially was the poorest Nordic country, until the discovery of undersea oil in the mid-20th century).

From these three points, I am assuming that:

4. Perhaps governments in Nordic countries are more careful about how they spend their money.

5. If #4 is true (and I don't know if it is), then perhaps said governments spend more on the welfare of their people and less on dubious overseas adventures or aggrandizing gestures (like building huge statues of rulers, which seems to happen in more totalitarian regimes).

Of course I'm assuming a lot. If anyone here is from one of the Nordic countries, please feel free to jump in and correct me.

 

Might I encourage you to not think of philosophy within the confines of your formal education? The sandbox analogy doesn’t strike a chord with me. That’s not the way I see human thought, and, in the end, what philosophy adds up to is human thought—broadened. Why did we evolve this ability to question if not to use it? I instead see philosophy – again, not in the formal sense but in the asking of unanswerable questions – as a way of better understanding one’s place in existence. As a way of lifting up your eyes. It can be bolstered by all the ideas that came before, and then you try to make your own sense of it. Besides, who doesn’t like a good mystery?

Also - my “real world” – my close friends and my family – are not indifferent to me at all. It’s often been said, “What will it matter in a hundred years?” That is not the point. The point is that it all matters now. The future cannot come without the now.

I dunno, we are still quoting the ancient Greeks.

There sure is meaning. My life has had way too much meaning to be meaningless. No, it wasn't found in reason (although that kept me happily occupied) but in human connection.

Is that the deeper knowing to which you refer? Or are you talking about intuition? And do you not see a role for intuition in philosophy?

 

Well, of course, I had to Google Primo Levi and Beckett.

With their shared experience in a German concentration camp, Levi immediately brought to my mind Viktor Frankl. But, whereas Frankl focuses on the prisoner experience, Levi tried to understand how good men went bad:

How do we keep good men from going bad?

I found fascinating the influence Joyce had on Beckett (“a pivotal moment in his career”):

In Beckett’s words:

“Dance first. Think later. It's the natural order.”

Grab life while ye may?

 

Well, I think, that with elections, it can’t be “anything goes.” If there is not a cap on campaign donations, the rich will control the outcome. And the rich are self-interested. The systems that do not depend on wealthy donors are less likely to fall prey to corruption.

 

One of the things I like about Beckett is the way he attaches the same level of detail, infused with the same amount of meaning, into the mundane actions of sitting up in bed as he does for more generally accepted "important events". I love his "fail better" quote. Levi wrote about humanity most of all, as revealed to him through his experience in Auschwitz, rather than the horrors of what he witnessed. They were there too, obviously, but his writing essentially deals with being human, transferrable to life generally and not just the death camp.

As far as the rest of it, I'm a Pisces, two fish swimming in opposite directions. Oscillation is my thing! I do recall this whole "meaning of life" thing first started to make sense after the birth of my daughter and then my son. Kids put perspective on it all, whether your own, nieces/nephews, grandnieces/grandnephews. Dirty nappies have no regard for existential musings.

 

Here it is:

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

It’s all about possibilities. Do not despair! I love that attitude that says, yeah, I'm human, and I am fallible. But I am still pretty cool.

It's no secret, I love kids. I love listening to them talk! And working with young people was incredibly rewarding in my teaching career. They are so dynamic!

 

I am thinking of philosophy in the broadest sense, as in trying to answer ontological questions, as in why are we here, what's the purpose of life, is there free will, and all of that. I guess my unspoken premise is that those are, as you say, unanswerable questions, so we can talk all we want and make no difference; the answer is what it is no matter how well we reason things out. I guess I'm more and more of the belief (I choose that word because I don't want to make it a philosophical position) that intellectual answers don't matter much and it's maybe not such a good idea to wander in the weeds of words. We each need to do it for ourselves. To paraphrase St. Paul, we all must "work out our own salvation in fear and trembling." Not cold reasoning.

I'm sure your family is not indifferent to you at all, , nor is mine to me. But human relationships rely on human relations, not platitudes and logical conclusions. As you say yourself, meaning doesn't come from reason.

When I said that words will ultimately be forgotten, I don't mean in terms of years or history, I mean in terms of our actual lives. Whatever truth we find after death, I am convinced, will have nothing to do with words or argument. In a cartoonish sense, I picture someone looking around at the afterlife, and saying, "this can't be right."

I have no firm idea what that "deeper meaning" might emanate from, but seems to me intuition would be more likely a vague sense of what that deeper meaning might be than the deeper meaning itself. And in that sense it has no place in philosophy at all. To say more than that would be postulating on my part; I have my beliefs, things that more and more seem true to me, but I don't want to fall into the trap of arguing in for them. That would be hypocritical. Even Buddha said something like, "don't take my word for it, find out for yourself." All that said, I am more and more convinced that the Universe is at heart a good place. To quote a Christian writer, St. Julian of Norwich, "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."

But I can't prove any of it. And won't be tricked into trying to.

 

I think they make a great difference in how you see yourself and how you live your life.

can't disagree with that

You seem to be arguing against a purely rational approach, and I am sorry if I gave you the impression that that was my position.

Reason, emotion, intuition, all have a place in the unfurling of a life.

I place more value on intuition. It's our deepest knowing. Let's not discount our wildest self. That soul-place is actually the accumulation of the experiences of a million generations.

Amen.

But it's fun to talk about it while we can.

 

Big picture topics are fun to talk about and in that sense have a great impact on our relationships with others. But I don't think they make much difference in how we and our family and friends view things. I think family, and certainly friends, stay together because they share perspectives, not because they are later convinced of them through logical argument.

I think I've been a bit disingenuous here, downplaying the value of philosophy while philosophizing about it. I believe the most sincere expression of truth is silence, but because this is a writers' forum, one should probably write. And I enjoy these discussions.

I never thought you were arguing from a purely rational position. Far from it.

Finally, I don't doubt the value of intuition, but I do think it is irrelevant to any purely philosophical discussion since intuition rests on something deeper and inexpressible that philosophy. And is certainly not susceptible to philosophical exploration or refutation.

 

What I'd really like to know is this:

1. Who teaches Aristotelian philosophy?
2. Who teaches Hegelian philosophy?
3. Who teaches logical positivism?
4. And who in charge of the sheep dip?

And strewth yeah, that's an absolutely 'onest portrayal of 'ow we teach philosophy down 'ere in Ozstraya. And now I have to do this:

*stands up* Ozstraya, Ozstraya, Ozstraya, Ozstraya, Ozstraya, we love ya! Amen!

I will now ask the padre for a prayer.

This 'ere's the wattle,
the emblem of our land.
You can stick it in a bottle,
you can 'old it in your 'and!
Amen!

(Sorry. The above has to be said every January, 'cos it was Ozstraya Day down 'ere and I only went and bloody well missed it. It's a simple philosophy, but meh!) *shrug*

 

Three logicians walk into a bar. The barman asks: “Three beers?” The first logician says, “I don’t know.” The second logician says, “I don’t know.” The third logician says, “Yes.”

 

Um, I think I understand that. I just had to look at it really, really cockeyed. :-\ In a similar vein:

A Roman Catholic priest, a rabbi, and an imam walk into a bar. The publican narrows his eyes at them and says, "Is this some kind of joke?"

 

It is really, really weird when the same thing comes up for discussion in two separate places. Primo Levi and his incarceration came up for discussion yesterday on my history forum, in relation to Nazi A-bombs. Confused me about which forum I was looking at there for a few seconds.

 

A glitch in the Matrix? Or just that such associations aren't uncommon in the world today.

As you mention it, I've often noticed seemingly anomalous situations arising in pairs. Whoever wrote the script sometimes repeats themselves. Maybe.

 

Is falsifiability the one true criterion in distinguishing true knowledge from rhetoric?

Scroll to "Freud and Popper" -

https://existentialcomics.com/philosopher/Karl_Popper

 

Well, I was reading today about Karl Popper (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994). He was a famous philosopher of science. He developed this concept of falsifiability - the ability to prove a statement, theory, or hypothesis wrong – “a fundamental principle of science that helps distinguish science from pseudoscience.”

Some of Popper’s work was about the difference between genuine knowledge (e.g. the work of Einstein) and rhetoric (e.g. the work of Marx and Freud). The basic difference seems to be if you can’t say what would make the statement or theory false, then it’s rhetoric, not science.

He used this concept, for example, to dismiss the theories of Freud as unscientific.

But it got me thinking, because I have argued in this thread that the subjective has a greater influence in our everyday lives. We don’t put the information we accept as true through the “falsifiability” test.

 

Wasn't he trying to present an economic theory? I remember writing an essay in my undergraduate studies critical of the economic theory he was trying to put forth.

I'm reading, trying to understand this. I confess I do not. But I found this quote from Marx that seems to lend some understanding:

“It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.”

― Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy