The Questions we hold determine the Paths we take. –RWS
Good morning Gentle Reader.
Consider this: The ‘Themes’ and ‘Questions’ that follow are not the preserve of the specialist (although the specialist does preserve them). These are the themes and questions that we humans have been holding for thousands of years. Together they structure the ways we think about, interact with and act upon our world and one another. They help determine our ‘place’ in our world (the macro-world – the global community and the micro-world — myself).
The great thinkers and the not-so-great thinkers have been holding and engaging these themes and questions for good and for ill. Any person who holds and engages one or more of these themes and/or questions is ‘doing philosophy.’ These themes and questions form the mental models that we integrate and that directly impact the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of our lives.
THEMES: Here is a list of the big themes; a list that we humans have been holding for thousands of years. THE LIST: knowledge, reason, truth, mind, freedom, destiny, identity, God, goodness, beauty, justice, mercy, compassion and empathy.
QUESTIONS: Here are the questions that anyone of us humans might hold and respond to or ‘live’ (Rilke counsels us to live the questions themselves). Let us begin with the six questions that Socrates offered us to consider and hold: What is virtue? What is moderation? What is justice? What is good? What is courage? What is piety?
Here is a list of questions that we humans have also been asking/holding: Who am I? What am I? What is consciousness? Will I survive my bodily death? Do I always act out of self-interest? Might I be a kind of puppet – programmed by ‘Fate’? Am I really ‘Free’? How do I know I have ‘Free-Will’?
My goal is to seek to ‘understand.’ This is not easy for me – and I assume, Gentle Reader, that it is not easy for you. For me, many of these questions continue to be baffling questions – they defy simple responses (although I often offer simple responses to them). On the other hand, if someone were to ask me ‘When is it high-tide?’ I could set out to find the answer. With some effort I would be able to answer the question with some authority. This is a type of question that is called an empirical question. It is a question that can be settled by means of agreed upon procedures – looking, measuring and applying certain rules.
The questions I framed above are not empirical questions – they are not ‘measurable’. So if they are not empirical, what are they?
To ask new questions requires creative imagination. –Einstein
Searcher-Seeker 