All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 31, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
14:02
2898 Identifying Philosophy

How do you identify a philosophy from a non-philosophy - such as mysticism and sophistry?

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
So, a listener sent in this question, which is a great, great question.
How do you identify a philosophy from a non-philosophy, such as mysticism and sophistry?
From my understanding, he says, it comes down to two things.
The law of identity being followed, And two, how a knowledge claim is made, or how a claim to knowledge is justified.
Is this a good rule of thumb to use?
Are there any extensions I can add to it?
Well, again, great question, and I'll give you some thoughts and tips.
This comes down to the definition and nature of philosophy, so it's going to be exciting.
It's an exciting area to explore.
So, first and foremost, of course, the question is, what is philosophy?
Now, I've got a 17-part Introduction to Velocity series right here on YouTube, also available on the feed or at FDRpodcast.com.
But I will say, of course, that philosophy has the goal of allowing you to confidently know that which is true and confidently reject that which is false.
And that, of course, has a whole lot of suppositions and axioms and premises built into that very Definition.
And in the same way science is supposed to help you to confidently assert that which is validated in the realm of matter, energy and the effects thereof.
And the study of health or doctoring is to prevent disease or cure it should it arise at the optimum health, the optimum functioning of bodily organs in conjunction to produce a sense of well-being.
The purpose of nutrition is to find foods to eat and things to drink.
Which are appropriate to a particular level of health or athletic or personal lifestyle goal and so on.
Lose weight or bulk muscle or something like that.
So all of these disciplines have a purpose, have a goal.
These are very well examined in the Socratic Dialogues written by Plato, so you don't have to rely on me, just go.
Every discipline has a particular purpose.
Now, philosophy is the discipline which umbrellas or you could say is the foundation for all other disciplines because all disciplines that aim towards the improvement of something or excellence in the pursuit of something have truth and falsehood as their basis.
If you don't know what is true and false, you can't be an engineer or a physicist, you can't be a nutritionist, you can't, I mean, a personal trainer, you just can't know and do anything if you don't know what is true and false.
So the first foundation of any discipline is to know what its purpose is and to know how truth and falsehood is determined in the pursuit of that purpose.
So in science, the purpose of science is to discover validated truths, reproducible truths, universal truths about the behavior of matter and energy and the way that you achieve that goal is through the scientific method.
And The same thing with health.
Doctoring the goal is optimum health and the way that you pursue that method is through the scientific method really as a As it applies to medicine, which is, you know, the double-blind experiment and validation and all that kind of stuff and the knowledge of biology and knowledge of how viruses work and cancer cells work and knowledge of how to effectively and repeatedly and in a validated way disrupt or destroy negative effects on health.
So all of these things are part of the general discipline.
The general discipline of engineering is to create sustainable cost-efficient structures in the world and the methodology is Cost plus a knowledge of tensile strength and all that.
So the purpose of philosophy is to allow you to know confidently what is true and what is false.
And through that process you can figure out what is moral and what is immoral and in that process you can pursue Happiness through virtue, right?
So that's the general tripartite sequence, the dominoes of philosophy.
Reason equals virtue equals happiness.
And so all of that is the basis.
Now, the way that you know something is a philosophy rather than...
A lie or a sophistry or a manipulation or a scam or whatever is that it must have an objective definition of truth.
and falsehood.
So the definition of truth and falsehood in the realm of philosophy is first of all rational consistency and second of all empirical evidence and this is true for science as well.
But in philosophy science would not study ethics in any particular manner because ethics is not really the behavior of matter and energy but rather choices made by human beings according to universal values or at least values claimed to be universal but morality is a proper subject of philosophy and as I've put forward in my advocation of a rational secular morality a morality that requires neither
the existence of commanding deities nor the bribes and punishments of coercive governments called universally preferable behavior a rational proof of secular ethics which you can get for free at freedomainradio.com You have to have universal rational consistency in your ethical theories and it's really good if they then are supported by rational evidence.
All who claim, for instance, that property rights would be invalid or everything should be owned collectively or we all own each other would have to explain why societies that violate property rights Do really, really badly in terms of economic productivity and basic human sustainability.
All who oppose property rights will then have to explain how human wealth has exploded over the past 200 years when property rights have been more enforced.
And those who say that the religion and the state should be one need to explain why, when religion and state are united, countries tend to do very badly in terms of standard of living, personal freedoms and censorship and all that kind of stuff.
So there is a rational consistency requirement for ethical theories, but ethical theories also need to explain empirically how certain societies do well or do badly.
That, I think, is important.
Rational consistency.
And since philosophy aims to describe that which is true, and that which is true cannot be merely contained within one's head, because that would be subjectivism, then through universal principles, philosophy is aiming to describe that which is true outside of one's head, to link the concepts in the mind to the actual behaviors of matter and people.
In the world, the mind is subject to error.
Reality is not.
I may misidentify a tree that doesn't change the nature of the tree.
It simply means that I am incorrect in my naming of the kind of tree that I'm talking about.
So, universal rational consistency, empirical evidence, first principles, which I've talked about in a video and podcast here called an introduction to first principles, Those things are necessary, and with those come the second thing that you need to look for in a belief system to differentiate it from philosophy and non-philosophy is what is the null hypothesis?
In other words, how can a theory be disproven?
And that is...
Something so foundational to life that we often overlook it.
So if I say a book that I wrote is worth a million dollars, well, that's a theory.
Let's say that's a hypothesis.
So then I put a book I wrote called Cease Deaf Speak and I put it on in the marketplace in eBay or whatever, Amazon.
And if people are willing to pay a million dollars, then My hypothesis is validated.
The book is worth a million dollars.
If people aren't willing to pay a million dollars for it, then my hypothesis is falsified.
So the question is, is there a falsifiability to the hypothesis?
So if you look at something like psychic phenomenon, people say, well, you know, I had a dream that came true.
I'm able to predict these numbers.
And then you say, okay, well, let's test it.
Then you say, well, let's test it.
Let's find out if Your psychic powers are valid or not.
Over the course of your life, you will have thousands and thousands and thousands of dreams and eventually, just by the law of averages, you're going to have a dream that appears to predict the next day.
Of course, you'll remember that.
You won't remember all the dreams that didn't come true and there will be a time where you're thinking intently of someone and that person happens to call at the same time.
You don't think of all the times.
You're intently thinking of someone who doesn't call.
That's a falsifiable hypothesis, right?
You just say, okay, well, I've written down a series of numbers, and guess what they are, and if the person consistently does better than random, then that's a support for the thesis.
But what you generally hear back from people who claim psychic phenomenon is, it doesn't work that way.
Or, if there's a skeptic in the room, it doesn't work, and so on, right?
And all of that is a desire to escape the requirement of falsifiability.
of a null hypothesis.
And the same thing is true in other spheres of political influence, of religious influence, and so on.
The question is, is there a null hypothesis?
Can the person's hypothesis be disproven?
Is there a negative to the proof?
That's an important thing.
And if there isn't one, or if you say, well, how would I know if what you're saying is false, then if the person evades that, then they're not engaged in philosophy.
Philosophy is where you go to that which is the most difficult and the most challenging and focus on weaknesses within your own argument first because you shouldn't really put arguments out into the public sphere if you're responsible that you have not rigorously critiqued yourself first to save other people time.
So, I think those are fundamental issues around the realm of determining philosophy from non-philosophy.
And the last thing that I'll mention, this is not obviously an exhaustive list, but these are useful approaches and they will eliminate a lot of nonsense from your life.
But another one is to look for adjectives.
Argument by adjectives.
And we're going to do...
A show on Buddhism and the Dalai Lama Sunni, you'll see that there is this problem with adjectives.
And so, if somebody says, well, you know, my goal in philosophy is to produce excellence and peace of mind and serenity and ultimate wisdom.
That doesn't actually tell you anything at all.
It's like having a diet book that says, you know, inside the diet book is written, You know, the goal of this nutritional program is to have you achieve your optimum weight and energy and functioning through what you eat and drink.
And that's the end of the diet book.
It's like, well, okay, so you've described a purpose, but you have not described a methodology.
It's like putting out a scientific theory, which says, a hypothesis, which says, my theory or hypothesis is aimed at accurately and reproducibly and universally describing the behavior of matter, energy and their effects.
Period.
The end.
It's like, well, yeah, but that's just a shell.
There's no content.
It's a candy bar wrapper.
There's no actual candy in it.
So when people fire a lot of adjectives at you, peace of mind, serenity, grace, happiness, joy, nirvana, whatever it is, they are teasing you with the positive effects of a program or a methodology, but they're not actually really telling you the methodology.
And that is something to be Quite cautious about, to say the least.
So when you have an excess of adjectives, particularly positive adjectives, to me there's just kind of a con going on, which is that you are being teased with all of these positive effects, but there's no sustainable, rational, objective, reproducible methodology to it.
So, I mean, certainly in my conversations with people throughout these years, I have told people repeatedly that the pursuit of philosophy, particularly in a world that is anti-rational in many ways, the pursuit of philosophy is certainly not guaranteed to bring you happiness and will in fact bring you discomfort in the short run.
And I think happiness in the long run, but it's sort of like if you've been a couch potato for a couple of years and you go to the gym, It's not going to be that comfortable for the first little while.
If you're overweight or underweight and you have to change your dieting habits, it's not going to be comfortable in the short run, but in the long run, it produces better functioning.
So, those are some approaches I hope that are useful in helping to differentiate.
Philosophy from non-philosophy, from the imitation of philosophy, which is really the opposite of philosophy.
And if you want to know more about those arguments, you can check out the show, An Introduction to Sophistry.
So, thank you everyone so much.
Have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful week.
▲
Export Selection