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THE PURPOSE OF PHILOSOPHY

(Draft One)

1) All language is allegory to experience. The most complex terms are simply increasingly loaded combinations of basic experiences.

2) Our experiences are limited. We can only sense so much on our own, with the physical bodies that we have to work with.

3) Language allows us to collect a greater range of experiences than we can on our own. Even experiences separated by time and space.

4) Our ‘calculative’ (not computational) ability is limited. We can only ‘figure out’ so much on our own.

5) Language allows others to help us calculate what we could not calculate on our own.

6) Systems of measurement allow us to ‘sense’ what we cannot sense with our senses alone.

7) Systems of calculation and computation let us compare and contrast what we cannot figure out on our own.

8) Language, Measurement, and Calculation and Reason allow us to extend our perceptions, and to create symbols that we can manipulate with the limited abilities that we do possess.

9) The purpose of philosophy is to test, integrate, reconstruct, rearrange, evaluate, prioritize and articulate our body of knowledge to our advantage given the new information available to our senses by way of our tools, measurements, communications, and calculations, so that we can make best use of the information at our disposal.

The assumption in this line of reasoning, this set of priorities, is that with more knowledge we have more choices to determine how to make ourselves most happy through the accumulation of experiences.

The other line of reasoning, is that human beings are able at present to be happy if they seek to obtain

The problem is that humans demonstrate a preference for the consumption provided by the first, and demonstrate a preference to expend the intellectual and physical labor of the second. More accurately: they want others to expend the effort on the first, and to reserve for themselves the experiences of the second.

We call conflict of ambitions a desire for ‘free riding’. In fact, we can argue that more human calculation is performed for the purpose of pursuing free riding than any other end except sex.

Curt Doolittle.

Kiev, Ukraine.

(NOTE 1: “Calculation, in its broadest sense, refers to any comparison that permits a judgement. So while numeric computation is included in the definition of calculation, but so is ‘Where can I get a peanut butter sandwich?’ and ‘Do I like chocolate or vanilla ice cream more today?’. We use ‘calculation’ to distinguish simplistic processes from reasoning, which has a higher standard of demands – namely substitution and transformation.)

(NOTE 2: This approach abandons the metaphysical program.)