Viola asked:

If you cannot be certain on what the truth is, based on experience, can you know anything at all?

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

If you wish to do things philosophically, the first rule is: be careful that you actually know what kind of a question you are asking!

If were to ask a computer this question, you’ll find ‘it does not compute’. You’ve not specified precisely what your notions of ‘truth’ and ‘experience’ are.

Philosophy is no different. The answer you receive depends on whom you ask. You can’t expect that everyone knows what’s on your mind when you write those words!

Now we use the word ‘truth’ quite casually every day, and usually we mean the truth of some fact, of which the opposite is misinformation or lies. But this is easily resolved, and a computer can do it too.

But maybe you want something ‘deeper’? The truth of your soul, or scientific proof, or even God’s truth?

Then the question can be answered, at least provisionally.

A scientific proof is grounded in experience, i.e. a theory and experimentation. The outcome of this is usually some form of exact knowledge. But soul and God are beyond us; on these issues we have only the choice between guessing and trusting revelation.

In short: we humans have no other actual access to truth than what our collective experience over many generations conveys to us. But this is not ‘truth in itself’ – it is the sum of judgements made on many disparate kinds of circumstances in which our forefathers and we discern something that may strike us as ‘truth’.

Truth itself cannot be experienced. There is no such thing out there in the world. But you can have an experience that results in some condition that you feel is either truthful or not. So judgement must resolve it. If someone steals your car and is known to be a thief, you will say, ‘it’s in character’. You mean, that’s a truth about that person. But it may change. A thief may get sick of being jailed and stop stealing. Then this former ‘truth’ will turn into something else.

Many truths, especially the ‘higher’ truths, are mere prejudices. They are not based on experience, but on some person claiming to be in possession of some truth, even ‘The’ truth, and inviting or forcing other people to believe it. This is very common, today as it has always been in history.

So to return to your question: It is not a question to which a cut-and-dried answer can be given. The words ‘truth’ and ‘experience’ are welded together in the sense that no truth can be known unless there is an experience behind it, that has been evaluated by a human judgement.

Now this has no effect on the other part of your question, ‘how can we know anything at all?’ All living creatures, including those which can’t think, must evaluate information in order to survive. That’s their truth. Accordingly it is knowledge. If you get it wrong, you become extinct. So survival is the great teacher of knowledge.

We humans have a lot more knowledge than worms, but some of this may not be survival truths, but survival dangers (e.g. nuclear power). So you see, that ‘truth’ is an inherently ambiguous term, because it can mean so many things to many people, and they may all disagree with each other. But as I said, having knowledge has virtually nothing to do with truth. Truth only becomes important when you use this knowledge to act. Then you will find out, in the long or the short run, whether your ‘truth’ is truth or not.

Yeboah asked:

1: who is a philosopher?

2: can anyone be a philosopher?

Answer by Shaun Williamson

This is like asking can anyone be an artist or a musician. Anyone can buy a box of paints or a guitar but that doesn’t make you an artist or a musician.

You become a philosopher by studying philosophy and logic to a high level. Read lots of philosophy books and then read more philosophy books. Philosophy is not about sitting around having deep thoughts. It is about hard study.

One you know about philosophy then you are in some sense a philosopher but that doesn’t mean you will be a great philosopher. Going to art college will teach you to draw and paint but that doesn’t mean you will be a great artist.

To be a great artist you need talent and dedication. The same is true for philosophy. People become musicians because the are compelled to play music. People become philosophers because they feel compelled to study philosophy.

Anonymous asked:

When a wise man starts to believe there is fault in him, even throughout endless reflections of mind soul and body, into the cycles of thinking, all he discovers is that he is more and more sane. Still, he seems to think he’s faulted somewhere, and so he asks himself what is missing. How does the wise man move on?

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

I have known people who have known ‘wise men’ who match your description. They usually live in a monastery or a hole in the ground in the desert, and similar places. In short they hide themselves; they turn away from life to seek God. The impression they leave on others is not, however, of conspicuous wisdom. Rather they tend to radiate some kind of sanctity, or ‘holiness’.

To echo your words: they don’t move on. These are people who have a problem with coping. I’m sorry if this sounds negative to you; but I don’t believe in holiness, and I don’t accept this retreat into their self and despair over the imperfections of human life as wisdom. When you look over the history of philosophy as well as religion you will find, on the contrary, that the ‘wise men’ were not defeatists, but men who grabbed the bull by the horn and acted. Some of them changed the world.

You might not have noticed, but your description of a wise man matches Martin Luther exactly, so take a look and study how he moved on. Another, who contemplated his thinking endlessly because he was forced by authorities to this survival technique, was Nelson Mandela. He also moved on eventually. While you’re at it, proceed to Socrates, Augustinus, Gandhi, Confucius, Albert Schweitzer and others. I won’t give you a long list, these names will do. And you might then recognise that your question attacks a straw man.

Wise men are those who plunge into life and live their philosophy. They usually want others to wake up and live a meaningful life, and therefore they act in the world. They are the men who have understood that life is intrinsically action, not thought; but they also understood that thought, intellect, reason, sanity, creativity, understanding, judgement etc. must activate them for the good of their acts, so that something good comes out of their deeds.

The wise man of your question is not a wise man at all. He’s a cliche. Wise men, the whole idea of wisdom, is not what this cliche insinuates. As some insightful wise men have said repeatedly over the course of history: The meaning of life is not repose, peace and boredom, but striving, achieving something and, yes, moving on.

Tommy asked:

What exploded in the ‘Big Bang’ and what caused ‘it’ to explode?

Answer by Tony Fahey

The big bang theory is an attempt to explain what happened at the very beginning of our universe. Although many astronomers and physicists agree that our universe did in fact have a beginning, and that beyond that there was nothing, for me, Stephen Hawking, in his A Brief History of Time, takes a more reasonable approach to this debate when he says, ‘…even if there were events before the big bang, one could not use them to determine what would happen afterward, because predictability would break down at the big bang’. (1998, p.49). In other words, we cannot say with certainty that there was nothing before the big bang, only that if there was, we cannot know anything about it.

Anyway, the standard big bang theory argues that our universe sprang into existence as a ‘singularity’ around 13.7 billion years ago. A ‘singularity’ is a term used by mathematicians to describe how the general theory of relativity predicts that there is a point in the universe where the theory itself breaks down. Bill Bryson, in his A Short History of Nearly Everything, gives us some idea of a singularity when by comparing it to the size of a proton. The proton, he says, is so small that a dib of ink on the dot of an ‘I’ can hold something like 500,000,000,000 of them. Now if we want to compare this to the size of a singularity we must reduce the proton down to a billionth of its normal size into a space that would make the proton look enormous. (see 2003, p.27)

Thus, with regard to the first part of the above question: ‘What exploded in the ‘Big Bang’?’, we can say that what exploded to cause the big bang was a ‘singularity’. However, it should be pointed out that many experts, rather than holding that there was a single blinding explosion, say that it was (and continues to be) more an expansion than a sudden ‘big bang’. It should also be said that big bang theorists argue that the singularity did not appear in space; rather that space, as did time, began with the big bang.

With regard to the second part of the question, whilst experts insist that we can know, with some certainty, that the big bang, and the events that occurred thereafter, arose as a consequence of the explosion of the singularity, since prior to the big bang, nothing existed: neither space, time, energy, nor matter, they are forced to concede that we simply cannot say what caused ‘it’ to explode.

Mandy asked:

What is Aristotle’s reason for thinking that the highest good is happiness?

Answer by Caterina Pangallo

Aristotle examined the behaviour of many people in everyday life. He noticed that some people had good lives and others had bad lives. Then he noticed that all these many people do different things to make themselves happy. But whatever they do, the end result they wish to achieve is always the same: namely happiness.

Whereas those people who are dissatisfied all have in common the characteristic of being unhappy. Therefore in answer to the question “What is the good life for man?’ it is “a life of happiness’. So Aristotle makes the point that e.g. collecting butterflies, or climbing mountains, or reading lots of books is always done for the sake of making that person happy. Therefore happiness is the common denominator of all these varied activities.

In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle gives a definition of the word ‘happiness’ which has since become famous. Happiness, he says, is an activity of the soul in accord with virtue. What Aristotle is stressing here is the fact that happiness is not something which is static, but is an activity. Happiness is related to our lives and engaging in various activities of life in a certain way. Not the least importance is given to what he calls “the Golden Mean’. Happiness is not achieved by exaggeration. For example, it is silly for person to overeat and get fat or sick in the process, because that will make them unhappy. This is important because the “golden mean’ is not an objective principle, but applied to people and their circumstances. So a professional wrestler will, on the contrary, have to overeat so that their body has enough fuel to burn in the contest.

Aristotle says that every-one who is not totally corrupt can learn the way to happiness: indeed it is innate even in animals. But it does not come for free. We have to work for it. This is inescapable: there are many changes and chances throughout life and therefore we should ensure that we develop our character so that the pursuit of excellence is habitual. The good and bad do not consist in the many chances of life. They are the ‘extras’ which control our ability, but they do not control our happiness.

As long as we insist on excellence and improvement of our soul, we can even in time of great disaster, suffering or captivity, retain a little of happiness in one small corner of the soul. He disagrees with the famous quote from Solon that no-one can call themselves happy until they are on their death bed. He says that to be blessed in life is enough, because no-one can know the future and to look back on one’s life is, after all, to look back on happiness and misery changing sometimes from week to week. But when you are dead you know nothing.

In conclusion:

Happiness is the greatest good, because it is at the bottom of every pursuit in which we engage.

No-one goes out looking for unhappiness. But this does not mean that we can be always and constantly happy. The pursuit of happiness may be accompanied sometimes by pain and disappointment, but we accept those mishaps for the greater good we strive for. So the true nature of a human being is not to be happy permanently, but to strive for it. It is the striving itself, that is usually the greatest happiness.

cynthia asked:

What is the meaning of Theatetus’ response to Socrates’ question: ‘what is philosophy’?

‘For this especially is the passion of a philosopher: to be astonished; there is no other beginning of philosophy than this.’

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

What is your passion in life? I don’t know; but let us make an example of a Marathon Runner training for the Olympic Games.

He’s good at it, no doubt. He has strong legs and feet, and they are long legs and broad feet. He has a good lung too, and a healthy appetite, so that he can tuck away 10 kilos of potatoes for fuel before a run. Also endurance, very important when you have to run for an hour and a half. Moreover he is serious about his game, so he studies whatever science can do to help him, like appropriate footwear and how to navigate a strong wind. But most importantly he trains: day after day, punishing his body, extending the threshold of pain, doing without the simple pleasures that make other people happy, like hamburgers and coke. He might even decide to go without sex for a year, so as not to waste his strength. What does all this add up to?

Clearly that the fellow is either insane or else passionate about something that he has decided to achieve. He makes great sacrifices to this passion. And if he gets better and starts winning a few events, he will feel the spur to exert himself even more. And then one day, let us suppose, he wins gold.

Looking back over all these motivations of an athlete to live a pretty hard Spartan life, you can now say with Plato:

‘For this especially is the passion of an athlete: to be astonished that this was possible; and there is no beginning of athletic contest other than this.’

And his admirers are astonished, and he will will bask in the sunshine of their delight with him.

For an athlete and his well-wishers it may be difficult to conceive that a life of study and thinking may be driven by passion. But then it is easy enough to put the boot on the other foot and wonder what’s so special about running a quarter of a second faster than other athletes and investing a substantial portion of a life in that quest.

The philosopher’s passion is to discover something about the world, about man in the world, about the secret connections that hold between phenomena. Every thought that discovers something generates astonishment about what makes it so – e.g. (specific to Plato) that humans have an innate ability to generalise from particular objects to groups of objects sharing certain qualities and features. This ability, quite mysterious when you really think about it, might then encourage a theory of ideas, because plainly those features are often in the mind of the observer rather than his eyes. Hardness is shared by ceramics and fingernails, but does this make them objects belonging to one class? Justice is something every human wishes for, but (as Plato writes) you can’t take a candle into the streets and go looking for it. So this kind of investigation can bring its own rewards in the astonishment of the philosopher about how much there is to learn about life and the world, and about how much happiness it can bring to the soul to share this effort with others. And so philosophical discovery, like every other human achievement, kindles and fuels passion, and the desire for more, greater, deeper insights.

But the first emotion you must bring to philosophy is astonishment. We take so much for granted that is mysterious and enigmatic. A baby can’t think about everything new it is learning in life. A philosopher should – a philosopher should be astonished every time he hears a sound, sees a colour, touches a surface, and above all about what this incredible fact that we call ‘life’ is all about.