gib, this last post of yours is a great example of why I value you. (I must admit I enjoyed Fixed Cross’s characterization of you as “the archetypical lightweight”, though. Then again, one can be a lightweight and still be a champion in that class–and thereby be stronger than most people who (would) fall in the heavyweight class.)
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I’ll check the video later, but yes, logic puzzles and riddles and such constitute a great counterexample. Or at least they seem to do so. For I think this example is not incompatible with my argument. The thing is, I think of philosophy as itself essentially a form of play. Philosophers don’t tend to think about things just because those things are “sooo important”; that reeks of moralism and taking oneself too seriously.
Right, good point. And yet I have a problem with it. If we begin with Logic, who’s to say we’ll ever go beyond it? Logic puzzles may suffice to keep us occupied, without any incentive to move on to more important riddles. And even if we see Logic as only instrumental, it may still be a study which requires at least a lifetime…
Right. But I think it goes deeper than logic. For one thing, logic or reason can hardly establish values. (I’ve personally established the rational value of valuation (i.e., valuing) itself, but using that to establish the value of logic would be circular.) I think the first consideration in the study of logic–as distinct from just doing logic puzzles for fun–should be this:
So in other words, we think about that which we enjoy thinking about. All forms of thought provide an opportunity to exercise one’s rational thinking skills, so the exercise of logic can be applied to pretty much all areas of thought. The question of what constitutes moral philosophy is answered easily enough by saying: it’s when you aim to establish what one ought to do. ← That too can be done out of the pure enjoyment of thinking. I agree that this is different from “moralizing”–not just in the sense of telling others how to live their lives, but in thinking of yourself as doing moral philosophy because of moral obligations–as if you didn’t really enjoy it.
But that throws a bit of a wrench in the original question: what is first philosophy? It’s almost asking: what ought we to study first? Any answer to this might be taken as “moralizing”. But I don’t think we have to take it as a moral question per se; it could just be a question of how to best achieve our goals: if we want to think clearly and intelligently about certain topics in philosophy, what ought we to put first? What will help us most in our goal. ← No moral obligations, just practical considerations. This is why I opted for logic: because it has practical effects on all other areas of thought.
Well, I don’t think the progression from one area of philosophy to another needs to be that linear. In fact, I don’t think we can help but to think of all areas of philosophy as they occur to us. But I do think that the exercise of logic helps with later thoughts in other areas of philosophy. In other words, we go forward making mistakes in pretty much all areas of philosophy until we learn how not to make those mistakes.
You mean what statements we take to be true of the world? Unless such statements are deduced through a logic analysis, you are talking about assumptions. I agree with Faust that these are prelogical. We hold onto the assumptions we’ve experienced to be true in the real world, or which we’ve been told by a trusted authority, or which we intuite emotionally. ← The key to choosing our assumptions is to be aware of what grounds are the most reliable. Or, if your goal is just to persuade, which assumptions are shared by those you’re trying to persuade. But you do have to bring logic to the table when you try to draw out other truths from those assumptions.
I’m not a philosopher … yet … I agree with Moreno … phenomenology first.
Anyone here familiar with Edith Stein’s contribution to phenomenology?
I’ve known the name Edith Stein for about 15 years … known of her interest in phenomenology for most of that time … yet … until today had no understanding of phenomenology.
Let me share a metaphor to illustrate my current understanding … be it right or wrong.
A train … at birth we are like the engine of a train … the “I” … the “self” … the “ego” is the engine.
As we travel through life we add “cars” to our train … these “cars” are units/clusters of our personal experiences.
As we age our “train” grows to be quite long … many of the units of personal experiences are long forgotten … yet … we continue to pull them along.
From time to time something happens in our external world that triggers a “synthesis” … a homogeneous grouping of selective units/clusters of experiences and we become more conscious of our life’s purpose/meaning.
Do you think we can say that the study of logic is a very narrow focus of the study of phenomenology? I’ve always thought of phenomenology as the focus on our experiences and the attempt to draw out descriptions of how they feel, turning that into philosophy. Could the study of logic be that specifically applied to rational thought?
Seems to me Edith Stein … in her thoughts concerning phenomenology … would consider logic necessary for making sense of experience(s) yet independent of experience … residing in the sphere … realm … of essence(s).
Always possible. Can you give a summary of Russel fundamentals?
I agree with the statement that the future determines the present as much as the past does. In fact I’ve made that statement now and then myself, without having read Russell beyond his commentary on Wittgenstein, where I do think he is wrong.
Russell seems to miss a beat with the shift from logic to semantics. But this does not invalidate his logic. Its just the case that we had to go through postmodernism to grasp the arbitrariness of semantics and the absence of logical consistency in conceptual language. That is what Wittgenstein figured out after which he had to dismiss his Tractatus which had impressed Russel and the English other analytics.
There is probably still a lot to find in the disagreement of Wittgenstein with Russell and his former self.
Ah, I guess that’s where Edith Stein and I differ. To me, the feeling of thought is just another quality of phenomena–it is a subjective experience being had by a brain. “Abstraction” is just its quality.
Do we KNOW HOW to live or do we learn how to live moment by moment? I think that it is an ongoing journey learned by following both contiguous and non-contiguous paths.
We learn by our experiences, both the negative and the positive ones.
The negative ones, if paid attention to, can teach us more I think than even our positive ones.
Our mistakes are scattered all over to learn from.
A baby may also be able to teach you if you pay attention to one. First you at times must learn to live by crawling, then by taking baby steps…putting one slow wobbly foot in front of the other.
Logic is first. Philosopher should do more than just opine. They should make arguments for their positions. Good ones, preferably. Ethics is the disguise for the real work of academic philosophy outside of logic - which is politics.
Actually we can say with very remarkable accuracy indeed that science tells us what we know while philosophy tells us what it means because
science pertains to knowledge [ scientia means to know ] and philosophy pertains to wisdom [ philo means love of and sophia means wisdom ]
Not Russel, but Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege put logic first. The modern logic (logistic, analytic etc.) was founded by Frege. Frege was Russel’s mathematical, logical, philosophical father.
Philosophy is primarily about logic. In other words: "Philosophy without logic“ is no philosophy. Even if you put other philosophical fields first: you have to always answer the question whether your thinking about them is logically right or false (wrong). If ontology, epistemology, phenomenology, ethics are not logically right, then they are almost nonsensical, without any philosophic and scientific basis; and ontology, epistemology, phenomenology even contain the word "logic“, so any comment is superfluous in those cases.
They are not underrated by their continental friends. Gottlob Frege was German (thus: continental European) and Russel’s mathematical, logical, philosophical father. Frege founded the modern logic - both the modern mathematical logic and the modern philosophical logic - logistics, analytics etc…
Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege influenced everyone, also Edmund Husserl who followed Frege especially by adopting his distinction between logic and psychology (cp. Frege’s „Sinn und Bedeutung“) which led Husserl to his kind of phenomenology.
Yes. Logic comes before all other branches of philosophy. Just as "mathematics without logic“ is no mathematics at all, "philosophy without logic“ is no philosophy at all.
A child in a womb can already behave according to logic - but not according to ethics. Every child’s development shows clearly that logic comes before ethics. Also is behaving according to ethics earlier than knowing about ethics.
Living comes before thinking. That is absolutely right. But that does not mean that ethics comes before logic.
It goes like a circle. When living without ethics has reached thinking, then it has reached logic and starts going backwards: from logic to living, which is now a living with ethics.
Even the most primitive laws are based on ethics based on logic. So they are primarily based on logic. The reason of any taboo and any totem may be ethics, but reason is not cause. They are caused by logic (based on logic), because only logic can lead to ethics. Ethics without logic is not possible. Logic without ethics is possible. Even an anarchist has to argue logically when it comes to the elimination of laws.
Do bacteria have ethics? No, but they are behaving according to logic. Logic does not require ethics, but ethics requires logic (otherwise such "ethics“ would not really be ethics).
So if we are arguing according to development in general or evolution and history in particular, we have to put logic first. Logic was before ethics.
A child in a womb can already behave according to logic - but not according to ethics. Every child’s development shows clearly that logic comes before ethics. Also is behaving according to ethics earlier than knowing about ethics.
So again: You are absolutely right about the fact that living comes before thinking. But you should not confuse ethics with living, because ethics does not mean "living“ (but the philosophical [!] answer to the also philosophical [!] question: "what should we do?“). Living can but does not have to lead to thinking, and logic can but does not have to lead to ethics.
