PeterJ

Lol. Yes, why would you care what the solution to philosophical problems might be. First one would have to know what they are. This is childish and I'm off. It amazes me that there is so little interest in these issues on this forum.

John - Are you saying that you cannot distinguish a philosophical problem from a scientific one? And what has all those PhDs got to do with anything? But no matter. I've said my piece. It seems even Kant is unknown around here and I didn't take that distant possibility into account, so probably pitched my comments all wrong. .

2501 - It would not be possible for science to supersede philosophy. It would like mathematics superseding psychology, They are different areas of study. This is why they have different names. .

Sorry John, but I don't know how to answer your question. Philosophy has not made any progress in the East for centuries. It arrived at the end long ago. So the last fifty years were no different from the previous one thousand and fifty years. But you might notice that Buddhists, Taoists, Sufis, Absolute Idealists, Vedantists and others who hold this view of philosophy are generally pretty happy people, tend to care for other people and do little harm in the word, and that they don't have to spend all their time worrying about philosophy. It's a subtle effect, and not without exceptions, but it can be discerned. If you're asking me what philosophy could do for you then this would be a more interesting question. I predict that it would change your life considerably for the better were you to study it carefully. Just as long as you don't assume that you're bound to fail, which is always a self-fulfilling prophecy, and only if you don't care where ideas originate as long as they work. I'm sure you'd agree that there must be a solution for philosophy even if this is not it. if so, then it would be important to establish that this is not it, and not to simply dismiss it. This solution would explain why western metaphysics does not solve problems. It would be because this is the only solution it refuses to consider. It's refusal to consider this solution is exactly what distinguishes it as 'western'. Really it's a no-brainer. There obviously is a solution it refuses to consider, otherwise a solution would have been found by now. So you've got half the world saying they have the solution, and the other half refusing to believe that there could be a solution. It's a bit weird if you stand back and look at the situation. To be fair to us westerners, lots of western philosophers do find this solution, but once they've found it they are no longer viewed as part of the tradition, and tend to disappear from the curriculum. Kant is clearly on my side as to the solution for philosophy, albeit he never quite sorted it all out, perhaps because he didn't have the internet, and yet he is supposed to be a central pillar of the western philosophical tradition. It is all stranger than fiction. Kant shows us the solution for philosophy if we interpret him sympathetically. I'm only agreeing with him.

It was not solved by science. If you think that science can solve philosophical problems then we'd have to backtrack and start the discussion at a more simple level. Freewill and determinism are not scientifically testable theories. Or not unless we call metaphysics a science of logic, which I'd be okay with. There is a reason that science is not called philosophy. To repeat, the solution would be to 'sublate' the two terms and ideas, such that they can be seen to be two ways of viewing the same phenomenon. We would have to abandon all extreme views. This is a solution because it has explanatory power and it can be generalised, Simply denying freewill gets us nowhere, and in the sciences it cannot be more than a guess. It might be a good guess, but nobody is interested in guesswork stated as fact.

Abandoning Newton was necessary for a solution, but I agree that it was not in itself the solution. I want to stress the necessity of abandoning unworkable positions here, however, since until one has seen the necessity for doing this the remaining position will seem ad hoc and unnecessarily weird. If we cannot understand what the problem with philosophy is then we cannot hope to solve it. I'll start easing myself out of this since I'm just causing trouble. I'd suggest reading about Nagarjuna for more background on what I'm proposing. Or, if you like mathematics, George Spencer Brown or Hermann Weyl. For a more western style refutation of positive theories there is Bradley's Appearance and Reality. For something more relevant to physics there is Ulrich Mohrhoff. Tom MacFarlane is excellent on all these topics and has plenty online. They all adopt the same solution but explain it from different angles. It is a very common view but goes largely unnoticed in scientific circles, at least now that the early QM pioneers, who were often good philosophers, have passed on. Schrodinger got it, and spent forty years arguing for this view. So no need for me to bang on. I'll assume a lack of interest and beat a retreat, just like I always end up doing here. It is a remarkably closed-minded forum, I must say. .

Example: Freewill vs Determinism This is two extreme metaphysical positions. Neither idea works. They form the two horns of an ancient dilemma. The problem is undecidable for the reason Kant gives. The solution would be to reject both. This solution can be seen as a global compatibilism. This approach assumes that the universe is a unity, thus that all distinctions are emergent. Mind/Matter, Externalism/Internalism, Something/Nothing, Beginning/no-Beginning, One/Many, and so forth, the solution would be same in each case. The assumption that the universe is a unity (not a 'One' - which is simple monism) requires that we abandon all partial theories. Now, you may not see much in this, because it needs a book's worth of elaboration. But it is the only solution of philosophy that has ever been proposed and it is irrefutable. So, it is not actually possible to prove that philosophy does not solve problems since we cannot prove that this is not the solution. The solution would be, as I've said a few times above, to abandon all extreme metaphysical theories. How this can be seen as 'not giving a solution' I'm not sure. It would be the solution. These are difficult topics and I am not a genius at communicating, but it must be pretty clear by now what I'm saying by now. If not my apologies, but maybe it's too ambitious to do this on a forum starting from scratch.

You ask me how dismissing whole swathes of philosophy is a solution to anything. This is how we solve problems in the sciences. We solved gravity by dismissing Newton. We can solve philosophy by dismissing all the philosophers who have failed to solve it. You ask me to explain which problems it can solve, and I have said it's all of them. I'm giving a general solution, not a solution to this or that problem. The beginning of the solution would be to abandon the views that do not work. If we cannot do this then there is no way forward. In order to see how this solution works we would have to understand what the problem with philosophy actually is. I've tried to explain but the task is beyond me in a hostile environment. So I'll just say simply yes, philosophy solves problems, once has the trick of it. For further info there is plenty of relevant literature. The trick would be to abandon all extreme theories. Basically, this means taking certain parts of Kant and Hegel seriously. Yes, this is dismissing one whole swathe of philosophy, and this would be why it works as a solution. But it takes time to see this, and time is something we haven't got here. I cannot get past the first part of an explanation. If we cannot understand Kant's comment that all selective conclusions about the world as a whole are undecidable, then we cannot understand how to solve philosophy. So this would be the place to start. The doubt about the effectiveness of philosophy arises from the fact that Kant identifies, but in western thought there is no solution to it. Give this fact a different interpretation and we will have a solution. But first we would have to understand this fact, and I'm not convinced that anyone here has yet grasped it. In this case, there's not much chance that what I'm saying will seem sensible. I'm solving a problem that has not been recognised as a problem, so the solution will make no sense. Yes, philosophy solves problems. But this cannot be understood if we do not study the issues. The first issue is why the problem arise in the first place, which is what I tried to explain. But no matter, I have no wish to browbeat anyone and just wanted to defend philosophy from the charge of being useless. People tend to look at western philosophy and judge the whole subject pointless, forgetting that this is a subset of philosophy based on ideas that are rejected by every philosopher who ever claimed to have solved philosophy. Also, to grasp this approach we would have to be able to talk about mysticism in a calm and balanced way, and I think you'd agree that this would not be the place to do attempt to do this. .

Nothing at all as far as I can see. It is almost a complete waste of time in the West since it can solve no problems. I presume you're excluding any other kind of philosophy from consideration. Otherwise you would have seen the value in it.

Strange - I'm sorry you don't understand what I'm saying,. Probably my fault. I certainly have no idea what your complaint is. John repeats the usual opinion above. He see no use for philosophy. Why? Because nobody listens when someone offers them a solution. They start leaping up and down with indignation and assume, because this is what they believe, that philosophy is so useless that nobody could have a solution, therefore a person which claims otherwise must be talking nonsense, therefore there would be no point in trying to understand what they're saying. Case closed. You ask a question to which you firmly believe you already know the answer. I see no purpose in it. You believe that philosophy cannot solve problems, and I'm trying to explain why you believe this. If you did not believe this then you would not have asked the question. You believe it because you refuse to consider the potential solution that I'm offering. Perhaps you can tell me what's wrong with it. Or perhaps I explained it badly. Who knows. Clearly one person did not see any meaning in it and chooses to bandy insults rather than talk about it.

Surreal, yes. The OP asked, Does philosophy solve any problems? He would not be asking this if he could see it solving any problems. Therefore, his question supports my proposal that the solution does not lie in any of the theories that are considered by stereotypically 'western' thinkers. This is a very simple point. The point is simply that western metaphysics is a failure, and I see no reason for providing any evidence when it is so obvious. Clearly most people here regard it as a failure so I'm not sure why we'd disagree about this. All I'm doing is explaining why it is a failure. I'm not saying 'all science is wrong' like some naïve idiot. I'm stating that one tradition of metaphysics has got it wrong, and that this would be the only reason the OP needs to ask this question. If we are going to stick with this tradition then my answer to the question would be a simple no. It is obviously no. Footnotes to Plato and no progress in many centuries. I was suggesting we should move on.

When the OP asked his question he did not know of my existence, so I have no idea what you're saying here. Philosophy is not useless. It is just that bad workmen blame their tools. . If you cannot grasp what I'm saying then my apologies, but I can't write essays here. To say that philosophy does not solve problems means ignoring a vast swathe of literature. When one mentions this nobody is interested. So philosophy gets the blame for the narrow thinking of some of its practitioners and the western tradition is preserved intact, to continue to fail until the end of time. Yes. western university philosophy is useless and solves no problems. We can at least agree about that.

Strange - This is missing the point. The OP's question was asked because for many people philosophy does not solve problems. I was suggesting that we need to ask why they think this. Clearly it is because all positive theories do not work. If they did work, then nobody would be asking the OP's question. In other words, the OP's question is in itself evidence that what I'm suggesting about metaphysics is correct.

It was full of meaning, more than in many whole text books, but I can accept that it's difficult to see this when it is such a brief statement. Andrew. It didn't take me ten years to reach this conclusion. It took me ten years to learn to to say it this simply. It took three days to reach the conclusion. It was Nagarjuna who most famously proved what I'm saying here about metaphysics, but nearly all metaphysicians prove it. Why has metaphysics has made no progress for so long, and why none is none predicted? Why would someone post a forum thread with this title? It is because all positive metaphysical theories are logically absurd, and this can make it seem that (logical/analytical) metaphysics is a dead end. Nagarjuna's solution would be to abandon all these absurd theories for a neutral metaphysical position. This would be the philosophical foundation of the perennial philosophy, mysticism and Middle Way Buddhism. According to this view .the ethical problem set out by Strange would be solved by assuming the unity of the universe. For the mystic right and wrong would be contextual, relative, non-absolute. It would not always be wrong to kill a person, and this is perhaps why a story is preserved that in a previous life the Buddha committed a murder in order to save a boatload of people. Ethics would be solved by assuming that we share a common identity with all sentient beings. An enlightened person would know this, would be aware of it constantly. In their case there would be do difference between selfish and altruistic behaviour since the ego has departed and the unity of the universe is a living reality. (This would be the solution to altruism given Schopenhauer, when he explains it as the 'break through of a metaphysical truth'. For us this is just a conjectural theory, but as a theory it works in logic. As a metaphysical theory it would be the only one that does work, and this is demonstrable, It is this theory that is always rejected by people who cannot solve philosophical problems. It may not be obvious at first that it is a theory, and not just the absence of one. The logical positivists knew for certain that all positive or extreme theories do not work. This was their entire criticism of metaphysics. The solution that I'm proposing here accepts this fact. But it awards this fact a different interpretation. If all these positive theories do not work, then we must assume that they have to be rejected. This leaves only one theory standing. It is this theory that we would need to understand in order to solve philosophical problems. Note: A 'positive theory is what Kant calls a 'partial' or 'selective' theory. Such theories always have a mirror-image counter-theory. .

Maybe it's too big a topic for a forum. It shows the way philosophy is neglected in our society that what I said above is not already well understood. There's nothing new in it.