Common sense

[Obw]

More and more ‘these days’ I see philosophical mess where there could be philosophical discovery. I think alot of this is thanks to the discipline being essentially derailed by a few key philosophers who, during a time when the world was slipping away from under them (new continents being found, the church in uproar, the pope unknown, nobody knowing their arse from their elbow) logically (psychologically speaking) turned to a metaphysical speculation that led us to ultimately question things ‘ultimately’.

Ever since then, we have lost our roots. As philosophers, we produce so much utter tripe. It is little wonder that professional philosophers have no job market. We have lost ourselves beneath a tirade of nonsense.

I am using this keyboard to type. Hume expects me to consider that this keyboard may not actually exist. However, I can see that it does and I certainly know that it is a keyboard, and that I am using it. More sensible philosophers such as Aristotle and Muller seem swamped, hidden beneath a shower of metaphysical rubbish that now seems to be detestably popular in modern philosophy. But why are they more sensible? What gives me the right to be so rude about those that disagree with them?

Well, very little gives me the right to be rude, so forgive me that. However, here is my argument: if we seek to achieve anything through philosophy (and if we do not, we may as well pack it all in now) then there must be something to work from. If we cannot accept anything about the world around us, there is no philosophy to be done. The fact is that the world is a certain way. The world works in a certain way. We can see this for ourselves very clearly. The fact that the world works in a certain way, and that the items in the world such as plants and animals also work in certain, often similar, ways shows us that there is a ‘certain way to things.’ It is our job, through philosophy, to determine and discover this certain way; this ‘Truth’.

It is there, we just need to mold our beliefs so that we fit the world better. That is what I consider the main job of the philosopher. To learn how to better fit our beliefs to the world we live in. We cannot do this without common sense, and if we continue to let ourselves trample on that which we know to make sense, we will continue to fail ourselves. If a theory doesn’t make sense, that is the first alarm bell as to the possibility of it being false.

As Grice once said, “It is almost always wrong to reject as absurd, false or linguistically incorrect some class of ordinary statements if this rejection is based merely on philosophical grounds. If, for example, a philosopher advances a philosophical argument to show that we do not in fact ever see trees and books and human bodies, despite the fact that in a variety of familiar situations we would ordinarily say that we do, then our philosopher is almost (perhaps quite) certainly wrong.”

[Future_Man]

i completely agree that the philosophical skeptics who make it their job to say that something isnt really ‘real’ when you think about it way too hard are wasting everybodys time.

what do you suggest they spend their time on?

[Obw]

Fitting our beliefs to the world we live in.

[Future_Man]

hey thats my favorite thing! i am the undefeated champion of twisting stuff to make it fit what i believe.

i think its funny how when something somebody believes turns out to be wrong, like their unflinching prepubescent belief in catholicism turns out to be silly, they uncontrollably associate things like the existence of god with organized religion, and therefore they believe that god is also not real.

i never realized that some of those annoying famous philosopher skeptics were skeptical because they lived during religions scientific puberty…

[Obw]

That’s a fairly acute observation you have made. Some of the most contested and most referred to works of philosophy were written in a time when that was exactly the case. Despite this, some people still cling to these works as gospel, although it is my opinion that something such as Descartes serves only as a way to shake up first year philosophy undergraduates before sitting them down to do some useful philosophy.

[Aeris]

You cannot simply categorize Catholism as “organized religion.” I do not defend Catholism as right, because it’s heretical; however, we must not put these beliefs in the category as “organized religion,” because it usually is that case that Christians are individuals in a society of heretics (other “so-called” Christians) although they are the ones living out the truth. So please if you will, restrain from that category, as we are living in the post-modern world.

[Future_Man]

the category ‘organized religion’, in my mind, includes any group of people who claim to know what god does besides the blatantly obvious. catholics are that. so are whatever your talking about.

we must not put these beliefs in the category as “organized religion,” because it usually is that case that Christians are individuals in a society of heretics (other “so-called” Christians) although they are the ones living out the truth.

aeris what are you even talking about? does it belong on this thread? ive written much more content-filled commentaries on catholicism much more worth your response in the religion forum.

[Obw]

@Aeris

You cannot simply categorize Catholism as “organized religion.” I do not defend Catholism as right, because it’s heretical; however, we must not put these beliefs in the category as “organized religion,” because it usually is that case that Christians are individuals in a society of heretics (other “so-called” Christians) although they are the ones living out the truth. So please if you will, restrain from that category, as we are living in the post-modern world.

This is off topic but Catholicism is an organised religion by nature. It has a structure, a set of beliefs, a head…etc.

[tmminionman2]

http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=141895

this thread is a good example. Instead of philosophy undermined, it is mathematics that suffers.

[John_Jones]

testjj

[John_Jones]

So you want philosophy to say ‘this, rather than that’…
Then you describe ‘this’ and note that it is not the same as ‘that’.
And I am supposed to be wiser for it? Of course I am wiser for it. But that is not philosophy. Once we get used to distinguishing this from that, we have no need for philosophy.

[wkraemer3]

@Future Man

the category ‘organized religion’, in my mind, includes any group of people who claim to know what god does besides the blatantly obvious.

Ummm…what is it that god does which is “blatantly obvious”? As far as I can remember pretty much every philosophy of religion class ever, we can’t even settle on whether or not god is possible. How can any “actions” of god be obvious when his existence is not?

[tmminionman2]

JJ,
if you ask a math question, you get a math answer. Philosophy never enters the debate.

[Poiesis]

@OxfordWill

More and more ‘these days’ I see philosophical mess where there could be philosophical discovery. I think alot of this is thanks to the discipline being essentially derailed by a few key philosophers who, during a time when the world was slipping away from under them (new continents being found, the church in uproar, the pope unknown, nobody knowing their arse from their elbow) logically (psychologically speaking) turned to a metaphysical speculation that led us to ultimately question things ‘ultimately’.

Ever since then, we have lost our roots. As philosophers, we produce so much utter tripe. It is little wonder that professional philosophers have no job market. We have lost ourselves beneath a tirade of nonsense.

I am using this keyboard to type. Hume expects me to consider that this keyboard may not actually exist. However, I can see that it does and I certainly know that it is a keyboard, and that I am using it. More sensible philosophers such as Aristotle and Muller seem swamped, hidden beneath a shower of metaphysical rubbish that now seems to be detestably popular in modern philosophy. But why are they more sensible? What gives me the right to be so rude about those that disagree with them?

Well, very little gives me the right to be rude, so forgive me that. However, here is my argument: if we seek to achieve anything through philosophy (and if we do not, we may as well pack it all in now) then there must be something to work from. If we cannot accept anything about the world around us, there is no philosophy to be done. The fact is that the world is a certain way. The world works in a certain way. We can see this for ourselves very clearly. The fact that the world works in a certain way, and that the items in the world such as plants and animals also work in certain, often similar, ways shows us that there is a ‘certain way to things.’ It is our job, through philosophy, to determine and discover this certain way; this ‘Truth’.

It is there, we just need to mold our beliefs so that we fit the world better. That is what I consider the main job of the philosopher. To learn how to better fit our beliefs to the world we live in. We cannot do this without common sense, and if we continue to let ourselves trample on that which we know to make sense, we will continue to fail ourselves. If a theory doesn’t make sense, that is the first alarm bell as to the possibility of it being false.

As Grice once said, “It is almost always wrong to reject as absurd, false or linguistically incorrect some class of ordinary statements if this rejection is based merely on philosophical grounds. If, for example, a philosopher advances a philosophical argument to show that we do not in fact ever see trees and books and human bodies, despite the fact that in a variety of familiar situations we would ordinarily say that we do, then our philosopher is almost (perhaps quite) certainly wrong.”

You claim that philosophers should make use of themselves, (which I agree with) but I have a lighter view of things. If a philosopher has a good reason to make you doubt you are typing on your keyboard, then he has a good reason, period. (.) Hume has some backing behind his arguments.

Also, common sense is not infallible at all. Common sense tells you the earth is flat, Bigger objects fall faster, quantum particles are in some definite position. Common sense is a rough approximation of the truth, no more. That I can commonsensically say “I am typing at my keyboard” doesn’t really prove anything. Philosophy is about why you know for sure you are typing, what gives you the right to say that, what is “knowledge”. If people have good arguments behind things that seemingly don’t make sense, you should be prepared to accept it (although you have reason to doubt it, of course).

[wkraemer3]

Brilliantly put Poiesis.

It is very, very unfair to discuss the skeptics because their arguments would make philosophy “meaningless”. To do so is to avoid a possible truth out of desire to keep philosophy “going”.

If the house must be torn down, it must be torn down. This is not to say I do or do not agree with skeptics, that really isn’t the topic at discussion here. However, to dismiss an idea simply becayse you don’t like it’s implications is very, very dangerous.

[hermes_the_thrice_gr (hermes the thrice great)]

@John Jones

So you want philosophy to say ‘this, rather than that’…
Then you describe ‘this’ and note that it is not the same as ‘that’.
And I am supposed to be wiser for it? Of course I am wiser for it. But that is not philosophy. Once we get used to distinguishing this from that, we have no need for philosophy.

been reading the Zhuangzi?

[hermes_the_thrice_gr (hermes the thrice great)]

@OxfordWill

More and more ‘these days’ I see philosophical mess where there could be philosophical discovery. I think alot of this is thanks to the discipline being essentially derailed by a few key philosophers who, during a time when the world was slipping away from under them (new continents being found, the church in uproar, the pope unknown, nobody knowing their arse from their elbow) logically (psychologically speaking) turned to a metaphysical speculation that led us to ultimately question things ‘ultimately’.

Ever since then, we have lost our roots. As philosophers, we produce so much utter tripe. It is little wonder that professional philosophers have no job market. We have lost ourselves beneath a tirade of nonsense.

I am using this keyboard to type. Hume expects me to consider that this keyboard may not actually exist. However, I can see that it does and I certainly know that it is a keyboard, and that I am using it. More sensible philosophers such as Aristotle and Muller seem swamped, hidden beneath a shower of metaphysical rubbish that now seems to be detestably popular in modern philosophy. But why are they more sensible? What gives me the right to be so rude about those that disagree with them?

Well, very little gives me the right to be rude, so forgive me that. However, here is my argument: if we seek to achieve anything through philosophy (and if we do not, we may as well pack it all in now) then there must be something to work from. If we cannot accept anything about the world around us, there is no philosophy to be done. The fact is that the world is a certain way. The world works in a certain way. We can see this for ourselves very clearly. The fact that the world works in a certain way, and that the items in the world such as plants and animals also work in certain, often similar, ways shows us that there is a ‘certain way to things.’ It is our job, through philosophy, to determine and discover this certain way; this ‘Truth’.

It is there, we just need to mold our beliefs so that we fit the world better. That is what I consider the main job of the philosopher. To learn how to better fit our beliefs to the world we live in. We cannot do this without common sense, and if we continue to let ourselves trample on that which we know to make sense, we will continue to fail ourselves. If a theory doesn’t make sense, that is the first alarm bell as to the possibility of it being false.

As Grice once said, “It is almost always wrong to reject as absurd, false or linguistically incorrect some class of ordinary statements if this rejection is based merely on philosophical grounds. If, for example, a philosopher advances a philosophical argument to show that we do not in fact ever see trees and books and human bodies, despite the fact that in a variety of familiar situations we would ordinarily say that we do, then our philosopher is almost (perhaps quite) certainly wrong.”

Oxford, whose common sense? the common sense of you and I as first world westerners? Or the common sense of Chinese people? or the Common sense of aborigines in australia who have a thousand words for grasshopper (a bad joke, a joke yes, but a bad one)?

Common sense refers to one thing - the accumulated acceptable “yes” answers of a certain community in a certain time and place

[tentative]

I’ll chime in with H3 on this one. What is common sense to you has absolutely nothing to do with me (necessarily). Here’s a common sense saying, “There’s just no accounting for the way other people see things.”

JT

[Obw]

@Poiesis

You claim that philosophers should make use of themselves, (which I agree with) but I have a lighter view of things. If a philosopher has a good reason to make you doubt you are typing on your keyboard, then he has a good reason, period. (.) Hume has some backing behind his arguments.

Also, common sense is not infallible at all. Common sense tells you the earth is flat, Bigger objects fall faster, quantum particles are in some definite position. Common sense is a rough approximation of the truth, no more. That I can commonsensically say “I am typing at my keyboard” doesn’t really prove anything. Philosophy is about why you know for sure you are typing, what gives you the right to say that, what is “knowledge”. If people have good arguments behind things that seemingly don’t make sense, you should be prepared to accept it (although you have reason to doubt it, of course).

Yes, very well put. I agree with you - Hume has good arguments that need to be looked into. His validity is often undeniable as for others. Common sense is certainly not the measure by which we determine truth. However, it is a tool that we should not be so keen to throw out. Hume, Descartes…infact pretty much every modern philosopher is happy to throw out common sense the moment it conflicts with their theory. This is the ‘step too far’ that to my mind is causing the problems.

This is the difference between a valid and invalid philosophy. Hume has his reasons and for the most part they are good. However, for me at least, a theory that never produces any positive results (I’m turning to Descartes again here) and merely causes philosophical destruction is surely a big warning sign as to the amount of attention and respect we should be paying it. We have never gotten anywhere or to anything from this kind of philosophy, and for me, a theory that produces no useful results is a theory to be fundamentally questioned (as with Grice). If I cannot accept that my pen exists then we are met with a brick wall.

[Obw]

@hermes the thrice great

Oxford, whose common sense? the common sense of you and I as first world westerners? Or the common sense of Chinese people? or the Common sense of aborigines in australia who have a thousand words for grasshopper (a bad joke, a joke yes, but a bad one)?

Common sense refers to one thing - the accumulated acceptable “yes” answers of a certain community in a certain time and place

Hi Hermes,

Well this is an important point. I do not of course mean to be too particular about common sense. I cannot write up ‘common sense’ and expect it to not be somehwat relative. However, I refer to a more fundamental common sense. My 4 year old daughter (for example) knows that this is a keyboard. She can tell me and other people that it is a keyboard. She has no idea who Hume is. She definitely knows it is a keyboard, and not a chicken.

We can make this keyboard possibly become a pen, by attaching some ink and a tip. We cannot, however, make it a chicken. Not even if we try very hard. She knows this, too. This is the common sense I refer to.