Considerations

A couple of considerations: does everything have a philosophical element to it? Are there anything behind facades by definition?

One of our first posts on this blog was Goldman's famous barn example. The question was about knowledge, and the example was to show that knowledge by chance is not knowledge at all.

The example goes like this: there are thousands and thousands of barn-facades in southwestern Kentucky, say for a movie. Doug and his wife Tricia are driving along the countryside when Doug points out his long hairy arm with his unkempt nails and says, "That's a barn!"

Except, this time, the thing that Doug pointed to actually is a barn. (Alarming, no?) The fact that it is surrounded by facades means that Doug could have just as easily been mistaken.


Does everything have a philosophical element to it? When I ask if everything has a philosophical element to it, I have no idea what I am saying. Philosophy, we have seen, at least in this blog, and also in our lives, can pertain to, but is not limited to:

The Art of Thinking
the Referee of the Sciences
Ethics and Morality
Theory of Genius
Theory of Success
Definitions and Lexicography
Knowledge aka Epistemology
The upper level of any science (doctorates in this country are called Doctorates of Philosophy and denote post-undergraduate studies)
The integration of sciences (this is what the Modern Philosophers were really known for. Guys like Descartes and Leibniz were able to explain what knowledge is and give pretty decent ideas of how to get to that knowledge. Much much later, guys like Russell were break out stars by crossing mathematics with the ideals of foundation, in order to make a foundation for mathematics.)
Aesthetics
Embryonic Sciences (if it becomes a science, it is out of the realm of philosophy; one example is Astronomy)
Existentialism - Why are we here?
Reasoning
Rationality
Argumentation
Regulation and consideration of Religion
Truth & Falsity (in a mathematical sense)
Truth & Falsity (in a greater sense; like what to do with the facts that we have after we get those facts)

And so much more!


The point, and the considerations of this entry are that indeed not everything has a philosophical element to it. We have to get back to this later, but I'm pretty sure of that.

Next, is there always something new to learn? Is there always something behind a facade? I think ontologically the answer is yes. Ontologically here means by definition, and I think by definition something must have something behind it. I'm thinking here of a great big facade of a building, and then you look behind and it's a prop for a movie studio. There's tons and tons of air behind the building. What is air? What was I doing in a gigantic movie studio?