Philosophy and Experience

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“Philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a device for dealing with the problems of philosophers and becomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men.” --John Dewey

Dewey’s pragmatic approach to philosophy was based on empirical experience. How much of philosophy is really based on this? And how much of philosophy should be based on this?

I ask specifically with respect to one’s personal philosophy. An overall worldview should, naturally, influence and define one’s day-to-day approach to life but often we speak about these things quite academically. We don’t always live that which we purport to believe.

But as we get older, it occurs to me that rather than a worldview influencing and defining one’s life, one’s life begins to influence and define one’s worldview. We gain experience…we make observations…we’re able to examine things that happen to us and analyze them based on prior experiences. A worldview begins to form, or become better defined, based on experience.

It is this process, Dewey’s “cultivation,” that shapes our beliefs and gives them form. It is life experience where philosophy perhaps begins.

Yes? No? Maybe?

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and of course this is why the youth say that you can’t trust anyone over 30…

you have to be young, immature and ignorant, not experienced in the ways the world actually works to hold many of the idealistic positions the youth hold…

experience is the best teacher? no…

experience is the only teacher…

and they continue to bang their heads into the wall…

-Imp

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That’s just Imp’s jealously, because he has had ten years as a post grad and still doesnt know anything! :stuck_out_tongue:

Actually, I agree with him, well - his sentiments.

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Somehow, I get the feeling that no matter what I might say, I’m screwed. :stuck_out_tongue: Sooooo, looking for the most PC answer possible… It seems to me that there is a difference between reading a road map, and making the trip… I can read in a few minutes what might takes hours or days to drive…

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And why anyone over 30 says that you can’t trust the youngsters…

Experience teaches you about experience, philosophy teaches you about philosophy. I’m not sure that either need have anything to do with one another.

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SIATD,

Can I infer then that you would fundamentally disagree with Dewey’s quote above?

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Yes, you can. If someone tries to hurt me or someone that I love then I don’t think about Aristotle before leaping in. On reflection I can’t argue against such a mode of action either…

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But the experience of the someone trying to hurt you, and the subsequent experience of you leaping in, and the results thereto, will have an impact perhaps on how you view things thereafter, no? That is to say that the experience (perhaps all experiences) will help shape and mold your overall viewpoint. Philosophy then, so I am taking Dewey to mean, is not something done in a vacuum and studied laboriously in the classroom. It’s an active process and an ongoing one that becomes, for an individual’s worldview, more and more refined as we grow and gather more experiences.

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For many years I was a total pacifist. I did not engage in
fighting and did not condone any fighting. It was a philosophical
decision and ran concurrent with my being an anarchist.
As real world events showed me my anarchism,
was inadequate for the times I lived in, I also
discovered that pacifism was also inadequate. An event
occurred which finally broke me from pacifism and not
to long after that I broke with anarchism. Experience showed
me that my philosophical beliefs were insufficient, inadequate for
my life. A theory in theory might work, but a theory must
go into life and then see if that theory is adequate, useful,
needed. I am not afraid to take my theories, beliefs, and
put them to the torch of life, and see what survives, what is
still useful. Pacifism and anarchism failed the test of
experience for me, for others, they might be the way to go.
My liberalism has survived the test of experience, and
I know it works. So I keep it.

Kropotkin

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So Peter, how do you explain that you and I, a mere one year apart in age if I remember correctly, have come to such different points of view about, for one thing to name an example, the proper role of government in our lives?

Please understand that I’m not here to argue one POV versus the other, we can do that elsewhere. I’m just trying to get a handle on this experience thing.

Different experiences do you think? Or do we filter our experiences through some predetermined point of view that we’ve carried with us? In other words what, I am wondering, is the true role of experience in how we consider the world? How much is experience and how much is some predilection? Is it possible that one can take an experience to show one thing while another would take the exact same experience and see something else in it?

And if that’s the case, how much can we trust our experiences?

I’m asking only because I don’t know.

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I agree, JT.

I was kind of wondering if we could get some of the youngsters around here (with less life experience) to make the contrary argument to this…

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Perhaps so, I’m not sure of my particular psychology concerning this, I just know that there are plenty of times in life when philosophy (or any discussion whatsoever) is a waste of time or worse, an obstruction. I could philosophise continuously about the texture of a woman’s vagina as we’re having sex but I don’t think that I’d achieve very much. I suppose that it depends on the woman…

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The contrary argument is ‘why bother to take the journey when you can read a map in five minutes and imagine the rest for yourself?’

It’s a failure, that argument, but it does make the one point that is vital in all discussion of life experience, namely that experience isn’t the only game in town, it should never be used to curtail imagination (discursively, politically, whatever).

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I agree with this, SIATD. In fact, it could be argued that experience often gets in the way of imagination. We hesitate to try something, something that can be done, because of some experience in the past where we’ve failed and come to the erroneous conclusion that the something cannot be done.

Still, it’s an important factor this experience thing. One that cannot be ignored. More importantly, I’m not sure it’s possible to ignore it. Once one has experience in a given thing, the experience will influence one’s perception of the thing.

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Jerry:So Peter, how do you explain that you and I, a mere one year apart in age if I remember correctly, have come to such different points of view about, for one thing to name an example, the proper role of government in our lives?
Please understand that I’m not here to argue one POV versus the other, we can do that elsewhere. I’m just trying to get a handle on this experience thing.
Different experiences do you think? Or do we filter our experiences through some predetermined point of view that we’ve carried with us? In other words what, I am wondering, is the true role of experience in how we consider the world? How much is experience and how much is some predilection? Is it possible that one can take an experience to show one thing while another would take the exact same experience and see something else in it?
And if that’s the case, how much can we trust our experiences?
I’m asking only because I don’t know."

K: It is a tough question and I am 47, so yes we are close in age.
anyway, I believe we are born blank slate, Locke’s Tabula Rosa.
I taught children for many years, swimming, and I believe this is true.
Children don’t know what to afraid of unless they are told.
Anyway, Experiences, family, school, church, state, media, all
play a role in creating the human being known as Jerry.
there is no inherent form in the mind. Now some people are
naturally bolder then others, and some are more cautious then
others, one can see this in large families, I am one of 5 and some
are bolder then others in my family. Anyway, our experiences teach
us how to even view the world. DAD: “Now son remember the world
is a tough place and you have to be on guard at all times”
And warned we look at the world as a tough place, and
its not hard to find what you are looking for, if it does exist
in some fashion in the world. So experiences confirmed the
warning of dear old DAD. So step by step we are lead to
a political philosophy, that matches our viewpoint of the world.
the machiavellian idea, that all man are the same, from the
beginning of time to the end of time, men are either good or evil,
and they can’t change their ways anymore then a leopard
can change its spots, and we reach the conservative viewpoint.
Not from some inherent political philosophy, but from our
vision of the world as shown by experiences.
A person can become conservative from natural
inclination, being just natural cautious, I suppose, I can’t rule
that out, but I believe it is experiences that lead us to
our political viewpoint. How much can we trust our experiences?
What else can we trust? It is in the interpretation of our
experiences, that lead us to take viewpoints, and even
those viewpoints/interpretations are created by our prior
experiences.

This much I believe to be true, first of all,
Liberals, I believe have a positive viewpoint of people.
Conservatives have the most negative view of people and
The political group with the most positive view of people are
anarchist and each viewpoint is created by experiences.

Kropotkin

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To address the original question,

The experience it comes from is as abstract as possible, and the experience it applys to is the practical informed by the theoretical. To address PK, everyday experience, in the way he speaks of it, seems to be particulars which either confirm or seem to falsify the universal. But then, sometimes particulars do not turn out the way we expect them to on our theories, for some reason which we should try to discern.

PK, by anarchism, do you mean that everyone is good enough to rule themselves? Do even good people do bad things because of failure of good human nature?

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Well, I tend to just strike a balance between both ways of doing philosophy. I know philosophy should be applied to one’s life, to fit my beliefs better with the world around me, but I also enjoy just mind-in-the-sky speculating which I know will get me nowhere.