The tools of philosophy

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

in thinking about the relationship between science and
philosophy, and how science does or doesn’t impact philosophy,
is a question that engages me…

Science has all kinds of tools, both physical and theoretical…
the theoretical involves the use of theories, ideas like evolution
and Fractals, math and experiments… which leads us too the
question of, what are the tools within philosophy?

We have models, paradigms that we can use to make judgements
about… Plato for example uses the paradigm of ‘‘Eternal forms’’
that the world is dualistic, we have the permanent, forever forms,
of circles and squares and triangles… Plato considered those forms
as eternal… universal, forever… the problems lies within the fact
about these question of universals… for the life of me, I can’t
find something that is actually eternal, forever, universal…

The common offering of universals lies within the idea of
dogs… that the idea is that dogs, are as a class, are
a universal…but the question arises about this idea of
universals… are dogs actually a universal idea or have
we expanded the idea of one dog into being an entire class…
a universal… the idea of universals is a useful idea, a tool
in which we can then use compare and contrast with
other universals… but leaving out the question about
universals themselves… does the concept of a universal
actually, exists or has it been artificially created in order to
compare and contrast? The Medieval period was big on
this concept of universals… and little good it did them as far
as being able to advance the ideas of philosophy…

The question here is not about the usage of universals,
but the question of the tools that philosophy uses to discover
whatever the hell is that they discover… as far as I can tell,
the tools of philosophy are limited because they don’t engage
with or interact with this something we call, reality…
the question becomes, how do we apply the tools of philosophy,
(and who knows what exactly they are) to what really matters,
which is life and how do we go about this thing we call life?

Let us try this, we have areas of study within philosophy,
we call these categories Metaphysics, morality/ethics, political science,
logic, Aesthetics, epistemology… and these branches or categories
are means of organizing philosophy into clear and distinct areas of
study…and within these distinct areas of studies, what tools
are we using to engage in those studies?

Let us take Metaphysics for example… what is the classical
definition of Metaphysics?

Metaphysics: investigates the fundamental nature of reality, existence,
objects, and properties… Key topics include ‘‘ontology’’ which is
what exists, space, time, and causality… so, what tools are we
to use in this study of Metaphysics? Math, science, logic,
imagination, faith? and the very choice of a tool, be it
science or faith, then determines the nature of this study…
the tools determines the way a subject is approached…
by using faith, that tool changes the topic of Metaphysics
into something different than the tool of science, or the tool
of math… the lens we use to study a topic changes the nature
of that topic… if we were to study ‘‘ontology’’ the tools we use,
be it science or faith or math,… changes the nature of this
‘‘Ontology’’ the study of being… The tool that Heidegger used
was tying being into what the ‘‘Greeks’’ believed to be
the nature of being… the comparison was with the ‘‘Greeks’’
that was Heidegger tool… but the question arises, is
‘‘Being’’ actually something we can investigate? one notices
that the statement, ‘‘I am’’ is a complete statement…
grammatically anyway… but what tools will we use to
explore this complete statement, ‘‘I am’’…logic?
The problem with ‘‘Logic’’ is that it doesn’t have any real
world existence… logic is an artificial concept that has
no existence within the real world or within reality…
so, how does one use an artificial concept like ‘‘Logic’’
to study a ‘‘possible’’ real world existence like being,
‘‘I am’’…

I suspect part of the problem within philosophy itself,
it fails to use the right tools for the questions it asks…
and then comes the realization that it is possible, indeed
quite likely that there are no answers to some of these questions…
an example of the is this question, ''What is the meaning of
existence/life?" if there is meaning, what tool would we use
to explore that concept? Mathematics? What does
1 + 1 = 2 bring to the table in terms of the ‘‘meaning’’ of
existence? Or what does the scientific truth that the
Earth is 93 million miles from the sun, bring to us the
answer to the meaning of existence/life? That black holes
exist, what does that tell us about the meaning of existence?

This suggests to me, that we are using the wrong questions,
the wrong tools in philosophy… the question of ''why do I exist?"
is a common enough question, but what tools would we use
to answer that question… the idea of universals, of math,
of science, of faith… indeed, I would argue that using the tool
of faith to understand our own meaning is the wrong tool,
the wrong question… using black holes is a excellent
way to approach this problem… black holes as a concept,
was mathematical concept derived from one of Einstein’s
equations, but it was decades before physical proof of
black holes existed…and today, we have physical, concrete
proof that black holes exist…and let us try to use the concept
of god, in the same way we used the concept of black holes…
as a theory, a concept, god exists, but there is still no
physical or concrete evidence that there is a god… even after
god as a concept has been around for thousands of years…
until we have actual, physical proof, god as a concept is
theory, not fact, and not a particularly strong concept…
black holes at least had a mathematical basis or support,
there is no basis for belief in god outside of faith…
because once again, what tools would we use to explore
the physical reality of god? This question of tools lies
at the heart of what philosophy is/does…
Which tools are the right tools within Philosophy?
Now one might say, we can’t answer that question
until we know the question of philosophy we are engaged with…
Thus, Metaphysics would use one sort of tools, and we would use
in the study of Ethics a different tool… and in political philosophy
we would use an entirely different tool or a combination of tools…

I suggest that part of the ongoing problems within philosophy
lie in the use of or the lack of understanding in both the tools
we need and the understanding that not all questions have
answers… philosophy has failed in large part because
of this failure to use the right tools in our quest for understanding…

Kropotkin

2

So, given the above, what tools should philosophers engage with?

If we recall that the Greeks felt that the universe was rational
and thus knowable, that by logical/rational thought, that they
could come up with knowledge of the universe…
and we still hold to this belief into today… that the universe
is a rational, concept that by science, we can know and understand
the nature of the universe… but given what we know today,
is this certainty, and it is certainty, can we be certain to
‘‘know’’ the universe in this fashion? What is the right tool to
use in philosophy today?

I would say it is clearly not certainty, but in fact, doubt is the tool
we must engage with…to hold to certainty means that we also
believe, rightly or wrongly, that we then hold to the truth…
certainty suggests in holding the truth… but give our current
state of affairs, it is clear that we, at present, don’t have
any idea of the truth, in either science, or philosophy…

I hold that we cannot be certain about anything…
and thus, we have a chance of understanding because
we don’t hold to holding the truth, certainty…

I hold that there is no such thing as certainty, nor is there any means
that by such tools as science or philosophy, that we can in fact reach
the truth… for the universe is not rational nor is it logical…
and how does one find the truth in an irrational universe?
that prospect never entered the Greek Mind…
recall that the Greeks were engaged in theory about the
nature of the universe, they didn’t engage with experiments
or seeking out practical research into the nature of the universe…

For me anyway, it is quite clear that the universe, no matter how
hard we try to turn the universe into a clear, certain reality,
the truth is that we live in an irrational, illogical, random
universe… where chance and probability are as strong a
factor in the universe as the laws of the universe…

Take theories like evolution and the big bang theory…
they are basically probability theories, where chance played
as much a role as rationality…and that is, in part, why we have
failed in philosophical theories because we engage with them
as tools of certainty and the universe being rational and logical…
whereas we cannot hold to a rational, logical universe…
there is no evidence for that…the Greeks believed in
logically consistent theory of the universe whereas I hold
that the universe is not logical, not logically consistent,
nor is it rational… or thought of another way, if god did
create the universe, he didn’t do it logically nor did he
make it logically consistent… we don’t live in a rational,
logical universe… it is a universe of chance and probabilities…
a random universe… and how can we find a rational universe
within a random universe? I have no idea how to square the circle
here…and the tools needed to explore a random universe is
far different than the tools needed to explore a logically consistent
universe… and that is why we have science has, to a large degree,
failed to work, because science is predicated upon a rational,
certain universe… but the real problem that lies in philosophy
is entropy… going from order to disorder… and what does
disorder mean philosophically? we are not only not using the
right tools, we aren’t even talking the same language…

Paul Feuerabend brought out this in his book ""Against Method’’
if there are no universal rules or method to science, then
what does that say about philosophy? what does/can philosophy
say about entropy? a basic fact of our universe, of going from
order to disorder? that much of our own language hinges on
the fact that because we don’t talk in the same language, or use
words in the same way, we talk past each other…
Feyerabend called this: incommensurability…
the actual definition of incommensurability is this:

Incommensurability: is the quality of lacking a common measure or
basis for comparision… which means two things cannot be
directly compared using the same standard… it describes
competing theories that lack a common framework, making
rational comparison impossible…

this incommensurability that lies at the heart of science also
lies in the heart of philosophy…This means we cannot compare
science with philosophy because they use vastly different languages
and different goals… How can we compare science with philosophy
if they use different language, goals, agenda, and techniques…
and because the Greeks are engaged in a different language,
different means, different goals, that we cannot ever hope
to rightly understand Greek philosophy/science…

The Greeks believed in a rational, logical universe…
one that can be understood if one practices the philosophical
method… but just as we cannot compare apples with oranges,
we cannot compare Greek philosophy with our own…
it uses different base of understanding as the starting point
within both…The real language of today is not the Greek
starting point, of logic and rational thought, but of entropy
and probabilities… our very starting point is wrong…
and as we know from traveling from one place to another,
begin at the wrong starting point means we end up god knows
where… the very tools we use, the Greeks used logic
and rational thinking whereas we cannot use rational thinking
about irrational actions and thoughts…

And this very change in the way we think, using entropy and
chance and randomness as our base, instead of logic and
rational thought… we will get totally different answers to
our totally different questions…

So, given the random nature of the universe, what is the
tool we should be using, if we don’t use rational or logical
thinking…

Kropotkin

3

Well some did.

Not quite all of them. You had the tragedians and stuff, and the Dionysians… also Zeus wasn’t known exactly for his orderly behavior nor was the succession story from Ouranos downward very ‘rational’ in the sense Euclides might have prescribed.

But they did invent logical deduction. A part of the myriad they did.

4

In thinking about philosophical tools, we have to
also think about context of those tools…
We tend to think of philosophical content as being isolated
from each other…For example, Nietzsche’s ‘‘Eternal Recurrence’’
is an idea that is taken out of context… it has to be understood
as part of an overall context… as an idea, it cannot stand alone…
To make sense, it has to exists within the confine of other idea’s…
Every idea requires some context for it to make sense…
and context requires some sort of background in which this idea
has some relationship with other ideas…

Another example, this idea of ‘‘the meaning of life’’ as a stand alone
idea, it makes no sense… ‘‘my meaning of life is’’ requires some
sort of context with my life in general… we fail to understand
many sorts of ideas because we attack them in isolation from
other ideas… the question of my own meaning cannot be
answered because it is tied up in this question of what is the
meaning of life for the human species… but if we were to
expand this even more, what is the meaning of existence for
life itself? Which then requires us to investigate the question
of what is life? and that requires us to go back to the beginning…

scientists hold that the universe began, via the big bang,
roughly 13.8 billion years ago… the Solar System itself,
has been around for roughly 4.5 billion years ago, give or take
a few years…and the question of life, it is believed that life itself
began roughly around 3.8 billion years ago… so, in basic terms
life began pretty soon after the creation of the Solar System…
but multicell life didn’t begin until billions of years later…but why
didn’t life go beyond single cell organism for billions of years?
the basic idea is that life had to ‘‘wait’’ for conditions to change
within the environment itself to present the right conditions for
life to evolve…life is dependent on its environment
to make changes sufficient enough for it to become something
new… life itself is a self-organizing entity… but it is limited
by its environment and the rules of the universe…
for example, one of the rules of the universe is gravity…
life may be a self-organizing entity, but it still is limited by
the rules of the universe… life cannot change in defiance of
the rules of gravity or the strong nuclear force, the electromagnetic force,
or the weak nuclear force… life must obey these rules/laws…
and one of the organizing principles of the universe lies within
entropy… which is the principle of moving from order to disorder…
life exists because it continually organizes itself, maintaining order
in the face of the constant attempt to disorder that challenges
the universe…what is entropy? it is simply the movement of
energy from one system to another… I am growing old, that is to
say, I am losing the battle of entropy… order or energy within me,
is quietly leaving me… I have less energy today then I did yesterday…
and with each passing day, I lose energy… and if enough energy
leaves me, I have permanently suffered from a loss of energy…
The very nature of being human lies within this constant moving
of energy… toward me is order and away from me is disorder…
A basic fundamental principle of human existence lies within
this movement of energy… without this movement of energy,
life itself is impossible… so, this is just another brick in the wall
in regards to us being human…we human beings requires
energy to exists…no energy, no existence…

What this seems to suggest is that in order to make sense of
being human, requires us to go beyond just philosophical concepts,
it could be said the entire point of existence, human or otherwise
comes down to the acquisition of energy… the tools of humans
requires energy to build, create and to maintain… as the
equally potent rule of existence says that we constantly
move from energy in, to energy out and if enough energy leaves
us, entropy wins the battle… and we die… to be rather blunt,
the question of existence in some very basic way, revolves around
the question of energy in, and energy out… so seen this way,
the meaning of life could be this question of how we gain or
increase the energy going into us as living beings, as well
as energy going into the systems we have created…
This could be, perhaps the key question of existence,
the movement of energy… and thus, it could become
the meaning/purpose of existence… the flow of energy to
us and from us… to our systems and away from our various
systems… the question of life is the question of energy/ or entropy…

Kropotkin

5

let further examine this idea…

I have both seen and been a victim of the energy problem
within the business world… one name is Job burnout…
I have heard people say, and I have said it myself,
‘‘I need a vacation to recharge’’… in other words, our work
has taken more energy out of us then it put back into us,
thus, we are in need of ‘‘recharging our batteries’’ as they say…
and then in terms of this energy, what is part of the energy that
we get and put out in terms of work/business…

I get paid because I put in some effort at work…
both effort and payment are matters of energy…
the business deems our effort/energy as being worth
X amount of dollars… we are trading that energy/effort
in work to a paycheck from work… in terms of order and
disorder, working as in putting more effort in than one receives
back, that is entropy… moving from order to disorder… the business,
basically, steals our energy as its own and pays nowhere near
the amount of energy we put into something…
basically, we turn our personal effort /energy into the corporation
and received back a fraction of energy we put into it back as
checks… This state of affairs is why capitalism is doomed…
it takes more energy to run a business then it can put out…
the equation of business does not equal out…
it takes more energy to run a business then it gives back
to the state/society… hence the society/state is slowly
growing into a state of entropy… moving from order to disorder…
because the leftover energy isn’t going into the state/society,
it is going into business/corporations… hence their rise to
domination… this is why we are in a clear state of moving
from order to disorder in our society/state… too much
energy is staying in the business world and not enough
going into the state/society… thus, disorder…

but Kropotkin, what about the state? staying in your own terms,
doesn’t the state take away energy from people and thus, moving
the society into a state of disorder? No, because the state is always
moving money, (and money equals energy) back to the society…
we have the welfare state and that is a very good thing because
it takes money and redistributes it back into the society…
while a massive tax cut to the wealthy is a failure because all
the wealthy do with that tax cut is put it into the bank or
hides it in overseas banks… for taxes to be a plus benefit,
it must be reinvested back into the society… the movement of
energy…again, think of money as being equal to energy…

You want to MAGA? the answer lies in the movement of money/energy
back into the hands of those who actually spend it, every single day…
that is where the strength of energy really lies… it must be
continuously brought back into the society as spending money…
and that inclusion of money, is really an inclusion of energy into
the society… part of the problem is that we don’t realize
the connections between work, effort, money and the society…
for a society, any society to succeed, it must have enough
energy to able to grow beyond just simply survival…
convert money into energy and we begin to see the real truth
of existence… money/effort is what grows a state/society…
moves it from being static to being dynamic… and that
state lies in where the money/effort is…

Kropotkin

6

if we think of existence in terms of energy spent, then much
of our existence changes in its nature… ever heard someone
say, ‘‘man, that guy is draining my energy’’ ‘‘they aren’t worth
the energy to hold them as friends, they are too draining’’
we begin to see how the universe is about energy/entropy…

If we change our perspective from money to energy, we will
see existence and aspects within existence, such as work,
changes its very nature…in fact, I would say that the
aspect of exchanging money for energy, is a waste of time…
why should I be spending my life working when I don’t get
enough energy/money back to justify it… but this idea can be
expanded… why should CEO’S receive millions in money,
and I receive very little based on energy spent?
the CEO of my workplace before I retired, made
15.2 million dollars in compensation, while I made roughly
43,000 thousand dollars… in terms of energy spent,
why does that CEO make so much money? Is his energy
spending that much greater than mine? His compensation is
based on other factors other than energy spent…
and therein lies part of the problem within capitalism,
there is no relationship given between energy spent
and compensation given to employees… Money
becomes the final factor in deciding who get energy/money
from the corporation… But Kropotkin, there is no real way
to compare energy spent on the amount of pay one gets…
but we do that every single paycheck… regardless of energy
used, the pay remains the same… it is fixed… and
how does that create incentive for employees to make
a real effort if it isn’t based on energy spent? and I tie
this argument into an earlier post where I questioned
the incentive a society or state uses to get its citizens
to become a bigger part or use more energy on behalf
of the state/society… if I have no voice in the state, where
is my incentive to help the state maintain or grow bigger?

so, both in matters of the state and within business, one
of the questions comes down to what incentives does the citizen/
employee get to invest further into either the state or the corporation?

So another question of existence becomes incentives needed to
move us forward…

Kropotkin

7

Are you an LLM?

8

ProfessorX:
Are you an LLM?

K: I actually had to look this up…I don’t even know
how to use AI… and frankly, I will never use AI… it is
a very lazy way of doing things… and I oppose it in
every way possible…

Kropotkin

9

So, in my ongoing research into the ways and means between
science and philosophy, today, I shall look into the philosophy
side of things…

I have and have read virtually every major philosophical text that
has been written in the west… From Plato to Kuhn and Feyerabend…
and part of what I have noticed is that I cannot relate what
these writers and their philosophies to my own life…
just an example, Plato and his eternal forms…the creation of this
dualism within reality does not track to what I see… as Descartes
dualism doesn’t track with the reality I see… the mind/body problem
seems to me anyway, to be an artificial problem… as does Hegels
spirit problem… his ‘‘spirit of the age’’… and for the life of me,
I can’t tell what this means to me in trying to understand our own
situation…

Or to say this an entirely different way, what I read in philosophical
texts, doesn’t seem to apply to my life and situation… I can’t see
how Plato forms or Nietzsche’s ‘‘eternal reoccurrence’’ impacts
me as a human being or as a philosopher… Most written philosophies
as constituted today, has no relevance to me… if there were
philosophers who have impacted me, I would say they were
Socrates and Kierkegaard, and the commonality of both is that
they begin with the human being…not with the theory, but
with real life human beings… I don’t see life as an answer,
but as a question…and at least Socrates and K, seem to begin
there…The other group that has application to me, to my own life, seems
to be the Existentialists… they at least attempt to connect the one,
a person to their reality as it exists…

Which brings us to the question of a universal idea of philosophy
vs the one/individual idea of philosophy… in other words, is there
a philosophy that can be considered to apply to everyone, to be
universal? I don’t see that… the tools of philosophy do not lead
us to any sort of universal, applicable to everyone who is or
was alive… and this thought, that there is no universal philosophy
that can be applied to everyone, takes out much of what we think
of as philosophy… it removes Plato for example as a philosopher
we might want to follow… because his philosophy has no universal
application to everyone… and it removes such philosophers as
Augustine and Aquinas as well as Descartes and Hegel…
or to think of this differently, it removes those philosophers
who think in terms of systems…for a system, any system
to work, it must take into account all aspects of people,
things and events.. it must be inclusive to everyone or
universal, applies to everyone equally…

if the ‘‘tools of philosophy’’ don’t allow us to create
a universal, applicable to all philosophy, where, exactly
does this leave us?

Let us try this:

I hold that the liberal ideal of the last 200 years, of expanding
the rights of human beings, including the right to vote, as a
primary and fundamental value we should reach for? but voting
itself is not actually the universal value we are working on,
but the universal value is this, that people should have
the right to decide for themselves, past, present and future,
what type of life they want to lead… the freedom of choice
is the universal value, not democracy/voting itself…
that democracy is the best means to allow people the right to
make their own choice, that is the means to the freedom of choice,
not the specific political theory… we can see this within the
Declaration of Independence:

‘‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain
unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and
the pursuit of Happiness’’…

and try to find the universal value that is being offered here?
it isn’t by a specific political system, for none are mentioned,
but it does say that as a universal value, that all men are
created equal, as a universal value, that all men are created
equal, that all men have ‘‘certain unalienable rights’’..
that is the universal being offered… not any specific
philosophy, but the universal right to practice values
based on rights, not on any specific policy choices…
and then the role of government is instituted to protect
these rights… the government is not instituted to promote
any specific policy, but to promote the individual’s rights
to engage in the pursuit of ‘‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit
of happiness’’ however the individual practices or wants
to practice those individual rights…
The universal rights being practiced is ‘‘all men are created equal’’
and they are ‘‘endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights’’
and we choose the form of government that best allow us to
achieve these individual pursuits within the confines of a state
or society…and which social or political systems seem to be
best at working out this individual’s pursuit of ''Life, Liberty
and the pursuit of Happiness?“”

this makes the political/economic systems apply to the pursuit
of our individual rights, and those are best done within systems
of choice… and within this idea lies the failure of
a dictatorship and any totalitarian political systems… which includes
a monarchy…for who has the final say within the Monarchy?
why, the monarch of course…and we can include any sort
of economic system that removes our freedom of choices…
which includes economic systems like slavery and communism
and feudalism… and within the very recent failure of capitalism
by which they remove our ability to make our own economic
choices… because within economics, the primary reason
for capitalism is to create maximum profits, but it has no
interest or care/concern about individual within that system…
it is part of the ‘‘costs’’ of capitalism… regardless of the
certain damage individuals receive within capitalism…
the rejection of the Declaration statement that

‘‘all men are created equal’’

the capitalism system exists to create wealth, not to
help or improve individuals within that system…
capitalism, as a system, couldn’t care less about the individuals,
as they are, within capitalism, simple tools that are used to
create wealth, and they have no other value beyond that
creation of wealth…or as every boss I have ever had, has
told me, that I am expendable, and within capitalism,
everyone is expendable… except for the wealthy, the rich
are the only ones who aren’t expendable in capitalism…

So, the question we need to ask is quite simple, under
what system, economic or political, can we achieve our
rights as defined by the Declaration? Not as universal,
applicable to everyone, but as an individual person…
If we are, as the Declaration declares, ‘‘born equal’’
how do we go about achieving this? What system, either
economic or political will allow us to practice the idea
of everyone is ''born equal?"

What this really comes down to is this, what is the point
or meaning of human existence? is the goal of existence
for human beings really about just creating profits?
or is the goal something bigger, something that includes
all of us? But Kropotkin, you have already denied any sort
of universal, applicable to everyone approach, to the theories
of existence? So, now what?

What tools are we going to use to work out this problem?
are the tools of Plato or Hegel or Nietzsche going to solve
this problem? I think the answer is pretty clear on this…

Kropotkin

10

Well, this site is full of tools.

The original text being evidence enough