The roots of philosophy...

When I say philosophy I should stipulate that I mostly mean essentialistic philosophy, or philosophy in the form of a quest to achieve wisdom or enlightenment - the belief that there is wisdom and a philosophic answer to be had for the treasure-seeker philosopher. I believe such philosophy is a phenomenon that finds its roots in language and the impact language has on us both socially and psychologically - as opposed to being rooted in some innate awareness that there are 'master-answers' in the universe that need to be discovered through the process of rigorous thinking and dialectic. I believe language can instill in us concepts and ideas that don't really exist outside of our heads. It can introduce ideals and arouse questions that don't really have meaning outside our heads as well. They are basically trick questions, but the questioner himself doesn't realize that. Things like "what is truth" and "what is our purpose" are examples of language and communication skewed because they were never meant to be taken out of the context that evaluates them. Such as "is what you say the truth?" The evaluation of the term is "what you say" which tells us that by using "truth" they're probably asking if the person is lying or not. "The purpose of the lawnmower is to cut grass." In this sentence the context allows us to evaluate purpose as "the activity the device is designed (or perhaps intended) to accomplish - specifically cutting grass."

Here's another example of language and its influence. You've doubtless heard of the word "love" and you've grown up learning about its inherent implications FROM society (television, books, your parents, your friends, or your spouse) - you've learned about how it's the most powerful responsibility, that it in some cases like a mother to child is unconditional or supposed to be unconditional while in other cases like boyfriend to girlfriend can be VERY conditional, that when you have it your supposed to experience joy at being together, etc. Now if these concepts were never COMMUNICATED to you, would you ever fall in love? We see other examples of this in isolated tribes - people who don't seem to have concepts that we take for granted every day. The Waorani for example didn't have the concept of forgiveness until it was communicated to them by missionaries. Many native americans didn't have concept of land ownership before that was rudely introduced to them. In ways such as these one sees how powerful and influential language can be on our minds, what we think we know, and the type of questions we ask.

As for the idea of how these questions of essentialistic philosophy (what is my purpose, what do I know or can I really know anything) managed themselves into our system of communication, and ultimately how it became ingrained culturally and psychologically one can perform a simple experiment. Gather a group of say 50 people and have them sit in a large circle. Tell one of them a little story (something like I went to the store to buy groceries, and there I got 2 apples 3 pies and a can of soup) or something of that nature and then ask them to pass it on to the next person. When the story reaches the last person in the circle have him/her recite the story outloud. Odds are what the last person says will be at least somewhat different than the story you had told. It is in a similar way, I think, that many concepts in philosophy - absolute truths or forms, good vs evil, knowledge and wisdom - came about. They started as one thing, then as they were communicated from generation to generation over long periods of time their meanings were altered and skewed. One can easily imagine that "freedom" in one era could mean something completely different to people in another era. The same with love, happiness, and even truth (in some eras truth was whatever the king says or whatever the oracle says, in other eras it was chiefly found within the contents of a holy book, while in others its the enlightenment attained through fasting and meditation, etc. Some cultures have even interpreted truth as coming from one's dreams.) Eventually these ideas became what they are today, with many people actually trying to solve the puzzle of "wisdom" or "what is the right thing" yet often forgetting or never even realizing how much development and alteration could be behind the premise they're starting with - namely that there is answers to be had and the answers will be recognized in HIS/HER way of thinking.

Though while I believe the morphing of concept and communication from generation to generation over long periods of time played a major role in these anomalies of philosophy found within human culture in the recent era, one obviously cannot ignore the fact that some could also have found their way in through the evolution of our mind (our instincts and behavior) as well. First of all in the history of evolution there has always been a definite advantage in numbers. Creatures who had the capacity to cooperate with each other and understood how the health and safety of the "group" has a direct influence on that of the individual stood a much better chance of surviving, despite not being very formidable physically. Due to this fact communal and altruistic instincts likely developed, and from preconditioned mindsets such as those and others (survival, fighting, and mating) an interest in the objectifying of certain styles of behavior and action could easily have formed. In this way behavior that was seen to benefit the groups survival could be categorized and easily separated from that which the group considered detrimental to survival. "Love" in the sense of having an interest in the wellbeing of another, would have been one such useful attitude for survival and therefore could be rooted in us through both communication and instinct. "Justice" in the sense of reinforcing cooperation of the group through maybe a reward and punishment system, would be another such example. Hence ideas such as good, evil, lust, valor, and cowardace may have their roots in the evolution of our instinct as well as language.

I think there ARE answers to why we sometimes feel the need to ask questions like "what is moral" "what is real" or "what is known," and why they strike us as mysterious, and why even the most rigorous investigation into the answers to these questions yields as much variety in their results as there are styles of artwork in the world (a da Vinci or a Picasso - we might as well label essentialistic or universalistic philosophies the same way despite the care given to their objectivity as maybe a Plato, or a Spinoza.) But I believe these answers lie in the science & investigation of language, communication, and behavioral evolution.

I might also add that this is why deconstruction can so often be a thorn in philosophy's side. Because deconstruction is sort of a way of HIGHLIGHTING the loopholes in language and communication through which many philosophic questions can manifest.

PS: Sry I'm new on this forum. Not sure whether this belongs in Language Philosophy or Metaphilosophy. I suppose I could've posted it in both.