Reply to TiredThinker It seems to me that philosophers don't "answer" so much as they raise (unbegged) questions of 'our political, ethical and intellectual givens' (e.g. assumed answers, perennial questions, normative solutions or intractable / underdetermined problems).
IMO, some of the more profound philosophers from a century ago (more or less) are Peirce-Dewey, M. Scheler, P. Kropotkin, R. Luxemburg, Russell, Wittgenstein, Popper-Feyerabend, Zapffe-Camus, Buber-Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, de Beauvoir ...
What paradigms have been broken, altered, or introduced by philosophers in that time period? No fair citing physicists or other scientists who have speculated about their subjects, just philosophers known for their contributions, those ideas familiar to the general public.
?TiredThinker It seems to me that philosophers don't "answer" so much as they raise (unbegged) questions of 'our political, ethical and intellectual givens' (e.g. assumed answers, perennial questions, normative solutions or intractable / underdetermined problems).
You cant raise a question if you dont already presuppose its answer in terms of a wider framework within which the question is intelligible.
Every questioning is a seeking. Every seeking takes its direction beforehand from what is sought. Questioning is a knowing search for beings in their thatness and whatness.... As questioning about, . . questioning has what it asks about. All asking about . . . is in some way an inquiring of... As a seeking, questioning needs prior guidance from what it seeks. The meaning of being must therefore already be available to us in a certain way.(Heidegger)
What paradigms have been broken, altered, or introduced by philosophers in that time period? No fair citing physicists or other scientists who have speculated about their subjects, just philosophers known for their contributions, those ideas familiar to the general public.
Logical positivism was put into question by the linguistic turn in analytic philosophy, structuralism was
critiqued by phenomenology and post-structuralism in continental philosophy and the social sciences, modernism was replaced by postmodernism in political theory, etc
structuralism was critiqued by phenomenology and post-structuralism in continental philosophy and the social sciences, modernism was replaced by postmodernism in political theory, etc
Logical positivism was put into question by the linguistic turn in analytic philosophy
Thanks for your answers. I've been reading about LP, finding I knew very little about it.
unenlightenedNovember 11, 2022 at 21:36#7557510 likes
Contribution to what? Curiously, the list of the great and the good so far on the thread seems to leave out the philosophers of environmentalism, of feminism, of anti colonialism. It is surely not the business of the philosopher to contribute to society but to challenge it. It is not our business to answer to a miserable accountancy that cannot value anything except in terms of convention and complacent compliance.
Popper and Rawls would have to be up there. Gettier, too, in an odd fashion. Maybe Singer and Chalmers. I think there's a bunch that may seem to have made great contributions (Wittgenstein, Russell, Kripke, Lewis et al) but will end up looking on the wrong side of history.
We will need considerable historical distance to see which of these names mentioned gets historical recognition.
Back in the time of the classics, people like Malebranche, Gassendi, Priesteley and More were as big as Locke and others, but for some reason which isn't clear, they're not much recognized at all, even if they did excellent work, in my estimation anyway.
I think Husserl and Heidegger will make it out, as will the pragmatists, of the po-mo crowd, it's hard to say. Maybe Foucault.
I don't know if Derrida will be a big name in say, 10-20 years. And people like Wittgenstein might end up being over-valued in terms of lasting impact. We don't know.
I cannot think of any concrete contributions philosophy has made to our understanding of Creation/nature. It is interesting but not very useful. Only our faith in the Creator offers us any real hope for the world. IMHO.
What has philosophy answered for use [sic] in the previous 100 years?
For the last 100 years, it's the role of the individual in society.
All the important metaphysical questions have already been written and defended vigorously prior to this period. Most especially the ultimate reality and the self.
unenlightenedNovember 12, 2022 at 08:58#7558250 likes
TiredThinkerNovember 12, 2022 at 16:49#7558870 likes
If philosophy only raises new questions has science answered anything other than by way of discoveries that give philosophers more to ask questions about?
Contribution to what? Curiously, the list of the great and the good so far on the thread seems to leave out the philosophers of environmentalism, of feminism, of anti colonialism. It is surely not the business of the philosopher to contribute to society but to challenge it. It is not our business to answer to a miserable accountancy that cannot value anything except in terms of convention and complacent compliance.
You're right unenlightened. A philosophers role is indeed to challenge convention, to deduce where such convention would logically lead and inform the public on that impending outcome.
In this way philosophy is about navigating the "thought-scape" based on the assumptions of the collective (society) and reveal where that goes. To venture metaphysically down each path, before the physical has to make the choice. In that way philosophers may guide them, as our ancestors (chieftains, sages, druids, prophets, oracles, wise ones) have done so before us.
Philosophy is a guardian of informed choice. A neccesity. A passive one but a neccesary one.
Your contribution to philosophy exists so that physical contributions to error/misjudgement may not. Do not take your responsibility lightly.
If philosophy only raises new questions has science answered anything other than by way of discoveries that give philosophers more to ask questions about?
In order to raise a new question a new assumption must first be established. Science lends its hand to concretising such assumptions. Philosophy takes what is learned and addresses the ethical and rational implications of that.
It is a "to-and-fro". A symbiosis. Without philosophy, science is blind to the ethical applications of its objective discoveries. Without science, philosophy can only merely speculate, is blind to the objectively rational.
I cannot think of any concrete contributions philosophy has made to our understanding of Creation/nature. It is interesting but not very useful. Only our faith in the Creator offers us any real hope for the world. IMHO.
Is philosophy not the contemplation of such a creator? Philosophy can (as far as I know) be applied to all human pillars of society - medicine, language, politics, education, science, faith.
Philosophy IMHO is the transcendence of all human spheres of thought. All disciplines. And thus the only true way to unite them, and elucidate the true nature of creation, reality and truth.
It is up to philosophers to work constructively (through discourse) to bind and solidify the meaning of what it is to exist. And what existence is. If they cannot do it, no one can.
Such is the broad scope of thought and its applications (philosophy).
If philosophy only raises new questions has science answered anything other than by way of discoveries that give philosophers more to ask questions about?
In the main, I don't think so. Science solves problems (re: fact-patterns, phenomenal processes, computations), philosophy questions with grounds its own questions as well as the framing of scientific problems (re: aporia, ideas, interpretations, criteria, methods). In this way, it seems to me, 'science and philosophy' complement and may inform / influence one another.
Kudos to David Lewis for saying out loud that there is no difference between a possible world and a "really real" world.
The "ideal" (potential to be) and the "real" (what actually is currently) are mutually dependent. The ideal is the goal whilst the real is what we have at our disposal to get there.
Utopia is brought into existence through advancement: taking current problems, making them a thing of the past, and then facing/challenging the remaining issues, working our way through what stands between us and our ultimate and deepest desire.
One can create a personal utopia, or they can attempt the behemoth task of creating one for everyone. The choice is up to the individual and how egalitarian they are in character. They may be unsuccessful but they can give it a go.
Well but I was referring to logically possible (consistent) worlds, not ideal ones.
Well if " more ideal/improved" realities or worlds are connected to the real/currently possible one (which is consistent), does that not mean that a truly ideal world would also be consistent? On an ethical and logical basis.
You can say your ideal world is where you can fly in the sky.
In the 1800s this is a logically impossible ideal and inconsistent with reality. Just a dream.
Now, we have several dozen versions of flying available to people: planes, helicopters, wing suits, powersailing, kites, balloons etc.
So it seems like the ideal is only referential to the real. When something new is realised, someone's ideal has been established (the inventors, the entrepreneurs, the author etc). Otherwise they wouldnt have chased it down/pursued that goal.
All goals are ideals. Some goals are not ethically consistent (having slaves) and some are not logically consistent (time travel backwards), but some are both logically and ethically consistent or becoming so (vaccinating impoverished people against malaria).
What has philosophy answered for use in the previous 100 years?
What about the modern concept of Holism? Since the golden age of Greece, philosophy had become somewhat moribund. And since the Enlightenment rejection of religious authority on secular questions, philosophy once again went underground, and basked in the shadow of empirical Science.
In 1926 though, as "quantum mechanics" was found to be surprisingly non-mechanistic, a new light was focused on the "scientific method". Lawyer Jan Smuts was concerned about the inherent limitations of the analytical/reductive trend in science since the Renaissance. His practical yet evocative philosophical concept soon led to the emergence of Systems Science & Cybernetics & Quantum Holism. It also spurred interest in Eastern philosophy. The notion that whole systems are fundamentally different from isolated parts changed the direction of modern culture. What question did it answer? Perhaps "why are complex systems so hard to make sense of via analytical methods?" :smile:
Holism :
[i]Although the concept of holism has been discussed by many, the term holism in academic terminology was first introduced and publicly shared in print by Smuts in the early twentieth century.
Although Smuts' concept of holism is grounded in the natural sciences, he claimed that it has a relevance in philosophy, ethics, sociology, and psychology.[19] In Holism and Evolution, he argued that the concept of holism is "grounded in evolution and is also an ideal that guides human development and one's level of personality actualization." Smuts stated in the book that "personality is the highest form of holism"[/i]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Smuts
Quantum Holism : The essence of quantum holism lies in translating the idea of wholeness into the fundamental property of the finite indivisibility of quantum systems into any kind of elements or sets.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physics-holism/
A century ago, the Newtonian/Euclidean conception of the universe was shattered. And set theory finally enabled us to be certain that 1 + 1 = 2. Doesn't get much more fundamental.
What paradigms have been broken, altered, or introduced by philosophers in that time period? No fair citing physicists or other scientists who have speculated about their subjects, just philosophers known for their contributions, those ideas familiar to the general public.
A century ago, the Newtonian/Euclidean conception of the universe was shattered. And set theory finally enabled us to be certain that 1 + 1 = 2. Doesn't get much more fundamental.
Nice try. :cool: Set theory for the general public is arranging dinner plates and counting silverware.
Deleted UserNovember 15, 2022 at 22:35#7565540 likes
Comments (40)
Time is the greatest contributor to philosophy. Not a who but a what.
IMO, some of the more profound philosophers from a century ago (more or less) are Peirce-Dewey, M. Scheler, P. Kropotkin, R. Luxemburg, Russell, Wittgenstein, Popper-Feyerabend, Zapffe-Camus, Buber-Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, de Beauvoir ...
update (re: 20th century innovations):
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/581566
What paradigms have been broken, altered, or introduced by philosophers in that time period? No fair citing physicists or other scientists who have speculated about their subjects, just philosophers known for their contributions, those ideas familiar to the general public.
Yep, very much so.
One could add Whitehead, James, C.I Lewis, Nagel and so on.
But I'm sure some here will say we are missing the real geniuses, Derrida, Lacan, Deleuze, Lyotard, Althusser....
Hah.
Contemporary philosophy has answered one of our biggest doubts:
- Are we, as humans, with or without God, morally good?
And the phenomenological answer that the synthesis of the last century gave us was:
- No.
We live, then, in an age of uncertainty and rediscovery, as metaphysical as physical.
In the end, only one thing is certain: - We will never stop questioning ourselves.
(Re: "philosophical suicide") And we're as good as dead whenever we stop. "The unexamined life is not worth living", is it?
Dont forget Foucault, Rorty, Kuhn, Ricouer, Gadamer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Husserl and Nancy.
You cant raise a question if you dont already presuppose its answer in terms of a wider framework within which the question is intelligible.
Every questioning is a seeking. Every seeking takes its direction beforehand from what is sought. Questioning is a knowing search for beings in their thatness and whatness.... As questioning about, . . questioning has what it asks about. All asking about . . . is in some way an inquiring of... As a seeking, questioning needs prior guidance from what it seeks. The meaning of being must therefore already be available to us in a certain way.(Heidegger)
Logical positivism was put into question by the linguistic turn in analytic philosophy, structuralism was
critiqued by phenomenology and post-structuralism in continental philosophy and the social sciences, modernism was replaced by postmodernism in political theory, etc
Motion is not always progress. :wink:
Thanks for your answers. I've been reading about LP, finding I knew very little about it.
Much has changed in science since he wrote it. Nonetheless, it brought into focus the divides between models of consciousness currently being pursued.
We will need considerable historical distance to see which of these names mentioned gets historical recognition.
Back in the time of the classics, people like Malebranche, Gassendi, Priesteley and More were as big as Locke and others, but for some reason which isn't clear, they're not much recognized at all, even if they did excellent work, in my estimation anyway.
I think Husserl and Heidegger will make it out, as will the pragmatists, of the po-mo crowd, it's hard to say. Maybe Foucault.
I don't know if Derrida will be a big name in say, 10-20 years. And people like Wittgenstein might end up being over-valued in terms of lasting impact. We don't know.
I cannot think of any concrete contributions philosophy has made to our understanding of Creation/nature. It is interesting but not very useful. Only our faith in the Creator offers us any real hope for the world. IMHO.
So what's your (Heidi's) point? How does it relate to my previous post which you've quoted?
For the last 100 years, it's the role of the individual in society.
All the important metaphysical questions have already been written and defended vigorously prior to this period. Most especially the ultimate reality and the self.
Contribution studiously ignored.
Audre Lorde.
Contribution studiously ignored.
But what did the Romans ever do for us?
You're right unenlightened. A philosophers role is indeed to challenge convention, to deduce where such convention would logically lead and inform the public on that impending outcome.
In this way philosophy is about navigating the "thought-scape" based on the assumptions of the collective (society) and reveal where that goes. To venture metaphysically down each path, before the physical has to make the choice. In that way philosophers may guide them, as our ancestors (chieftains, sages, druids, prophets, oracles, wise ones) have done so before us.
Philosophy is a guardian of informed choice. A neccesity. A passive one but a neccesary one.
Your contribution to philosophy exists so that physical contributions to error/misjudgement may not. Do not take your responsibility lightly.
In order to raise a new question a new assumption must first be established. Science lends its hand to concretising such assumptions. Philosophy takes what is learned and addresses the ethical and rational implications of that.
It is a "to-and-fro". A symbiosis. Without philosophy, science is blind to the ethical applications of its objective discoveries. Without science, philosophy can only merely speculate, is blind to the objectively rational.
A complimentary system indeed.
Is philosophy not the contemplation of such a creator? Philosophy can (as far as I know) be applied to all human pillars of society - medicine, language, politics, education, science, faith.
Philosophy IMHO is the transcendence of all human spheres of thought. All disciplines. And thus the only true way to unite them, and elucidate the true nature of creation, reality and truth.
It is up to philosophers to work constructively (through discourse) to bind and solidify the meaning of what it is to exist. And what existence is. If they cannot do it, no one can.
Such is the broad scope of thought and its applications (philosophy).
In the main, I don't think so. Science solves problems (re: fact-patterns, phenomenal processes, computations), philosophy questions with grounds its own questions as well as the framing of scientific problems (re: aporia, ideas, interpretations, criteria, methods). In this way, it seems to me, 'science and philosophy' complement and may inform / influence one another.
Kudos to David Lewis for saying out loud that there is no difference between a possible world and a "really real" world.
The "ideal" (potential to be) and the "real" (what actually is currently) are mutually dependent. The ideal is the goal whilst the real is what we have at our disposal to get there.
Utopia is brought into existence through advancement: taking current problems, making them a thing of the past, and then facing/challenging the remaining issues, working our way through what stands between us and our ultimate and deepest desire.
One can create a personal utopia, or they can attempt the behemoth task of creating one for everyone. The choice is up to the individual and how egalitarian they are in character. They may be unsuccessful but they can give it a go.
What does such a redundant modifer even mean? As compared to 'not really real' or 'unreally real'' :roll:
It means to emphasize that something is "real", especially when one doesn't know what "real" means.
Well if " more ideal/improved" realities or worlds are connected to the real/currently possible one (which is consistent), does that not mean that a truly ideal world would also be consistent? On an ethical and logical basis.
You can say your ideal world is where you can fly in the sky.
In the 1800s this is a logically impossible ideal and inconsistent with reality. Just a dream.
Now, we have several dozen versions of flying available to people: planes, helicopters, wing suits, powersailing, kites, balloons etc.
So it seems like the ideal is only referential to the real. When something new is realised, someone's ideal has been established (the inventors, the entrepreneurs, the author etc). Otherwise they wouldnt have chased it down/pursued that goal.
All goals are ideals. Some goals are not ethically consistent (having slaves) and some are not logically consistent (time travel backwards), but some are both logically and ethically consistent or becoming so (vaccinating impoverished people against malaria).
What about the modern concept of Holism? Since the golden age of Greece, philosophy had become somewhat moribund. And since the Enlightenment rejection of religious authority on secular questions, philosophy once again went underground, and basked in the shadow of empirical Science.
In 1926 though, as "quantum mechanics" was found to be surprisingly non-mechanistic, a new light was focused on the "scientific method". Lawyer Jan Smuts was concerned about the inherent limitations of the analytical/reductive trend in science since the Renaissance. His practical yet evocative philosophical concept soon led to the emergence of Systems Science & Cybernetics & Quantum Holism. It also spurred interest in Eastern philosophy. The notion that whole systems are fundamentally different from isolated parts changed the direction of modern culture. What question did it answer? Perhaps "why are complex systems so hard to make sense of via analytical methods?" :smile:
Holism :
[i]Although the concept of holism has been discussed by many, the term holism in academic terminology was first introduced and publicly shared in print by Smuts in the early twentieth century.
Although Smuts' concept of holism is grounded in the natural sciences, he claimed that it has a relevance in philosophy, ethics, sociology, and psychology.[19] In Holism and Evolution, he argued that the concept of holism is "grounded in evolution and is also an ideal that guides human development and one's level of personality actualization." Smuts stated in the book that "personality is the highest form of holism"[/i]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Smuts
Quantum Holism :
The essence of quantum holism lies in translating the idea of wholeness into the fundamental property of the finite indivisibility of quantum systems into any kind of elements or sets.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physics-holism/
A century ago, the Newtonian/Euclidean conception of the universe was shattered. And set theory finally enabled us to be certain that 1 + 1 = 2. Doesn't get much more fundamental.
Quoting alan1000
Nice try. :cool: Set theory for the general public is arranging dinner plates and counting silverware.
I am also a particular fan of absurdism for the average person.