Dear Readers,
It seems to me that Philosophy is more that just looking into the big questions that we all wonder about. Like; What is the nature of life, Why are we here, What is Justice, What is the nature of the universe, etc… It is about achieving a means to find these answers.
Many times philosophy is stating that which we all know to be true yet don’t understand why. This is a means to understand why we as a human race believe to be true. Like Justice is good… Why is justice good, and if it is good, and we all believe that it is, do we not practice it? Cearneades argued that people are like animals and all of us seek our best interest over the interest of all others and that justice is just an expediency so that the powerful can more expeditiously take from the others. Mencius argued that men’s natures are naturally good and seek “justice” like water seeks low ground. The truth must lay somewhere between the two. Or are they both right?
When Kung Sung Lung argued successfully that a “A white horse is not a horse, but a black or a yellow horse is a horse.” He wasn’t arguing that a horse, is not a horse, if it is white, he was arguing that the language that allows a white horse is not a horse but a black or yellow horse is, is too imprecise a tool to actually carve out the answers to these questions.
So how can we hone the tools we have, or create new ones to actually probe these questions? Like scientists have created microscopes to probe the small and telescopes to probe the large we must develop better means to answer these questions. Modern philosophy is merely at the looking glass stage. We have yet to develop the magnifying glass.
Despite thousands of years of trying our philosophers have thought about things but no one has come up with a test. Many have tried. From Epicurus’s seek pleasure and avoid pain, to Nietzsche’s seek pain for in pain we grow. Our philosophers have made the cardinal sin of science. They have skewed the results to make the hypothesis look true. Bacon’s Idol of the theater.
The closest we have come is in the pragmatist philosophy of William James. He has given us the best means yet to test and measure our philosophies. His test is, what are the results of implementing this philosophy? If the results are bad it is a ad philosophy, if the results are good it is a good philosophy. This as far as I know is the best test yet to determine the validity of a theory of philosophy.
But it still is a crude measuring tool. I certainly am not as gifted as the men I quote, or ridicule. But if this question is known, how do we test and measure our philosophy, maybe some neo-Maxwell will emerge and align our philosophy with the next big technological evolution. They go hand in hand… technology and philosophy.
