Is Philosophy Useful?

I hope this question goes beyond the obvious. Remember the dictum (of Socrates, I think), "The unexamined life is not worth living." I don't know what his criterion of "worth" was, but I've also heard the opposite dictum that the unlived life is not worth examining. This probably refers to the writing of a biography of a very boring and uneventful life.
By the obvious, I refer to a comment I made on the thread about time, that our ordinary shared cultural conceptions of time are obvously sufficient to get us through the day, to meet appointments "on time," to make causal sense of sequences of events, to keep track of, and anticipate past and future events, as with one's calendar of events. For that we have no need to examine the nature of time philosophically. Philosophy's concerns have more to do with the felt, if non-practical, need to make "deep" sense of our experience. This is probably what Socrates was talking about.
But we must also remember that the original philosophers might have been primitive astronomers. At least that is what we hear about the earliest thinkers who looked to the skies and speculated on the meaning and nature of celestial bodies. Explanatory theories of all sorts were purely speculative, even fanciful, in the beginning, i.e., they were more like philosophy than science as we know it today. But these efforts eventually evolved into meteorology, astronomy, and other forms of very practical engineering disciplines.
But, can we argue that philosophy, like art, poetry and literature, ARE useful in the grand sense that they make life interesting and exciting, if not just bearable?
Oh, another point. We all agree that Science is useful--because of its engineering functions. If so, we should also agree that the Philosophy of Science, which forms much of the theoretical basis and rationale for scientific activities is also useful.

Hi everybody!

The question of wether philosophy is useful in everyday life depends on a great deal of criteria. One is what we mean by useful. Philosophies can at times be applied to make a task easier, or even at all possible. Philosophy applied can even change the world. Gandhi is a prime example of that. Now this is not actually what we call everyday life, but also in smaller aspects of life one can find that philosophy is useful.

One thing we also must remember is that all philosophy is considerations of life, both day to day and the bigger schemes. It is practicality made theory so to speak. It seems to me that a philosopher is one who seeks to understand the sum of his knowledge, experience and wisdom. One who tries to bridge the dark chasms of ignorance that we all share. Well, all humans do this. It is inevitable. Then the degree of consciense applied to the process decides wether it will be called science, philosophy or religion. In the end they are all mere tools to achieve something. The true value of any craft comes from the honor and quality of the craftsman.

So in answer of your question, tcis, I think philosophy is not only valuable in everyday life, but inevitable...

Cyracuz, I think in your last sentence you meant to use the term, conscientious, rather than conscience. Is that right? But, then, I don't know if there are clear differences in conscientiousness between philosopshy, religion (theology) and science. All three can be very exacting and self-conscious in their efforts.
By the way, Ghandi's program of peaceful protest and resistance is, to my mind, more an example of ideology (ideological praxis) than of philosophy. Philosophy, to me, is an act of conceptual inquiry. Ideology is a form of conceptual justification (to justify either the status quo or change). Philosophy is to basic science what applied ideology (.e.g., Ghandi) is to engineering. Schopenhauer tried to understand the World; Ghandi tried to change it.
I very much appreciate your last sentence. Philosophy (and to a lesser extent, ideology) can be seen to be not only valuable but inevitable in everyday life. We are always trying to make sense (either by cultural recipe or original thought) of our on-going existence. In the end, and here I partially contradict what I say in the previous paragraph, you are right in your advocacy of philosophical Pragmatism.

Interesting site that I just found.


http://www.hottopos.com/mirand6/anthropology_and_common_everyday.htm

I know. I know. BoGoWo told me St. Thomas was to philosophy as Barry Manilow was to Bach. Still, I think it holds true regardless of the religious implications.

It was and would still be until all shot to hell by subatomic particles. It's POTENCY has become severely deflated and hardly more than academic. It's exegesis half the time based as much on uncertainty as to what is actually meant. But it's effect on history was truly dynamic for better or worse - often and only because its ideas have been massively misinterpreted to "endorse" compability with the ruling system forging very dubious history in its wake. We need more "certitude" in our future actions (being now top-heavy with technology) then brilliant pinnacles of opinion however interesting they may be. The brilliance of a writer/thinker can be massive and convincing giving it an aura of validity but it's more validity than aura that we NOW require. Too many ideas have been "justified" under the name of Philosophy that were proved contagious and detrimental. Philosophies that have been "canonized" in societies are nothing more that secular religions which have had their day or should I say milleniums even though islands of what were continents still remain. We now need a mental horizon that can with credence and by degrees integrate the VERTICAL with our Horizontal if you get my meaning.

If this be mere philosophy, please disregard!

NTS,

Lets see if I am reading you correctly: Are you sayng that philosophy might have been more useful 2000 years ago than it is today?

Or, perhaps they just (mistakenly?) thought it was more valuable then?

tcis, a good philosophical question.

Is philosophy as Valid today as it was THEN?

That's what I responded to thinking that's what you meant. "Then" I would qualify all in all as pre-Nietzschean and pre-Kierkegaardian. They were the critical points in philosophy when it was made to question its own validity. Prior to them, it was mainly Shakespeare who had the task of dramatizing the existential often making a great comedy of it. He fathomed the HUMAN version of the "Uncertainty Principal" pretty well and didn't show much respect for philosophers. He knew that the human psyche does not need systems but first and foremost to know itself...as much as possible.

What I more or less railed at were philosophies that became bureaucratic meaning inflexible as they became institutionalized, politicized, socialized, rationalized, totalitarian, etc. Also I would emphasize "OVERLORD SYSTEMS" which, because of their semi-metaphysical, ecumenical mystique requires a huge amount of effort to understand yet brings no one closer to understanding reality than reading Paradise Lost. But it was important independent of time because the mind ALWAYS strains toward synthesis. It strives to understand and it will create that understanding even if reality fails it and when it does, you are free to expound whatever REALITIES you want according to your own logic. You will seldom be corrected. The result can be all those truly ingenious thought-fractals - that don't exist. But there is a side effect based not so much on the merit of the system IN ITSELF as in THINKING about it. New ideas or revised ones often require greater inflection and resolution of language to make them apparent. Incisive verbal and linguistic tools, concepts etc which often become more valuable in themselves than the systems they denote, a priori as Kant would say. I've already mentioned this in another post as the disciplines of scholasticism preluding the scientific revolution.

The mind can be just as wrong in philosophy as it can be right in science. (Not too likely the other way around). Mental asset expenditure is often equivalent in both. So the question is: living in the age we're in, what would you spend your time and brain assets on? To discover "THAT REALITY" pre-existing ALL philosophies or create your own however complex? If you lived 1000 years, this question wouldn't be valid, you could accomplish both!

Of course, I may have written differently had the question been expressed differently. Anyways, this is the last time I posted anything so long! It's thoroughly useless for debate...and though I tried, I'm no longer trying to figure why this is a "a good philosophical question" as compared to a simple query!

A person swimming in the ocean can choose his depth provided he realizes that he is restricted by ability and knowledge and equipment. In short: his expertise. Even if he possesses sufficient expertise he may still decide to stay at, or near, the surface. A lot can be said for frolicking and a lot can be said for deep diving.

Similarly can a person view philosophy. Any question can be taken to those depths that inclination, tempered by expertise, dictates.

Those early deep thinkers looked at the stars and the world around them and explained what they saw in as coherent a fashion as they could. They offered what turned out, in some cases, to be hypothesis which later proved, in some cases, to be scientific "laws" which later turned out, in some cases, to be the technology that, in some cases, led to the very screen that you are now viewing. Without the original question this screen would not have been possible. That is pretty practical and useful. People find it enlightening and interesting to look back at those early questions to see the genesis of what they see around them.

In the realm of day to day living those early deep thinkers looked at the way life was being led and tried to reason out as to how life ought to be. These deep thoughts on what ought to be have led to political ideologies. These ideologies have a big time effect on our lives. Everyday. It is, again, interesting and enlightening to see this genesis.

People develop philosophies on a personal level. I think that this development has a different genesis. If the scientific and the political had a sort of deductive genesis, then personal philosophies have an inductive genesis. We seem to adopt beliefs willy nilly influenced by our parents, teachers, peers and environment. Delving into philosophy can help to "sort out" our beliefs and see how they fit together (or don't). Sometimes this sorting out can serve to bring our thoughts about things together; sometimes it (the sorting out) can cause us to be confused when we discover that we're inconsistent.

Everyone can take it as deep or shallow as they want. The results, I think, are both practical and useful.