Does philosophy Matter?

Journey

As I continue learning and writing about different stuff, mostly with regards to philosophy, I wonder what its essence or value in a very practical way is in the context of my life and the people around me.

Questions

Does it need essence or value?

What is value? What is essence?

Who determines them?

Who determines the essence and value of essence and value?

Now

Stay with me.

Let’s get some context.

Context

Where did philosophy come from?

How did it come to be?

Now, the thing with names is that the thing kinda needs to exist and a name gets attached to it.

Origins

Philosophy comes from two Greek words that translate to the love of wisdom.

Philia(love) and Sophia(wisdom).

Some guys

Key people associated with philosophy are Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Aurelius etc.

What was the context around which this happens?

My unhelpful theory

Philosophy is about understanding life.

We find ourselves in a world and we have some desire to understand it, some more than others.

And in this we ask questions and question our questions.

Justice series

Recently, relistened to the Justice playlist from Harvard by Michael Sandel.

I found it fascinating.

Mostly because the question about what is right and wrong, good and bad comes from and who decides that. Surely there is a system that arises over time to determine this and others get thrown away, integrated in some manner and others take center stage.

In the earlier moments, he gives a sort of disclaimer, one I for some reason do not remember hearing the first time.

Disclaimer

Anyway(from lecture 1 of the justice playlist.), it goes like this “What is familiar becomes strange”

At (17:21 - 24:04), Professor Sandel warns that studying political philosophy as an exercise in self-knowledge carries significant personal and political risks. He explains that:

• Philosophy unsettles us: It takes familiar concepts and makes them “strange,” which can be an unsettling experience because once you see things differently, you cannot go back to your previous way of thinking.
• It can be a distancing activity: He warns that philosophy can potentially make one a “worse citizen” before it makes them a better one, as it distances students from conventional, established assumptions and settled beliefs.
• It is unavoidable: Despite these risks and the temptation to retreat into skepticism, he argues that we cannot avoid these questions because we live out our answers to them every day.

Whaat

I found it deeply strange. Why does he possibly say this?

He went on, “in this we discover something about ourselves that we did not know existed.”

All started, the classic trolley question comes up. He started off with a version I had not heard before(my bad).

Case 1

In the first case, you are the driver of a runaway trolley and must choose whether to stay on track and kill five workers or steer onto a side track to kill one (0:33-1:32).

Case 2

In the second case, you are a bystander on a bridge who could stop the trolley by pushing a large man onto the tracks, sacrificing him to save the five workers (4:34-5:37).

Types of moral reasoning found

Two main types of moral reasoning:

• Consequentialist moral reasoning: This focuses on the results of an action, such as the principle that it is better for five people to live even if one must die (13:30-14:00).
• Categorical moral reasoning: This suggests that certain actions are intrinsically wrong, regardless of the consequences, such as the idea that killing an innocent person is never permissible (14:30-15:00).

Does the end justify the means?

This brings us to something that’s been devouring me, does the end justify the means? Something the categorical and consequential debate tries to answer.

Well…

There is a high chance I do not answer concerning the intrinsic or extrinsic value of philosophy. However, we are to remember that most of the judicial laws and ways of life have been obtained through such.

Any how

Whilst learning Computer Science, we have used principles of philosophy extensively.

Matters to do with logic(formal logic, predicate logic/calculus/), theoretical analysis(doing this in Design & Analysis of Algorithms), Ethics and problem solving at its heart.