The Nebulous Contribution of Philosophy

[Skyweir]

I love that quote Wayfriend .. exactly on point.

I agree .. yes our social frameworks are built incrementally over time .. but I do not agree that we are prisoners to those frameworks. Yes we grow up through pre established thought systems, yes we inherit our culture, beliefs etc .. but as humans with intelligence we are not controlled by them .. owned by them.

It is NOT impossible to challenge them, to break free of established constraints and controls .. and make further self discoveries, learn, question, change, adapt etc.

And we do this BECAUSE of lets say philosophical methodolgies .. for want of a better descriptor. This is but ONE benefit of philosphy .. it gives us the tools to question, analyse, consider apply methodology and substance to reasoning. This is without doubt one of philosophies great claims to fame.

Ok Science.

Even if you were to go the path that Wayfriend elucidated .. and start each life from THE beginning .. even stone age humans caused environmental damage, of course the impact was limited .. but we dont have to return to primeval conditions to live more harmoniously with our environments. There is no avoiding the absolute fact that humans ALWAYS adapt and change their natural environments to suit themselves.

If you want to free humanity from this inevitability you would have to remove humans from the equation, period.

But while we are part of the equation, science, philosophy is critical to the survivability of humans and our environments. Today we know and understand soooo much more about sustainability. Back in the day we didnt so much and the results were telling.

Today the way we grow, harvest and plant is based on a better understanding of sustainability .. and it .. well in Australia at least .. governs how most farming occurs. My sister is a viticulturalist .. and wine maker .. her training was in the science of viticulture. She has been doing this for 30 odd years now and is an expert in her field because of what she has brought to the industry. And its all about sustainability as an economic profit imperative. She speaks all over the world about wines and viticulture. Very different to viticulture of the past.

But its the same in livestock farming, and animal rearing .. we know so much more than we ever did about our industries and most farmers apply scientific principles to their farming.

Animal treatment is still evolving .. but I wager we will learn and ACCEPT that the way we treat livestock impacts on the meat we consume. Philosophy plays a significant role here too.. and of course backed up by the actual science.

I am in a farming region .. and I see changes in the way we farm all the time.

Yes it seems that we havent come that far .. and maybe we havent .. but I see improvements and benefits in new thinking everywhere.

I was raised in the same paradigm you were .. but I broke the chains of thought and expectations. You can too ... we fail I think as humans when we believe we have no choice .. that we cannot change the parameters of our being and believing.

Much love to you my friend .. all is not as lost as it can so very often seem it is.

[peter]

Trapped was entirely the wrong word here; let me use analogy again to try to get closer to my meaning. You are given a granite house in the countryside. You can decorate the inside of the house as you choose with anything from bright florals to sombre browns - but nothing you can ever do will turn that stone house into a wood house. This equates (I think) to the structure of our minds; it is created by the formative ideologies and understandings within which we are immersed during those critical years of development during which time it's plasticity is set, never to be changed other than by the decoration by which we choose to adorn it - the fundamental structure of how it sees the world (at its deeper level of understanding) never to be changed.

An example from science; we know that gravity does not exist. There is no such thing. Unless you completely eschew all advance in physics since Einstein it's dead in the water. But not a single one of us - and that includes the physicists who most of all should be able to - can do other than see it in exactly the way they did as when, in the pram, they learned that a teddy tipped over the side would fall to the floor and not rise to the ceiling. The way we see it is hardwired and we can do no other. Now this is what I think philosophy actually does; it is the builder of that house, it is the actual creator of that mental framework upon which we hang out decorative beliefs - and for the most part is unchanging and unchangeable.

How does it do this - by disseminating ideas that become over time embedded in the public consciousness and eventually move, generation to generation into the unconscious framework of understanding upon which our thinking hangs.

(Ps love you too Sky! )

[Skyweir]

Gravity doesnt exist

When did that happen??? .. OMG .. I am seriously sciencely deficient

[Fist and Faith]

I was raised Presbyterian. I went to Sunday School for the first ten-ish years of my life, and attended the Church service afterwards often enough. I sang in the Cherub Choir, which my mother helped run. It was all simply the way life was. I didn't question any of it. I assumed everything I was taught was factual information, which is how it was presented.

The minister I remember most from those years is among the nicest people I've ever known, and I would be extremely happy to see him again and chat. I don't remember the minister before him as well, but I remember us neighborhood boys hunting snakes around the rectory, because his wife was scared of them.

The town doctor had previously been a missionary in Africa. He and his family came back due to a health issue with one of the boys. I was sick a lot as a kid because of allergies, and went to him for allergy shots every week. I took care of their dog when they went on vacations. I would probably literally cry tears of joy if I saw them again, even though I might not recognize them after close to forty years. (They returned to Africa when the son's health permitted, but my brother said he saw them several years ago.
They were in the congregation where my brother, who was then a minister, was preaching.)

Then there's Furls Fire...

In short, I have never had anything close to a bad experience with religion or the very religious people I've known in my life.

I am as far from being a Christian as anyone else in the world is. I feel absolutely nothing religious within me. When I was about ten, I heard a guy on tv talking about atheism. I had never heard of or imagined the idea that there were, or even could be, people who did not take all the stuff I had been taught as fact. But I realized I was one of them. I realized I did not feel any of the things I had been raised on. I do not feel God's presence. I don't have any feeling of a religious nature inside me.

I spend decades reading about different religions, and talking to people of different Christian denominations. (I even had a Jehovah's Witness come to my house every week for a few months, so I could learn how what they believed was different from what all the other Christians who have bad opinions of them believe.) I have found some beauty and wisdom in various places. Particularly in what I've read of Hinduism.

But I feel absolutely nothing for any of it. I have absolutely no reason to believe there are gods or a God; a soul; an afterlife; whatever.

No, peter, we are not taught an unchanging and unchangeable mental framework. Even in the most repressive societies, there are people who do not believe what they are taught, and want out. More today than in the past, because, despite the efforts of those in charge, the people are exposed to different ideas because of our technologies. It's hard to stop the internet, and people from other places are visiting more often than ever due to ease of travel.

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

[...]

An example from science; we know that gravity does not exist. There is no such thing. Unless you completely eschew all advance in physics since Einstein it's dead in the water. But not a single one of us - and that includes the physicists who most of all should be able to - can do other than see it in exactly the way they did as when, in the pram, they learned that a teddy tipped over the side would fall to the floor and not rise to the ceiling. The way we see it is hardwired and we can do no other. Now this is what I think philosophy actually does; it is the builder of that house, it is the actual creator of that mental framework upon which we hang out decorative beliefs - and for the most part is unchanging and unchangeable.

How does it do this - by disseminating ideas that become over time embedded in the public consciousness and eventually move, generation to generation into the unconscious framework of understanding upon which our thinking hangs.

[...]

What you're seemingly saying here is that humans-who-use-science have learned to know -- ironically, by the science "since Einstein" -- the limitations of science.

So, if earlier humans-using-science had perhaps -- believing science to be a Path-of-Ultimate-Knowing -- developed a promethean God-complex, is that the fault of science or of the humans?

Cuz it seems like your example shows that humans -- properly chastened and humbled -- can, in wisdom, correct the systemic foibles of their respective disciplines without pyrrhonistically effacing the historical footprints of their endeavors.

[Skyweir]

I sang in the Cherub Choir,

Awwww ... this is too cute. What a great name for a childrens choir .. or a choir choir

The minister I remember most from those years is among the nicest people I've ever known, and I would be extremely happy to see him again and chat. I don't remember the minister before him as well, but I remember us neighborhood boys hunting snakes around the rectory, because his wife was scared of them.

Then there's Furls Fire...

AMEN to this .. and nothing pulls at my heart more than this beautiful human. I loved this woman ... and mention of this amazing soul makes emotions well up. She was one of the most incredible humans in my life .. one of the very few mortals that I have ever truly adored.

... people are exposed to different ideas because of our technologies. It's hard to stop the internet, and people from other places are visiting more often than ever due to ease of travel.

This is true .. we are no longer bound by the thinking, cultural understandings, traditions, or even expectations of the past. Today we are exposed to much more diversity of understanding, and even if you have precious little knowledge or experience with one subject or another, you are able today to access information on pretty much any topic. Thank you Mr Google

[Skyweir]

+JMJ+

[...]

An example from science; we know that gravity does not exist. There is no such thing. Unless you completely eschew all advance in physics since Einstein it's dead in the water. But not a single one of us - and that includes the physicists who most of all should be able to - can do other than see it in exactly the way they did as when, in the pram, they learned that a teddy tipped over the side would fall to the floor and not rise to the ceiling. The way we see it is hardwired and we can do no other. Now this is what I think philosophy actually does; it is the builder of that house, it is the actual creator of that mental framework upon which we hang out decorative beliefs - and for the most part is unchanging and unchangeable.

How does it do this - by disseminating ideas that become over time embedded in the public consciousness and eventually move, generation to generation into the unconscious framework of understanding upon which our thinking hangs.

[...]

What you're seemingly saying here is that humans-who-use-science have learned to know -- ironically, by the science "since Einstein" -- the limitations of science.

So, if earlier humans-using-science had perhaps -- believing science to be a Path-of-Ultimate-Knowing -- developed a promethean God-complex, is that the fault of science or of the humans?

Cuz it seems like your example shows that humans -- properly chastened and humbled -- can, in wisdom, correct the systemic foibles of their respective disciplines without pyrrhonistically effacing the historical footprints of their endeavors.

Wow just wow .. so beautifully written. And kudos brilliantly expressed. I especially like "can in wisdom, correct the systemic foibles of their respective disciplines without pyrronhistically effacing the historical footprints of their endeavours".

[peter]

Take being raised from day one in a western liberal democracy; you may rail against it, you may protest against globalisation, you may be a died in the wool socialist.....but it will always be set against a western liberal democracy framework. You will struggle in the utmost to understand those people in this world for whom that idea is anathema - because they were raised from day one in other systems, and for whom the western model will always be 'the other'. Similarly, there are women in middle-eastern countries for whom the wearing of the hijab and burka is so natural, so ingrained that they are unable to understand why it is a source of consternation to those raised in the western tradition. The paternalism in which they are raised is so immersive a part of their lives from day one that it is almost a source of confusion to them to hear that there could be anything other, let alone entertain the possibility that it can be broken free off. And these are only the most crude examples that I can come up with in my limited imagination. I reiterate; this is not teaching us to think - this is creating the way we think. We are the sum of our beliefs, both conscious and unconscious - and these beliefs are the creation of those who have gone before.

In respect of people 'wanting out of what they are taught' .... this reinforces my point. It is only what they are taught that they can want out of - they haven't the framework in place to want out of anything other and the escape that some of them do make will be superficial at best.

[Vraith]

There's a fair amount of true in that, peter.
Very Foucault and similar...though really, even the ancients knew the power of early and constant indoctrination.
And the root of it is biological, energy/speed efficiency.
If we had to thoroughly and comprehensively "think" about all the inputs we receive...or even a few percent of them... we'd die basically immediately [though really, we'd never have come to be].

But it's not true entire, definitively...
The foundations, even if subterranean and pre-fabricated by our culturancestors, are not iron or stone....more like magma. Deep, dense, thick...but semi-plastic, semi-fluid.

Changing surely takes time, effort, desire, and near-immersion/exposure, but isn't necessarily merely superficial.

don't be such a gloomy-puss fatalist.

[peter]

I'm not sure it's actually fatalism in any 'gloomy' sense V. More a seeking to understand perhaps. I'm over sixty years old now - and not a jot wiser than when I was sixteen (or damn it, six come to that). I like to fool myself into thinking it is so most of the time ......... but when the chips are down the belief is built on sand. (Maybe that realisation is a form of wisdom in itself, like Socrates' knowing that ultimately he knew nothing, or the hedgehog's one Big Trick - I don't know.) But speaking from the purely personal - and it's dangerous to extrapolate from oneself to the rest of the set I know, but our own experience is all we have to go on - I've never been able to consciously effect even the slightest change on my deep inner core being, though God knows I've needed to. I suppose it must be possible however, as you say - take the Buddha for example. He, we are told, was able to find inner peace (or more correctly create it) from the turmoil of suffering that is existence by yes, developing a philosophy, a pathway to what he called enlightenment. (Was it really so; perhaps he simply went mad, but the form his madness took - or the place of madness to which his path of thinking took him - was simply that of unshakable belief in his enlightenment; all that remains then is to convince everyone else that by following the same path they will fetch up in the same place - but did it ever happen?) But questionings aside let's give perhaps Buddhism the benefit of the doubt and say yes - here we have a philosophy that has truly contributed to the positive advancement of humanity - and simultaneously, by very hard work as you say, allows a change to be made to ones core being.

[Vraith]

here we have a philosophy that has truly contributed to the positive advancement of humanity - and simultaneously, by very hard work as you say, allows a change to be made to ones core being.

Big B and the ensuing are not the only, but perhaps the best/most clearly communicated/delineated. In part, because they had a near-continuous communication path and in part because it doesn't tell you what to THINK in order to BE/DO.
It describes what to DO to open up thinking/being. [[and the doing itself isn't limited like "lift x, y times, increase by z to get amazing biceps]]
[[[that is a disputed claim, in many ways/sects, but basically true]]]

BTW---the problem MAY be that you think there IS a 'core being."
But I think we all have some variation of that problem.
Because see previous...efficiency.
[[[but efficiency is, often, a false path. It WASn't, before real intelligence...but it absolutely is now. Because in most cases we don't know what is efficient until AFTER there are dead people.
And dead people isn't BAD for the misunderstanders. They call it "collateral damage." [if it is even damage at all, which it only is if it is CERTAIN people damaged].

Heh---NOW who is being gloomy-puss? Me. But I'm in the middle of the bad shit. I'll get over it. Or die. Collateral fucking damage.

Can you believe that term exists?
That's fine.
Can you believe it is acceptable, rational?
In that case, I should be allowed to kill you and call you C.D.
[[[That's the Clockwork Orange Buddhist School.

[peter]

Now don't be getting your bowler hat and eye-liner out today V.

(I hear you my friend; be lucky! )

[Avatar]

...in most cases we don't know what is efficient until AFTER there are dead people.
And dead people isn't BAD for the misunderstanders. They call it "collateral damage."

There are always going to be casualties. Even in changing things for the "better."

--A

[Skyweir]

Thats the hard reality that Im pretty sure V gets .. sadly

The hard thing is being involved in a reality where deaths are justified, inevitable .. or worse avoidable.

I have no experience in such fucked up realities. But feel for those that have...

... as I have experience with other fucked up realities