Katrina asked:

Why do you think that philosophy today is no longer given serious attention?

Sally asked:

Of what use is Philosophy when we agree to disagree?

Answer by Peter Jones

It seems to me that these two questions belong together, or are essentially the same question, since it seems likely that the reason why philosophy is given too little serious attention these days is that philosophers spend most of their time agreeing to disagree rather than actually settling any arguments. As long as philosophers are content to go on doing this then the discipline can go nowhere. ‘Without contradiction there is no progress’, writes the Dalai Lama about philosophy, and clearly he is right. For as long as its practitioners go on agreeing to disagree philosophy will be of little use and will not receive the serious attention it deserves.

A good explanation for why the characteristically ‘Western’ tradition of philosophical thought is so remarkably tolerant of such a cornucopia of mutually inconsistent theories would have to be very long. I sketched out an answer in a recent article for the Philosophy Pathways Journal (Issue no. 171) but it is no more than sketch. Briefly, logical analysis fails to endorse any of the theories favoured or considered legitimate by philosophers in this tradition, or not if they want to stay in this tradition, and in fact refutes them all. This leaves us two options. One option would be to give up trying to decide between them and agree to disagree. Those who do this must enter Kant’s ‘arena for mock fights’. Lots of hand-waiving but nobody gets hurt. The other option would be to recognise the futility of arguing back and forth for theories that can all be refuted and give some credence to theories from outside the tradition that cannot be so easily defeated.

For the philosophy of the Upanishads, which is the only world-view that is not refutable in logic as far as I am aware, these same two critical questions could be fairly asked but for entirely different reasons, and they would have entirely different answers. If you examine this philosophy you will find that you are expected to agree or disagree with it, and that it bluntly disagrees with the countless other theories that philosophers so often agree to disagree about. This philosophy receives a great deal of serious attention outside of the tradition to which these two questions are directed, and an ever increasing amount of it as more and more people see that the traditional philosophy of Western academia is bankrupt.

If you wish to dig deeper into these issues and can face a long slog then you might like to read my dissertation at http://philpapers.org/rec/JONFMT. I would suggest you go to this address to read it rather than to our good host’s site since this version has been much improved from the original. On very few points does it agree to disagree with anyone. This was deliberate, since I fully endorse the criticism of philosophy that your two questions imply.

Peter Jones received the ISFP Fellowship for his dissertation ‘From Metaphysics to Mysticism: Exploring the Case for a Neutral Metaphysical Position’

Amber asked:

If you do suspect that Plato’s theory of the forms may be true, and that the ‘real’ world is in fact fiction (this is extending the theory a bit) then what is the point in living? If the world wasn’t real, then there must be an actual real world. What is better? Living in ignorance but being happy, or knowledge but never being able to go back to your original happy state?

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

You’re making a fundamentally mistaken assumption (although it’s relatively common): What makes you think “ignorance is bliss”?

All of human history points in the opposite direction — in fact you can go back to Homo erectus, if you wish.

The pattern conveyed by this history is that searching for a better life, for fulfilment and meaning in life, is what drives human beings, time and again, to discover and invent, to create and to think.

So the correlation between ignorance and being happy, which you put into your question, has not the flimsiest foundation. I believe, in fact, that you are mistaking the few escapists, drug addicts and fatalists as representing all of mankind. Although there have been episodes when whole cultures went into a slump of escapism, they also do not represent the trend that is typical of human history. They are retarding episodes in a general upward thrust.

Accordingly I cannot make head or tail about your question on Plato. What if Plato’s theory were true? Well, perhaps it is. So what? Do you think that Plato wrote 350 pages of the Republic to be misunderstood as meaning there is no real world? Isn’t that book on the contrary the clearest evidence of his worry that we are apt to fall into just the kind of delusion that you falsely attribute to him? Do you believe that the State which Socrates is constructing in its pages — his ‘kallipolis’, or beautiful city — is a dream or something he wanted to see in the real world? Near the end he tells you — perhaps you should read this a little more carefully! My city, he says, is a paradigm, a model; and I don’t expect anyone in the world to adopt it holus bolus. But everyone can take a little from it, which can only improve their society. Especially (which is the real point Socrates wanted to make) to improve human justice, which plays such a poverty stricken role in most societies, when it should be the first and most important criterion in the foundation of a community.

Now that’s not a dream. It is hope, and realisable, if only we wish.

But to accomplish this, you must cast off the delusions to which we humans are chained, such as (for example) today’s rampant consumerism. That is ignorance indeed, but not bliss!

Jürgen Lawrenz at PhiloSophos.com

Bryan asked:

Is there such thing as darkness?

Answer by Nathan Sinclair

This question reflects one of the earliest and most divisive disputes in philosophy: the existence of universals. When we conduct an inventory of the things in the universe we will find red things, tall things, just things(/people), courageous things(/people), but will we find in addition to those things also redness, tallness, justice, and courage.

Plato and Aristotle are the best known proponents of each side of this dispute, with Plato taking the side of those who believe in universals (also known as platonic forms), and Aristotle taking the side of those who deny the existence of universals.

Plato’s main argument (though he doesn’t seem to feel the need for much of one) is that we could not perceive things as having any common characteristics unless we were acquainted with the relevant universal.

Aristotle’s bets known argument is the third man argument. If two things are both men, and resemble each other in this respect only because they both instantiate the universal MAN, then what of the universal itself? It would seem that it could only resemble particular men if there was another universal (a third man) which they all instantiated. If not and the universal and the particular men can resemble each other without participating in higher universal, then surely the original individuals can resemble each other (and all be men) without the need of a universal MAN at all.

In Aristotle’s argument he relies on the assumption that universals are true of themselves: that the TALL will itslef be tall, that COURAGE will itself be courageous and so on. To modern eyes this seems ridiculous, but it was accepted by the vast majority of Ancient Greek philosophers. Still, the relationship of instantiation itself seems to need a universal (if any relationship does at all) and so some form of the argument still seems good.

In modern times the dispute turns on two problems:

On the skeptical side no one has a workable account of when two universals are the same. Merely being true of the same things isn’t enough (consider creature with a heart, and creature with a kidney, these two properties are surely different, everything with a heart has kidneys and vice versa).

On the positive side there seem to be some statements (such as “Humility is a virtue”) that seem to unavoidably rely upon the existence of universals. Those against universlas must either give a plausible re-interpretation of such claims which doesn’t rely upon universals, or abandon such statements altogether.

Putting aside the general issue of universals and looking at darkness are there any reason to suppose DARKNESS is particularly implausible?

Yes, it is both subjective and seemingly inessential to our claims about the world. Not only is darkness relative to particular visual equipment (what is dark to you ro I is not dark to an owl or a frog), and hence it would seem not a key feature of the worlds functioning. Moreover it would seem we could replace talk of DARKNESS with talk of ‘receiving insufficient light to form a visual image’. This might still leave us with a universal to deal with but it wouldn’t be DARKNESS. More generally we seem to have perfectly adequate and successful theories of the world which don’f use the term darkness at all. We could surely paraphrase claims about darkness in terms of average number of photons being received per square meter per second.

For my part I find (a modern version of) Aristotle’s argument pretty convincing, and I don’t believe in universals at all.

Nathan Sinclair recently joined the Board of the ISFP. He has a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Sydney.

Diana asked:

Descartes gives a list of things he had previously believed. What are these?

Answer by Craig Skinner

Short answer: his method entails his suspending belief about absolutely everything except one thing, namely,

* because he is doubting, he is thinking, and therefore must exist (‘I think therefore I am’, or, in Latin, ‘cogito ergo sum’).

He hopes to argue his way back to most of his former beliefs by sound reasoning from this single, clear and distinct, indubitable belief, thereby establishing a ‘firm and permanent structure in the sciences’.

Although he makes mention of his method of doubt in Rules for the Direction of the Mind and in Discourse on Method, the definitive account is in his Meditations, specifically Meditation 1 subtitled ‘Of the things which may be brought within the sphere of the doubtful’.

First, he says he must doubt everything learned through the senses (all empirical or a posteriori knowledge as we would say). For the senses can deceive, and also, at any given moment, he can’t be certain he is not dreaming, or that his mind is nor controlled by an ‘evil genius’ which deceives him about everything.

Secondly, he must doubt all truths of reason (rational or a priori knowledge). He feels that, even if dreaming, he knows that 2+3 = 5, but he considers that an evil genius could deceive him about mathematical truths, interfering in his thought every time he adds 2 and 3 so that he is sure (wrongly) that the sum is 5.

The nearest he gets to a list is towards the end of this Meditation, when he says:

‘I shall consider that the heavens, the earth, colours, figures, sound, and all other external things are nought but… illusions and dreams… I shall consider myself as having no hands, no eyes, no flesh, no blood, nor any senses, yet falsely believing myself to possess all these things.’

Having done all this doubting, the only certainty remaining, the Archimedean fixed point as he calls it, was ‘I think therefore I am’ (this exact wording is actually given in his Discourse on Method, but formulations in Meditations are equivalent)

Of course, he didn’t really doubt that there is a world out there, or that he had a body. His scepticism was a ploy (methodological scepticism) to try to put his views on a rational footing. However his arguments back from the cogito to belief in the physical world of concrete things, other people and his own body (with God as the bridge, so to speak), are widely considered unsound or invalid. So the upshot is that one of his main legacies is scepticism rather than its resolution, and strong philosophical scepticism (about matter, the external world, causation and selves) later emerges, for example in the views of Berkeley and Hume.

Craig Skinner at PhiloSophos.com

Ruth asked:

‘Nothing can be known.’ What is a powerful objection to this claim?

Answer by Helier Robinson

It is self-refuting. If it is true then you cannot know about it. Any self-refuting statement must be false.

Helier Robinson is Emeritus Professor in Philosophy, University of Guelph. His books are available from http://SharebooksPublishing.com.

Answer by Tony Fahey

The most obvious objection to the old nihilist credo ‘nothing can be known’ is that if it can be shown that the statement ‘nothing can be known’ is valid, then it follows that the statement itself is something that can be known.  Paradoxically, rendering the statement invalid.

http://www.tonyfahey.com

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

Why can’t the sceptic just say, ‘Only one thing can be known, that nothing (else) can be known’?

On the face of it, the qualification, ‘only one thing’ saves the assertion from self-contradiction or being self-refuting. However, the next question would be, ‘What makes this one proposition special?’

Here is one move that the sceptic could make. It is similar to the argument Russell gives about naive realism: ‘Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows that naive realism is false. Therefore, naive realism is false.’

So, similarly:

Belief that something can be known leads to epistemology, and epistemology leads to scepticism. So either you’re a sceptic to start with (you don’t believe anything, don’t utter any statement, but just wag your finger) or you are led to scepticism by your assumption that it is possible to know something. Whether you reject the possibility of knowledge without offering any argument, or offer an argument, the conclusion is the same.

Here’s another way of putting the same point, using the logical rule of or-elimination:

1. Either I know something or I know nothing.

2. If I know something, then I know that the proof of scepticism is valid, therefore I know nothing.

3. If I know nothing, then I know nothing.

4. Either way, I know nothing.

http://www.philosophypathways.com/vita.html

Barbette asked:

Is it possible to achieve fellowship with the divine (Dionysus) and if so how?

Answer by Stuart Burns

Barbette, I cannot begin to answer your question without first establishing just what you are asking. Please explain just what you mean by ‘fellowship with the divine’, and why you specifically reference Dionysus — the Roman god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, or in Greek mythology, of ritual madness and ecstasy.

I am giving you the benefit of the doubt by assuming that you mean this in some figurative/ poetic sense, since the Gods (none of them) do not really exist. It is therefore not possible to have ‘fellowship with the divine’ in the sense of friendship and companionship (or any relationship at all) with non-existent divine entities (Gods).

http://www3.sympatico.ca/saburns/pg00cv.htm

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

One way would be to get together with some friends, drink lots of wine, and dance around naked. That’s what the Greeks did. For all our much vaunted freedoms, the Greeks were way ahead of us. You and I would just get arrested if we tried to emulate the Greeks. It’s not quite the same, dancing around your living room with the curtains tightly closed.

The Dionysian is something Nietzsche thought deeply about. Wagner’s operas embody the spirit of Dionysus. Arguably, all true art has something of this spirit, divine madness, lack of control. But to be art rather than just a mess, there has to be control in there too somewhere. Hence, the opposite element, the ‘Apollonian’ aspect of order and measure.

Rock music is, or would be, the nearest equivalent to the Dionysian were it not so formulaic and hidebound. The time for a god like Wagner has passed. Contemporary art is mostly petty and effete, ‘art’ only in name. That’s what Nietzsche would have said. Will the true spirit of Dionysus ever return? Until it does, I’ll stick to wine, lots of wine.

http://www.philosophypathways.com/vita.html