Topic: Philosophy
The philosopher's role is to ignite wonder, raise the burning issues, inspire the pursuit of answers. It is science that produces the ever-changing, improving answers to the haunting questions that religious wonder poses. There are eight questions that any fair survey of our philosophic history would agree are most fundamental to our existential condition.
Category (type of questions): Examples.
1. Origins (Genesis): How, when, where did life come from? How did it evolve?
2. Politics (Security): Why do humans fight and compete destructively? What are the territorial laws that explain human conflict? How can humans live in relative peace and harmony? How, when, where and why do humans differ (among each other and from other mammalian species) in aggression, control, cooperation, affiliation?
3. Epistemology (Truth, fact, knowledge, language, communications, manufacture of objects, artifacts and symbol systems): How, when, where and why does the mind emerge (in the individual and species)? And how, when, where and why do humans differ in their ability to process information, learn, communicate, think, plan and manufacture?
4. Ethics (Good and evil, right and wrong): How, when, where and why do humans differ in their moral beliefs and rituals? Who decides what is good and right?
5. Esthetics (Beauty, pleasure, luxury, sensory reward): How, when, where and why do humans devote their energies to decoration, hedonism, art, music, entertainment? And how, when, where and why do they differ in modes of pleasure?
6. Ontology (Reality and it's/their definition): How, when, where and why do humans differ in the realities they construct and inhabit? How are realities formed and changed?
7. Teleology (Evolution and de-evolution of life): What are the stages and mechanisms of evolution? How, when, where and why has evolution occurred? Chance? Natural selection? Natural election? Creation? Is life created and evolution blueprinted, who did it? Where is life going?
8. Cosmology (Galactic evolution, of ultimate and basic structure): How, when, where and why was matter-energy formed? What are the basic units and patterns of matter/energy? What are the basic forces, energies and plans that hold the universe together (or don't) and determined evolution? Where are we going?
from Timothy Leary, Changing My Mind Among Others.
Posted by mediafaction
at 12:01 AM EST
