Thursday, November 10, 2005

Philosophize this

Through my experiences of the past couple of weeks I've come to hate the superficial use of philosophy. But let me start at the starting point and not at the end....

Philosophy as defined by dictionary.com is
  1. Investigation of the nature, causes, or principles of reality, knowledge, or values, based on logical reasoning rather than empirical methods.
it is also defined by Webster as: The sum of the ideas and convictions of an individual or group.
Not to show my science geekiness but for the philosophy to really be of any solid, practical use it has to be based on logical reasoning. Logic is the key to its usefullness so thus we need to thoroughly define logic.
Logic as defined by webster is: a science that deals with the rules and tests of sound thinking and proof by reasoning. 2. sound reasoning
What this means is that logic follows a certain format to be true or sound. The conclusion of the argument must follow the premise(s) and in order for the person to be right his premise(s) must be true for the argument to be true as well.
This brings me to my point....The people that philosophize about the shit that hits the fan don't often follow the rules of logic. You can tell me the meaning of life all you want but unless you've followed some logical path it's just you running your mouth about something you "think" is right. Sit there and philosophize about the blue sky all you want...I'll still call it fanciful ignorance.

Feenix