Life, the Universe, and Everything.
We all have views on the ways of the world, here are some of mine.
Firstly, we need to consider what the term Philosophy is going to mean on this site.
On tearmaster.me the philosophy will not impress the academic world. They would classify it at best as "folk philosophy", which is a good thing, because the implication of that is it at least should be understandable.
On tearmaster.net the discussion will still not rate as particularly academic, but for good reason, not lack of rigor or reason in the argument but to persue the academic method will bore the pants off you for no particular advantage.
On tearmaster.art Things will eventually be considered in the light of the academic method, but for now the arguments should be understandable without the need for endless reference to other published material ancient and modern.
On tmaster.co.uk This site focuses on Language and Paradox, two topics that lead to questions of primal significance to our presence.
FUNDAMENTALS - What is Philosophy?.
I am going to offer a simple definition. Philosophy is the art of asking questions. Philosophising is the action of asking questions, and the purpose of philosophy is to seek clarity.
This gets us away from the classic dictionary definition of a philosopher being a "lover of wisdom", a definition of no practical value, and avoids the need to then quote a long list of items the lover of wisdom wishes to study.
Unfortunately there are two terms that it is difficult to avoid in any forey into philosophy from the learned classes. Epistemology and Ontology.
This topic requires its own page here.
But a brief comment may help understand why I am reluctant to use these terms wherever it can be avoided.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is an excellent reference source. In an article on Epistemology it makes this comment:-
"...epistemology seeks to understand one or another kind of cognitive success (or, correspondingly, cognitive failure)..." Then goes on to say of "cognitive success":-
"There are many different kinds of cognitive success, and they differ from one another along various dimensions. Exactly what these various kinds of success are, and how they differ from each other, and how they are explanatorily related to each other, and how they can be achieved or obstructed, are all matters of controversy."
The sentence above says they have defined something as something else that they haven't got an agreeable definition for. The academics can't agree on anything.
There is a link to the article a few sentences above this one, learn about "cognitive success" if you feel the need, here are my epist-ontological views, otherwise scroll a little further and follow the links to my ramblings.
