From: Elizaphanian (elizaphanian@tiscali.co.uk)
Date: Mon Mar 03 2003 - 12:23:43 GMT
Hi David,
I'm following this whole conversation, but I don't have much to contribute
right now. But I thought I would pick out something from your post on
Saturday.
> Take a look at what the Oxford Companion to Philosophy says about
philosophy
> itself.
>
> "The shortest definition, and it is quite a good one, is that philosophy
is
> thinking about thinking. That brings out the generally second-order
> character of the subject, as reflective thought about particular kinds of
> thinking - formation of beliefs, claims to knowledge - about the world or
> large parts of it. A more detailed, but still uncontroversially
> comprehesive, definition is that philosophy is rationally critical
thinking,
> of a more or less systematic kind about the general nature of the world
> (mataphysics or theory of existence), the justification of belief
> (epistemology or theory of knowledge), and the conduct of life (ethics or
> theory of value). Each of the three elements in this list has a
> non-philosophical counterpart, from which it is distinquished by its
> explicity rational and critical way of proceeding and by its systematic
> nature. Everyone has some general conception of the nature of the world in
> which they live and of their place in it. Metaphysics replaces the
unargued
> assumptions embodied in such a conception with a rational and organized
body
> of beliefs about the world as a whole. Everybody has occasion to doubt or
> question beliefs, their own or those of others, with more or less success
> and without any theory of what they are doing. Epistemology seeks by
> argument to make explicit the rules of correct belief formation. Everyone
> governs their conduct by directing it to desired or valued ends. Ethics,
or
> moral philsophy, in it most inclusive sense, seeks to articulate, in
> rationally systematic form, the rules or principles involved."
Firstly - who wrote the article? That might be revealing.
Secondly, I think the difference between philosophy and theology lies purely
in the articulated commitments of the people doing it. Modern philosophy
(Modern meaning Modernist, not contemporary, although it's still probably
the dominant mode in some ways) is thoroughly SOM based, and denies that you
have to make a value commitment in staking out a position on those
questions. The MoQ, of course, disallows such an option. So the question
becomes - what are the guiding commitments which govern your choices between
the different metaphysical, epistemological and ethical questions? Logical
consistency is only a partial guide.
Sam
"When we speak of God we do not know what we are talking about. We are
simply using language from the familiar context in which we understand it
and using it to point, beyond what we understand, into the mystery that
surrounds and sustains the world we do partially understand" (Herbert
McCabe)
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