theory of knowledge- what's it for?

markyedison

hi everyone,

I'm relatively new to philosophy, in an academic sense. I've started doing a evening class and i've been reading some recommended books like the Apology, Descartes' Discourse on Method and Russell's Problems of Philosophy.

I was reading the Russell book last night and he spent the first two chapters debating whether or not the desk he was writing on was real. I wanted to kick him in the nuts and then ask him how real it was.

My problem is that I don't understand why this debate is important.
Is it important?
If so, Why?
Or is it more the case that to be able to think in a philosophical manner, one has to open one's mind to the mere possibility, no matter how slight, of the material world being an illusion?

Cheers, Marky

18AD

It is just a method of enquiry into the nature of reality. Surely science pursues the same goal of figuring out what is happening here. Albeit with different methods.

Even science has pursued this question of is reality real. See anything about the holographic universe.

As to whether it is important...that's up to you.

I think there is a big element of being open minded in philosophy, espcially in the subjects advancement. But that'd just be how I approach it.

Good luck.
AD.

Joe1919

I think Russel is discussing the idealism/materialism argument which states that matter does not exist. This theory was paticularly popular with the Irish Philosopher George Berkeley."To be is to be percieved" This idealism is very popular in Eastern Philosophy.

LukaszS

Hi Everybody,

Idealism is the backbone of western philosophy. Weren't Plato (in a certain way) a founder of idealism? And what about Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer? Would you call them materialists? By the way: reading Russel is a very narrow way to learn about philosophy. Try Copleston.

DadaKopf

I would seriously question the reduction of philosophy to idealism, and seriously challenge the implication that the origin of philosophy is 'Western' whatever that means.

As Slavoj Zizek says, philosophy is a very humble, but important profession. It's not the job of philosophy to prove the existence of an inaccessible ideal realm, or answer: 'what is true'? Science can measure and attempt to explain the universe, we don't need philosophy for that.

Philosophy is more humble than that. Philosophy asks: what does it mean for something to be true?

In other words, philosophy reformulates questions. And those reformulations, if read, can reveal underlying truths.

DadaKopf

Joe1919 wrote:

I think Russel is discussing the idealism/materialism argument which states that matter does not exist. This theory was paticularly popular with the Irish Philosopher George Berkeley."To be is to be percieved" This idealism is very popular in Eastern Philosophy.

Berkley was an empiricist, not idealist. That statement is pure empiricism, it identifies being as something external to the subject doing the questioning; a scientific verification of one's existence through the observation of facts. A theory that I exist because I perceive others to exist, therefore I exist.

I am a hypothesis.

LukaszS

It's not the job of philosophy to prove the existence of an inaccessible ideal realm, or answer: 'what is true'?

and

philosophy reformulates questions. And those reformulations, if read, can reveal underlying truths.

Didn't I just catch You with your hand in the cookie jar? :-))) You don't want to hear about "ideal realms" yet you do use expressions like "underlying truths". It's not to easy to escape from the metaphysical dimension of the language isn't it?

I would seriously question the reduction of philosophy to idealism

I wasn't trying to reduce philosophy to idealism. I was merely challenging the view that idealism stems from Eastern Philosophy (whatever it is). Contemporary philosophy should be classified as "materialist" if You agree to this kind of simplifying divisions. On one hand (left hand ;-) You have Marxism and Frankfurt School with such names like Benjamin, Adorno, Horkheimer, Fromm etc. On the other hand there is a great german philosophical tradition called "Lebensphilosophie" (Philosophy of life) - with Nietzsche, Dilthey, Bergson (this one is obviously french), Simmel, Spengler. In Ireland it is propably called "continental philosophy" like "continental breakfast" ;-))))

As Slavoj Zizek says

In Poland where I come from they call Zizek "new Hegel" :-)

Maclommis

DadaKopf wrote: »

Berkley was an empiricist, not idealist.

But he's still considered the founder of Idealism. Idealism and Empiricism are not opposing schools of philosophy.

DadaKopf

LukaszS wrote: »

and



Didn't I just catch You with your hand in the cookie jar? :-))) You don't want to hear about "ideal realms" yet you do use expressions like "underlying truths". It's not to easy to escape from the metaphysical dimension of the language isn't it?



I wasn't trying to reduce philosophy to idealism. I was merely challenging the view that idealism stems from Eastern Philosophy (whatever it is). Contemporary philosophy should be classified as "materialist" if You agree to this kind of simplifying divisions. On one hand (left hand ;-) You have Marxism and Frankfurt School with such names like Benjamin, Adorno, Horkheimer, Fromm etc. On the other hand there is a great german philosophical tradition called "Lebensphilosophie" (Philosophy of life) - with Nietzsche, Dilthey, Bergson (this one is obviously french), Simmel, Spengler. In Ireland it is propably called "continental philosophy" like "continental breakfast" ;-))))




In Poland where I come from they call Zizek "new Hegel" :-)

I didn't mean truth in a strict sense. I meant it in a vaguely relativist, embodied kind of way. Truth in the Freudian sense, or Lacanian, or Zizekian sense of getting to the basic concerns/drives of human beings and how structures of thought and (in)action are built on top.

Or, for example, in a different sense, 'regimes of truth' in a Foucauldian sense of man creating structures that preserve particular power complexes, or rules of what can be thought, said and done in a particular place and time. Regimes that are at once external and internal to the human body.

Or in a phenomenolgical sense, particularly Merleau-Ponty, who emphasises embodied existence, the indeterminability of the division between subject and object, an embodied subject who gives meaning, not intuits it from an ideal realm.

These kinds of positions imply a collapsing of the division between materialism and idealism. As someone very much influenced by Marxian philosophy, and some phenomenology, a clear division is not just unsupportable, but its really unhelpful.