I think philosophy misses its true calling, by acting as one more field of enquiry. The world is full of specialized fields, examining their particular areas from every possible angle and philosophy certainly falls into this habit, yet what is really needed is some effort to really step back and try to understand how it all fits together. The current situation is like some global Tower of Babel.
Not only is there no overall sense, though western religions assume some deistic entity and the sciences assume some material basis, but many otherwise obvious observations are missed, because they don't fall into any of the conceptual ruts that have developed over time.
For example, we are mobile organisms, necessitating this sequential process of perception and evolved culture through narrative, so we experience time as the point of the present, moving past to future. Physics codifies it as measures of duration.
Though the logical cause is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. Duration is the present, as the events come and go.
There can be no linear dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.
Energy is the present, not some dimensionless point between past and future. It creates time, as well as temperature, pressure, color, sound. Frequencies and amplitudes. Time is frequency, events are amplitude.
So energy, as process, goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past. The energy carries the wave, while the fluctuations rise and fall.
Consciousness goes past to future, while thoughts go future to past, yet it is the digestive and circulatory systems processing the energy, while the nervous system sorts the information.
Consider God; Logically a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell.
It doesn't take a great deal of wisdom to realize an absolute, which is elemental, is not an ideal, which is really just aspirational. Where were the philosophers?
Or the economy; Money is a social contract that enables large societies to function, but we treat it as a commodity to mine from society.
People are linear and goal oriented, while nature and markets are circular and cyclical, so we see it as the signal to extract and store. Though its functionality is in its fungibility. we own it like we own the section of road we are using, or the fluids passing through our bodies.
A medium is not a store. Blood is a medium, fat is a store. Roads are a medium, parking lots are a store. The hallway is a medium, the hall closet is a store. If the average five year old can figure that out, why not economists, or the philosophers.
Philosophy might be dead, but it needs to be revived.
Hopefully your generation has more imagination.
