Wednesday Wisdom

If we are to believe philosophy is the art of thinking and hopefully thinking well, is there a structure provided to break down subject matter?  In order to formulate the right questions and perhaps find a reasonable answer, it can be helpful to break "the art of thinking" into subsets.  According to general philosophy definitions, five subjects, often overlapping, make up the discipline. 

METAPHYSICS: Literally, the term metaphysics means ‘beyond the physical.’ Typically, this is the branch that most people think of when they picture philosophy. In metaphysics, the goal is to answer the what and how questions in life. Who are we, and what are time and space?

LOGIC: The study of reasoning. Much like metaphysics, understanding logic helps to understand and appreciate how we perceive the rest of our world. More than that, it provides a foundation for which to build and interpret arguments and analyses. 

ETHICS: The study of morality, right and wrong, good and evil. Ethics tackles difficult conversations by adding weight to actions and decisions. 

Politics takes ethics to a larger scale, applying it to a group (or groups) of people. Political philosophers study political governments, laws, justice, authority, rights, liberty, ethics, and much more.

AESTHETICS: What is beautiful? Philosophers try to understand, qualify, and quantify what makes art what it is. Aesthetics also takes a deeper look at the artwork itself, trying to understand the meaning behind it, both art as a whole and art on an individual level. A question an aesthetics philosopher would seek to address is whether or not beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.

EPISTEMOLOGY: This is the study and understanding of knowledge. The main question is how do we know? We can question the limitations of logic, how comprehension works, and the ability (or perception) to be certain. 

2022 - Why do we care?

Consider "Aesthetics" and "Ethics" as they are related to some very interesting technology that is developing. The advancement of Blockchain software and Artificial Intelligence will test the boundaries of what we previously believed. Blockchain software creates a transparent ledger for data and assets to be safely stored and accessed in a community. Artificial Intelligence is simply a computer or software that mimics a human function for example speech recognition software.

"Aesthetics" have been a hot topic with the rise of Non-Fungible tokens(NFT), which is digital art, where original ownership is codified by blockchain. The software can store and identify which is the original piece of art and which are copies. Do we consider digital pictures to be art in the same way as a drawing or painting?  What if these NFT's are computer generated, is this considered artwork? Lastly, if a computer can write a great book or song, is this a masterwork?

One of the most famous exercises of "Ethics" is the Trolley Dilemma. This an ethical thought experiment where there is a runaway trolley moving down railway tracks. In its path, there are five people tied up and unable to move and the trolley is heading straight for them. People are told that they are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If they pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks—but will kill one person who is standing on the side track. The people have the option to either do nothing, and allow the trolley to kill the five people on the main track, or pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.

The rise of autonomous vehicles is bringing this dilemma into a new light. How should a car be programmed, save you at the cost of another life? Autonomous driving has already been shown to be safer than human error, but we seem to be comfortable with human error as opposed to robotic error.

What is art and what is ethical? we will dust off our philosophy books and reexamine these age-old questions. 

And now you know or perhaps, now you have something to think about.

Philosophy is the art of thinking, the building block of progress that shapes critical thinking across economics, ethics, religion, and science.