What is the Correct Philosophy?

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The correct philosophy is the one which is malleable to whatever the known facts exist. No one philosophy will ever be completely correct for all time, you must be open minded to whatever we can prove exists and occurs in our universe.

This is the correct philosophy according to me and if you don't agree then you are an idiot.
That may be a joke or it may not be.


1.We are born with certain morals. The others are created by the society that we live in.
2. Nothing is certain. Don't blindly follow a religion or your intuition. Question everything including science,politics,philosophy and all religion
3. Everyone is equal but we are all individuals.
4. Evil is caused by pride,hatred,greed and apathy.
5. It is impossible for all people to agree on one philosophy. The same goes for religion and politics.
6. Humor is equally important to philosophy,religion and politics.

I am sure someone will disagree with me which is why there will never be one correct philosophy.

I think it is unclear, too. I am asking this as a rephrasing or refinement of my original question regarding a correct philosophy. I'll try and explain better what I mean.

It appears to me that everything 'that is' (this includes everthing that has been and will be), is only one way. There is only one way things can be. Something cannot be both the case and not the case. In this sense there is some 'truth' and it is the reality of everything that is. Perhaps this is just obvious, taken for granted, uncontroversial.

Can there be an account given of this? Not by me, not by any individual, I would say. Is there anywhere an account of all that is? Is there anywhere known, all that is?

I'm not sure what itch I'm trying to scratch with this line of questioning.

Yes, this is more what I'm looking for: a philosophy that can account for everything that is. If it can't account for everything then it would not meet the definition of what I mean by 'correct'.

That's pretty bold talk. I don't know if I disagree with you until I know more clearly what you are saying.

What certain morals are we born with?
How would this be possible in a world where nothing is certain?
Why not blindly follow ideas?
Why question everything?
Equal in what respect?
What is 'evil'?

Ok, so this is ONE possible world.

However, what account can be given for this ONE possible world? The only one possibility I can see is deriving it from logic, and skepticism towards that project is justified. After all, deriving this particular world from mathematical principles in physics does not appear too promising. Additionally, arguments like the ontological argument are generally not compelling and always have massive logical gaps.

So, given that, it is hard to really say much. Am I missing your direction?

I think I'm now asking if everything that there is can be fully replicated but in the form of the understanding, comprehension, knowledge, of everything that is. I'm not just asking for a some principles through which we can account for what is or a part of what is. This seems an impossible ask.

I'll make it easier by removing knowledge of the future. In fact, I'll get much more realistic, practical and personal, by getting rid of the need to know anything that has not fallen within my own experience. Now I am asking whether I can come to a correct account of what has happened to me. Is there a correct account? Is it possible to be able to accurately explain what has happened to me and why it has happened? Sometimes I think I get a better understanding of my own life compared to the one I held previously, and then, later, I go on to develop that understanding further, such that it is actually now a different account of things.

Philosophy is tied up with this self-interpretation. Say, I have something bothering me in my life, and I want not to be bothered by that, so I somehow look into the problem and try to find out why it is a problem and how I can move on from it. I will look at philosophical resources: accounts that philosophers (or scientists, thinkers in general) give about parts of what is. I will look at my own attitudes towards these subjects and compare my experience with the account being presented. I will get a sense of what feels right and I will come to adopt revised views, a revised philosophy of my own life that I take to be more correct than the previous one. But how do I know that I have the correct account?

That's kind of what I'm getting at now.

You mean represented? Like, whether we could come up with the "Everything in the universe program"? I don't see anything inherently impossible. If we assume that reality is non-contradictory, then we just need to create a massive MAP with every variable related to every other variable. Honestly, when making this map, it is probably possible to make MANY possible and different maps.

The issue is that human beings will never be able to do this. Knowledge of everything is a MASSIVE demand.

Also, in terms of knowledge, we couldn't convey qualitative knowledge. So, while we can express in some format "John dumping Mary made Mary experience sadness", we can't express sadness as emotion, only in some artificially constructed language.


I think you can come up with a correct account, hypothetically. Realistically you never can. The issue is partly in terms of the data you would wish expressed. If you created a model of the function of every neuron in the brain, that would express everything you have experienced in some form or fashion.(along with external facts as needed) However, if you wish to express emotional content, then that may be more difficult. You could make the effort in terms of recreating events, but in all likelihood subjective data will be lost in transmission. If you are approaching this as a fallible expression including experiential content, then there is no correct account.

In all practice, there is no accuracy, only continual efforts to create models.


You never know you have the correct account. Instead, you have an account that you regard highly and one that you may be justified to believe is the best.

Really though, is it important to have the "God's eye view"? You are guessing, checking, and altering as much as you can. Maybe the entire effort is doomed to fail. You can't do anything else though. Just take truth with a grain of salt, and recognize that what you consider true is that which has had success in inquiry for you, even if it isn't the "God's eye view".


Hopefully my response is somewhat meaningful.

Thanks for that, AG.

You've given me some ideas to work with here. I suppose I am loooking for something of a 'God's eye view' even if that is only of myself. I suppose it is impossible to be able to know if in one moment I have the correct understanding of everything that has gone on in my life, inwardly and outwardly, because that would involve going through it all in memory which would be incomplete or take as long as my life has been.

I suppose I am looking for a summary, an ongoing summary, understanding of what has happened and I kind of have this. It's not quite like I spell it out to myself, but I recast things in accordance with a new theory or test new insights against an old theory. I suppose it is a bit like the subjective application of the scientific method to subjective experience. Testing a new hypothesis against the data, or testing new data against an old hypothesis, and sticking with the old or adpting the new hypothesis accordingly. It should perhaps be no surprise to think that I operate in this way, although ths itself is just a new idea I have had just now. I keep seeming to have new insights and ideas. It's brilliant! To me anyway. It doesn't make much difference to other people.

Just throw in the notion of a paradigm shift as well to make this even more interesting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift

People that ignore the morals that we are born with.

Thanks for your reply, artrat.

What to you is the basis of these morals we are born with? I mean, where are they? What are they? How do you know they are there? What experience, thinking, or feeling tells you this is so?

@AG

I think the idea of the paradigm shift can be applied to the development of my own self-understanding. I have perhaps only undergone 2 or 3 major paradigm shifts in my post-adolescent inner life.

As a quick thought, I wonder whether the idea of the paradigm shift is the one that explains best the major points of change in my self/world view. The theory of the paradigm shift is perhaps itself subject to the very process of revision that it theorizes as being applicable to particular domains of understanding under its purview. For example, I might tend to understand the process of major change in view as being due to the dual forces of destruction and creation: like a plant would die back at the end of the season and come again, renewed, next season into the space that its old self previously occupied.

The theory of the paradigm shift seems a kind of meta-theory, a kind of 'God's eye view' itself. Is even a God's eye view subject to change and overhaul?

Well, the paradigm shift probably does apply to itself. So.... yeah, its a theory how things are, but at the same time, it is fallible, and we can reject it or overhaul it, etc. And that's really kind of odd to think about.

Luckily this question has already been answered.

Check out _The Beginning of Infinity_, by David Deutsch, a physicist and philosopher. He's a Popperian.

This book puts humans back at the center of the universe, unlike Richard Dawkins and similar guys who say that humans are just chemical scum and that we're not worth s**t in this universe.

Deutsch is a proponent of the Multiverse and he has a chapter about it in this book.

He also discusses epistemology, creation, biological evolution, cultural evolution, the physical vs meta-physical, artificial intelligence, optimism, morality and human choices, objective beauty, and more.

This is the most important book ever written!

Check out the introduction here: http://beginningofinfinity.com/excerpt

Join the discussion: http://groups.google.com/group/beginnin ... ity/topics

Two months ago I started reading the book and I've been asking questions to get clarification on the forum and its been a blast!

-- Rami

Good philosophy helps prevent thinking mistakes.