What value is there to having a world view? Philosophy can help one develop a comprehensive, coherent world view, but is that necessary for the good life? In contrast would be just having a mostly disconnected set of beliefs and tackling issues one at a time, rather than having a comprehensive world view (e.g. secular humanist, Marxist, naturalist, religious, etc.) into which one can process information and generate judgments.
One value of a comprehensive world view is that it can help you be more consistent. If I deal with issues ad hoc and one at a time, I run more of a risk of taking positions that may ultimately contradict each other since if I haven't done the work to make sure my views fit a comprehensive, consistent picture. An example may be a moral issue. If I don't have a comprehensive philosophical moral world view (e.g. like utilitarianism), I might end up taking a position on a moral issue that I discover later contradicts another more important moral principle that I hold to be true.
There might be some cognitive economic advantages to having a world view as well. Rather than starting from philosophical scratch every time one comes across a new issue, having a world view allows one to generate positions on various issues based upon the already accepted premises of the world view.
Of course, having a world view doesn't necessitate that one be absolutist about it. One can always hold one's world view to be only contingently true until better evidence comes around, or an alternative world view which better explains the available data and what you believe to be true. Of course, getting too comfortable in a world view may inspire someone to reject out of hand evidence or interpretations of evidence that don't fit their world view. But that's a potential problem with any theory. The history of science is replete with cases of evidence being rejected because it didn't fit a prevailing scientific hypothesis, theory or research program, until the weight of the evidence grew so much that a "paradigm shift" occured and the old hypothesis was discarded in favor of a new explanatory hypothesis which better explained the totality of data. The key thing is to have the intellectual integrity to be open to alternative explanatory hypotheses/world views.
So are there other good things about having a world view? Are there other worries which mitigate its value?
One value of a comprehensive world view is that it can help you be more consistent. If I deal with issues ad hoc and one at a time, I run more of a risk of taking positions that may ultimately contradict each other since if I haven't done the work to make sure my views fit a comprehensive, consistent picture. An example may be a moral issue. If I don't have a comprehensive philosophical moral world view (e.g. like utilitarianism), I might end up taking a position on a moral issue that I discover later contradicts another more important moral principle that I hold to be true.
There might be some cognitive economic advantages to having a world view as well. Rather than starting from philosophical scratch every time one comes across a new issue, having a world view allows one to generate positions on various issues based upon the already accepted premises of the world view.
Of course, having a world view doesn't necessitate that one be absolutist about it. One can always hold one's world view to be only contingently true until better evidence comes around, or an alternative world view which better explains the available data and what you believe to be true. Of course, getting too comfortable in a world view may inspire someone to reject out of hand evidence or interpretations of evidence that don't fit their world view. But that's a potential problem with any theory. The history of science is replete with cases of evidence being rejected because it didn't fit a prevailing scientific hypothesis, theory or research program, until the weight of the evidence grew so much that a "paradigm shift" occured and the old hypothesis was discarded in favor of a new explanatory hypothesis which better explained the totality of data. The key thing is to have the intellectual integrity to be open to alternative explanatory hypotheses/world views.
So are there other good things about having a world view? Are there other worries which mitigate its value?
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Los Angeles
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Re: The value of a world view
Mon, January 31, 2005 - 5:35 PMThe more you see the better, but try to keep it all in balance, ie don't lose sight of the local perspective or you may wake up in a fascist america; that is of course, if you haven't already.
