How good is
philosophy at getting at the truth?
Thinkers from Aristotle to Descartes have long
considered the nature of space, time and matter.
Yet not one philosopher conceived the key theories
of space, time and matter: Relativity and Quantum
Mechanics.
So thinking, as a standalone activity, is an
unreliable way of arriving at truth. Only experiment
and observation can be the ultimate judge of
what is closest to the truth.
Is philosophy
self-consistent? Bertrand Russel,
the famous mathematician and philosopher, showed
that feeding logic back into itself creates
horrible paradoxes. Lobbing the dung of self-referential
logic into the mathematical fan, he showed,
to the chagrin of purists, that the illogic
of such paradoxes destroys the belief that mathematics
is internally consistent.
The statement
"I am lying to you"
is a paradox, as the ancient Greek philosopher
Ipimenides pointed out. The equivalent paradox
can be constructed mathematically. The fact
that mathematics gives rise to paradoxes means
that all mathematics is built upon shaky foundations.
The statement,
"All philosophy is untrue",
is a philosophy in its own right. If it
is
true then it says it is
not true! If
it is
not true then it
is true!
Philosophy can quickly lead to a paradox! Philosophy
itself is, at its very core, defective.
So, in conclusion, philosophy may be
great for many things, but it remains fundamentally
unsuited to ferreting out truth.
However, as imperfect a tool as philosophy is,
it is far superior to religion as a means for
understanding truth. A man who seeks to learn
truth by practising religion is like a man who
seeks to eat by sewing his mouth shut.
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| From: |
MadPole | Subject: | 2000-11-26 08:43:19 |
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bryony | Subject: | 2001-04-26 05:24:13 |
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Dale | Subject: | 2001-10-31 23:46:12 |
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MadPuke again... | Subject: | 2001-12-07 13:59:18 |
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