I was interested to see your links, which go back a bit before I joined the site. I think that your project sounds great. The one thing that I am not sure about, however, is your suggestion that we can find 'correct' answers to many questions. I am not just saying that I disagree with it, but that it is a complete contrast to what so many other people on this thread are saying. I know that you are suggesting backing this up with 'common experience,' but many dispute this. Personally, I don't come from the point of view that knowledge is not possible at all, and I do believe in systemic ways of seeing, but it does all seem to be a very careful art of juggling and there are so many competing perspectives.

I started reading your links and I am favorably impressed. Actually, I am delighted with your timely effort. We are in a bit of crisis right now because education for a technological society with unknown values ended the transmission of culture in the US. Now we have no agreements, and worse, no shared method for forming agreements. Nothing could be more important than correcting this problem.

The US traditionally relied on religion for a culture. This worked fine when it went with liberal education and the transmission of culture for democracy. Religion does not produce a culture for democracy. Disney "Lion King" is not wonderful values for our children! No way would Jefferson and Ben Franklin be taking their children to that movie and leave talking about the wonderful value lesson. A lion king and associating the mass with hyenas is not a movie for democracy. Religion without the transmission of the culture based on liberal/classical education is a disaster! As the author of the book "Eat the Rich" said the US one-parent family policy is not working any better than China's one-child families. In so many ways we are in crisis and we need your book to pull us out of this crisis.

To answer the question in the title of this thread- the essence of philosophy is to have a civilization that does not self-destruct. We need to understand, in a democracy, everyone needs to be prepared to manifest a civilization that does not self-destruct. That is the only way to have liberty, not anarchy, and police state authority over the people.


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I was interested to see your links, which go back a bit before I joined the site. I think that your project sounds great. The one thing that I am not sure about, however, is your suggestion that we can find 'correct' answers to many questions. I am not just saying that I disagree with it, but that it is a complete contrast to what so many other people on this thread are saying. I know that you are suggesting backing this up with 'common experience,' but many dispute this. Personally, I don't come from the point of view that knowledge is not possible at all, and I do believe in systemic ways of seeing, but it does all seem to be a very careful art of juggling and there are so many competing perspectives. — Jack Cummins

:gasp: You do not speak with education for democracy. Liberty is not the freedom to do anything we please. It is only the freedom to decide what is right or wrong. Now we may not agree with a law but we protect our liberty by obeying the law. Second, we must take action to change a law or a policy if we believe it is wrong. Democracy is important because we participate in making our laws. They are our laws, not laws imposed on us by a king (or a Military Industrial Complex). Our laws and policies are supposed to be a consensus of the people. Not Homeland Security and being tracked through education, banking, and medical care, federal government control of education, closing schools that do not comply with federal government standards.

:gasp: The education for technology the US has had since 1958 is not education for democracy so we are destroying our democracy. From what you have said this is not just a problem in the US.

I am reading and thinking about what you said to me about democracy, but I think that you replied to @Pfhorrest but did not click on the name, but I have clicked it here, so that may make it obvious that the comment you wrote previous to the one to me was intended for Pfhorrest.

I have thought a bit about how you say that I do not speak 'with education for democracy.' I think that is partly because I don't really have much sense of being in a democracy. I am not really sure that I feel that people in society are listened to by leaders and politicians. I realise that we are not free to do exactly as we please and do believe that we need certain laws, but I do find the implementation of law a bit abstract in some ways. I don't really have much sense of any involvement in the creation of laws and social policies. Having a vote in England seems to be the only involvement, but I am speaking of English politics. I have been on a few marches, but don't feel that the politicians are very interested in those at all.

- Pragmatic arguments to adopt general principles that could be summed up as saying that there are correct answers to be had for all meaningful questions, both about reality and about morality, and that we can in principle differentiate those correct answers from the incorrect ones; and that those correct answers are not correct simply because someone decreed them so, but rather, they are independent of anyone's particular opinions, and grounded instead in our common experience. — Pfhorrest

" Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance." ~ Plato

Are there correct answers (opinions) for all meaningful questions? If Man is a tripartite soul lacking inner unity, what is the correct opinion of love? The scientist sees it intellectually, the artist sees it emotionally, while the mechanic just wants to get to it. Yet if there is a correct opinion, how can these three attributes agree if they don't understand each other? How can they evolve from previously formed opinions into knowledge?

I saw that part of Pfhorrest's discussion as interesting because it is questionable whether we can find the correct answers to many philosophical questions. I know that you suggested in a discussion we were having in another thread that we could find truth rather than opinion. It does seem to be an underlying one in many of the threads. It does seem that so many of the issues in philosophy involve mysteries and throughout history people have sought to answer them differently. Obviously, each question is unique. I am inclined to think that, generally, we may only be able to come up with opinions, but that some opinions are far more knowledge based than others.

↪Nikolas
I saw that part of Pfhorrest's discussion as interesting because it is questionable whether we can find the correct answers to many philosophical questions. I know that you suggested in a discussion we were having in another thread that we could find truth rather than opinion. It does seem to be an underlying one in many of the threads. It does seem that so many of the issues in philosophy involve mysteries and throughout history people have sought to answer them differently. Obviously, each question is unique. I am inclined to think that, generally, we may only be able to come up with opinions, but that some opinions are far more knowledge based than others. — Jack Cummins

If you are right it makes Simone's search and the purpose of her life along with those with the same need futile. I prefer to believe there is a small minority who have transcended opinions in their need to experience the quality of consciousness in which truth abides.

Excerpted from a letter Simone Weil wrote on May 15, 1942 in Marseilles, France to her close friend Father Perrin:

At fourteen I fell into one of those fits of bottomless despair that come with adolescence, and I seriously thought of dying because of the mediocrity of my natural faculties. The exceptional gifts of my brother, who had a childhood and youth comparable to those of Pascal, brought my own inferiority home to me. I did not mind having no visible successes,but what did grieve me was the idea of being excluded from that transcendent kingdom to which only the truly great have access and wherein truth abides. I preferred to die rather than live without that truth.

I have nothing against opinions but have the greatest admiration for those rare ones who transcended their attachment to them in order to open to knowledge. Isn't that really the higher purpose of philosophy?

It is hard to know, but I would not dismiss the visionaries and outstanding thinkers who have paved the way with their insights. It seems to me that relativism has gone too far in deflating the whole quest for truth.

we may only be able to come up with opinions, but that some opinions are far more knowledge based than others. — Jack Cummins

This is more or less my conclusion as well. Something or another is the completely correct answer, but we can never be sure that any particular option is that. We can, however, be sure that one option is further from that than another, and so get arbitrarily close to that completely correct answer over time.

↪Nikolas
It is hard to know, but I would not dismiss the visionaries and outstanding thinkers who have paved the way with their insights. It seems to me that relativism has gone too far in deflating the whole quest for truth. — Jack Cummins

"Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance." - Plato

Relativism is nothing more than additional subjective opinions which change with external circumstances. The only people who can transcend relative opinions are those rare ones who have experienced the domain of what Plato called the unchangeable forms. They have experienced the inner cognitive direction that leads to the reality of the forms and objective knowledge. That inner experience makes it possible to transcend attachments to dualistic opinions.

I went through a phase a few years ago in which relativism did seem a really good option, because it did seem that there were so many perspectives. However, I see the relativist viewpoint as very weak, because it avoids any commitment to any specific one.

I think that relativism is a good way of going beyond mere acceptance of what one was taught to believe in childhood, but not a good conclusion to come to in the long term. I see the development of a unique perspective on truth as the goal, but coming to this individual grasp of truth takes time. I am hoping that through reading and writing to come to this. But I think that when one works hard to develop knowledge it is possible to go a bit further than mere opinion.

I think that relativism is a good way of going beyond mere acceptance of what one was taught to believe in childhood, but not a good conclusion to come to in the long term. I see the development of a unique perspective on truth as the goal — Jack Cummins

It's odd that pluralism is readily accepted as a hallmark of a modern or post-modern society, while relativism consistently figures in controversial and pejorative disputes. And yet they essentially are the same thing.

I think that relativism and pluralism are slightly different because pluralism seems to be about competing truths, rather than just seeing them as being just equal. It has some greater sense of constructing a model from the various pictures.

I didn't ever respond to your thread on Dennet because I began a book called 'The Four Horsemen,' involving Dennett, and a couple of others but I just can't get into.

I think that relativism and pluralism are slightly different because pluralism seems to be about competing truths, rather than just seeing them as being just equal. It has some greater sense of constructing a model from the various pictures. — Jack Cummins

See, I'd interpret that more as relativism, while pluralism acknowledges the fundamental plurality of our collective reality. Pluralism seems more descriptive while relativism has more normative connotations.

Perhaps different writers have used the terms relativism and pluralism slightly differently. However, what I see as the main aspect is that we strive towards finding truth but do not put that of others down as lesser.

Having argued a short while ago that one can go beyond mere opinion to knowledge based truth, am I going back to the point of seeing only opinions? It is complex, because I do see it as problematic if anyone thinks they have the definitive truth. Yet, it does seem that some particular theories or ideas are derived from knowledge and clearly thought out thsn those which just seem shallow, and only a subjective opinion.

I think objective knowledge is a valid ideal.

I see the relativist viewpoint as very weak, because it avoids any commitment to any specific one. — Jack Cummins

Relativist opinions are not competing truths one stronger than another in comparison. They are opinions contingent on more or less universal circumstances, some are scientific laws, some are social conventions, and some others are personal subjective realities. What really has never been shown is that absolutely absolute truths exist at all, anywhere anytime. Moral absolutes are highly desirable dogmas, relative absolutes so to speak, but not absolute logical necessities. Plato's (relative) absolutes dogmatically require a god of logic and transcendent eternity to logically hold. He understood this much, do we?

In the discussion above, I was thinking more about relativism in thinking about metaphysics. I believe that moral relativism is more complicated. That is because whereas reality involves the subjective experience, there is a certain objective reality.

On the other hand, moral decisions have a wider scope, ranging beyond intentions and consequences in the individual's life. The consequences of any action are far reaching, because any given act of a person has benefits and disadvantages for self and others. In making a choice at any moment it does seem that situations are unique and the specifics of circumstances seem to need to be juxtaposed in decisions. I find it hard to see anything which is absolutely wrong in all circumstances apart from murder and rape, which I think most, but not all people would see as almost always wrong. So, what I am suggesting is that I think that searching for knowledge based moral decisions is even more complicated than other philosophical ones. However, I can see that what I have said is probably far from true as an absolute.

I have thought a bit about how you say that I do not speak 'with education for democracy.' I think that is partly because I don't really have much sense of being in a democracy. I am not really sure that I feel that people in society are listened to by leaders and politicians. I realise that we are not free to do exactly as we please and do believe that we need certain laws, but I do find the implementation of law a bit abstract in some ways. I don't really have much sense of any involvement in the creation of laws and social policies. Having a vote in England seems to be the only involvement, but I am speaking of English politics. I have been on a few marches, but don't feel that the politicians are very interested in those at all. — Jack Cummins

Your experience is true for everyone.

Coming from my family and the political talk at our dining table, my sister and I were groomed to be political activists. Also in the 1960s most of us were socially moved to be politically active. We chanted things like "If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem". It was a really different time in history. Now we are old and President Biden is doing the social things we thought should be done in the 60ties. That might have something to do with having a lot of seniors voting right now.

I was radicalized when the state took my grandchildren. At that time Grandparents were starting to organize in a fight for their grandchildren and the governor of the state wanted to change things. I joined the grandparents and helped them get media attention and to do a conference, and I was at every meeting with the officials. The result of this activity was a complete change in the policy, putting grandparents first when the state had to take children, then extended family and not a paid foster parent unless there is no family. I was fighting for family and therefore far more motivated than normal.

I also was the leading advocate for homeless people, and in my city, the response to homeless people radically changed. I organized the homeless men, we got media attention, we attended public hearings, and spoke whenever possible. I was so glad when others realized something needed to be done and took over. :rofl: That is not exactly how my professors expected a student to use education, but two of them knew I would take a different path and I regret what I have to say about bureaucratic organization is ignored. So much of our power, or the lack of it, is about organization. Here is where philosophy has a problem- it tends to be head stuff, not practical stuff.

Anyway, you speak for most people and a lot of them don't even vote. We have a city council and a county council and of course, state legislature and our nightly news says nothing about what they are doing. :rage: This problem is far worse than it was when I participated in a hunger strike on the steps of the state capital building. We have a serious media problem and a lack of political interest problem. This kicks back to the education problem. Anyway, what I am saying is not philosophy so I will stop. :zip:

One more thing, the US Constitution as about agency

the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power — Merriam Webster dictionary

A democracy is about everyone being a part of this. Philosophically do we support this or not?

Are there correct answers (opinions) for all meaningful questions? If Man is a tripartite soul lacking inner unity, what is the correct opinion of love? The scientist sees it intellectually, the artist sees it emotionally, while the mechanic just wants to get to it. Yet if there is a correct opinion, how can these three attributes agree if they don't understand each other? How can they evolve from previously formed opinions into knowledge? — Nikolas

By communicating with each other. The gods argued until they had a consensus on the best reasoning. Democracy is an imitation of the gods.

The love issue is very much helped by reading books and articles about it. People who have children might want to begin with reading books and articles about child-rearing. In the past we didn't have near the science we have today, and it might seem cold and counter to emotional love to become well informed, but for centuries poets and theater have expanded our awareness.

But God knows the young people don't want to hear what the old people have to say. We seem to be compelled to rush into life without getting informed. :lol: However, as all civilizations have more and more long-lived people, I am rather excited about how this might change civilizations. If we return to education in the humanities, really exciting things could happen. I hope we return to family values and I am afraid of what might happen as more and more children grow up with single parents and do not have role models for successful, long-lasting relationships, while education grooms them to be products for industry.

Socrates was an example. He wrote nothing. I think the only minimum requirement is to have read at least one philosopher, ancient or modern and then continue on the types of issues that person was wrestling with. But this is my first impulse.

Even this minimum requirement may be superfluous. As long as you try to be rigorous in terms of being honest with yourself and you try to look for answers instead of going through it the easy way - some aspects of New Age for example, aren't very serious - you can be considered a philosopher. The burden would be on those who disagree to say why anyone needs anything more to be considered a "real philosopher".

Pluralism seems more descriptive while relativism has more normative connotations. — Pantagruel

Yeah, that seems ... well, in my own terms, I conceive of 'relativism' denoting incommensurable perspectives from which to interpret X (i.e. subjective, perhaps "normative") and 'pluralism' denoting complementary aspects of Z itself (i.e. objective). (R) Discrete paths taken on a mountain & (P) topological descriptive features of a mountain, respectively.

Socrates is an interesting role model for philosophy. It has already been pointed out that he was ugly and, as you pointed out, he didn't write books. However, he was prepared to die in defence of his quest for truth...

Plenty of people we don't know, die all the time fighting for they believe in. Socrates happens to be a vivid example in our imagination because Plato wrote about it, and Plato's writing survived for thousands of years. Of course, many of those who die for what they believe in may not call themselves philosophers.

Philosophy is a way of thinking about things, usually in a deep manner. If this resonates with you, and if other people think you are a philosopher, then you are one. At least, that's how it looks to me.

I think that relativism and pluralism are slightly different because pluralism seems to be about competing truths, rather than just seeing them as being just equal. It has some greater sense of constructing a model from the various pictures. — Jack Cummins

See, I'd interpret that more as relativism, while pluralism acknowledges the fundamental plurality of our collective reality. Pluralism seems more descriptive while relativism has more normative connotations. — Pantagruel

Sorry if I'm barging in but by my understanding relativism draws its metaphysics from pluralism as therefore subsumes it as a dependency because relativism necessarily arises when we have the symmetrical conflicts of pluralism. Given relativism's broad coverage across philosophy, it likely has a metaontological range, if not a metaphilosophical one.

Relativism can also be descriptive, evaluative, or prescriptive. Often the last two seem to be called normative relativism. Sometimes the last one seems to be called methodological relativism. Then there is obviously the plurality of domain-dependent relativisms which substantiate it individually (but not globally).

I am glad that you have joined in the discussion on relativism and pluralism, and the question of how they are distinguishable. Your points are useful for considering this.