There are some answers - at least in approximation and ruling out idiocy - though I really agree the questioning part, except answers sometimes provide 'go forward'. 'Slavery' sort of exists in ants - but what is it about it that we now reject as abhorrent? I'd stand and die against it, but I don't have John Brown's religion in any standardly religious sense. Tropical fish realism is subject of philosophy - most of us wielding equations haven't done much more than followed a book as we would in setting up a tropical fish tank.
I still tend to think of 'social lunacy effects' in terms of Bacon's Idols - or at least my version of them. His main ones were: 1.Tribe 2. Cave 3.Marketplace 4. Theatre His writing is dreadfully dull and about 11 Idols can apparently be picked out. I've had the books from time to time, but to be honest couldn't read them long and rely on commentary. He claimed science was inductive - this was toshed - but we now have probabilities. My take on the idols renames them thus: 1. Our parochial peer group. 2. A closer group such as family. 3. Public discourse such as politics and gossip. 4. More theoretical learned opinion taken as doctrine. 5. The need to espouse certain opinion because of followership demands including funding, garnering votes and so on. There are also issues to do with those who can't follow argument or tolerate its uncertainties and how this should be treated. Just as we think democracy is good - along comes opinion we regard as 'thoughtless', 'clown' 'utterly biased' and so on. And, of course, the moderation bete noir 'foul'. The 'objective' voice is often brutal and not objective at all and doing violence - the point of deconstruction rather than nihilism. Although ad hominem is not allowed in academic talk it's actually full of the stuff in disguise from 'standing on the shoulders of giants' on (Newton casting aspersion on Hooke's 'size') to Habermas as 'the professor (meaning he who knows all -a jibe from the postmodernists). The books of my subject specialism, organisation theory, generally revolt me. Managers have a key role in 'creating reality' for others translating quickly into 'taking huge salaries or fees for some dud strategic mission statement' and so on. Underlying issues of 'meritocracies' reproducing themselves by hogging resources like boss mice are unexplored. Critique is hobbled with heresy tags - and frankly often comes from people carving out a niche for themselves rather than an alternative. All the while we really 'shelter' under what is now the American military umbrella, much as many of us despise something about it - possibly its necessity. 'Banning the bomb' movements never went global and few really wanted us to give up and have a world with Russian and Chinese (and Pakistani, Indian, Israeli and South African) ones. Economics is clearly barking too and we have a Politburo of the rich. We end up up the gum tree of wanting power in the hands of the people, and unable to trust the people. Those claiming freedom of religion often seem to threaten me as a secularist, though how can there be such freedom without a secular society, and how can we allow Crusaders or Taliban? One in thirteen kids die before five - which is bloody awful - yet so is the increasing over-population. With agriculture at 4% and production at 25% of world GDP there is little work that needs doing to give us a base for a sane and reasonably equal society. I fancy we are caught in madness on work ethic from our feudal past. Just as the banks are so networked that Greece falling will hit across Europe and the US, our production is built on houses of cards. Lack of world interest in engines of death causes 3,000 highly skilled manufacturing jobs to go in the UK, taking 20,000 support jobs with it. Shale gas under Lancashire is thought sufficient for 64 years UK energy supply but will only directly produce 5,000 jobs and our media is full of stories on exploding water taps, not analysis of how we might best exploit the resource while we get into more sustaining technology. We're scared on getting into a politics that could let us alone to do 'philosophy' and drag ourselves out of the medieval. On Sep 27, 9:51 pm, Contemplative <[email protected]> wrote: > I agree with the "best it can do is question". > It seems to me that an answer is simply a question with a period at the end > of it. > An answer is static, trapped in the amber of time and applicable in a very > limited scope and totally dependent on the question. > A question is dynamic, and moves through time, spewing static little answers > wherever it goes...or not, the question is not dependent on its answers... > Philosophy is about how one thinks, not what one thinks. To think is to > question. To rely on answers is to avoid thinking.... > > Not sure where that came from... but there it is.... > > :-)
