Can someone name a single solved philosophical problem?
I'm yet to read of a single one, rather tragic really. Plato outlined the most important problems in philosophy around 2500 years ago, and we are yet to solve one, we haven't even made progress.
Is progress in this domain even possible? If not, why not? And if not, why bother?
Is progress in this domain even possible? If not, why not? And if not, why bother?
Comments (63)
Some examples:
Physics, psychology, linguistics, mathematics, logic, chemistry, biology...
Quiet a few, really.
...then the problem lies here:
Quoting forrest-sounds
You need to read more. Aristotle, perhaps.
Check this out, it's brief, but worth watching:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2i9WPzRbPo
Yes, defiantly.
Quoting Banno
Yes, probably.
One should always read with defiance. Those who read in compliance are sheep I've always said.
I Googled for a list of solved problems in philosophy, but nothing came up, so I guess there are none, or maybe Wiki is still assembling the list.
I don't read whatsoever. What does that make me to be? (PLEASE DON'T SAY IT.)
It makes you a bibliophobe. See, that's how you make up new words, unlike the gibberish you put out. It's so pratotonic how you do that.
Like Banno said, the solved philosophical questions have migrated into the realm of sciences. They are no longer philosophical questions, though they may have been that some time ago.
For instance: What creates wind?
Why do things fall down, instead of up?
How can the Earth be round and not have things fall off at the bottom?
How does the sun get around to the east again after setting in the west?
God lives in the country of heaven? (Sky, clouds.)
What makes the sun disappear on a clear day, with no clouds, for eight minutes or so, every few dozen years?
Why have the sun's coal reserved still not burnt out?
- what is consciousness? Soul?
- why do mirrors reverse left-right orientation, but not up-down orientation?
- is there a god, and if yes, what kind of thing is he or she?
- the morality of stock trading on the Internet
- if you sit a billion monkeys in front of billion typewriters, they will produce great works of literary art and stuff in a few years. (BTW, this has been disproved by the Internet.)
While I recognize you probably presented these questions in order to present examples of solved problems, I think I'll take a more literal approach and answer these questions for you.
Wind is created by fans. Know why it's so cold at the baseball field in San Francisco? They have Giant fans.
Things do fall up, like helium balloons. Also, if you flip upside down and hang your head over the couch and stare at the ceiling, up is down and down is up. I do that sometimes, less now since grammar school.
Your question about the earth is a good one, but I think it has to do with how they attach the houses into the ground so they don't pop up, but that's not the same for cars so my explanation might not be completely right, but it is a good start I think.
The sun sets in the west so the cowboys know to go toward Texas where they live. If it didn't come around each day, there'd be cowboys in New York City eventually and that's stupid because their horses would be killed by gangs.
Heaven isn't a country. It's technically a county, a legal subdivision of earth.
Not sure what the hell you're talking about with the sun disappearing. You might be blinking and that's what you're noticing. If you blink real fast, it'll look like a strobe light.
The sun doesn't run on coal. It runs on Dunkin. That's a reference to Dunkin Donuts. Look it up if you're not from America. If you are from America, you can laugh knowingly at this joke.
Except it's not new.
bibliophobe in American English. (?b?bli??foub) a person who hates, fears, or distrusts books.
And the word does not describe my relationship to books. I don't hate them, fear them or distrust them. I just don't read them.
The awareness part: right on. I have problem with the second part.
So... given what we cannot answer... we can only live by those guidance that are answerable or not even question but a nominative truth.
For instance: Does god exist? I don't know. --- Ergo, you can't live your life to satisfy god, as you don't know the first thing about god, not even about its existence.
It is somewhat impossible to live your life by those standards, that are given by questions we don't have answers to.
Or what did you have in mind, Fooloso4? Can you give some examples, of how to live and think GIVEN what we can't answer?
In the past everyone thought there was a god. So you did what you believed god wanted to you to do.
Now we question the existence of god. Its existence became a philosophical question.
Therefore we are not bound any more to behaviour that was tied to a god belief. We don't say our evening prayers, for instance, and we don't go to church.
Starting from what principles and using what method should they be solved? Answers to such problems have been offered in a way or another, but not to everyone's satisfaction. In philosophy it is more difficult to agree on principles and method than in other fields, not least because in philosophy there is a strong tendency to question what it is usually taken for granted.
Some thought that in order to see god you have to become godlike first, so if we are to believe them, if you don't follow a godly life you won't see god. They went as far as to claim that the godly life is the most beautiful and happiest life, but what is the point of pursuing such a life, if you find no satisfaction in it?
Welcome to the forums, Sahrian.
A very good question, I thought of it myself many suns ago. I felt a sense of pride rush through me at what was to me the profundity of this...er..."discovery."
Alas, it didn't take long for real, professional, true, philosophers to school me on that score - it was old news, it was what every genuine philosopher already knew. In fact, trying to solve evidently unsolvable problems is what philosophy is all about. Of course, solving one or two would be the highlight of any philosophical career but such occasions are either imaginary or few and far between.
Socrates was known to have confessed his abject ignorance with the words, "I know that I know nothing" and he was a giant in philosophy, having founded it in the west. Perhaps, philosophy isn't about solving as much as it is about getting a handle on the problem. Philosophy isn't about knowing something or anything but is essentially a journey through life that ends when the philosopher confronts faer own ignorance and comes to terms with it.
In a sense then, philosophy is less about solving problems and more about creating them.
My definition of a philosopher: Ugly, irritating, and preferrably Greek (description of Socrates, the Athenian gadfly).
Thank you very much! I'm glad to be here.
Questions about how we ought to live, on a personal, social, political, and geo-political level.
:clap: Superb Monsieur 180 Proof.
If you have the time, you might find this video somewhat intriguing. It speaks to the relationships between the two...
That.
And the remaining problems are quite difficult.
Yep! Much of practicing good philosophy (and science for that matter) is about knowing the right questions to ask.
Those of us who dabble in it, often find that once the questions are asked, it leads to yet other questions that ironically enough, in some way shape or form, get answered.
Sorry, but you gave an insufficient answer. The task is not what the questions are; but how those questions elicit us to act in the absence of an answer. You have a very strong sense and incredibly strong command of ignoring my points when you are cornered.
Let me give you a simple, but perfect example why your answer here failed by being insufficient.
Son: "Daddy, should I wear the purple shoes, or the black shoes to school today?"
Daddy: he does not answer.
Son: he will wear the black or the purple shoes, but not because dad gave some guidance.
Humanity asks philosophy via asking philosophers: "Is there a god?"
Philosophers: Don't tell humanity, and admit they don't know the answer.
Humanity: will believe in god, or not, but NOT because philosophers gave them an answer as guidance.
Of course you will say humanity is many people, and this and that, and will completely ignore the thrust of my example. Be my guest, that will be the end of this part of the discussion.
I am saying that it is not possible to guide human behaviour by not answering questions, whereas you said in your quasi-definition, that that is part of philosophy.
You are definitely on the right track. The so-called "problems" in philosophy are not problems at all, instead, they are misinterpretations and misunderstandings.
Since the human mind is incapable of accessing reality in any substantive way, people make-up all kinds of non-sense that changes, changes, changes with the winds that blow in every direction.
I do not think that I am cornered. Is that what you intend? To corner me?
We are in the process of packing up and moving back to our summer residence. I simply did not read your question carefully enough. I was thinking about what the questions are.
My first answer to your question is, I can't tell you how to live. For me it begins with working on myself, on who I am and want to be. What I do follows. To live the examined life, that is, to reflect on what I do and say and alter my behavior and attitude when upon reflection I think I have done wrong. To act with patience, humility, and caution, knowing that whatever I do things may not work out as intended or that what is intended may not have been the best choice. To try to see things from different perspectives.
Except that the op could just as well have been ‘Can someone name a single solved scientific problem?’.
Converting natural philosophy into physics didnt ‘solve’ anything. It just changed the language and methods.
I’m not sure what ‘solved’ is supposed to mean with regard to empirical paradigms unless
one believes that there is a way things ‘really are’ and we’re just mirroring nature with our theories. Science offers practical ways of interacting with the world in relation to our goals.
You just gave a good description of science, which claims to ‘solve’ a problem and then refashions itself over and over to ‘solve’ again. Except the so-called progress of science is less about solving a previous problem than of asking a different question.
For example, the problem of the place of consciousness in nature has been solved. Panpsychism is the correct answer, although questions remain. Or maybe I'm wrong, and functionalism is true. Either way, the problem has been solved.
Very few people today would say they are a substance dualist. Although property dualism is a different problem...
Quoting Manuel
The understanding of philosophy or science that believes that either of them are in the business of ‘solving ‘ problems’ is a problem for me.
Solution implies for me the idea of thought as the mirror of nature. To me nature isn’t a static ‘out there’, it is a becoming that our inquiries contribute to. We don’t mirror the world, we produce worlds. I think the purpose of knowledge is to clear the ground for the asking of more interesting questions.
Oh sure. I'm perfectly fine with that. I think we only approximate too.
I suppose it would be more accurate to say we are no longer led in mistaken paths as to what one tentative answer could look like. By abandoning contact mechanics or substance dualism, we are less mistaken.
So in this case "solved" would imply something like "no longer a pressing problem down this path of inquiry", but this should not be taken as meaning that all problems are eliminated.
They never are. They are either modified, put aside or discarded.
...he typed on his laptop...
Quoting Banno
which used to be a typewriter , and before that pen and paper , and before that a feather quill , and before
that a stone tablet. Did each invention solve the same
problem or create a new problem to solve? Wasn’t it Steve Jobs who said he made products that people didn’t even realize they needed?
Science is natural philosophy, and used to be called as such, right through the 19th century.
The conception of nature as res extensa, as matter, or as the "physical" (as in the science of physics, a word derived from the Greek phusis, which is also often translated as "nature" [natura, in Latin]), comes from the beginning of what we call modern science, in Galileo and Descartes. Of course, their idea of "body" (and hence material) was based in the mechanical philosophy of the time: the idea of contact action. That is, that the world was like a machine, not unlike the complicated clocks and automata of the 17th century. Eventually this was abandoned, of course, for a view that takes into account the "forces" of nature -- but you see the point, I think.
But the very ontology behind science is a naturalistic one -- basically materialism or, perhaps better, mathematical and measurable. "Reality is only what is measurable," as supposedly Max Plank once said. This ontology is not itself scientific.
If it truly is a linear progression then, yes, it makes sense to describe science as in the ‘solving’ business. But as far as I can see , with a linear causal
model of progress you end up with what you started with Kind of like ‘solving’ physics with a unified model of everything and thereby predicting all future events
on your computer. It solves everything and nothing at the same time. I do like a concept of prediction that jettisons the linear causal baggage though.
Look: there are tons of thinkers in my life who are not like your calibre. I can take from a number of my friends, debating partners and acquaintances, that they genuinely misunderstand me or not understand me. From you, I don't think I should accept that. No, I don't want miracles from you, but you are more intelligent and more learned than I am, and therefore I sense (not know, but sense and I believe my gut feelings in those instances) that you are trying to slide out of giving me a straight answer, and you instead waffle or talk about irrelevant things.
Being a person I can look up to has its responsibilities as well as its privileges.
And see Causality, Determination and such stuff.
But also on the other hand ...
Quoting James Riley
:clap: :100: :sweat:
Philosophy is generally theoretical, and I think its main branches are metaphysics, logic, epistemology, axiology and aesthetics. Problems which exist within these domains can justly (as far as I am concerned) be considered philosophical. Problems which are of the form 'How does 'x' occur' and 'Why does 'x' occur' where x is any natural phenomena are scientific. If you don't agree with this schema that's okay, but can you answer the original question with the assumption that it's correct.
PM sent.
It is generally understood that only a portion of Plato's philosophical work was committed to writing. Many of his most important ideas were communicated verbally to those close to him. Who's to say that the dilemmas and conundrums that he spoke of weren't reconciled by them? In the Apology, when Socrates drinks hemlock and dies without complaint or bitterness, who's to say that his ability to maintain equanimity in the face of death doesn't represent a solution to the problem of existential anxiety?
Yes, Xeno's paradox has been solved for two distinct interpretations.
Yes. Science consists in reasoning to the best explanations (you point out such questions above) which are then modeled and deductions from which (i.e. predictions) are experimentally tested until falsified or replaced by better models etc (rinse and repeat). Explanatory models which are well-tested and (so far) unfalsified are considered theories, or scientific knowledge (not mere conjectures). I suspect, forrest, you agree with this description?
Cite some "natural phenomena" that are explained – experimentally modeled such that they produce "theoretical" results – by philosophy. I cannot. What have I missed?
From that Wikipedia article section 9.1
"The Existence Question: is there progress in philosophy?"
"The Comparison Question: is there as much progress in philosophy as in science?"