Something I've been thinking about lately is the role of philosophy in one's understanding. One of the difficulties in this is that philosophy is something a little harder to define- some may think of it as a whole separate branch, something removed and marginalized from the affairs of public life and to some extent personal life as well- it's something we have access to if we wish to partake of it and use it to reflect on the things of life which are what philosophy is an interpretation of, but not a participant in; again, maybe another view of philosophy would be that it simply is the window of perception in which we're all necessarily and naturally engaged- meaning that one cannot do without philosophy since to even do without philosophy would be your philosophy, it would reflect one or more of the three main categories of philosophy: metaphysics (what exists), epistemology (how we know), and ethics (what we do or should do); in this latter view, then, philosophy is simply something extracted from the public and personal life and then laid bare for analyzing and organizing. And there may be many more views of philosophy beyond this; in my purposes for asking the question of what the role of philosophy is in a person's understanding, I'm in some way already positing it as a category- not necessarily marginalized and separate from experience, but an aspect and category of that experience- however big or small in each person and society, public and personal. What I will refer to this as, then, is philosophy as a method: the role of the three categories of philosophy as they are used/infused in our life. This means that in some way philosophy may be said to be a part of everyone's experience- since everyone, by virtue of their thoughts and actions (to the extent that they're competent and intentional), is in some way necessarily dealing with and "speaking" to the issues of what's real and how we know and what we do because of it: if this isn't clear then you can just think of the justice system- dealing with ethics, and tabloids for that matter- which criticize public figures according to an ethical standard (either directly or indirectly, but when you say "can you believe he did this??" you seem to be implying that it matters because he shouldn't be doing that, and this is a position of ethics), and quickly- other examples of philosophy in our lives would be simply getting in your car and driving somewhere, which seems to imply that you are maintaining a view of what is real: that gas is combustible, that the way the world worked yesterday it will work the same way today (in Stephen Crowley's Modern Philosophy class we've been discussing David Hume's work which addresses the concern of why it is that people make a connection with how things were yesterday and how they are today, that things will work the same- "where does that inference come from?" is the concern), and also the religious and skeptic alike ascribe to a sense of epistemology- the religious person's view of how we know certain things is that of revelation, God reveals it; the skeptic's view of epistemology, or how we know things, may be that we in fact don't know- but this reveals his view of knowledge: that it is something that is not a fixed and certain principle- that what we believe to be true today may not be true tomorrow or that what we consider to be "knowledge" could be uncontrollable processes of matter (in our brain, etc.) which have been and are subject to the laws outside our control. Both of these two people have an epistemic philosophy (epistemic simply meaning "related to knowing"); and they have this even if they haven't studied "philosophy". And philosophy is something that can be studied- just like motion, you can both move your body without really thinking about the relationship and science of your body parts and you can also study this motion by analyzing the relationship between your moving parts and evaluating limitations and possibilities or whatever else accords to that field of study. All the previous stuff about philosophy as a method is just to say that this is the sort of way I'm thinking about the role of "philosophy" in understanding. And since by this way of thinking, I'm also considering that it isn't all we do or use in coming to knowledge- just as a person can move without analyzing it, also a person can "know" without completely (or at all?) utilizing "philosophy"- I can "know" that gas is combustible without analyzing the facets of philosophy that ask questions like: what is gas? how do you know the fire is associated at all with what you call gasoline, and instead isn't just near it? how do you know that what you see (or experience) when you see combustible gas is even real and you're not just hallucinating? (all this aside from the assumption of science being regular and constant- "the laws of science"). So you could "have" knowledge of something experientially without utilizing the methods of philosophy- this might be more instinctual, you may also be able to know this with both experience and philosophy and I would call that a conviction- you don't just believe it because of philosophy or experience but rather both complement your conviction about the combustibility of gas or whatever you're considering to know.
With those preliminary thoughts (and forgive me for not having the clearest expression of them, these things are what I'm recently thinking about and I haven't developed the clearest way of thinking about it), I want to go beyond considering just what philosophy is as a method (as stated in the preliminary thoughts) and now go on to the consideration of what philosophy is capable of doing or "what its role is" in knowledge.
My concern about the role of philosophy in knowledge- or my motivation for understanding it- is that if we have knowledge, and philosophy is not the complete source of knowledge, then something else is; also, I'm consequently concerned for those who think of philosophy as a complete source of knowledge. If it is not the complete source of knowledge, and with the belief that it is, and with the consequence that non-philosophical sources/methods for knowledge are disregard, such a person will never truly know anything beyond what they must necessarily know (through the true source but without rendering acknowledgement to this source) and any further knowledge that would be gained by pursuing these other methods will, in such a person, be mitigated from informing the person or, once informed, will be stemmed from use due its disconnect from the philosophical method.
When philosophical methodology is used, to what does it apply? Usually it begins with a "problem", this problem is in our information (as a conflict in that information)- which comes either from empirical/a posteriori or imaginative/a priori sources. But if philosophy begins with a problem (or analysis, etc.), and that problem is in information (the concern arising usually from ignorance, misunderstanding, or some unacceptability in the information), and that information comes from things which aren't themselves philosophical, then the knowledge gained through this experience has philosophy as an aid but not as the source which informs that knowledge- but rather a method by which the source and its information are critiqued for understanding. Here is an illustration of, not a defense of, this perspective: say you're on the phone with a girl and she tells you she was at the mall; you have gained information: ranging between the mere acknowledgement that you perceive yourself to holding a phone to your ear with audio of a certain sound and language- conveying that it is a person who is at the mall; to- the fuller conception that you're talking to your friend Ashley and she says she was at the mall. You have gained information, whether inferring truth or falsity, which itself did not come from philosophy but, at this point, is simply received through either mental (a priori/imaginative) or physical (empirical/a posteriori) mediums. You are not, at this point, said to have knowledge; you may believe your friend Ashley is at the mall and, with no direct/inherent reason to believe the opposite, maintain a belief that this is reality- which most people would not reasonably hold against you. To take this belief and turn it into a conviction, or further more- knowledge, would perhaps require the application of the philosophical method. First, let me create a problem (for without it you may not find inquiry warranted); say you recall that your friend Ashley had told you that she had to work on this day that she is now purportedly at the mall. Now you feel compelled to apply the philosophical method, because you know that both things (assuming in this example the mutual exclusivity of the events) cannot be true.
At this point notice that the information, from its sources, is not itself contradictory: it is not a contradiction that your friend said she'd be a work and later in the week reports that she is at the mall (on the day she said she'd be at work)- the contradiction comes in applying the inferences of both of these facts; you "know" that one of these things bore fruit and not the other, or, that neither bore fruit; you know that both did not bear fruit (in that it's contradictory). What have you come to know, through philosophy? You have not come to know anything actual, but something about the actual- that it doesn't correspond with what is not possible, which would be both of those possibilities both being true. But at this point you don't know which one, or if any, of those things is true- she could be at the park, which would nullify the truth value of both those possibilities (in this example the two things aren't both possible together, but neither are they mutually exclusive to the extent that the falsity of one confirms the truth of the other; another example of that nature may be warranted). Philosophy in this case has told you what isn't true, or a positive way of looking at it- what is true about the way the world can't be; you still don't know what is true about your friend Ashley, but with further information and, perhaps, with enough confirmations on impossibilities (maybe getting lucky enough to deduce something from a mutual exclusivity example)- you could eventually figure out what must have been the case. Notice that all the information has not come from philosophy, and, ultimately, philosophy depended upon this information to be applied toward your knowledge. It may be shown, I'm proposing, that knowledge truly comes from something besides philosophy ("possibly" God and the extension of himself that he has created or revealed through the world, scripture, church, Jesus, etc.). This is not an argument against philosophy as a method, but against philosophy as the source for complete knowledge and the consequences of ascribing it as so. Other definitions of philosophy may demonstrate my example vacuous, but they would, I think, still need to account for the source of knowledge or the source of information within that philosophy, since I've demonstrated that at least an aspect of philosophy (what was described by calling a method) isn't the source of what we know- but a critical method by which we evaluate information and knowledge. The strongest case to be considered against this is that philosophy can give us knowledge: as in "A or -A" "A=A" "not: A and -A" but I still consider this to be knowledge of possibility. This knowledge does not tell us what A is, but that, whatever A may be, has a certain relationship with itself and its counterpart; and it may at least be granted that philosophy gives us knowledge about relations, or something like that. I owe tribute of these ideas- at least in so far as they reflect philosophy as a negative science and not giving us actual knowledge of the world, to Matt Marino (pastor of the "Well" church in Boise, Idaho) who let me read some apologetics and philosophy stuff that he wrote. If I think of more prominent and essential influences on these ideas then I would like to give credit to them as well; in some sense everything I know academically is accredited in some sense to someone else, but the expression of crediting someone directly implies that they informed me of, and/or had a particular influence on, a specific idea that I've mentioned.
This post is unrefined and limited in its scope, which makes it great for revisiting in the future, but for now I'm content to allow it to be a reflection of preliminary thoughts on this whole subject and leave it a spring board for discussion and debate.
What a song is
8 years ago
