One of the Largest and Most Visited Sources of Philosophical Texts on the Internet.





The British Archive of  the American Writer's  Poems, Prose and Political  and  Philosophical  Criticism

Published by

The British Sansom Society
Preston  England

With the kind permission of the author
                       
DEFINING PHILOSOPHY
My dictionary defines philosophy as:

“The rational investigations of the truths and
principles of being, knowledge or conduct.”

What about this definition:

Philosophy, even as including or depending upon eliminativism, is the investigation and analysis of belief. For me, belief is the sum total of what you call the “…unitary, numerically symbolising brain,” or more specifically what all that stuff does.

All that we do, say and build emerge out of synaptic groupings – some of which are established beginning at birth, and some of which are stitched together with experience. I call all of those groupings our beliefs. I agree completely that what is left after the removal of the voodoo systems of analysis and interpretation of human behavior, as philosophy, is simply neurology. Michael Gazzaniga, a prominent neuroscientist claims that psychology, as it has been known, is dead; it is being replaced with neurology and cognitive science. I would say the same thing for philosophy. Seen as only synaptic groupings, the mystery of thought is removed and replaced by the examination of how and why such groupings are there. Why have we accepted the Platonic view that the idea of a circle is a circle? Why do we believe that triangles exist without any specific triangle present? Why do we believe that the number pi exists outside the human brain? Why have we invented the concept of God? Do the synaptic God-groupings in all brains look the same? These are legitimate questions about how the physical brain functions. And they are questions that can be posed in light of your and my definition of philosophy.



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