Synthesized answer
The "layman's dilemma" in philosophy, as described in the passages, refers to a common predicament where individuals, often philosophical amateurs, desire to reconcile seemingly incompatible philosophical viewpoints. These individuals, who are described as "ordinary philosophic layman," "live vaguely in one plausible compartment of it or another to suit the temptations of successive hours," and are "vexed by too much inconsistency and vacillation in [their] creed" [1, 3]. They find themselves wanting both facts and religion, science and a spiritual dimension [3].
This dilemma manifests as a perceived separation between two essential components of a desired philosophy. On one hand, there is the "scientific loyalty to facts and willingness to take account of them" [2]. On the other hand, there is the "old confidence in human values and the resultant spontaneity, whether of the religious or of the romantic type" [2]. The issue is that available philosophical systems appear to offer only one or the other: "empiricism with inhumanism and irreligion; or else... a rationalistic philosophy that indeed may call itself religious, but that keeps out of all definite touch with concrete…
Synthesized from the book passages below. Chat with the book on Feynman for follow-up.
From the book
pical Rocky Mountain toughs, in philosophy. Most of us have a hankering for the good things on both sides of the line. Facts are good, of course--give us lots of facts. Principles are good--give us plenty of principles. The world is indubitably one if you look at it in one way, but as indubitably is it many, if you look at it in another. It is both one and many--let us adopt a sort of pluralistic monism. Everything of course is necessarily determined, and yet of course our wills are free: a sort of free-will determinism is the true philosophy. The evil of the parts is undeniable; but…
has a certain sweep and dash about it, while the usual theism is more insipid, but both are equally remote and vacuous. What you want is a philosophy that will not only exercise your powers of intellectual abstraction, but that will make some positive connexion with this actual world of finite human lives. You want a system that will combine both things, the scientific loyalty to facts and willingness to take account of them, the spirit of adaptation and accommodation, in short, but also the old confidence in human values and the resultant spontaneity, whether of the religious or of…
. We are worthy of the name of amateur athletes, and are vexed by too much inconsistency and vacillation in our creed. We cannot preserve a good intellectual conscience so long as we keep mixing incompatibles from opposite sides of the line. And now I come to the first positively important point which I wish to make. Never were as many men of a decidedly empiricist proclivity in existence as there are at the present day. Our children, one may say, are almost born scientific. But our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our…
that the disjunction is a final one? that only one side can be true? Are a pluralism and monism genuine incompatibles? So that, if the world were really pluralistically constituted, if it really existed distributively and were made up of a lot of eaches, it could only be saved piecemeal and de facto as the result of their behavior, and its epic history in no wise short-circuited by some essential oneness in which the severalness were already 'taken up' beforehand and eternally 'overcome'? If this were so, we should have to choose one philosophy or the other. We could not say 'yes,…
ady in the field. A very large number of you here present, possibly a majority of you, are amateurs of just this sort. Now what kinds of philosophy do you find actually offered to meet your need? You find an empirical philosophy that is not religious enough, and a religious philosophy that is not empirical enough for your purpose. If you look to the quarter where facts are most considered you find the whole tough-minded program in operation, and the 'conflict between science and religion' in full blast. Either it is that Rocky Mountain tough of a Haeckel with his materialistic monism,…