Philosophy
I became interested in philosophy a few years ago and made a casual acquaintance with some of the characters who have played a part in its progression since Socrates wandered about the market places of ancient Greece, annoying the locals. I can’t say I am any wiser because of it. I thought that learning about philosophy might help facilitate my getting to the truth of things. If it has taught me anything at all, it is that there isn’t a truth of things.Perhaps a better way of putting that would be to say that the word “truth” stands for something different every time we use it, but it always seems to involve distilling or isolating something from something bigger. What we end up with is very often something that has to be separated from any wider context in order to satisfy our desire for a binary* outcome.
Philosophy isn’t really about getting to the truth, it’s more about getting to what isn’t the truth, and for that alone, it’s worth pursuing.
* I would have said “black and white” at one time.
Comments (49)
An evening could go like this:
What is that?
Me:It's a chair
How do you know it's a chair ?
Me: Because it is a chair. It performs the function of what we call a chair . I'd be sitting on the floor if it weren't under me.
They then go off in a philosophical rant about the chair/non-chair
I go into the kitchen, get a drink and start watching TV whilst continuing to sit on the philosophical chair.
Maybe it would be a good defence for me though
it's called common sense.
He posted someones words "nothing in life has a meaning, except the meaning that i give it".
The truth is as relative as the justice. ...........good for the lawyers.
The phrase implies one established entity, the word implies two.
I like the linguistic logical basis necessary for philosophical discussion because the aim is to communicate information accurately.
I don't have a problem with a chair being a chair and a non-chair simultaneously, as long as Molly's in a non-huff.
What made me think of writing this blog was a "training course" I was on yesterday. The instructor showed a diagram of three vehicles involved in a traffic accident that was developing. He asked the class which vehicle was at fault. A couple of them gave him a definite answer, everyone else didn't seem as sure but still felt obliged to make a choice, which they all did. I thought it was a case of all three vehicles contributing to the accident, but even then I was making some assumptions about the situation. The instructor said it was the first time he'd used this particular slide show and didn't have the notes for it, so he didn't actually know what the answer was.
It was a good example of how people feel they have to come to a conclusion even when they don't have enough information to justify one. Brexit would be another example of a car crash with numerous versions of the truth.
Happy to see you back
Fact->Philosophy->Theory->X->Truth
Did I put them in the right order?
I think more often people start with their preferred version of the truth and make the philosophy fit it.
MiMi has no constructive ( not that I’ve said any constructive things on other blogs anyway!
That's a relief, MiMi, if you'd said something constructive I would have had to respond with something that sounded intelligent. It's all too much work; coffee and cake sounds much better.
Prepared with
Through the baby boomers we are arriving at pre-Renaissance times. Civilisation has gone senile and as a greying baby it begins to resemble its infancy what came before the Renaissance.
There’s a reason Game of Thrones is so popular beyond it being well-made. Winter is coming encapsulates the spirit of our times. Winter is what the new age turned out to be - The 1960s followed by not really bothering with politics for 50 years is both the grandfather and the father of Brexit.