The Philosophy Thread

[Louanne Learning]

Truth, as a concept, is beautiful and good.

 

[DLC]

Two different types, lol.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Two different types, lol.

Two things guide our decisions and our actions: reason (mind) and emotion (heart).

This theme is explored in Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.

We’re all born to be righteous, but we are righteous about different things. What it comes down to in many cases is whether it is reason (our mind) or emotion (our heart) that predominates in making our moral decisions.

A famous letter written by Thomas Jefferson explores this theme. In 1786, while in Paris as the American Minister to France, Jefferson fell in love with a beautiful 27-year-old married English woman named Maria Cosway. By all accounts, she and her husband had an open marriage, but nevertheless after some time, Maria’s husband insisted she return to England.

Her departure caused Jefferson great pain. He wrote her a letter that in part consisted of a dialogue between his head and his heart.
After the letter's preamble, it begins:

Head. Well, friend, you seem to be in a pretty trim.

Heart. I am indeed the most wretched of all earthly beings. Overwhelmed with grief, every fibre of my frame distended beyond its natural powers to bear, I would willingly meet whatever catastrophe should leave me no more to feel or to fear.

Head. These are the eternal consequences of your warmth and precipitation. This is one of the scrapes into which you are ever leading us. You confess your follies indeed: but still you hug and cherish them, and no reformation can be hoped, where there is no repentance.

Heart. Oh my friend! This is no moment to upbraid my foibles. I am rent into fragments by the force of my grief! If you have any balm, pour it into my wounds: if none, do not harrow them by new torments. Spare me in this awful moment! At any other I will attend with patience to your admonitions.

Head. On the contrary I never found that the moment of triumph with you was the moment of attention to my admonitions. While suffering under your follies you may perhaps be made sensible of them, but, the paroxysm over, you fancy it can never return. Harsh therefore as the medicine may be, it is my office to administer it. You will be pleased to remember that when our friend Trumbull used to be telling us of the merits and talents of these good people, I never ceased whispering to you that we had no occasion for new acquaintance; that the greater their merit and talents, the more dangerous their friendship to our tranquillity, because the regret at parting would be greater.

Heart. Accordingly, Sir, this acquaintance was not the consequence of my doings. It was one of your projects which threw us in the way of it. It was you, remember, and not I, who desired the meeting, at Legrand & Molinos. I never trouble myself with domes nor arches. The Halle aux bleds might have rotted down before I should have gone to see it. But you, forsooth, who are eternally getting us to sleep with your diagrams and crotchets, must go and examine this wonderful piece of architecture. And when you had seen it, oh! it was the most superb thing on earth! What you had seen there was worth all you had yet seen in Paris! I thought so too. But I meant it of the lady and gentleman to whom we had been presented, and not of a parcel of sticks and chips put together in pens. You then, Sir, and not I, have been the cause of the present distress.

And it continues for several more paragraphs, if you wish to read it.


Those who want to know depend more on reason (mind), and those who want to believe depend more on emotion (heart). It’s not that one is right and one is wrong, it’s just different ways of approaching the world.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Here’s what it boils down to:

Can we devise a reason-based morality?

 

[Louanne Learning]

Can we devise a reason-based morality?

Hume, in his 1748 book, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, wrote that without reason it is all sophistry and illusion:

“When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.” (Section 12, part 3)

 

[Louanne Learning]

Science concentrates on “what is” – a set of facts, without a lot of wiggle room outside of the physical evidence.

Philosophy concentrates on “what ought to be” – positions that take the variation of human behavior into consideration.

I don’t think this means philosophy ignores science, but rather takes into account each spectrum generated along the “what is” of existence.

There can be no philosophy without choice. Which deviation from the norm most embodies “the good?”

This brings to mind Plato’s Theory of Forms - the idea that the real world is changeable and unreliable. Beyond this world of “appearances” is a world of permanence and reliability.

Which study seeks the better form – Science or Philosophy?

Which better comprehends the true reality behind the world of everyday experience?

 

[Louanne Learning]

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.”

― Heraclitus

 

[Louanne Learning]

I'm not sure about this:

“It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover.”
― Henri Poincaré (1854–1912).


Can we not discover by logic?

 

[Dante Dases]

I'm not sure about this:

“It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover.”
― Henri Poincaré (1854–1912).


Can we not discover by logic?

Much of scientific discovery is through logical application of known principles. I suspect the date when Poincaré said this is significant, and this statement may be safely consigned to the 'dated' view of discovery and development of human knowledge.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Much of scientific discovery is through logical application of known principles. I suspect the date when Poincaré said this is significant, and this statement may be safely consigned to the 'dated' view of discovery and development of human knowledge.

It might be significant that Poincaré was a mathematician, considered the best of his time. "Proofs" rule in math?

 

[Louanne Learning]

Truth, as a concept, is beautiful and good.

View attachment 285

I read today a follow-up to this quote of Nietzsche. It seems he may have been influenced by Schopenhauer

 

[Dante Dases]

It might be significant that Poincaré was a mathematician, considered the best of his time. "Proofs" rule in math?

Quite possibly. Also perhaps how 'discovery' is defined.

 

[Louanne Learning]

We've compared the objective to the subjective before. How about if we apply it to purpose?

Does the universe have an objective purpose?

Is all purpose subjective? What's wrong with that?

 

[Zatamon]

We've compared the objective to the subjective before. How about if we apply it to purpose?

Does the universe have an objective purpose?

Is all purpose subjective? What's wrong with that?

On Merriem-Awebster I have found many different definitions of the concept 'objective'. What caught my eye was the following: "reality independent of the mind". I find this quite confusing. Independent of whose mind? My mind? How could anything be independent of my mind?
I have only one mind (as far as I know) and the only way I can decide if there is anything independent of it is to step outside of my own mind and then look around. I have never been able to do that. I have never been anyone else, the universe started when I was born and will die with me. My universe, the only one I can forever experience. So, is talking about 'objective reality' anything more than pure speculation? Of course, we assume that it exists - an assumption necessary for our day-to-day survival.
BTW I am new here - how do you post your photo instead of a big fat blue Z?

 

[Homer Potvin]

On Merriem-Awebster I have found many different definitions of the concept 'objective'. What caught my eye was the following: "reality independent of the mind". I find this quite confusing. Independent of whose mind? My mind? How could anything be independent of my mind?
I have only one mind (as far as I know) and the only way I can decide if there is anything independent of it is to step outside of my own mind and then look around. I have never been able to do that. I have never been anyone else, the universe started when I was born and will die with me. My universe, the only one I can forever experience. So, is talking about 'objective reality' anything more than pure speculation? Of course, we assume that it exists - an assumption necessary for our day-to-day survival.
BTW I am new here - how do you post your photo instead of a big fat blue Z?

Well, in writing, the objective POV is literally independent of the mind in the sense that the story never enters any of the characters' head. No emotions, no thoughts, nothing that can't be detected through independent observation. So the definition there couldn't be any more apt. I haven't looked further into the definition, but there's definitely some kind of connection.

 

[Louanne Learning]

My mind? How could anything be independent of my mind?

I understand what you mean. Our whole take - our whole construction - of reality happens inside of our minds.

We can never be sure that anything other than us exists for sure.

But then how would I explain that I know people who have died, and I am still here?

the universe started when I was born and will die with me.

The universe itself, or your experience of it? Do we accept as valid the physical evidence that tells us the universe is 13.8 billions years old?

So, is talking about 'objective reality' anything more than pure speculation?

Only if it is based on unsubstantiated belief and not scientific evidence.

BTW I am new here - how do you post your photo instead of a big fat blue Z?

Welcome! Go to you profile page (click on your name on the top of this page), then roll your cursor over the "big Z' - click on edit and a box will come up allowing you to upload an image as your avatar.

 

[Zatamon]

I understand what you mean. Our whole take - our whole construction - of reality happens inside of our minds.

We can never be sure that anything other than us exists for sure.

Naturally, we must assume that

But then how would I explain that I know people who have died, and I am still here?

This does not contradict my statement about how I have never been outside my mind. That still stands and there is no way around it.

The universe itself, or your experience of it? Do we accept as valid the physical evidence that tells us the universe is 13.8 billions years old?

I was being 'poetic' when I said that the universe started when I was born. 'My Universe' - not yours or anyone else's

Only if it is based on unsubstantiated belief and not scientific evidence.

I am a retired theoretical physicist. I know about science, the first book I ever wrote was a Physics textbook.
I swear by the scientific method, but philosophically I can't deny that I have been locked inside my mind my whole life and that is never going to change.
Thank you for the tip about my avatar. The photo is of myself, with my muse.

 

[Louanne Learning]

"I have never been outside my mind"

But that is just it - we have senses and are able to be aware of what is "not us." We are able to be aware of our surroundings. We are able to detect it, through various stimuli. Then interpret it as we may.

 

[Zatamon]

"I have never been outside my mind"

But that is just it - we have senses and are able to be aware of what is "not us." We are able to be aware of our surroundings. We are able to detect it, through various stimuli. Then interpret it as we may.

That's all true but I am only objecting to the term of "objective reality" - that is how critical thinking is bypassed. There is a book written by John Ralston Saul called "The Doubter's Companion" - one should always doubt and examine how sure one is of one's 'objectivity' - what one may perceive as rock solid reality may be just neurons misfiring in the brain.

 

[Louanne Learning]

one should always doubt and examine how sure one is of one's 'objectivity'

But we are not assigning "objective reality" to a person - indeed - it is the reality in the absence of a detector of it.

what one may perceive as rock solid reality may be just neurons misfiring in the brain.

this falls under the umbrella of subjective, not objective, reality.