philg42 wrote: ↑August 12th, 2022, 12:25 pm
Perhaps the idea of right or wrong in philosophy is whether a particular philosophical idea is internally consistent rather than correct or incorrect, or maybe morally right or wrong. Or whether an interpretation of a philosophical idea uses strategies which do not do justice to the original writer's actual work, deliberately or otherwise. For me, 'right' is useful in moving things on and 'wrong' the opposite. Which may not be true for someone else, of course.
I guess that the idea of right and wrong are loaded in a certain way, going back to all kinds of black and white thinking and binary thinking. Internal consistency is probably useful for thinking of ways in which ideas, and logical thought patterns are considered. It does come down to the nature of thinking and one particular book which I have found helpful is, 'Thinking Fast and Slow', by Daniel Kahnemann(2011), in which he explores different aspects of thinking and judgement. He speaks, in particular, of the difference between the immediacy of intuition and the more careful deliberation, slower thinking of analysis.
He also speaks of the nature of the way in which people think in terms of expertise, and lack of it. The entire way in which knowledge is analysed, interpreted and evaluated raises so much in understanding the nature of the thinking processes. This includes the nature of biases, which may be unconscious blindspots.
Part of the issue which I see is that while ideas are based on logic in many aspects of life there is such a complex crossover between reason and emotion, especially in the realm of values. While rationality and critical reason are the tools of philosophy it may be that the emotional aspects lying behind reason play such a significant role, especially in the area of morality. Even beyond moral issues, into conceptions of reality emotional dispositions and what one wishes to believe psychologically, may be extremely significant. It is hard to know whether rationality or emotions have the bigger sway and influence. This is the area which is probably the centre of internal consistency, and may be played out in the wider arena of philosophy debate with other people's arguments and ideas. It may be an aspect of individual and social life which is apart from logic and possibly rationality is built around it . It is hard to know if the skeleton of philosophies proceeds from logic or whether the fles of it is the core body of emotional values. Or, perhaps the division is so intricate and fragile, making it extremely difficult to disentangle the two components.