Philosophy discussion
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"Philosophy is dead"
Robert wrote: "Everyman,Sorry...I'm guess I'm not following your point. Do you see someone as advocating "a world where everything is known, where there are no mysteries, where there is ambiguity, where one ..."
It seems to me that that is the end goal of Hawking's position, and indeed the core assumption of many scientists. That it is always better to know scientifically than to leave anything unknown that one could possibly know, that science can indeed, in principle, answer any question given enough time, money, and scientific effort, and that there are no questions which science should not attempt to apply scientific principles to answer. Seems to me that Hawking's position is that ideally there should be no mysteries in life hidden from scientific investigation, and that if there are it just proves that there is more work for science to do.
Me, I like some mysteries in life, and hope science will leave some areas of life alone.
Robert wrote: "Sorry...I said I would no longer respond to you, and I did. I'll try better next time."Please do try harder. If nobody pays any attention to him, eventually we can hope that he will realize that he is wasting his time and go troll somewhere else.
Everyman wrote: "Seems to me that Hawking's position is that ideally there should be no mysteries in life hidden from scientific investigation, and that if there are it just proves that there is more work for science to do. Me, I like some mysteries in life, and hope science will leave some areas of life alone..."
AGREED! Life certainly is much more interesting when mystery remains. I must say, though...I'm not worried. The irony of modern physics is this: with every new discovery and theory that proves useful, the mystery actually deepens. That's a beautiful thing, from my perspective. And most modern physicists, I would hazard to guess, would agree (smile).
THanks for clarifying your point, Everyman. It's good to know that I share the love of mystery with another! Join me over in the Poetry group to explore that further! (smile)
Robert wrote: "The irony of modern physics is this: with every new discovery and theory that proves useful, the mystery actually deepens."Amen to that, and it is exactly what keeps bringing me back over and over. Physics and philosophy often walk hand in hand for me.
Amen to that, and it is exactly what keeps bringing me back over and over. Physics and philosophy often walk hand in hand for me. It's ironic that the more we know, the more we're aware of that's out there as a possibility.
Who was it that said that the historian of Philosophy is, as a necessity, in fact a philosopher themselves? I think it may have been Kenny. As far as i'm concerned Philosophy can never be dead as long as people wonder, question or care about the world, reality and themselves... Hawking denies himself a second title, there, or does he just think he knows all the answers? if he does then he's no scientist either. The want and ability to question is Philosophy and therefore it can never truly die...
Adeel wrote: "Stephen Hawking, in his latest book, The Grand Design, claims that philosophy is dead:
Living in this vast world that is by turns kind and cruel, and gazing at the immense heavens a..."
A possible counter to Hawking's claim could be that Philosophy isn't necessarily concerned with "knowledge" or "understanding." Physics, to me, at least, seems like it tries to pin down how the world works exactly; an attempt to completely know the world. This seems to not be what most philosophy is concerned with--at least not directly (although it seems that more often than not philosophy does attempt to pin down things like Universals)... but...I would argue that philosophy, first and foremost, is an attempt or a practice that isn't going after knowledge, but meaning. And I don't think that this practice is ever really going to die... perhaps it is stalled at the present moment and in need of some sort of revamping (post-post modernism, perhaps) but it is certainly not dead. I'm sure there are thousands and thousands of philosophy students who will attest to this.
Living in this vast world that is by turns kind and cruel, and gazing at the immense heavens a..."
A possible counter to Hawking's claim could be that Philosophy isn't necessarily concerned with "knowledge" or "understanding." Physics, to me, at least, seems like it tries to pin down how the world works exactly; an attempt to completely know the world. This seems to not be what most philosophy is concerned with--at least not directly (although it seems that more often than not philosophy does attempt to pin down things like Universals)... but...I would argue that philosophy, first and foremost, is an attempt or a practice that isn't going after knowledge, but meaning. And I don't think that this practice is ever really going to die... perhaps it is stalled at the present moment and in need of some sort of revamping (post-post modernism, perhaps) but it is certainly not dead. I'm sure there are thousands and thousands of philosophy students who will attest to this.
Hi Dan --I agree with your perspective. I don't know of another subject that values meaning the way philosophy does.
Word to Tyler. And Justin: I think the main difference b/w science and philosophy seems to be science's ardent want to clearly define the lines of reality--and in some cases in a manner that seems too hasty or not fully thought out. I guess the philosophy that I would say is most powerful is something like the Socratic method. From what I've read of Socrates, it seems he never made any sort of definitive, conclusive statements that got to any results (albeit the idea of the Forms, or any of his metaphysics, but I don't know how much of that was really Socrates and how much of it was Plato)... Science and philosophy perhaps start in the same place, but results wise, I think they are fairly different. The philosophy I am interested in (at least at this moment) doesn't necessarily answer any questions, insofar as it only makes an attempt to account for things in a way that are inconclusive and perhaps more based around notions of meaning, as opposed to knowledge or wisdom. And to make a claim as lofty as Hawking seems to be at least un-thought out, at worst dangerous. Your last statement, while slightly abrasive, is something that I wholeheartedly agree with.
Justin's last remark points to a fundamental error: Argument from Authority. While Hawking is an expert in physics and his opinion carries weight in that field, readers of his book will tend to think he has the same authority on subjects unrelated to physics. That is seldom the case, and experts in one field should avoid grand statements about the investigations taking place in other areas.Science was once rooted in philosophy and was called natural philosophy. Eventually, once the absolute base of human knowledge was sufficiently large, the systematic study of reality became science and separated from philosophy, although there remains a "philosophy of science" dedicated to uncertainties such as proper methodology.
In any case, Dan is right to bring up Socrates. The Socratic method -- that is, professing first not to have any knowledge -- is critical to both philosophy and science. I think what Socrates said was, "The only thing I know is that I know nothing." That remains a sound starting point, and I think the later development of skepticism builds on it. Socrates was insightful not to focus on what conclusions we might reach, but rather on what assumptions we're starting from.
Dan raises an interesting point: If philosophy were dead, by what means would we be expected to properly assess meaning?
Do you think that Socrates really believed that he "knew nothing?" The Socrates I read about in Plato seems to know some things and to draw some conclusions. Or am I wrong? Is that what he really meant? Could he have just been being disingenuous?
I think one of the more interesting things I've heard about Socrates (and this could, again, have more to do with Plato...) is that the way he approached philosophy, i.e. not claiming to "know anything," was an attempt to tease ideas out of the people he was talking to, debating with. I will admit that he does at times come off as a smartass, really sarcastic, etc. but the way he went about engaging people really does say something about the way he approached philosophy, life, etc. I forget which one of the five dialogues it was (Meno, maybe?), but in it he professed an idea that there is this innate knowledge within people, that people already have something inside of them that essentially knows. He uses the example of teaching a young slave boy geometry (this could be wrong, too, I'm not a really big math guy)...the metaphysical stuff aside (which I don’t agree with)…this is a really powerful and telling metaphor of his position...has anyone, by chance, read any of Hannah Arendt's The Life of the Mind? It's got a really great section called 'The Answer of Socrates'...or something like that...
Hi Jimmy -- I agree with Dan. For someone who claimed to know nothing, Socrates obviously had a point to make with each of his interlocutors. What Socrates was emphasizing was the the need to approach a subject, moral reasoning in his case, from an objective standpoint. That means holding no bias at the beginning.
Socrates was able to establish 2400 years ago that this skepticism about our own knowledge was the only way to separate a true insight from doxa, the world of opinion. That had been philosophy's greatest challenge at the time. In fact, one of the enduring dangers today in both scientific and philosophical reasoning is "confirmation bias," the tendency to look for things that support our own opinion while unfairly discounting evidence to the contrary.
I agree with what you are saying, Tyler. I just think the Socrates quote is phrased wrong. We do know some things with some certainty, but we just have to understand that if new evidence is available, we must be willing to change our viewpoint. Consider these "facts" which people still doubt: the earth revolves around the sun, humans evolved, President Obama was born in Hawaii, Osama bin Laden was killed this weekend. I just picked up a book that a home schooler used. It stated that dinosaurs were on Noah's Ark. My head is spinning from all of this craziness. People need not only to know how to be skeptics, but they need to learn how to arrive at sensible conclusions.
Yes, I think people confuse skepticism used as a tool with the notion of total skepticism about everything. In the case of the flat-earthers and so on there's only contempt for truth disguised as something else.
The book I am talking about claims the earth is about 6,000 years old, the Grand Canyon was created by the flood, dinosaurs and animals were on Noah's Ark, there was only one ice age, God made light rays all the way to earth along with the stars. A lot happens in just a few thousand years. That would be kinda funny, but then I read the reviews by what appears to be otherwise intelligent people. See and read for yourselves:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53...
All physicists know is how some triangle has some angle or how some object can do some sort of work. How much potential energy something has blatty blatty blah. Consider this Adamantius in 476 B.C. knew that a toy spinning top would not move unless a force was acted upon it. Along with his other duties of like running a state he was really smart. Newton did not come up for a law for this untill two thousand years later, An object will stay in motion untill a force is acted upon it. Really, the Greek philosophers didn't have to create a law to explain something they already knew, had other more important things to worry about real humanistic problems, reality.
Philosophy is ahead of current physics, given that gaining a deeper understanding of the universe is a central goal. For one thing, interpretations of quantum mechanics and the compatibility of the general theory of relativity with quantum theory (as well as implications of Bell's Theorem) are problems in philosophy of physics and suprisingly enough not in physics itself. You would think that the goal of physics is to understand the physical world and not to follow Mermin's dictum, "Shut up and calculate". Of course, Hawking may have a different idea of physics' goal but most physicist share the shut-up-and-calculate approach by endorsing an instrumentalist interpretation of quantum mechanics or more generally a failure to comtemplate the implications of the physical sciences for our picture of the universe.
Hi Said --... interpretations of quantum mechanics and the compatibility of the general theory of relativity with quantum theory (as well as implications of Bell's Theorem) are problems in philosophy of physics and suprisingly enough not in physics itself.
Your answer is insightful. The current interpretations fall on the side of philosophy, or speculative physics, at least partly because no physicist knows how to test the competing hypotheses.
From what I'm able to follow, various hypotheses within the realm of quantum physics have been gaining or losing popularity over the decades. Given the still-evolving understanding of advanced physics, it's hard to see how Hawking can think philosophy is dead.
Even if it were, physics would not be able to fill the void with a factual account of reality. That inability does indeed place the various explanations of quantum phenomena within the scope of philosophy, specifically the philosophy of physics.
Yep, philosophy is dead because philosophy doesn't have to ability to answer the most important questions. It leaves them unanswered, and when it does answer something it only raises more questions, so it really doesn't answer the questions.
Hawkins quote = complete BS!Sorry, but the Hawkins quote is in my opinion a clear proof of him being a human and also being capable of making mistakes. It is complete BS! I don’t think he has read Habermas. After the (few) philosophical works I have read (at University and in the seven years since then) my impression is that there in general is a continuum visible in the findings of some important philosophers over time "in general" (if one can make that statement at all), and that is that less and less is possible to completely and definitely defined as a specifc finite form. Instead what we think is around us, is (for us) dependent on our perception of it. That leads to us constructing intentionally or not, what it is for us that we perceive ass effecting us.
If you walk by ground zero without looking at the site or the people looking at it, it will have a totally different meaning for you than if you actually stop and take time to think about the impressions you are getting from being there. In that sense (and many others) it depends on us what the things we get in touch with mean for us and “are” for us.
At the beginning of philosophy as we find it referred to in documents and books we use today, everything was clearly identifiable something specific or a least belonging to something other clearly difined. Like Plato’s idea of beauty or idea of good or idea of a tree.
Today we have reached the level where modern philosophers have concluded, that there is no more truth than what we all agree upon at a given time in a hierarchy free discussion with all effected people at the table. That I think is as far as we can get... Now you can say that makes philosophy obsolete. Because philosophy can’t logically come up with anything anymore that has any higher meaning or higher truth than what we all agree upon among ourselves. I can understand that perception. But as long as the real hierarchy free discussion (especially with all effected participating in the hierarchy free discourse at the time) is so much of an ideal that is never reached, philosophy can give us very valuable intellectual stimuli to personally grow and inform our personal choices. Beyond this I believe that it is very important - and I believe healthy – for every mind to be confronted with ideas of others to form their own and contest and also train their own thinking.
Lastly, as a political scientist I want to say that a lot of the above responses claim that the social sciences in general are dead if they say that the problem of philosophy is that it can’t be “proven”... Mathematics by the way is a complete construction itself as none of us have ever had the pleasure of meeting a two a ten thousand or any other number... This only exists in our minds – which by the way doesn’t make the construction any less helpful for us.
Rob wrote: "Death is a stoppage, a cessation, an arrest which brings to a nadir all possibilities of evolution, revolution, progress, regress, and change. An answer to a question, insofar as it is an unequiv..."Yes that is true that it continues on and on, but it keeps on continuing on and on without stopping. Just when you think you have an answer you don't have an answer because that answer ends up not answering things because it brings forth another question.
It seems to me that the statement "philosophy is dead" is either dogmatic or simply false. I suspect that Hawking is being dogmatic. My suspicion rests on similar things he's said in the two books of his that I have read: in those criticisms of philosophy, it has been apparent that he lacks enough familiarity with philosophy. (Notice that he is also the one saying "Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics.") However, if we could corner him and ask him, perhaps he would insist that he is not being dogmatic, perhaps we could compel him to reconsider his position; and if we could do that, then his statement is simply false because by reconsidering the so-called death of philosophy, he would be engaging in the very act of philosophy. Or so it seems to me.But besides all of this: can anyone now genuinely confound the rank order of philosophy and science, after Nietzsche? Surely not.
It is impossible for philosophy to be dead. Religion, for example, is a part of philosophy. These certain faiths were sprung up from ideas from certain prophets. And the interpretation of sacred texts such as the Bible and the Koran, as well as the readings of such people as St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine remain an active part of philosophy today.And that's not the only part. Politics and government remains an active part of philosophy today, as well. Just think. Communism was an idea sprung from the ideas and philosophy of Karl Marx. John Locke was one of the philosophers whose ideas still continue to embody the U.S. Constitution today. Though, Thomas Hobbes' ideas are not actively practiced today, they still aroused great controversy which is still being debated today.
Unfortunately, however, philosophy is being used more and more as a weapon of destruction than a tool of knowledge. Just take a look at Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East and how Jews are frowned upon by some Americans. Also, take a look at oppressive governments like that of North Korea and unstable governments such as that of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Bolivia, Somalia, etc.
I think Stephen Hawkings is being ahead of himself saying that philosophy dead. He is being presumptious and disregarding the responses of counter culture against a culture that supports mass consumption and "innovating inventions" that can lead us into a highly technological era.We are innately human and not cyborgs. Although I am afraid of the idea that humans will rather be the computing subjects they have than the humans they are who are capable of learning more than what they are useful for.
Philosophy isn't dead. There is still a consistent question among people of why we are here and why we are made this way and other such questions. Yes, science has made it easier for us to live in better conditions, but we still face ethical problems we still haven't solved. And guess what that is part of philosophy. IT is a question of right or wrong that is controversial because many sides of the coin have come up with logical answers.
It is a little too much to assume that what the masses dictate is what the world thinks.
Stephen wrote: "I believe philosophy has always been 'dead', in the sense that Hawking intends: 'Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bea..."You make it seem like science is a trend and that philosophy is some metaphorical old dude who hasn't kept up with the times. We aren't just inventions. We are a species that can think and discern from right or wrong. We have set up ethics. We have set up laws. We have set up a place where we have lasted for centuries as a species NOT only because of our inventions but because many people questioned the same people who made such assumptions as Stephen Hawkings and even religious leaders who have ascertained that they know everything about the world. Science isn't everything. Yeah, it has measured emotions and how to make a mechanical heart but it cannot recreate life in exactly the way we humans naturally do. IT hasn't figured out how we came into being. Hasn't proven God doesn't exist. Hasn't given us the ability to live a thousand years. Hasn't eliminated diseases and the new ones that come about.
It is an idealistic view to see scientists as "carriers of a torch" and assuming a technological advancement is our step of evolution. People have died faster now than when they did ages ago. Stupidity or whatever irrational behavior hasn't been corrected. And yeah I put an extremist front. But we don't know everything. We just know a portion of what has already been here before us. We give things name like we have preceded them but we haven't. Who knows what is really the end of the universe of if there are actually beings that have more understanding than we do of the galaxy.
For example: UFO's. What does that stand for: "Unidentified Flying Object". We call foreign beings from another galaxy "aliens" because they are foreign to our existence and what we already know of it. There is an understanding that we don't control everything.
I know I am saying a lot but all I am really saying is science isn't everything and philosophy is NOT definitely dead.
Philosophy is 'dead' only for scientism, not for humanity.As C.P. Snow pointed out 60 years ago, there is a sharp divide between the two modern intellectual cultures of science and literary-humanistic thought.
Philosophy is only 'dead' for scientism, for those who find -- or feel humans OUGHT to find -- complete satisfaction of our reasoning in the worldviews produced by modern science and technology.
That is why scientism is so perplexed and disturbed by the persistence of modern interest in theological and speculative philosophical questions. Scientism tries to diminish questions it fears it can't answer by mocking the most simplistic versions of theology like fundamentalism, ignoring the much profounder thought of literary and phenomenological philosophical thought.
Scientism is a form of emotional, social, and intellectual retardation, a kind of social-intellectual Autistic Spectrum Disorder like Asperger's, in regard to understanding the human condition.
For example, think of Richard Dawkins' understanding of religion and its place in the world, then compare that understanding with the following description of a book on religion as treated in the literary and existential concerns of continental philosophy:
"Tragedy, Recognition, and the Death of God: Studies in Hegel and Nietzsche" by R.R. Williams (Oxford, 2012).
"Robert R. Williams challenges the view that [Hegel and Nietzsche] are mutually exclusive. He identifies four areas of convergence. First, Hegel and Nietzsche express and define modern interest in tragedy as a philosophical topic. Each seeks to correct the traditional philosophical and theological suppression of a tragic view of existence. This suppression of the tragic is required by the moral vision of the world, both in the tradition and in Kant's practical philosophy and its postulates. For both Hegel and Nietzsche, the moral vision of the world is a projection of spurious, life-negating values that Nietzsche calls the ascetic ideal, and that Hegel identifies as the spurious infinite. The moral God is the enforcer of morality. Second, while acknowledging a tragic dimension of existence, Hegel and Nietzsche nevertheless affirm that existence is good in spite of suffering. Both affirm a vision of human freedom as open to otherness and requiring recognition and community. Struggle and contestation have affirmative significance for both. Third, while the moral God is dead, this does not put an end to the God-question. Theology must incorporate the death of God as its own theme. The union of God and death expressing divine love is for Hegel the basic speculative intuition. This implies a dipolar, panentheistic concept of a tragic, suffering God, who risks, loves, and reconciles. Fourth, Williams argues that both Hegel and Nietzsche pursue theodicy, not as a justification of the moral God, but rather as a question of the meaningfulness and goodness of existence despite nihilism and despite tragic conflict and suffering. The inseparability of divine love and anguish means that reconciliation is no conflict-free harmony, but includes a paradoxical tragic dissonance: reconciliation is a disquieted bliss in disaster."
http://www.amazon.com/Tragedy-Recogni...
-Tom
Everyman wrote: "Glen wrote: "Saying "philosophy is dead" is similar to saying "God is dead"."I had the same reaction. Neither statement makes sense to me."
Philosophy in the classical sense has become moribund and been replaced by new disciplines such as phenomonology, chaos theory, and studies of how the mind works. In other words, it is bound up with science.
The natural reaction is to say that philosophy is not dead. But honestly, look at the state of affairs at the moment. There aren't any major enlightening intellectual movements going on at the moment. I know that this isn't what Hawking is getting at, but I just thought of this aspect of it. Or, maybe there is a bunch of philosophical movements going on that I just don't know about, which is a fair chance. Either way, I wish I could have seen existentialism take rise in France after WWII; it would've been a great intellectual scene to be on.
There are still movements rising. Think about speculative realism in continental philosophy or experimental philosophy in analytic philosophy. Of course, they are still small, but also relative new.
Hawking, like most physicists, is not satisfied with philosophical speculation because it is not mathematical enough. But mathematical physics is founded upon a speculative-metaphysical assumption -- NOT empirical observation -- that 'Nature' is fundamentally mathematical. Like philosophy and theology, mathematical physics reasons to a large degree about unobservable entities postulated, sup-posed, speculated to explain the observable phenomenon of the cosmos as a whole. But anyone trained in mathematical physics is going to take deeper satisfaction in exercising their mathematical powers of calculation toward some creative theory than toward any speculative reasoning about the cosmos which is not as reliant upon advanced mathematics. The tremendous success of mathematicized and technologized -- instrumental -- science at manipulating our world in the 20th century has put us under the illusion that science is Closer to Truth than philosophical reason is capable of, when actually science (formerly "natural philosophy"), as regards Truth, is just a more pragmatic, instrumentalized extension of human-centered philosophy. Note the main argument for the ascension of science over philosophy is that science 'works', but any serious inquiry into what it means 'to work' can show this is a metaphor of human-centered labor and effective instrumentation which in itself logically, conceptually precludes the very idea of revealing 'Nature' in itself.
Philosophy, as I understand it, continues because there are unsolved abstract problems which have not yet been categorised in a measurable way. So the task of philosophy is to categorise a thing such that it becomes measurable, analyzable, and open to a unified perspective.
Why does philosophy "continue" when it can never seem to achieve final resolution of its problems?I've found that Heidegger offers the most compelling account for why philosophy continually returns to its source problems, whereas sciences seem to come to once-and-for-all conclusions.
On Heidegger's account, philosophy or Theory began when the Greeks explicitly articulated the question of "being", from which has unfolded historically all the various branches and species of theoretically grounded Knowledge. Thus in Western civilization a particular answer to the question of "being" lies implicitly at the root of all our modern and functional species of knowledge today, such that we tend to think it pointless, trivial, or useless to examine our underlying historical assumption about what we mean by the "being" of things we think we know and understand.
The assumption we've inherited from particular past philosophers is that "being" means "what is (truly) present", or more exactly: what can be rendered present to us in or about some object of theoretical inquiry, because it is what Finally underlies various false appearances. Once false instances of appearing are scraped away, then we will have exclusively what is present.
But notice that there is implicit or suppressed in this historical assumption of ours (a) a temporal character and a bias for the "present" aspect or moment of temporality, which is a bias against the past and future aspects intrinsic to temporality also; and (b) a relative character in that what "is" must be rendered present-to-us.
Having disclosed this temporal character of theoretical knowledge, Heidegger finds by phenomenological analysis that it derives and unfolds from the underlying practical, laboring, and temporal character of "Da-sein". In Da-sein or human "being-there", phenomenologically, we find things initially appear as most solid or 'real' in their being there as Tools for our use. Since Theoretical Objects are themselves 'like' Tools, Heidegger thus offers an Instrumentalist account or theory of Science itself.
But this does NOT mean that Heidegger is a mere "relativist" regarding all our sciences and claims, or that he is seeking to undermine them in an illegitimate or unreasonable manner, as many of his critics unfairly charge. Rather, the substantive reality he means to uncover in his work is that the implicit and suppressed meaning of "being" is Time or Temporality, including a past, present, and future -- and this entails -- "it" entails -- that nothing can ever be rendered completely "present" by us once-and-for-all. Rather, we must continually in philosophical thinking and practice (by which I include science as a branch of applied theory) bring the being of things forth to-presence in some particular way, manner, or practice, repeatedly.
This answers the question why philosophy "continues": it must continually return to the question of "being" which by its nature is never finally "present"; it has to return to the original, generative question that remains implicit, only ever seemingly resolved within any particular, momentary claim or any particular science.
We in the West have been operating for centuries with a faulty underlying assumption that "being" is merely a "present-ness" in things that can be overlooked once we move on to more specialized knowledges. Instead the "being" of things is never rendered finally-present and so we must constantly engage in the philosophical activity of bringing-to-presence temporally and historically.
Now, none of this means that the sciences as we know them today will not reify or ossify into forms that become increasingly oblivious to their own grounding in a particular answer to the question of "being". It might be expected that insofar as they are ignorant or forgetful of this basis they will become increasingly defensive regarding their "relative" status as uncovered by those who 'continually' create a distraction in their view by raising philosophical questions. I think we see this in the recent attempts by some scientists to banish philosophy -- to banish thinking (!) -- once and for all. Isn't it a great irony that some prominent scientists today are becoming in certain crucial respects dogmatists and thus enemies of thought?
It is thus vitally important for philosophers to give appropriate respect to the achievements of modern sciences and systems but not thereby to disown their own unique calling to deeply question the assumptions underlying modern views no matter how seemingly final.
Interesting Group. Looking forward to reading all the posts. Being that I see Philosophy as the what, how and why of the present and future, it doesn't seem like a end to me. Hawking is brilliant, but he speaks from one realm of knowledge. Opening the mind is not always that easy for any individual -- I know. But as long as we have questions and thoughts, we will have philosophy.Just started to follow and have a love for philosophy.
dgp
At least when Wittgenstein said that it was dead there was a sound philosophical reasoning behind the claim even if he too was judging it trough one medium and standard alone also.
Hawking is brilliant, but he speaks from one realm of knowledge."Yes. I don't think physics provides the proper tools for a philosophical critique.
Hawking's frustration, is understandable, in a sense. It is, more or less, shared by any who venture to invest their life-energy into a field of inquiry with as uncertain an outcome as that of philosophy. Think of Wittgenstein's pathetic attempts to "cure" himself of philosophy. He taught little children, became a gardener for a monastery, turned to architecture and engineering, and even strove to prove to himself that, really, philosophical problems were really pesky linguistic knots that disturbed the innate mountain-fresh lucidity and mystical certainties of mind if left in its native silence. He could let his mysticism take care of the side of him that strove to question, but it didn't work. He kept coming back for more philosophy, like a possessed man. Or think of the pit philosophy drove poor Hume into:
“I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, inviron'd with the deepest darkness, and utterly depriv'd of the use of every member and faculty.”
But yay, because:
“Most fortunately it so happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours' amusement, I wou'd return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strain'd, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.”
But did he go back for more? Every time. Once caught up in the dialectic, you're stuck in the stream.
It is natural that we should long for there to be a terminus point to philosophical inquiry, an ultimate resolution so that the energies within ourselves that tie themselves into knots when thinking and inquiring can finally come to rest on a solid platform of unshakable certitude. We like to think that the cleavage we have created between ourselves and restful abiding with the world-at-hand by asking our first question will, of its own, be healed, and we will be transported back into the primeval bosom of security when there will simply be no more need for questions. Hegel is probably the ultimate expression of this pipedream: there MUST be some ultimate resolution! The chain of dialectic HAS to stop, of its own, somewhere! More lucid (and cynical) minds might take Hawking's approach and desire that dialectic should all just peter out, instinctively knowing as they do that there is no terminus point. So just call philosophical problems chimeras. Others still turn to Buddhism. It is yet another way of "solving" the problem by silencing the part of ourselves that rears its head and questions. Remain silently embedded, and ye shall remain peaceful.
But they are not chimeras, no matter how much we try to dissolve them with linguistic-conceptual analysis, or with injunction to unreflection. They come back to bite us in the butt just when we like to convince ourselves we are just fine. They break the silence, and make it unbearable. And they are reflections of ourselves - it is -we- who are the problems. Why did we ask the first question? Who knows, but it's a thought experiment I always like to play with myself. Why step back and ask anything of the world? Why -not- be content with backgammon? Because we have a problematic nature. Philosophy reflects and tries to deal with this problematic nature.
And dialectic is a relentless peace-consuming monster. Once you start the questioning and the conversation, it seems unlikely it's ever going to come to a rest. Peace and certainty don't come at the end of the road – something else will. Who knows what. Maybe real autonomy will. Maybe we will come into our own and finally discover who we are and what we want to do with what we are.
And to finally answer why philosophy continues, I'll let Cassirer do it for me:
“Absolute trust in the reality of things begins to be shaken as the problem of truth enters upon the scene. The moment man ceases merely to live in and with reality and demands a knowledge of this reality, he moves into a new and fundamentally different relation to it. At first, to be sure, the question of truth seems to apply only to particular parts and not to the whole of reality. Within this whole different strata of validity begin to be marked off, reality seems to separate sharply from appearance. But it lies in the very nature of the problem of truth that once it arises it never comes to rest. The concept of truth conceals an immanent dialectic that drives it inexorably forward, forever extending its limits...”
You won't get rid of the problems of philosophy until you resolve the tensions inherent in human nature.
As a discipline of contemplation about "ultimate" things, philosophy is dead. We must now have a kind of philosophy that overarches all the disciplines, and serve as a basis for them. How we think and perceive is just as important as what we think.
In face of the absurdity of our economic and political systems, philosophy can offer alternative systems of
living.
Adeel wrote: "Stephen Hawking, in his latest book, The Grand Design, claims that philosophy is dead:Living in this vast world that is by turns kind and cruel, and gazing at the immense heavens above, people ha..."
Is philosophy not a way of knowing, rather than knowledge?
Elena wrote: "Think of Wittgenstein's pathetic attempts to "cure" himself of philosophy. He taught little children, became a gardener for a monastery, turned to architecture and engineering, and even strove to prove to himself that, really, philosophical problems were really pesky linguistic knots that disturbed the innate mountain-fresh lucidity and mystical certainties of mind if left in its native silence. He could let his mysticism take care of the side of him that strove to question, but it didn't work. He kept coming back for more philosophy, like a possessed man."I think you're being slightly unfair to the later Wittgenstein here. He came to realise that philosophy is like an illness and, for precisely that reason, it has no end. It will always be breaking out afresh in new guises and mutated forms. As such, the philosophical task is not to establish a settled body of knowledge (as science does) but to therapeutically treat the illness on a case-by-case basis. It is an activity - something you do, not a bunch of facts you learn. This is not a million miles away from mystical approaches such as meditation or lectio divina (which brings us to the Eastern-/Western-philosophy thread you have recently started).
Re: The notion of "philosophy as the queen of sciences" as being old-fashioned. That is not the case, if we understand what prompted Kant to make that statement. Kant believed that only philosophy could understand the architectonic forms of reason upon which all our knowledge in every discipline depends. He argued that since our various disciplines are products of the understanding, examining said understanding would give us a grasp of their nature and of how they fit together. In doing this, philosophy can help us create a map of knowledge, which enables us to meaningfully situate the findings of the various disciplines in a common worldview.
Without philosophy, such an interdisciplinary, metacognitive, and even intercultural understanding is simply impossible, and narrow specialization rules the day. As Wittgenstein put it, “the real foundations of his inquiry do not strike a man at all.” Instead, philosophy enables us to have "a perspicuous view of the foundations of all possible buildings.” Think how the germ of all other disciplines' methods (and of the conceptions with which we interpret/cognize scientific findings) was formed through philosophical thinking.
Through philosophy, you basically step back from your narrow specialized discipline and try to situate it in the greater context of human understanding and human endeavour by identifying its basic principles and the basic structures of thought that make it possible, and relating them to the other products of human understanding. Without this philosophical step, imo, there can be no real understanding at all (if we believe that "understanding" involves a grand-scale organization that goes beyond stockpiling facts, which I do).
Philosophers such as Kant were right to suggest that a "science of human nature" is fundamental to all intellectual progress, and that only such a science could form the foundation for all other sciences and disciplines. This is because all our other intellectual endeavours are products of the understanding, and understanding how our understanding works can help us grasp the nature and meaning of its various products, and how they are all related in our minds. This step goes above and beyond what the specialized disciplines of human science achieve - a metacognitive leap is required to bring it all together into an integrated understanding of the foundations of knowledge.
Philip:As much as I admire Wittgenstein (he is one of my favourite thinkers), I do not think he was right in characterizing the effect of philosophy as an "illness." Cassirer was more on the mark in this respect in discussing the inexorability of dialectic and questioning, and that was what I tried to get across in that long and meandering post.
That philosophy is not an illness, and that its problems are not merely linguistic knots or artefacts of the mind, Wittgenstein's own career should show us. Or to be more precise, the illness lies not in philosophy or in the constructs we make, but it lies deeper down in human nature itself. The problems of philosophy are expressions of and attempts to resolve what we experience as our problematic nature. Wittgenstein couldn't get away from philosophy because he couldn't get away from the perplexities of human nature. Even our silence is problematic.
I agree with you that philosophy shouldn't be reified and misidentified with its products, and that it is an activity. However, we disagree about the nature of said activity. I think meditation, while a necessary part of the apparatus for attaining the realization of the mind (and therefore wisdom), cannot provide an escape chute out of philosophical reflection. I find it startling that so many truly intelligent people in our generation cultivate an anti-intellectualist turn to things such as Buddhism in an attempt to escape from the perplexities of the modern condition. This search for the sources of our being is healthy and good, but it won't solve everything. We are still where we are, and we still must make our destiny whether we want to or not. We must still -choose- where we want to go.
Elena wrote: "Philip:As much as I admire Wittgenstein (he is one of my favourite thinkers), I do not think he was right in characterizing the effect of philosophy as an "illness." Cassirer was more on the mark..."
You may be heading down existentialism in relation to absolute freedom and responsibility here
"The very attempt to define how a philosophical work is supposed to be connected with other efforts to deal with the same subject-matter drags in an extraneous concern, and what is really important for the cognition of the truth is obscured. The more conventional opinion gets fixated on the antithesis of truth and falsity, the more it tends to expect a given philosophical system to be either accepted or contradicted; and hence it finds only acceptance or rejection. It does not comprehend the diversity of philosophical systems as the progressive unfolding of truth, but rather sees in it simple disaggreements..." says Hegel in POS... Thus Hawking's determination is also a negation at the same time and his determination is philosophy at its purest..."But he who rejects a philosophical system [i.e. the new philosopher] does not usually comprehend what he is doing in this way; and he who grasps the contradiction between them [i.e. the historian of philosophy] does not, as a general rule, know how to free it from its one-sidedness, or maintain it in its freedom by recognizing the reciprocally necessary moments that take shape as a conflict and seeming incompatibility..."
Elena wrote: "That philosophy is not an illness, and that its problems are not merely linguistic knots or artefacts of the mind, Wittgenstein's own career should show us. Or to be more precise, the illness lies not in philosophy or in the constructs we make, but it lies deeper down in human nature itself. The problems of philosophy are expressions of and attempts to resolve what we experience as our problematic nature."Well, here we disagree. I think Wittgenstein was on the money in pointing out that philosophical problems arise from various types of conceptual confusion. At the same time, he might well have agreed with you that the tendency towards such confusion lies deep in our natures. It is certainly connected to deeply ingrained (and usually very helpful) ways of thinking.
As for your point about meditation/philosophical reflection, I would turn it around. When it comes to areas such as the nature of being, philosophy is a latecomer to the party and not a particularly helpful guest. Far from mystical approaches being an inadequate chute out of philosophical reflection, philosophical reflection is an inadequate rationalisation of a mystical problem.
For philosophy to be dead, language would have to be abolished. A major motivation of philosophical enquiry is to clarify our concepts and to obtain a consistent set of principles to live by. This may not be ultimately achievable, but as soon as we humans started to use language, and more importantly to write our thoughts down, we were inevitably drawn into this activity. Even a quietist religion such as Buddhism must have its sages and sacred texts. For figures such as Socrates and Descartes, philosophy was the only way for them to live an authentic life; that they could justify their existence to themselves. Of course it is possible to live a good and authentic life without philosophy, but in no way can philosophy itself be considered a dishonourable or redundant activity.
Philip: Attempts to reduce one human activity to another invariably impoverish the human condition by restricting the modes of expression available to our nature. Philosophy and meditation are two different activities altogether, and they cover different grounds in the human condition. If they weren't different, they would naturally cancel each other out and we wouldn't need to preach that one -should- extinguish the other by force. It is when one makes imperious claims for one human activity that all thought goes awry. That is why in such cultural matters, I prefer a both/and to an either/or approach. It is far more fruitful, imo, to see how they complement each other and to treasure what is unique in each, as opposed to merely seeing one in terms of the other.As I suggested, I believe that the reason such imperialistic claims for one kind or another of cultural activity are still being made is simply because the barriers between cultures have only recently begun to deteriorate, and only recently did we begin to understand that our human heritage isn't just made up by Socrates and Descartes and Kant, but also by Buddha and Confucius and Mohammed. All these traditions have much to teach us about ourselves, about what we might be in other conditions, and we can but struggle to bring all these together into a coherent understanding of what it is to be a human being, and how each cultivates and expresses our underlying humanity.
Philosophy is precisely the activity to do this. It cultivates a kind of metacognitive, integrative mental function (that can express itself in formally coherent systems, but not necessarily) that enables us to step back from available worldviews in order to get a sense of the mental foundations from which they spring, and therefore to relate them as expressions of human nature.
To make imperialistic claims for mysticism is to make a philosophical claim that mysticism cultivates faculties that are superior in the greater human psychic economy, and these claims will be evaluated, if not by dogma, then by philosophical debate. Also note that the Buddha's picture of human nature as radically impermanent was actually given philosophical formulation in the West in the thought of Hume. The point is that philosophy is uniquely suited to mapping together tokens of our different revelatory experiences, and stepping back from them to understand their significance (and their relation to the many other kinds of experiences human nature is capable of).
Of course, the token-making has to end somewhere and be grounded in immediate experience, but again, nobody made imperialistic claims for philosophy in the sense of rejecting the validity of other more direct modes of knowing. In fact, I will be the first to agree that philosophy doesn't so much create knowledge on its own, and this is why it makes no sense to divorce it from immediate inquiry through science or meditation, where appropriate. It is simply an invaluable final step that completes the process of knowing. It's the "and now that we had our experience, let's bring it all together once more and see what has changed and what we -should- do with it" step.
I find it an interesting fact that our culture responded to the disintegration of a coherent worldview in modernity by trying to escape from philosophy. First it achieved this through adherence to unreflective scientism. That didn't quite cover the human element of thinking, so now people try to escape into unreflective mysticism. Perhaps they will get tired of the promises of both and come back to thinking critically about where they are, and about how they might build bridges among traditions in order to help resolve our current perplexities about what it means to be human.
PS: when I said that the "illness" and the "problem" are experienced in human nature itself, I wasn't talking about "confusion." The illness and the problem are not conceptual confusion. We experience our lives as a question, and our nature as a problem. This innate restlessness, this thorny sense that what we bring to life that is uniquely human puts us in an uneasy relation to the rest of being, is what distinguishes us most from other creatures, and what makes us so uneasy in silence. Choosing to solve this disquiet by pulling the plug on what is uniquely human and calling by it “illusion” IS escape from the problem of human nature if anything ever was. It is indeed a relief after a long journey through the sometimes thorny thickets of thought to rest on a mossy-covered patch of ground and feel the rain fall on your chest and just be embedded and cradled by it all, but that belonging can never last forever. The wheels of dialectic start up again and we're ground up in the process of a mind looking to make itself up again. Andrew talks about the end of philosophy being predicated on the death of language - I would say we shall accomplish it only when the mind ceases for good. And I find Buddhist, quasi-Humean attempts to convince us that the mind is a chimera are utterly unconvincing. For even if it is a "chimera," many of us prefer it to the alternative.
Philosophy is mind coming into its own as an autonomous function of nature. Meditation is opting out of the game, and reconnecting with the ground of being underlying mind. They can be complementary processes, but instead are habitually polarized. This long-winded post ends here. Phew.
Elena wrote: "PS: when I said that the "illness" and the "problem" are experienced in human nature itself, I wasn't talking about "confusion." The illness and the problem are not conceptual confusion. We experie..."Where does Emotion fit into this as a mode of consciousness ? Is it in one sense more immediate than believeing and concieiving one's experience.
Philosophy
Books mentioned in this topic
The Grand Design (other topics)The Grand Design (other topics)
The Grand Design (other topics)
The Grand Design (other topics)
The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science and What Comes Next (other topics)
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And don't worry, I would never actually assume that you'd do something you said you would. Your words, much like the ideas you so meretriciously apply them to, aren't worth the toilet paper they're printed on.