Topics Philosophy

Question I was taught that philosophers should not try to abolish ordinary notions like "existence" or "truth," but only to explore them. But I have also heard that time may not be necessary for fundamental physics. In general it seems possible for science to drop an ordinary type of notion by demonstrating a theory (or theories) without it. Can philosophy also do away with an ordinary notion? Should it try to?

Accepted:
May 9, 2008

Comments

"Shoulds" in philosophy are a tough sell. And in particular, the idea that philosophers "should not" try to overturn ordinary notions is one that's regularly challenged by philosophers. For example: many philosophers have argued that there is no such thing as a "self." Some philosophers have argued that the ordinary notion of belief is incoherent. And challenges to the idea of time, to take your example, have come from within philosophy itself; McTaggart's famous article "The Unreality of Time" offered purely philosophical arguments for abandoning our familiar ways of thinking about time.

It would be not just hard but perverse to argue that philosophy should never challenge our ordinary conceptions -- even if the challenge runs very deep. After all, sometimes we are confused, and even when we're not, there's often something to be learned from meeting the challenge. That said, some attacks on ordianry notions may take those notions to carry more baggage than they really do. The case of the "self" may be a good example. Ordinary people seldom use phrases like "the self," though they do use words like "myself" and "yourself," and while people may say peculiar things about "the self" when pressed by philosophers, it's not clear that the extra stuff plays much of a role in their day-to-day thinking.