Is there a foundation of philosophy?

Question

I'm asking about some advice on what to read on the following subjects:

I think that, in order to be able to start thinking or talking about anything, some grand constructs are already present, the nature of which must be examined before everything else. For example, we can articulate sentences with stable meaning, and remember it as the discussion proceeds. How is this possible? I think it is not at all obvious that it should be so. Everything could vanish the next second. How can stable things exist in general, in the material and mental world? How does the evolution of consciousness, if it exists, relate to the above?

Answer 1

Philosophy, or at least a core portion of it, can arguably be characterized as the search for just the kind of foundations you are seeking. Because of that, every identifiably distinct philosophical school has its own answers and its own emphases.

Plato and Lao Tzu were interested in the foundations of reality --both saw those as existing at a deeper level than what we commonly experience in everyday life. Plato saw them as being in an ideal realm called the "Realm of the Forms," while Lao Tzu saw them as being founded in the dynamic tension between the complementary forces of the Tao.

Wittgenstein was interested in the foundations of language. Descartes explored the foundations of knowledge. The Buddha intuited the foundations of morality. Euclid saw the universe as founded on geometrical axioms. Russell sought the foundations of mathematics, and Turing looked for the foundations of intelligence and/or consciousness. Your questions cut across a number of these different realms, so there likely isn't any one unified, definitive answer, or at least, not an uncontroversial one.