Well, being that social philosophers have been sticking it in the ass of humanity for the last three hundred years this really should come to no surprise or shock…
I first philosophized as a kid when I thought that maybe if you’re dead you won’t know it, so all you’ll ever know is life, so subjectively life equals all of your experience, and if you have nothing to hold as a yardstick next to your experience revealing where it falls short, your experience of life is subjectively and for all intents and purposes, infinite. That thought was philosophy, the emotions it gave rise to were weird to say the least and how to best deal with these emotions and figure out what to do with them is also philosophy. By shredding up the verbal games ad infinitum you’re avoiding the real urgent questions of what to DO with your observations, how to make them consonant with peace and contentment or whatever else it is you want. That’s where philosophy failed me. I had to find these answers on my own.
Wittgenstein took that thought to a conclusion: “Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.”
With respect to the relationship between language and logic on the one hand and actual conflicting human behaviors derived from conflicting value judgments on the other hand, how is this not typical of the academic/scholastic philosopher?
It asserts particular propositions about “right” and “wrong” to be true merely by asserting other things to be true in turn.
But in what particular context relating to what particular conflicting goods?
What does it mean to be both “smart” and “good” when confronting those on both sides of the abortion wars? Or in reflecting on any other moral conflagration of note?
Sure, he will have his own set of assumptions regarding the “right” and the “wrong” things to do. But how does he then demonstrate that these assumptions are not just political prejudices rooted largely in dasein, but are instead the values that all rational men and women are obligated to embrace in turn?
In other words, in order to do “consistently good things” you have to share his own political values. And then philosophy is used to channel those largely subjective values into one or another deontological contraption.
And, then, further [for some] this all becomes in sync [somehow] with a particular denominational God.
Objectively as it were.
If only “in their heads”.
I think that since Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Epicurus and Socrates not much has really been discovered in philosophy. Since then philosophy has lost steam because just as science both show more interest in correlations than causation. Academia is also to blame as it uses philosophers as patents. This state of affair is mainly what drove me into the metaphysics of the platonic solids and what I discovered went far beyond anything I could ever imagine.
Depends on who’s payroll you were on. If you were on the king’s or the church’s payroll, you made philosophy about being good because that’s what your employers needed everyone to be. Good. But any honest philosopher after hume knows that moral philosophy is like doing philosophy just for the exercise. Like walking on a treadmill. You’re not going anywhere but you’re walking, sure.
But you see how we reached a plateau in the nineteenth century in ethics. Every possible kind of social and economic problem has been identified already… no new problems, no new contexts. I agree with fukuyama in that capitalism is the end of economics… and therefore the end of ethics.
James wrote:
Where does philosophy take you to find that wisdom?
To critical thinking, logic, correlating, understanding. The only way is to experience indirectly or to experience directly.
The above is experience? Define experience as you’ve used it here, Artimas.
You can think about something that has happened to something or someone else and think about it… That’s experiencing it through your mind, indirectly as I put it.
Experience directly is when it happens to you, directly. Mind, physical, etc.
Logic is experience, because the more logical you are the more you can split and understand others experiencing as well as your own to reach understanding, knowing, etc.
Logic has to do with the relationship between assertions. One can experience logic and use logic, but it is not experience. You could make a case that grammar (partially) frames experience, but logic, nah.
And you can be very logical and not have the slightest insight into other people’s experiences.
To me, much like life itself, part of doing philosophy is getting lost in the karmic wheel for a while, with its pains and pleasures, gains and losses, trumps and defeats. To get lost in a world view or series of related world views, only to realize that everything you thought was right is nihil.
Once one hits that bottom, then one is close to approaching the philosophers stone, which is the death of philosophy itself, i.e. to cease from thinking, to observe and dwell in what is, this kingdom on earth.
Naturally, since one can’t live in this state permanently, one must go back into the wheel and take the experiences from the previous one, and continue to do the work and get lost in the illusions again, with all the pains and pleasures, gains and losses, highs and lows, and then reach bottom again, and then once again kill philosophy (aka, thinking) and dwell in the present moment again.
If one doesn’t get lost in the hallucinations and false narrative of the mind, one cannot appreciate the sublime silence, the sublime stillness.
Doing philosophy then, is both getting lost in illusion, and then coming out of it. Each circle being similar yet different from the previous one. That is also life itself. Of course, I am speaking only from my own experiences and am speaking only from this moment and time. My answer to what philosophy is, and its value, will no doubt be different every time I am asked, depending on what context my being is situation in at the time I am responding to the question.
Reason/logic doesn’t only have to do with assertions, you can definitely use reason/logic to reach a point of understanding of direct or indirect experiences.
If you are not reasonable, how can you reach understanding, of anything really.
Now I like what Socrates and Plato did here. This is one of better moments of Greek philosophy. They argued that a person is always good, but only in that they mean to do what they believe they should do…and one always does what one thinks is best… not in the sense of knowing what is best to do… which is irrelevant to one’s intention. They believed rather than men being bad, they were instead ignorant. One cannot be at fault for their ignorance, and therefore not intentionally bad. This is very fair and psychologically insightful.
But the down side of that was that Socrates and Plato couldn’t relate that theory to the manner in which I have come to understand the meaning of dasein and conflicting goods. Like any meathead objectivists they dodged the issue. How can Socrates and Plato apply what is in heir heads to, oh, I dont know, the issue of abortion?
Unless, of course, I’m wrong.
(That was the best forum member impersonation you’ve ever seen… and that was nothing)
But the down side of that was that Socrates and Plato couldn’t relate that theory to the manner in which I have come to understand the meaning of dasein and conflicting goods. Like any meathead objectivists they dodged the issue. How can Socrates and Plato apply what is in heir heads to, oh, I dont know, the issue of abortion?
Unless, of course, I’m wrong.
(That was the best forum member impersonation you’ve ever seen… and that was nothing)
It’s true though. I’d say in most cases.
Artimas
Wouldn’t that be more in terms of “reflection”? although I understand what you mean. Memory plays more of a role in the above, not experience.
Maybe it comes down to how we word+ our ideas, Artimas.
Logic to me isn’t experience. Logic is a form of evaluating and judging in a reasonable manner. A logical mind thinks clearly, more slowly and evalutes the evidence or what’s before it.
I think that we can only understand another’s experience through empathy. We can evaluate what we know of its outcome through thinking and reflection.
James wrote:
What are we reading the scriptures for - to gain scholarly knowledge or to see ourselves through them and through the stories and thereby come to know ourselves through them?
If we know how to read them and have expectations of what we’ll find in them, we may not find anything but what we already “believe” and expect. Aren’t scriptures supposed to "come alive’ for us?
Let’s not forget the finding of more question which is sometimes more important than finding the answers, especially the answers which we intuited we already knew.
If we’re so sure that we know how to discern truth, we may find it where it is not and what isn’t really truth.
I might have asked this question first: metaphysical truth or evidence and facts?
How do we discern truth, James? What, to you, is the most valuable important prerequisite for discerning truth?
I already asked you about that. 
The word itself means a love of wisdom BUT is that all philosophy is about - being wise?
What does that itself entail in relation to philosophy? 
But if you are not logical, thus not reasonable, how can you reach any understanding at all? Is empathy derived from logic because it is reasonable to feel in certain situations?