I was feeling really contemplative this morning, and I thought about how I regard the different views on social structure, primarily the contrast between libertarianism and socialism. I've said in other threads that this difference is between a rights-based system and a purpose-based system (with neither intended to have any inherent implication of good or bad), and that it essentially stems from one core question: Are humans primarily individuals or primarily part of a social entity? And I had said that the answer is basically subjective; both facets of human nature exist and there really isn't a way to prove that one should be regarded above the other. Anyway, I started thinking that this really isn't the core question... you can go back further than this. I started thinking that perhaps all of the conceivable questions in existence can be organized in a tree structure, with the instance of asking a particular question dependent upon a specific string of answers to previous questions. The previous question being dependent on the answer before it, and so on... all the way back to what I refer to as "the first question." It's probably more accurate to view it as a web, since many questions may depend on multiple questions before it... so it can be seen as a series of parallel linear dependencies. I kind of relate this to physic's attempt to seek a Grand Unified Theory... a law of the natural world that would encompass the 4 basic forces of physics (weak, strong, electromagnetic, and gravity). As far as I'm aware, they have been able to unify all but gravity, mostly because we don't yet know the method that gravity propagates via. The benefit of this idea of mine is that it theoretically helps one to form a truly consistent opinion. All people have opinions on certain questions that are much higher up on the tree, but most never consider the root questions. If one were to consider their answer to a question that they've held for a while, it's possible that in trying to trace the path through the tree that they would arrive at a dependent question where they answer that question contrary to that the answer needs to be to have their present opinion. That would suggest an inconsistency and perhaps a need to re-evaluate their position. So I've been trying to think about what that first question is. At first, I came up with "Are we discussing with logic or something outside of logic?" But this is unsatisfactory for me because the fact that we are asking the question already necessitates the use of logic. I then came up with an alternative, and it's still the best I've been able to produce: "Can truth exist outside of logic?" The advantage to wording it this way is that the existence of the question is possible with either answer. If the answer is "yes" then I don't know how to proceed, it might suggest that no further questions can be asked. I would also say that if the correct answer to this question is "potato","OMG", or *holds up a drawing of a penis*, then that's the same as answering yes. I'm wondering if anyone can come up with a non-banal question (meaning not something like "what is the first question?" or "am I considering this subject?") that would precede this. inb4 TT;DR (Technetium Thread, Didn't Read)
this video has some relevance to what are you saying about individualism and the evolutionary advantages of having a social behavior.
I like the idea but maybe you could give some examples of questions stemming from questions so the rest of us can get a better idea of what you have in mind.
what is there how do we know what should we do I don't think "Can truth exist outside of logic?" fits your goal because, in order to understand it properly, you need to define truth, existence, logic, and "outside of" (which sounds like a metaphor). My three are basically the questions of the three main branches of philosophy (metaphysics, epistemology, ethics). I think of metaphysics as the most basic, but any answer to metaphysical questions relies on assumptions about how we know things, so metaphysics/epistemology are tied together.
I kind of see where you are going, but... you can't really ask any other questions without knowing if truth is derived from logic. For example, if you want to start with the meanings of truth, existence, and logic, how would answer that if you haven't concluded that the question is going to be answered in a logical way? Without the understanding of logic already in place, I can define any of those words to mean whatever I want. I also specifically used "can" instead of "does" because it allows for pretty much all possibilities: that truth is dependent on logic, that truth can exist outside of logic, and that no truth exists at all (I have not worked it out but I suspect that this is the same as saying that truth can exist outside of logic). I had some ideas when I made the thread but now I'm kind of drawing a blank... I'm not even sure I worded it right. I guess one example would be... If you were to ask "What rights does a person have?" or "Is freedom of speech a right?" you would first have to have answered the question "Are we operating in a rights-based social system?" with "yes", that question itself depending (like potentially every question) on answering "Can truth exist outside of logic?" with "no", although probably with a few more steps in between.
In my metaphysics class the first question was 'why is there something rather than nothing', but I can see how a question about the nature of reason may proceed it.
It's sort of like Descarte's meditations in a way. Absent is your formal philosophy education yet you've been able to formulate some of the same questions, which is admirable, but please just go download a textbook or look at the Stanford online encyclopedia and save yourself some trouble. This is what my class used, looks like it is a popular choice: http://www.amazon.com/Metaphysics-The-Big-Questions-Philosophy/dp/0631205888
I was going to rant about why this thread is crap and how I decided not to pursue philosophy because of semantic bullshit like this, but instead i'll play your game. Here's my first thought: "What is the purpose of a question?" or "Is the purpose of a question to find absolute truth?" Also, wtf are we going to allow to have an operational definition in this little exercise, how deep into this bullshit do you really want to wade? For example, define each of "What", "is" "the" "purpose" "of" "a" "question" "?" Let's ignore that last statement though because its pretty endless and pointless and assume we are going to use commonly understood definitions for these words.What's the reason behind asking a question? If you don't want, or the person you are asking doesn't want to give, a logical answer that follows argumentative form then the assumptions you make from the question's response will certainly be different won't they? If you want to follow a backwards trail of response to question to response to question then I would suggest you define a question by the results this question provides.
It's probably impossible to find a first question, since you could always pose a question about the question. But if you try going forwards instead of backwards, and start with a single question, then you could probably make different trees based on the seed (first question) and what you use to nurture it (circumstances to provoke further questioning.
Also (not saying this applies to those suggestions), the "first question" should be something that can conceivably have more than one answer. Remember that I'm trying to create a tree-like structure (kind of... but like if each branch can connect to multiple larger branches rather than one).
I've had the same idea myself a few times and at first I thought "Wow, I'm pretty smart", but what you're really describing is logic and consequently science, which is nothing new. Our understanding of the world around us could indeed be summed up by an enormous tree (or a graph probably) of "why" and "how", that's just common sense IMO, but it's too large to fully connect all the nodes and traverse all the way back to the root. Trying to figure out your root question would likely require that you know absolutely everything. You might get a close estimate if you took all our combined knowledge and made a tree by asking "why" ad infinitum, but even that would be an futile undertaking, and as others have pointed out; how would you know when to stop?
I think I was a little confused by the wording of your question. (Now I understand it as "Are the rules of a good standard for truth?" or maybe "Are the rules of logic truth-preserving?") The question "Does truth exist?" might precede your question about logic. I'm reading Sextus Empiricus' Outlines of Skepticism right now and he takes aim at logic first, because that'd undermine knowledge of everything else, so you're probably on the right track.
Yeah, I was thinking about this... I am wondering if perhaps (and I have not put much effort into trying to work it out yet) that if you answer that truth does not exist, that this might be synonymous with answering "Can truth exist outside of logic?" with "yes", in that either of those result in possibly not being able to rationally construct and/or answer any further questions. However, I'm not really sure that identical results implies identical questions. The challenge with dealing with subject matter that exists outside of logic or that exists where truth doesn't exist is that we are coming from a perspective opposite both. If a person operated without logic, he wouldn't be able to ask these questions. So we're trying to evaluate a perspective of something that seems to me like it's sealed behind an impenetrable wall from us. Another reason I think the two questions may be related is that I think the only way a person can "argue" against the familiar paradoxes inherent in lack of truth is by using absolute nonsense basically.
Do you mean world-view instead of opinion? Because an opinion is such that its consistency isn't really relevant. So what if one day I love apples and the next I hate them; it's my prerogative right? So let me replace opinion with world-view (excuse me I skipped the rest of your post). If this is your goal, why do you think you need to start with a question? For consistency you start with truth-seeking. For truth you consider rationality, logic... It depends on what type of truth one is seeking, but if it's to do with reality or our physical world then we start with the scientific method, which is the most reliable method we have for determining and understanding reality.
