Art, Philosophy, and Truth

Can art help philosophy ask more vital questions?

The dominant forms of contemporary Anglo-American ‘analytical’ philosophy tend to take their orientation from the success of the modern natural sciences in generating theories which enable the prediction and control of events in the physical universe. The dilemma for philosophy in the face of this success has been to establish a role which takes appropriate account of the power of the sciences while justifying philosophy’s own right to existence. The extreme response to this dilemma is suggested by Martin Heidegger, who, in his late work, especially the essay ‘The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking’ (1969), claims that the natural sciences have actually become what philosophy sought to be, by explaining the nature of what there is. This means philosophy has come to a certain kind of ‘end’. As a successor to philosophy Heidegger calls for ‘thinking’, which is concerned with unconcealment’; the fact that the world comes to make sense at all, before it can become the object of true theoretical and other judgements. Such sense he associates with the ways in which major art changes how we relate to the world.

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John Jones 29 December 2016

Talk, endless talk.

There are billions of different 'truths' out there, each with a different perspective and interpretation. So what is truth? Truth is informantion, which brings us back to different perspective and interpretation. of that information.

Dzen_o 10 March 2016

“…epistemology and the revival of a metaphysics concerned with ‘what fundamental kinds of things there are and what properties and relations they have’…”
– Yea; however

“…unsuccessful the attempt to establish philosophical foundations for the scientific knowledge which determines the nature of our world has been…… Agreement in epistemology and metaphysics seems only to be local and pretty short-lived…”
– Yea, but from that by any means doesn’t follow that the problem “what fundamental kinds of things there are” cannot be a subject of philosophy [and be, to certain extent, outside “usual” sciences] at all. Though if that relates to the mainstream philosophy, such inference is quite true.

Such a situation in philosophy had/has/ happened and is happening till now, quite naturally, because of this philosophy operates with the notions that are Meta-mainstream-philosophical notions – “Matter”, “Consciousness”, “Time”, “Space”, etc.

But all these/such notions can be properly defined or, at least understandable on pithy level, and that is indeed so (and only), in the “The Information as Absolute” conception ((http://vixra.org/pdf/1402.0173v3.pdf), where it is rigorously proven that all what exists in our Universe and outside is/are some informational patterns that are elements of the absolutely fundamental and absolutely infinite “Information” Set.

Including, for example, that in this conception there are no principal epistemological problems, in the reality all such problems, first of all - “Why “nature laws” exist” and “Why human’s consciousness seems evidently is capable to explain how these laws act in Nature?”, aren’t some problems – it seems evident as quite natural, when some informational patterns constitute some systems where some logical, cause-effect, etc. connections exist. Matter is just an example of some dynamical informational system, which is a sub-Set.

At that consciousnesses (that constitute a sub-Set “Consciousness”) are some dynamical informational systems that operate essentially outside the sub-Set Matter (these sub-Sets have occupy partly different regions in the Set), at that – in contrast to an automaton “Matter”, a consciousness recognizes her/himself as something singled out the external, is capable to perceive information about the external and to analyze this information, including – correctly “decode” informational connections between material objects an communications (interactions) between the objects.

The number of main ontological philosophical problems is essentially larger then in epistemology, and they also become be essentially understandable only in the “The Information as Absolute conception”, but cannot be discussed on some suffice level in a post in the IAI; so more – see the link above.

Besides:

Any human’s consciousness obtains and analyzes any information about the external only basing on experiments’ (practice) data. But Nature (and to certain extent – “social” sciences and psychology) sciences analyze such information about Matter and create some theories that put forward some predictions, which must be – and can be - tested at some experiments. Though any experiment’s outcome cannot be a proof of a theory – the postulates (“Nature laws”) of any theory cannot be proven.

The mainstream philosophy operating undefined notions creates some “theories”, i.e. philosophical doctrines, that are – as that is in Nature sciences also- principally non-provable, but – in contrast to Nature sciences – are also non-testable experimentally. Just therefore the mainstream philosophy in fact is something like a religions system, i.e. a system of non-provable and non-testable doctrines where the number of doctrines and corresponding prophets seems isn’t lesser then the number of sects and prophets in existent religions.

But in the informational conception above the philosophy obtains indeed real, and indeed absolutely fundamental subject for the study – the “Information” Set, which seems at least in not too near future will not be a subject of any other science…

Cheers