Currently I am a student going to Brigham Young University taking a couple of philosophy courses. I plan to pursue law school, and word of mouth has suggested philosophy as a useful undergraduate major. So far, I have yet to find little reason why philosophy and philosophizing is worth my time. Also please understand that I believe strongly in a church whose doctrines are sure and steadfast - there is no need for different interpretations.
Here is what initiated my great dislike for the study of philosophy. This semester we have begun studying Rene Descartes. He's a philosopher from the 1600's. Descartes published a long strain of thought titled Meditations on First Philosophy. Descartes, like nearly all philosophers, first begins by finding some kind of foundation (i.e. a base truth) upon which he will construct the rest of this theories. He believes that all he had known prior to his meditations was only deception, and he must bulldoze everything and start again.
This is where I have a problem. How in the world can someone decide to make up foundations and have any validity? The philosopher who created the foundations can believe his own foundations are true, but what credibility does he have to others? It seems that his only premise to support his theories are his perceptions or beliefs about a matter, which could differ entirely with another person. So how can he begin? He can get a group of people together that might believe in his philosophies, but isn't this what we call religion? There seems to me, no way of proving a philosophy is true. It all seems like a popular belief-fest. Yet philosophers continue to use the language "therefore", "I can then conclude", or "this proves", as if to say that any philosophy can be concrete without falter.
A philosophy may be true in a single circumstance or situation described, but one cannot make up a universal philosophy that applies to all. it's absurd. I can drop a ball from one hand to another hand, notice the gravity that pulls the ball down, and then conclude that for that instance that the ball did in fact drop from one hand to the other. But it would be foolish of me to say that every and any ball, when released from one hand, can be caught in another hand. What if the ball is 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit? Can it still be caught? Of course it cannot. There must be a long string of explanatory detail to describe the circumstance in order to even come close to making a conclusion that can be even remotely true. This is what lawyers do. They create seemingly infinite pages of fine print in which they attempt to place roadblocks in front of every loophole imaginable. But still companies lose lawsuits, because no policy can be absolutely universal in every circumstance - at least not to the persuasion of every member of the jury.
Philosophy is fun, and an interesting way of thinking, but let us make no error by deciding that philosophy can be a way of determining ultimate truth.
After reading your theories, I can then conclude you have your own philosophy of philosophy.
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