Reading Philosophy

Seeing as Philosophy is the art of questioning...

Can our reason and logic eventually find solutions for all the problems in the world... or better yet, can they at least save us from self-destruction?

And another question: Is knowing the truth always beneficial? Is it best to have as much knowledge as possible?

You're here, aren't you? You're talking to me, aren't you?

Seeing as nobody else hangs around in here, I'm going to add my .02 :-)

Can our reason and logic eventually find solutions for all the problems in the world... or better yet, can they at least save us from self-destruction?

We can probably find solutions, but I don't believe we'll be able to realize them within due time. From what I've seen, people more often than not prefer the "if I stick my head in the sand, maybe the problem will go away" approach, or they just plainly refuse to acknowledge a problem. You can find this kind of behaviour almost everywhere and in every aspect of life.

Take diets, f'r instance. Time and again this easy formula has been proven right: consume less energy than your body burns, and you'll lose weight. In other words, go easy on the cheese cake and exercise.
Most people who want to lose weight are not happy with that approach: it's a slow process and probably demands abstention from eating your favourite foods, not to mention the strenuous physical activity. Hence they go crazy over something like Atkins or the dozens of miracle diets in women's magazines that promise weight loss with nearly no sacrifice whatsoever. I believe that the potential for denial and wishful thinking is in all of us.

Then there's the fact that knowing and accepting what is 'right' doesn't mean you'll automatically do it. Maybe you don't because of laziness - think of flossing: everybody agrees that it's a good idea, if your dentist is like mine he'll preach the necessity of flossing after every meal to you on every visit, and you assure him that you do it religiously - yet both you and him know that you do it maybe once a day... on a good week.

Or look at our current (and past) environmental problems, a long-running issue if there ever was one. It's a pretty safe bet* to say that we'll eventually run out of oil, global warming will kill (or at least seriously mess with) most of our food supplies, regular water shortages in the first world may well be a reality soon, and who knows what's waiting for us in terms of natural disasters.
We all know what it takes to solve (or at least delay) these problems: sell your car and use solar-powered public transportation, save electricity wherever/whenever possible, use less plastic, buy all your food from a nearby farm and make a bunch of other really huge sacrifices.
The facts are more or less undisputed*, yet show me one geographic area or society that would embrace or even accept these changes that ask you to sacrifice so big a part of your comfy life.
(* Unless your last name is Bush or Cheney, in which case unlimited access to cheap oil is your God-given right as a citizen of a free country and all will be well once your glorious troops have wiped out 'em freedom-hating terrorist sand niggers.)

Then there's greed. I've heard it said that there is not one single Fortune 500 company that hasn't been charged with a crime at least once. In the 90's the Pentagon set up an office especially to deal with fraud cases by General Electric. Companies like IBM, Krupp and Siemens supported Hitler in exchange for exclusive multi-billion contracts with the Reich.

And last but not least, even among the purest and most well-intended of idealists, not everybody has the same idea of what is the 'right' thing to do.

Consider yourself hugged.

f'r

This is an example of rhoticity. In this case, though, it is not being placed on a mid-centric vowel. Here it is acting as the end of a word. It takes place when the r sound is attributed to a schwa, which is represented as ə.

Therefore -- the point being -- in using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), the word would be spelled as such:fə~. The tilda in this post represents a sort little,squiggly mark made on the schwa when denoting rhoticity..

The etimology of "schwa" by the way, is of Hebrew origin. It may even be of Syriac origin previous of the latter.

What comes around goes around.

On a personal note, i tend to be iclined to run with the thinking that reason is the cause of self destruction. For me, it is knowledge, reason and understanding that lead to self hatred and destruction. I can only disgust what i understand

however on a global level, i guess the opposite is true... It seems most people are ready to freely hate that which they dont understand. This makes mel sad.

Look at me! I'm a prostitute robot from the future!

Can our reason and logic eventually find solutions for all the problems in the world... or better yet, can they at least save us from self-destruction?

That depends, what kind of reason are you talking about. Each individual person has their own sense of direction and reasoning, to why such they did so and so.
I've seen that people can make up elaborate rationalisations to reason out what and why they did something. This especially happens when the person in question has done something society/parents/ones you love regards as wrong.

Take a relationship for example, we've got a couple who has just had a massive arguement and so in consequence, they break up. The girl gets all her girlfriends and have a big night out on which occasion she gets very drunk and sleeps with a stranger.
The next evening her (ex) boyfriend calls up and says he was very sorry for the argument and asks for forgiveness. The girl feels incredibly guilty for what she did and tells the boy about what had happened the night before. The boy now obvisiouly hurt and feeling incredibly betrayed questions how such could ever happen? They had loved each other for a while now, and just because of an argument, its not a reason to sleep with anyone else.
- Girl argues - She was angry and upset, wanted to have a bit of fun and also she had broken up with him.
- Boy argues - It's only been a DAY!

In the boys mind, there couldnt be no sensible reasoning why should would sleep with anyone else, arguments aside he still loved her and was sure (or thought he was) that she loved him too. However, in the girls mind, they had broken up. The words "broken up" gives enough "reason" to do what she did eventhough she does still love him and wants to get with him.

So put yourself in both their shoes in turn and what reasoning would you pick?

I guess reasoning to me has come to be relative to each person. So as far as your question goes, can reasoning solve all the problesm of the world....?

Well, I really wouldnt think so, Money could be the reason for so many (and is) and well, the world is still going to hell.
As for the logicpart of it, well like Null said, I think there is a sort of a mathematical logic in how the world is seriously getting screwed but we just are too lazy to do anything else about it.

The whole "lets make like and ostrich" really applies.
I live down under at the moment and we have a serious water issue, and just a few days ago the new government budget plan did not include anything about new water restriction plans or programs.
I honestly have no idea why? they constantly advertise to use less water BUT didnt but any money towards the programs that help save it.
Its seems completely unreasonable and totally illogical BUT i'm sure money has something to do with it, and I'm not sure whose pockets they are going to line this time.

For self destruction, I really think the same would apply. Instead of a government body put a person behind it, I'm sure there are a lot of people living in denial out there and reasoning with themselves that what they did was because of the situations on hand, but not really because it was the easy way out. (just an example, there are a thousand other reasoning dilemmas out there)

As for your second question

Is knowing the truth always beneficial? Is it best to have as much knowledge as possible?

Well, what is the truth? how do we know anything is true and what kind of truth are you exactly looking for?
Our existance? Our perceptions? the ol' who am I? and what and I doing here?
we have no real proof philosophically, who we are, what we are and in most situations will land up in an aporia of sorts.

I guess just I would best just try to gather as much knowledge as I know, not necessarily do I have to make perfect sense out of everything I know, as I've come to realise its sort of a never ending pit of questions when you are looking for something that has to chain up and link together.

Anyways, hope you make sense of what I've written, its just my two sense of things..

what do you personally think?

Foosh... Aaughh!!... Foosh... Aauuggghh!! - Cold spray deodorant

In order to move through the discussion, some basic presuppositions are in order. Perhaps we should define our terms for easy understanding.

By reasoning, I take it to mean a deliberative process, such as the scientific method, or some such debate.
Assumedly, this definition would have to include "peer review"--which begs the question who are the peers? This of course, presupposes a "group" of experts--those who are specialists.
It seems to me that we already have that.

The difference is that you're talking about the deliberators becoming policy makers, and not the rhetoricians.

I see the biggest obstacle to that is social conditioning, or perhaps its human nature; but it's the schoolhouse mentality. Growing up, I recall the smartest and brightest being hated, picked on and resented. We're taught early-on to go with the flow, and not make waves. Behave, is the school's mantra. Order brings intelligence, by this standard.
Latent in our sub-consciousness is this memory. We recall in our training for "adulthood" that we get "ahead" by following along. Don't question things, or people in charge. Be compliant is our conditioning. The desire to fight, struggle, question, be brilliant is beaten out of us by the time we become adults and start working.

I look at an all-reasoning environment as that, as the beat-down on the recreation yard for being too smart.
Is this counter-intuitive; that in an all-thinking society that we would resent those even smarter? No, its not. The sad reality is that all logic, all reasoning, all thinking, et al, exists only on the blackboard, or in the books.
We've tried this experiment, it's called Communism. Communism did away with churches and "thoughtless" pursuits, such as art. The Dark Ages, and Crusades can be seen as a time when reason ruled Civilization.

The pinnacle of a reasoning society could be The Borg, from Star Trek. That's the purest form that I can use as an example. Machine-like logic is as good of a way to rule the universe as any, right?

I think the problem with any approach that presupposes one single solution will cover all problems, is that it's bound to fail. One problem is that it doesn't take human nature into consideration. It also doesn't take into account all the varying elements that we need to make us whole, complete people.

The question to me really should be this: will logic, reasoning, and the deliberative process, tempered by empathy and compassion, be enough to steer us from our current direction?

The Cranesbill--a surprising pick by Emmet.

Reson can do nothing. really, absolutely nothing. it won't change the world or anything.

now, why is that so? because reason is a tool, and as such, per definition, a tool can do nothing on it's own.

You could use it for good or worse. And then again, it also depends on how good a tool you got.
For Example, in summer there are more icecream sales, and in summe there is more crime. Which leads to the conclusion that icecream is responsible for crime. Which is a classic logic fallacy. It's even so classic, it's got it's own name, cum hoc ergo protpter hoc ("with this, therefore because of this") ;) But to some people it seems reasonable (ok, with other examples).

Like a screwdriver, you can use it to build a machine that solves all our environmental problems, or you could stick it into your coworkers head because you envy his girlfriend.

And well, even if you want to argue on sciences with reason. well, some hundret years ago when railways where invented, there where some people, also scientists, who argued that humans shouldn't travel at 40 mph, because it's was dangerous and unhealthy for the human body, because we weren't made for such high speeds. Which is completely ridiculous to us today, but was considered very reasonable back then.

And then again, there are the cases where our "knowledge" even interfears with reason. given the choice for 2 places to spend the rest of my live at (only concerning the safety aspect), an nuclear power plant or an airplane, i'd chose the power plant. i guess most people wouldnt. If you take reason and test both, you'll find that a nuclear power plant (nowadays with like 5 self-sufficient failsafe-systems, some of them not even thechnical, but working due to physical laws) is way safer than an airplane, but still, quite some people would chose the airplane, because of tschernobyll and so on. Because our knowledge tells us that something is bad, and went pretty wrong, even though our reason tells us that all those flaws have been taken care of. Ok, not the best example, but i couldn't think of another one at the moment.

And then again, for reason in non-emotional/non-personal issues (the girlfriend/boyfriend thing from before clearly only depends on eachs point of view) you need complete knowledge to truely apply reason. Like solar power is so good, it uses the suns energy with almost no waste, so not using up precious natural ressources. It's reasonable. But well, most solar power cells today use poisonous substances in their creation, like arsenic acid, and production of solar cells (at least the standard type) produces a lot of CO2. ok there's a lot of research going on and i hope they fix this stuff in the future, but my point is that with incomplete knowledge, reason is flawed.
And well, "The wish is father to the tought" applies quite often as well ;)

And well, we as humans as such can never know everything, our brains are just too small, and scientifically spoken, the uncertainity principle forbids complete knowledge.

which leads to the conclusion, while reason as such might be one of the most powerfull tools of the human race, it can never be applied to it's full potential, it's will always remain flawed, imperfect and as such it can never solely solve all our problems.

And about the self-destruction thing: reason and logic alone cannot save us from selfdestruction, due to the points above. Imperfect logic and reason still leaves room for failure. but it may put the chances in our favour ;)

You only know if knowing the truth is beneficial, when you know it, at which point it's already too late, so i guess, nothing you could do about it except from denieng the truth. but as this is a personal choice/opinion, you cannot find a universal answer to that question, imho. But when it comes to use of reason, knowing as much as possible if beneficial.

"The wise have always said the same things, and fools have always done the opposite"-Schopenhauer

I like your base but it’s got to have more depth if you want to solve problems.

About this Boy friend girl friend thing. The first priority is for determining fault and reason is to determine base/ ground work. Relationships don’t work themselves into perfection. People don’t make decisions to fix everything 24-7. The girl was upset, so she said "I want to have fun..." So when she purposed to do such she took her boyfriends idea of (break up) as an excuse to serve self along with self pity. Then when the boyfriend said he was sorry she thought (oh crap) I didn’t think about fixing this, I thought about myself only. Did she really want to fix this with reason? I think she was only thinking of her own situation and keeping herself afloat with interaction of motive to be still in action instead of her with her boyfriend she replaced him with a one nighter. Do you see there was no reason or purpose other than self?

Reason doesn’t work with self. Long term anything takes serventhood. So listen to this example.

A girl who was 8 years old gets brutally victimized and grows up thinking all men suck. But when she is 20 years old she says to herself, "life has got to be more than this". So she buckles down and says "if I can I will". So she see a guy who seems to be descent and she gives him a little slack. After a while she realizes he is a jerk because he wants to service himself only. So she perplexed, "why try anything with men. So she thinks about possibilities with women. So she finds a nice girl to comfort her and after a while realizes this seems to be more of a balanced but it seems to be based on timely circumstances vs untimely. She wants kids and wants to be a good wife but this situation only provides a feeling of pleasure and peace. What she decides she wants is a relationship that can sustain time, trials, heartache, chemistry, pleasure, and morality that gives extra peace of mind, and to be a satisfied so she feels perfected. So she goes to church and learns a different way of thinking. The church teaches her that God has put her on earth for one reason. That reason was to choose a certain pattern of life that brought her closer to God. Then she learned that God performed a miracle to make purpose for living here and for living eternally with Him. She dint quite understand it all but there was enough there for her to make sense of what Gods purposes were but not hers. She still felt like all these bad things were happening to her and she deserved better. So she reasoned to put her life into a different scenario. She thought what if it had all turned out perfect. Then she realized something. She still would have to make some choices about this God thing. So weather here life was good or bad there were still choices. Had she made the choice to suffer for eternity, or the choice to look forward to an eternity? For the Bible teaches that one sin committed towards God means that you will have to pay for that sin with innocent blood. You can’t use your blood because it is not innocent. So how does this complex meaning of reason come in to play? God shed His own (innocent) blood and said if you believe in me I will cover your sins and you can spend eternity with Me. So this Girl starts to see a bigger picture. Even though some idiot had taken advantage of her, God still had an eternal plan for her. So she reasoned to say Because that man was an idiot, not God, I will reason to follow God and spend eternity with Him. God didn’t allow her to get hurt in a sense that she would be eternally damaged. Only in a way to show her she was in a sin filled world that will use any REASON to get what they want. (SELF). So if you want to be Satisfied, I feel that the girl would be best of if she accepted that she was a victim of selfish people rather than of God’s torture. This was caused by mans free will. But she was put into a place to consider reason which can hopefully lead to clear thinking, which can hopefully lead to a real purpose. Her purpose was to find out what she meant to God. God said He loved her and would seal her eternity of safety if she would try to serve Him as well as others. By serving we give ourselves something to look back on and be purposeful. Then if we do what makes us purposeful then we can build from a base to more and more purpose that leads us to less stupid mistakes. (So if the chick up above had said well maybe this isn’t the man for me, maybe she could of said let me regroup and see if it was something I did that made this go down hill instead of getting so revengeful and selfish.) Note: You can be the nicest person in the world but if your doing it to look back at yourself and say “I am the bomb and everybody should worship me and give to me and suffer for me”, then your no different than Satan himself.
He was so selfish that he felt being so good should lead him to being worshiped. Think about it. If you serve God and serve others, you become humble and less prone to making worldly bad decisions. To follow the bible doesn’t mean you have to stop having fun, it just puts your real goal as eternity with GOD. Most Christians try to live both lives and it becomes a mess because they want to play and be selfish and at the same time they want to be proud of there “great walk with God” and that pride has to be covered up with “well I only do this because my life was so bad before excuse”. That crap doesn’t work. One cannot have 2 masters. It’s either God or Self. If you serve yourself God says you can spend all eternity by yourself and that means without him. A place without God is Hell.

One thing we learn from history is that we dont learn from history!!!

The church teaches her that God has put her on earth for one reason. That reason was to choose a certain pattern of life that brought her closer to God.

And then the post seems to go on assuming there is such an entity as "God", which, in my humble opinion, cannot be explained with reason.
I believe that turning to God to find satisfaction and to cover your sins is in fact selfish, while serving others is not.

When your every move is monitored, you won't see me.

So if turning to God is selfish then so would this be.

Your a young kid and your dad tells you to clean your room and do your chors. Oh and he tells you to respect other and so on. Then he tells you if you dont comply you will get punished. So you go on and do your chors, but you forget to take out the trash. So your dad says you can say your sorry or get a whoopen/grounded whatever. Being selfish from your opinion would be to ask for forgivness. I dont get it. Especially if you are truely sorry.

Just because you dont see God as an entity, doesnt change what He is. He says He sees us as His children whom He loves dearly. So much so he took the whoopen for us. Then He said He wishes none to perish but all to have everlasting life. Then he gives us the Chor list. When we screw up he gives us the consiquence but not punishment if we try our best to please Him. He says if we choose not to believe in Him we will spend eternity away from him in hell. That doesnt mean He doesnt love us, it means He wont choose for us. You have chosen your road, you can change your mind. But as I see it whatever we do wont change who he is. So if I say I dont believe in gravity and jump out of a plane, Crap happens. Because you cant see God with your eyes "cant see gravity" doesnt mean He doesnt exist. You only know when you jump out of the plane so to speak what is real. When you die your eyes will be 100% open. 20/20 hindsite vision wont do a bit of good. There are millions of ways to see he exist, Scientist see it every day, and so do I. If you close your eyes like a little kid doesnt mean you get out of reality.
Every one can still see you.

One thing we learn from history is that we dont learn from history!!!