Is philosophy dead?

[inocente]

But all questions of morality are ultimately determined by Power. As Doestoyevsky aptly stated, “If God doesn’t exist, then all acts are permissible.” If you convince enough people to vote to protect mother earth, there will be population controls. Just look at the atrocities by history’s worst dictators.

Doestoyevsky conveniently forgot to mention that some gods promise paradise to those who sacrifice virgins and ethnically cleanse all non-believers with extreme prejudice.

Secular ethics may be influenced by religious traditions but is based first and foremost on reasoned arguments from philosophers, rather than just what various gods command.

Which is no bad thing imho, as gods which don’t base their commands on reason are definitely determining morality by power alone.

 

[John_Martin]

Doestoyevsky conveniently forgot to mention that some gods promise paradise to those who sacrifice virgins and ethnically cleanse all non-believers with extreme prejudice.

Secular ethics may be influenced by religious traditions but is based first and foremost on reasoned arguments from philosophers, rather than just what various gods command.

Which is no bad thing imho, as gods which don’t base their commands on reason are definitely determining morality by power alone.

Well said - and interestingly highlights the understanding of the “Intelligent” nature of God, creating a creation that is intelligible, not only in its physical makeup but also intelligible in its moral imperatives for intelligent creatures. Thus, “natural law” is understood by (and from) sound reason, and, fittingly, the revealed Law does not conflict with it but adds the aspect of Love, making it go deeper than outward action.
It is in this nature of creation that God protected us (more or less, depending on whether we use our reason) from false gods and no God founded upon the abandonment of reason in favor of the embracing of desires and ideals. He was / is keeping us relatively safe until He is revealed to us in his Revelation.

John Martin

 

[John_Martin]

…
I’ve noticed that the debate gets more interesting when I observe the personality types of various religious people. The Demanding types who want to believe there’s an objective answer are the most passionate and orthodox in thinking they are Correct, and intolerant of non-believers. The laid-back types just want to keep the peace and are more likely to be liberal regarding faith. It’s just funny to think that no matter how much the Demanding types Demand, they still don’t get any objective answer, only faith or non-faith.

I find that I am permitted by my position to be neither demanding nor laid back. When I think of “demanding” I think of Peter blocking Jesus on his way to Jerusalem to be crucified and Jesus (the King, Messiah, Teacher) saying in reply, “go behind me,… anyone who wants to follow **behind **me must take up his cross (just as I am now doing)” And when I think of “laid back” I think of the man who said he would follow Jesus wherever he went, but Jesus replied, “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (there is no “laid back” posture in following me).

Faith is trust in the Teacher you are following, non-faith is not trusting the Teacher (or not following any teacher). Objective Truth is either there, or not, depending upon the person of your teacher (or depending upon the person of yourself if you do not trust any teacher).

Isaiah beseeches his readers to repent, “to seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts.” Isaiah is calling for people to turn to the Teacher, not to an idea, and to forsake their “way” of walking somewhere else rather than with their Teacher, and to forsake their “thoughts” and replace them with thoughts they can hear from their Teacher.

John Martin

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Oh, so philosophers only want problems and questions that can be easily solved? Let us not forget that solutions to many problems in real life are also impossibly difficult. Or at least philosophers cannot agree on what is the correct answer in many cases. Perhaps that is why many people avoid philosophy. If after years of intensive study, philosophers cannot agree among themselves about what is right and what is wrong, then is it a waste of time to think about some of these philosophical issues.

Now you have really boxed yourself in. While condemning the usefulness of philosophy you are practicing philosophy, and a very bad philosophy at that. We cannot escape philosophy. We can only choose between a good philosophy or a bad philosophy. To condemn philosophy because you are confused by so many philosophies is not logical. The proper response to that dilemma is to pick a philosophy that is as close to the truth as you can get, and then spend the rest of your life refining that philosophy.

It was bad philosophy that brought about the invention of the atomic bomb, and worse philosophy that led to the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

One of the reasons philosophy has such a bad reputation is that professional philosophers have begun to speak to each other rather than to the world at large. You do not find this in Socrates. Whatever else you may think of Socrates, he made very clear what he was talking about. It may give you a headache to follow the depth of his line of reasoning, but clarity was never his short suit.

Today there are altogether too many writers of philosophy who have turned philosophy into something so unintelligible that it would take an Einstein to figure out what the author is trying to say. When the common person gets wind of this, he is disgusted and and turned off.

Elton Trueblood in his General Philosophy put it this way:

“It is not decent to try to protect the castle of philosophy by the dragon of esoteric terminology.”

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Well said - and interestingly highlights the understanding of the “Intelligent” nature of God, creating a creation that is intelligible, not only in its physical makeup but also intelligible in its moral imperatives for intelligent creatures. Thus, “natural law” is understood by (and from) sound reason, and, fittingly, the revealed Law does not conflict with it but adds the aspect of Love, making it go deeper than outward action.
It is in this nature of creation that God protected us (more or less, depending on whether we use our reason) from false gods and no God founded upon the abandonment of reason in favor of the embracing of desires and ideals. He was / is keeping us relatively safe until He is revealed to us in his Revelation.

John Martin

 

[inocente]

If after years of intensive study, philosophers cannot agree among themselves about what is right and what is wrong, then is it a waste of time to think about some of these philosophical issues.

Yes there’s a lot of disagreement on what is the right thing to do, but I think that just indicates there can never be a rule book containing all the answers.

In, say, a 9/11 situation one person, Jeremy Bentham, thinks that the airliner should be shot down, sacrificing the passengers for the greater good, while another person, Immanuel Kant, thinks it is never permissible to treat persons as objects and so wouldn’t shoot.

When faced with moral dilemmas, most people side with Bentham one time and Kant another, depending only on the detail. Which is a bit alarming, especially as they usually have good reasons for why they flip. That, to me, underlines the importance of respecting the reasoning of all sides.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Yes there’s a lot of disagreement on what is the right thing to do, but I think that just indicates there can never be a rule book containing all the answers.

In, say, a 9/11 situation one person, Jeremy Bentham, thinks that the airliner should be shot down, sacrificing the passengers for the greater good, while another person, Immanuel Kant, thinks it is never permissible to treat persons as objects and so wouldn’t shoot.

In this instance I would side with Jeremy Bentham, but not for the reason he gives, that we must act so as to secure the greater good for the greater number. Rather, I would argue that, when confronted with one of two inevitable evils, we must always choose the lesser evil, keeping in mind that it is still an evil and not a good. I certainly don’t see how the people shooting down an airplane full of passengers can feel good about what they have done, though I expect the occupants of the 9/ll towers may thank them for their service.

 

[Tomdstone]

It was bad philosophy that brought about the invention of the atomic bomb, and worse philosophy that led to the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But is it true that there are moral philosophers who say that the dropping of the bomb on Japan was justified as the lesser of two evils? And that there are those who disagree saying that the end does not justify the means? Would that not indicate that there is philosophical disagreement on what constitutes the difference between the lesser of two evils versus the end does not justify the means. This is profoundly different from giving a math problem such as to solve: dy/dx = y, y(0)=1, to a mathematician. All mathematicians will agree without exception that the answer is y=exp(x).
But moral philosophers oftentimes find themselves in disagreement and with the justification of dropping the bomb on Japan, followed by the decision to drop, and then followed by the actual event, the result was that innocent children were killed.
Why didn’t all moral philosophers without exception categorically and absolutely condemn this action as totally immoral?

 

[Tomdstone]

Yes there’s a lot of disagreement on what is the right thing to do, but I think that just indicates there can never be a rule book containing all the answers.

In, say, a 9/11 situation one person, Jeremy Bentham, thinks that the airliner should be shot down, sacrificing the passengers for the greater good, while another person, Immanuel Kant, thinks it is never permissible to treat persons as objects and so wouldn’t shoot.

When faced with moral dilemmas, most people side with Bentham one time and Kant another, depending only on the detail. Which is a bit alarming, especially as they usually have good reasons for why they flip. That, to me, underlines the importance of respecting the reasoning of all sides.

But philosophy cannot give us a definite answer one way or the other. Is this then a boost for moral relativism?

 

[Charlemagne_III]

But moral philosophers oftentimes find themselves in disagreement and with the justification of dropping the bomb on Japan, followed by the decision to drop, and then followed by the actual event, the result was that innocent children were killed.
Why didn’t all moral philosophers without exception categorically and absolutely condemn this action as totally immoral?

You tell me.

No doubt most of the moral philosophers were not aware of the bomb until after it was dropped, so I don’t think they were consulted in the matter. But there had to be somebody next to FDR and Truman, and there had to be somebody next to Einstein and Oppenheimer, who were wondering about the morality of dropping the bombs. Unfortunately, they had little or no say in the matter.

We know that later Einstein and Oppenheimer had their regrets. But then as physicists we should not have expected all that much moral wisdom from them in the first place … until they saw clearly the consequences of their much vaunted genius.

You could, I suppose, make the case that good philosophers are not often invited into the corridors of power. They would be most likely to tell the truth, and the power brokers of the world often do not want to hear the truth and often have to get busy burying it after the truth is out.

Think Benghazi and the IRS.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

But philosophy cannot give us a definite answer one way or the other. Is this then a boost for moral relativism?

It is wrong to say we have to respect the reasoning of all sides.

Some reasoning is downright dumb.

That people disagree does not mean everybody is right.

 

[John_Martin]

But philosophy cannot give us a definite answer one way or the other. Is this then a boost for moral relativism?

Philosophers are not our lawgivers, they do not decide for us what is the proper choice in any given instance, and even natural law and civil law do not give us these answers. We each invariably make moral decisions whenever we are faced with an alternative.

Civil law might bring us to trial to evaluate whether such a choice was, in the end, moral or just. And our own consciences evaluate similarly within us about each moral choice we make.

The job of the philosopher is to understand and explain what we do, not to define for us what we do. Kant and Bentham try to explain what is really real about moral choices, and they may have their own opinions about what should have been done based upon their analysis of the intelligibility of human moral decision and what drives it or should drive it, but philosophy’s real role is to delineate what actually is happening in any decision, right or wrong. Natural Law is “above” the philosophers, to be understood and perhaps explained, but not theirs to define and not relative.

John Martin

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Philosophers are not our lawgivers, they do not decide for us what is the proper choice in any given instance, and even natural law and civil law do not give us these answers. We each invariably make moral decisions whenever we are faced with an alternative.

John Martin

Every person is a philosopher in that every person asks questions and seeks answers.

The professional philosopher has a life experience of asking and seeking that you would think gives him some respectability in the matter. But this is not always the case. Sometimes people fancy they have more wisdom than others when they really don’t. These are generally the more dangerous philosophers because they neither seek the truth nor do they often find it. And worse, some of them, having developed decidedly false philosophies, lead others down dead ends of thought. It therefore behooves (love that word ) the lay philosopher to learn first how to think logically before being exposed to pseudo-philosophers.

That means one must learn to think analytically. There was no better teacher of analytical thought than Plato, who used Socrates as his mouthpiece. Socrates often played the humble fool and exalted the intelligence of others before he examined them in dialogue and tasked them to account for their convictions. One does not have to agree with everything that Socrates said or concluded to know that an hour spent with Socrates was an hour spent learning how to reason, and reason well.

 

[Lion_IRC]

I say yes, philosophy is dead.

Define “dead”

The ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth.

Is that true?

…The belief that a godless cosmos was magically born from absolutely nothing regarding all realms of time and space is both illogical and forever unscientific.

I would debate that but then we would be doing ‘philosophy’ keeping it alive.

Anyone want more wine?

In vino veritas.

 

[Tomdstone]

No doubt most of the moral philosophers were not aware of the bomb until after it was dropped,…

True, but that does not stop a moral philosopher from letting us know now whether this action taken in the past was morally justified. You are going to find some saying yes, while others will say no. So there is no definite agreement on the morality of the action, one way or the other. This then opens the door to those who take a subjective view of morality, possibly contrary to Catholic teaching.
If moral philosophy is alive and well, is it alive as a subjective study, with no promise of definite answers to many moral questions?
If a student finds that there is no definite answer to many moral problems, but it is only a matter of opinion one way or the other, he may be inclined to seek out courses which leave him less confused as to what is and what is not objectively true.

 

[Tomdstone]

I was one of those “ignorant believers” until college philosophy class shamed me down this long tortuous path due to my alleged ignorance only to find that there is still no answer after all that “enlightenment.”

The ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth.

That is what bothers some people about philosophy that in the end there is no definite answer one way or the other, as we mentioned already the dropping of the bomb on Japan. Some argue it was the lesser of two evils. Others say no - it was wrong because a good end does not justify a bad means. The debate goes on, but neither side is able to convince the other of the correctness of his opinion.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

That is what bothers some people about philosophy that in the end there is no definite answer one way or the other, as we mentioned already the dropping of the bomb on Japan.

You are confusing the fact that people disagree with the notion that therefore neither side is right or wrong, and therefore there is no definite answer. The dropping of the bombs on Japan was wrong. That is a definite answer. It can’t be helped if some people are not smart enough to see that. If they don’t see it, that does not mean it is not the truth.

It has been pointed out before that Einstein and Oppenheimer came to see that the bomb was a mistake … a huge mistake, and scientists have to take responsibility along with the politicians for the mistake. They were, after all, the First Cause, the first conceivers and intenders of the terrible weapon. Now the world is stuck with an arsenal of them and those ungodly people in Iran want one to wipe out Israel. Should we let them build one? Or will you say “there is no definite answer one way or the other”?

Intellectual paralysis is deadly.

 

[Tomdstone]

The dropping of the bombs on Japan was wrong.

You are absolutely right on this. It was a huge mistake and totally wrong to drop the atomic bomb on Japan for more than one reason. I agree completely.
However, try to convince someone who says it was morally justified and you will not succeed. At least, I have not. They will claim that it was the lesser of two evils.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

You are absolutely right on this. It was a huge mistake and totally wrong to drop the atomic bomb on Japan for more than one reason. I agree completely.
However, try to convince someone who says it was morally justified and you will not succeed. At least, I have not. They will claim that it was the lesser of two evils.

What was the greater evil? It couldn’t have been anything so catastrophic, since Japan was already beaten and only the mop-up operation was required to obtain surrender.

The correct moral axiom to have applied to this situation was the one Jesus taught us. Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you. So would we have liked Japan to have dropped atomic bombs on us?