Where does philosophy come from?

[coberst]

Where does philosophy come from?

Western philosophy emerged in the sixth century BC along the Ionian coast. A small group of scientist-philosophers began writing about their attempts to develop “rational” accounts regarding human experience. These early Pre-Socratic thinkers thought that they were dealing with fundamental elements of nature.

It is natural for humans to seek knowledge. In the “Metaphysics” Aristotle wrote “All men by nature desire to know”.

The attempt to seek knowledge presupposes that the world unfolds in a systematic pattern and that we can gain knowledge of that unfolding. Cognitive science identifies several ideas that seem to come naturally to us and labels such ideas as “Folk Theories”.

The Folk Theory of the Intelligibility of the World
The world makes systematic sense, and we can gain knowledge of it.

The Folk Theory of General Kinds
Every particular thing is a kind of thing.

The Folk Theory of Essences
Every entity has an “essence” or “nature,” that is, a collection of properties that makes it the kind of thing it is and that is the causal source of its natural behavior.

The consequences of the two theories of kinds and essences is:

The Foundational Assumption of Metaphysics
Kinds exist and are defined by essences.

We may not want our friends to know this fact but we are all metaphysicians. We, in fact, assume that things have a nature thereby we are led by the metaphysical impulse to seek knowledge at various levels of reality.

Cognitive science has uncovered these ideas they have labeled as Folk Theories. Such theories when compared to sophisticated philosophical theories are like comparing mountain music with classical music. Such theories seem to come naturally to human consciousness.

The information comes primarily from “Philosophy in the Flesh” by Lakoff and Johnson.

[madnak]

People classify things because it helps them make sense of a world that they have, until recently, lacked the ability to understand. We have evolved the tendency to view the world in terms of "kinds" and "essences" in the same sense that we have evolved the tendency to see patterns where there are none. That humans naturally tend to group things together is no indication that their groupings are valid, and it's no wonder so many "great" metaphysicians have failed to make a single accurate prediction and have instead come to patently absurd conclusions. "It's easy to assume x, therefore x must be true" - I think collectively we are better than this (finally).

[onesandzeros]

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People classify things because it helps them make sense of a world that they have, until recently, lacked the ability to understand.

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You are describing yourself and your own post. lol


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We have evolved the tendency to view the world in terms of "kinds" and "essences" in the same sense that we have evolved the tendency to see patterns where there are none.

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Everything is a part of a greater whole. Same with "patterns".

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so many "great" metaphysicians have failed to make a single accurate prediction and have instead come to patently absurd conclusions. "It's easy to assume x, therefore x must be true"

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What predictions are you referring to? Please enlighten me. Please define "X" with a true example.

[onesandzeros]

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Where does philosophy come from?

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From the burning desire for truth.

[tame_deuces]

From people like those who write on this board? [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Maybe smarter, maybe dumber, maybe more or less educated. But I think the basic drive for answers and debate is indeed the same.

[madnak]

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People classify things because it helps them make sense of a world that they have, until recently, lacked the ability to understand.

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You are describing yourself and your own post. lol

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Yeah.

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We have evolved the tendency to view the world in terms of "kinds" and "essences" in the same sense that we have evolved the tendency to see patterns where there are none.

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Everything is a part of a greater whole. Same with "patterns".

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Yup. What's your point?

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so many "great" metaphysicians have failed to make a single accurate prediction and have instead come to patently absurd conclusions. "It's easy to assume x, therefore x must be true"

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What predictions are you referring to? Please enlighten me. Please define "X" with a true example.

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Almost every philosopher until Hume was guilty of this. Aristotle's a good example because he gets a lot of (undeserved IMO) veneration even today. His ideas about how objects fall (that heavy objects fall faster than light objects) for one. But his whole approach was bogus, and he was full of silly [censored]. His view of science was narrow-minded at best, and largely because he took a pov similar to that coberst is describing.

[onesandzeros]

U evaded my questions.

[madnak]

You only asked on question, about what predictions I was referring to. I gave you Aristotle's as an example. You told me to give an example of "X," so I mentioned Aristotle's prediction that heavy objects will fall faster than light objects.

Where am I being evasive?

[coberst]

We have in our Western philosophy a traditional theory of faculty psychology wherein our reasoning is a faculty completely separate from the body. “Reason is seen as independent of perception and bodily movement.” It is this capacity of autonomous reason that makes us different in kind from all other animals. I suspect that many fundamental aspects of philosophy and psychology are focused upon declaring, whenever possible, the separateness of our species from all other animals.

This tradition of an autonomous reason began long before evolutionary theory and has held strongly since then without consideration, it seems to me, of the theories of Darwin and of biological science. Cognitive science has in the last three decades developed considerable empirical evidence supporting Darwin and not supporting the traditional theories of philosophy and psychology regarding the autonomy of reason. Cognitive science has focused a great deal of empirical science toward discovering the nature of the embodied mind.

The three major findings of cognitive science are:
The mind is inherently embodied.
Thought is mostly unconscious.
Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical.

“These findings of cognitive science are profoundly disquieting [for traditional thinking] in two respects. First, they tell us that human reason is a form of animal reason, a reason inextricably tied to our bodies and the peculiarities of our brains. Second, these results tell us that our bodies, brains, and interactions with our environment provide the mostly unconscious basis for our everyday metaphysics, that is, our sense of what is real.”

All living creatures categorize. All creatures, as a minimum, separate eat from no eat and friend from foe. As neural creatures tadpole and wo/man categorize. There are trillions of synaptic connections taking place in the least sophisticated of creatures and this multiple synapses must be organized in some way to facilitate passage through a small number of interconnections and thus categorization takes place. Great numbers of different synapses take place in an experience and these are subsumed in some fashion to provide the category eat or foe perhaps.

Our categories are what we consider to be real in the world: tree, rock, animal…Our concepts are what we use to structure our reasoning about these categories. Concepts are neural structures that are the fundamental means by which we reason about categories.

Quotes from “Philosophy in the Flesh”.

P.S If we take a big bite out of reality we will, I think, find that it is multilayered like the onion. There are many domains of knowledge available to us for penetrating those layers of reality. Cognitive science is one that I find to be very interesting.