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Part 1
Overview of Worldviews

Clment Vidal The Frontiers Collection The Beginning and the End 2014 The Meaning of Life in a Cosmological Perspective 10.1007/978-3-319-05062-1 Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014

Following the development of modern science, scientists have taken over more and more issues from philosophers. For example, classic philosophical problems about the mind, time, space, or the cosmos are now investigated by scientific means. How should philosophers react to this? They may feel intruded upon, and react by taking refuge in issues science will never touch. Or they may be delighted by scientific progress on philosophical issues, since it contributes new ideas, arguments, and insights for our common quest to understand the world.

Philosophers thus often need to redefine the scope of philosophy and its relationship to science. They can also take the opportunity to embrace new scientific knowledge. Partly because science has taken over some formerly philosophical issues, modern philosophy has split into two main traditions, analytic and continental , with different drawbacks that we shall briefly examine.

Decades ago, Paul Ricoeur (1979) directed a survey of the main trends of philosophy. He distinguished three main trends:

(1) Philosophy as Weltanschauung (worldview),

(2) English and American analytic philosophy,

(3) Subjectivity and beyond.

Philosophy in trend (3) explores other forms of experience than objective knowledge. Philosophers who went this way include the young Hegel, Kierkegaard, the young Marx, and some disciples of phenomenology. This trend corresponds to continental philosophy . It is a stimulating intellectual approach but faces harsh criticism, most notably for its lack of methodology (see e.g., Shackel 2005).

By contrast, although analytic philosophy (2) brings precise methods of analysis and criticism into philosophy, it still lacks a general guideline or a unifying agenda. The use of logical methods is insufficient to constitute such an agenda. Analytic philosophy really needs to go beyond pure analysis; it also needs to be complemented with a synthetic dimension. Synthetic worldview construction, as we shall see, can fill this gap. Our philosophical position in this book will thus tend toward trend (1).

Still, distinguishing those three trends does not answer our question: What is philosophy? A fuzzy answer is that it is a quest to understand humankind and its world. For the most important questions, this enterprise overlaps with science and religion. Philosophy, science, and religion share this quest for understanding, and they can build more or less strong relationships to pursue it (see e.g., Russell et al. 1988). The result is that starting respectively from science, religion, or philosophy, we end up with different worldviews.

We shall argue that having a coherent and comprehensive worldview is the central aim of philosophy. But what, more precisely, is a worldview? How can we compare very different worldviews? Specifically, what are the respective strengths and weaknesses of scientific, religious, and philosophical worldviews?

To better grasp what philosophy is and to navigate its rich and complex landscape, I first introduce, in ). By synthesizing them, we can hope to build more coherent and comprehensive philosophical or theological worldviews.

Thus Part I provides an ambitious yet considered philosophical framework to serve as a launch pad for our journey into the big cosmological issues: the beginning and the end, and the meaning of life.

Clment Vidal The Frontiers Collection The Beginning and the End 2014 The Meaning of Life in a Cosmological Perspective 10.1007/978-3-319-05062-1_1

Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014

1. The Six Dimensions of Philosophy

Clment Vidal 1

(1)

Center Leo Apostel, Global Brain Institute, Evolution, Complexity and Cognition Research Group, Free University of Brussels, Krijgskundestraat 33, 1160 Brussels, Belgium

Clment Vidal

Email:

URL: http://clement.vidal.philosophons.com

Abstract

We introduce six dimensions of philosophy. The first three deal with first-order knowledge about reality ( descriptive , normative , and practical ), the next two deal with second-order knowledge about knowledge ( critical and dialectical ), and the sixth dimension ( synthetic ) integrates the other five. We describe and illustrate the dimensions with Leo Apostels worldview program. Then we argue that we all need a worldview to interact with our world and to give a meaning to our lives. Such a worldview can be more or less explicit, and we argue that for rational discourse it is essential to make it as explicit as possible. We illustrate the dynamic interrelation of the different worldview components with a cybernetic diagram.

While defining what a worldview is, it is useful to distinguish six dimensions in philosophy, as depicted in Fig.. We distinguish between first-order and second-order knowledge (Adler 1993, pp. 1316). First-order knowledge is about reality and second-order knowledge is about knowledge itself. A third-order synthetic dimension (6) integrates the five dimensions of first and second order. The descriptive dimension (1) and the normative dimension (2) correspond to Adlers (1993) metaphysical and moral dimensions. The critical dimension (4) and the dialectical dimension (5) partially overlap with Adlers objective and categorial dimensions. Dimensions (4), (5), and (6) are also inspired by Broad (1947; 1958), who calls them analysis , synopsis , and synthesis . We now dive into these dimensions.

Fig. 1.1

The six dimensions of philosophy

1.1 First-Order Questions

A philosophical agenda defines the range of problems and issues that are addressed by a philosophy. What are the most profound questions of existence? Those questions, but not their answers , are surprisingly enduring throughout the history of philosophy (see e.g. Passmore 1961, p. 39; Rescher 2006, p. 91). The worldview approach developed by Leo Apostel elegantly explicates the questions (Apostel and Van der Veken 1991; trans. in Aerts et al. 1994); we can summarize them as:

(a)

What is? Ontology (model of being)

(b)

Where does it all come from? Explanation (model of the past)

(c)

Where are we going? Prediction (model of the future)

(d)

What is good and what is evil? Axiology (theory of values)

(e)

How should we act? Praxeology (theory of actions).

These questions correspond to the big, eternal, or age-old philosophical questions. Each question corresponds to a branch of first-order knowledge (in italics above). It is important to recognize that starting with this agenda is already a philosophical choice. We shall discuss the agenda in more depth when we describe the scope in agenda criterion (). Although the six dimensions of philosophy are more general than this worldview agenda, I introduce them here because they clarify our philosophical framework.

Apostels definition of a worldview is not just as a representation of the world because it also includes theories of values and actions [questions (d)(e)]. An answer to a worldview question forms a worldview component . Articulated together, the components form a worldview that we define as a coherent collection of concepts allowing us to construct a global image of the world, and in this way to understand as many elements of our experience as possible (Aerts et al. 1994, p. 17).

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