User:Heah/philosophy

Philosophy
People have great problems understanding truth, both here in wikipedia and in general, so i've written a little essay of sorts. You can read it if you want. That's why it's here. It's kinda long; the npov section is pretty short though.

NPOV
People misunderstand the NPOV policy. Even editors that have been here for a long time. I did at first. I study philosophy, and the idea that this encyclopedia was supposed to be devoid of points-of-view bugged the heck out of me, because that's impossible. But that isn't what NPOV means! (Really.)

Many people don't like it because they don't believe in the "Objective". Yet, it does not claim to present ANY of the following:
 * Objective Truth
 * Scientific/Materialist Truth
 * The Truth

Wikipedia was put together and is maintained by programmers and other fairly intelligent individuals, and one should not presume that they are unaware of post-positivist philosphical thought, relativism, or Schrödinger's cat. It does NOT mean "objective truth", it means what it says, "neutral point of view". This means (ideally) that all significant, verifiably extant points of view are represented, without any one being touted as the "truth". The point of view of the article remains neutral- it gives the points of views of others, and does not claim that some of these points of view are "objectively" wrong or right.

What it does use is FACTS, facts being verifiable and citable. If a large percentage of people believe in creationism, if creationism has a cosmology that can be cited, those are the facts in question when writing the article. that many people believe in it and hold it as a point of view is a FACT. that the world was created 6000 years ago is NOT a fact.

Many people support NPOV but incorrectly think it means "objective" or "scientific". Yet much like creationism, that the world came out of the big bang is again NOT a fact. That a large number of people believe this, that scientists publish papers demonstrating this- THAT is a fact.

In this use of the word, for a fact to be verifiable and citable does not mean that the big bang happened. The reports do not verify the existence of the big bang, as far as wikipedia is concerned. The research itself is the fact; the research is verified by citing sources, ie providing a link to or information on the paper demonstrating the big bang. The research has not been verified as true, but rather, the presence of the statements in the article are verified as not being original research. The research is the fact, not the big bang.

This means, for instance, that the article "creationism" does not belong in the superstition category, simply because it has been verified by science as incorrect. That would violate the NPOV policy, as many people have the view that creationism is the truth. The article should, however, note that the tenets of creationism are debated by most (all?) scientific research, and cite this.

To regard a scientific/materialist presentation of articles as proper violates NPOV. That is simply one world view, not the Truth, and should be presented accordingly.

While for the most part i think wikipedia does real well, i do think it tends to take a scientific bias. Can you imagine any chemical being afd'd as non-notable, no matter how insignificant its uses or existence? absolutely not. Ditto with plants and other stuff like that. And i'm mostly okay with this, as every chemical should have an article. But when people come around sticking NPOV tags on articles discussing (eg) mystical experience, simply because Science says there is no such thing, it bothers the heck out of me. When shamanism says that shamanism is a healing practice and that "this is believed to be accomplished by traversing the axis mundi and forming a special relationship with, or gaining control over, spirits," that does not violate NPOV! It doesn't say that shamans traverse the axis mundi, it is said that this is how their practices are believed to be effected, and THAT is the fact, and this is a fact because shamans and those living in animist cultures DO believe that this is how the shaman does his work. It does't state that the axis mundi or spirits are factually existent, it states, as it should, that this is something people believe.

me
Which takes me into my own philosophical beliefs. I am a radical empiricist, but since that article doesn't exist, you should read pragmatism instead. basically the same thing, just with different foci. I would say that i'm a platonist but they understand Plato just about as well as Christians understand Jesus, so i won't.

Radical empiricism, as spawned by the brilliant William James, is a philosophical method stating that experience should ALWAYS and only be the foundation of all belief. You don't know something if you haven't experienced it; it is in experience that we obtain knowledge. This is why someone cannot give you or tell you the requisite knowledge and skills required to play the piano. to be able to play the piano, you must have the experience of knowing how to play the piano. That doesn't come in a book. One can NEVER step outside of his or her own experience; IE i can never ever have the experience of being you, because i'm me.

We then use these experiences to formulate our beliefs, ala the pragmatism first set up by C. S. Peirce. As he says:
 * Consider what effects that might conceivably have practical bearing you conceive the object of your conception to have. Then your conception of those effects is the WHOLE of your conception of the object.

Translated, this means that our conception of any given object is, in whole, the effect of that object in our experience. Meaning cannot be removed from experience. We know nothing and cannot know anything outside of experience. This is radical empiricism. The implications of this are important. Peirce again:
 * A conception, that is, the rational purport of a word or other expression, lies exclusively in its conceivable bearing upon the conduct of life.

Which is where things start to get interesting. As James says:
 *  . . . Truth is one species of good, and not, as it is usually supposed, a category distinct from good, and co-ordinate with it. The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite assignable reasons.


 * leave out that whole notion of satisfactory working or leading (which is the essence of my pragmatic account) and call truth a static logical relation, independent even of possible leadings or satisfactions, and it seems to me you cut all ground from under you.

So truth, or rather proper belief, isn't founded on a logical relation or objective fact. Rather, it is what is best to believe. This doesn't just mean you should or could go around believing any old thing. Like James believed in God, as he felt it was a belief of great benefit to his life; however, he in no way expects that all people should or could believe in God.

Plato knew this; he also said that truth was just a form of the good, in the Republic. But nobody knows he knows this. Kurt Vonnegut knows this; anyone who hasn't read Cat's Cradle and heard the noble lies of Bokononism is missing out. Robert Pirsig knew this. One of my professors knows this, but the rest don't.

The pragmatists were not relativists- lets get that straight. Richard Rorty might be, but he would also like to pretend that James didn't mean that truth was a part of the good when he said that truth was part of the good, and seems to miss the point of the whole experience thing by focusing on the difficulty of verifiably coordinating experience with any sort of objective reality or the experience of others, rather than the centrality of experience when formulating belief according to what is best to believe. I don't think that he really believes it's best to believe anything. So i don't know how he can really be called a pragmatist, and we can move on from him. ..

The pragmatists were not relativists. Peirce believed that eventually, given the practically infinite amount of time that sentient life would have to sort through ideas and experience, we would eventually come up with the truth. Whether he believed we could ever get there or not, i dunno, but he did believe that the truth was out there somewhere, and that the pragmatic method cleaved towards it.

James, on the other hand, found the truth with nitrous oxide, but understood that the revelations of the mystic hold no water for others- as we've been discussing, you have to experience things for yourself. Otherwise it's just another interesting idea worth investigating. The truth he found shouldn't be called the truth. Plato usually called it "the Good" or the "Beautiful"; Lao-tzu called it the tao, the way, the path. Robert Pirsig called it Quality. This isn't contradictory with pragmatism- the truth is what is best to believe, the truth is determined by the good, the truth is what leads. the tao is the path, the way; it leads. Plato (usually) and Pirsig (always) defined it in terms of value. Pragmatism does not demand that we accept the tao or quality or the good, as it only demands that you believe what is best for within your own experience; but it certainly doesn't deny it, seeming to imply it as it is founded on it- we are to find some sort of "truth" based on what is best to believe, taking for an axiom that some things are better to believe. And regardless of all that, if you've had the experience of the mystic, you'll believe it. That's how it works. trust me. It is so intensely the best thing to believe that anything else is just kinda washed out in its glow.

But I digress. regardless of the individual beliefs of James or Peirce and the nature of the good, pragmatism is not relativism. It doesn't think that all beliefs are okay, or that it is okay to believe anything. Peirce once said, in a fleeting moment of consiseness, that pragmatism can be summed up simply as "dismiss make-believes." It is not okay to think you can fly. It is not beneficial to your experience. You will jump off of a building and die. That is bad. This is what pragmatism says. Peirce, in fact, saw it as akin to using the scientific method when processing experience and acting. We form hypotheses, reject or advance certain conceptions, all according to what works the best. For pragmatism, it is imperative that your beliefs work, that your beliefs are the best beliefs you can have, and that you are constantly examining your experience to ensure this. Some beliefs are better than others, it tells us. No beliefs in particular; it could never demand that. But it isn't okay to just believe whatever you want, and all beliefs are NOT created equal.

Everyone is a pragmatist, they just don't know it, and usually aren't very good at it. But this is how experience works- we have experiences, and we seek to rectify past and possible future experience by conceiving of it in the best way possible. As we only know what the best way possible is through our own experience, some people hold bad beliefs, and many beliefs held by many people are contradictory to the pragmatic method. But how else could we come by belief?

Wikipedia, experience, and information
Radical empiricism, while not demanding that we accept the revelations of the mystic, DOES demand that we do not dismiss the mystic's experience out of hand. All experience must be investigated; the validity of any experience cannot simply be denied. A workable metaphysical framework must account for ALL forms of experience; none can be dismissed.

Which brings us back to wikipedia and NPOV. Wikipedia does not seek to provide the best possible things to believe; rather, with the wealth of information at our fingertips, it helps to open us up and expose us to a multitude of theories and methods and things and belief systems. We can then apply these to our experience and formulate the best beliefs possible.

Much like pragmatism, wikipedia doesn't think it should just be open to anything. statements must be verified. original research is not allowed. There should be reasons for the things being stated.

Having a neutral point of view is kinda like being a radical empiricist. Everything must be taken into account, nothing is to be left out. (and i don't mean that radical empiricism is inclusionist!!) But it works only as a conveyor of things other people know; it does not make any decisions for us about what we should or should not believe, and it should not. That comes only in our own experience.

Conclusion
And yet, wikipedia only gives information, not experience.

As Plato said,
 * Those who think . . . that writing can yield results that are clear or certain, must be quite naive and truly ignorant . . . how could they possibly think that words that have been written down can do more than remind those who already know what the writing is about?.

As the Zen master says,
 * Those who know, know.

Or, as William James says,
 * Medical school; divinity school, school! SCHOOL!
 * Oh my God, oh God; oh God!