Philosophizing means that something is in play; something is up for doubt.
Doubt and uncertainty keep us alive and in play. Certainty is out of play.
Nothing in life is certain, most of all philosophizing. Philosophizing asks: Are you certain? (Nothing is certain, including the proposition that nothing is certain. Question everything, including the command that you should question everything.)
A settled question is out of play. We no longer seek new answers to a settled question. Philosophizing unsettles a question.
This freedom is contrasted by the settled answer, the official answer, the authorized answer. Authority involves the fossilization of useful ideas. Ideas are biological product and likewise have a shelf life of utility. They are the shell temporarily used until the organism grows and needs a bigger shell. Growth involves abandoning old certainties in favor of new possibilities. On the far end we of change we have unsustainable growth and inevitable collapse while at the other side we have stagnation and death. Sustainability is between these extremes. The disease of cancer is the impulse of life gone too far.
The product of philosophizing is philosophy, temporary solutions. Every great philosopher took something that had been settled, unsettled it and then offered a new temporary solution. Although not all of them may have recognized the time bound nature of their proposed solutions.
Philosophy is the ‘Glass Bead Game’ [Glasperlenspiel] of the mind controlled by only a few Overlords and Master players. They are the ‘artists’ who create the kaleidoscopic variations on all the themes of existence, the art of existence and existence itself. Truth is based only on what convinces and remains a residual of the best manipulations of the symbols of play.
Certainty is the end of a journey. Once we arrive there we must start looking for new uncertainties. When you run out of uncertainties sometimes you must smash the old certainties. Philosophizing does this. It breaks old bonds. It unties old knots so you can make new nets. When everything is certain, then everything is over. We live in-between. Certainty makes up our backbone, while uncertainty forms the living flesh that allows the bones to do more than just bleach in the sun.
Metaphysical theories were originally invented by thinkers who (in the main) displayed an aristocratic contempt for ordinary language and empirical knowledge – and hence for the manual labour on which both are based. Ordinary language and empirical knowledge are grounded in communal life, which means that they are ultimately based on collective labour and common understanding.
In the West, this ancient, aristocratic world-view found expression in the use of specially-tailored jargon – wherein nature in effect became the reification of Indo-European grammar. So, subjects, predicates, and practically any vaguely relevant word – especially participles of the diminutive verb “to be” (i.e., “is” and “being”) --, were imbued with profound ontological significance. The grammatical structure of a few specially-selected sentences was now capable of revealing the underlying structure of the entire universe. To take one example: if language contains negation, so must reality.
i feel that this is a good question, because many people might instictively answer yes – i.e. because pragmatism proports to take this “one step at a time”, or to draw only (temporary) conclusions based on a strict criteria of acknolwedged facts, i feel that to extend the idea of pragmatism must be more deeply thought out.
to borrow from the raft theory of philosophy, if i were to constantly work on my raft while i was on it, then there will be undoubtedly periods in which some parts of my raft must be held secure while others are being repaired. these parts are, persumbably but not necessarily, the bits where i am currently sitting while repairng said raft.
now, if the raft is my belief system, repairing it is my current state of knowledge, then it follows that there are parts of pragmatism that are in fact foundationalist. indeed, even pragmatism’s committment to poisting the type of human knoweldge available (i.e. justified on a narrow idea of experience) seems foundationalist.
does antifoundationalism escape a similar trap? well, it does if it does not attempt to argue its viewpoint. it is perhaps free to criticize other points, however.[/code]
