Over and again I come upon threads in the philosophy forum that basically encompass an academic analysis; a scholastic “argument” that is asserted to be true by yet more analysis still.
Which invariably brings me around to this: What “on earth” does this mean? How are these “theoretical insights” applicable to the world that we live and interact in from day to day to day?
Or, philosophically, is that beside the point?
To wit:
[b][i]Bruce Wilshire:
Kierkegaard, William James, Thoreau and others I admire are very close to Nietzsche in his condemnation of philosophers who will not or cannot reflect on their own persons: that is, wholly professionalized philosophers.[/i][/b]
…
[b][i]William James:
Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up in our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. There is in the living act of perception always something that glimmers and twinkles and will not be caught, and for which reflection comes too late. No one knows this as well as the philosopher. He must fire his volley of new vocables out of his conceptual shotgun, for his profession condemns him to this industry, but he secretly knows the hollowness and irrelevancy.[/i][/b]
…
[b][i]Leo Tolstoy:
There are many things to know in this world, but how to live is the only thing that matters.[/i][/b]
…
[b][i]Will Durant:
In the end it is dishonesty that breeds the sterile intellectualism of contemporary speculation. A man who is not certain of his mental integrity shuns the vital problems of human existence; at any moment the great laboratory of life may explode his little lie and leave him naked and shivering in the face of truth. So he builds himself an ivory tower of esoteric tomes and professionally philosophical periodicals; he is comfortable only in their company…He wanders farther and farther away from his time and place, and from the problems that absorb his people and his century. The vast concerns that properly belong to philosophy do not interest him…He does not feel any passion for pulling things together, for bringing some order and unity into the fertile chaos of his age. He retreats into a little corner, and insulates himself from the world under layer and layer of technical terminology. He ceases to be a philosopher, and becomes an epistemologist.[/i][/b]
My point is this: that wherever one goes with their “philosophical constructs” don’t forget about the part that pertains to the life that they live from day to day.
Now, sure, philosophy doesn’t always have to go there. I just wish that it did here. More often as it were.
And aren’t you able to “move on” to God?
Indeed, that’s why [for me] philosophy is most relevant when it explores the relationship between “how one ought to live” on this side of the grave [b]as this is then reflected [for the religious folks] in what they imagine their fate to be on the other side of it[/b].
Or, as I noted with zinnat on this thread – viewtopic.php?f=1&t=190059&start=250 – how do they connect the dots between the particular political values that they espouse in the "society and “government” forum and the manner in which they encompass valuing itself in the philosophy forum.
And I’m never reluctant to note the dots that I connect here — dasein, conflicting goods, political economy.
Once you explore philosophy and discover those constructs and the limitations of philosophy, then you can drop the philosophy entirely and just live from day to day.
On the other hand, I am always willing to probe those things in “existential contraptions” like this:
1] I was raised in the belly of the working class beast. My family/community were very conservative. Abortion [like premarital sex] was a sin. Big time. Both in and out of church.
2] I was drafted into the Army and while on my “tour of duty” in Vietnam I happened upon politically radical folks who reconfigured my thinking about abortion. And God and lots of other things.
3] after I left the Army, I enrolled in college and became further involved in left wing politics. It was all the rage back then. I became a feminist. I married a feminist. I wholeheartedly embraced a woman’s right to choose.
4] then came the calamity with Mary and John. I loved them both but their engagement was foundering on the rocks that was Mary’s choice to abort their unborn baby.
5] back and forth we all went. I supported Mary but I could understand the points that John was making. I could understand the arguments being made on both sides. John was right from his side and Mary was right from hers.
6] I read William Barrett’s Irrational Man and came upon his conjectures regarding “rival goods”.
7] Then, over time, I abandoned an objectivist frame of mind that revolved around Marxism/feminism. Instead, I became more and more embedded in existentialism. And then as more years passed I became an advocate for moral nihilism.
Which I believe is more in sync with what the folks above have in mind.
Whatever you say will just be some words which depend on the meaning of other words. The fact that you go from the general experience of men and women, to the specific experience of one man or one woman, does not change that at all.
One can still ask … What “on earth” does this mean?
On the contrary, my aim is always to focus the beam on the limitations of philosophy here. Only in recognizing this can one more realistically go on about the business of living from day to day.
But that doesn’t make this go away:
If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.
And I suspect that any number of objectivists react to the points that I raise here as they do because they begin to suspect in turn that it may well be applicable to them? Then what of their precious Self and their dogmatic moral/political agenda?
It situates both my value judgment regarding abortion and the manner in which I have come to construe valuing itself throughout the course of the life that I actually lived. I had certain experiences, met certain people, had contact with certain ideas and as a result of this “I” think as I now do about these things.
All the while recognizing how newer experiences, relationships and sources of knowledge might result in my changing my mind again.
That’s very different from those philosophers who imagine that one can think through to the most rational manner in which the rational man or woman is obligated to behave pertaining to abortion. Or to any other conflicting goods.
And certainly precludes the part about God.
Of course: Here at ILP all we have are words to convey what we think and feel. But those words can either more or less be connected to the lives that we lived.
How do you go about conveying your values pertaining to abortion [or to valuing itself] in that manner?
There is no “general experience” regarding abortion. Other than as a medical procedure without complications. Instead, particular individuals are confronted with any one particular unwanted pregnancy. What then can philosophers/epistemologists/logicians/ ethicists etc., convey to them regarding the morality of killing the unborn baby?
Epistemology is to me more what philosophy is about than day-to-day living. Having said that, I would like to see practical philosophy taught in schools etc. the two things are merely two of many different fields of philosophy, I don’t get why one should cut any given field out.
Those philosophers also met certain people, had contact with certain ideas …
And they derived certain principles which apply to other people. What’s so weird about that? What’s impossible about it?
The distinction that you make is frankly incomprehensible.
Some words have more embedded meanings and abstractions than others. But when you say anything, you are communicating an abstraction. That is true both for specific personal experiences and general common experiences.
Of course you can have a general experience regarding abortion. You just wrote an entire paragraph without referring to a specific abortion or pregnancy.
You never had an abortion or pregnancy. I never had an abortion or pregnancy. And yet I understood what you wrote.
Experience – the senses, are possibly all observational, words attempt to express our observations. They don’t directly interrelate, much like sound and light, if you know what someone means by their words, then a successful communication has occurred.
So we have different fields which have to be related and referred to one another via a third party.
Why is it a problem that we can’t merge everything into one? all things are informational - but saying that is cheating.
Doesn’t Iambig tend to engage in more theoretical babble than the average forum poster?
