I personally have always found it rather difficult to integrate alot of my beliefs about the universe and such into my regular every day life. Like when i look at my beliefs i find myself to be a very hard determanistic materialist. i find it incredibly difficult to try and fit something like that into my everyday life with the real life consequences that my belief entails. Like i sometimes feel like a closet philosopher of sorts.
So what you have to do (and what we all, in fact, do) is to revise your theory in the light of your real life intuitions, and then, in turn, revise your intuitions is the light of the theory. And you continue to go back and forth understanding that there is no permanent resting place (certainty) but only increased understanding. This is sometimes called the process of “reflective equilibrium.” You engage in the process of reflective equilibrium all the time as you walk through life. You look at something, and you quickly form a “theory” about what it is you see. But some other perception may lead you to revise that theory, or even reject it, and you try to make sense of the new perception, but then you might need to revise or even reject the perception in the light of the theory, and, so it goes. All our beliefs whether about our perceptions or of theories about our perceptions are always revisable. For a quick understanding of this take a look at “The Web of Belief” by Quine and Ullian.
that does sound like a reasonable strategy to tack much of any problem but doesnt even basic philosophy teach us not to trust experience from everyday life? So how could i use anything from my life as an argument in any kind of philosophical situation. I think im just stuck being a very perterbed individual when it comes to the world around me.
I don’t know of any philosophy that tells us not to “trust” everyday beliefs.
I trust everyday beliefs until I have some (good) reason not to do so. And so, I suppose, do you; whatever you tell yourself you do.
It does not seem to me possible to doubt anything unless you believe other things on the basis of which you doubt the first thing. If I doubt that the airplane is going as slowly as it appears, isn’t that because I believe I see the airplane is at a great distance and that what is at a great distance appears to go more slowly than it actually does?
Or if I doubt that a report in the National Inquirer that George Washington was really a Martian, isn’t that because I believe a lot of other things (among which is that The National Inquirer is an unreliable newspaper)?
That doesn’t mean, of course, that what I believe in order to doubt must be true. For I may, in turn, doubt that belief in turn. But on the basis of other beliefs that I hold for the time being.
sometimes one can only keep philosophy within ones ideals. pragmatism would sometimes force us directions contrary to how we would like to live our lives. pouts
in order i be true to my philosophical ideals i would have to give up lotsa things … and perhaps myself, but thats another story.
In response to kennethamy’s confession that he knows of no philosophy which encourages the individual to disavow everday experiences, I would suggest the work of some early Greek philosophers, particularily Xeno and his mentor Anaxagoras (? - that may not be correct. If anyone knows, do correct me). Xeno’s paradox about the impossibility of running 100 metres was used to prove Anaxagoras’ argument that movement was impossible. In essence, the argument ran thusly: A person goes to run 100 metres. But before she can rune 100 metres, she must run 50. But before she can run 50, she must run 25. And so on, and on, and on. But, as anyone who has taken a course in Calculus knows, that one may infinitly divide 100 and never reach zero! Thus, how would she ever begin to run the race in the first place? Thus, according to Xeno, movement was impossible. Ah, yes, someone may contend that she has the sensation or perception of movement, to which Anaxagoras and Xeno would reply that one’s senses are being decieved and ought to rather trust their reason, which would state that movement is logically impossible. This is an excellent example of philosophy enouraging an individual to disavow their everday beliefs.
Yet Frighter is not the only person within humanity to marvel at the apparent disconnect between his philosophy and everyday experience. The infamous British philosopher David Hume felt this tension, too. In his writings he contended that a person’s belief in causation is often very unfounded, and that what a person often tends to observe is merely correlation, yet continually misinterpret it as causation. An obvious example of such a mistake would be: the rooster crows and then the sun rises. Therefore, the roter’s crowing causes the sun to rise. There is correlation here, yes, but not causation. Hume argued that this was the case with much of what one sees in life. Yet, nonetheless, we do not read of Hume carrying on his daily existence as if there was no such thing as causation. You would never see Hume hop out a window thinking that gravity would not ‘cause’ him to fall several metres and bust his flabby hump on all those wond’rous stone paved streets of England. Furthermore, one also sees the real struggle to encorporate metaphysical beliefs into actual everday practice in the writings of the famed Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius, namely in his Meditations.
As for gaining a real appreciation for how philosophy may interact with one’s everday existence, I suggest the categorization proposed by Dr. Ravi Zacharias. He argues that there are three (3) levels to philosophy. Firstly, there is the highest level, namely theoretical philosophy. This is where a person really engages ideas in their abstract form. These abstraction, then manifest themselves in the arts. Examples include Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, Voltaire’s Candide, or modern deconstructionist architecture. Then there is the third level of philosophy, the day to day existence, where ideas are dealt with, including their consequences, around the breakfast table. Such examples would include a parent teaching a young child that stealing a chocolate bar is morally wrong. This third level is often influenced by the second level of the arts, and this phenomena may be seen through the entrance of a philosophic idea (whether it be metaphysical or moral) through the forum of music.
In response to kennethamy’s confession that he knows of no philosophy which encourages the individual to disavow everday experiences, I would suggest the work of some early Greek
I guess I should have distinguished between philosophy and philosophers.
You are correct, of course, in saying that many philosophers (and not only those of ancient Greece) held that, at least in certain areas, commonsense beliefs should be rejected. But, what I had in mind was some general philosophy, or philosophical view that simply rejected commonsense beliefs, wholesale, so to speak. Although, maybe Plato’s came very close to that, come to think of it. (I don’t mind here identifying a view with a philosopher because Plato was so pervasive, and so influential) Aristotle, Plato’s pupil, famously rejected this tendency in Plato.
— Excellent post TdB! Zeno’s mentor was Parmenides he was even called parmenide’s son in Plato’s sophist. I just got through the meditations by Marcus Aurelius, i have always admired the Stoics.
— Where lies the mean between the extremes of idealism and practicality? Whether tis nobler to be a pragmatist or a philosopher with his head in the clouds?
— Some have done both. Some of my favourite philosophers actually lived their philosophy and believed that to be ideal (e.g. Friedrich Nietzsche, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Noam Chomsky, Jose Ortega y Gasset, Bertrand Russell), but living your philosophy is somewhat of an inexact art and not for the faint of heart.
— Quite possibly the academic philosophers that go over the really tough questions about language, metaphysics, and the like, but fail to achieve any prominence for the way they have lived have unwittingly helped scores of others to live their lives.
— By definition, philosophy can never be purely abstract because then it would have no practical use for man whom it serves, by the same token, it can never be purely practical because then it would not serve man as the tranquil rest and the elusive ideal to be striven after that it has become. It has been said that philosophy resides between science and religion, one day it will be said that it also resides in that wonderful cradle twixt science and art.