The Purpose of Philosophy is...

[roydop]

I have a theory that thinking is consciousness constructing a relative form of existence. Subconsciously it's: "I know I exist when I'm thinking."

Consciousness that has forgotten that it is the Absolute will construct something relative to it in order to reaffirm it's existence. This relative creation is a Ponzi scheme - a self-enforcing feedback loop that will develop exponentially, causing it's own eventual collapse.

Proof of this would be the development of a self-referring system that has no end, like thought. Philosophy being a subset of thought, it would exhibit the same characteristics. Human's growing addiction to the screen is another example of a relative form of existence.

So is the question/answer system an attempt to actually produce answers that will bring conclusion to the system, or is it's real purpose to simply reaffirm (quite redundantly) your existence?

Investigation into the thought process indicates an exponential increase in the amount of thought and use of symbols within human consciousness. There's also the fact that you, or pretty much any other human, is incapable of stopping their thoughts.

[Logik]

Incomplete set of options.

I would also add: Humanizing the ape

[henry quirk]

...to kill time.

[Logik]

...to kill time.

You are a free will. Why do you outsource responsibility?

[henry quirk]

"Why do you outsource responsibility?"

For killin' time?

Cuz I can, I wanna, so I do.

[Logik]

"Why do you outsource responsibility?"

For killin' time?

Cuz I can, I wanna, so I do.

Not a very result-driven person, are you?

[henry quirk]

When it cones to killin' time: my standard for success is understandably low: time passes, I'm moderately amused with next to no self-expenditure, success!

[PeteJ]

I have a theory that thinking is consciousness constructing a relative form of existence. Subconsciously it's: "I know I exist when I'm thinking."

Yes, and when you're not. Your post suggests you're most of the way to the Perennial view of these things.

[Alemm]

Academic philosophy should concern itself with helping to connect together the various disciplines and looking to build a framework which helps make them intelligible to each other--and to the general educated public. In society: To achieve social peace, by encouraging power to moderate itself and by encouraging people to take into account the common good. In Human Life: to make sense of one's life and to help the individual to live meaningfully.

[odysseus]

Alemm:
Academic philosophy should concern itself with helping to connect together the various disciplines and looking to build a framework which helps make them intelligible to each other--and to the general educated public. In society: To achieve social peace, by encouraging power to moderate itself and by encouraging people to take into account the common good. In Human Life: to make sense of one's life and to help the individual to live meaningfully.

This part about making sense of life is right, and a certain kind of education certainly is the point, but the rest is not philosophy's business any more than it is the business of physics. It is the business of civil education to make children into decent people. Philosophy is only interested in the truth at the level of basic questions.

[Skepdick]

It is the business of civil education to make children into decent people. Philosophy is only interested in the truth at the level of basic questions.

Begging the question. What is decency?

[Skepdick]

Academic philosophy should concern itself with helping to connect together the various disciplines and looking to build a framework which helps make them intelligible to each other--and to the general educated public. In society: To achieve social peace, by encouraging power to moderate itself and by encouraging people to take into account the common good. In Human Life: to make sense of one's life and to help the individual to live meaningfully.

Richard Rorty argues similarly - that philosophers should participate in society as mediators and consensus builders within social discourse. And I agree. Most social disagreements are miscommunication due to linguistic dogmatism, not the absence of common ground.

Philosophy & Taking Time Seriously

[odysseus]

Skepdick
Begging the question. What is decency?

The question is not begged for there is no designation of the decency is about, only that it is not philosophy's affair to morally (to instill a sense of moral decency) educate. Indeed, the purpose of the post was to make a disclaimer regarding this matter and to free philosophy from the restraints of what a given culture might consider decent. Philosophy must be free, even if the Truth is morally offensive.

I do however have faith that philosophy leans toward a concept of moral goodness, and for an answer as to what this is about, ask your man Rorty, for he is the one pulls that rabbit out of his hat: See his position in Contingency, Irony and Solidarity: Rorty quotes Judith Schklar, arguing that the worst a person can do is cruelty; yet, he holds that truth is not discovered but made. It is a hard position to defend, Rorty's, because being compassionate, even self interestedly concerned-for-others empathetic and the like (not being cruel) are not allowed be definitively prescriptive, and therefore he cannot defend not being cruel outside of the conditions in which the propositional ethical Truths are conceived. He seems to think as a pragmatist, being good to each other "works" and he could be right about this, but then, the foundation for this is absent, leaving a person free to,like a good pirrana, go after the guppies at will.

[henry quirk]

Seems to me the two are part & parcel.

Consider: two extreme positions (the natural rights libertarian & the marxist communist). Linguistically dogmatic? Absolutely! Consider how each will define 'freedom', as example. The rigidity of language is irrevocably tied to the 'ground' each stands on, two distinctly antithetical 'patches' neither will abandon or compromise, each seein' the other as wrong-headed.

No common ground, no common language: stalemate (leadin' to uncomfortable truce or out & out war).

Such gulfs exist everwhere and between folks ostensibly far 'closer' than the two extremists I use above (members of the same tribe/party/culture/etc. goin' at each other like mad dogs over molehills inflated to mountains).

So: if I gotta 'chicken or egg' it, I think idiosyncratic 'grounding' leads to idiosyncratic semantics leads to islands with no possible bridges between (just folks semaphoring at one another).

[Nick_A]

IMO Jacob Needleman explains the purpose of philosophy in his book "The Heart of philosophy."

Chapter 1

Introduction

Man cannot live without philosophy. This is not a figure of speech but a literal fact that will be demonstrated in this book. There is a yearning in the heart that is nourished only by real philosophy and without this nourishment man dies as surely as if he were deprived of food and air. But this part of the human psyche is not known or honored in our culture. When it does breakthrough to our awareness it is either ignored or treated as something else. It is given wrong names; it is not cared for; it is crushed. And eventually, it may withdraw altogether, never again to appear. When this happens man becomes a thing. No matter what he accomplishes or experiences, no matter what happiness he experiences or what service he performs, he has in fact lost his real possibility. He is dead.

……………………….The function of philosophy in human life is to help Man remember. It has no other task. And anything that calls itself philosophy which does not serve this function is simply not philosophy……………………………….

The purpose of modern philosophy is to help people forget rather than remember so argues details. Debating egoistic details is not philosophy even though the majority believe it to be so.