One of my friends mentioned one time that philosophy has only taught him that you cannot be sure of anything. I was reading something today that gave me somewhat of an insight into this. I have thought a bit about how different methodologies (history, hard sciences, philosophy) seem to condition a certain worldview for those who employ them. Could it be that "philosophy" is prone to teach that you cannot be sure of anything because of a methodological bias that one learns in philosophy? I am thinking of critical thinking here. You are "taught" to question assumptions, and to try to come up with arguments against those assumptions. It is even taught that one should do this as a pure intellectual exercise even if you agree with the premises in order to detect errors, i.e. make your position stronger.
It seems to me that there are several problems with this. The first problem brings to light a fundamental problem for the methodology of philosophy. Before we even get started in asking about assumptions and beginning the project of criticism, we have the problem of defining what philosophy is--i.e. are we going to critique things that make no rational sense, that do not seem to fit into our experience, or are we just going to be absurdists and play with language all day? It seems to me that the nature of modern philosophy and academia predisposes the "methodology" of philosophy to take on purely a form that is conducive to discursive, abstract, presentation. I heard a philosophy professor--Dr. Jensen--describe philosophy in these terms as he ridiculed those who believed that philosophy really was "the love of wisdom" and said that philosophy is a certain way of going about answering a question, i.e., questioning assumptions, etc. I believe it is structural problem. In other words, the academy is incapable of accommodating an endless variety of definitions of what philosophy is and must naturally lean to one way of doing things. It is therefore doomed to cause people like Alex to only learn to "doubt everything" because that is the natural outcome of the particular methodology of abstract, discursive reasoning.
So the first problem of defining what philosophy is leads to the next problem I see in that "philosophy" (as we've defined it) could lead to sidestepping the question of practical reason and living. If one is focused on whether something is consistent in a logical, discursive format, one neglects empirical realities or subjective positions. This means that philosophy could overemphasize the ethereal, abstract, nature of things as opposed to other approaches such as intuition, emotion, empirical models. In other words, I've noticed that philosophers do not necessarily base their arguments of what is true on empirical studies and surveys of what people think. Just because most people believe in God does not make it true for the philosopher or even an interesting question. I am kind of rambling here, but I feel that there is an important gap here between a practical reality and the philosopher's reality.
Ok. I am going to sum up. Because I do not believe that "truth" necessarily forces itself upon us when it is seen, I feel that the methodology of philosophy may not be necessarily conducive to finding truth, but rather conducive to finding error and only error. So it is similar to the agnostics dilemma in which he is sure that God cannot be proven, but he is also sure that God cannot be disproven. If the agnostic is speaking of what human reason can tell us, then it seems that philosophy only pronounces upon the limits of its own methodology. For those who believe in God, this may point to the fact that philosophy must be combined with other approaches with different premises for what can count as "truth".
Please discuss.
5 comments:
Does any other methodology avoid those problems? History is the ideological tool of its writer, hard science changes as tools improve, etc. I almost feel like philosophy, despite the skepticism it imbues in its student, provides a better avenue to truth because it doesn't rely on an incomplete corpus of evidence (historical or natural), or any evidence at all. Of course, neuroscience brings a materialistic element to philosophy, but I don't think it changes the answer(ing) of philosophical questions.
Ultimately, though, I don't think truth should be anyone's goal. Not to be too post-modern or nihilistic, but truth doesn't really exist, not with a capital T anyway. Say [fill in the blank with a religion] is true, you go to heaven, and sit with God(s). What then? You still don't know what a just solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is. You still don't know if free will exists. Sure, God can tell you something, but he's all powerful--he can impose whatever he wants. His justice might not be Israeli man x's justice. How do you know he's not lying? Maybe he has no free will but thinks he does and tells you that free will exists. Some questions will never have answers. Philosophy will remain eternally useful in inquiring after the answers, but it will never find them.
Thanks for this Tim--it was interesting food for thought. I have two initial comments to leave.
1) I am taking a biology course lately and your thoughts helped solidify some things I was thinking about the other day. It seems that science often falls into the format of believing that truth can only be found through empirical, tangible evidence based on experimentation. Part of my biology textbook seemed to imply subtly that we have moved beyond the incorrect teachings of the Bible due to scientific reasoning/evidence. I felt that this was flawed because it assumed that religious truth is found and founded on the same things as cellular respiration, anatomy, or other natural sciences and concepts. I wondered: what about spiritual evidence and experimentation? Can natural science truly claim to apply to all truth?
2) My other thought is on how the burden of wisdom (for lack of a better term) falls upon us. Every discipline, every book, every person has a bias and can only offer a certain and necessarily limited perspective. I think it's very important for us to seek out wisdom and ideas and learning from as many diverse good sources as we can in order to gather truth, always using the tempering power of the gospel. Something like a venn diagram of disciplines that overlap to show new truth :)
Anyway, just a few thoughts! I hope you're doing well. Thanks again!
Sierra
I realize that I may be in the vast majority, but I wholeheartedly disagree with Dr. Jensen.
I'll be succinct.
1) This is exactly what Descartes questions in his 'Discourse on Method.' Especially that we, in effect, end up no better than Socrates--ignorant (or perhaps ironic?)
2)Drew's post is a mess. I appreciate his attempt at a 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' though.
3)Your first paragraph refers to sophism, not philosophy. See: almost everything by Plato
4)The epigogei (Greek word meaning 'first look' or 'direct look') is not new, in fact phenomenology adopts what Aristotle and Plato did long ago. They didn't add some psychological barrier to knowing things, or conditional on the makeup of man's mind. Simply put, you allow the object to dictate it's existence to you. Phenomenology tweaks this (famously, Heidegger).
I agree that Philosophy, as you mention, that philosophy is turning into a big pile of poop, but then again, that's often times not philosophy. It is a love of wisdom and a seeking for truth.
4) Aristotle, Plato, Plotinus, Augustine, etc etc never side-stepped reality or any of that stuff. In fact, they were quite aware of it. As to the importance they granted personal experience (or the material world--which is not putting it as precise as it ought to be), that's another matter.
5) Thus, it hurts my heart that you would say Philosophy can be likened to agnosticism in that it only ends up with you ignorant and ambivalent. That is bad philosophy, indeed. Philosophers, even the best ones, can seem a bit heady (because they are) or a bit disjointed with reality (because could very well be), but to speak generally like that is a disservice to those who wish to both divine God's will and Laws via the faculty of human reason. Likewise those who seek truth about what we are, what is noble/good/just.
Post a Comment