The Basic Philosophy Series 101 -1: What is philosophy and how is it done?

[MindOverMatter2]

Hello everyone,

I lost internet connection again. I was one of the few that got it for a little bit. 90% of the residents in town do not have power. Power was established at the library and we are taking turns with the internet. We get 30 minures per day each.

I read the posts. I am thinking about this thread. I plan to post what Aristotle said about philosophy and how it is wondering.

I am writing as if I was writing a telegram.

People in town look a mess - no hot water, no heat, no cooking… it’s tough. but, people are helping each other. The night before last five people slept on the floor in my living room. I have power and heat and cooking gas. I just do not have internet nor phone service.

Yes, I like to think of the first philosophers are the children. Why are we here? Where does the sun come from? What keeps the moon in the sky? Why, why, why why?

Philosophy begins in wondering about our existence and the universe we live in.

Philosophy is the search for knowledge… for answers…for truth… it is not mere opinions nor views nor musing…

But, how do philosophers come to know? What are the processes used to find the answers to the questions they pose? Would defining epistemology help to answer the question?

I have a couple of minutes left…and I am writing under pressure here…tic toc tic toc…

Signing off from storm country…

P.s. I will respond to the posts addressed to me as soon as I can…

Have i miss something? I was not aware that things are so terrible where you are.

God-bless and stay safe.

 

[Acapiteadcalcem]

Yes, I like to think of the first philosophers are the children. Why are we here? Where does the sun come from? What keeps the moon in the sky? Why, why, why why?

Philosophy begins in wondering about our existence and the universe we live in.

Philosophy is the search for knowledge… for answers…for truth… it is not mere opinions nor views nor musing…

I like that. Spot on!

 

[Shike]

How can there be recognition without prior knowledge? I could only recognize my mother if I already was acquainted with her AS my mother. Otherwise it’s only another face on the street.

You do not need a concept of redness to know that it is something different from everything else, if confronted by it in experience for the first time. After encountering it you start to apprehend its essence and therefore start to form a detailed concept of redness.

Playing off your analogy: you may not recognize her as your mother, but you would recognize her as different from other things.

Propositional knowledge is not the only kind of knowledge.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

You do not need a concept of redness to know that it is something different from everything else, if confronted by it in experience for the first time. After encountering it you start to apprehend its essence and therefore start to form a detailed concept of redness.

Playing off your analogy: you may not recognize her as your mother, but you would recognize her as different from other things.

Propositional knowledge is not the only kind of knowledge.

Correct; there is a distinction between things, between the essence of things. Red is not Blue regardless of whether or not we describe the particular colors as red or blue. We use two different words precisely because we want to symbolize the fact that we our experiencing two different essences. We experience the essence of thing, and we see that there is distinction between things. A car is not a mouse; an apple is not an orange.

 

[Kismetji]

My apologies, Acap, I couldn’t help myself!

Kismetji:

So, the inevitable conclusion of your argument above is that man could never, ever have understood danger in his primordial, primitive condition. Interesting that we’re here at all! Before man could talk, he would more than likely have been killed or eaten to extinction. All of this, then, is illusion, isn’t it?

I wouldn’t say illusion. More like pre-rational instinctual driven-ness.

With the exception of your inevitable conclusion from your above proposition, I would concur. Of course, were we all killed and eaten, or unable to understand that jumping from a steep cliff, or that we are food for lions, or that walking into water that is way over our heads, will more than likely take your life, then there should be no one here to make judgments. Right?

God bless,
jd

The will is irrational. The survival instinct, and actions springing thereto, should not be conflated with rational knowledge.

 

[Kismetji]

You do not need a concept of redness to know that it is something different from everything else, if confronted by it in experience for the first time. After encountering it you start to apprehend its essence and therefore start to form a detailed concept of redness.

Yes you do. How else then can you “apprehend” its essence? There is no way your senses alone can differentiate. That is a faculty of the mind, and the mind requires a concept of difference. Difference presupposes you beforehand know you are dealing with two things that are quite unlike each other in kind; say, red and blue. If you did not know beforehand that red and blue were different, you could not recognize either of them. This is not to say the phenomenology of red or blue was ever felt by you beforehand, but you would require a corollary concept in order to match their senses and speak about them meaningfully.

Playing off your analogy: you may not recognize her as your mother, but you would recognize her as different from other things.

Not if I do not presuppose their difference. In which case I already have a conception built-in that faces of the kind I am seeing do not look alike.

Propositional knowledge is not the only kind of knowledge.

I think you would be hardpressed to say it isn’t, though here I actually agree. There is mystical or transcendental knowledge. But there is no such thing as sensory knowledge. That is non-sense.

 

[Kismetji]

I’m not sure we have much of a disagreement here, if I understand you correctly: I agree that knowledge is formulated in language; I also agree that there is a correspondence between the mind and reality.

There is a correspondence between the mind and the world. This is because they are essentially non-different. There is no “inside” or “outside.” Thought and reality run in parallel to each other.

Reality… that is outside the realm of description, beyond language and beyond the mind. It is arational.

What is it in particular you disagree with? Are you arguing for idealism–or at least that we can’t verify as real what we perceive to be the case? I’m not sure I qutie get the thrust of your point.

What we perceive to be the case is not in principle what exists beyond our given filter of thought. But, there is a correspondence of degree, with a key difference in kind. Things “out there” may not be exactly what our senses feel them to be, but they are grounded in the same concepts we use to pick them out. The problem lies with the senses.

 

[JDaniel]

Hello everyone,

I lost internet connection again. I was one of the few that got it for a little bit. 90% of the residents in town do not have power. Power was established at the library and we are taking turns with the internet. We get 30 minures per day each.

I read the posts. I am thinking about this thread. I plan to post what Aristotle said about philosophy and how it is wondering.

I am writing as if I was writing a telegram.

People in town look a mess - no hot water, no heat, no cooking… it’s tough. but, people are helping each other. The night before last five people slept on the floor in my living room. I have power and heat and cooking gas. I just do not have internet nor phone service.

Yes, I like to think of the first philosophers are the children. Why are we here? Where does the sun come from? What keeps the moon in the sky? Why, why, why why?

Philosophy begins in wondering about our existence and the universe we live in.

Philosophy is the search for knowledge… for answers…for truth… it is not mere opinions nor views nor musing…

But, how do philosophers come to know? What are the processes used to find the answers to the questions they pose? Would defining epistemology help to answer the question?

I have a couple of minutes left…and I am writing under pressure here…tic toc tic toc…

Signing off from storm country…

P.s. I will respond to the posts addressed to me as soon as I can…

Abba:

No. But what would help would be to gain an understanding of what “dialectic” means. Then, perhaps, move on to understanding what “deduction” and “induction” mean. Then, much later perhaps to discover the meanings of more complicated logics. Then perhaps starting with a general science, i.e., a philosophy of nature.

“Why” is an important question, but where does it take one next? To merely more “Why’s?” Or, do philosophers ever ask “What is that thing?” What if “What” was the first question, instead of “Why?”

Do philosophers only seek to understand their mental pictures? Or, do they juxtapose them, or juxtapose pieces of them? Do philosophers ever look for regularities in things? Or similarities? Or differences? Do philosophers know what “sameness” is; or “dissimilarity” mean? Or, maybe they might seek to understand an “idea.” Or, a string of “ideas.”

(Thank God your power has been restored and that you could help others.)

God bless,
jd

 

[JDaniel]

I like that. Spot on!

Acap:

Yet we have Aristotelians, Socratics, Sophists, Anselmians, Thomists, Scotists, Hegelians, Humeans, Marxists, Kantians, and these are but a very few of the various “schools” of philosophy that have come along. These names are what the followers of the various philosophies were called.

The originators of the philosophies asked questions, took their questions through a more or less rigorous dialectic, and made inductions or deductions.

Did any of them make errors in their conclusions?

God bless,
jd

 

[JDaniel]

I wouldn’t say illusion. More like pre-rational instinctual driven-ness.

Whew! Where’s William of Ockham when you need him? :ehh:

The will is irrational.

No. Only if one considers it per se. Acts of the will normally follow after deliberation. (Which we can do nowadays!)

The survival instinct, and actions springing thereto, should not be conflated with rational knowledge.

The problem is, under your structure, the cavemen would have had to learn a rather sophisticated language system before they could begin to grasp any concepts of danger. By the time they learned a language and could think in ideas, they would all have been dead, at the bottom of some gorge. Don’t you see that?

God bless,
jd

 

[Kismetji]

No. Only if one considers it per se. Acts of the will normally follow after deliberation. (Which we can do nowadays!)

Not really. The variables are too great. If we truly did ‘rationally’ (whatever that means in the context of life - which is nothing, I assume) then we would not choose at all as it would take too long a period of time. Don’t you see life isn’t like that?

The problem is, under your structure, the cavemen would have had to learn a rather sophisticated language system before they could begin to grasp any concepts of danger. By the time they learned a language and could think in ideas, they would all have been dead, at the bottom of some gorge. Don’t you see that?
God bless,
jd

There are a number of ways I can go about this. I can say that the caveman does not have a sophisticatd language system, but is in possession of primitive cues which spur him to various courses of action pre-reflectively. I can also say that he does in fact have a sophisticated language system, but that it is innate (as with color recognition) and not something which has to be learned.

In any case, to parse through sense data (which I think is impossible, without concepts a priori) would take, along with the deliberation process above, an indefinite, overly long period of time. Concepts already existing are pithier, and can guide a survival instinct (which is itself, I maintain, completely irrational) along a somewhat reasonable (that is, coherent) course: “first I should do this, then this would be appropriate.” Notice there is no actual reason given for why a course of action is appropriate. It just happens.

 

[JDaniel]

Not really. The variables are too great. If we truly did ‘rationally’ (whatever that means in the context of life - which is nothing, I assume) then we would not choose at all as it would take too long a period of time. Don’t you see life isn’t like that?

No. I firmly believe that you are wrong.

There are a number of ways I can go about this. I can say that the caveman does not have a sophisticatd language system, but is in possession of primitive cues which spur him to various courses of action pre-reflectively.

The question is, “How on earth would he know that an action he took was dangerous?” He would have no idea that if he were to jump from a mountain, into a ravine, that he would die. He would be blundering along as a robot without programming. There used to be, and there still might be, toy robots that can only walk. If you left them on the floor, they did just fine. But, when you put them on a table and turned the switch to “On,” they would walk right off the edge of the table. The first primitive human would be just like that. He would not have made it in this world long enough to have children.

I can also say that he does in fact have a sophisticated language system, but that it is innate (as with color recognition) and not something which has to be learned.

And you have a problem with the concept of “natural law?”

In any case, to parse through sense data (which I think is impossible, without concepts a priori) would take, along with the deliberation process above, an indefinite, overly long period of time.

Concepts already existing are pithier, and can guide a survival instinct (which is itself, I maintain, completely irrational) along a somewhat reasonable (that is, coherent) course: “first I should do this, then this would be appropriate.” Notice there is no actual reason given for why a course of action is appropriate. It just happens.

BUT, you are presupposing language.

God bless,
jd

 

[Shike]

Yes you do. How else then can you “apprehend” its essence? There is no way your senses alone can differentiate.

There is a formal intelligibility in a thing, that when coupled with the mind apprehends the essence. It’s an immediate kind of thing; the formal element of the thing really is “in” the mind of the knower. The modern empiricism-epistemology of concepts as representations or images is false and creates a false division between knowledge and experience.

The mind is necessary for apprehension, so in a sense you are correct. It would be wrong, however, to call the formal element of a thing a concept, but I find no problem with calling the formal element as apprehended by the mind a concept (different mode of being). That said, it still remains the case that a prior concept is not needed to distinguish different things in experience.

The problem seems to come up if you accept the concept-as-representation position; which is wrong.

I think you would be hardpressed to say it isn’t, though here I actually agree. There is mystical or transcendental knowledge.

I would agree! But I would also add an experiential knowledge of another person. And something like the knowledge that one’s spouse loves him/her.

 

[Kismetji]

There is a formal intelligibility in a thing, that when coupled with the mind apprehends the essence. It’s an immediate kind of thing; the formal element of the thing really is “in” the mind of the knower.

This, if I understand you correctly, is a myth. There is no “giveness” that any thing is, as it is, save mediated by perception.

The modern empiricism-epistemology of concepts as representations or images is false and creates a false division between knowledge and experience.

Why would you assume that? Given what we know about neuroscience and how the mind works?

I do think concepts are “out there” in a sense. But the way they are presented to us is subjective through and through.

The mind is necessary for apprehension, so in a sense you are correct. It would be wrong, however, to call the formal element of a thing a concept, but I find no problem with calling the formal element as apprehended by the mind a concept (different mode of being). That said, it still remains the case that a prior concept is not needed to distinguish different things in experience.

What exactly do you mean by “formal element”? If you mean that the human mind entangles itself with external objects in various complex ways via perceptions, than this constitutes for us the “form” of the object. But apart from the human viewpoint, we don’t know what it actually is. Also, I do not see how, lacking an innate concept of difference, together with inequality (that all things are patently NOT the same), a person could distinguish different things in experience.

The problem seems to come up if you accept the concept-as-representation position; which is wrong.

Concepts extend outward; but as we perceive them they are mediated. Given that we presuppose truth and a world, concepts are real relative to us; namely, perceivers.

I would agree! But I would also add an experiential knowledge of another person. And something like the knowledge that one’s spouse loves him/her.

I’ll have to think about that.

 

[Kismetji]

No. I firmly believe that you are wrong.

Alright. Now it’s your turn to give reasons. I am more than willing to keep the conversation going.

The question is, “How on earth would he know that an action he took was dangerous?” He would have no idea that if he were to jump from a mountain, into a ravine, that he would die. He would be blundering along as a robot without programming. There used to be, and there still might be, toy robots that can only walk. If you left them on the floor, they did just fine. But, when you put them on a table and turned the switch to “On,” they would walk right off the edge of the table. The first primitive human would be just like that. He would not have made it in this world long enough to have children.

Okay. So, we are born (as cavemen, say) and we have concepts in our minds, which map to experiential datums. These experiential datums are made sense of in light of our concepts. And we may even discover new concepts within by creatively integrating our current concepts.

Experience has to do with quantifying reality into discrete packets. As young children, before they learn numbers more than one or two, may take a bunch of pennies when told three. They don’t understand that the plural marker ‘three’ is limited to only three things and not “many.” Gradually, our concepts get a lock on experience, and, slowly but surely, we make advancements. Why can’t it be the same in the caveman example?

You might say lesser apes and such do not have concepts (even an innate conceptual ability - which I think is nonsense). Which I think is odd and not readily apparent, but ok. So what? Apes, dogs, rats, and so on… still don’t act like poorly designed toy robots.

And you have a problem with the concept of “natural law?”

I am not sure I understand it. I believe in the law of karma. I also believe in morality, that it is in some ways grounded in the world. That said, I do not see anything grounded in the world to implicate that suicide is a bad thing. That’s why I went on with my long drawn out metaphysical argument.

BUT, you are presupposing language.

God bless,
jd

It’s actually possible for there to be concepts without language. But even if there aren’t, animals, as we can say, without concepts, do not act like broken toys.

 

[Abba]

Have i miss something? I was not aware that things are so terrible where you are.

God-bless and stay safe.

You sure have. Over a million people are without power. I live in New England.

One million people without power in Northeast storm aftermath
news.yahoo.com/one-million-people-without-power-northeast-storm-aftermath-202016720.html

Well, I got internet and telephone service back, I hope it is back to stay. The town is beginning to light up. It wasn’t so bad as people have been helping each other. It was actually nice to see that reaction from people. The restaurants that had power did very well and so did the gas stations.

The governor postponed Halloween, I think until Saturday. So I brought some candy for us to munch on. I buy more tomorrow for the children.

http://c671444.r44.cf2.rackcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/free-Mars-Candy.jpg

---

Now, this thread is ending tomorrow, Saturday, November 5th as on Sunday our next thread in the series will begin. We want to answer the questions as best as possible. There is a nice discussion going on, which I have as of yet kept up with - I may get time later, but, nonetheless, you want to start wrapping it up. The discussion has been nice on this thread as it exposes people to a little philosophical analysis. Keep in mind that we do not want to talk over people’s head and so we do not want to get too deep into a philosopher nor a theme unless the topic of the thread is exactly that in order to present such an exercise. Btw, I will be wrapping up what I myself got involved with too; regarding how knowledge begins in the senses.

---

For those of you new to the series please refer to our introductory thread on the series for more information. I should have posted a link on this thread earlier for it:

Announcing: The Basic Philosophy Series
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=611279

As you will note, in May we are going to have a competitive Philosophy Trivia Game as our review for the series. Only people who posted on the series are eligible to participate in the game. Afterall, it will serve as our review examination. If you want to play you have to participate and must have at least one post in one of the three series.

---

Here is a quote from Dummett’s
The Nature and Future of Philosophy
Michael Dummett
What Is a Philosophical Question?

What, then, is philosophy about? For Quine and some other contemporary American philosophers, philosophy is simply the most abstract part of science. It does not, indeed, make any observations or conduct any experiments of its own; but it may, and should, incorporate the discoveries of the sciences to build a naturalized theory of knowledge and of the mind. Properly speaking, therefore, it ought to be classified with the natural sciences. Wittgenstein held the very opposite opinion. For him, philosophy stands in complete contrast with science: its methods wholly diverge from those of science, and its objective differs to an equal extent. Probably most philosophers practicing today would agree with this, and would add that the results of philosophy differ fundamentally in character from those of the sciences. Wittgenstein was more radical. He did not think that philosophy has any results, in the form of statable propositions it has discovered to be true; philosophy merely casts light on what we already know from other sources, enabling us to see it with eyes unclouded by intellectual confusion.

The best way to judge this disagreement, and say what philosophy is about and by what means it proceeds, is to contemplate a sample philosophical problem. For the reasons explained in the preceding chapter, it was not until the nineteenth century that it made sense to ask for an example of a philosophical problem, as opposed to a problem of some other kind; even now there could easily be disputes over whether one or another particular problem was genuinely a philosophical one or not. But there are paradigm cases of problems that everyone would agree are philosophical in character. One is this: Does time really pass? Some may say that it evidently does: the world changes as new events occur; these events formerly lay in the future, and will in due time be over and recede into the past. But some deny that time passes in this sense. There are temporal relations between events—certain events temporally precede others—but this is all there is to time: its being a dimension on which events have diVerent locations.

This is plainly a philosophical disagreement. It is indeed a metaphysical disagreement: it concerns the nature, not of the human mind or human behavior, but of external reality. Faced with such a disagreement, how does a philosopher proceed? He may begin by asking the believers in the passage of time to clarify their view. What, he may ask, do they think that there is? Some may reply that what is yet to be is not, and that what has ceased to be is not: all there is is what exists now. Does this mean, he inquires, that statements about what will happen or about how things formerly were are neither true nor false? For, he urges, a statement can be true only if there is something in virtue of which it is true: so, if all there is is what exists now, no statement about the future or about the past can be true. Some may enthusiastically agree. Reality, they say, is ever-changing. The only true statements are those that represent reality as it is, that is, as it is now; there can be no truths about how it will be or how it was.cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-15052-1/the-nature-and-future-of-philosophy/excerpt

Any comments on this quote?

 

[Shike]

Any comments on this quote?

Yes.

I think the talk about the 19th century being the only time in history that made sense to ask for a distinction between philosophical and scientific problems is just jabberwocky. Aquinas, for instance, in the 1200’s explicitly knew the difference between scientific hypothesis and metaphysical demonstration.

The philosophical history is vast, and someone who talks about the history of philosophy with a selective forgetfulness about anything before Modern Philosophy is hard to take seriously.

I liked the contrasting views presented, however. And the problem raised is a very important and legitimate one.

 

[Shike]

Why would you assume that? Given what we know about neuroscience and how the mind works?

Why would you assume that the mind is the same as the brain?
I think you are confused about what I am referring to. I am talking about a certain position within the history of philosophy that is associated with the Modern Empiricists… and I think even some of the Rationalists as well (someone with more expertise please correct me).

What exactly do you mean by “formal element”? If you mean that the human mind entangles itself with external objects in various complex ways via perceptions, than this constitutes for us the “form” of the object.

Sort of. This isn’t quite right, but since you are familiar with Plato, think of it more as The Forms are accessible by the intellect through perception of individual objects. Since forms are not representations, since if you have a “copy” of a form you actually have the same form, there is no thing-in-itself problem that so many in Modern Philosophy have toiled over. Phenomena and Noumena, groundless as metaphysical concepts.

But apart from the human viewpoint, we don’t know what it actually is.

The very fact that one can say that we don’t know what something is apart from the human viewpoint (aside from the trivial that there wouldn’t be a me or you to know it) assumes we know something outside of the human viewpoint. Such a statement is contradictory–it was a favorite error of Kant. Besides, experience is the starting point that cannot be denied without serious consequences to the very foundation of human knowledge.

Also, I do not see how, lacking an innate concept of difference, together with inequality (that all things are patently NOT the same), a person could distinguish different things in experience.

You could think of it as if the concepts of difference and inequality are formed simultaneously with the apprehension of any essence. One instance of the knower and known would be sufficient.

Concepts extend outward; but as we perceive them they are mediated. Given that we presuppose truth and a world, concepts are real relative to us; namely, perceivers.

We do not perceive concepts. Strictly speaking we perceive objects in sense-experience. Only afterwards do we reflect on our experience and “perceive” a concept. Try to know that you are perceiving something before actually perceiving it, and then you will have in some fundamental sense why it is impossible for us to “perceive” a concept without experience.
You do seem to be correct about concepts being relative to us with regards to their mode of being. But their being still stems from a source outside ourselves and is therefore objective.

ciao,
Michael

 

[MindOverMatter2]

Now, this thread is ending tomorrow, Saturday, November 5th as on Sunday our next thread in the series will begin. We want to answer the questions as best as possible. There is a nice discussion going on, which I have as of yet kept up with - I may get time later, but, nonetheless, you want to start wrapping it up. The discussion has been nice on this thread as it exposes people to a little philosophical analysis. Keep in mind that we do not want to talk over people’s head and so we do not want to get too deep into a philosopher nor a theme unless the topic of the thread is exactly that in order to present such an exercise. Btw, I will be wrapping up what I myself got involved with too; regarding how knowledge begins in the senses.

---

For those of you new to the series please refer to our introductory thread on the series for more information. I should have posted a link on this thread earlier for it:

Announcing: The Basic Philosophy Series
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=611279

I think a good addition to your series should be a thread about the epistemological differences between science and metaphysics, and why they are both valid inferential systems and do not contradict each-other.

The idea that science is the only rational mode of inferential knowledge (scientism) is an issue i spend most of my time challenging, and so a thread discussing the epistemological nature of metaphysics as expressed by Aquinas/Aristotle and in relation to science would would be quite cool.

A thread on epistemology (what can we know?) would also be good.

 

[Shike]

I think a good addition to your series should be a thread about the epistemological differences between science and metaphysics, and why they are both valid inferential systems and do not contradict each-other.

The idea that science is the only rational mode of inferential knowledge (scientism) is an issue i spend most of my time challenging, and so a thread discussing the epistemological nature of metaphysics as expressed by Aquinas/Aristotle and in relation to science would would be quite cool.

A thread on epistemology (what can we know?) would also be good.

I second that!