[cotner]

The background of the present thread is the post from yours truly in my thread on Indicators of reality aside from pinching noses.

Is there a wrong philosophy as opposed to a right philosophy?

Here is my definition of philosophy:

Philosophy is the continuous unending search for the programming that exists or might exist or should exist in everything in the light of speculative reasoning.

I am sincerely after obtaining the thoughts of people here who do care to think and give their thoughts on this question, for the sake of arriving at a conciliation on the issue whether there is a wrong philosophy.

And what is wrong and what is right?

Here is my idea of what is wrong, and everything that is not wrong is either indifferent or right.

Wrong is anything that detracts from the conservation of life with mankind and its advancement.

Someone will want to ask me what is life, and I will tell him that it is that state of his existence wherein and whereby he can ask me the question what is life, and I can hear him and answer him intelligently.

Of course in a democratic society subscribing to the freedom of thought and speech, anyone can advocate a wrong philosophy and argue that the philosophy he advocates is not a wrong philosophy, in which case people who see that his philosophy is a wrong philosophy can and should point out to society that what is claimed to be not a wrong philosophy is actually a wrong philosophy: because it detracts from life of mankind and its advancement.

The reply then to the advocate of a philosophy that is wrong is for people who question him to insist that the advocate of the wrong philosophy live his own philosophy in everyday life.

Just as if a philosopher should sell a food product as a sideline commercial activity, which he argues to be healthy, but better informed people from their repeated experience know it to be lethally poisonous if enough is ingested to a cumulatively death causing quantity, then he the wrong philosopher should himself eat his own food product up to the lethally deadly quantity to show that his food product is not poisonous.


cotner

[Pyrotex]

Good question. But the answer is neither yes or no.

There are many things in this world and in life that simply do not exist or function in the domains of Right-Wrong or True-False.

Philosophy is one of these things. The essence of a philosophy has nothing to do with truth or "rightness", but with its usefulness at explaining something. Philosophy has value to the extent that it gives us insight and understanding--gives us a "handle" on some aspect of the world.

When Nietsche said that philosophy could answer all questions except for the nature of God and the nature of conciousness, he wasn't saying something that was merely "true" or merely "right". That would have been a waste of his time and he knew that.

He was trying to explain something about the nature of God and the nature of conciousness--about how these things were unique in the universe and unexplainable, even inaccessible, with the usual tools of logic and science with which we approached everything else.

Love is neither right or wrong. It's just beautiful. And that's enough.

[REASON]

And the answer is:

It depends on whether or not it's my philosophy.

[Kriminal99]

I would say that there are incorrect philosophies and that many held philosophies are incorrect.

I say incorrect instead of wrong, because I attribute them to a simple lack of understanding or information on the part of the people that hold them.

I categorize them as wrong with a definition similar to yours - a philosophy is wrong if it does not allow the person who holds it to achieve their goals with maximum efficiency, based on the best understanding that person could have.

This is different from yours in that it only requires a person to be concerned with their own well being rather than society as a whole, but this is done with the assumption that he exists in a community with others who care equally about their own well being.

It is a capitalist model, where each person is responsible for using their limited resources and superior competency regarding how to make themselves happy to do just that. And as a result the best and most efficient society overall results.

So for instance, an incorrect philosophy might be the idea that "philosophies can't be incorrect". It is held because people do not want to admit that they are wrong, but realize that it would be selfish to require other people to and not themselves. So they try to create an enviornment where no one is wrong by just labeling philosophies subjective opinions.

It is incorrect because the real world has no regard for people's feelings, and sometimes presents problems that a certain philosophy is incapable of recognizing. In order to overcome these problems a person must admit that they are wrong and change their philosophy with respect to a new understanding of the situation.

Thus the person who thinks "no philosophy can be wrong" has a view that reduces their efficiency in achieving their goals, because they can't adapt to problems in the real world as well as a person or group who feels it is more important to see reality for what it is than to not admit when you are wrong.

[Symbology]

A philosophy can discuss the survival of another species other than homo sapian. Potentially even to the detriment of human survival and still be right in my opinion. I'm with Pyrotex on this one with my own twist: A philosophy discussing moral behavior for any species whether it is human or otherwise can be right or wrong based on its accuracy... not whether it involves the survival of humans.

For example there is the philosophy of establishing nature preserves, such as protecting elephant habitat - even though the teaming masses of humans surrounding it are running out of space because they are over populating.

A gray area example would be the philosophy of executing serial killers - where we are discussing the termination of one life to theoretically save the lives of many others.

Or by contrast the philosophy of the war on terror where we kill tens of thousands of lives "over there" so that nobody dies "over here". That comes down to a value judgment on who deserves to live and who deserves to die - both sides being human. The opposing side has a similar but opposite philosophy. Both philosophies involve the killing of humans. Both are preemptive in nature. Both sides think that they are right. Such discussions generally devolve down to "who threw the first punch" - which all depends on how far back you want to look. Do we consider The crusades for example? Or do we start in 1947 when land was taken from the Palestinians against their will and given to Israel. Or do we pick some other arbitrary time frame to start keeping score?

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

Voltaire

To my observation it pretty much comes down to survival of "us" over survival of "them".

To say that the universe is here for our benefit only, and to not have us in it "would be a bad thing" is fairly arrogant and ego centric in my book. Fossil evidence and carbon dating tend to indicate the world operated fine without us. And based on our self-destructive history, it may well be existing without us again soon enough.

To be grateful that we are here, and to work to be good stewards of the time we have been given in this place, sounds like good policy, but not necessarily right or wrong philosophy.

Asimov pondered this situation quite a bit in his Robot Series where computers might replace us in the future as the next evolution in the species.

The Wachowsky brothers had it bang on in The Matrix. They were big fans of Nietzsche as well as Jean Baudrillard.

Agent Smith: I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet, you are a plague, and we are the cure.

[Kriminal99]

You accept that philosophies can be inaccurate. IMO (as I outlined in my last post) this is all that is required for a philosophy to be wrong.

Unlike cotner I didn't use the survival and happiness of the human race as the implied goal of a philosophy, but the survival and happiness of the philosopher (human or otherwise).

From there I would say that it is inaccurate to act in a selfish manner in an enviornment full of other "philosophers" who are also fighting for their own happiness and survival. Once this is recognized, the next step and or hurdle is setting up a system that can recognize what is selfish and what is fair in complex situations.

Unfortunately this creates situations like you outlined where the elephants are fodder because they lack the ability to fight back. IMO this is unavoidable because for instance nature has us depend on eating other living things for survival. In truth I am outlining this philosophy as completely unavoidable and the way we will always live our lives. We create elephant preserves because we like to have a diverse population of animals for various selfish reasons. Animals are not given rights like human beings are.

[cotner]

Originally Posted by Pyrotex

Good question. But the answer is neither yes or no.

There are many things in this world and in life that simply do not exist or function in the domains of Right-Wrong or True-False.

Philosophy is one of these things. The essence of a philosophy has nothing to do with truth or "rightness", but with its usefulness at explaining something. Philosophy has value to the extent that it gives us insight and understanding--gives us a "handle" on some aspect of the world.

Originally Posted by cotner

Here is my idea of what is wrong, and everything that is not wrong is either indifferent or right.

Wrong is anything that detracts from the conservation of life with mankind and its advancement.

I can see that you are talking about indifferent philosophy which is neither right nor wrong; but there is wrong philosophy and there is right philosophy aside from philosophy that is simply indifferent.

For example, democracy is a right philosophy while dictatorship is a wrong philosophy.

Perhaps you can give an example of a philosophy that is indifferent in regard to my definition of wrong as anything that detracts from life in mankind and its advancement, and right as the opposite of wrong.

When Nietsche said that philosophy could answer all questions except for the nature of God and the nature of conciousness, he wasn't saying something that was merely "true" or merely "right". That would have been a waste of his time and he knew that.

In which case we need not take him seriously since he is in his own mind and heart by his own words wasting our time as he is wasting his own time, which however we need not bother ourselves with.

He was trying to explain something about the nature of God and the nature of conciousness--about how these things were unique in the universe and unexplainable, even inaccessible, with the usual tools of logic and science with which we approached everything else.

And pray with what tools if not logic and science was "He was trying to explain something about the nature of God and the nature of conciousness--about how these things were unique in the universe and unexplainable, even inaccessible"?

Love is neither right or wrong. It's just beautiful. And that's enough.

I know love, have received love and given love, and at least there is one man in the vast realm of the universe of time and space that knows that love is right, and hate is wrong; so any philosophy founded on love is right while any philosophy founded on hate is wrong, because hate is not in conservation of life in mankind and its advancement while love is certainly in conservation of life in mankind and its advancement.

Moreover, anything beautiful is right while anything ugly is wrong, because the beautiful is in enhancement of life while the ugly is in degradation of life.


cotner

[Symbology]

Originally Posted by cotner

And pray with what tools if not logic and science was "He was trying to explain something about the nature of God and the nature of conciousness--about how these things were unique in the universe and unexplainable, even inaccessible"?

I would hazard a guess of "creativity" - that genesis through which most anything comes into being through us humans.

A Work of Art
... is not a living thing ...
that walks or runs.
But the making of a life.
That which gives you a reaction.
To some it is the wonder of Man's Fingers.
To some it is the wonder of the Mind.
To some it is the wonder of Technique.
And to some it is how Real it is.
To some, how Transcendent it is.

Like the 5th Symphony
it presents itself with a feeling
that you know it, if you have heard it once.
And you look for it,
and though you know it you must hear it again.
Though you know it you must see it again.
Truly a work of Art is one that tells us,
that Nature cannot make what man can make.
- Louis Kahn
Architect of The Salk Institute

[Symbology]

Originally Posted by cotner

Moreover, anything beautiful is right while anything ugly is wrong, because the beautiful is in enhancement of life while the ugly is in degradation of life.

Britney Spears is considered "beautiful"
Steven Hawkings is not considered "beautiful"
Paris Hilton is considered "beautiful"
Mother Teresa is not considered "beautiful"

I disagree on all points.

To go nowhere, follow the crowd.

Now I will say that the inverse of your point is true:
the enhancement of life is beautiful
while the degradation of life is ugly


It is important to note that some of the most beautiful things in nature are the most deadly. Colorful frogs, insects, and snakes;



lighting, tsunamis, and hurricanes.





So it is equally important not be taken in by outward appearances. In fact the wise might even take such outward efforts to gather our attention as a proper warning.

[Symbology]

Originally Posted by Kriminal99

We create elephant preserves because we like to have a diverse population of animals for various selfish reasons.

Very astute observation. Thanks

In the end we only protect what we love,
we only love what we understand,
and we only understand what we have been taught