Kant ask, why has the sciences been far more effective
then the philosophers? in other words, why has science
been so successful in understanding the world,
when philosophy like metaphysics has been
unsuccessful in understanding the world?
metaphysics has been a problem since the age of the Greeks…
questions of the three traditional problems of metaphysics,
the nature of being, the cause of things and the things that
do not change…I realize that other crap has been thrown into
metaphysics, but let us deal with that in a moment…
why hasn’t philosophy correctly understood these three
problems of metaphysics?
why hasn’t there been any progress in metaphysics like
there has been progress in science?
I would suggest that its because science deals with
objects that can be experiences in some fashion through
the senses…objects that can be measured, weighed,
contrasted and compared to other physical objects…
you can learn something about an object by comparing
and contrasting it to another like object…
you can compare mars to Venus and by doing so,
you can learn something important about both…
you can gain knowledge that can be measured, weighed,
contrasted and compared…what you see is what you get…
there is nothing “metaphysical” or outside of the senses
in regards to Mars or Venus…it is science which means
anyone who bothers to look will see the same thing…
they might interpret it differently, but they will see the same thing…
in fact, they might interpret it differently because of
the person doing the interpretation might be doing so via
the prism of myths, habits, biases, prejudice and superstition.
you see Mars and say, that was created by God and every observation
after that is seen in light of the idea that Mars was created by god…
because your initial thought was wrong, it leads the entire observation
to be mistaken……… and that mistake is the basis of judging reality…
which leads one to mistake reality for something else…….
so the scientific method must begin without any bias or
judgement or prejudice, so that the original observation doesn’t become
bias because the original observation was flawed from the beginning……
so when we look at metaphysical questions, it is assumed that
our questions about the nature of being or the first cause of things (god)
or things that do not change (the soul) actually exists…
but, but we cannot look at a person and see a soul… we
cannot find a soul, no matter how hard we try…
but it is assumed that a soul must exist and will exist eternally…
and so we look for evidence for such a thing… we try to find the
the existence of a soul, the thing behind what we see and we cannot
understand why we can’t find it… well, we can’t find it because it
doesn’t exists… there is no thing behind the thing… we see a person
and that exactly what we have… nothing extra, nothing metaphysical,
nothing beyond the physical…….nothing that will exists forever…
we can’t see the soul because it doesn’t exists and it surely doesn’t exists
forever………
that is why science has progressed far beyond metaphysics
in philosophy… that is why science has been far more successful
then metaphysical concepts………
because there is no there, there in metaphysics…
if we drop metaphysics, the three questions of metaphysical thought,
then perhaps philosophy will be far more successful…in other words,
if we change the question/questions of philosophy, we might have more
success with philosophy………
in other words, we are reevaluating philosophy…
we are engaged in an attack upon our basic principles
of philosophy and this is according to Nietzsche, might,
might, lead us to an overcoming of our convictions that
has lead us nowhere in our understanding of philosophy……
a reevaluation of philosophy itself may be just what the doctor
ordered………. what are the “real” questions of philosophy?
what should we really be asking? if we dismiss the traditional
questions of philosophy and start over, what will we have?
what questions should we be asking instead of the traditional
questions of philosophy that have lead us nowhere?
a revaluation of values in philosophy itself…
quite a scary proposition and perhaps one that we now need…
Kropotkin