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The Tasks of Philosophy
What are the tasks of philosophy? Broadly, the role of philosophy is to bring us wisdom--"philosophy" is derived from
the Greek words "philos" and "sophia," meaning, respectively, "love" and "wisdom," so philosophy is etymologically the
love of wisdom. How would a wise man answer questions about the nature of reality, about the meaning of life, about
how we should live our lives, about what is true or good or beautiful? And how would a wise man reach his answers?
Less nebulously, philosophy is about determining what to think is true, and includes metaphysics (the
study of being), ethics (the study of morality), aesthetics (the study of beauty), epistemology (the study of
knowledge), and logic (the study of proper thought). Philosophy is about arriving at correct conclusions, and about
arriving at them in reliable ways. (Once we have determined what to think is true, we will know what we ought
to believe; and determining what to think is ethically true will tell us how we ought to live our lives. We will have
access to wisdom of thought and to wisdom of action, if we can determine such truths.)
Because we want to arrive at correct conclusions in reliable ways, we need to understand what constitutes
reliable methodology of thought. That is the province of logic. So, one of the tasks of philosophy is to work out how
to think (so as to be able to trust our conclusions). Logic helps us understand valid arguments and invalid arguments,
sound reasoning and unsound reasoning.
However, if the ideas about which we think are not clearly conceived--if our ideas are ambiguous or poorly defined or,
worse,
self-contradictory; or if our questions are ultimately nonsensical--then no amount of logical deduction will ensure that
we arrive at correct conclusions. Or, if we proceed from mistaken, misstated, or incompletely stated premisses, our
conclusions will again be unreliable, no matter how valid the forms of our arguments might be. So, an important task
for philosophy is to clarify our ideas and our questions, to separate sense from nonsense, and to examine the premisses
of our arguments, both implicit and explicit, to root out possible sources of error. And in all of our thought and in all of
our argumentation, we must notice relevant distinctions, so as not to delude ourselves into believing that we are
drawing correct conclusions according to reliable methods when in fact our arguments or our premisses are beset by
unseen difficulties.
Because we express our ideas in language, and because it is quite possible to introduce linguistic confusions into our
thought, we must also clarify our language use. We must be careful not to fall into linguistic traps; we must be careful
not to let unanalyzed or poorly analyzed language use prevent us from reaching our goal of the truth. Not only our ideas
but also the words we use to express them must be clarified. In short, we must clarify what we mean.
On occasion, this will seem like nit-picking. On occasion, it will seem overdone. But it's important that we engage
in this clarification, if we are to express ourselves sufficiently carefully to be able to trust our conclusions. And it is
important that we examine our thought for hidden assumptions. When we cannot do without an assumption, then it
should be made explicit. And that is one of the primary tasks of philosophy: To expose nonsense and to make our
ideas and language use clear, so that our discussions are not just so much hot air, and to unveil the assumptions
supporting even our most cherished beliefs. We do not want to build intellectual edifices upon shaky foundations.
What philosophy should not do is deny what we all know is true for no good reason. Philosophy should
subject what we think is true to penetrating analysis; but to simply reject what we know is true for no good reason? No.
It is one thing to question how we can know that chairs and tables and apples exist; it is quite another to claim that
they do not exist. It is one thing to point out the fundamental metaphysical arbitrariness of morality, or how ethical
principles are chosen on the basis of our own values rather than because they somehow inhere in the universe; it is
quite another to claim that going around randomly killing people isn't morally wrong, or that there is no rational reason
at all for thinking that we ought to consider it wrong. It is one thing to doubt, and to ask for good reasons to
think that what we normally take to be true really is true; it is quite another to simply deny it for no good reason.
Refusing to hold unsupported beliefs is simply good epistemic procedure; denying them, however, requires more
than just their lack of support. Withholding belief is not the same as active denial of that belief. A healthy philosophical
skepticism is procedurally sensible; solipsism is not.
Let us proceed, then, to examine knowledge and truth and reality and ethics and meaning. Let us proceed to analyze
our ideas and the words we express them in. Let us proceed with a little healthy clarification.
(© 2007 by Keith Brian Johnson)
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