(Meta-philosophy) Where to (begin) Philosophy? NEWER version

If you wish to think/write about many dimensional things like the‭ ‘‬world‭’‬,‭ ‬persons,‭ ‬consciousness,‭ ‬human thinking etc,‭ ‬you should at least think multi-dimensional and many levelled. Questioning the purpose,‭ ‬the subject-matter and the methodology,‭ ‬methods of the discipline. I have already dealt in detail about the disappearance of different subject from the philosophical discourse with the differentiation of other disciplines, as well as the involvement in philosophy in inter-disciplinary areas such as cognitive sciences, the creation of experimental philosophy and the philosophies of other discourses, eg art, religion, science, mathematics, sport and every subject possible. Philosophy has/is often interpreted as consisting of logic, which in has its own discourse, while other aspects or forms of logic really form part of mathematics. The doing of philosophy as the doing of (usually informal) logic is in some way related to this belief. As far as the method of philosophy goes, it is always seen as employing arguments, argumentation and reasoning. But all kinds of writing and talking employ arguments, argumentation, reasoning and informal logic – not just philosophy. I conclude with a discussion from theoretical physics (in the past associated with the philosophical discourse) that provides us with ontologies as philosophy used to do. Against that background I present articles on the multiverse, more conventional articles on our universe, our world, our physical reality and the origins of life. I think these are some of the many things that it is necessary that philosophy should take note of and consequently question itself, its aims, objectives, subject-matter and methodologies. We might then have something different than one-levelled and one-dimensional thinking and more many layered and levelled and multi-dimensional thinking. Is this not how our consciousness functions? On many levels, layers and dimensions simultaneously? So should this not be the manner in which we conceive of ‘it’, its nature and functioning? We, philosophy, should at least be thinking ( instead of individual concepts, or statements, linear thinking - we should simultaneously think on many layers, on many levels and in several dimensions) in terms of 3D, for example 3D scatter plots .By this I mean the many different aspects of the person (mentally and physically, socially, culturally, as well as our environment, planetary and universe context should be included in every concept we employ; each concept should therefore be at least like a 3D scatter plot image, including all these levels and information)

Meta-Philosophical Ideas ;Why and How do Philosophy, 2020

ABSTRACT It can be summarized as the Why of Doing philosophy and the How of Doing Philosophy. For this purpose I deal with the notion of Consciousness. Not, to develop or advocate yet another idea about this notion, nor to present another speculation about how everything is conscious or that all thinI deal with a number of meta-philosophical issues and ideas. gs are physical, or any of the possible positions in between these two poles. I merely mention this issue so as to illustrate what and how philosophy will deal with it. I then deal with some of the possible reasons and factors why certain individuals feel the intense need, motivation and obligation to philosophize. I focus on the Western tradition of philosophy and on original- and creative philosophers. In other words, I do not deal with those involved in academic institutions and professionals. The reason for this being that they teach, study, criticize and use the ideas of other thinkers and for academic related reasons, rather than those of original- and creative thinkers. I then deal with ideas about the nature and origins of our universe, as one possible universe, in a possible multiverse. Again, the reason for this is not to support or advocate any of the models, but to try and identify what is philosophically involved and to show how one will deal with them philosophically by questioning, argumentation and reasoning. Many people think when they talk about their every day lives, relationships and other aspects of their minute, little worlds, they are doing philosophy. Some of the fashionable issues that are favoured at the moment are: racism, gender, feminism, men and colonialism. Such people think their attitudes, beliefs and opinions about these flavour of the month topics are philosophy. Let them have their obsessions and concerns, let them turn them into academic subjects and qualifications, let them do post-doctorate research and write endless books about them, but do not involve me. How can I do philosophy as - there are things I do not know, there are things that I do notknow of and there are things that will be know and thought in future that I will never be aware of. Multi-sensory, embodied, consciousness (or mind) and minded or conscioussed, multi-sensory bodies of living organisms can said to be poles of a continuum (2 perspectives). Mind and body are often viewed in isolation, as unintegrated, dualistic phenomena, thus leading to false problems and -isms. I deal with issues concerning the origins of our universe for examplethe mediocrity principle and the anthropic principle, fine-tuning hypothesis. These three ideas, principles or hypotheses are of interest for a number of philosophical reasons, so I will mention what they are about.

Open Journal of Philosophy, vol. 9(4), pp. 452-469, 2019

A framework is developed for understanding what is “taken for granted” both in philosophy and in life generally, which may serve to orient philosophical inquiry and make it more effective. The framework takes in language and its development, as well as mathematics, logic, and the empirical sphere with particular reference to the exigencies of life. It is evaluated through consideration of seven philosophical issues concerned with such topics as solipsism, sense data as the route to knowledge, the possible reduction of geometry to logic, and the existence and status of human rights. Various dichotomies and the notion of continuity are evidently highly strategic.

International Journal of Current Advanced Research, 2017

Philosophy is considered the mother of all the other disciplines because of the generality and vastness of its subject matter in contrast to other forms of human inquiry. People talk of philosophy without understanding its role in educational research, particularly its significant contribution to all the other disciplines. It is worth noting that there is nothing in the universe that does not concern or interest philosophy hence philosophical enterprise is essentially the application of reasoning to a wide variety of topics. It is therefore of paramount importance to highlight the important role that philosophy plays in other fields of study in that every discipline raises questions which philosophical investigation can help clarify. Because of the complexity of the world we live in, our efforts to comprehend it are just as diverse. Besides, our different aspirations, interests and activities factor in our endeavor to understand the world and these aspirations and interests find expressions in various fields of study such as history, law, theology, education, economics, political science etc. Although these fields of study play an important role in our lives generally and in our endeavours to comprehend the world specifically, one cannot divorce them from philosophy. How can this be demonstrated? Given the unrestricted nature of the subject matter of philosophy, one can say that philosophy is an attempt to understand the world, its meaning and values. It examines rationally the fundamental problems affecting man and the world in which he lives. Its field is broad and inclusive. While using the facts and descriptive material presented by other specialized fields of study, philosophy goes beyond description to inquire into the nature, the values and the possibilities of things. Its goal is inclusive, comprehension and wisdom. That notwithstanding, philosophy cannot do without the results of other disciplines. It constantly interrogates and assesses the subject matters of the various fields of inquiry with a view of coming up with a conception of the universe that is coherent and systematic. This paper therefore aims at highlighting the contribution of philosophy to other fields of study such that questions and issues raised in every disciplineare addressed in a fundamental and comprehensive manner.Every domain of human existence confronts us with problems on which philosophical reflection can shed light.

Open Press TiU, 2021

This handbook is an open educational and open-ended resource for whomever is interested in philosophical thinking. Each of the chapters is open in the sense of freely available and accessible to everyone. You may be a student who wants to get some background on a specific philosophical sub-discipline. You may be a teacher who wants to assign introductory reading for students. You may be a layperson interested in reading an overview of philosophical thinking, written in a clear and accessible way. Each of you: feel free to browse, download, print and use the collection as you see fit. We believe that open access is the future and that academic philosophy as presented in this volume is of potential worth to many of you out there. In this open-ended handbook you find two kinds of chapters. First, there are chapters that provide a broad introduction into a specific philosophical sub-discipline, such as political philosophy, epistemology or metaphysics. As this collection covers most of the sub-disciplines currently taught at Western philosophy departments, you can legitimately claim that you have been introduced to Western ‘philosophy’ as a whole, understood rather canonically, after having read the entire handbook. Second, there are chapters that introduce slightly more specific topics or philosophical approaches. You will always be able to know the focus of each chapter by looking at its subtitle. The open-ended nature of this handbook, means that new chapters will be added in the future. We hope that philosophy will change and grow with time to become more diverse and inclusive and that this handbook will do so as well. We think of philosophy and its evolution as an organic process, as a tree that branches out in many different directions, adding new directions as it goes along. In this handbook, we organize the wide variety of topics that philosophers discuss into four main branches, which represent important subject areas that philosophers have covered.First, there is ‘thinking about societies’, which includes chapters that cover philosophical approaches to matters of obvious societal relevance. How should we organize our societies? How should we treat others? What exactly are cultures and what role do they play in a globalized world? This branch covers philosophical discussions, theories and views on what binds and divides us as societies and communities.Second, there is ‘thinking about humans’, which includes chapters that zoom in on people, the members that make up those societies. Is there something like human nature and what does that look like? How do human minds and bodies relate to each other? Are we free or not? This branch covers what one could broadly call ‘philosophical anthropology’: philosophical discussions, theories and views on what it means to be human.Third, there is ‘thinking about thinking’, which include chapters that focus on the ways in which humans can relate to the outside world. How can we come to know things about that world? What is truth exactly? What are the values and limits of scientific understanding? How do we reason and argue and how do we do so properly? This branch covers philosophical discussions, theories and views on how humans come to believe things about themselves and the worlds they live in. Fourth, there is ‘thinking about reality’, which includes chapters that investigate those worlds in more direct ways. Do things have an essence? What do we mean when we say that some things exist and others do not? How can language help us access the reality out there? This branch covers philosophical discussions, theories and views on the world we, as humans, find ourselves in. If you like what is on offer in this handbook, you can let us know on the website https://www.openpresstiu.org/ and register for updates, for example when new chapters are added. Consider each chapter as a first and stand-alone introduction to the exciting and thought-provoking world of a specific branch of philosophy. The same will be true of future chapters. Like the chapters already included, these future chapters will be accessible for readers without any specific prior knowledge. All you need is curiosity, an open mind and a willingness to think twice.

2022

In spite of the unprecedented nowadays communication involving the philosophers worldwide, it appears that there is still no consensus about the definition of the philosophy. While quite practical extracts addressing that issue can be found in sources such as Wikipedia and the Free Dictionary, these are somewhat blurred by the differences in the tendencies of different authors to focus on some of themes, while neglecting the others. For example, some authors concentrate on the psychological aspects such as aesthetics and ethics while the others put more emphasis on the nature and the ultimate significance of the universe. Although one can at the intersects of these trends recognise that the philosophers converge to studying of most general and fundamental questions about our relation with the world, a formal widely adopted definition seems to be still missing.

Questions and Philosophizing, 2021

There are many different kinds of questions. I have mentioned a few of them here- Philosophy: Aims, Methods, Rationale Paperback – 2018 by Ulrich de Balbian (Author) ISBN-10 : 1985719150 ISBN-13 : 978-1985719156 In this meta-philosophical study I commence with an investigation of Wisdom. I then continue with ane xploration of the institutionalization of the subject and the professionalization of those involved in it. Thien I show that philosophizing resembles and attempts to do theorizing. The 9 questions, etc of the Socratic Method and details of the Philosophical Toolkit occur throughout different stages of theorizing as one level and one dimension of it. Traditional philosophy is no longer viable, relevant and acceptable. It might be possible to continue doing philosophizing in traditional ways. It is possible to continue fabricating fictional realities in the manner of the Pre-Socratics, Spinoza, Leibniz, Husserl, Hegel, Plato, et al. It is possible to devise pictures of realities and depictions of human consciousness and cognition like Descartes or in the Kantian manner. One of the major issues with traditional philosophy is its lack of self-awareness, the absence of meta-cognition. This lack of meta-cognition of traditional philosophers leads to the creation of all sorts of questionable phenomena and fake problems. Traditional philosophy, metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of sciences, religion, arts, etc are little more than the possibilities, limits and restrictions enabled and allowed by the philosopher's methodology, techniques and tools. It is most likely possible to envisage a project to devise a collection or synthesis of many alternative realities by means of the insights and theories of theoretical physics, mathematics, bio-chemistry, biology and other sciences, the depictions produced by the arts and pictures of realities presented by the humanities. If such a system of pictures of reality is philosophically relevant and meaningful is however another matter. It is possible to continue fabricating fictional realities in the manner of the Pre-Socratics, Spinoza, Leibniz, Husserl, Hegel, Plato, et al. It is possible to devise pictures of realities and depictions of human consciousness and cognition like Descartes or in the Kantian manner. Some of these questions, certain kinds of questions are relevant to philosophy, to the doing of philosophy or philosophizing. What are the aims of different kinds of questions? What are their objectives and purposes? How are their relevant to the doing of philosophy? How are they related to philosophizing? These are some of the topics that will be touched on, tacitly and explicitly, in this exploration. I travel through the exploration of concepts and their role in questions, how concepts can be viewed as interconnected and being interpreted as forming a system or set of ideas and being employed to devise a theory, good, bad or indifferent.

Journal of Humanities and Social Studies, 2016

The aim of this paper is to examine the nature, scope and importance of philosophy in the light of its relation to other disciplines. This work pays its focus on the various fundamental problems of philosophy, relating to Ethics, Metaphysics, Epistemology Logic, and its association with scientific realism. It will also highlight the various facets of these problems and the role of philosophers to point out the various issues relating to human issues. It is widely agreed that philosophy as a multi-dimensional subject that shows affinity to others branches of philosophy like, Philosophy of Science, Humanities, Physics and Mathematics, but this paper also seeks, a philosophical nature towards the universal problems of nature. It evaluates the contribution and sacrifices of the great sages of philosophers to promote the clarity and progress in the field of philosophy.

2011

Phaenomenologica, 2010