I was talking to a friend about high-level philosophy, e.g., metaphilosophy and philosophy of consciousness, and they compared it to mental masturbation, implying that it may be fun, but was ultimately useless, since the theories couldn't be tested.
I like to philosophize, and defended its legitimacy by comparing it to art, saying that the creation of art is not just fun, but can be measured and evaluated in terms of beauty. It is also important for a piece of art, as well as a philosophical idea, to "jive" with the setting in which it is placed. For philosophy, this often means being consistent with what we think we know about how things work.
It occurs to me that I'll sometimes hear an idea, and I'll "like" the idea without really having a good guess about whether it is true, and if I like it, I'll consider it. In fact, it occurs to me that my biggest objection to certain religion views is that I don't like them, rather than me having some sort of "scientific proof" that they are false.
No comments:
Post a Comment