Philosophising
Is not the whole point of philosophical thinking to supply warrants for its conclusions and perspectives, to appeal to the commonality of reason (in a rather broad sense) for consideration and understanding?

My point is that there are many different ways to express "creative thoughts about life" and one of these is through philosophical discourse.


Philosophical thoughts and theories are "tested" through argumentative discourse by which means the reader is lead through the thinking involved in reaching a conclusion or a perspective about the world that might be different from his own. In this sense of encompasing, philosophy is akin to the truths of great music; the question whether Beethoven or Mozart is "right" does not arise.

Insofar as it is a logical process philosophising usually proceeds by abduction, by the the elimination of contradictions, a form of proof recommended by Sherlock Holmes. Without contradiction, says the Dalai Lama of analytical philosophy, there is no progress.

If we are prepared to incorporate contradictions in our worldview then this method is useless, and if we are not then we are using logical proofs to form our views. I've never come across a philosopher, or anyone else, who did not in most cases conclude that a contradiction is a proof of falsity. Indeed, it would be impossible to get through the day without believing this. So I can't get my head around the idea that philosophy can abandon the use of proofs.

At any rate, the idea that 'Eastern' philosophers are not interested in proofs is a non-starter. Consider Nagarjuna's proof of the absurdity of positive metaphysical positions, made in support of the Buddha's teachings, or Zeno's reductio arguments against certain of such positions, made in support of Parmenides equivalent doctrine. Without proofs we might as well adopt whichever philosophical position suits our temperament.

The way I see it is this. If the universe is reasonable then the truth is not logically absurd. In this case, a proposition about the universe which is logically absurd is not true. This allows us to construct a proof by abduction of the truth. It seems to me that such proofs must be the core subject matter for any philosophy predicated on a reasonable universe.

The term "proof" is often used when the conclusion need not be logically necessary. That is a requirement in mathematics and logic, but not in the law, where "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" is the standard, or, "the preponderance of evidence". The first is the standard in criminal cases, and the second in civil cases. The reason for that is clearly that more is at stake in criminal cases than in civil cases. But neither of them requires that the conclusion be logically necessary on the basis of the premises. And, since in science, we have inductive, not deductive proofs, the standard you give would mean that in science there are no proofs at all. So the use of math and logic as the model of proof seems to me not a good one.

I have found that proofs are always contradicted in some way. So I am a bit uncomfortable with the notion of proof, since proof implies certainty, which if really True would bring everything to a halt:

Another way of thinking about the problem is that philosophy uses "logical proof" as means to draw conclusions from certain premises; the difficulties arise in providing warrants or evidence for its premises, and the way these are structured in argumentation.
Much of philosophy, in a way, seems to be a prolonged discussion about what constitutes acceptable warrants for these initial claims and why some arguments (if any) are more compelling than others.

philosophy uses "logical proof" as means to draw conclusions from certain premises;