Which is First?

gib,

Do we KNOW HOW to live or do we learn how to live moment by moment? I think that it is an ongoing journey learned by following both contiguous and non-contiguous paths.
We learn by our experiences, both the negative and the positive ones.
The negative ones, if paid attention to, can teach us more I think than even our positive ones.
Our mistakes are scattered all over to learn from.

A baby may also be able to teach you if you pay attention to one. First you at times must learn to live by crawling, then by taking baby steps…putting one slow wobbly foot in front of the other.

Logic is first. Philosopher should do more than just opine. They should make arguments for their positions. Good ones, preferably. Ethics is the disguise for the real work of academic philosophy outside of logic - which is politics.

Philosophy is that of discussing values and existence in a way that science alone is inefficient or not up to task for.

That’s nice and succinct. :smiley:

The chicken.
No, no.
The egg.
No, no…

One could say, with only some accuracy, that science tells us what we know and philosophy tells us what it means.

That’s a little “greeting card philosophy” but everyone likes greeting cards.

Almost everyone.

Actually we can say with very remarkable accuracy indeed that science tells us what we know while philosophy tells us what it means because
science pertains to knowledge [ scientia means to know ] and philosophy pertains to wisdom [ philo means love of and sophia means wisdom ]

Not Russel, but Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege put logic first. The modern logic (logistic, analytic etc.) was founded by Frege. Frege was Russel’s mathematical, logical, philosophical father.

I would put logic first.

Philosophy is primarily about logic. In other words: "Philosophy without logic“ is no philosophy. Even if you put other philosophical fields first: you have to always answer the question whether your thinking about them is logically right or false (wrong). If ontology, epistemology, phenomenology, ethics are not logically right, then they are almost nonsensical, without any philosophic and scientific basis; and ontology, epistemology, phenomenology even contain the word "logic“, so any comment is superfluous in those cases.

They are not underrated by their continental friends. Gottlob Frege was German (thus: continental European) and Russel’s mathematical, logical, philosophical father. Frege founded the modern logic - both the modern mathematical logic and the modern philosophical logic - logistics, analytics etc…

Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege influenced everyone, also Edmund Husserl who followed Frege especially by adopting his distinction between logic and psychology (cp. Frege’s „Sinn und Bedeutung“) which led Husserl to his kind of phenomenology.

Yes. Logic comes before all other branches of philosophy. Just as "mathematics without logic“ is no mathematics at all, "philosophy without logic“ is no philosophy at all.

A child in a womb can already behave according to logic - but not according to ethics. Every child’s development shows clearly that logic comes before ethics. Also is behaving according to ethics earlier than knowing about ethics.

Living comes before thinking. That is absolutely right. But that does not mean that ethics comes before logic.

It goes like a circle. When living without ethics has reached thinking, then it has reached logic and starts going backwards: from logic to living, which is now a living with ethics.

Even the most primitive laws are based on ethics based on logic. So they are primarily based on logic. The reason of any taboo and any totem may be ethics, but reason is not cause. They are caused by logic (based on logic), because only logic can lead to ethics. Ethics without logic is not possible. Logic without ethics is possible. Even an anarchist has to argue logically when it comes to the elimination of laws.

Do bacteria have ethics? No, but they are behaving according to logic. Logic does not require ethics, but ethics requires logic (otherwise such "ethics“ would not really be ethics).

So if we are arguing according to development in general or evolution and history in particular, we have to put logic first. Logic was before ethics.

A child in a womb can already behave according to logic - but not according to ethics. Every child’s development shows clearly that logic comes before ethics. Also is behaving according to ethics earlier than knowing about ethics.

So again: You are absolutely right about the fact that living comes before thinking. But you should not confuse ethics with living, because ethics does not mean "living“ (but the philosophical [!] answer to the also philosophical [!] question: "what should we do?“). Living can but does not have to lead to thinking, and logic can but does not have to lead to ethics.

I think I agree with Sauwelios in that there is no “first” philosophy in terms of what must be developed first–it’s more of a hodgepodge of thought that we go through as we develop and grow, every area of philosophy impinging on every other in parallel. But I do think that as one exercises one’s rational thinking skills, one gets better at fleshing out all other areas of philosophy.

But there is a hierarchy within philosophy.

Also, there are more than those five “fields” that are mentioned in the opening post of this thread.

What is that hierarchy? In my discussion with Sauwelios, it became clear that “first” is unclear. It could refer to chronological “first” (what must develop first), it could refer to dependency “first” (what is based on what), or it could refer to priority “first” (what ought to come first). Either way, you could have a hierarchy. The “hodgepodge of thought” I described in my previous post only rules out chronological first. It’s not like a child must first flesh out his rational thinking skills to the brim before even starting to think about other philosophical topics. It’s more parallel development, but the more logic is developed, the better you become in other areas of thought.

It is not a “parallel development”, precisely said. It is just the development that shows why logic is the first field of philosophy.

I know that in modern times ethics is the one that philosophically attracks more than the other philosophical fields. But that does not mean that ethics must or should be put first.

In fact, it is a parallel development. What child do you know of who studies logic arduously until he has mastered all its intricacies before moving onto any other field of thought? Though I understand what you mean–though all fields of thought develop in the brain more or less simultaneously, there comes of a point when we have exercised logical thinking enough to recognize that in all other fields, we’ve been making mistakes and, to an extent, must start over.

Again, this depends on in what sense we mean “first”–if by “first” we mean what ought to take priority, then moral philosophy, by definition I’m willing to say, ought to come first. However, in terms of what depends on what, or what is a prerequisite to what, I’d say logic comes first, for without logic, one can’t derive anything of worth from any other field. This needn’t be construed as a conflict of priorities–it just means that if we are to arrive at the best, or the most reliable, moral conclusions on matters of life and things of importance, we must hone our skills at logic and rationality first. Therefore, exercising our skills at logic and rationality serves our pursuits in moral philosophy in the long run. Taken to its logical conclusion, one can say that we have a moral obligation to hone our logical and rational thinking skills in order to think through all other fields of thought with the most care and in the most productive way.

“Wrong”, not “false”. Logic can only establish whether an argument is valid, not whether it is sound. That is to say, it can only determine that, if an argument’s premisses are true, the conclusion must also be true; it cannot establish whether the premisses are true.

And even this holds only insofar as reality is logical–i.e., insofar as it corresponds to human reason.

You’re confusing two things here (perhaps not in your mind, but certainly in your words). A bacterium need not behave according to logic; it may just seem to behave that way, because we cannot think otherwise than “according to logic”–i.e., to human logic.

This is the profoundest insight with regard to logic. The rest is–no more than logical. To be sure, this insight requires the good use of logic. It is logical thought apprehending its own limits.

We cease to think when we refuse to do so under the constraint of language [note: not necessarily of words]; we barely reach the doubt that sees this limitation as a limitation.
Rational thought is interpretation according to a scheme that we cannot throw off.” (Nietzsche, The Will to Power, section 522, Kaufmann translation.)

“We are unable to affirm and to deny one and the same thing: this is a subjective empirical law, not the expression of any ‘necessity’ but only of an inability.
[…] Either [the law of contradiction] asserts something about actuality, about being, as if one already knew this from another source; that is, as if opposite attributes could not be ascribed to it. Or the proposition means: opposite attributes should not be ascribed to it. In that case, logic would be an imperative, not to know the true, but to posit and arrange a world that shall be called true by us.” (op.cit., section 516.)

“The earthly kingdom of desires out of which logic grew: the herd instinct in the background. The assumption of similar [“identical”] cases presupposes ‘similar souls.’ For the purpose of mutual agreement and dominion.” (op.cit., section 509.)

Thus ethics (herd morality) comes before logic. See http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=187672.

You are wrong.

Logic can more than you think.

I am not confusing anything.

And you are the only one who knows that a bacterium behaves according to its “bacterium logic”?

We are talking about logic and ethics here!

A bacterium logic is logic too - by definition.

Original (German) text:

„Wir hören auf zu denken, wenn wir es nicht in dem sprachlichen Zwange tun wollen, wir langen gerade noch bei dem Zweifel an, hier eine Grenze als Grenze zu sehn. Das vernünftige Denken ist ein Interpretieren nach einem Schema, welches wir nicht abwerfen können.“ - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Der Wille zur Macht, 522, S. 358.

Okay.

No. In order to have ethics logic is needed. The “herd morality” and “ethics” are concepts, created by language, by human language. Concepts must be defined, must be logical. So logic comes before ethics. Ethics depends on logic. There is no “herd morality” without logic, regardless how romantic (beautiful) the counter “arguments” are.