Just to show that I am willing to run the risk, I will toss out a few possible examples:
1)Man’s understanding is finite
2)Man’s free will is infinite
3)Reality is consistent
4)I know I exist
5)Belief and opinion do not equate to knowledge
6)All is X or not X
7)All things being equal, don’t posit unknowns
Any system can have it’s own axioms, but that is obviously not helpful in this context. I am rather asking about universal philosophical axioms, the truth of which would go unchallenged by all but the most contentious and radical skeptics. I suppose that parabolic doubt would cause one to deny the existence of any such universal axioms, along the lines of “it is not possible to know anything for certain” but I would like to consider such extreme doubt to be the radical left or radical right wing of philosophy. I have a childlike optimism about the possibility of “universal” acceptance of at least a very limited set of philosophic axioms. But perhaps that simply reveals my ignorance?
It’s generally considered “safe” to assume one’s own rationality. This is a tradition from Descartes. But I think Dr. Crusher said it best on Star Trek “Alright computer, let’s assume I’m not crazy, because if I am none of this matters much anyway.”
Anti-solispism also seems to be, generally accepted for the same reason.
Most others are questioned. Quine is probably the most famous for giveing a logical argument for changeing our logic. Not saying he is right, just that things like the law of the exluded middle (6) are definately up for grabs right now.
Things like free will and the principle of uniformity of nature (3), were famously questioned by hume, and are argued ad naseum by contemorary philosophers.
(5) is generally considered true. The classic account of knowlege is a justified, true, belife. And most try to add more qualifcations to that, not take any away. Although, on a more Wittenstineinan view the differance might be harder to find. Under his view, for instance, asking the question, "do I have hands?‘’ simply means you do not understand language. In my shallow undergraduate understanding of his work- it seems he equates knowlege to practice, specifically the practive of language. To know what free will is, is to be able to use it in a sentance. Truly strange stuff.
(4), though widely popular, is questions on the grounds of identity problems. First, I must figure out what it means to be an I, than I can see wheater or not I exist. The issue would be that perhapse there is nothing to really maintain identity in what we now consider to be an indivisual.
I really like the idea of axioms, but I think that you can question even some of your axioms. Quine said something like “our knowledge is a web touching sensory experience only at the edges. When we have new experiences we can adjust the web of knowledge in many different ways. No belief is secure from revision. The guiding principles in the revision of the web are things like elegance, conservatism etc.” (End of “two Dogmas of Empiricism”. This is not a very good account of that text.) Quine even suggets that the laws of logic are revisable, if this is the best revision of the web, and that such a discovery would be no more surprising than the change to a heliocentric picture of the world.
So, maybe even some of our most fundamental beliefs will be revised. However, I think that one can see philosophy, and indeed all of human knowledge-seeking, as a game, where some things must be taken for granted. Not that they are “true”, they are simply rules that govern the game. One such thing may be that our beliefs must aim at consistency. This seems a necessary condition for what we call search for knowledge. Maybe you can find more. In one sense, these are axioms; they are the fundaments of our building of knowledge. However they aren’t “true”.
Yeah, I made that list hoping someone would say something. I know I really did not put in axiomatic form, so thanks. Just interested to know how one would go about building axioms on these concepts.
Yeah, but he doesn’t say how this could be done…only that, on his holistic theory of meaning, it could technically be given up if drastic enough changes are made to the system. What those changes might be remain a mystery. Quantum theory and related ideas in physics are said to “threaten” the axiomatic nature of the law of excluded middle; however, Quantum theorists themselves don’t even really understand Quantum theory, and that’s because, as Wittgenstein said, “we couldn’t say what an illogical world would look like.” The brain just can’t function in such a way that would allow someone to form concepts without using the law of excluded middle. Quine himself must assume the law of excluded middle in order to formulate the web-of-beliefs model (face it, either any statement can be held true come what may or it’s not the case that any statement can be held true come what may). At the very least, I think it’s safe to say that language, or at least the activity of assertion-making, would be impossible without this axiom.
If that’s the case, then how do you decide what things to accept and what things to question? If you’re prepared to leave some things unquestioned, then why not other things? In fact, why not just accept everything at face value and forget about philosophy altogether?
Every thought that passes through my head is proper grist for my philosophical mill. If anything can be questioned then everything should be questioned. It would be arbitrary of me to think otherwise.
Your Axiom “Nothing is absolute” I’ve thought about it. And I wonder if what you are saying is something along the lines of “The exception makes the rule” ? Or every rule was made to be broken? In other words, what something is, can also be explained in terms of what it is not. By pointing out the differences between a rule and it’s exceptions, one cements the validity of the rule. Or that failure to follow a rule does have the very consequnce that the rule predicted in the first place?
“Nothing is absolute”–yes, if this axiom must be true, one must break it too. So, I agree, failure to follow it renders it true. (Geez, what’s with the rhyme?) Now, the rule exception should not be incorporated here, no?
forget that Logic part.
“everything should be doubted”–I agree it’s not universal.
How about this: “We can only think of or imagine what’s conceivable”–I think it’s cartesian.
I think that Aristotle uses the principle of noncontradiction as a axiom (or basis maybe) for his Metaphysics, is this correct? It seems a good starting point at least, unless u want to argue against it.
Logo/ Good post. I think you and Tractatus may be right. However; Quines argument shows that the laws of logic aren’t axioms in the sense that they are thought evidently true by all reasonable people, as was looked after:
Philosophic Caveman wrote:
Polemarchus
Well, I’m quite unsure myself here. I do think that most things can be questioned. However, can you question that we should aim at consistent beliefs? According to what principle do you question it? I think that we can say that this rule is a condition for playing the knowledge-game.
We can question a lot of common-sense beliefs using this and other rules. We are then inside the knowledge-game, and questions can be decided (“rationally”) between reasonable people. However, we have two kinds of questions that cannot be answered by using the rules.
Questions like “is solipsism true” cannot be answered by the rules. I don’t think we can decide between if I really live or if I just am a brain in an experience machine which gives me images of other people.
Why should we accept the rules? Here we have three types of answers. First, some rules can be justified by other rules. Second, some rules (like “we should aim at consistency of beliefs”) cannot be justified by other rules. Third, some rules occupy a position in the middle - they can be “partly justified”. I think that induction may be such a rule (even though I really know to little about induction to say anything about it). So, there is no sharp line between rules that are rationally decidable, and rules that we use for deciding whether to accept other rules.
I am quite unsure about this and really know too little to speak of these kinds of things. I apologize for my confusing post. It is also of course not very original.
And yet the principle of excluded middle (the law of bivalence) is enormously controversial. Aristotle, himself questioned the validity of bivalence pertaining to contingent propositions. Russell, speaking on the topic of Vagueness, in 1923 said:
“The law of excluded middle is true when precise symbols are employed, but it is not true when symbols are vague, as, in fact, all [practical] symbols are…Now ‘true’ and ‘false’ can only have a precise meaning when the symbols employed — words, perceptions, images, or what not — are themselves precise. We have seen that, in practice, this is not the case. It follows that every proposition that can be framed in practice has a certain degree of vagueness; that is to say, there is not one definite fact necessary and sufficient for its truth, but a certain region of possible facts, any one of which would make it true. And this region is itself ill-defined: we cannot assign to it a definite boundary.”
Polyvalent logic came to the fore in the 1930’s. Lukasiewicz, Post, and Tarski, among others, helped dissolve the notion that there is a single, universal underlying logic of language and thought. Tarski, especially tried to show that there can be no precise language that is universal; that every modestly complex formal language contains meaningful sentences that cannot be shown to be either true or false.
The 20th century psychologist, Abraham Maslow, remarked, “If your only tool is a hammer, you treat everything like a nail.” Logic is a tool, so oughtn’t we to fashion it according to the job at-hand? Approaching every philosophical problem armed only with bivalence is like trying to build a house with only a hammer. This world is too rich a place for that.
There’s a tremendous interest these days in vagueness. Timothy Williamson and Roy Sorensen have each produced excellent books on the subject. Here’s an extensive bibliography of on-line papers on the topic of vagueness.
Yes, I know, the site is overwhelming. But then, that’s how the world is, isn’t it? It’s a fathomless profusion of richness.
Close your eyes, walk in circles - strike your intellectual shovel into the earth wherever you choose - there’s treasure wherever you dig. Perversely, the riches of this world are so abundant that we often become jaded and bored of them. If, for example, our ocean beaches were covered with diamonds, people would shout with delight if ever they found a pebble among the diamonds. Philosophy is a passion by which we learn to re-treasure the mundane. Art and poetry are allied passions with the same ends.
“Wisdom is…a matter of living both thoughtfully and passionately, bringing understanding to bear on every passion and forcing every passion into the light of reflection.” – Robert Solomon, Passions
You are completely free to form that judgement. I am not aware of any restraint on my judgment. I can form any judgement I like. The truth or error of my judgment is irrelevant. I am still completely free to form the judgement. Is man bound by space and time? Or does man consent to be bound by space and time? Is it an external or internal constraint? Is it a self-imposed constraint? Like man once thought that you could not exceed the speed of sound. And today we think you cannot exceed the speed of light. Perhaps the only thing that prevents us from leaving the bounds of time is the same thing that once prevented us from leaving the solid earth and soaring amongst the clouds. Certainly it was always possible. Man can form judgements about anything he chooses and he is not constrained in that judgement by any knowldedge or lack of knowledge whatsoever. This is infinite fee will. The freedom to from judgments. Don’t be too sure of this present day state of our knowledge. It will no doubt be re-written many times. Is the universe finite? How do you know? And yet you are completely free to make that judgement?
Vaugness is indeed in fashion today. In fact, one might say that the modern art of politics, philosophy, accounting, business, psychology, stock brokering, and any number of other fields that were once thought to be dependably not vauge have become extremely vague. Even health care becomes vague in such an age. But is this lust for non-specificity desireable? Does it enhance our ability to understand?
I agree that word games can and do get played. Nano-tech gibberish is the fine art of writing footnotes to financial statements that none but a Harvard MBA could conceivably interpret. To say that vagueness is popular is an understatment of gigantic proportions.
There is the story of the fat man. Who upon being told he was fat, promptly lost one gram of fat. He then asked, Am I still fat? And was told of course you are still fat. Losing one gram of fat cannot make the difference between fat and not fat. So he came back the next day having lost yet another gram of fat, and was given the same answer. No way can one gram of fat change a person from fat to not fat. And so each day he came to report the new loss of one gram of fat and each day was given the very same answer. One gram of fat cannot make the difference. Well, of course, goes the story, eventually the fat man became not fat. And eventually, it was one gram of fat that crossed him over the line from fat to not fat. So even though fat is a vague term, we clearly have a very distinct idea in our minds of the boundry between fat and not fat.
Just as we have a very clear idea in our mind between X and not X.
Philosophic caveman you are right I am free to form the judgement or attitude towards any givin situation, but action is different.
I’m also a man and I didn’t choose to be one, I was just born one. There are certain laws that we are just bound to in the material sense perhaps not the spiritual.
Free will does not imply unlimited power to alter reality. That would not be infinite free will that would be infinite god-like omni-power. Will is about being free to make choices about those things that are within our power to choose. Altering reality is not one of those, at least I am not aware of any power I have to alter reality. Perhaps we do have that untapped potential, certainly some people think so. Of those actions a man can take, you are infinitely free to choose any one of them. But moreso, when it comes to the exercise of your judgement, that is the area in which you exercise infinitely perfect free will. You can beleive what you choose no matter how wrong or how outlandish it may be. You can decide that something is true, no matter how false it is. There is no restraint upon the exercise of your judgement whatsoever. This is the very reason why mankind makes so many errors, because we are not constrained by truth or knowledge in deciding what we will believe or what we will consider to be true or false. We can adopt outlandish fanciful beliefs and we can act upon those beliefs, even though they are completely fallacious, and have no basis in truth or knowledge whatsoever. And men will do it everyday unless they exercise self-restraint. It is only by choosing to restrain our free will, by conscious effort to limit our judgements, this is the only way that we can avoid error. Our will is just as likely to choose error as truth. It’s a coin toss. Our will has no bias for truth over error. It is only our rational intellect that restrains our will and makes the choice to exercise self-discipline to have a regard for truth over error. for reality over dillusion.
