A definition for philosophy
What exactly is it? It is unfortunate that Socrates did not ask Meno, because then we would probably have a definition by now.
Let's define an idea as "an expression in language". Then, a statement is philosophical, if it is an idea about another idea, i.e. a statement about another statement.
Why do I believe this?
If we look at the Platonic definition for knowledge, a justified (?true?) belief, we can see that knowledge is a statement (Q) that necessarily follows from another statement (Q), its justification:
P => Q
Hence, knowledge (Q) is a statement about another statement (P), which satisfies the restriction imposed by the arrow: "follows necessarily from".
This restriction is not necessarily satisfied in such arrow.
Still, if we wish to link both, even if we cannot necessarily argue the necessity of the arrow, we have general philosophy. In that sense, general philosophy is closely related to knowledge, but is not necessarily knowledge.
Knowledge statements form a subset of the philosophy set of statements. In knowledge, as opposed to general philosophy, we have successfully argued the necessity of the arrow.
If we have managed to link both statements using an epistemically accredited justification method, then the statement belongs in the epistemically-restricted knowledge subset of which that justification method is the set-theoretical membership function.
For example, if we manage to axiomatically derive a claim from the construction logic of its Platonic world, the claim is mathematical. If we manage to demonstrate that there are no counterexamples in a given set of real-world experimental test results, then the claim is scientific. If we have one or more witness depositions for the statement, then it is historical.
We can therefore define epistemology as the study and description of justification methods.
General philosophy, itself, is hypothetical knowledge for which we would possibly like to find a proper home in an epistemically-restricted subset of knowledge.
This may explain why modern knowledge disciplines originally used to be some form of philosophy.
For example, we no longer consider physics to be philosophy, but historically it used to be. In fact, physics is still philosophy today, but belonging to one of its epistemically-restricted subsets, i.e. science.
So, then we come to a set-theoretical question: Do the epistemically-restricted subsets of knowledge form a proper partition? In my opinion, by design, they do not overlap. However, it is much harder to argue that the union of these subsets also covers the complete set (of knowledge).
The question here is not whether we have discovered all knowledge (which we obviously haven't), but if we have successfully established the complete inventory of knowledge-justification methods? According to Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, we did.
Let's define an idea as "an expression in language". Then, a statement is philosophical, if it is an idea about another idea, i.e. a statement about another statement.
Why do I believe this?
If we look at the Platonic definition for knowledge, a justified (?true?) belief, we can see that knowledge is a statement (Q) that necessarily follows from another statement (Q), its justification:
P => Q
Hence, knowledge (Q) is a statement about another statement (P), which satisfies the restriction imposed by the arrow: "follows necessarily from".
This restriction is not necessarily satisfied in such arrow.
Still, if we wish to link both, even if we cannot necessarily argue the necessity of the arrow, we have general philosophy. In that sense, general philosophy is closely related to knowledge, but is not necessarily knowledge.
Knowledge statements form a subset of the philosophy set of statements. In knowledge, as opposed to general philosophy, we have successfully argued the necessity of the arrow.
If we have managed to link both statements using an epistemically accredited justification method, then the statement belongs in the epistemically-restricted knowledge subset of which that justification method is the set-theoretical membership function.
For example, if we manage to axiomatically derive a claim from the construction logic of its Platonic world, the claim is mathematical. If we manage to demonstrate that there are no counterexamples in a given set of real-world experimental test results, then the claim is scientific. If we have one or more witness depositions for the statement, then it is historical.
We can therefore define epistemology as the study and description of justification methods.
General philosophy, itself, is hypothetical knowledge for which we would possibly like to find a proper home in an epistemically-restricted subset of knowledge.
This may explain why modern knowledge disciplines originally used to be some form of philosophy.
For example, we no longer consider physics to be philosophy, but historically it used to be. In fact, physics is still philosophy today, but belonging to one of its epistemically-restricted subsets, i.e. science.
So, then we come to a set-theoretical question: Do the epistemically-restricted subsets of knowledge form a proper partition? In my opinion, by design, they do not overlap. However, it is much harder to argue that the union of these subsets also covers the complete set (of knowledge).
The question here is not whether we have discovered all knowledge (which we obviously haven't), but if we have successfully established the complete inventory of knowledge-justification methods? According to Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, we did.
Comments (98)
For me, philosophy is an ongoing discussion over the nature of being. But that is just me.
S="What I am holding now in my hand is an apple."
Is S philosophy?
If Socrates said it then yes. But if the S stands for someone else, I suspect it to be a kindergarten teacher or a magician, so pedagogy or wizardry perhaps?
I suspect that Socrates himself would have rejected the view: "Everything Socrates ever said, must be considered philosophical, because it was Socrates who said it."
If Socrates ever said, "I seem to have an indigestion today", then reporting to have an indigestion has now also become part of philosophy.
Therefore, it can obviously only be exactly the other way around. Some of the statements Socrates made were philosophical and therefore, we consider Socrates to be a philosopher.
There are two kinds of people. People who believe propositions because of whom said it, and people who believe propositions because of how they were said (i.e. their justification).
The "believe-who" people are known as the populace, who are trivially manipulated and misled, and who should not be allowed to make any serious decision that affects others. They cannot verify a justification, and therefore have to trust. That is obviously an accident waiting to happen.
Bah, please stop perpetuating this common modern misconception of equating philosophy with lifestyle, thank you!
I have deduced that you're totally new on this board by observing the number of your posts as well as their entry level content. What I fail to understand is how employing this basic reasoning can be considered philosophy, as you seem to imply in your post.
Chill.
I think viewing philosophy as a kind of meta-science is one excellent perspective. More so because it incorporates some form of praxis in that experimentalism. For me, philosophy also entails a conscious (systematic) effort to rise above the limitations/biases of egocentric perception - a species of metaphysical doubt.
I advise you to learn to distance yourself from your beliefs & opinions so you stop seeing their rejections as personal attacks. I am truly an antagonizing aggressor when it comes to unsatisfactory ideas and I'm not going to excuse myself because you interpret it as an affront. Also, you can check that there's no ad hominem attacks in my replies to you, while I can't say the same about yours.
You're utterly mistaken about what an ad hominem is or that entry-level is of any derogatory nature is all I can say to you, except, I hope you don't consider this response an ad hominem too since I imply you don't know what you're talking about and you prefer to argue in bad faith.
I think characterizing aRealIdealist as "someone who is not at my level" qualifies as an ad hominem. It is entirely a personal attack. If an argument is sophomoric then the correct thing to do would be to analyse or refute it, not use it as a roundabout way of injecting an ad hominem comment.
Except what was requested was more of a 'position statement,' what philosophy means to me. So it didn't warrant refutation. I found it a perfectly cogent idea.
I agree, but you need to show where I did that.
Quoting Pantagruel
"Position statements" are ripe for the Socratic dialectic in which I engaged. I didn't even formulate my reply as a refutation, I think you need to reread it, rather than go ahead arguing against a strawman.
Quoting Pantagruel
Obviously, I didn't. But maybe you're both above my level (I also didn't invoke any kind of individual hierarchy, that's your fomulation) and comprehend something I don't, in which case I still expect you two to clarify what that is.
Descartes, for example, took his motto from the Roman poet Ovid:
He appears in a very different light when this is born in mind. Very much at odds with what appears on the surface.
Save the advice; really, though, you got my post deleted? All that I said was that you’re not as smart as you believe yourself to be, is that really that harsh of a comment that it & along with everything else which I wrote in that particular post, outside of questioning your intelligence, should’ve been deleted as well? Huh, never mind, let me just rewrite what I wrote in that deleted post, without questioning your intelligence, & see if you’ll actually respond to it this time? Since you didn’t the first time round but instead solely focused on what was/is ultimately irrelevant.
Now, Noblosh, let me ask you again, is the noun-term of “philosophy”, in your view, composed of elements or components (is it a complex term or not)? Or, are you altogether lost as to a definition of philosophy? Answering this question’ll reveal to me how to explain to you that philosophy in general is equivalent with the rational/logical method.
Thank you for your compliment, Pantagruel (&, also, as is evident, for arguing on my behalf to some extent; but, please, don’t in any way feel either obliged or obligated to).
Indeed, though, yes, your assertion that the in manner in which “philosophy” is defined, in my original post, renders it as a kind of “meta-science” is spot-on; & its whole meta-physical(empirical) value lies in this alone; &, moreover, you’re also right that this gives it a dimension of praxis or practically, in terms of observing or deductively demonstrating the relations of empirically perceived objects, i.e., particular sensations, & rationally/logically perceived objects, i.e., general concepts or categories/classes (relations either between themselves or between each other; observing the relations of the former kind of objects between themselves constitutes the scientific branch of philosophy [“natural philosophy”, as some in the past from the modern era have referred to it], while observing the relations of the latter kind of objects either between themselves, or to the former kind of objects, constitutes the meta-physical[empirical] branch of philosophy).
Which, furthermore, for the most part, agrees with what you accept the definition of philosophy as entailing, namely, the conscious, systematic effort, attempt or act to transcend egocentric, i.e., particularly sensible, perceptions.
"S="What I am holding now in my hand is an apple."
Is S philosophy?"
The logical positivists argued over just such statements, but I suppose they would say they weren't concerned with the apple (or its holder), but the referential significance of "apple". What is the relationship between "apple" and an apple?
We pay too little attention to who is getting attention, and why. There may have been a hundred Descarteses, but the one who got the attention came at the right time to be the quotable source of substance dualism, as soon as it could escape Papal wrath. Similarly, logical positivism was being paid attention to just at the time that computers were a gleam in their inventors' eyes. By working out the limits of Boolean logic, they were the precursors of the cursor, and come to us in a history that is constantly rewriting itself using different fonts of emphasis.
As our knowledge of external reality has exploded, the nature of knowing itself may have changed. Hobbes' observations in Leviathan may have been "psychologistic," but are merely the tip of the iceberg of the types of knowledge made possible by the disciplines of psychology and cognitive science.
As such, if I had to define philosophy in a pan-cultural way I would describe philosophy as the attempt to unify or relate all other discrete realms of knowledge. Per my initial comment, I'd be prepared to agree that this is a kind of methodology.
The automated spam filter is flagging your post as spam and so it must be manually approved before appearing, which I've done so. Apologies for that.
Thank you very much, Michael, for fixing & clearing up the matter. Also, if it’s not too much, can you please delete those posts in which I inquired about my previously blocked post (for some reason I can’t), & even this one in which I’m replying to you right now, as well? Since my blocked post is up now, those others are needlessly taking up thread space. Thank you.
But it does. The desire to be wise includes the wisdom of how to live well.
I think it quite amusing when someone who is evidently uninformed mocks someone else who is trying to sort things out. They make fools of themselves. Try not to let it bother you. Your detractor is wrong in thinking it is a modern misconception and that the guidelines by which one lives equates to a lifestyle.
Quoting Corra
Socrates frequently cited the Delphic maxim: "Know Thyself". You are on the right track.
What does that mean? That you're not a wannabe or that you don't conform to society when it conflicts with your personal views and feelings? Or that you're always honest with other people?
"Philosophy" is exactly the type of term that layman dictionaries tend to get completely wrong.
The person who wrote the definition, simply did not understand what the term means, and then proceeds to explaining it in terms of other terms that he does not understand either.
Wikipedia is usually better, but in case of the term "philosophy", it is just as bad. The reason why so much bad definition work is being produced, is that these people simply do not understand what the term "definition" means.
Therefore, let's have a look at the work of people who clearly do have a usable understanding of what the term "definition" means.
Imagine we want to teach how to visually detect if something is a banana. How do we train the device to do that?
[i]For training a boosted cascade of weak classifiers we need a set of positive samples (containing actual objects you want to detect) and a set of negative images (containing everything you do not want to detect).
After the opencv_traincascade application has finished its work, the trained cascade will be saved in cascade.xml file in the -data folder. Other files in this folder are created for the case of interrupted training, so you may delete them after completion of training.
Training is finished and you can test your cascade classifier![/i]
A cascade classifier file is obviously a definition. It allows the cascade classifier program to inspect images and decide whether it contains a banana or not.
So, what exactly is a philosophy definition?
It is a file that contains rules and/or a description that should allow the user of the file to classify statements into philosophical ones and statements that are not. If the definition does not allow for using it in that way, then it is not a legitimate definition.
From here we begin to read a select group of philosophers and discuss what we have read.
What bores me is when that becomes archeological philosophy, as if getting the bones and dust in the right order is of any importance outside the museum.
Life and experience are like soil and seeds. Philosophy is like plant food. Don't you agree?
My approach is not archaeological. The works of Plato and Aristotle, for example, are in my opinion as vital today as they were when they were written. It is not bones and dust but thinkers of extraordinary insight speaking to us. While our world is in some ways much different than theirs, but we are in many ways not so different from them.
In line with the agricultural metaphor, I would say that philosophy not only provides nutrients, it cultivates - it removes the weeds.
I got into Plotinus before Plato, so now when I read Plato I'm interpreting it all through Plotinus. I'm curious about what I might be missing by doing that. Do you interpret Plato through the lens of someone who came later? We should do a reading group and see where we agree and disagree.
Quoting Fooloso4
Weeds?
That is a common problem. I am not sure we can really get behind those who came later and stand between us, but being aware of it helps.
Quoting frank
Those who influenced my reading of Plato are close readers of the text. It is always a question of textual support, and this means how well the interpretation connects all the parts while shedding light on the whole. There is still plenty of room for disagreement though.
Quoting frank
I cannot commit to leading a group but I would certainly participate. The Republic would be my choice.
Quoting frank
Thoughts, beliefs, opinions, habits, attitudes that, so to speak, steal the nutrients and moisture from the soil and block the sun. The words culture, cultivate, and agriculture are closely related.
I was asking for an example of a weed philosophy might pull.
Real weeds can give you a reading on the history and condition of a plot. If the soil is compacted, some of the weeds you see are correcting that (if you give them time.) I guess I'm wondering if some mental weeds are also potentially helpful (if you give them time.)
I was thinking in terms of the development of character which was central to the ancient schools of philosophy but not so much to modern and contemporary philosophy.
I suppose a weed is something that one does not want growing. What some may see as a weed other might see as a wildflower.
Perfect definition of philosophy.
It means, "stay real and keep to the core".
It may also equally mean (since philosophy is free from the gags and binds of science), philosophically speaking, "whatever."
It may also mean, that Corra never heard of secularity or of atheism. Or of Marxism-Leninism.
"Does not want growing..." That sounds ominous. Or am I making a mountain out of a molehill?
I don't think it is ominous. It is not:
Quoting frank
but rather, a school or trend or approach or individual that some are opposed to. Of course there are different levels of opposition. It is one thing to argue against what has been said, but another, to take measures to silence others.
I see. For me, philosophy is mostly something highly personal, so I thought you were talking about personal weeds, not communal ones.
Where a community goes astray, I think facing the real consequences of failure is the only cure. Philosophy might record the results, but can't do more.
If philosophy is something highly personal then what counts as a weed would be highly personal. And sometimes we may come to change our mind. There is a sense in which this could be ominous if we do not, so to speak, have something to plant in place of the weed that will keep the soil from eroding. But then again, some are better able to cope with uncertainty than others.
You've sort of persistently refused to give an example of a "weed" to help me understand what you're talking about. Could you help me out with that?
Quoting Fooloso4
Um. What?
Plato's Forms - when I first came across this and for several years after I took this to be the truth, accessible to those few who have had transcended the limits of human reason and ordinary experience.
But trust in the Forms helped uproot an earlier weed, a form of indiscriminate relativism.
Quoting frank
It is common for those who begin to read philosophy to feel lost, as if the rug has been pulled out from under them. They begin to question and reject beliefs that they had held but are not yet able to replace them with something else.
Have you read Parmenides?
Philosophy can be understood as the academic study of everything, or all knowledge at the least.
As for the weeds that philosophy is supposed to pull, well it depends on the branch of philosophy. Ethics is meant to weed out wrongness and replace it with the good. Without ethics, society as we know it would not exist.
Plato's dialogue Parmenides? Yes. The extent fragments of Parmenides? Those as well.
Philos means love sophia wisdom.
Quoting Mark Dennis
Although philosophy is today primarily an academic study that was not always the case, but if you hope to get paid then teaching is the standard route.
Wow. What haven't you read? :grin:
Now I know how my Highschool chemistry teacher at school felt when I corrected him on mixing up the charges of neutron and electrons (still sure he did this on purpose to see if anyone would correct him).
"Although philosophy is today primarily an academic study that was not always the case, but if you hope to get paid then teaching is the standard route." - This has always been my pet peeve about philosophy, that it's a highly competitive field with very few jobs available. However the methodologies one learns in philosophy come in very useful in a lot of other fields. I have a logician friend who after trying to get a teaching job and failing for so long, (Apparently he didn't go to the right university.) switched to studying mathematics.
In what capacity do you work as an ethicist?
I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water. The main highlight of the paper isn't that psychiatry is rubbish, it's that narrow minded focus linking the diagnosis of a disorder to effective treatment strategies for any individual in a reductive way makes it more difficult to recognise effective intervention strategies on the individual level. The diagnosis can hinder more than help, and will hinder more if the clinician thinks of the diagnosis as their only concern in prescribing treatment strategy.
It highlights that while the associations between the diagnosis of the disorder and effective intervention on that basis is weak, we nevertheless can leverage understanding of symptomatology to tailor intervention strategy using self reports (and observational data aggregates thereof), which are still at the individual level.
It also highlights that clinicians often do it this way anyway:
Basically the clinical take home message is that making decisions based solely on diagnosis (strictly; diagnostic category, like schizophrenia or major depression) is a crap shoot, as the individual level variability of the patients drives which treatment strategies are effective for them. Almost none of the relationship between their symptoms, their reports and effective treatment is contained in labelling them with their diagnosis! In other words, painting treatment in broad strokes doesn't work, and we don't need to anyway.
Psychotherapy already ideally tailors itself this way, as does the adaptive refinement of medication type and dose in the chronic case.
In broad terms, this is another consequence of the changing focus in science from reductive explanation strategies (this disease this treatment) to systems based contextualised ones when the considered system is complex (like mind-brain-body-development-culture...). As Gelman puts it (paraphrased): "what we really only ever observe in observational studies are high order interactions. And their variability is just as interesting as their mean."
I will sent you a PM.
"Love wisdom" in ancient Greece may have had a more profane or vulgar connotation. They may have meant, "Fuck wisdom." Meaning, to the heck with wisdom, let's practice hedonism or gambling or hetera worship.
On the other hand "love wisdom" may have meant a total mental-emotional-physical love. Since Greeks believed the Forms were real, existing things, this meant something. It meant that they wanted to experience the ultimate love, not just derivatives of it slated out for cave-dwellers; they wanted to make love to the mind, brain, soup, and body of the embodiment of love, that is, to Aphrodite.
Or it may have meant something totally different. My bet is that Heidegsteinbergerbaumfeld would say, if he were alive today that "philo sophia" ultimately and most profoundly meant, to the ancient Greeks in today's English vernacular, "whatever."
Philos means love, Eros would be love of the sexual connotation. Source of the ero in erotic. Fuck would be Pornea (guess which modern word that is linked to!) for Fornicate. Pornea Sophia would be fuck knowledge.
Thanks, Mark! I think fuck would be coitea, not Pornea, but that's good too in my books. Paul in the Greek version of the New Testament condemns the Arsenocoitei, which he calls by that name, and it's been a headache for Bible translators worldwide and timewide to come to terms with.
Your note was refreshing. In school teachers talked about the love for the country in Greek, the love for the home, the love for mother, etc., but the Real Deal was somehow always amiss.
“My bet is that Heidegsteinbergerbaumfeld would say, if he were alive today that "philo sophia" ultimately and most profoundly meant, to the ancient Greeks in today's English vernacular, "whatever."”
Well he’d just be completely wrong about that and I think that is a very silly thing to suggest. Why do you think this?
At this point I don’t really care if it is good in your books as you’re not really keeping up and now you’ve shared two outlandish and completely wrong statements.
If you’re going to correct someone at least do a bit of background research and make sure you’re not just spouting nonsense. I didn’t waste my time to learn this stuff only to be corrected on a forum about known words in Ancient Greek or be corrected on what is practically entry level philosophy. What is philosophy is literally part of the curriculum at the start of most courses and it is not really up for debate that Philos means Love and Sophia means Wisdom. Philosophia does not and has never meant “Fuck wisdom” and to even suggest that is what the ancient Greeks like Plato, Aristotle, Socrates etc were saying is the height of ignorance. If I saw that in a book I’d buy it and put it on the shelf next to Plato and Freud were they may all be companions in their ignorance!
Quoting Mark Dennis
This I based on other contributor's posts such as of Ocean777 who claims to have seen god, and of Devans99, who denies the fact of infinity, has a "proof" of existence of god, and has a "proof" (a priori,logical proofs both) that the universe began to exist at one point, before which point it did not exist. I based my "whatever" on contributions that insist that the BB was an unnatural phenomenon. Ocean777, Devans99 and others call themselves philosophers, and they take themselves seriously, and some others take them seriously enough to start to argue against their points. So this is what I meant, via quoting H., who is obviously a make-belief figure with a make-belief name, suggesting it's a joke what followed, but a joke with a serious and thought-out content, that philosophia means "whatever'.
At this point I don't care if you don't care. I did my background research, and I did some creative analytical thinking. Taking my words for garbage by my readers, over which words no care ought to be extended is not something I have control of. It is my readers that ought to decide that, and you, Mark, apparently decided that. So be it. I wash my hands.
Koitei means "Fuckers". In Greek. I derived "coitea" from it. So i burn in hell? Or maybe your Greek-English dictionary does not contain all the Greek words that there are or used to be in use. I don't see why you ought to break stick over me due to the lacking in your dictionary.
“This I based on other contributor's posts such as of Ocean777 who claims to have seen god, and of Devans99, who denies the fact of infinity, has a "proof" of existence of god, and has a "proof" (a priori,logical proofs both) that the universe began to exist at one point, before which point it did not exist. I based my "whatever" on contributions that insist that the BB was an unnatural phenomenon. Ocean777, Devans99 and others call themselves philosophers, and they take themselves seriously, and some others take them seriously enough to start to argue against their points.”
This is kind of the pot calling the kettle black and it isn’t even correct. Devans99 is obsessed sure and he isn’t very competent at forming arguments and he lacks an understanding of utilising logic in arguments but he does have an interesting perspective at times and if he could do some more concentrated study he could do very well. He’s kind of like a young Socrates, which is just a way of saying he’s a smart idiot who will one day wake up and realise he knows nothing, on that day he will be a philosopher. You on the other hand make a point of being unclear sometimes and you try and correct (which is fine) except your corrections are usually wrong and waste time needing to be corrected themselves. Also, it’s very easy to deny infinite because it isn’t a known fact. Not in the sense that we can say truthfully “We know infinite exists”. Ocean777 is pretty nutty though, nothing positive to say there.
“Koitei means "Fuckers". In Greek. I derived "coitea" from it. So i burn in hell?” What? No! You shouldn’t take my criticisms personally they are meant to be constructive. Also while it is admirable to try and figure out what words might mean based on our knowledge of known words, you’re forgetting grammar. It’s not English grammar it’s Ancient Greek. Koitei can also mean Cave (en koitei tes ges) “in a hollow of the earth.”
If you are surprised at my tone then I suggest you not use pejorative terms in relation to philosophy and the point is to be clear and understandable. Not purposefully misleading.
You also need to be aware of teaching methodologies within philosophy itself. You’re only getting the same critique others have to pay to go to college for and the point of it is to help you improve. I’m not one of those who will mollycoddle anyone.
This is a ridiculous demand.
You called me a liar. Remark noted and will never be forgotten.
What? You are telling me what to say and what not to say? Aren't we (meaning you) a bit presumptious in believing you can be calling the shots?
This is the ultimante insult, Mark. To tell someone what they are allowed to say and what they are not.
This is a website where I hadn't figured out yet how to put people on iggie. But you are sure one contributor who has lost total respect by me. I shan't be reading any more posts by you, as you 1. act as if you believed you are superior 2. which you are not 3. and due to (1.) you insulted me several times, several ways.
— Mark Dennis
This is a ridiculous demand.” It’s not a demand it’s a recommendation and a good one. Not my fault this is how philosophy is done. If you can’t take it then maybe you shouldn’t have replied in the first place. I didn’t mean to upset you but I don’t really know what you expect when some calls out what you say as untrue and misleading.
I don’t see myself as superior, I just know what I’m talking about and only speak what I know to be true. And yeah you did lie you admitted to it.
If you have no other way to counter my arguments but with ad hom and fake offense at calling you out for spouting nonsense then that isn’t really my problem.
Seriously if you get this upset at being corrected then philosophy isn’t for you quite frankly.
“H., who is obviously a make-belief figure with a make-belief name, suggesting it's a joke what followed, but a joke with a serious and thought-out content, that philosophia means "whatever'.”
Making up a philosopher who agrees with your claim that philosophy can mean “Whatever” is a lie, it was not obvious it was a joke at all. So saying you lied when you admitted it wasn’t real isn’t untrue of me to say is it?
“It may also equally mean (since philosophy is free from the gags and binds of science), philosophically speaking, "whatever."” Here we have another statement where you try and claim philosophy can just mean “whatever” and philosophy isn’t free from the gags and binds of science either because we still have to pay attention to the facts that science reveals. It’s like how philosophy of language is the conceptual study of language but it still has to pay attention to the empirical branches of language like linguistics or semiotics and the facts they reveal.
I’m not trying to upset you or embarrass you I’m just being direct and honest in my engagement with you. Stop taking these things personally.
I would say the ideal offspring would be self knowledge. For only through wisdom, can we see how ignorant we are. I’d like to think that Socrates would agree. Maybe not. Who knows? It’s a nice golden mean though. Is self knowledge the virtue found between wisdom and ignorance?
I think that in one sense this is right, knowledge of ignorance is a between. Socrates claims that he possesses "human wisdom", by which he means he still does not possess the wisdom the philosopher desires.
Offspring are of you but other than you. Self knowledge is of you but not other than you.
But offspring are part of you or part of you makes up the some of them. Speaking from personal experience I learned far more of myself taking care of my own kid than going through my own childhood. It’s an altogether humbling and illuminating experience. However this should not be interpreted as me not recognising the individuality of my own child. I do.
However, within your criteria, maybe the answer could be Acceptance... in fact, wouldn’t knowledge be the offspring of wisdom and ignorance? Through wisdom we gain knowledge of ignorance?
Philosophy is both the desire for wisdom and what that desire engenders. We might think in this regard of Socrates' role as a mid-wife. What one gives birth to may be a "wind egg" - a defective egg that will not produce a chicken. And in his role as mid-wife he helps not only in the delivery but in seeing it for what it is and discarding it, which can be hard, as he points out, because we love what is our own. Speaking less metaphorically, philosophy helps us evaluate our opinions and reject them when they are infertile.
But on what basis can we judge them if we cannot distinguish opinion from truth or opinion from true opinion? To begin to answer this question we must look not only as is usual to the Republic but to the Symposium. The Symposium is about eros and beauty, the Republic provides a beautiful image of truth as the ascent to the Forms. But the ascent is not compelled by eros but by force.