06 February 2008

Philosophia I

From wikipedia.com:

Philosophy is the discipline concerned with questions of how one should live (ethics); what sorts of things exist and what are their essential natures (metaphysics); what counts as genuine knowledge (epistemology); and what are the correct principles of reasoning (logic).[1][2] The word is of Greek origin: φιλοσοφία (philosophía), meaning love of wisdom.[3]

I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine who's teaching a JC class on Logic--on such subject. We found ourselves on said topic, however, by discussing a real-life situation that seemed to violate logic of foundational core moral standards. Things about the situation were utterly perplexing; the path from the reality of yesteryear seemed that it could not lead to today's reality. Yet, as I seem to hear so often lately: "It is what it is." Funny though... I couldn't help but notice that the logic that we tried to apply to my friend's situation was quite similar to that of the logic we try to apply to engineering a piece of software:
We take this timeframe (SDLC) and try to mesh different sorts of tasks in to virtual compartments of the timeframe--sort of like Play Dough in to cookie cutters--to help us manage intricacies that our brains can't really handle all at once. The SDLC is really just a tool that some smart people came up with to help us get stuff done.
Logic is really just some framework that helps us explain certain things (!=all things) away in reality. Also derived by smart people.
Sometimes the Play Dough just doesn't all fit.

1 comment:

loki said...

"what sorts of things exist and what are their essential natures (metaphysics);" -- this strict definition is actually called ontology (study [or "knowledge", if one must...] of being or existence)--metaphysics is a much larger term than only ontology. It will include theological questions and, ta meta ta phusika, or the things which come after the physics (and are in many ways related to physics and scientific issues, especially in more comtemporary philosophy).

the pedant