Modulous:
Thought about certain things. Things such as 'what is the right thing to do?' or 'how can I tell if this is a true statement or a false one?'
Well said.
Many people make the mistake of thinking that knowledge works like a college course catalog tends to look. Everything is there in self-contained little boxes. If one chooses one's courses from the chemistry box, the thinking goes, one has consigned social science and literature and other endeavours to the dustbin. Literature and social science specialists may likewise think of themselves as done with chemistry as a result of
their choices. Nevermore shall these paths cross.
Not so. Human knowledge is not isolated boxes, but a woven fabric. Threads cross, run parallel, provide mutual support. One thread leads to another. All of the fabric is connected.
We find an excellent example of this just in looking at the sciences. In the first half of the twentieth century we had a situation where geologists often did their thing, physicists did theirs, and biologists did theirs. As the century moved forward, though, patterns were discerned that had implications for, and united, all these areas of study. Overarching theories such as plate tectonics united a variety of formerly separate areas of study into one theory. (Just as the theory of evolution had a century earlier.)
This process of discerning pattern is not limited to the sciences. Interrelationships exist across all human knowledge.
Behind all areas of study lies philosophy. It is the place you come to when, regardless of where you started, you trace all the threads back.
JavaMan showed us how you get to these questions when you start with auto mechanics.
Jar showed us how addressing a practical concern--improving the quality of human lives--necessarily follows from value decisions--the nature of improvement, the desirability of the goal.
nator reminded us that in academia all roads lead to philosophy. When you do your science well, she pointed out, academia recognizes you as a Doctor of Philosophy (Science). Indeed it does. And when you do other things well, it
still recognizes you as a Doctor of Philosophy, whatever your field. Different paths, same colour blue at the summit.
To climb, if one climbs well, is to see a panorama at the summit. There one sees all the peaks one chose not to climb. One views them with new appreciation for having conquered the single peak one has. One sees the interrelatedness of all knowledge. And one sees the limits of one's own.
So it is that in back of all specialized knowledge lies philosophy. What do we know? How do we know it? What limits do we work with? How best to take advantage of those things we can do?
It is often charged that questions like these are not of 'practical' use. But they are. We act every day on our answers to them. It's just that most of the time we
assume those answers rather than think about them. The mechanic asks 'How do I get the engine to run more efficiently?' (a practical question). It's a daily concern. But the question itself assumes that an answer to another question has already been reached: 'What is efficiency?' (a threshold philosophical question).
Sooner or later thinking people step back and examine the assumptions they make. They ask those questions and question those answers that so often are taken for granted. They consider, they wonder, they... well, they think.
Am I using the best definition? How do I know? When did I decide? What other answers are possible? How do they compare?
The unexamined life is not worth living.
-Socrates
To hold any belief system, to operate from any set of priorities, is to have a philosophy. To examine any belief system is to engage in philosophy. All thinking people are in this business.
It is not true to say that philosophy has 'no definition' because 'everything is philosophy.' People say this when they realize this is something that can't be put in a ghetto-shaped box the same way you might be able to segregate, say, the subject of geology from the subject of biology. Not knowing right away where to place it, they assume it to be shapeless.
Not at all. It's not that everything
is philosophy; it's that philosophy stands
behind everything. It is the loom behind the fabric, the place you arrive when you trace the threads back to their source. It is where you question everything you think you know and seek every truth to be had.
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Edited by Archer Opterix, : html.
Edited by Archer Opterix, : clarity.
Edited by Archer Opterix, : clarity.
It looks like you really are one big joke.
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