What is the Correct Philosophy?

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Saturn
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14 Jan 2012, 2:23 pm

What is the correct philosophy about life, the universe and everything, or, if that is too big a target, some smaller part of it?

Vigilans
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14 Jan 2012, 2:24 pm

I would say "No philosophy" but that is just me

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14 Jan 2012, 2:36 pm

The philosophy that doesn't stop asking the hard questions.

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14 Jan 2012, 2:45 pm

Always strive for truth.

ruveyn
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14 Jan 2012, 3:01 pm

The correct philosophy is no philosophy at all.

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Saturn
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14 Jan 2012, 3:09 pm

Is 'no philosophy' arguably still a philosophy?

ruveyn
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14 Jan 2012, 3:12 pm

Saturn wrote:

Is 'no philosophy' arguably still a philosophy?

The sentence "No philosophy at all is best" is true no matter how you read it.

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Saturn
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14 Jan 2012, 3:19 pm

ruveyn wrote:

Saturn wrote:

Is 'no philosophy' arguably still a philosophy?

The sentence "No philosophy at all is best" is true no matter how you read it.

ruveyn

I'm not sure what you mean. Why is it true?

ruveyn
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14 Jan 2012, 3:38 pm

Saturn wrote:

ruveyn wrote:

Saturn wrote:

Is 'no philosophy' arguably still a philosophy?

The sentence "No philosophy at all is best" is true no matter how you read it.

ruveyn

I'm not sure what you mean. Why is it true?

Of all the philosophies there are, not one of them is best. Hence "no philosophy is best" is a true statement. On the other hand a totally null philosophy makes no errors, hence is better than all the others.

Philosophy is a questionable activity. What does it produce?

ruveyn

Saturn
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14 Jan 2012, 3:52 pm

ruveyn wrote:

Saturn wrote:

ruveyn wrote:

Saturn wrote:

Is 'no philosophy' arguably still a philosophy?

The sentence "No philosophy at all is best" is true no matter how you read it.

ruveyn

I'm not sure what you mean. Why is it true?

I would suggest that we tend to operate with some philosophical beliefs ie. things we have taken ourselves to have rationally concluded about how things are, whether we like it or not.

Philosophy as production is highly questionable but it also, I believe, comes out of human desire to understand how things are, and so I'm not sure it can be written off in practice even if it can be in theory.

There is also a tradition in philosophy of questioning what is conventionally or unreflectively held to be the case. Socrates seems to have done a lot of this and more recently I think Wittgenstein and Derrida are examples, although I think it was the content of previous philosophy that was their target. In this sense philosophy can be 'productive' in as far as it can undermine misunderstanding and thereby the products of misunderstanding.

Sunshine7
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14 Jan 2012, 4:05 pm

Quote:

Philosophy is a questionable activity. What does it produce?

I've agreed with you on this before, and as a STEM graduate, I do hold a small measure of contempt for philosophy majors who think that name-dropping Greek philosophers counts as "analysis".

On the other hand, mere functional utility is not the only barometer of value. All human beings value art, but art is, in a manner of speaking, useless. It can be of some happenstance utility, like as a tourist attraction, but these are usually only side-effects, not (usually) the main/sole intent of the artificer.

Quote:

I think you have a point there - the human brain is an emotion machine, not a logic machine.

We aspies tend to retreat to logic as the first and last language of discourse. For me it's because logic is unambiguous, unlike the fuzzy and unfathomable ways other people go about thinking. It's usually suboptimal, and doesn't always produce results - but at least within a logical framework I know why this frame of logic is unable to produce results.

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14 Jan 2012, 5:12 pm

ruveyn wrote:

The correct philosophy is no philosophy at all. ruveyn

With all due respect, sir; what about "Do what you will, as long as you do no harm"?

ruveyn
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14 Jan 2012, 6:35 pm

Fnord wrote:

ruveyn wrote:

The correct philosophy is no philosophy at all. ruveyn

With all due respect, sir; what about "Do what you will, as long as you do no harm"?

That is a moral maxim, not a theory of knowledge or being. It is a rule of thumb, as it were.

ruveyn

you_are_what_you_is
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14 Jan 2012, 7:13 pm

I'm a hardcore relativist/subjectivist on truth. I don't believe any philosophy of anything is correct "absolutely" or "objectively" or whatever. There are things that are correct for me, things that are correct for you, etc, but that's as much that can be said about it in my view.

The "correct" philosophy, for you at least, is whatever you happen to believe at the moment. That might change, of course.

.

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14 Jan 2012, 8:36 pm

There is no correct philosophy because the answer is different for each person.
We have had thousands of philosophers and not everyone can agree with one specific philosophy.
Until we find a philosophy that everyone agrees with then there will not be a correct philosophy.

Philosophy is very important but one philosophy can never be entirely correct.

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Saturn
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15 Jan 2012, 6:19 am

you_are_what_you_is wrote:

I tend to agree with you, and my own philosophical beliefs have changed a few times in impoertant ways for me. However, I don't (currently) see why there shouldn't in principle be one accurate account of how things are. The problem is that I can't see how one individual could provide or come to know that account. And since we are, practically speaking, never going to get beyond our particular perspectives, it perhaps doesn't make any sense to speak of a single accurate account or correct philosophy.

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