IS TRUTH TRUE?
Philosophy suggests many possibilities that enlarge our thoughts.
On a freezing January afternoon in 1982, Air Florida Flight 90 crashed on take-off from Washington National Airport and plunged into the icy Potomac River, killing 78 people. A balding man, probably in his 50s was seen clinging with five other survivors to the tail section of the airplane. He was described by rescue workers as appearing alert and in control. Every time the rescue helicopters lowered a lifeline and flotation ring to him, he passed it on to another passenger. Nature cared nothing about them. This man, on the other hand, cared totally. So the timeless battle between nature and man commenced on the Potomac.
“For as long as that man could last, they went at each other, nature and man: the one making no distinctions between good and evil, acting on no principles, offering no lifelines; the other acting wholly on distinctions, principles, and one supposes, on faith,” wrote Roger Rosenblatt, bestselling author and philosopher.
In a mass casualty it is not uncommon to find people like him. One wonders, though: Is nature indifferent to good and evil?
It is a kind of question only philosophy seems to have scope to discuss.
“The universe allows both good and evil to exist in it,” says Dr Abdul Matin, professor emeritus, Department of Philosophy at Dhaka University. “So we can say that universe is indifferent. If it wasn't, it would take one and discard the other.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein once said that the aim of philosophy is to show the 'fly the way out of the bottle'. While it is unclear whether anyone — philosopher or fly — should be flattered by this comparison, his overall point is clear enough. When we get curious about such questions, we are drawn into puzzles by the promise of sweet enlightenment, only to find ourselves caught in frustration and banging our heads against the same wall over and over again. To find understanding about some of the deepest questions in life, questions such as: why are we here? What is the nature of reality? What is truth? Is truth true? What is good and bad, right and wrong? — We need liberation— liberation from the prison of traditional thinking.
There are, however, complaints that philosophy is an irrelevant “ivory-tower” exercise, useless to any except those interested in logic-chopping for its own sake.
“People who are skeptical about philosophy think that these questions are subjective and have no answers,” says Simon Clarke, a PhD from Oxford and associate professor of Philosophy at Asian University for Women. “But philosophers think that with careful thought (and with the help of science) we can find true answers to these questions. Our thinking about these and other issues is sometimes confused by logical and conceptual errors as well as misinformed factual beliefs, and by a lack of theoretical understanding. Philosophy can correct these errors through conceptual clarifications and by discovering/building general theories that help us to understand these issues,” he says via email.
Science, through its inventions, is useful even to people who are totally ignorant of it. Philosophy has no such utility. If philosophy has any value, it is for those who study it. Imagine a world without poverty and diseases. There would still remain much to be done to produce a valuable society. Bertrand Russell in his essay The Value of Philosophy wrote, “...The goods of the mind are at least as important as the goods of the body. It is exclusively among the goods of the mind that the value of philosophy is to be found; and only those who are not indifferent to these goods can be persuaded that the study of philosophy is not a waste of time.”
Science and philosophy complement each other. Professor Matin says, “Philosophy comes before and after science. Philosophy of science tells us what the goal of science is and what method science applies and how acceptable the methods are. In this case, philosophy comes before science. Then we are left with the question: what to do with scientific findings, what are their implications? Philosophy answers those questions. In this case, philosophy comes after science. As long as scientific findings are relevant in our lives, we have to admit that philosophy is relevant in our lives.”
Countries that have prospered economically and technologically seem to have been guided by a philosophy. For example, America is pragmatic, India, despite its corruption and poverty seem to be non-violent, Germany has been heavily influenced by Kant and Nietzsche. “No one in our country bothers to think about what our philosophy is or what should be our philosophy. We have inherited certain things that guide our life. What we are having is a politics of selfish interests. I do not see any grand ideals at work here. Morality is like water--- it filters from top down. When morality has to rise from bottom up, we call it a revolution,” says Dr Matin. “Truth and morality are closely related. A truth seeker cannot be fully immoral.”
So what is truth?
Few have studied philosophy with such a great theoretical interest as Dr Abdul Matin.
Bertrand Russell believed that the value of philosophy is found exclusively in the goods of the mind.
Dr Matin says, “It's a two-part question. One is: what are the truths of different situations? The other one is: What do we understand by truth? For example, what is the truth of Bangladeshi politics? Is it in good hands? What is the truth of a politician? Is he a true patriot or not? To find these truths social, economic or political research is necessary. The other question is philosophical. It is easier asked than answered… Fools rush in where angels fear to trade.” Philosophy teaches us to ask questions. But the freedom to ask questions in our country seems to be slipping away from us every day. “When you cannot ask questions, it is called tyranny,” says professor Matin. “Good leadership encourages questions. In the glorious past of religion, the Caliphs always encouraged questions.” Few take up the study of philosophy with such a great theoretical interest as professor Matin who has a PhD from Canada and a post doctorate from Oxford. He wanted to understand the universe. “I think the most fundamental question is: how did the universe come about and why? There could have been nothing. Then why is there something at all? But the more I studied the more I was convinced that the ultimate questions of philosophy are unanswered and existence is a great mystery.” Under every deep opens a lower deep. Theologian and philosopher Raimon Panikkar believed that questions such as: What is reality? What is man? ….all assume that there “is” something presupposed in every question. The ultimate question would be that question beyond which there is nothing “else” to ask—which does not question itself, and stops at a that without a why calling for further interrogation. So back to square one. If philosophy cannot answer the most fundamental questions, then why study it at all? “It's like a detective trying to nab a criminal. He may ultimately fail but he will, through his investigation, learn many things about the crime,” says Dr Matin. “Your search for answers may not always be successful but you will learn many things. It is also worth learning why life is mysterious. It is also worth knowing why we cannot find answers.” Bertrand Russell wrote, “Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom.” If you think that the only possible “use” of philosophy would be to provide a foundation for beliefs that need no foundation, then the conclusion that philosophy is of little importance for everyday life follows immediately. But philosophy can be of practical significance. Even though basic beliefs on ethics or politics do not require prior philosophical justification, they do need what we might call “intellectual maintenance,” which itself typically involves philosophical thinking. The perennial objection to any appeal to philosophy is that philosophers themselves disagree among themselves about everything, so that there is no body of philosophical knowledge on which non-philosophers can rely. That may be true. But they do agree about many logical interconnections and conceptual distinctions that are essential for thinking clearly. An example: thinking about morality requires the distinction between an action that is intrinsically wrong (regardless of its consequences) and one that is wrong simply because of its consequences. Such distinctions arise from philosophical thinking, and philosophers know a great deal about how to understand and employ them. In this important sense, there is a body of philosophical knowledge on which non-philosophers can and should rely. But then again, what is right and what is wrong?
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