another Kropotkin case

[Peter Kropotkin]

One of the complaints against philosophy, one of many, is that
philosophy hasn't "gotten" anywhere.. we are still
going over the exact same terrain that Socrates
and Plato went over...and even today, after 2500 years,
philosophy doesn't seem to be any closer to the truth,
then it was back then...philosophy and philosophers
have been spinning their wheels for over 2000 years..
and we have nothing to show for it....

and I might say, yes, that is true... ok, so where is the problem?
Why hasn't philosophy gotten any further along given how far
the "natural sciences" have gone.... physics for example..
or biology is way more advanced than anything Aristotle wrote
about... but philosophy hasn't gone any further.....

and we must ask why?

one possible way to think about this is in how communication
works... in communication, we have three aspects,
the sender, the receiver and the message...failed communication
can fail because of any part of these three aspects...

in communication, we have the sender, the one sending the message,
we have the receiver, the one receiving the message and
we have the message itself..

philosophy is no different than communication.. we have the sender,
the one with the philosophy, we have the receiver, us, and we
have the message, with different philosophers/senders, we can
have vastly different messages...

so, let us take the sender/philosopher.. in this case we shall
choose Nietzsche...and we hold his message in one of his books,
"Beyond Good and Evil" and we are the receiver of that message...

as Nietzsche wrote several books, we can believe that he has
a message or messages, he was trying to send us..
let us take one such message, the idea of the "Ubermensch"...

now in communication, the problem could lie in the way he transmitted it,
the books he wrote were "confused" and his message got lost in translation...
that is one aspect of communication, that the sender, in this case,
Nietzsche, he himself was confused about his message... and that
confusion was in his message to us, and so the problem may lie
in the way Nietzsche transmitted the message.. the message
was confusing...

the second aspect of this in in the receiver...
or as we shall call them, the reader of the books of Nietzsche,
his message... the failure of communication of Nietzsche could
be in his readers failing to understand the message or the meaning
of his books...so the second part of communication is the receiver
and perhaps the receiver/reader got the wrong message based on
the failure of the receiver to understand Nietzsche...

the third aspect of communication is within the message itself...
that Nietzsche "knew" what he was writing about and the receiver
got that message, perhaps the failure was in the message itself...
it was a bad message or a message that made no sense or
perhaps that message had nothing to do with philosophy itself...

so let us return to the 2500 years of philosophy and its failure to
make any headway... the failure could be in the sender, the philosopher,
or in the receiver us, or in the message itself...

now if your boss or the other boss, your spouse, said this to you,
how would you respond? "Please take out the walls in our building"
that message, wouldn't make a lot of sense because if we take
out the walls, the building we are in, falls down, collapses...
and so at some point in the messaging or the receiving or in
the message itself, we have failure...
taking out the walls makes no sense in this context... or perhaps
the speaker/sender sends the message to " feed the alien from Mars,
cereal"... and unless you actually have an alien from Mars living
in your spare bedroom, that message makes no sense....
the failure could lie in any part of the communication cycle...
the sending, the receiving or in the message itself...

so in philosophy, where does the failure show up? in
the sender or receiver or in the message itself?

as a student of philosophy, I would suggest that the
communication problem in philosophy lies in the message...

failures in the message could come from our failure to
ask the right questions, or perhaps we are in involved in
the wrong areas of life... for example, philosophy is
treated as an intellectual affair, when it is actually
an action event.. we don't think about philosophy,
we do philosophy...philosophy is an physical event,
not a thinking event...philosophy as a way of life,
and not as an discipline taught in schools and forgotten...
that could be, could be the failure of philosophy...
it is thought about instead of doing it...

the next possibility could be in the message is just wrong....
much of modern philosophy has been an engagement within
philosophy as a means of knowledge.. epistemology...
what we know, how do we know it, and what are the limits
and scope of knowledge.... perhaps the failure in modern
philosophy is because we are engaged in epistemology,
when we should be engaged in the more practical aspects
of philosophy...what does it mean to be a moral/ethical person
given our isms and ideologies such as capitalism and democracies?
Is it possible for us to be ethical/moral within capitalism, in
which the goal isn't to be moral or ethical but to make money....
the very premise of capitalism seems to make being moral/ethical
almost impossible...as capitalism is a nihilistic belief, it
denies human beings and their values, how can we be moral/ethical,
given capitalism nihilistic premise?

Since Nietzsche, the philosophical question has been this, how is moral/ethics
possible in a 'No god" world? On what basis/standards do we judge
morals/ethics? perhaps, perhaps this is the wrong question,
the wrong message...

I don't think so, but I may be wrong....

perhaps, given the makeup of the world, we are going about
philosophy the wrong way... perhaps if we understood
that the goal of philosophy, to create a theory of everything,
which is the goal of physics, a wrong way to approach philosophy...
that it is quite possible there isn't a unified ''TOE" (theory of everything)
within philosophy...to seek out the whole, as Spinoza did and Hegel did,
is the wrong path in philosophy because there is no such thing as a
whole theory of everything, within and outside of philosophy....

the best we get, as human beings is parts, some parts are bigger than
parts, but they are still only parts.. and we have to make do with those
parts.. which means a theory of everything just isn't possible....there
is no whole to unite in one theory... think of a puzzle in which all
we get are the random pieces and the whole picture of the puzzle
is not only missing, but not even there...
how do we solve the whole picture, the theory of everything if
there is no everything? and therein lies part of philosophy's problem...
we think that something exists but it actually does not exist...
we are mistaken and that mistaken belief is sending us on a
wild goose chase... we chase theories that aren't there...

perhaps the question of philosophy can be reduced to this,
what is real and what isn't? or perhaps that is also the wrong
question which will lead us to the wrong conclusion/answer....

our pursuit of philosophy, as in any journey, must begin with
an question that is where we need it to be...ask the wrong question,
puts us in the wrong place...think of it this way, if I take a journey
thinking I am in New York and I am really in LA, I will end up in
the wrong place because I started out in the wrong place....
answers can only come from starting out exactly where
you think you are...begin the journey in the wrong place
and you will end up in the wrong place...

and I think, perhaps, this is philosophy problem, or part of
anyway, we are starting from the wrong place, asking the wrong
questions, which leads us to end up in the wrong place.. and
we, philosophy never gets anywhere because it can't as long
as it asks the wrong questions....

so perhaps to regroup philosophy or to rethink philosophy,
we should rethink, we should review the questions of philosophy...
and wonder, are these really the right questions we should be asking?
or perhaps, we can ask other, better questions about who we are
and what does it mean to be human?

edit: perhaps even asking who we are and what it means to be human,
is the wrong question... so, what are the right questions to ask?..

Kropotkin.

[Peter Kropotkin]

ok, we have an example of Einstein who spent
decades searching for a "theory of everything" "TOE"

Now I often wonder why didn't Einstein succeed?
Perhaps he was dealing with the wrong information or
perhaps he as looking at it the wrong way or perhaps,
there is no theory of everything.. until we can rule it out
or in, we don't know why Einstein couldn't figure it out...
and perhaps he couldn't figure it out because the information
he needed wasn't there...and until the right information comes
along, no one can figure out the ''TOE" .. But what would happen
if suddenly, the right information came out, then someone may be
able to figure out the "TOE"..

So does that mean that Einstein pursuit was in vain? not at all..
we actually need someone to go down that rabbit hole to see
if it is a viable rabbit whole... someone has to do it and it
may as well be Einstein... and that is his value in this matter,
an explorer of ideas that may or may not have worked out...
and until we have the whole picture, we just can't know....
a theory of everything would answer everything including what
Einstein got right and what he got wrong.... so, we need someone
to explore the various theories like the ''Ubermensch' and the
"eternal reoccurrence" if for no other reason than to rule out or
rule in, that theory.....
so Kant theories may be complete and utter bullshit, but
we still needed him to at least explore those theories.....

an idea or theory still have value even if it doesn't solve the problem,
because it will help suggest a road or path to take that will lead us
to a correct theory..... the wrong path is still a success because
it reduces the number of paths we do have to take...
so philosophers have value even if there theories are utter crap,
because those theories can lead us to finding the right place to start...

Kropotkin.