3

Science has given many concrete results and we all agree upon its utility as in the form of technology. There are some gray areas in science on which we do not agree. Similarly for history , geography , arts , literature etc …

However in philosophy there seems to be no agreement other than in philosophy of science which insists on reputable evidence.

I would like to know what are ideas in philosophy on which we all agree upon ?

I posted few questions with regard to nature of true knowledge and machines. The questions were not left open but closed. I had asked whether the true knowledge can only be gained by thinking. It shows that not only we are in disagreement but the question itself is not allowed. This made me ask the above question.

Dheeraj Verma
  • 1,851
  • 2
  • 11
  • 16
  • Comments have been moved to chat; please do not continue the discussion here. Before posting a comment below this one, please review the purposes of comments. Comments that do not request clarification or suggest improvements usually belong as an answer, on [meta], or in [chat]. Comments continuing discussion may be removed. – Philip Klöcking Oct 27 '23 at 20:31
  • I vote to reopen the question after the OP has added a prompt to support any further nomination of a breakthrough by a short argument why it can be considered a breakthrough. - The long series of comments shows how much attention the question finds in the community. - The question and its answers can be the seed for a Big Picture of (European) philosophy, generating further specific questions. – Jo Wehler Oct 28 '23 at 07:45

4 Answers4

5

A non-exhaustive list in no particular order:

  • Science branched out from philosophy and the scientific method is a creation of philosophers, on which many people (of course not ALL people) agree.

  • Descartes' cogito presented a solid basis for modern philosophy.

  • Leibniz' idea that we share the same world but see it from very different perspectives, and thus we all have our little piece of truth, which might differ from one another due to our different positions in the world.

  • Kant's distinction between noumena and phenomena founds modern epistemology.

  • Popper's falsifiability rule (+ subsequent refinements by Kuhn and Lakatos), and his rejection of totalitarism and determinism.

  • The rejection of sexism and racism as ill-founded, exploitative and morally wrong.

  • The importance of structures that are "more than the sum of their parts". Aristotle alluded to it, and the German gestaltists, and then Levi Strauss and Bateson expended on it.

  • Socrates' demonstration of the philosophical mindset as learning to question the boxes that we think within, to tease out presuppositions for examination.

  • Tied to the above, all the axiomatic work on mathematical and logical pluralism.

  • The stoics and pragmatists acceptance of uncertainty as intrinsic to life and philosophic knowledge.

  • Linguistics.

(Edited based on @dcleve's comment)

Postface

Thanks for the encouragements. Dcleve noted the basics of philosophy:

Socrates' demonstration of the philosophical mindset as learning to question the boxes that we think within.

Chris Sunami made a similar point:

Philosophy, by nature, is the study of questions around which there exists no widespread agreement, shared framework of inquiry or self-certifying means of confirmation. [emph. added]

The list above now strikes me as all (or most) about what they are talking about: framing (deframing, outframing, reframing...). Looking for the basic axiomatic of a world view, and questioning and studying these basic presuppositions.

When Descartes makes the mind experiment of the cogito, when he imagines that he can doubt even the belief in a real world around him, he is looking for a sure and certain axiom upon which he can logically reconstruct the certainty in everything he pretended to doubt. And he finds it: one cannot doubt the existence of doubt, hence of a doubter, hence of a Creator of the doubter, and hence His creation is real and I can trust my senses 'cause God ain't no cheater (in short).

Descartes was testing the solidity of the frame of individual existence.

With his monads, Leibniz was building a frame of reference for the world as perceived by all of us (including animals), a world in which people's views are always derived from a certain geometric or intellectual point of view, a perspective. It's now banal to say this but he formalized it.

Linguistics derive from an analysis of the very tools we use for thinking: signs, symbols. That too is a frame.

When Martin Luther King dreams, he is reframing his country.

Olivier5
  • 2,162
  • 1
  • 2
  • 20
  • 1
    Are "rejection of sexism and racism as ill-founded, exploitative and morally wrong" based on philosophy, or are they based on observations that their underpinnings are factually incorrect? – RonJohn Oct 27 '23 at 15:59
  • Issue with the same item. xxxism is anti-scientific on its face. The natural world will offer numerous scientific truths about the differences and thus superiority / inferiority of an aspect of one xxx over another. This is both scientific and xxxist. That item doesn't belong in the list. – djv Oct 27 '23 at 16:04
  • Also, "Popper's ... rejection of totalitarism"? There must have been some philosophers who have propounded totalitarianism (or isms like it). – RonJohn Oct 27 '23 at 16:05
  • Excellent list. I would add: Socrates' demonstration of the philosophical mindset as learning to question the boxes that we think within. Pragmatism's acceptance of uncertainty as intrinsic to life and philosophic knowledge (the answer to the Munchausen trilemma). The demonstration of both mathematical and logical pluralism. And Lakatos' Research Programmes as the refinement that follows the falsification of Popperian falsification. – Dcleve Oct 27 '23 at 16:07
  • 1
    @djv I remember when "Jimmy the Greek" was kicked off of TV for saying that black athletes (sprinters and football players) were superior to whites in the same sports because of the design of their Achilles tendons. The hubbub made no sense to me. – RonJohn Oct 27 '23 at 16:08
  • @RonJohn Sexism has a fairly obvious empirical basis: men and women are physically different. The idea that women and men are morally and intellectually equal is not derived from direct observation of the physical. It was derived from the work of thinkers, such as Simone de Beauvoir and many others. As for racism, I think it is generally frowned upon today, at least in some societies, not really because of observation of the obvious similarities between so-called races, but because of historical experiences of slavery, of the Holocaust, of the civil rights movement, etc. – Olivier5 Oct 27 '23 at 16:28
  • 3
    @RonJohn Feminism and antiracism are values, not facts. Not to say they are based on no facts -- eg the human race is nowadays apprehended scientifically as one large genepool, one population or rather species, for good reasons -- but they are not primarily motivated by facts. They are political and value-based. – Olivier5 Oct 27 '23 at 16:28
  • @RonJohn "There must have been some philosophers who have propounded totalitarianism" The list is long, from Plato to Leibnitz, to Hegel, to the various crops of left and right hegelians including Marx, to Heidegger, who sat on several nazi organizations for years, his texts constantly reprinted thanks to stocks of papers released for this specific purpose by the regime, to Sartre and his flirtation with the USSR and communism. Even Cioran in his Romanian youth... – Olivier5 Oct 27 '23 at 16:49
  • 1
    "They are political and value-based." But if the facts pointed towards women actually being, for example, mentally frail, and blacks actually being stupid, then the values of feminism and antiracism would be foolish. Thus, pointing to them as "ground breaking results in philosophy" is pretty lame. – RonJohn Oct 27 '23 at 17:07
  • @Dcleve All agreed on my side. Particularly Socrates, who establishes the legitimacy and utility of teasing out hidden assumptions. Axioms taken for granted need a teasing. This ties in nicely with mathematical pluralism, which you also proposed. As for "Pragmatism's acceptance of uncertainty as intrinsic to life and philosophic knowledge", I would like to cite Marcus Aurelius. "Give me patience to reconcile with what I cannot change, strength to change what I can, and wisdom to distinguish one from another." – Olivier5 Oct 27 '23 at 17:10
  • @Olivier5 -- These comments are most often used for discussion, rather than actual edits to an answer. I was hoping you would consider adding some of the above to your list. – Dcleve Oct 27 '23 at 17:15
  • @Dcleve - They are not SUPPOSED to be used for discussion. There is an associated chat site specifically for that. https://chat.stackexchange.com/?tab=site&host=philosophy.stackexchange.com – Chris Sunami Oct 27 '23 at 17:42
  • @Dcleve Done!!! – Olivier5 Oct 27 '23 at 17:47
  • Any reason is good enough to reject a bad idea. – Scott Rowe Oct 27 '23 at 22:53
  • this is a fair answer. the fact you didn't include hegel, marx, nietzsche, etc., may say something about philosophy –  Oct 27 '23 at 23:44
5

Philosophy, by nature, is the study of questions around which there exists no widespread agreement, shared framework of inquiry or self-certifying means of confirmation.

If a philosopher succeeds at systemizing a topic of inquiry to the point it provides consistent, widely accepted, objective results, it becomes a new science, and passes out of the realm of philosophy. That's where sciences come from. This happened in antiquity for Geometry and Physics, and in the recent past for modern Logic. (Chemistry, Calculus, Statistics, Psychology, Economics and Computer Science are just a few of philosophy's other past "ground-breaking results," in as much as the people who innovated them were thought of as philosophers at the time, and seen as scientists only in retrospect).

To address your secondary question about what qualifies for this site, our standard is that this is not a place, generally, for the practice of philosophy, but for questions about the discipline of philosophy, since those are the questions that are likely to have factual, objective answers. We often do philosophy here "around the margins" of answers, but open-ended discussion questions are off-topic.

Chris Sunami
  • 29,852
  • 2
  • 49
  • 101
  • 1
    Hi there. Points well taken. Is there a site you would recommend for "the practice of philosophy"? – Olivier5 Oct 27 '23 at 14:54
  • The short answer is no. All philosophy is intrinsically value-laden, so even sites that aspire to neutrality can't avoid having their own agendas. The two main places to practice philosophy are in the academy, and in the world. – Chris Sunami Oct 27 '23 at 15:16
  • 2
    Thanks for a clear (though depressing) answer. – Olivier5 Oct 27 '23 at 15:18
  • This is an excellent preamble to Oliver5's list! – Dcleve Oct 27 '23 at 15:45
  • 1
    @Olivier5 Besides this site for learning, and books, there's also thephilosophyforum.com. – J D Oct 27 '23 at 17:08
  • Are chemistry, physics, etc actually the results of philosophy, or did that early research just happen to be what proto-scientists also did besides philosophizing? Before the modern term "science" was created, that work had to be called something, and it was Natural Philosophy. – RonJohn Oct 27 '23 at 17:13
  • @RonJohn - Systematic thinking outside the boundaries of existing disciplines is what philosophers do. Until it produces objective testable results that can reliably and predictably be reproduced, it's not a science. // The only difference between "proto science" and other philosophy, is that other philosophy deals with questions that still remain "unsolved" to this day. – Chris Sunami Oct 27 '23 at 17:34
  • It's not popularity what changes philosophy into (what is modernly understood as) science, they deal with different fields of knowledge, one more fundamental than the other. It would be like saying that grammars can pass out of the realm of linguistics to become new literary genres. Philosophy may serve as a foundation and framework for scientific inquiry but no transmutation goes on from one into the other. – Mutoh Oct 27 '23 at 18:22
2

Expanding on one of Olivier5's items: Kant's antinomies show the limits of reason, resulting in the separation of what can be known (phenomena) from what might have be considered actual (noumena).

The 1st antinomy lays out contradictory proofs & conclusions regarding time and space:-

  • The world has a beginning (is limited in time).
  • The world has no beginning.
  • The world is limited with regard to space.
  • The world is not spatially limited.

These contradictions mean we cannot speak of the world with ordinary assuredness and we have to consider what we can know based on our own faculties, making the concept of existence itself co-dependent on cognition.

What is outside the field of perception and thought — and thereby the field of existence — is a complete mystery. Surely a novel situation to get comfortable with.

Chris Degnen
  • 5,777
  • 2
  • 15
  • 23
  • 1
    What about the idea that space (and possibly time) can be limited but unbounded? You won't fall off the edge, but there is only so much universe? Like saying Earth is round. – Scott Rowe Oct 27 '23 at 23:02
  • 1
    @ScottRowe It seems a plausible theory, like quantum vacuum & E8 are also. Nevertheless I think the limits to reason (of the antinomies) are just the springboard for the phenomenology. Phenomenological existence would still hold even if we could discover ways of understanding (and see) all of nature, so that we could 'know' another type of existence. It seems absurd to think we could know everything about nature though. – Chris Degnen Oct 27 '23 at 23:18
  • 1
    I think I'll get comfortable with a mystery novel instead. – Scott Rowe Oct 27 '23 at 23:22
2

Great answers here. One that sticks with me:

Duhem-Quine Thesis: Explicated in Quine's "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", it states that unambiguous scientific falsifications are impossible because testing any hypothesis always involves "auxiliary hypothesis" that can be rejected to protect the core hypothesis. Showed that even our most objective scientific theories rely on subjective tradeoffs in plausibility of different hypothesis - also seriously undercut the basis for Logical Positivism.

Annika
  • 1,470
  • 1
  • 15