I think much of philosophy comes down to asking and answering two questions: what is certain/true and what is important.
A lot of it has come down to answering both questions with: nothing. (nihilism)
But then there’s the area wherein you get: nothing is true and not even that, and for the true nihilist, nothing is important and not even that.
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But then one could argue that asking what is important already makes asking what is certain or true superfluous.
That is either true or not
And is that not imporant?
If it’s not important, it wouldn’t matter, you would not be asking it. So it only matters whether it’s true if it, you know, matters.
Thus asking what matters makes basically any other question superfluous.
But then a direct question: what truly matters? Is it not the case that some things only appear to matter?
(reversed: which truth matters?)
Ah, well, I have three thousand years’ worth of literature for you.
One problem with truth is that, as a concept, it is exhaustive. Technically, unless you know all of it, you cannot be said to have any of it, or, in any case, the rest of it hypothetically exists if even in a hidden form.
This is the extremely profitable hamster’s wheel that science will never come off of.
On the other hand, importance is very local and has no need for exhaustion to operate fully, even with theoretical locality (not just practical locality).
In one way you’re right. The question what matters, or rather the answer to it which is subjective, engenders the question what is true. Like: Im thirsty, and the nearest brook is this way or that way. From that you get the impulse to know the area and make a map. Which is a schema of truth. Deeper down you get knowledge of food and even of the digestive system. So maybe science derives from practical things that matter.
On the other hand if you start with the question of what is true, it’s not certain you arrive at anything that matters. Unless you answer it with: it is true that I am thirsty and from that follows that it is true that I want to find something to drink. Does it matter whether or not I find the brook? To whom? Maybe it doesn’t matter, but that doesn’t matter either, so Im still going to walk on and try best I can to be ‘wise’ in the primitive sense.
Hesiod said that in some ways it is better to have half than the whole.
That nobody would sit in the midst of dehydration to ask whether it matters that they are thirsty rather answers the question.
A person still might. It would be because they have a distress even more profound than thirst, and this still answers the question.
I thought about this also. In any case it is not certain a baby knows the thirst it feels means it needs to drink.
It would have evolved in this way. Those genes that quickly find out or already know that they must drink, at least those that do not resist it, survive.
But is it objectively true that they need to drink because they are thirsty?
It is true that they survive better if they do drink. Is this what matters?
It kind of gets messy.
What is true? That question is meaningless and leads to nothing. Any half experienced philosopher would ask “true about what?”
What matters? That clears your mental up pretty quick.
I think I showed that what matters leads immediately to that about what is true. But any answer to it need not always engender that which matters.
And Im not sure that what is true does not in a primal way also directly lead to a sense for what matters. Like, if I am out in the field, and I ask what is true, I may well look up at the sky and see the stars, which gives me some deep sense of truth even though I dont know about what, but it also gives me ‘will’.
For Socrates, I get that what matters most is freedom.
He is willing to tell a noble lie in order for Greeks to be free, by which he means to not act in fear.
So he sacrifices truth about certain things for what matters.
But what he really sacrifices is uncertainty about certain things, he replaces it with a lie. Or with what he thinks is possibly a lie.
So belief in the lie makes men geared towards what matters. Or thats how he seems to see it.
Is this true, though? I don’t know for certain. It seems it makes sense for it to be true but hm.
Maybe if truth is actively being made subservient to what is deemed to matter, this affects how much that thing (here, freedom) actually matters, or is actually freedom.
He didn’t think his Topus Uranus was a lie. That was what he thought the truth was. The lie was how he got to it. The exposition.
The lies were many.
If what is true matters, and if asking what matters always leads to whatever is true that matters, then already asking what is true is superfluous, if you are asking what matters.
Here, things start getting messy when you stop asking what matters and randomly start questing for what is true. Suddenly you end up with meaninglesness.
Nihilism is probably largely a byproduct of the lack of satisfaction guaranteed to take place at the much vaunted pursuit of truth.
The nihilist rightly concludes that he had been running around in meaningless circles, playing word games.
In fact, the very question “is it true” implies that it matters, failing which the answer is unnecessary, thus also the question.
But the answer to “what matters” is never unnecessary, unless it be because it is obvious.
He lies, or is at least bit messy about that, too. He says that such a city might not be wholly possible (thus not wholly true), but that that is not the important thing of his inquiry. The inquiry is after whether it’s desirable, what is desirable about it. He concludes that it should be, not that it can be.
So what is truth is the quest and the desire driving the quest, not the object of the quest.
I don’t think so, because when you ask what matters, and you get an actual answer, what matters is generally not a universal unspecified thing, but something at least more or less specific, be it ‘the good’ or ‘food’ or, ‘good food’ - you arrive at the necessity of arriving at what matters, and this requires truth, but does not imply or, provide it. Truth needs to be harnessed from experienced independently. By means different from those whereby we find what matters. So it’s not superfluous, even though it may be seen as contingent. (But then there are those for whom what matters most fundamentally is truth).
Socrates was able to gather what matters to him and his interlocutors, but not whether it would he possible to arrive at it, because he did not know if it is entirely aligned with factual truth. I could say that here, the relationship of mattering and being true here is like the form one wishes to chisel out of the marble as what matters, relating to the marble and the hammer and chisel and the sculptor as the truth. In this simile, Socrates’ method (equipped with his knowledge) is itself the truth, because it’s what he factually has to get to what matters. Does that make his method superfluous with respect to the City he wishes to build? But that’s interesting, as what has mattered about his whole work most to people might actually be the method.
Well let’s be clear, the method is what matters to most people, it is what has stood the test of time, it is why Socrates has survived as a pillar of philosophy, not the particular City/Topus he was after. Can the method, which is the truth, the means, the working reality, the fact, then be called superfluous? Was it not ‘secretly’, as nature likes to hide perhaps most from the one possessing it, the object?
The meaning here is the difference between subjective and objective truth. The former is more closely related to what matters, the latter is more closely related to what happens. The third question, first explored explicitly by Hegel (implicit in Plato), the philosophy of process.
I think you can convince yourself, that asking for what’s true arrives you at what matters, but what you would really be doing is taking the long way to what matters to you at a given moment, and replacing a questioning of it (and what matters in general) with whatever you dress it up with.
This is the reason children insist on the why, not on the what, and psychoanalysts ignore intended content.
But where did you get that idea? We have been agreeing that the primary question is what matters.
We disagree on how asking after truth comes into play here. You say it is superfluous to ask after it, I say it is under most circumstances less fruitful to begin with it, but necessary if one wishes, after having asked and answered what matters, to actually arrive at what matters. Not at knowing that it matters - we were already there, it is our departure point for looking for truth - but at actually getting (to) it; acquiring it, becoming it, attaining it. Unless of course, all that matters is what is already given, or at least always within reach.
Philosophy is about the exploration of the human mind, mental experiences, and the whole of existence itself.
Its not wrong per say, but philosophy is also a study about shifting your point of view. To see new things and interpretations while looking at the same thing.
The key problem that births this is the fact that we do not know the whole “truth”, and because of that, every idea we have about truth and reality, is subjective to us.
We are a mirror placed in the corner of a room.
We are only aware of what gets reflected off of our surface.
Is that image reflected in the mirror true? It most certainly is because its a reflection of reality. Doesnt matter how twisted that reflection gets, the source and origin remain the same.
However thats also the limit to it.
Its never the whole truth.
The mirror does not know whats outside the room. Whats behind it or to it’s side.
Its reflecting what fall’s within it’s range of influence. Nothing more, and nothing less. Hence it’s idea of “reality” will be always subjective and limited to it’s own scope of perception.
Hence the chinese proverb: There are three truths. Yours, mine, and the truth itself.
Nihilism is merely one of many deductions coming from a fact, and the fact is that nothing we build or do will last. Thats simply a fact.
What your reaction to that fact is, is mostly opinion, based on individual taste. Some give up, some construct their own goals, some even hand craft their own meaning of life and bypass the original fact altogether.
Complete falsehoods do not exist because they’d be antithetical to the concept of existence itself.
You can lie about things, but even the lie will be constructed with truths.
Each word you use for your lie has a meaning, a purpose and a concept that is true to itself.
Something that could be described as “nothing is true” is akin to the concept of void.
You cannot name it, you cannot speak it, you cannot conceptualize it, because it runs counter to all of existence.
Completely pure falsehoods do not exist. Every lie has to be constructed with a framework of truth.
No, superfluos as a basic philosophic question because, if it matters, it will follow the question of what matters.
There are many good philosophical questions. If you want to wittle it down to the absolute primordial, the question of truth is superfluous. It will come up by itself later, maybe, as a function.
Well, not maybe. It certainly will in pursuit of what matters, as you’re going to need some practical knowledge. So this is why I would not call it superfluous. But we’re just mincing words here around a basic agreement on the main issue. As far as I can tell.
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