Frozen Filosophy

Rouzbeh has expressed the desire for me, among others, to post more OP’s.

The greatest error I see on these boards, and in philosophy in general, is to use “frozen” concepts. Absolute ideas. Ideas that express an unchanging condition. Despite that we know of nothing that does not change. It’s the Philosopher’s Disease, born of a desire for Truth, Constancy, Knowledge.

The philosopher’s task is to find out what our basic assumptions are. But most will go further - to try to actually invent new assumptions - better, more durable assumptions. When these assumptions are formulated as to be not only durable, but permanent, we get metaphysics - or something very much like it. Metaphysics is the art of formulating permanent assumptions about what is real.

But nothing we can discern, that we can sense, is permanent, so far as we know. So, metaphysics deals in what we cannot discern. In what does not exist.

This desire is so great that even those who have no conscious metaphysics will fall into this trap. They overstate their case. And so they come up with questions that lead away from life, rather than to it. The examples are too numerous to count. But overstatement is the most misleading practise here.

I will pick on koifer, as i was just reading a post of his. But I could select posts almost at random and find an example. His question is at least clear, which makes it above average here. He asks if other people can control our happiness. This is a bad question. It is better to ask, “Can others influence our happiness, and to what extent can they? And how? And why would they?” It’s a bigger, more inclusive question - a more fecund question. And philosophers should try to ask fecund questions. Not “yes or no” questions. “Yes or no” questions belong to science.

We are taught in school to ask and answer yes-or-no questions. It is the philosopher’s task to go beyond these questions. It is the scientist’s task to get better at them.

Scientist’s questions should lead to an easier life - philosopher’s questions should lead to a better one.

You see, Rouzbeh - I don’t really have much to say.

A poignant point to say the least. I liken philosophy to working with the mentally unstable. You know what people do (and do so disastrously) but the end result is not as easy as why they do it; but rather how can they not do it as well.

But, yes education to a certain degree has denigrated the inquiring minds to rather simplistic responses of yes and no. I feel it is beginning to shift as our society will no longer simply allow for millions to be made off the simple “Buy” or “Sell” responses.

And you are right Faust, so little to be said.

Hi, Satori - long time no read.

I do not think the education we receive is so bad. We probably need to start with yes-and-no. It is simply the nature of philosophy to go beyond that - if the philosopher truly can. Yes-and-no keeps us alive. Philosophers exceed that - without forgetting that.

The method is, ironically, an eliminitative one. But a philosopher who doesn’t understand irony is a poor philosopher. Kant didn’t understand irony.

Eh, I have never really left just been a lurker.

I believe the education we are receiving has a bit of an extreme trend towards making us crave $$ more than the endless pursuit of question. But, perhaps you are right, since I am a product of it and I do fancy myself a bit.

Taking from my Eastern readings I feel we are forced to retrain from our why to yes and no’s. Every child I run in contact with hits you with a salvo of never ending Why’s?. Enough to the point that the urge to shake em a bit can arise. I kid! Maybe… Anyways what I believe myself to be saying is philosophers are retrogressive and embrace that childhood once again with their queries through the challenging of the stated.

I believe Kant and I will assuredly butt heads at some point but I have only really pushed up to Medieval philosophers along with some Eastern ones. But, I do blame those damn mathematicians for taking out the fun out of alot of things.

Mathematics has for millenia been the model of certainty. It’s a mistake that is still made - to believe that numbers exist. To mistake the measurement for that which is being measured.

Science is useful mostly insofar as it creates technology - stuff, in other words. An easier life. It’s a temptation that no one resists entirely, and why should we? Even the crunchiest of granolas use levers and sticks. It’s just not all there is. Else we would not have religion, for instance.

The “why” is the quest for certainty. It’s the desire for “more”. We at some point tell children - “Because I said so!” - the appeal to authority - for it must end somewhere - we must live. Project this to its ultimate, and you find God. Accept that there is an end, right here in our lives, and you don’t.

Philosophy can retrogress to any number of appeals to authority. When we stop at ourselves, we have something short of metaphysics. Philosophers need to know when to stop the train - and live. Many do not.

Wow, I was in the post! Point well taken. I wanted broad answers, and was somewhat upset when I didn’t receive them. The problem lies within the question though. Good post.

I think I generally read your posts, koifer. They’re usually pretty good. I’m glad I didn’t upset you. As I said, I could have picked any number of questions.

I think the Questions board exists because so many posters here haven’t learned which questions are useful to the philosopher. The usefulness of questions is the often standard by which philosophers are judged, and not the answers to them. This is why Kant is considered great - he asks a lot of useful questions. I think his answers suck, however.

Never want to miss an opportunity to slam Kant.

Who’s Rouzbeh? I like what you say here Faust.

Everybody has a metaphysics, whether they will admit to it or not. Some people are better with their metaphysical beliefs than others, will admit to them, point them out, and compare them to others. The nature of the human mind is to establish core beliefs at a very young age to which a person’s knowledge of the world depends upon his/her metaphysical system. Over history, much of philosophy (especially Modernity) has focused on strengthening these metaphysical foundations through pragmatic skepticisms. I don’t know why, but contemporary philosophy has all but rejected metaphysics based on its impracticality. I see this as a huge mistake, since without metaphysics, we aren’t really philosophizing anymore. We’re just building ivory towers and glass houses.

I believe the best course of action to take against absolute truths is to practice nihilism. By understanding the pattern that infinite regress takes on systems of knowledge, nihilism is able to backtrack through any and every logical assumption and destroy not only a person’s philosophical outlooks, but their most base beliefs of the world (running all the way down to metaphysics). In this way, flaws and errors become more and more obvious to a nihilistic practitioner, but nihilism itself is very unstable. I’m convinced from my own experience that the danger of nihilism becomes real the more seriously it is taken. Those problems include: anger, depression, meaninglessness, disconnection, and suicide. Why is that the case?

Since every human being creates core beliefs and a meaningful valuation of life, nihilism has the ability to reverse everything–by revoking all assumed meanings of the world (objectively) or subjective creation. This can have a major impact on a person’s psyche in realizing that all assumed meanings have been taken for granted. By realizing nihilistic truths, ‘hope’, ‘faith’, ‘love’, ‘care’, ‘relation’, ‘connection’, ‘selflessness’, etc. all these words are obliterated. The end result is what I would call pure emotion, which can potentially kill a nihilistic philosopher depending on their instinctual ability for self-preservation. Relational values, such as friends and family, potentially push such a person over the edge or not quite far enough.

Anyway, on to the point of all this…

As philosophers of the 21st century, we must embrace a constant truth among a chaotic universe. We don’t need to look for some grandiose ‘objective principle’; in fact, we need to get over the objective-subjective dualism in order to make progress. A constant truth just means that it has stayed the same throughout the history of human language that the human mind instinctively organizes things through our mental processes and we call this illusive ‘order’ the truth of things. While illusive, there is consistency.

That consistency should be what we talk about. We need to end this dualism to progress into a new era of philosophy.

point taken

Good to see you start a topic Faust! I agree with what you said, and that is exactly the type of thinking I was hoping to engage in with people everywhere. People who don’t answer with yes and no, and “no this is how it is, you’re wrong”, but something that leaves room for discussion but also goes so deep as to actually make yes/no impossible. I do remember someone saying that serious philosophers often have nothing to say to each other, even if they oppose each other’s views, because ultimately, there’s as many arguments against something than there are for it and it just comes down to belief. Maybe that’s what is going on here, the serious thinkers have nothing to say to each other. I am not strong in any belief yet, and find it difficult expressing emotion for any ideal. Maybe it’s good, maybe it’s bad. Any chance to read the thoughts of those who have had the time to question and think their beliefs through however is invaluable, so that I may be able to reason my way to mine.I might be rambling. My apologies if I am, I’m a bit disoriented lately.

However, I am wondering, are the questions that define the life of a philosopher lead to a “better” life? A happier one? Constant thinking, overanalysis and the like alienate the individual or? If anything, philosophy just leads to a harder life, but one that the thinker still can’t resist?
Your nothing, in jest or otherwise, is well worth the read!

You sort of had me riding along on the OP until this. I’m inclined to ask you to expound some on ‘better’, see where that goes, keeping in mind our wish to remain expansive, lol. It’s just that I didn’t think the philosopher’s questions were prescribed that responsibility.

I feel we can work from foundational beliefs and filter through others thoughts in ways that help us understand where we fit in this world. The trick is not to be discouraged by antithesis from people you believe who want quite your thoughts. Even if there is polarizing thought between the parties concerned. If you allow yourself to lose ground of those foundational beliefs that lead to easier paths of comfort, then you don’t honor your core self. It’s important to ask questions, but in meaningful ways. Try to observe the question or situation at hand from different perspectives in your mind, then place it for speculation. In this way you distill the concept to a tincture that is most applicable to your well being that get gets you closer to a truth your mind can accept.

Nice post faust…even if you think you said little. I have always liked this subject. Here is my basic and perhaps only disagreement with what you’ve said:
Frozen concepts…Absolute ideas…It isn’t a Philosopher’s disease. It is a human disease, need, disposition…in fact “disease” offers a perhaps unintended valuation. This… condition is not born from a desire for Truth…feelings are prematurely introduced here; this too is the quest for Truth. We humans…and most dogs…perceive constancy, patterns, which, when retained in memory, pass as “knowledge”.
Human reason, intelligence, relies heavily on just these absolute ideas…not because they “are” in actuality so, but that we have minds that function by making them so. An “idea” is an idea by virtue of it’s boundaries…that is, because it is conceptualized, severed from the frenzy of “maybes” and “perhaps”. “We know of nothing…”, that very statement, however it might end, reflects that necessety of reason to proclaim in absolutes. The truth (and while reasoning, I allow myself such ideas) is that we can only speak of a very finite and miniscule part of the entire cosmos. There is no “we”. “Nothing” is too far ranging…too certain, absolute and frozen. I said before there is no real reason to believe in a “we” and after Hume who really can afford belief in the “I”. How far does this floating consciousness of mine survives into the past that I could trust when it asserts something as final and complete as “nothing”? Freud has been debunked on many aspects but one of the most resilient aspects of his philosophy was the idea of repression and a hidden away unconscious. Can we know without doubt that we know of nothing?
We are transient. What can we know but what is like ourselves? When we say what is real or what is not real, what is that but a confesion, a report, an expression, of the front-line of our perspective? But that that is our absolute. The dilema of the liar is that the liar, though a liar, is the only one we have as a reporter. We won’t know he is lying unless he tells us he is lying and we are stuck with having to rely on his honesty to discover his falsehood. Our concepts are often wrong. Our ideas which we thought were reflections of what was thge case prove to be only what we “thought”. We find that absolute ideas are not really absolute and that there are exceptions. But how do we find that error? If we were wrong once could we now be right? Could we trust our opinion to be right? No, we cannot, but we do. It is how our reason works and we have no choice. We go along finding illusions through not-yet-found-new-illusions.

I’ll agree that we as philosophers ought to avoid absolutes in our pursuit of “good” ideas. As I age, I find more and more that a certain degree of fuzziness in our thinking is always a good thing - at least, enough fuzziness to prevent our ideas from “freezing” as you put it faust. That way, there’s always room for our ideas to change if they have to. If the function of the philosopher was to find absolute Truth, it would be better to minimize, if not get rid of all together, the fuzziness. That’s why I believe the function of the philosopher is to steer the mainstream or dominant ideas that drive society in the best direction. What the “best” direction is depends on a lot of things - like current scientific findings, political climat, trends in popular culture, psychological and physical health, etc. - but as society is always changing (in fact, nature herself is always changing - I’m even willing to rank such change as a natural law), not philosophical idea should ever be written on stone tablets to be observed for the rest of time - there needs to be that fine degree of fuzziness, enough to allow future philosophers to tap into and bring out doubt and alternate ideas when the time for change is at hand.

But how do we decide what is “best”? Who should decide that? Should we philosophers appoint ourselves as the guardians of all ideas that are good and healthy for the masses? That’s what despots and crazed idealists in positions of power do. Well, what can we do? Someone’s got to take the reigns and steer society in whatever direction seems the best according to whatever standards seem most reliable. After all, this is generally what is done all the time anyway. If there were no preachers, politicians, rhetoricians, or whoever for the masses to look up to and ask questions of for the sake of having some guidance, they would just lead themselves (Skinner argued something similar with respect to operational conditioning - he said that we do it all the time to each other, and it was inevitable - might as well gain some measure of control over it). So, we do the best we can.

As it concerns metaphysics, say what you want about its “reality” - the word “real” really can mean a variety of different things anyway. The fact of the matter is, however, that the masses, whether they realize it or not, believe in a whole abundance of metaphysical truths. I don’t think this will ever change. Some believe that we ought to steer society away from metaphysics… as if one day, every man, woman, and child will be faithful adherents to the church of logical positivism, and then society will be set straight. Not to be too denegrating of the average Joe, but I believe logical positivism or any hard scientific doctrine about the nature of reality is a little over their heads. I think the more practical route is to provide them with ideas that are deemed “healthy”, ideas that lead them to better their own lives and those of others. Ideas do determine the way we live our lives after all… a great deal. That’s not to say that truth ought to be thrown out entirely, but it is to say that it ought to take a back seat when the mental, social, and political health of a society is in jeopardy. Besides, truth and health go hand-in-hand most of the time, but not always.

I’ll try to respond to all of these posts before I get to bed.

realun - no. Not everybody has a metaphysic. I don’t.

Rouzbeh - philsophers are free to create a horrible life for themselves, by adopting the values that will lead tro such a life, if that’s what they want to do. I just don’t think there is any point to that. I have no real argument against this practise - I just think it’s a stupid thing to do. If we are creating our own meaning, we might as well have some fun.

Ingenium - it’s not an absolute responsibility - heck, look at Kant. I’m not talking about any old philsophy - I am talking about good philsophy. It’s a stipulative definition - which philosophers are free to use.

Litenin - I don’t address conflict specifically - philosophy is always intellectual violence. But that’s part of what makes it fun.

Omar - it may be common among all humans - philsophers just have time to think about it. We do require pattern recognition - I think all animals do. Certainly predators do. But I think prey does, and herbivores do as well. We need to know what to eat, and how to acquire it. philsophers go beyond survival needs. Sometimes tragically. Sometimes comically. Like Kant does.

But there is no necessity to deal in absolutes. We just need to eat and go home. The rest is metaphysics, or epistemology, which is a species of metaphysics. I won’t play.

Gib - we decide what is best. What the best values are for us. That’s good philosophy. The revaluation of all values - for each of us, by each of us. There are no philosophies, only philosophers.

A coup d’etat of sorts. Where words are your weapon and reason is your armor…

Meaning, every man to himself?

That’s probably the way it actually works, but I was referring more to the function of the philosopher in society, and if one was to buy what I said, he’d probably take that as a compass for what makes “good” philosophy… either that or take a handful of suggestable people and start a cult with the ultimate end being to make money.

Litenin - words are all a philosopher has. Philsophy is the process by which we learn the fullest meaning of the claims we make. Those claims themselves are our opinions.

Gib - Both of those are regularly done. The money doesn’t always go to the philosopher - the middleman is often the guy who makes the dough.